The Evolutionary Void

SEVEN

THE CAPSULE CAME DOWN close to the center of Octoron’s little township. Acrid smoke layered the air. Several of the buildings surrounding Entranceway Plaza were damaged; energy weapons had briefly turned the iron structures molten, causing them to sag and twist as they started to lean over. The wreckage of crashed capsules was sticking out of the ruins. Heat from the impact in combination with all the munitions had ignited a great many fires, which the chamber’s drones were only just extinguishing. They’d used a lot of crystalfoam, covering vast swaths of the plaza in blue-green mush that was still emitting sulfurous belches.

Human paramedics were scuttling around, performing triage. Serious cases were carried to waiting capsules to be ferried off to the hospital on the edge of town. Thirty heavily armored and badly pissed Chikoya were strutting around, getting in the way of the human emergency teams. Resentment was starting to rise on both sides. There’d be another clash if tempers didn’t start cooling quickly.

The capsule’s door dilated, and he stepped out. It wasn’t a bad entrance, he felt; he was wearing some really quite stylish mauve shorts and a loose-fitting shirt of semiorganic white silk open down the front, like the top half of a robe. Top-grade Advancer-heritage genetic sequences and a decent diet had toned him up, and his slightly elevated position gave him that commanding full-of-confidence appearance, as if he’d arrived ready to take charge and everyone else could now relax. The frayed leather flip-flops admittedly detracted from the image, but he’d been in a hurry, so nothing he could do about that now. In any case, no one was looking at his feet; they were all looking up at him. Except the fifteen armored Chikoya who had swung their weapons around to splash their targeting lasers across his pristine shirt.

“Well, this sucks,” Ozzie said.

He trotted down the capsule’s three stairs to the ground and gave the big aliens his best untroubled grin. The Chikoya resembled medium-sized dinosaurs with vestigial dragon wings. Beefed up with armor that resembled black metallic crocodile skin, they were imposing demonic creatures. And really very pissed, Ozzie decided as their minds radiated the paranoia and aggression that only their species could produce in such quantities.

“So what’s up?” he asked.

“You are Ozzie?” the lead one asked. Its thick neck curved down, putting its helmet tip inches from Ozzie’s nose.

“Sure thing, dude.”

Three mirrored lenses in the helmet’s center swiveled slightly to focus on Ozzie’s head. “Where is the human messiah?”

“I don’t know. I like just got here. Right?”

“You are the one who broke through into the realm of the all-perception. You can use it at the highest level. You must know where he is.”

Ozzie took a sad moment to reflect how semantics always betrayed the universe-view of each sentient species. “I don’t know,” he said patiently, pushing an intense feeling of benevolence out into mindspace. “The messiah is powerful. He has mysterious ways of camouflaging himself from the rest of us.” That was a slight exaggeration. Ozzie was sorely puzzled how Inigo had actually managed to conceal himself. One moment he’d been there, his raging thoughts glaring out into mindspace, and the next he’d gone, vanished, the mind extinguished. It was as if he’d died, which, judging by the amount of carnage let loose in the plaza, was a high probability. Except there had been others with him, a woman and some kind of psychotic special forces bodyguard who also, oddly, didn’t register in mindspace. For all three to vanish without leaving a visible corpse between them just wasn’t going to wash. Either they’d teleported out somehow, which he didn’t believe because the AI was showing the damaged navy scout ship still sitting on the pad, or they knew a way to circumvent mindspace, which he wouldn’t put past that slippery, gloating little shit Inigo.

“Why is he here?” the Chikoya demanded. Oval vents at the front of its helmet clunked open, allowing a misty stream of phlegm to come spitting out.

Ozzie dodged gracefully, managing to clamp down on his feelings about that particular Chikoya body function. “As I haven’t met him, I don’t know.”

“He is a danger to all living things on the Spike. The Void may know of his presence here. It will seek us out. We will be the first to be devoured.”

“I know. Real crock of shit, huh? When I find him, I’m going to kick his ass right off the Spike. I’m going to be hunting hard.”

“We will locate the messiah. We will make him stop the Void.”

“That’s wonderful. We both want the same thing. But dude, you just gotta make sure to let me know when you find him, please. I got me special supersecret weapons that will cut the bastard to shreds no matter what kind of force fields and military protection he’s brought with him.”

“You have weapons?” Sensor clumps mounted on the Chikoya’s armor rose up like time-lapse mushrooms to scan over Ozzie as another jet of phlegm spit out.

“Hey ho, I used to be one of the Commonwealth’s rulers, you know. Check your database to confirm. That means I had full access to its pre-postphysical technology. Of course I have superweapons with me, dude.” He pushed a starburst of sincerity and determination into his mind and held it there. “I don’t want any more of your herd to be hurt or killed by his soldiers, so please, if you find him, please call me. I can squash him like a Kantr under a Folippian.” Whatever they are.

“We will inform you if he is troublesome.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind.” Ozzie smiled again at the monster’s helmet and walked around it into the plaza. The other Chikoya let him pass. His macrocellular clusters reported a quick surge in encrypted data between the big aliens. They began to holster their weapons.

Oh, yeah. Still the man.

That was exactly what he’d come to the Spike to get away from. He went over to one of the triage teams. “Hi, Max.”

“Uh? Oh, hi, Ozzie,” the medic replied. He was kneeling beside an unconscious woman who’d suffered a lot of burns.

“So what happened?”

“The guy was a fucking lunatic. He took on a whole army of Chikoya by himself.”

“Did you see it?” Ozzie asked.

“Just the end.” Max applied some pale-green derm3 to the woman’s black and red legs. The jelly spread out evenly over the terrible damage and began to bubble like sluggish champagne. “And I had to wait until that was over before I landed. Anything moving down here got trashed. I guess weapon enrichments have come on some since I left the Commonwealth.”

“Yeah, looks like it.” Ozzie’s field scan told him the Chikoya were starting to teleport out.

Coleen, the medic working with Max, broke off from implementing the stem support module she’d applied to the woman’s throat. “What the hell is Inigo doing coming here?”

“Sounds like he wants to talk to me,” Ozzie admitted.

“Why?”

“Don’t know for sure, but just a wild guess here: the Void.”

Max had cut away the smoldering fabric of the woman’s dress and started applying the derm3 to the side of her abdomen. “Can you stop it?”

Ozzie gave him a bitter laugh. “No. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Then why-”

“Dunno, man.” Ozzie spread his arms wide in surrender. “She going to be all right?”

“She’s not Higher,” Coleen said. “But she should be able to avoid re-life. I think she’s stable enough to make the trip to the hospital now.”

“I’ll take her,” Max said.

“How many hurt?” Ozzie asked. He didn’t want to know, but his conscience was prodding him. That was something that hadn’t happened in a long time. And it shouldn’t be happening now, damnit.

“Eleven got bodylossed,” Coleen said. “We’ve shipped eight live criticals back to the hospital, and there’s another five bad ones waiting. Maybe two dozen more with minor injuries.”

Ozzie gave a tight nod. “Could have been worse.”

“The Chikoya aren’t going to get over this in a hurry,” she said.

“I know.”

“They think the Spike belongs to them.”

“It doesn’t.”

“But this …”

“They’ll get over it. We’ve all got to get along.”

“So you keep saying,” she said.

Ozzie was disappointed by the amount of bitterness and resentment in her mind, even though Coleen was good at toning down her feelings.

“I’ll sort this out,” he assured her.

“Good.” She hurried off to another victim, her boots squelching through the crystalfoam.

Max gave Ozzie a sympathetic look. “I don’t blame you.”

“Very big.”

“But it’s Inigo, Ozzie! The Dreamer himself. Things have to be bad if he’s come to you.”

“I know.”

“And that bodyguard-”

Ozzie held his hand up, palms outward. “I’m on it, man.” He turned and walked slowly back to the capsule, stopping briefly to study the broken buildings. No doubt about it, they were going to have to rebuild the whole center of town. “Connect me to him,” he told his u-shadow.

The code embedded in the general message made a connection instantly. “This is Ozzie.”

“You are the eighth person to claim this.”

“That’s gotta be a bummer for you. And what if I’ve cloned myself? Would any of us brothers do, or did you want the original?” He waited for a reply, slightly mystified by the delay.

“I need the original.”

“Then this is your lucky day, pal.” Ozzie’s u-shadow informed him that a very sophisticated infiltrator was trying to take over the capsule’s smartnet. “Let it in,” he told the u-shadow. “But if we land in deep shit, I want to be able to wipe it.”

“Confirmed,” his u-shadow reported. An exovision display showed him the infiltrator’s progress.

“I will require DNA verification that you are Oswald Fernandez Isaacs.”

“Nobody calls me that.”

“That is your name.”

“It was my name.” Even after all the re-life procedures and biononic regenerations he’d undergone in the last fifteen hundred years, with all their associated memory edits, he’d never quite let go of the childhood persecution that name had brought down upon him. “Now I’m just Ozzie; always have been, always will be.”

“Very well, Ozzie, I am loading a coordinate into your capsule. Please do not attempt to deviate from the route.”

“Dude, wouldn’t dream of it.”

A map of Octoron compartment flipped up, with his u-shadow showing him the route the infiltrator was preparing to fly. Ozzie studied it, but the destination was a nowhere, a remote stretch of land past one of the water columns, about thirty kilometers away. Just the kind of nowhere outlaws would choose to lie low in, in a decent Western.

The capsule lifted silently and curved around over the town. Ozzie watched the buildings shrink away while the resentment built in his mind. The Spike was his escape from the shitty vibes of life in the Greater Commonwealth, and Inigo was the one man who’d subverted and ruined his hopes for the gaiafield.

Nigel Sheldon had offered Ozzie another way out, a berth on the Sheldon family armada of colony starships. They weren’t just going to the other side of the galaxy to set up a new society. Oh, no, not Nigel; he was off to a whole new galaxy to begin again. A noble quest, restarting human civilization in a fresh part of the universe. Then in another thousand years a new generation of colony ships might spread to further galaxies. After all, as he’d pointed out, this one is ultimately doomed with the Void at the center, so we need somewhere that’s got a long-term future. Ozzie grabbed the logic even as he argued back that humans would have gone postphysical long before the Void would ever present a tangible threat.

Ha! Yeah, right. Goddamn Nigel, always gets the last laugh.

The Spike had been a kind of compromise for Ozzie. A withdrawal from Commonwealth life for sure but not a complete retreat the way Nigel had chosen-not that he saw it as a retreat. He did it because there was a slight chance he could still turn things around and reclaim the dream that he’d lost to Inigo, Edeard, and the insidious Void.

He had intended the gaiafield to allow humans and aliens to understand each other better, eliminating conflict and confusion across the galaxy. The oldest liberal dream of all: If we just keep talking … And now the gaiafield could back up the talk with sincerity and understanding. Except, as always, the human race had found a way to fuck it up and turn it into the carrier wave of the latest and stupidest of all religions. So he came to the Spike with an idea of how to make something bigger than the gaiafield and commune with the Silfen Motherholme, a wonderful union of the mind that couldn’t be subverted by selective, edited thoughts like Inigo’s seditious dreams with their sole purpose of entrapping people.

Mindspace was a good start, except it worked better with human thoughts than with anyone else’s, especially the ratty little Ilodi. But the Chikoya were coming around to accepting the state, even though the stupid monsters were hanging on it a whole load of religious connotations of the “all-perception realm,” which had sparked some old dumbass racial lore.

A little bit of fine-tuning was all it would take. Something he’d been analyzing and rationalizing-well, sort of-for the last forty years. Then every sentient species in the galaxy would be aware of every other species, which would be truly wonderful. Unless there was something else like the Prime out there. And prescience/rationality species would probably think their gods were calling. Oh, and greedy little psychopaths like the Ocisen Empire would use it as a map of worlds to conquer.

Yeah, fine-tuning. That’s all.

Which he would have gotten around to. Eventually. Except now the Commonwealth and its incredible idiocies and factions and violence had followed him to the Spike. His basic instinct was to just cut and run again. But Inigo’s boneheaded stupidity was finally paying off, with the Void going apeshit and everyone desperate for a solution. To what Ozzie wasn’t sure. But sure as bears shit in the woods, they came searching him out for it, treating him like the ultimate guru.

So once again, here he was doing the right thing, which would have appalled the him of centuries past. Today, he just figured that this was the quickest way to get them the fuck off the Spike.

The capsule approached the water column, one of twelve massive support structures that stretched from the chamber’s landscape right up to the opaque roof forty kilometers above. They always reminded Ozzie of giant cocktail swizzle sticks, huge narrow cylinders with ridges that spiraled the entire length. It was part of the chamber’s irrigation system; water flowed constantly down them, racing around and around in a white-foam cascade. The top third of the twists had sharp angled kinks that sent thundering bursts of spume swirling off in long clouds that traced huge arcs as they fell downward and outward until they’d evolved into ordinary stratus scudding through the air before eventually drizzling on the ground far below.

He flew directly underneath one of the churning ribbons of thick white mist and began a steep descent. A broad expanse of Octoron’s purple and green grass lay below, with a herd of sprightly tranalin racing away from the lake at the base of the water column. Ozzie expanded his biononic field scan function and probed the ground directly below. Three human figures were waiting for him, which was odd because he couldn’t perceive any incursion of thoughts within mindspace. He frowned and refined the scan. One was standing waiting, integral force field active; the other two were lying on the grass, unconscious.

“Ah,” he grunted as realization dawned. “Clever.”

The capsule touched down, and he emerged to face the standing man. No doubt he was the bodyguard type who’d unleashed hell back in the town. The man’s biological appearance was mid-thirties, which was slightly older than Highers usually maintained their physical looks. Ozzie was drawn to his eyes, which were gray with weird flecks of purple. His Commonwealth Navy tunic was simple gray-blue semiorganic, with several burn scars where energy weapons had fired out from subdermal enrichments. But it was the expression, or rather lack of it, that was most intriguing. He didn’t express a single flicker of emotion. Whatever thoughts were animating the body were extraordinarily simple, like those of a small animal. Ozzie had to get within ten meters before he could even sense them.

“Yo, dude, you hurt a lot of people back there. Some are going to have to be re-lifed, and that hospital doesn’t have a whole lot of medical capsules.” He had to raise his voice above the crashing white water waves of the column as they poured into the lake behind him. Very humid air was surging out. His semiorganic shirt hardened slightly to become water resilient, but he could feel it starting to saturate his Afro hairstyle.

The man put his hand out. Ozzie raised an eyebrow.

“I need to confirm your DNA,” the man said.

“Ho, brother.” Ozzie touched his palm to the one offered, allowing the biononic filaments to sample his dermal layer cells.

“You are Ozzie,” the man declared.

“Really? I thought I was just fooling myself.” In itself the confirmation was interesting; that particular datum was extremely hard to get hold of in the Commonwealth. Ozzie had made sure of that before he left, and ANA enforced the proscription on access. You’d need to be quite the player to get hold of it.

“No, you are not. Please turn off the telepathy effect.”

“Say what?”

“Turn off the telepathy effect. It allows the Chikoya to track Inigo.”

“Ah, I get it. Smart. No.”

“I have brought Inigo to you. You cannot function effectively together if we are constantly interrupted by hostile elements.”

“Man, I don’t want to function effectively or any other way with that little turd.”

“You have to.”

“No, dude, I don’t.”

“I will exterminate the woman if you do not switch it off.”

“Jesus fuck! Why? Who is she?”

“Corrie-Lyn. A past member of the Living Dream Cleric Council and Inigo’s lover.”

“So why kill her?” Ozzie was getting a bad feeling about the way the man’s thoughts functioned. In fact, he was beginning to wonder just what kind of biology was nestling inside the human skull. And who it belonged to.

“She is my leverage. If you do not comply, I will find others to kill until you do.”

“Okay. I’ll accept that threat is real for the moment. What does Inigo want with me?”

“He doesn’t know yet. I am following orders from another source to bring you both together.”

“Shit. Who wants that to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on! Seriously, dude?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. So what do you expect us to do when we’re up and talking?”

“I do not know. Those operational instructions will not activate until that stage of the mission has reached active status.”

“You’re not human.”

“I was.”

Yep, very bad feeling. “I know of this kind of conditioning. The last time it was used on humans was by the Starflyer. And I’m pretty sure we got rid of that bastard.” Ozzie grinned evilly. “But you never know, do you?”

“I do not know who I work for.”

“So I have to take a chance, huh?”

“Yes. And spare Corrie-Lyn’s life.”

“Hmm. I guess the only reason your boss would get me and the dickhead messiah here together is if he or she or it thinks we can do something about the Void. And for that reason, and that alone, I’ll switch it off. I’m curious to see what you think I can do.” He directed his u-shadow to deactivate the device. “This will take a while.”

“How long?”

“I have no idea. Maybe half an hour. It’s never been switched off before.”

“I will wait.”

Ozzie watched him. The man wasn’t kidding. What followed was no vaguely awkward interval where they occasionally made eye contact and hurriedly looked away, nor was there any attempt to talk. He just stood there, his field scan sweeping around; otherwise he had no interest in anything. That wasn’t human. His thought routines, such as they were, resembled machine code in their simplicity. In one respect that was a relief; Starflyer conditioning was different.

After a while Ozzie felt mindspace withdrawing, collapsing in on itself. It was akin to closing down his gaiamotes. The minds glimmering all around him faded away, most of them expressing sorrow and alarm as they felt mindspace fading. The loss was more profound than he was expecting, even though he knew it was temporary. But he’d lived with and embraced mindspace for so long now that it was a part of his existence.

“It’s done,” he said grimly, and pushed his hair back off his forehead. It had absorbed so much of the vapor thrown out by the water column, it had begun to sag and tangle in unpleasant rattails.

A tic started on the man’s left cheek. Expression slowly emerged on his face, like color filling a penciled-in outline. He let out a long sigh, the kind a witness to something awful would make. “Okay, then, that’s good.”

A thoroughly fascinated Ozzie gave him a very curious look. “What’s happening?” He had a strong urge to switch mindspace back on and feel the man’s thoughts again. But it would take days for the device to reestablish that state.

“My normal thought routines are back.” The man gave Corrie-Lyn’s unconscious form a quizzical glance. “That ought to go down well in some parts.”

“So what was firing away in your brain before?”

“It’s a kind of minimal function mode, in case of neural injury.”

“Uh huh.”

“In my profession there’s a big chance my neural structure will suffer physical damage during a mission. This allows me to remain functional in adverse circumstances.”

“Cool reboot. Uh, what adverse circumstances hit you here?”

“The telepathy effect was affecting me in an unfortunate way.”

“Right,” Ozzie drawled. “So who the hell are you, dude?”

“Aaron.”

“Okay. Top of the list, huh?”

Aaron grinned. “Yes. And thank you for agreeing to meet with me. My minimal version doesn’t have a lot of tact.”

“Man, that’s the biggest understatement I’ve heard in a century. But you said you’ve no idea why you’re here.”

“Partially true. When Inigo wakes up, I’ll know what I have to ask the pair of you to do. I’m expecting it’ll be to stop the Void’s devourment phase.”

“Oh, sure. I’ve got time before lunch. Shall I tell my superwarship crew to get ready to fly? Or are we going to sneak in through the back gate and steal the bad guys’ unguarded power supply?”

Aaron smiled like a particularly tolerant parent. “Is that the back gate on the Dark Fortress?”

“Man, I don’t like you.”

“I appreciate that this isn’t easy.”

“You have no idea.”

Some mornings after she’d woken, Araminta would walk out onto the balcony overlooking the vast expanse of Golden Park to watch the sunrise, enjoying the first rays as they touched the tips of the white pillars along Upper Grove Canal. Over a thousand people were usually there to greet her with waves and cheers and thoughts of thanks directed through the gaiafield. They camped there overnight, much to the annoyance of the city authorities. But Araminta had told the Clerics to grant them permission to stay, knowing that the more people who were watching her, the less anyone could do anything about her. She still gifted everything she saw and heard and felt to the gaiafield, which had led to a storm of embarrassment the first few days as she used the toilet; she soon learned to stop gifting anything but sight at those times and was careful where she looked. She really didn’t want to think about what it was going to be like when it was her time of the month. Mercifully, it was a kind of mutual embarrassment, and no one who came into contact with her was crass enough to mention it.

She was thankful for the control she could exert on her own mind (sometimes resorting to the melange program for support); without that discipline, she would have been completely exposed to the impact of thoughts within the gaiafield. The thoughts of her devout followers she held back from, content simply to know their existence through the outpouring of gratitude. For everyone else, the deluge of emotion from the billions upon billions of humans who didn’t admire her, she kept herself as remote as possible. Even with that detachment it was impossible not to be aware of their hatred and vilification. Hour after unceasing hour she was subject to the superlative abuse and loathing of the majority of her entire species. The intensity was awesome in the extreme. They despised her as pure evil that had taken on human form. That was justified, she acknowledged weakly; after all, she was going to trigger the event that most likely was going to kill every single one of them.

She gave the Golden Park crowd a swift wave of appreciation and went back inside. The pool in the bathroom was almost big enough to swim in, and of course no one from the Dreamer down to the Cleric Conservator had ever entertained the notion of installing a decent modern spore shower in an unobtrusive corner. If the residents of the state rooms wanted to get clean, they jolly well had to do it the old-fashioned way. Araminta walked down into the body-temperature water and started slathering on the liquid soap. All that ever did was make her think of Edeard and the string of floozies he’d enjoyed during the dark time that had befallen him in Dreams Thirty to Thirty-three. She ordered the shower on and sluiced the bubbles off, mildly worried about how similar the whole episode was to starring in a porn show.

Sure enough, and despite her resolve, she could feel the physical admiration of male Living Dream members seeping into the gaiafield as the water ran across her skin-and no little amount of appreciation from females, either. Worse still, a lot of her foes were registering their enjoyment of her flesh.

When this is over, I’m going to have to walk down the Silfen paths to the other side of the galaxy and live like a hermit forevermore. Her gaze was drawn down to the pendant as it dangled between her glistening breasts-Oh, Ozziecrapit, look away! It wasn’t warm, and the light inside was dim, as if a wisp of phosphorescence had been caged within the crystal, but it still made its presence known. On the other side of it was the infinite comfort and wisdom of the Silfen Motherholme. That at least gave her some reassurance she wasn’t entirely alone.

Three Mr. Boveys smiled in gentle sympathy as they sat down to a late dinner at home.

She ordered the shower off and stepped out of the pool. Then all she had to do was rub herself down with a towel, which she did while looking at the ceiling. A small growl came out of her throat as she grew cross with herself. She hurriedly struggled into her vest top and briefs, then slithered her long white robe on top. The belt had been modified by the palace security detail and contained a force field generator. They’d insisted, and she wasn’t going to argue. Dressed and chaste at last, she made her way through the long ornate halls to the state dining room.

Underneath the glaring ceiling, the huge polished wooden table built for a hundred fifty guests was set for one. At least Edeard had Hilitte for company, she thought. And how would he have coped with body functions and sex and life in general if he’d ever known of his audience? She wasn’t sure if a table this size set for two was more or less ridiculous that it was with just her lonely cutlery. But then, Edeard often was joined by Dinlay for breakfast. All she had were five superefficient staff members to serve her anything she wanted from the bolnut veneer sideboard that was loaded with an authentic Edeard-style breakfast from the Thirty-third Dream. She remembered the later dreams when he’d been properly elected Mayor. He and Kristabel had never had breakfasts like that, but then, he’d never taken up residence in the state rooms then, either. Perhaps the palace staff members were being ironic; if so, the nuance was lost on her.

Just to be difficult, she ordered a hot chocolate to have with her croissant. One of the girls in a maid’s uniform scurried off to the kitchens. As she tore the pastry open, Araminta reflected on how it would be nice to have someone there for company. She was a little sad that Cressida hadn’t been in touch, but she could certainly understand why her cousin wanted nothing to do with her.

Her chocolate arrived in a huge cup, the top covered in whipped cream dotted with strawberry marshmallows. Darraklan walked in with the maid; he’d taken to wearing the long burgundy waistcoat, white shirt, and yellow drosilk cravat of the senior Orchard Palace personnel. He’d slipped very easily into the job of chief of staff, helping her settle in. “Good morning, Dreamer; Cleric Rincenso requests a moment of your time.”

Araminta noticed that Darraklan didn’t have any gaiafield emission relating to the Cleric whatsoever. But then, in his own repellent ass-kissing way, Rincenso was also striving hard for favored status. She could use that; he’d want to score points by exposing any of his colleagues who doubted or schemed against her.

“Show him in,” she said.

The Cleric came into the dining room as the corona of Querencia’s sun erupted with flares all across the ceiling. The bright rippling light shining off his robes and highlighting his eager smile had an almost aquatic property. He bowed politely. “Dreamer.”

Araminta gazed at him as she sipped her chocolate. It was delicious. Thank Ozzie, being a galaxy killer should have some perks, surely. “Did you find them for me?”

“Yes, Dreamer. The women were at the mansion on Viotia. He was actually already here; our security services have been holding him.”

“Why?”

Rincenso’s smile became stretched. “It was thought he might be shielding you from our Welcome Team.”

“Ah. He wasn’t. I eluded them by myself.” A pause for emphasis. “It wasn’t that difficult.”

“Not for you, Dreamer.”

He was so smooth, he almost spoiled the taste of the chocolate for her. “Is he here now?”

“Yes.”

“Bring him in.”

Rincenso hesitated. “Dreamer, he was interrogated very thoroughly.”

“Thoroughly? You mean …” She didn’t like to dwell on that too much. I make a truly rotten despot.

“He was given a memory read, yes.”

“Honious! Bring him in.”

The man led through the dining room doors, who needed to be supported by a burly security guard in a constable’s uniform, had the body of Likan, but the spirit was definitely withered. Any lingering anger she felt toward him was immediately banished. She got up and pulled out the chair next to her. The security guard helped him into it. There was no evidence of any physical damage, but his limbs were shaking badly, and he hunched up as if he were cowering from some omnipresent tormentor.

“I’m sorry,” Araminta said. “I didn’t know.”

“You,” he said with a bitter snarl. “There was always something about you.”

“You were quite the personality yourself.”

“That’s not what you told me when we parted.” He glared around the big room. “That’s on record now. You know I’m telling the truth.”

“They will give all the copies back to you. I wish it to be so,” she said with simple authority. Rincenso nodded discreetly. “You can destroy them if you’d like.”

“Ha. And what use will that be when the boundary comes reaching out of the stars to obliterate all of us?”

“A question I’m sure you asked yourself when you facilitated Viotia’s compliance with Conservator Ethan’s scheme. That whole monstrous invasion was dedicated to one purpose: to find me. What did you think the Second Dreamer was going to do once I ascended to the Orchard Palace?”

He forced his head to shake despite the jerkiness of his muscles.

“Like all nonbelievers, you considered us to be foolish and deluded,” she continued. “You put your own greed before anything.”

“I do not let greed drive me. I have strategy. I have logic and planning.”

“Likan … I’m not interested. Whatever there was between us is long gone. You’re here today to correct an injustice.”

“I fuck your apology all the way to hell. I hope the warrior Raiel blows your Pilgrimage fleet to shit. The rest of us will have the greatest party history has ever known to celebrate your death.”

“I’m not apologizing for your interrogation; you brought that upon yourself.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m going to plead with the Raiel to turn you over to the Prime. And we all know what they do to humans, don’t we?”

She could feel billions urging him on, hoping his desire succeeded. “I’m prepared to let you go free,” she said.

“What?”

“Free to go back to Viotia, perhaps? Our wormhole will be closing today or tomorrow now that all my followers have returned home. Free for the Viotia authorities to question you about your part in the government’s corrupt submission to Cleric Phelim and the invasion-oh, Phelim’s coming back to Ellezelin and joining the Pilgrimage fleet. Who will that leave to face trial, do you think? And I will look favorably on any request to turn over your read memories to them for examination. What evidence of treason will that turn up?”

His whole body juddered. “You said …”

“I said I’d like to release you. But there is an injustice to right first, one that only you can do.”

“Bitch!”

“Phelim took your harem into custody. They’re already here. I’ve got the best genetic team on Ellezelin ready to treat them. The problem is, we didn’t read your memories from that long ago.”

Likan glared at her fearfully.

“Which three, Likan? Once I know, you’ll be released; you have my word as the Dreamer on that. A starship will take you wherever you wish to go. We can even reprofile you first if you’d like.”

“What’s the point?” he wailed, close to tears.

“The point is success. Do you think that ultimately I will succeed? Or will you and your way of life? I know which choice Nigel Sheldon would make. Do you?”

His head dropped. When he brought it up again, the shakes and tics were overridden by a ferocious snarl. The old Likan was glowering out at her. “Oh, yes, Madam Dreamer. I’ll take your deal; I will comply. But remember, it will leave me free to hunt you down when you fail, because a miserable fuck-up like you couldn’t pull off something this grand in a million years, not a chance.”

“We’ll see,” she growled back.

“Marakata, Krisana, and Tammary,” Likan said.

“Thank you.”

“They’ll kill you, your new friends, even if I don’t get there first. Once you’ve given them what they want, they’ll kill you. This is too big for you. You were small-time when I picked you up and screwed you, and you’re still small-time now.”

“Win-win for you, then,” she said coolly. At the back of her mind the Skylord was showing an interest in why she was becoming so agitated. “Get rid of him,” she told the security guard.

Likan was hauled roughly to his feet. There was a starship waiting for him at Greater Makkathran’s spaceport. She’d organized it all last night, using her u-shadow to send messages to Phelim and Rincenso and Ethan in private, editing it all out of what she released into the gaiafield. Phelim had few troops left on Viotia, but he was desperate to redeem himself, so he expended every effort. She knew poor little Clemance and the others would have been terrified as the remnants of the Welcome Team snatched them: bundled into a capsule when the rest of the planet was rejoicing the lifting of tyranny, not knowing where they were being taken or why, then being forced through the wormhole to Ellezelin itself. If the Dreamer Araminta was now regarded as the devil, this planet was surely her realm.

But in a couple of hours they’d be reunited with Likan-those who wanted to be. The starship would fly them to an Inner world of his choice. She’d supplied untraceable funds, she’d supplied new identities. There was nothing more she could do.

The three he’d violated would spend a couple of months in a womb-tank here in Greater Makkathran having their psychoneural profiling reversed. When they came out, they could make their own choices again. That’s if there’s a galaxy left to come back out into. It didn’t matter; she’d done the right thing.

She looked over at Darraklan. “Is Ethan ready?”

“Yes, Dreamer.”

“Right, then.” She got to her feet, starting to resent Inigo’s stupid proscription that no capsules should be allowed to fly above Makkathran2. It meant such long walks or gondola rides (which she actually quite liked) or riding on horseback, and no way was she going to do that; her one time on a pony when she was seven hadn’t ended well.

A squad of bodyguards in constable uniforms fell in around her as she left the back of the Orchard Palace. They went down the sweeping perron and into Rah’s Garden with its sweet roses and immaculately shaped flameyews. Clerks peered out of their offices as she carried on through Parliament Building on the other side. Then she was out in the open and walking over the Brotherhood Canal bridge into Ogden. That at least was a short straight path to City Gate. People were running frantically across the meadowland to greet her. She didn’t need Likan’s old melange program to help her slip into her mildly aloof public persona: greeting a privileged few overawed followers with a handshake or a murmured word of thanks for their support, smiling graciously at the rest while allowing her squad to keep her moving past them.

The crowd at City Gate was a lot larger, but more guards were there, in ordinary clothes. She suspected that the shimmering semiorganic fabric covered up some muscle enrichments; they certainly seemed extraordinarily strong as they pushed people aside. Three capsules were parked just outside the crystal wall, waiting for her, with another five defense force capsules drifting overhead. Ethan stood beside the door of the largest capsule. He bowed graciously as Araminta approached.

“Your morning has gone well, then?”

“It certainly did, thank you,” Araminta said. “I appreciate your help in preparing the medical treatments.”

“My pleasure, Dreamer.”

They stepped up into the capsule and sat at the front while the bodyguards took the rear seats. It flew swiftly along the coastline, keeping Greater Makkathran on one side, heading for the broad estuary to the north of the city. With the security forces flying escort, no civilian capsules tried to approach. It left Araminta with a clear view of the landscape through the transparent fuselage. Once again she marveled at the vast metropolis sprawling across the land beyond Makkathran2.

Living Dream built all of this out of nothing, she thought. If they can do that, if they are so creative, why do they want to go to the Void? The reset ability isn’t that different from our own regeneration. Humans have been able to start again from scratch for over a thousand years.

It had to involve not a small amount of avarice lurking in everyone’s heart, she realized sadly. Effectively it was a universe where only you could regenerate, giving you a vast advantage in terms of knowledge and experience over everyone else. That and the whole telepathy and telekinesis thing-that was raw power.

“Oh, Lady,” she muttered as the starship manufacturing field came into view. She recalled that the last time she’d seen it was on a unisphere news report a while back, when the ground was being prepared by big civil construction machinery. Regrav units had propelled streams of raw earth and crushed rock through the air as massive bots crawled across the bare soil, driving in thick support stanchions and spraying down acres of enzyme-bonded concrete.

She’d expected to see huge hangars spring up where thousands of bots would crawl along scaffolding gantries, bringing together a million components that formed the starships. Instead, the starships were assembled out in the open, floating in the middle of regrav fields. The bots were there, though, tens of thousands of busy little black modules buzzing about like wasps around their hive entrance.

“That is something else,” she admitted. For once she didn’t bother restraining the emotion that swarmed out of her into the gaiafield. “Did you organize all this?” she asked Ethan.

“I wish I could take credit,” he said ruefully. “But the plans for the Pilgrimage were begun back in Dreamer Inigo’s time. Indeed, the main driving factor behind Ellezelin’s economic dynamism was to provide us with the resources to build the fleet when the time was right. These ships have been in the design stage for over fifty years, constantly being improved as new techniques were developed. The National Industrial Ministry also had to match production systems to the requirements, making sure we had sufficient capacity. Nearby Commonwealth planets complained that we were unfairly subsidizing our manufacturing corporations, while in actuality we were preparing for this moment. Every section and component can be fabricated either locally or on a Free Market Zone world.”

“Incredible” was all she could say.

The entire fifteen square miles of the construction yard was cloaked by five layers of force fields capable of protecting it from just about every known weapon system. Unlike the weather dome Colwyn City could throw up, this one went right down to the ground, then carried on binding soil and rock molecules together to guard against any possible subterranean threat.

Twelve of the mile-long cylinders hung gracefully above the vast expanse of concrete, each one the center of its own airborne cybernetic swarm. The hulls were all complete, leaving the thick streams of regrav-propelled machines to wind in and out of huge ports and access hatches. Thousands of tons of equipment was being delivered to each ship every hour. The majority of it now was made up of the identical dark sarcophagi of suspension chambers: twenty-four million of them. They were being produced all over Ellezelin and the Free Market Worlds, Ethan said, churned out by replicator systems that were close to level-three Neumann cybernetics. “All we have to do is provide the chambers with power and basic nutrient fluid. Essentially, that’s all the ships are, warehouses full of suspension chambers with an engine room at the back.”

The capsule slipped down toward one of the five materiel egress facilities spaced equidistantly around the rim of the force field. Their capsule with its escort flew through a series of sophisticated scans before landing outside the entrance of a thirty-story office tower, one of fifty ringing the yard. They were greeted by quite a crowd of senior project personnel headed by Cleric Taranse, the overall director. For once the gaiafield wasn’t just filled with excitement and admiration for her. Everyone working in the construction yard was devoted to the project, delivering a strong and very pleasing sense of achievement. That didn’t stop thousands of them from taking a break and pressing up against the windows to watch her. Araminta slipped back into full politician mode, thanking the group with the director for their extraordinary effort.

As they walked alongside the first massive cylinder, she was struck by how arid the air was inside, almost as bad as the desert around Miledeep Water. An errant thought made her wonder how Ranto was doing right now. Searching the desert in vain for his beloved bike, or had he bought a flashy new one that would boost his status among his peers by an order of magnitude?

The dryness was nothing compared to the noise. With so many machines operating inside the dome, the humming and buzzing was constant, all-pervasive, and loud. Araminta heard the ponderous motions of larger systems through her rib cage. The sheer quantity of metal flying around on regrav units stirred up small fast gusts that whirled along each avenue between hulls like microclimate winds in perpetual conflict. Her hair and robe fluttered about with every step. The giant regrav fields supporting the ships induced disconcerting effects in her inner ears as she moved. Walking in the yard was akin to keeping one’s balance in an earthquake zone; a mere couple of paces through the invisible conflicting fields could bring on unexpected queasiness that secondary routines in her macrocellular clusters had difficulty suppressing.

To counter the nausea, she tried picking a point in the distance and focusing on it; that led her to look up. The metallic-gray fuselage curved away above her, presenting an impression of size and weight almost as great as the one given by the length of the damn thing stretching on ahead. Holes the size of skyscrapers were open all the way along the side, with fleets of bots and freight sleds zipping in and out. Now that she could see them up close, she noticed that most of the sleds were carrying identical consignments. Twenty-four million medical suspension chambers; she couldn’t quite get her head around that number. It was more than the population of Greater Makkathran. But not of Ellezelin, and as for the billions of followers across the Greater Commonwealth …

“I’ve heard this referred to as the first wave,” she said.

“Yes, Dreamer,” Cleric Taranse said cheerfully. He had the appearance of a man in his biological fifties, even down to thinning hair and wrinkled skin; the deliberate elder image, she suspected, was an attempt to give him an aura of experience and confidence. But then, a lot of Living Dream followers allowed themselves to appear to age because in the real Makkathran, everyone grew old. “Now that the production systems have been established, they can continue at remarkably little cost. Ellezelin can certainly afford to keep on producing them.”

“But won’t Ellezelin’s population be the first to leave? When they’ve traveled into the Void, who will keep the economy going?”

“We are ultimately hoping that some kind of bridge can be established between Void and Commonwealth,” Ethan said smoothly. “Such a thing can hardly be beyond the ability of the Heart.”

Araminta remembered the way the boundary had distended out to swallow Justine’s little ship. “Most likely.” She glanced up again as she moved through another clash of regrav waves. The sight of the starship was drawing the Skylord’s attention, building anticipation. One question she was never going to ask it was: Can you reach us here?

“I will need to be awake during the voyage,” she said.

Both Ethan and Taranse smiled an indulgent smile, not quite belittling her but close.

“The life-support section is in the center of the ship, Dreamer,” Taranse said. “Each will have a crew complement of three thousand. There are a lot of systems to maintain even with smartcore and bot support.”

“Of course. That’s very reassuring.”

“The cabins will be fully equipped with every luxury; your voyage will be spent in complete comfort and security. You have nothing to worry about.”

He wasn’t joking, she realized. “How do we stay in contact with Ellezelin during the flight?”

“The ships will be dropping relay stations at frequent intervals, just like the navy link with Centurion Station. As well as TD channels, ours will have confluence nests.”

Araminta felt very reassured by that; she’d been worried about what might happen if she passed out of range of the bulk of her followers. The ships would, no doubt, be crewed by Ethan’s loyalists. “So now we just need the ultradrives and force fields,” she said as she checked the timer in her exovision. There was only a couple of minutes left.

“I have every confidence,” Ethan said easily.

“Oh, I’m sure it wants us to get there, all right,” Araminta said.

He stopped and gave her a look of reluctant admiration. “You were correct in what you said to Ilanthe. The Void will always triumph. I was … gladdened by your faith in it.”

“Do you have any idea what that thing wants to achieve inside?”

“No. But it will be some soulless technocrat scheme to ‘improve’ life for everyone else. It is the kind of delusion of which her kind dream constantly. That is why I never really concerned myself about it.”

“Yes, I thought as much.” For several nights after her arrival in the Orchard Palace, Araminta had tried to feel for Ilanthe’s thoughts to gain a sense of what her intentions were. Bradley and Clouddancer had said the Silfen Motherholme had sensed whatever it was emerging from the Sol system, but either Ilanthe had somehow slipped from the Motherholme’s perception or the Silfen in their wisdom weren’t sharing. She thought the latter unlikely.

“They’re here,” Cleric Taranse announced happily.

Icons from Ellezelin’s civil spaceflight directorate were popping up in Araminta’s exovision. She’d never realized just how much information even a nominal head of state such as herself was supposed to absorb on a daily basis. How actual heads of state coped, she had no idea; expanded and augmented mentalities, presumably.

Thirty-seven large commercial freighters had just dropped out of hyperspace two thousand kilometers above the planet. A secure link to the Ellezelin defense force fleet headquarters informed her that five squadrons of Ellezelin warships were emerging around the freighters in a protective formation. This was the critical stage, the one window of vulnerability left to those who opposed the Pilgrimage. Until the freighters got under the construction yard’s force fields, they were dangerously exposed.

The freighters were given clearance to descend. Sure enough, eight craft lurking in orbit dropped their stealth effect and opened fire. Weird mauve and green light flooded across the ground at Araminta’s feet at the same instant the exovision displays reported what was happening. She tipped her head back reflexively to see what was going on, but the dome had opaqued above her. All she saw was rapidly expanding colored blotches in the grayed sky, like borealis storms as bright as sunlight.

More icons appeared, assuring her that the Greater Makkathran2 force fields were also up and protecting citizens from the terrible torrent of hard radiation slicing through the atmosphere. She even felt a start of anxiety leaking out of Ethan’s gaiamotes and smiled in sympathy. The pilgrimage fleet probably could make it with standard hyperdrives, but without the force fields the Raiel would reduce the ships to radioactive fog.

Though the Void might just be able to stop them, she thought. The Raiel could never beat it.

Her u-shadow told her the head of planetary defense, Admiral Colris, was opening a secure channel. “Dreamer, we’ve eliminated the enemy ships.”

“Are our ships all right?”

“Three badly damaged; eight took temporary overload hits, but they’re still flightworthy.”

“How badly damaged?”

“We’ll recover the crews. Don’t worry; it’s what we train for, Dreamer.”

“Thank you. Was there any damage to the freighters?”

“No. Lady be praised. It looks like those new force fields are as tough as advertised.”

The whole Greater Commonwealth that was gaiafield-attuned blinked at the burst of Araminta’s surprise. “The freighters are protected by Sol barrier force fields?”

“Yes, Dreamer.”

“I see. Please pass my thanks to your crews.”

“Of course. They’ll appreciate your concern, Dreamer.”

Ethan and Darraklan were both watching the force field overhead gradually clear. The sky beyond was reverting to its usual pristine blue. A few violet scintillations burned through the ionosphere as disintegrating wreckage hurtled downward. Ethan’s delight and relief were open. “Those would be the best ships our opponents could deploy,” the Cleric said.

“Yes,” Araminta replied, not quite knowing if she should be celebrating.

“We can begin installation at once,” Taranse said.

“How long until we’re ready?” she asked.

“If the systems function in accordance with the details they supplied, we’ll be looking at a week.”

“Excellent,” she said. Then I can finally try and stop this madness. I just hope there’s enough time left.

They waited in the construction yard as the freighters dropped down through the atmosphere. Taranse left them to organize the unloading. Araminta and Ethan watched the operation begin from the front of the big office tower where their capsule was parked. She was a little disappointed at how dull it all was. The units were all encased in smooth metal shells, providing no hint as to their function. For all she knew, they were just water tanks.

“Your moment draws near, Dreamer,” Ethan said.

She wasn’t surprised by the way he was studying her so intently. She’d felt his curious thoughts wiggling through the gaiafield, trying to gain a hint of her true feelings. She suspected that when they arrived in the Void, he would prove a formidable telepath.

“It does indeed,” she said levelly. “Where do you suppose all this came from?”

“It is irrelevant now. That it is here is what matters.”

“And because of that we can reach the Void. Yes. That just leaves me and the Skylord now.”

“I will be honored to fly with you in the flagship to offer what support I can.”

“Which one …” Her hand waved idly at the row of ships.

“That one. The Lady’s Light.”

Araminta had to smile at that. “Of course. But shouldn’t that be Lady’s Light Two?”

“If you wish it to be so, Dreamer.”

“No. The original has been unmade, and it was a redoubtable ship. Let us hope our own voyage is as successful.”

Ethan’s smile was tight. He clearly still couldn’t work out what Araminta’s game was, which was exactly how she wanted it.

The capsule lifted through a thick sea mist that was rolling in fast from the shore. As soon as they were above it, Araminta saw the change that had spread across the fields and forests that stretched away from the city’s perimeter. The lush green squares of grassland and crop fields had become a sickly yellow. Long lines of wildfire burned furiously through the forests.

“What happened?” she asked in confusion.

“Radiation downspill,” Ethan explained. “The orbital fight was directly above us. Those who understand such things explained to me last time that starship weapons today are extraordinarily powerful.”

“Last time?”

“Two ships fought above Ellezelin shortly before you came forward. We never did find out why.”

“Great”-she nearly said “Ozzie”-“Lady. What about people caught outside the city force field?” The mist as well, she realized, was a part of it: surface water flash-boiled by the energy deluge.

“Not good. A majority of Living Dream followers don’t have biononics or memorycell inserts.”

“Because the Waterwalker didn’t.” It almost came out with contempt.

“Quite. But the clinics will be able to re-life those that did.”

“May the Lady watch over the souls of those that didn’t,” she said, appalled by how pious she sounded.

“We’re a long way from the Lady,” Ethan said.

“Not for much longer.”

“Araminta is disgusted with them,” Neskia declared as the gifted vision swirled around her, partially blocking her view of the ship’s cabin. “It didn’t leak into the gaiafield, but I could tell how horrified she was when Ethan told her the moronic faithful didn’t even have memorycells because of their belief.”

“That’s reasonable enough,” Ilanthe said. “I’m equally disgusted. They chose to remain animal when they could elevate themselves. They certainly don’t deserve pity.”

Neskia’s head swept from side to side as her long neck undulated sinuously. “If she’s truly taken up the cause of Living Dream and become their Dreamer as she claims, then she would exhibit sympathy. This is simply evidence she is attempting some kind of subterfuge.”

“I fail to see what she can do. She is committed now, as few have ever been. She has claimed her position as the head of Living Dream on the promise of delivering Pilgrimage. To go back on her word now would bring dire personal consequences. At the least, Ethan would break into her mind and compel her to communicate with the Skylord. In that he would have the tacit support of most followers. Either way I gain entry to the Void.”

Exovision images showed Neskia the inversion core resting cleanly in the ship’s one and only cargo hold. There was no gaiafield connection, so she couldn’t determine the timbre of Ilanthe’s thoughts, if that was what they could still be called. “Her conversion was too swift, too complete. I do not believe in her.”

“Nor do I,” Ilanthe agreed. “But in gaining political power, choice has been taken from her. You heard her. She trusts the Void will defeat me.”

“And how did she find out about you? She was all alone and running from everyone.”

“I suspect the Silfen.”

“Or she has allies among the remnants of the factions. Gore is still at large, the Third Dreamer. That could indicate a connection.”

“Gore told Justine to travel to Makkathran. Whatever he’s planning, it involves a connection between him and his daughter, not Araminta. None of us knew her identity until a few days ago; she was never part of any of Gore’s schemes.”

“He’s going to go postphysical, isn’t he? That’s what he’s doing on the Anomine homeworld. It has to be; the Anomine elevation mechanism must still be there. Such an advance will grant him the power to ruin everything.”

“If that is his goal, he will fail.”

“How do you know?”

“I researched the Anomine elevation mechanism a century ago. It won’t elevate Gore.”

“Why not?” Neskia asked.

“He is not an Anomine.”

Neskia’s long throat trilled with delight. “I had no idea.”

“The process I am committing to is not one I undertook lightly. Every option was reviewed.”

“Of course, my apologies. But you really should get Marius to eliminate him.”

“Marius may or may not succeed in such an endeavor. Gore’s ship is undoubtedly the equal to the one Marius is flying, and the borderguards will intervene.”

“You can’t risk him interfering with Fusion,” Neskia insisted.

“You say that because you do not understand what I will initiate when we enter the Void. Gore and all the others are a complete irrelevance. Araminta is all that matters now.”

“We will initiate Fusion. I understand and approve.”

“No. Fusion was a misdirection The inversion core is destined to seed a far greater revolution.”

Neskia became still, perturbed by this change of direction. Everything she had become was dedicated to the Accelerator goal of Fusion. “What?” she asked, mildly surprised that she was questioning Ilanthe’s purpose. But still …

“The Void is rightly feared because it requires energy from an external source in order to function. It is the epitome of entropy, the final enemy of all things. But the Void is a beautiful concept; mind over matter is the ultimate evolutionary trait. I propose to achieve the full function of the Void without the failing of its energy demands. That will be the Accelerator gift to existence itself.”

“In what way?”

“I was inspired by Ozzie. His mindspace works by altering the fundamental nature of spacetime to accommodate the telepathic function. I don’t know how he worked out the specific alteration to make such a thing viable, but its implementation was a phenomenal achievement, sadly underappreciated thanks to his sulky withdrawal from the Commonwealth. But to change the very nature of spacetime across hundreds of light-years is remarkable. It opened vistas of possibilities I had never conceived of before. I realized I should be aiming so much higher than simply wedding the Accelerator Faction to the Void. The potential of the Void is far greater. That it is locked away behind the boundary, dependent on a dwindling source of power, is a disaster for the evolution of sentience everywhere. It needs to be liberated for the boundary to be thrown down.”

“You mean you want to bring all sentient species into the Void?”

“Quite the opposite. As Ozzie’s mindspace is only a localized alteration powered, presumably, by the Spike’s anchor mechanism, so the Void can only function as long as it has mass to feed on, and that is finite. What the inversion core will do is instigate a permanent change. It will grasp the fundamental nature of the Void and impress spacetime to that pattern, forcing reality itself to transform. The Void’s final magnificent reset of everything will begin. Change will shine out from the center of this galaxy-in time, a very short time, illuminating the entire universe. Entropy will no longer exist because its principles will simply not be a part of the new cosmos. With the laws of spacetime itself rewritten, the true controller of reality will become the sentient mind, allowing evolution to reach a height impossible even for the postphysicals which this limited, flawed universe can gestate.”

“You’re going to change the fundamental laws of the universe?” a shocked Neskia murmured.

“Such a goal is the pinnacle of evolution, elevating an entire universe. We will be the instigators of a genesis from which our mythical gods would cower in awe. Now do you see why I don’t concern myself with the antics of Gore and his kind? I will simply wish them out of existence. And it shall be so.”