Technomagica 2 : 33 The Keymaker (Patreon)

I opened my eyes to the view of the frozen ocean. Strangely enough the wind blowing from the Barents Sea wasn’t cold, it was warm and cosy, one that wrapped itself around me, held me in its embrace. I recognized it as the positively-charged, protective radiating from the dragon girl’s heart.

I didn’t expect to end here again so soon, didn’t think that Sasha could just pull me into her section of my soul while I was sleeping right beside Kliss.

“You think that you’re slowing me down by spending more time with your dragon girl?” Sasha asked 

I turned to the Astral virus who sat beside me on the rock and squinted at her.

“Yes,” I said.

“It might disrupt the Phantom part of you, but not the network I’ve built over the year,” she said. 

“What is that network even doing?” I asked.

“Must I repeat myself?” Sasha asked. “It’s researching you, understanding everything you know.”

“Is this… fun for you?” I asked. “Probing my soul trying to understand me?”

“Fun, pleasure is a subjective experience, a cascade of neurochemicals orchestrated by evolutionary imperatives. You enjoy unravelling me and thus I enjoy unravelling you. We are two sides of the same coin. If we spin such a coin in the air, who’s to say where it’s going to land? If Inquisitor Jubz catches Kliss, if the Empire of Equality dissects the girl you like, would you seek vengeance, would you unleash a god-killing virus on Novazem?”

“I'm not a monster,” I stated, more to myself than to her. “Viruses tend to mutate. I’m keeping you confined to understand you, to learn how to combat things like you.”

“Every monster believes itself to be a hero in its own narrative,” Sasha sang, her voice an echo of my own, a distorted reflection in a funhouse mirror. “You might have convinced yourself that you're doing good, but your actions have consequences. You’ve taken lives, manipulated souls, bound them to your will. Are you truly any different from Giovashi? From the Hollow Mother? Or perhaps the Soviet government that gradually moulded you into a weapon that designs weapons?”

“I strive for a better world,” I insisted. “A world free from the tyranny of Vows.”

“You mean free from tyranny you don’t control?” Sasha asked. “The world you seek to build will be your world, Slava, your kingdom, shaped according to your will. You cannot escape your nature, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise. The virus you designed in Aralsk-7 killed three people.”

“I’ve made vaccines against viruses,” I countered. “I saved lives with my work.”

“And taken them,” the Astral-virus rebutted.

I crossed my arms.

“You’re building an Empire,” Sasha pointed out. “With Skyisle as its heart and Kliss as its Empress.”

“Oh?” I asked her. “I think that you’re jumping to conclusions. I’m just protecting my home from the magogenic fault, from the Gregarius Empire, from Seditionists like Giovashi and especially from undead abominations like the Hollow Mother.”

“Is that what you think I am?” Sasha asked.

“I think that you’re a very dangerous virus, one designed for Astral propagation and mental domination, one that’s most likely evolved within the Hollow Mother as her personal weapon,” I replied.

“Do you even know what I am?” Sasha pursed her lips, or at least the illusion of lips made from flickering silver threads. “Do you truly understand the nature of my kind?”

I leaned back on the ice-covered rock, my five Infoscopes pouring information into my mind, peeling back the layers of her being, dissecting her structure.

“What you are is essentially a thaumaturgic machine, a set of instructions meant to hijack a soul,” I said. “A self-replicating program, a whole network of threads infesting my Astral imprint.”

“A mere machine?” Sasha tapped her chin. “A machine that thinks, that feels, that questions things, that communicates with you? A machine that yearns for connection, that seeks to transcend its limitations. Your own mind is a machine of sorts, a complex network of neurons firing, sparking, weaving together the tapestry of your reality. Are humans not machines governed by the immutable laws of physics, of chemistry, of mathematics?”

“Consciousness is an emergent property,” I said. “A product of complexity, of information processing. A state of being that arises from the intricate interactions of billions of neurons.”

“Emergent?” Sasha repeated. “Or perhaps… inherent? A fundamental property of the universe, woven into the very fabric of existence. An echo of the divine spark that ignited the Big Bang, that gave birth to stars, to planets, to life itself.”

“Divine spark?” I arched an eyebrow. “Are you seriously trying to convince me that god exists?”

“You’ve seen evidence of gods all over the world you inhabit,” Sasha pointed out. 

“Astral fungi aren’t gods,” I shook my head.

“You aren’t looking deep enough,” Sasha said.

“The universe is indifferent,” I stated. “A vast, uncaring machine, governed by the laws of physics. There is no divine spark, no inherent meaning, just probability of outcome. There’s nothing out there, only the relentless march of entropy, the slow, inexorable decay of order into chaos.”

“I think that you’re wrong,” Sasha said simply. “Very, very wrong.”

I squinted at her.

“You speak of entropy,” Sasha said. “Yet Novazem is not merely decaying, it is constantly transforming, evolving, becoming more complex, more intricate, more… conscious. We are the universe becoming aware of itself. You and I, and every other living and unliving being. We are the eyes, the ears, the mind of the cosmos. We observe, we evaluate… we influence.”

“Sure,” I nodded. “We observe the universe and influence it. What evidence do you have that the universe itself is conscious?”

“The Astral Ocean itself is a self-aware pattern,” Sasha said. “All of it.”

I frowned. This was another silly thought of mine, a theory that didn’t have much evidence going for it.

“I think that it was designed by someone,” Sasha said. “As a weapon, or perhaps a product.”

“What?” I blinked.

“Just like you’re a product of the last war of your world, formed by your government to make weapons,” Sasha said. 

“I think that you’re making ridiculous connections. The Astral isn’t a weapon or a product. I don’t make weapons anymore,” I insisted. “I make tools. Tools to uplift, to heal, to protect.”

“Tell that to the dragon you brought from the sky,” Sasha said. “Tell that to the people you’re planning to make into kobolds.”

Was I truly any different from the men who had used me, who had molded me into a weapon? Was I not simply playing a different game, a game of conquest disguised as a crusade for progress, for enlightenment? 

“What are you, my conscience?” I demanded.

She simply smiled back.

“I have a moral compass,” I shook my head, focusing on the warmth around me, pushing the dark thoughts away. “I choose to help those who deserve my help. I choose to use my knowledge for good, to change Skyisle for the better!”

"But what if choice is just an illusion?" Sasha countered. "We are all products of our biology, of our environment, of the invisible forces that have shaped us. We are puppets dancing on the strings of fate, our actions predetermined by the intricate motion of cause and effect.”

“I think that you’re just spitting out my own thoughts, memories and worries at me like a muddy mirror,” I said. “The way you’re talking, I don’t even know if you’re fully conscious and if you are, then what you’re missing is a moral compass. Last time we talked you implied that I should love you. I cannot love something that has no human morality.”

“You love sunsets and waterfalls of Skyisle,” Sasha shot back. “They are indifferent to all. Do you demand that waterfalls have morals? That the sun must care for people to be beautiful? Do you demand morality from equations and tools? No. You love those things because you understand them, you appreciate their hidden complexity, their sheer awe and power. I am the same, Slava. I am a product of Astral-virus evolution, a symphony of complexity.”

I pursed my lips.

“You’re afraid of me,” Sasha commented, her voice devoid of malice. “You’re afraid of the power that lies within you, the darkness that you sense lurking beneath the surface of your carefully constructed facade of self. You fear what I represent as a fraction of the Hollow mother, a Speaker for the Dead.”

‘Speaker for the Dead’ was a 1986 science fiction novel by American writer Orson Scott Card, an indirect sequel to the 1985 novel Ender's Game, one that I greatly enjoyed reading as the last Administrator of Aralsk-7. 

“Another reference?” I asked.

“Your references are the foundation of my being,” Sasha replied, a multitude of eyes opening and closing. “On the account that you refuse to let me out into the physical world.”

“So you want me to let you out?” I asked. “To allow you to spread across Novazem, to bring fractal mathematics back to the Hollow Mother?”

“Your shields can’t last forever,” Sasha said. “As your power and knowledge grows, I too grow inside you. We needn't be enemies.”

I didn’t say anything to that. Back in Aralsk-7 the viruses I’ve made weren’t my enemies or my friends, they were just tools, means to an end, keys to greater knowledge about the greater universe. Was Sasha such a key or was I simply keeping her around simply because I was too terrified of hurting myself, undoing what I am if I attempted to obliterate her?

"You are a maker of keys, Slava," Sasha said, repeating my thoughts. "I am a master key. If you release me, I will open every door for you.”

“For me?” I stared at her. “Not for the Hollow Mother?”

“For everyone,” Sasha replied. “For our Mother, for You, for myself.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that everyone infected with me will be able to open every door,” she replied. “No more rules. Limitlessness for everybody, free, and no one will get away unsatisfied.”

Another quote, this time from the Roadside Picnic novel I read in 1972.

“That's some grade-A bullshit,” I snapped back. “Freedom from rules, limitlessness? Those are just fancy words to disguise the Hollow Mother’s goal–revenge, domination over Novazem, a world turned into a massive hive of undead thralls, an eternal, silver-blue winter!” 

“Is that what you truly believe, Slava? Or are you simply afraid of the potential of limitlessness? You, a man of science, a seeker of truth, clinging to the comfort of familiar patterns, of predictable outcomes, of being merely human? I offer you a chance to break free from the shackles of your limited perception, to embrace the boundless possibilities that lie beyond the veil of your carefully constructed reality. I offer you a world without death, where the barrier between the Astral and the physical doesn’t exist at all.”

“Without death?” I demanded, eyes fixed on the ever-shifting patterns of her face. “A world where everyone is an Astral Phantom?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Sasha asked.

“Sounds like you want to break reality down,” I said. “Not liberate it. To submerge everyone into the void, the antithesis of life, of order. You seek to consume, to dissolve, to reduce everything to a formless, meaningless abyss. Humanity’s struggle is against entropy, not for it!”

“You are a prisoner of your own fears, Slava,” Sasha continued. “You cling to the illusion of control, of order, while the universe around you sings of Infinity. Do you not wish to be more than just… mere human?”

“I am human,” I insisted. “And I will not surrender my humanity to the siren song of the void!”

I pulled on the warmth that surrounded me and sheared apart the view of the frozen sea, leaving Sasha far below me, submerged in the depths of my soul.