Quite clearly, Trust had been reset, and the players-drawing on some twenty years of accumulated experience-had managed, whether through the magic of balanced game design or simply because such is human nature, to reproduce more or less the same world.
This time there was no Stella Nori, and no deadline: Cassandre had wrapped herself in her true name and had taken the time to visit the wonders and the horrors of Trust. Drawing on her previous experience, she had been able to modify the Dark Unit so as to dive into it without Armor, and above all to completely disconnect from the software load of the After when she rested: thus, she could endure for weeks where only days before had drained her of all strength.
Enriched by this extra time, she had danced with the cat-men of the sinister carnival of the Spectral Celephaïs, learned from a guild how to hunt and tame her own dragon, and on its back reached sky islands where libraries stood, filled with unknown books, never read, generated on the fly by AI. There she had read a particularly beautiful sentence about the color of the sky, and she thought melancholically that she alone, in the whole history of humanity, would ever know that sentence: if she never revealed it to anyone, she would carry that information with her, like the memory of a beautiful landscape, into the heart of the Empyrean… before remembering that all of humanity would live its life second by second in Pax… the process is underway. Nothing will truly belong to us anymore, not even a thought.
Then rose the towers crowned with bulbous domes of the Fief of Joy. Her dragon skimmed above the exotic long-necked animals and their owners, who were fiercely negotiating this plot of land or that high-bandwidth connection. For a moment, the dragon eclipsed the setting sun in the palace windows before crashing awkwardly onto the flight of steps before the great sculpted double door. Two equally awkward guards-AIs-helped her to her feet with repeated cries of "Lady Cassandre."
Lady Cassandre ignored them, pushed the two doors open from their center, and entered sumptuous corridors. The tapestries depicting ships now told the epic of Lord Lucky, who had crossed parallel worlds and led all Chimera sapiens to Hyperion in order, it seemed, to save all of humanity.
Thoughtfully, Cassandre admired the white-and-gold woven scene of the Great Traveler conversing with the Wau in the base of the Church of Quantum Survivance. She was surprised by the arrival of a familiar and yet fleeting figure from her own story: Euyin, stepping through the banquet hall curtain, hat on his head and a smile on his lips.
- "Oh," he said, as if struck by a wonderful surprise, "Lady Stella-or Cassandre. The one who asked me on a Tuesday where Julia Prahi was, and who on Sunday won Trust. And the one who told me she would one day return to the After to tell me everything. You hadn't lied, in the end."
- "Cassandre," she confirmed, shaking his hand.
- "Cassandre," he said, removing his hat, "you are family now. If you ever need me, my services will be free."
- "And I am no longer in a hurry. I think I indirectly owe you my life. Perhaps it is time to keep my promise."
Smiling, he invited her to sit on the benches of the antechamber to the banquet hall. Their words rang out loudly, but were ignored by the AIs who already, somewhere, knew everything.
Cassandre expounded at length on the fate of most of the actors in what was called in the HS "the Aleph Crisis," though its stakes intersected with the very destiny of all sentient civilizations in the universe.
Aleph was tried once again, in a sprawling trial that divided the HS, as he had a great many followers. The Transients, who had abandoned the universe, could not interfere in the proceedings. But as the first time, he accepted his fate graciously, facilitating the process. He was sentenced to virtualization therapy, and everyone knew that sooner or later, one would encounter him in the After.
"But if we are to believe the Heir of humanity, he will have become a completely good man-a path on which, I believe, he already was-and from the After he will accomplish many beneficent deeds for humanity."
If the conduct of the HS as a whole-its leaders, the Stellar Fleet, and the press-had been more than questionable during the Aleph Crisis and meticulously documented by the AIs, the account given by influential figures was entirely different. Ingo Izan emotionally hammered home tales of terror and resistance against a creature, Aleph, possessed by a malevolent Transient, and all of humanity found itself united in the belief that it had created a glorious, omnipresent Resistance that had triumphed over divine plans. It was false, but it is so tiring to verify sources when it is so pleasant to be enchanted by a great storyteller who turns everyone into a hero…
Through the prism of this great lie, Cassandre measured how rarely humanity had behaved well, and how it had painted over each of its moral defeats.
"We are idiots lost in our vices, draped in a king's cloak."
Andreï was buried with honors on Yarn Ball, and Tohil posthumously awarded him a medal whose name Cassandre had not noted. His crew wept, except for Pallas, and the speech did not pay him tribute, given the divergence between reality and the needs of the post-crisis unifying narrative. For the HS and the Stellar Fleet, Andreï would simply be the man who had discovered a Transient system at the far end of the universe.
"Unjust, but exactly what he would have wanted."
Ada, confronted with this narrative, was filled with great fury and considered descending upon Prospero to kill people at random. The Wau intervened in time to reason with her, and at the end of a long dialogue that lasted two days and two nights, convinced Ada to undergo AI therapy. It produced apparently wonderful effects, and it was a capable and serene young woman who emerged from the suit, full of dreams of adventure and thirst for knowledge. Only in appearance, noted the Wau, who could read minds, and he devised another plan: he asked the young woman to "pretend" she had changed for a few years.
Thus Ada divided her time between journeys to habitable Xeno planets identified by Andreï with Salman (and all the love she could find with him), and mathematical research at UniNox, where she demonstrated that an alert and imaginative mind can be as perceptive as the brutal sweeping of AIs. Nourished by love, science, and wonder, she healed-and if she is still called Gorylkin, and if she still carries her Transient rifle, well, the page of violence seems to have been turned. Perhaps also thanks to the presence of Alpha and Kukth, who love her in a Xeno way that only she can understand.
"Despite her maturity, she remains haunted by her past deeds. I watch over her, so that in the tribunal of her conscience I may intervene and plead in her favor."
Salman was unquestionably the darling of the authorities in the post-crisis unfolding of events. "Calmos," already a useful symbol of an army that wished to appear benevolent, had forged a Human–Xeno alliance-moreover, a military one. He was integrated into the government, in second position after the HS minister for Xeno affairs, with a permanent office in the renovated tower of Origin. There he simply understood that for years, Xeno affairs had consisted above all in not interfering with incomprehensible civilizations. The unofficial philosophy of the ministry revolved around the fable of a dinner between a human and a Xeno, with the principle of "never asking the time of the meal." Salman took part in long meetings where he explained what he had learned about the Xenos, and the experts nodded with conviction-but nothing changed.
So Salman resigned, and the President of the HS, fearing he might depart to some Xeno world to found an alliance, refused his resignation. Then Salman stole a Tyger on Origin and "disappeared," except to his friends. He is today humanity's representative in the Xeno alliance, but no one in the HS truly knows it. His secret project, he confided one day to the Wau, was in the coming months to seed Dante's soil with Xeno seeds to transform the prison into a paradise. His best friend is the Abandoned One, who developed a deeply human, boundless friendship for the former soldier and follows him everywhere. The Abandoned One has become a major figure in the Xeno alliance, and many believe that if the Xenos had a leader-at least in the local galactic cluster-it would be him.
"Of all the marvelous flowers that will bloom on Dante, Salman is the first."
Sky became a billionaire in fifteen days. The Hyperion project, underway for years, suddenly required massive inputs of fractal materials, and the Endymions had vanished from the stellar routes. He organized smuggling, cheated his associates, and siphoned colossal sums from army funds. He is now extremely rich, equipped with a new hand, but pursued by nearly everyone-authorities and cartels alike.
"On good days, he considers uploading himself into the After and abandoning his billions. On bad days… let's not talk about it."
Samuel Aloysius was executed on Lodovico by Aleph's troops when the army lost control of the Chimera Sapiens. Worse still, he is portrayed by the Ingo Izan as the scientific genius and damned soul of the malevolent Transient-and many consider him worse than Aleph himself. Ada, who is making breakthroughs regarding the Veritatis, intends to rehabilitate his image, though no one really knows to what end, since he is not even in the After.
"Samuel was my friend. And I am responsible for his death. I do not know how I will be able to process this information in the years to come."
Pallas suffered greatly from the resolution of the Aleph Crisis. Very attached to Andreï, she replayed all their many years together, listing everything she might have done to find a solution. She left society and plunged body and soul into the Grip. The Wau found her during a blood-soaked orgy of the cult in the True Abyss, and kidnapped her to undertake a long journey of philosophical discourse and discoveries. The psi officer joined the Cult of the Epic of All Life and completed all the required pilgrimages; she found peace. She now commands the Alecto with Andreï's former crew. Tohil entrusted them with a mission of exploration and first contact with the Xenos of Multitude.
"She wanted to become a captain at any cost-she became a captain… In the meantime, it became utterly unimportant. Pallas has a void in her soul that bears the name of her former captain."
King Dorian abdicated graciously, and Booz as well as the Royal Planet fell under the authority of the HS Council-for the better. He returned to the life of tranquil opulence for which he had been destined, and became laconic, philosophical. One day, he attended a lecture by Ada on the philosophy of the Veritatis, seated in the back row of an amphitheater. She recognized him, and they exchanged a few words without animosity. Since then, in the evenings, in his parents' magnificent residence on Earth near Lake Como, he leans on the balcony and gazes at the distant stars. He kept his two severed fingers as a souvenir of a life of adventure.
"No one truly knows what he thinks, but he has everything of a great King-including solitude, and clearly the capacity to forgive."
The Wau reconnected with the Council of the Wau. Human society had deep troubles tied to its humanity, and a bit of help-even draped in lies-was always useful. He even apologized. The Council of the Wau joyfully welcomed back the prodigal son, who had completed, for the first time in the history of the Order, the entire compass: the East of rupture with the Order, the West of reconciliation, the Zenith of resolving a major crisis, and the Nadir of having died on mission… and yet she was still there. Cassandre had stored away the Armor, which would need years to be fully repaired. She now contemplated having a child, to perpetuate the Order, even if Ada also seemed to her a good potential candidate to bear the Transient relic.
- "That is more information than I could ever have dreamed of. We are in virtual worlds where imagination is the only limit, but reality is fascinating-truly."
- "You dream of adventure until you are neck-deep in it," Cass said, rising. "And then you have nothing but regrets, believe me. Safe travels, detective."
He saluted her, and she passed through the curtains. The great banquet hall, the servants, the dishes with unknown and intoxicating aromas, the open balcony and its great curtains like angel wings, the last rays of sunlight outside. She sees Lucky, beneath his immense and ridiculous turban, with a face that could be that of a child. She feels like laughing, and sits not far from him.
- "Cassandre! You seem far nicer to me than that stuck-up Stella, if you ask my opinion."
- "Speak well of Stella-she is a very well-informed person."
- "Help yourself: Dawnrain shrimp, and these little things are grilled black crocodile hearts. A marvel."
Cassandre bites into a heart-for a moment, she sees herself swimming up the muddy waters of an immense river flanked by stone pyramids. Lucky snaps his fingers and brings her back to the 'reality' of the After:
- "I am honored by your presence, but you Wau-don't you have people to save somewhere in the universe? I say this because I've done my part, and I like it when everyone does theirs."
- "A page turns with Aleph's condemnation. I thought that good stories generally end with a kiss."
- "Death has changed you, Cassandre. For the better."
- "Are you going to keep reminding me that you pulled me back from death?"
- "Yes!"
The servants placed brachiosaurus necks from the jungles of Bharat on the table. Enormous as tree trunks, their skin was served as grilled chips.
- "As long as my vision is not realized," Lucky declared, stuffing a bloody piece of meat into his mouth, "I can live. If it is realized, well-after that, it's the unknown."
- "And Lucky is afraid of the unknown."
- "I have changed, Cass. Do you love me, woman in armor?"
- "A little," she admitted, "but I don't think I am someone meant to love."
- "Maybe you could stay here for a while. Well-deserved vacation. We could eat nice things, see crazy animals, list everything that's wrong with the HS."
- "Everything that's wrong? That's a roundabout way of wanting to keep me prisoner here for a thousand years."
- "The HS is a bit like you, Cassandre. Full of flaws-but that's no reason not to love it."
- "Did someone also fetch a version of you from a parallel universe and put it here? I barely recognize the man who used the word 'son of a bitch' in every sentence."
- "I told myself, Cass, that if I was going to kiss you, I might as well have you love me."
He cast an empty gaze toward the last pink hues of dusk. In the street, his AI servants were bustling around the evening fireworks that would be launched as soon as the silver Halcyons took flight.
- "Over time, I understood that the visions we have are not simply random fragments taken from our future lives. The Owls do not want to show us the future, but to show us the best of ourselves."
Cassandre thought of her own vision. A family. Mouth full, Lucky continued:
- "I was led my entire life by a vision. More than realizing it, I had to understand it. You never stopped telling me so. You were right, of course, and that's why the Owls showed me you, my beautiful one. Because you would be able to set me on the right path. You know, Cass, I think I was a fragile and sensitive boy who always asked to love and be loved, but whom no one ever taught how to do it. If I had wanted a sublime girl like you, I would not have envisioned any path other than violence or blackmail, because… I would say that I did not consider myself worthy of doing otherwise. Today, you could kiss me and turn the page, as you say. We could turn the page together, Cass. Case closed. Next. But what would remain for the two of us? Rather than turning the page, let's open another book. A book where we would find ourselves, understand each other, and love each other. Love is not a bad choice, is it?"
- "I have never said no to a good book," Cass concluded with a dim smile.
The silver Halcyons took flight in a majestic song, drowned out by the detonations of the first fireworks that colored even the interior of the banquet hall. Inside, the lights dimmed to highlight the spectacle.
The NPC AIs and the players in the court of honor watched a magnificent display that had always, in the ancient times of Mythic Earth, fascinated minds. The vivid, thunderous flashes lit up their amazed profiles in the newborn night.
Cassandre tried to imagine the true nature of these fireworks: these lights were only computer programs, beams of light striking the electronics of a bunker-continent powered by the magma of humanity's mother planet. A beam of light strikes a sensor, a photon disappears, an electron is generated-and in this small exchange of energy, the infinite world of the Blind Gods is born and dies, recreating in an instant all possible stories of the universe, recreating its own story, and infinitely many Cassandres watching fireworks.
The Travelers, the Heirs, have departed in all those moments into the Empyrean, taking with them the Transients who opposed them. The Wau's quest is over. There is no longer a man in the woods. His brothers have come to fetch him.
Cassandre thinks of the anonymous Transients eliminated by Aleph. They will not go to the Empyrean, and the Heirs do not even know it. Their project is incomplete, and they do not even know it. Perhaps because of these absences, this great Plan to escape an infinite cycle will fail, and everything will have been in vain.
She smiles at Lucky with a kind of desperate tenderness.
- "You would have wanted us to kiss tonight anyway?" he asks.
- "I wonder whether everything we do is in vain."
- "Ah, intellectuals. You offer them a place in your bed, and they'll read a boring book in it. You mean-does it serve any purpose to live?"
- "Would living another thousand years make a difference? Is the great machine of the Universe not there to use us and digest us, as we digest these crocodile hearts?"
- "For me, yes-living another thousand years would make a clear difference. I want to live a thousand years to see you for another thousand. The Universe has the elegance, my sweet, of having its share of mystery. Our ancestors feared death and wondered whether there was an afterlife, or how to live if that afterlife did not exist. And now that we have built the After, we say-well, what else? What will there be when Earth runs out of energy? My view is that there will always be mystery. But it is never in vain, because you see, we push back the fog of mystery a little each time. And praise be to the Blind Gods-there is always something beyond the hill. Can you imagine if we were certain of everything all the time? That would be unbearably boring! Mystery gives us hope. And you know what? The world will always need hope."
Cassandre raised her glass:
- "You are a magnificent person, Lucky. Perhaps the Owls placed me on your path not so that I might guide you, but for my own good."
- "That, my dear and tender Cass," Lucky said, clinking glasses, "is the most beautiful thing ever spoken by a sinister Wau!"
In the half-light, Cassandre's cold face was beautiful like that of the AIs. Yes, they could have climbed the steps then and embraced-and perhaps, in that exchange, there would even have been love.
But not tonight. Not tonight. Tonight, there will only be the halcyons and the thunder of rockets, and within that thunder the silent and certain birth of hope.
Thank you for reading The Blind Gods
Thank you for being among the few people (there really aren't many) who read The Blind Gods to the end.
In fact, there are so few-and those who have contacted me-that I know who you are :-)
I wrote this book before "Game of Rôles Galaxies" (you can look for it on youtube), with the idea of creating a well-constructed science-fiction universe that could serve as the stage for other SF stories. I was able to place various concepts that are dear to me, stemming from my work on AIs.
At the very beginning there is the chapter "History of humanity until the end of time," which appears late. It was meant to be a lecture during a science-fiction night. I thought it was a bit arid, so I wrapped a story around it.
I sent this book to friends, and they didn't really read it. I sent it to publishers and was told it wasn't very good. I sent it to my own publishing house and they told me it wasn't very good.
So it ended up here. It may be in its rightful place.
Feel free to write to me at [email protected] if you would like to share a debrief.
See you soon.