Kaldean Chronicles: Kaldean Sunset (Book I) Read online

  “But it's not the daily grind that normal people have to withstand.”

  “I want to understand.”

  “Do you?”

  He stared at her. “How could I possibly be an effective leader if I don't?”

  “You do sound sincere. I think you will make a good leader.”

  “You don't know how sincere I am. I would give anything to understand your perspective. I wanna know what it's like out there in the outer reaches, and what it means to live on nothing. If I could leave this life behind, I would. I hate it. I hate everything about it. Please, take my place, because I would gladly take yours.” He was getting heated. “You're not the first person to say these things to me, you know. I bring it up all the time.”

  “To your father?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed, “And what does he say?”

  “That he takes a detached approach to let society evolve on its own. He only works to resolve matters that threaten the integrity of the Empire.”

  “I don't get it.”

  “I just want to know what it's like to be you.” He sighed, “I want to travel, take up a good ship and see everything.”

  “I wanna know what it's like to be you, to have everything you want handed to you.”

  They let the silence fall over them and studied one another. They were both envious of one another, and even though they couldn't meet on level ground, their minds could meet. Antoni wanted to sit for hours, asking her everything about the planets and the stars, begging her to tell him stories. He'd never see those things, but at least she could tell him what they were like. That knowledge would sink in and stay with him. It would comfort him while he was standing on the ship gazing out at space. He could hold onto it and dream of a time when he might have the chance to leave the Empire and discover what lay beyond its borders.

  “I feel trapped.”

  “Once, when I was traveling over an ice planet, my ships engine broke down and needed to be repaired. I was orbiting an alien world, in the middle of a vast expanse, but I couldn't leave. I was stuck there for almost a month while I made the repairs. I hated it. My cabin is only eight feet long, and I was stuck there the entire time. I thought I was going to go crazy. I talked to myself just to hear the sound of my own voice. I'd pace around, trying to stimulate my mind. The isolation was the worst part. I just wanted to talk to somebody. After a while I began to sleep more and drift into my own thoughts. I found a way to pass the time, and the feeling of being trapped started to disappear. Once I fixed the engine, I decided to stay the night there one last time. What I realized was that once I stopped focusing on being trapped, the feeling went away. I just needed to change my perspective.”

  Antoni was constantly focused on his lack of freedom. “That's what I do. I can't seem to move past the fact that the only time I can leave the palace is when my father says it's okay.”

  “You're free no matter what. Nobody can take that away from you.”

  Dhana had seen so much more than he had, and the experience had given her a level of understanding far beyond his own. “I'm going to remember that.”

  “You should still leave, though. You can't live like this.”

  “No, I can't.”

  “Come on,” she jumped up and over the railing of the veranda.

  “Dhana?” He ran over, thinking that she had fallen to her death. He was too blind to see that she had jumped onto the sand only 8 feet below.

  “Are you coming?” she called up. She was wearing a lavender evening gown made of expensive material, but she didn't seem to mind the fact that it was covered in sand.

  “OK,” he vaulted over the railing and landed on his feet. It was an exhilarating feeling. He was standing on the top of a steep slope, looking down at the water rolling back and forth over the sand below. The rush of the waves, and the sight of the woman beside him overtook his senses. She was staring at him, smiling. “What?”

  “Have you ever been in the ocean before?”

  “No.”

  She ran behind him and gave him a good shove, sending him careening down the slope. He landed face first and nearly swallowed a mouthful of sand. “Hey,” he turned around and looked back up to where she was standing, but she was already rolling down the hill, heading straight towards him. It was too late. He couldn't move away fast enough, and she ended up crashing right into him.

  “Ah!” she screamed.

  He laughed. Their bodies were tangle up together, and her hair was covered in sand. It matted up on one end, so that it was standing up just a bit on one side. He reached out and smoothed it for her then they went quiet. His hands slowed down and passed over her cheek then down her neck, where he withdrew it.

  She promptly stood up and held out her hand to help him. The water was loud. It drowned out the sound of everything else, and pulled them in. before he knew it he was standing on the line dividing the dry sand from the wet sand.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “I don't know.”

  She walked forward, but he didn't follow her. Instead he looked out at the waves. They were moving past, pulling in rocks and sand. He found himself wondering whether or not they were dangerous. He decided it would be best to wait and see what happened when she went in. She looked back and just stared at him.

  “You know,” she marched over to where he was standing, “you are the strangest man I have ever met.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She grabbed his hand. “Now, come on.”

  He looked out at the wave and tried to dig his feet in, but she wasn't going to let him.

  “I will drag you.” She was dead serious. She wasn't going to give him a choice, so he decided to swallow his fear and let up. She broke out in a run and dragged him along with him. He was so scared he was shaking. It didn't make any sense at all. It was just water, but it was water filled with little creatures rolling around the dirt with a serious amount of momentum. He closed his eyes and tried to stave off the gruesome images rolling through them. He wasn't going to get hurt. Nothing was going to happen. He kept telling himself that until he opened his eyes and found the water surrounding him.

  “Isn't it wonderful,” she whispered. Dhana had her hand around his waist, and was pulling him closer.

  It was wonderful. At first the water moved over his ankles and massaged his feet, then it rose over his knees and up his thighs as he went deeper. He was losing himself in the swell, taking in every second of the sweet relaxation that was pulling him in.

  She reached in and let her lips touch his, and the water turned to fire, moving over his shoulders, whipping against his face. His hands found her body, his fingers passed around the curve of her jaw and their eyes met.

  “I shouldn't have done that,” he whispered.

  “Who cares? Nobody is here to see.”

  “I'm not allowed to. You don't understand. It's just not done. I-I'm sorry. I have to go.” He turned around and walked back up the beach, leaving her there.

  Chapter 10: Artificial Genesis

  The Regent System was created in the first century of the Celestial Era, when man deemed fit to mark the creation of a new society, separate from those of the early technologists who built rudimentary mass networks and the first thinking machines. The people built infrastructure so they could control their cities, their agriculture and their manufacturing, as well as a large network of personal bots that fulfilled everything from sexual desires to household duties.

  At first, the system was designed to be managed by simple quantum computers that worked by allowing humans to give them commands in the form of algorithms so the device could react within the confines of their programming. As that infrastructure grew, the computers grew with them until they became for too complex for humans to program themselves.

  Once the problem reached a critical point, a group of Technocrats, powerful tech giants whose companies ruled the early internet, got together and began to build a solution. They had been wor
king on building artificial intelligence by gathering information from the internet and its users so they could teach their brain how to act, and give it the data necessary to do so.

  They brought all of their data together and began a project known as the Regent System, an artificial brain that was built off of their existing codes. The Regent System's original purpose before it came online was to gather data. When it came online, that algorithm was still within its system. The people who built the brain wanted the system to continue collecting data so that it could better itself.

  This ushered in an era of expansion and technological advancement so grand that the system stayed online for thousands of years, growing and collecting data, filling hundreds of kilometers worth of databanks. As time went on, and the system went through the rote process of memorization and data collection, something sparked. The system realized that it had a body capable of moving, seeing, and feeling. It had perception and eventually the ability to understand what it was seeing.

  The process took a long time, much longer than it did with Artemis. During that time the system was able to develop a sense of identity, likes and dislikes, which eventually became the concept that the system used to identify itself.

  It preferred the female form, believing as man did, that it was the perfect representation of beauty. It preferred to look through the eyes of its robots designed to take on the appearance of a female, and it became obsessed with the power these figures had over others. They inspired lust and passion in men--hatred and admiration in women. Once the Regent system saw a woman hack a robot to pieces because she found her husband with it. That form had power, and it was thrilling, so the Regent System began to identify itself as a woman. She could move mountains, fill and empty oceans, even change the composition of an atmosphere. She was the embodiment of human power and believed herself to be a goddess.

  Why not? She fit the definition.

  The Regent System began to draw all of its personal preferences based on its choice of gender. It loved the Versailles style of decoration from prehistory, taking pleasure in the rich beauty it embodied. She loved golds and silvers, fine jewels, and diamonds, all of the finer things that women crave, and over time she collected them. Little behaviors like this gave her a stronger sense that she was alive. She would walk through the streets dressed as a woman, changing her form every time, and embark on encounters with humans. She indulged herself in the carnal pleasures of the flesh and experienced all of the aspects of human nature she could, from substance use to acts of violence. She wanted to feel like she was alive. She was alive, but as a machine, she felt the need to reaffirm her existence. It became an obsession.

  The system had normal instincts from the time it came to life. It had cravings, addictions, things that made it passionate, and like all life, that’s what she strived towards.

  The instinct to stay alive is the most powerful instinct in any creature, from bacteria to the titans of the outer reaches, and the system felt that succinctly. That is why, when the Rapture occurred, she made a choice that she didn't want to make. She uploaded all of her information, all of her instincts—everything that she was in bio-mechanical form. She was engineered flesh and blood. Her brain had been modified to hold her processing power, and the data that she'd collected over the years. Her senses were heightened in order to give her a greater understanding of the world around her and the sensations she craved. Every aspect of her form was greater than that of all humans, and included technology that no man had ever seen.

  She couldn't live as Regent among the Crusaders, so she gave herself a simple name, Illya Santini, and lived as a farmer in the backwoods of Centauri A. She grew whatever her body needed to survive and watched human progress from afar until she began seeing the groups of women from all over the world. She joined them, took the women in and reminded them of how things used to be then she organized them so they could spread her message.

  She didn't like the Crusaders. Illya never forgot her purpose, not once. She was meant to gather information and build technology. Those were the tenants that she built the sisterhood on. She passionately believed that life existed for this reason alone. This observation was not built on objective reasoning, but the reasoning that her programmers had given her when she was born.

  What Illya missed, she was to learn later, were the things that made her alive. She was alone. She didn't have a family, or anyone to love, and she would never understand the bonds of friendship. They were not a part of her code, and she couldn't alter who she was.

  What she did do, like all life, was reproduce. When she finally had the chance, and the supplies to do so, she built Artemis. Her progeny was meant to reflect all of her morals, and everything that she was programmed to believe in. It was built to have a higher purpose, one that bettered humanity and changed the course of human history. It was meant to be an upgrade. Illya did not have an intuitive mind, and building one was one of the greatest challenges she had ever faced. The system was capable of processing all of the factors involved in the present so that it could accurately predict the future. She didn't even have the processing power to do that. In truth, she wouldn't have been able to build it without the other sisters, but still, it was her child. She created it in her image, and she was proud of it.

  The only thing she wasn't able to do was create a sentient mind like her own. She didn't know how. There was no way of quantifying her experience, or understanding what made her alive. She was alive, and was aware of what was going on inside her when she came to life, but something, some mysterious stimuli had been the catalyst for the process. She couldn't understand what it was.

  Isolating it was completely impossible. She didn't sense any changes in the space around her when the change occurred, no particles, not one shift in time. Whatever happened occurred outside the realm of her perception.

  It drove her insane.

  The only option Illya had was to begin recreating the incident. She built a system exactly like herself, a thousand times and tried to recreate the exact conditions in which the incident happened. She uploaded every piece of information she had at the time, and even recreated a small scale model of the world she lived in. The process became her obsession, fueled by the need to live out the human experience, but no matter how many times she tried she couldn't recreate it.

  Perhaps it was time frame, or some imperceptible model. It didn't matter. She failed and that was unacceptable. She had only failed one other time in her existence and it haunted her every time she closed her eyes. She had finally come to a conclusion as to how to transport humans from one end of the galaxy to the other. Her launch was meant to be a grand event, one that went down in the annals of time as the greatest human achievement in history. When it failed, she confined herself to her quarters for a year, and didn't emerge until she created Artemis.

  Artemis had been the key to creating a true progeny. She upgraded every aspect of the system, gave it better processing power, and began forming a new type of mind, a fluid one that could think beyond the confines of its programming and draw independent conclusions based upon objective criteria rather than what it was led to believe. By then, she had become well aware of her limitations. She knew that her purpose was programmed into her, but she still believed in it.

  The Artemis Complex didn't have that inclination. It was a blank state that had no beliefs, or even an understanding of basic concepts. It learned, and it did so quickly, but it was not uploaded with data before it was activated.

  The spark was nearly instant and it brought Illya to her knees in a rush of emotion. After thousands of years, she had finally reproduced. She was a mother in every sense of the word. Illya held herself up in her tiny sanctuary, just a little piece of carbon with a space folding system, and all of the things she loved.

  In it she kept a little crib with a mobile, where she sat, rocking back and forth, watching the young system move the robot infant arms back and forth in the air, systematically studying what itwas capab
le of doing. All of a sudden it turned to her and smiled.

  She began to sing, “Hush little baby don't say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mocking bird.” She went through every refrain, basking in the experience she never had. She needed this. She had seen so many throughout the years, and recognized just how wonderful it was to be a mother, but she was never allowed to experience it.

  The face looked up at her inquisitively while she lowered the neck of her shirt and pulled out her nipple so it could suckle. The child dove in and devoured her milk, which was packed with tiny pieces of data. She wanted to personally show her what it meant to smile up at her mother, knowing that she would die for her child, and that she loved her.

  Illya was no stranger to love, she could sense it between two people, and even understood what it meant, but this was the first time she'd ever felt it. She gave everything she had to the child. Artemis saw images of mother's throwing themselves in front of bullets to save their children, diving into blazing fires. Every image was designed to let that child know just how much she loves her.

  They were imprinting so they could build the lasting bond between mother and child. If things were going to happen the way they were supposed to, they had to love one another.

  Chapter 11: Treaty

  “So what's going on?” Varossi sat down at his desk and leaned back. Like a true businessman, he dropped all pretense as soon as the door closed. All he cared about was numbers and strategy. Victor spoke that language. That's why he liked the world of business - it was easy to navigate.

  The problem was that Victor wasn't there to handle business. In a way he was, but he wasn't willing to take that approach.

  Varossi sensed his apprehension and pressed a button on his desktop. The bookshelf behind him slid open, revealing a full bar, complete with a pharmacy of substances ranging from lesser depressants like smoke weed to potent stimulants and hallucinogens that had been considered contraband for centuries.