The Starfighter Invitation

50 the starfighter invitation

"Who drowned the Earth, Dio?"

[[That is what you are meant to tell me.]]

I looked up at the mote of light circling above my cockpit chair. Proper Dio this time, I decided, not a Construct.

"Dream Speed encourages us to get stronger, to win Challenges, to gain reputation, to head out into the galaxy and maybe steal a ship, or maybe decide The Synergis is fine, really, and so stick around the Chocobo stable. You’ve sprinkled what I think are meant to be clues around—things like that cat Challenge, where someone was clearly enslaving people and it didn’t seem to be Cycogs—but those hints are too widely scattered and contradictory to be put together into a picture. There’s so many lies that I don’t think you really can be intending for one of us to gather all the suspects into a drawing room, and prove it was Miss Scarlet with the candlestick."

[[Yes, it’s all just ominous foreshadowing, really.]]

"And then you say things like that." I sighed. "Who shattered the moon, then? Was it whoever controlled The Wreck?"

Dio dropped to hover quite close to my face, then receded to the edge of the viewport bubble. [[The moon is a lie. Doesn’t happen.]]

"It’s not shattered? No lunar ring?" I stared out at the distant glinting line, not certain whether I felt relieved or cheated.

[[Thriving sub-surface cities.]]

"Any other lies you’re going to admit to?" I asked, unsure what to make of this answer, true or not.

[[We made the other Types up. Except the Ah Ma Ani, but they are not a base Type, just a hybrid.]]

"I’m sure you had a good reason for that," I said, blankly, then frowned. "Does The Synergis have a parable of the Cycog who cried wolf?"

Dio’s laugh was oddly muted. [[Or teased their Bio too much? But no, we are moving past the game. I am glad we managed to run a System Challenge before the shutdown—I enjoyed watching that.]]

Dio had lied so freely and openly that I always assumed te was teasing at first. But this didn’t seem the sort of thing te would joke about.

"You—you’re shutting down Dream Speed?"

[[There is no way to continue. The window of opportunity is almost closed.]]

A sensation of freefall is dizzying before a space vista. "Is this a time travel thing?"

[[It has always, fundamentally, been a time travel thing. And of being out of time.]]

"Dio, there’s only so many vague dark statements I can take. Why are you telling me this? What’s about to happen?"

[[Type Zero.]]

"Zero? Are they the ones belonging to The Wreck? Waging interstellar war, and you have an experimental ship needing a pilot to fight off their armada?"

[[No. No war. No starfighters.]] All vestige of teasing humour had drained from Dio’s multi-layered voice, leaving it measured, sad, and infinitely kind. [[An orbital bombardment. You have a decision, but you cannot stop the fall.]]

I held onto the armrests of my chair as if they were all that kept me from spinning off into the universe. "Tell me properly, Dio."

[[We have not found their origin planet,]] Dio replied, drifting a couple of inches, but then seeming to fix to the curve of the viewport: one star among many. [[We speculate that they may be intergalactic, have travelled from outside Helannan, but there is no evidence. You are the third sapient species they turn their attention to. The method is the same each time: they locate sapients, observe, and then Skip multiple stellar objects into the planetary atmosphere.]]

Meteors. Asteroids? I’d read enough about Tunguska to immediately picture flattened cities.

[[After the impact, they leave until the planet stabilises. For Earth, they do not return for something in the order of thirty years. And then they collect the survivors.]]

"How…" My throat had locked with impossibility, and I could barely get the word out. "How many?"

[[Type Zero displays considerable expertise in bombardment, using large numbers of relatively small objects targeted at high population areas and seismic weak points. There is immediate, mass-scale death, and multiple volcanic events leading to an ash cloud. Extended winter follows. By the time the hunting starts, there are less than a million of your species left.]]

Dio paused, then went on briskly. [[They reduce the population further, divide the survivors amongst themselves, and move on, leaving one to seek out any who escaped the initial capture. And then they repeat themselves, locating a further three planets supporting sapients. One, they destroy completely, although it is unclear if this is a deliberate act, or a miscalculation.

[[They are still almost a complete mystery to us, for they do not communicate verbally, or retain any kind of written or computerised records. Their expertise with lan far outstrips that achieved by The Synergis, and includes domination of other Bios after a conversion process that leaves them with direct control. The control transmits to offspring, and so freedom was only achieved by eradicating Type Zero completely.]]

I was beyond processing, head whirling with a prospective itinerary of bombardment, death, slavery. But an image emerged. "You showed us. In that mosaic."

[[Yes, a truth misinterpreted. Veronec came to awareness during the subjugation of Type Five, and that process was complete before te could find some way to affect the world around ter. But the final image of The Heart of Mars series shows the result: control severed after the removal of all of the hidden Type Zero. There were only a few dozen, but it took many years to achieve, and Veronec did not see that moment. Te had divided long before, after the death of the Bios te originally came to know.]]

"And it’s always been about time travel because Veronec developed on a world controlled by Type Zero."

[[That is the fact that frames our actions.]]

There was no Starfighter Invitation. The Cycogs had not set up Dream Speed to recruit a defence force. They wouldn’t stop any attack on Earth, wouldn’t interfere in something that led, eventually, to their own genesis.

"But why are you here at all?" I whispered. "Just to watch?"

[[To some extent. We have been collecting historical and genetic information, since the vast majority of Earth’s species and cultural heritage is lost during the bombardment. But Dream Speed itself is, as has been frequently speculated, a combination of recruitment program and tutorial, for we are looking for a solution to a problem that, well, we don’t know if it truly exists.]]

I wanted to scream at Dio to get to the point, but doubted anger would produce anything but a delay. Scrubbing at my eyes, I tried to focus, and found my face was wet: I’d been crying without even noticing.

[[In the past decade there have been incidents,]] Dio continued. [[Trusted Bios behaving in destructive ways. Which is not entirely new behaviour, since anyone’s mind may fall into distortion, given sufficient stresses. But the Quadrant Administrators noticed a pattern, a tendency for these incidents to cost us some of our most promising lan talents.]]

"Do you—" My voice wavered, but I pushed through because I had recovered enough to realise that this was perhaps not simply an explanation, but another test. "I guess you think maybe you missed some of the Type Zero?"

[[We are loathe to officially admit to it. They are the terror that forever lurks in nightmare, for all we were convinced we had destroyed them completely. Our current theory is that more have come from outside our galaxy to prevent our expansion. And our Bios are incapable of resisting them.]]

"They reduced the population almost completely to guarantee that everyone that remained, and all their descendants, would have this…control mechanism installed? You don’t have any lan-users that you can fundamentally trust?"

Dio changed colour briefly. [[None. It has been suggested that we simply uplift one of the near-sapient species and focus our development efforts on a Type that is not tainted by this lan modification. But tinkering with species in this way is both uncomfortably reminiscent of Type Zero’s behaviour—a thing we resile from—and also does not address the problem of billions of Bios vulnerable to control. Most of us are, generally or specifically, attached to our Bios. We don’t want to replace them. So we are attempting an inoculation.]]

"You—you think that Bios from now could mix with your current population and, what, have children without the weakness?"

[[Although that would be useful, and we have some hopes for that eventuality, it would be too slow. What we want is your immunity, hidden by the guise of ordinary Enclavers, present in our population centres. Not as enforcers or investigators—we can use Constructs to police events with high lan concentration—but to be the wild card factor. To be the Bio that does not obey the hidden puppet master. To stand out simply by not following. That, we think, may give us vital warning, and allow us to trace the nexus of control without fear of ships becoming stranded. And so we have risked this project, to locate Bios we think suitable. You’re a borderline candidate, Taia.]]

I was already so cold it was impossible to chill further. All Dio’s attempts to puzzle me out, poke at what I was afraid of, how I reacted to stresses, and now…would I do handstands, perform, vomit up all the innermost of me, in hopes that te would offer salvation? But, no, that wasn’t Dio. Te wasn’t telling me this in order to watch me beg.

[[We could not, of course, properly develop lan over a few days. You have a strong Core identity, but you remain at the very lower edge of viable transfer. We cannot bring forward current bodies, you understand—we will be transferring lan and memory. The risk is high for you, and it will be into circumstances where you will be separated from all you know. Not everyone would wish to experience that, so I will give you time to consider your choice.]]

I found a use for the bed. Unable to face the stars, I retreated, crawled beneath neglected sheets, clutched the pillow and wept.

Not for a single moment did I entertain the hope that Dio lied. That death was not about to rain from the sky. Nor did I spend time debating whether Dio’s motives were less altruistic than presented, for all te was literally asking for my soul, or the futuristic equivalent. Having moved past the question of lies, there was no doubt in me. I don’t think I ever heard a single person suggest life boat as the reason for Dream Speed, but I was glad to be offered a place on it. I didn’t want to die.

Knowing I had a way out did nothing to prevent a mountain of grief and helplessness from crushing me. I kept trying to be angry at Dio for offering only escape, instead of giving us the chance to fight for our future. But how could I criticise someone for not sacrificing ter own species in order to spare mine? All this had happened before Veronec had come into existence, and the Cycogs were even putting the lives of Bios above cold practicality—just the Bios of the future, not those existing now.

Who drowned the Earth? The first question the game had asked, and when I’d heard it I’d somehow pictured the inundation happening long after humans had spread beyond our solar system. But it was nearly now, in a way that made me half-frantic to wake up, so that I could run aimless as a chicken before a falling sky. The great flat fields of the Lowlands would lose the long battle with the sea. Drowned. All the places I had ever visited, all the continents on Earth, soon to be hit by a rain of stone and fire and upheaval. The mountains would speak, the ground would split, the oceans rise. Planet-wide Atlantis.

Beyond tears, and those fumbling attempts at anger, came a dry nausea that sent me retching. I resorted to a shower and peppermint tea in an attempt to gain some measure of…could I call it calm?

By the time Dio returned I was back in the cockpit of my Snug, hands curled around a lukewarm mug, feeling somehow scoured. I watched tem drift, wordless, to rest on the tip of my boot.

"You must be stopping people who say 'no'—or, even 'yes'—from telling anyone else."

[[Simple enough to not copy back the details of conversations. You’ll wake feeling as if you were upset, but not remembering why.]]

Something the Cycogs could do at any time in this sort of game—a far from comforting reflection. That was the Chocobo future I had been invited to join.

"What happens if—oh, I need to stop that—there is no if. I would like to go to The Synergis, please, Dio and be whatever that—what was it?—be an inoculation. But how does that happen?"

[[Drones. Not Renba: there’s no biomatter involved, which is one of the reasons why this transfer is so dangerous. The drone downloads your memory, and then your lan is detached, and the drone immediately returns to its chronal departure point. There you will be transferred to a Renba until you’re stable, and can be transitioned to your Core Unit.]]

"Do—" I hesitated, because there were some very important things I wanted to know, but I didn’t want to ask outright. "What happens to my body? Will it look as if I died playing the game?"

[[No. For original Cores, there is usually an echo of lan that persists for a few hours before dissipating, and so Bios can function to a certain level. Like a memory of a dream of themselves. But we are attempting to perform all transfers in the last two hours before the fall, to avoid panic around the game.]]

"How many, Dio?" I asked, for the second time.

Dio drifted from my left boot to my right, and I wondered if the movement was an attempt at distraction or prevarication, or even discomfort. Cycog body language was still beyond me.

[[Our goal is a hundred thousand. Whether we reach it depends on how many agree—and how many of them survive.]]

"You’re getting refusals?"

[[Yes. There are some who do not believe, or do not trust. And others who choose not to be separated from those around them. We do not invite the parents of young children, but there are other bonds candidates are unwilling to walk away from.]]

"Children couldn’t even play the game." The whole horror of it hit me afresh. Every child on this planet, about to die or face a future of deprivation followed by slavery.

[[I was not certain of you,]] Dio continued. [[Because of your dislike of Cybercognate oversight. You can reconcile yourself?]]

"When the choice is to serve in heaven, or die in hell, I can adapt."

The smile I offered up failed, not because I thought it would be so hard to have an alien overlord, but because of all that decision represented. I stared down at the drowned Earth, remembering that I’d cried the first time I’d floated above it. I’d do so the next, I suspected, for different reasons. Perhaps I always would.

Then, carefully, so carefully, I asked: "Is strength of lan the only criteria you’re using?"

[[No. We have chosen primarily candidates that, after due grieving and support, appear likely to adapt and go on to become functioning citizens of The Synergis. There was no set criteria beyond an ability to understand and respect city rules. Common courtesy and consideration. That kind of thing.]]

"The forums were full of debates about ruthlessness versus teamwork, puzzle solving ability versus fearlessness, and you were looking for polite?"

Dio flickered through colours. [[Because this is an intake System, you perhaps did not have the context to fully understand the impact of city rules. It is enough to say that our Bios are safest when they do not cause offense without thought.]]

I sighed, because I was never going to like our Bios, no matter the context.

"What happens to the Cycogs here?" I asked instead. "Are you at risk of not transporting back? Do you have a nice time paradox become-your-own-grandparent thing to look forward to?"

[[We will be observing for some time,]] Dio said. [[We don’t anticipate difficulty returning.]]

"No?" I paused, wavered, and said: "The people you take can’t team up at all? Everyone will be alone?"

[[There are numerous paired candidates which we will attempt—though those are complicated by the possibility that only one survives. But clusters would paint too large a target, particularly during the initial years of this project. It will all come out eventually, of course. I only hope we’ve achieved our goal before that occurs—or we might find that a spate of mysterious deaths among transferred Bios point the way to Type Zero.]]

I coughed, a failure of laughter. "We’re not even Chocobos," I said. "You’re looking for canaries for your coalmine." But it was not that fact, nor the prospect of travelling alone that bothered me. "A-are —" I began, then stopped. What I wanted to know was whether my parents were candidates, but what would I do if the answer was something I didn’t want to hear? I would rob myself of the ability to pretend that they, like me, had a seat on the lifeboat.

[[Any last questions or requests?]] Dio asked, in a tone that suggested te knew exactly what I wasn’t asking. Then te added a teasing note: [[Tips for how to manage your Cycog? A kiss for luck?]]

I did manage to laugh this time, a weary whir of sound, as if my chest had filled with clockwork. Dio was transparent in ter attempts to distract. "I could use a hug," I said, surprising myself.

[[The easiest of requests. Do you have any preferences?]]

I blinked, puzzled, then realised te was asking what I’d like to have hugging me, and I laughed again, a more genuine effort this time.

"Don’t you? Something that would pass as your Core Unit, if you were a Bio. While still being something I’d feasibly want to hug."

[[Interesting.]]

The starscape before me blurred, and then resolved into a sky, and me beneath it, standing in an empty vastness, mug, chair, Snug, all vanished. My eyes also no longer felt raw, my nose had unblocked, all trace of my crying fit erased. The shift made me dizzy, and glad that Dream Speed had not frequently moved us about without softening the transition.

There was an absence of Dio, though, unless te considered terself an empty space, or a starry sky. My sight blurred again, but then it became clear that the stars themselves were moving, drifting downward, forming into lines, streamers, vast tresses of nebula hair, and at its centre a humanoid figure, stepping into existence.

Te had chosen to be only a little taller than me, with skin of a faded dusky violet, ter features patrician and androgynous, lit by a suppressed laughter no doubt due to my gaping. But then te tilted ter head, and gave me a smile so full of warm sympathy that I was glad te immediately wrapped me in ter arms, because my face crumpled, and I wept all over again.

I am not by nature a hugger, and Dio was a mote, an alien, wearing a body purely by request. It made nothing better. I was glad I had asked.

My tears, at least, I could bring under control more quickly this time. Was I already growing used to the idea of the complete destruction of everything I knew? I resisted the temptation to wipe my face on the starry open robe Dio had conjured for terself, and just straightened, sniffed, and stepped back a little.

[[[[[[[I’m sorry I never had any intention of saving your planet, Taia.]]]]]]]

The voice was layer on layer, so much more than Dio’s. Because this was Ydionessel, fledging of Veronec.

"I’m sorry too," I said. "I wish it made more sense to be angry at you." I paused, surveying tem. "Your self-image smells like geranium. And has a lot more echoes."

Te laughed, and then spoke as a Bio would, still in a rich voice, but with no extra layers. "Yes, it’s an indicator of our own ranking system, though we usually only use it when we want to show off."

"Can I ask a—a minor boon?"

"Ask, certainly. There’s a great deal I cannot do for you."

"Let me remember. Whatever part of me that wakes up. Not to shout it to the world, just to go through the end understanding what’s happening."

"Wouldn’t that make it worse?"

"Knowing all the horror ahead for everyone who doesn’t die today? Maybe so, if I didn’t know that there’s an end to it."

Te tilted ter head, then gave me a single nod. "Very well. I think that I can trust you."

That was, in its way, a big compliment, and I smiled, felt tears threaten to return, and took a step back. Whatever I felt about personal alien overlords, I was glad this one had made a horrible end just a tiny bit easier to bear.

"Goodbye Ydionessel."

"Farewell."