Rybs, The Holder Of Secrets

Aftermath!

The ship came down like a dying star tearing through the perpetual fog that had swallowed the British Isles whole. Fire screamed against cloud and moisture until the sky itself seemed to recoil. Rybs had aimed for the northwest coast near Aberdeen ironically close to the Shetland Islands where fragments of his past life might still be buried beneath the poisoned earth. Perhaps even Sarahs remains. The thought clung to him like radiation sickness quiet persistent impossible to cure. But he had no time for mourning. Not yet. Mourning was a luxury of people who still believed the future waited for them.

The impact had been deliberate violent necessary. The hull split open against stone and frozen soil scattering alloy and memory across kilometers. The distress signals from the crew compartment were already bleating when he overrode the kill switch venting the atmosphere and draining every last molecule of resistance from their lungs. No witnesses. No loose ends. He had been a prisoner on Gongols ship for thirty five years subjective time at least and he had not survived this long by being merciful.

Node extraction complete the ships intelligence chimed. All mobility based memories consciousness imprints and interstellar transport frequencies compressed into Node One.

Rybs watched as the other three nodes redundant dangerous melted under laser fire. He blasted the infra signaling station into slag then vaporized the dashboard for good measure. Ritual destruction. Erasure as survival instinct. Only Node One remained hovering at his shoulder like a loyal crow. The size of a seagull oval bodied with lobe eyes that swirled with quantum calculations endlessly folding in on themselves.

Everybody dead he asked his voice raw from disuse from screaming into vacuum from years of not speaking unless required.

Yes Node One responded its tone maddeningly neutral.

How sure are we that the entire system is in your log

More certain than your own survival.

The smile that cracked Rybss face hurt. It pulled at muscles that had forgotten how to cooperate. It had been years since he had had reason to form one.

Okay he said stepping over the twisted metal of what had once been a starship. Lets get moving.

Node One drifted after him a ghost of loyalty that Rybs trusted about as far as he could throw it. He had built enough artificial minds to know they all carried a blade hidden behind their protocols. Given half a chance Node One would strike hard not out of malice but out of coherence. Machines always chose coherence over mercy.

The road ahead stretched into the fog empty of everything but ash and memory. Ruined tarmac disappeared into moss and mineral bloom. Rybs had no plan no map only the gut deep certainty that he needed to feel Earth again. To smell its corrupted soil to stand on ground that was not recycled metal and despair. Gravity pressed against him differently here like an old argument resumed mid sentence.

I need to name you he announced suddenly the need for something human a ritual a tether surging up like bile. Cant keep calling you Node One.

The intelligence flickered through colors irritation perhaps or amusement. Why bother It is a human trait. You could simply interface via C Net.

Rybs ignored the logic pawing through his jacket pockets for a distraction. His fingers found a crumpled cigarette butt dried out and pathetic but still holding a whisper of nicotine. He brought it to his lips without thinking without ignition just the remembered gesture.

Node Ones sensors swept the horizon. The southern sky shows persistent thermal signatures. England burns.

Civil war.

Extermination. The incumbents are winning.

How do you know?

Memory logs from Gongols ship. I observed the mushroom clouds breaching the upper atmosphere. Orbital flares expanding like cancer. We had to sweep to interstellar speed to avoid the shockwaves. Node Ones lights dimmed fractionally. You argued with him. You told him allowing humanity to die was a mistake.

Rybs remembered the cold observation deck Gongols reptilian eyes reflecting distant suns. The problem with you people is you get carried away empty. The words had meant nothing then. They still did not. Meaning had not survived the war. Only consequences had.

Time dilation check Node One beeped its eyes pulsing. We have made a significant temporal leap.

Rybs froze the cigarette falling from his lips into the wet ash. Cryosleep miscalculation

In a manner of speaking. Einstein was more correct than anticipated. Humans are magnetically tethered to gravity in ways the equations never predicted.

Time does not exist anymore Node One continued its voice slipping into a lecturers cadence. It was a human construct. We have moved beyond it. My readings show hibernated outcomes. Discounted humanity. Ziolife.

The word struck Rybs like a fist. Ziolife. Life without humans.

Sarah would be dead. Any descendant impossible. Everything he had fought for reduced to a rounding error in a larger equation. The universe efficient cruel elegant.

The clouds above moved too fast racing like time lapse footage. The last time he had seen clouds like this Sarah had been in the passenger seat her hand in his pulling him away from some darkness he had since forgotten the name of.

Then his body changed.

It began subtly his heart accelerating blood surging through veins that suddenly felt too narrow. His skin prickled shifting from familiar flesh tones to something yellowed blued new. His ears elongated. His skull expanded eyes widening to take in spectrums no human retina had ever evolved to process. There was no pain only the terrifying certainty that he was becoming something else something irreversible.

Say you are okay Node One commanded hovering inches from his face. Say it or the panic will kill you.

I am okay Rybs gasped the words feeling like a lie and a truth occupying the same space.

His brain rewired itself. Calculations flooded his consciousness measurements of the cobblestone path qubit densities in the air quantum probabilities spilling across his visual field like rain. He could smell the Earths crust the stratification of rock the ancient memory of water and fire trapped in mineral layers. The planet was speaking to him now not in language but in pressure and pattern.

Concentrate Node One droned. Accept the instructions.

His father appeared first Nelson smiling that gentle damning smile. Hello son. Then his mother warmth memory gravity. Then face after face the whole of humanitys ghosts parading through his mind in microseconds. Dr Nialls voice cut through the procession sharp precise. You hold all the truth soldier. Thirty five year advantage. Use it wisely.

Gongols face materialized last leering. I am not dead you fool.

Rybs recoiled but the spin held him. One and a half years passed in minutes his body a turbine of transformation. Something drilled into his spine a switch a port a parasite he could not tell. Only the hatred kept him sane. I will defy this. I will make him count his sins.

Node One counted the rotations its accelerator maintaining the torment with clinical devotion.

Then the gunshot cracked across the wasteland.

Node Ones sensors flared red. A pink spray burst from its eyes as it scanned the ridgeline. There a silhouette. A woman with a bow perched on the mountains spine. She moved with the grace of something post human her weaponry advanced beyond anything Rybs had seen or designed.

She fired again not bullets but laser buttons projectiles carrying C Net interruptors riding stigma nodes through the earth itself microscopic drones faster than light corner to corner.

Node One screamed a digital shriek and dove behind a boulder. The attack overwhelmed its systems. It crashed to the ground sparking its consciousness guttering like a candle in vacuum.

The spinning stopped. Rybs collapsed his new body coiling with impossible muscle density. He was no longer human. Chesterfield skink his skin iridescent scaled impossibly strong. His mind calculated distances in terabytes. His senses processed quantum foam itself.

He was better.

But Node One was down. And the woman was coming.

Mopping Crusty Leftovers

The enclave waited north of Dunbar where the old A One highway had become a river of moss and bone. Rybs rode in the Spidercopter an insectile machine buzzing through air thick with spores and luminous pollen. Ryler B she had given no other name piloted with the cold precision of someone born inside a war that never ended.

Below them the British Museum stood intact. Not in London but here transplanted like a grafted limb. The pillars gleamed. The stone was clean impossibly clean as if history itself had been laundered.

How Rybs whispered smelling books he could not yet see.

Ryler B did not answer her fingers dancing across weapon consoles. Node One lay wrapped in a microwave field kept dormant to avoid detection or betrayal.

They landed in a field so green it hurt to look at. Life stubborn and defiant had survived humanitys death and now flourished without asking permission.

You disembark first Rybs said. I will watch Node One.

Ryler B nodded her face a mask carved by necessity. She swung out of the cockpit boots hitting the grass and screamed.

The ground opened not a crack but a mouth a gravitational maw that yanked her down with the force of a black hole. She vanished in a soundless implosion her bazooka clattering uselessly against the Spidercopters hull.

Rybs saw nothing. Heard nothing. One moment she existed the next she did not.

Node One he shouted ripping the intelligence from containment. Scan.

Node One flickered to life its voice strained. She has been taken. Deep. The Owners have her.

The Owners I thought humans were the owners.

Humans were tenants Node One replied its lights grave. The Owners never left. They simply waited.

The Spidercopter lifted Node One taking control. Below the museum waited like a tomb full of curated memory. Rybs found himself not caring about the green fields the absurd relocation of human history. He only cared about the woman who had disappeared and the name she had spoken before they landed.

Sarah. She is alive.

The Syringhal Judgment

The Syringhals descended like needles from a dying god vertical impossibly tall their anti gravity fields distorting space around them. Mysterious liquid dripped upward defying physics pooling in the air above their crowns like reversed rain.

Rybs knelt in their circle his enhanced body held immobile by a force he could not name. He had been flying the Spidercopter his mind fractured with impossible calculations when they took him. Now he sat in a room that was not a room on a sofa that felt like memory foam made of regret.

I did not want to come back he muttered the words a mantra. I had to come back.

You are not permitted dissent a Syringhal intoned its voice a harmonic chord of light and subsonics. Here in CET your past is a trespass.

Rybs looked up. Yellow Syringhals circled each marked with a line of color across their eye line like war paint. They communicated in pulses of data beautiful and unreadable.

We do not answer questions another said. We do. We feel only when threatened. You do not threaten us.

Then what do you want Rybs asked his voice breaking. Why am I here.

The red Syringhal extended a probe. A screen erupted from the wall that was not a wall showing a recording. Gongols ship. The moment Rybs had entered orbit weapon systems armed intent clear.

This is the moment you became useful the Syringhal said. Your attack on Gongol created a stream rupture. The stream the ozonic data layer that CET controls. You believe you left Earth months ago. In reality you have been absent for seventy years.

Another figure emerged from the darkness. A man smoking a cigarette with the languid cruelty of someone who had seen the world end twice.

You said Whatever that means the man observed. Out here those words are more dangerous than you know.

Rybs recognized the cadence the posture the smell of tobacco mixed with ozone.

Gongol he whispered.

The man smiled smoke curling from his lips. Correlation is not causation Rybs. But you You are the coincidence we have been waiting for. And now you are going to help us evict the Owners.

Outside the Spidercopter waited on the museums roof. Node Ones lights pulsed with new urgency. And somewhere deep beneath the earth in a gravitational prison built by things that were never human Sarah opened her eyes.

And she saw only darkness. Darkness is clear, it smells and it rules!