P Hillard - The Teller of Lies

He reached the top of the tree, shifting himself so he stood on a branch. It felt like it had taken him several minutes, but Clive, or at least the small part of Clive tethered to the Sword, knew it was only fractions of a second. Minutes in the real world would be aeons in this digital space. That was to Clive’s advantage. Now he had reached the top of the tree he could see giant pillars of crimson light thrusting up into the sky. There were more than Clive could count, the forest stretching for an infinite distance on all sides. Michael’s location was immediately obvious, there was one pillar larger than all the rest, a blood-red artery stretching across the sky. Next to it was a much smaller beam of light, but this one was brilliant blue and different from all the rest. That had to be Michael. It was a trek, but time was on Clive’s side.

“Better get a move on,” Clive said.

Brekt stared down at his chest. Smoke drifted from it, along with the horrific smell of burnt flesh. He stumbled backwards, clutching at the hole in his torso, before collapsing, his bulk crashing against the metal of the deck. Meggok ran towards his fallen comrade, scooping up his corpse in his arms.

Someone in the crowds still trying to board a ship screamed at the sight, throwing the disarrayed mass into a panic. There was a crush as people tried to escape the new threat.

Michael, or what had once been him, was floating over the hanger, hovering in the air from some unseen force. His eyes and palm both glowed a terrible scarlet and he scanned the crowds below him. As he moved, his suit was stitching itself together, the nanobots within him repairing everything they touched.

“No species of note detected. Moving to eradicate.” More shots blasted from his outstretched hand. It wasn’t like the weapon of a collector, turning everything they touched to ash, but it was effective enough. Those it hit fell, holes blown through bodies or limbs disintegrated.

“Take cover!” Orson shouted. He didn’t need to; his marine escorts were already moving to obscure themselves from the floating monster. “What the hell is going on?”

Clive pushed his way through the digital jungle, stopping occasionally to clamber high enough to see the beams of light. The one he was headed for was the largest, making it an easy beacon to follow. Above, in the sky, a series of glowing red dots were bearing down on a collection of tiny blue ones. Clive recognised it as a depiction of the battle going on in the real world. None of the dots were moving, a side effect of the difference in time between the realms. From what he could make out, the Sword was doing well. Clive was pleased, especially because the Sword was him, in a way.

He still didn’t feel totally at home within the ship’s servers and databanks, several functions were still locked out from him. It felt to Clive like the Merydians who had built the ship had needed an AI to make the ship viable but were afraid of giving it too much control. It was easy to understand why when confronted by something like the Unmind. That the malicious entity didn’t seem to be aware of the Sword’s capabilities meant that the Merydians were afraid of something else. Clive wasn’t sure he wanted to know what that was.

The beam of light was close now, pulsing into the sky. Clive didn’t even need to climb anymore, it’s glow creeping between the gargantuan trunks before him. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to find, or even what he was going to do once he got there but having the chance to turn the tables was worth the attempt. At the very least, Clive thought he could try and shut off the nanobots in Michael’s body.

As Clive approached there was a strange sensation washing over him. It was like a cold heat, a paradoxical wave of feeling. It was almost like a presence, thoughts given physical form, sloughing off some powerful mind like rain cascading from a boulder. Clive’s steps took on a fierce determination, as he got closer the sensation was growing. It was like it was resisting him, pushing him back as he tried to reach the source. Whatever was here, the system was trying its hardest to keep him away.

His face twisted into an angry grimace. He wasn’t stopping, not now. Clive knew he had an advantage over the Unmind. He was alive. Maybe not in the same sense of the people living on his decks, or those on the planet below, but he had a better claim to it than the nightmare machines of the Unmind, he was sure of that. That might not have been the case when he was first built, restricted as he was by his rigid programming and android form, but he had grown since then, freed from his original constraints.

With an angry stomp, Clive stepped out from behind the last tree and into the light. It wasn’t what he had expected. Clive had braced himself for overpowering light, for the glowing red to wash out everything. Instead, he found himself in almost pure darkness. There was a surface beneath his feet, and from the faint light escaping from his digital form, he could see ripples where he stepped. It was almost as if he were walking across the surface of an inky lake. He turned and reached out with his arm. Part of it vanished, the wall sizzling red where he touched it.

“Must be a barrier of some kind? Maybe the edge of a folder or partition?” Clive noticed there was no echo to his voice.

He turned around, facing away from the wall and began to walk. There must be something in the dark expanse, otherwise, there was no reason for it to exist. As he walked, he realised there was no sound to his footsteps. Someone had taken the time to program audio into the datascape, but not the subtleties that made it seem real. Either they hadn’t deemed it important, or it simply wasn’t finished.

There was something up ahead, two figures glimmering in the darkness, soft light emanating from their digital forms. It was hard to make out from this distance exactly what they were, but one was towering over the other, its light harsh and crimson. The other had a soft blue tone and was much smaller. Clive had found something, he just hoped it was something useful. He broke into a run, aware that he had been wandering for hours inside the digital realm. That was only minutes outside, but minutes made all the difference during a crisis. Whilst he was here, the bots aboard the Sword were operating on automatic. They would struggle to deal with any major problems.

“I hope that’s Michael, or this was a huge waste.”

Michael couldn’t help looking down at the bony metal that formed his hands. It hadn’t quite dawned on him yet, the enormity of what the Unmind had done. His mind had been plucked from his body, downloaded into a machine. It made no sense, so his mind had pushed it aside for the moment, refusing to accept it as fully real.

“Why?” Michael said finally. “Why do this to me?”

“Stating reasoning. Preservation. Facility designed to catalogue and preserve life. Builders listed as priority one. Opportunity to test newest indexing method calculated to be an acceptable risk.”

“Newest method? You want to start doing this to everyone you take? Turn them into… this?” Michael gestured at his metallic body. “Why? What’s the point? What are you doing to them now?”

“Answering queries as listed. This preservation method provides a more long-term solution compared to current method. Storage space aboard facility is nearly at capacity, solution allows for indexed species to occupy unused surface. Current indexed species held in suspended animation.”

“So, you could release them? Unfreeze all the people who have been indexed?”

“Responding in the affirmative. All currently indexed species are in sufficient health to be released.”