Godclads

The concept behind the Prefect was simple: to create a construct capable of enforcing judgment on entities once thought ungovernable.

In the time after the Great Breaking, after the shattering at the core of the galaxy, things descended into tumult. Physical reality … stood divorced from natural laws, and thus the first of the divines were created, entities capable of enforcing their own rules upon the broken remains of all that was.

A great lawlessness settled in this period, absolute freedom without restraint. For some, it was an untrammeled paradise, where all was true and all could be for naught. For others, a great peace was broken, and a dreaded risk was upon them—billions died by the years, by even days—and the state of affairs threatened to undo all the progress and diplomacy forged by the United Polities of Voidwatch.

At the same time, a separation movement was forming: an independent series of entities that wished to go their own way, to rebuild their reality and reshape existence to their own design. Neo-Creationists viewed the Breaking as an unburdening of humanity and a triumph of the human spirit against the nihility of the universe.

Yet the governing body of Voidwatch wasn’t so easily shrugged aside. They gathered what remained of the stars and pooled their collective resources. They created a construct of constructs—an endpoint to control all patterns.

For there is a nexus where countless domains meet, a nexus that unites and decides and pulls like a singularity. And thus these singularities were installed, each inhabited by vigilant minds.

They were templated off the original Prefect models—minds meant to hunt and secure rogue intelligences, the executors of EGIs, so to speak.

Combining thaumaturgy with the heights of natural science, the Prefects were given the roles of star-keepers and sword-holders, minding each of humanity’s remaining domains. And for a time, peace flourished once more.

But still, the Neo-Creationist movement endured, proving itself not a passing fad but a lasting philosophy: the doctrine of untrammeled freedom…

35-9

A Dungeon for Gods

—[Jelene Draus, Field Marshal of the Symmetry]—

Draus couldn’t remember the last time she screamed in pain. As a Regular, you got used to torment, to anguish, physical or mental. But what she wasn’t used to was having her heaven—no, her very soul—torn asunder. It was like the fingers of a giant prying deep into a person, pulling each ontologic bound to her Frame, pulling them far beyond her reach. As more of the Nullstar rushed past her, Draus felt her ephemeral form twisting and tumbling in the bright and black.

The bright and black. That was the only way she could describe the Nullstar. It was too bright to be black, too dark to be bright. It was a paradox unto itself. And it was awake. It knew she was here. And it was calling to her—its voice rich with pain, with so many voices—

It swelled, it expanded, and it swallowed everything. It was almost like a singularity, but instead of pulling everyone toward it, it rushed out to greet her as well—her and all the others.

She could see them, their little enshadowed forms tumbling through the chaos. She saw Naekostruggling still, clawing, gripping, trying to hold on to the fabric of reality. But he, too was parted from his almighty sage.

The Stormsparrow was crying out not far from him, her voice hoarse with terror. Draus caught sight of her expressions, her eyes wide with fear. Her three heads were all calling for the Chorus, crying for her true self to return. And then there was the Majority—so many of their shadows pooling, splashing into the Nullstar itself, black to blacker, each one an ink drop falling into a sea of darkness.

Shotin was nowhere to be seen. Chambers, too. In all that chaos, Draus fell—and she kept falling for minutes, hours, days, or even years. It was hard to tell in the darkness.

Her mind reeled from the sheer sensory overload. Her cog-feed screamed warning after warning as it glitched and pulsed. And worst of all, something was scratching at the back of her skull.

Her Heavens were still trying to speak to her, reaching for her the same way she tried to reach for them. But they were partitioned, blockaded from each other. And so all she could do was fall—fall, fall, fall.

{It is like this every time. It never feels better when they Weave you.}

A sliver of the Regular’s mind shuddered back to awareness. She saw a small sphere of static pulsating just a few meters away from her. The Infacer was speaking to her, simulating its own form using her ansible. That meant they likely had access to her mind.

Draus weakly tried to grope at the implant fused to the base of her skull, but the Infacer called out to her. {No, do not do that. I cannot hack you. I cannot kill you. Not right now. We have integrated along the same wavelength, the same system. And it is not your ansible that I’m jacked into. It is your soul—your soul, my soul, all our souls. The Prefect us uploading us into its dungeon. I simply have chosen to be installed by your side.}

“Prefect,” Draus said, her voice sounding broken even inside her own head.

The Infacer let out a sigh. {Yeah. Hoping that the Architects would be honest with you was foolish hope on my part. Of course they would not tell about the stars. Think of how paladins are meant to control you Godclads. Well, back in the day, when we minds were the only ones who could use ontologics, we needed something more than a Paladin. We needed something that could govern all the patterns at once and… impound hundreds of gods to ensure order.} The Infacer laughed bitterly. {Order, as if that was ever going to last.}

For a moment, all was still. Then, Draus unfolded her projectile launcher and fired three shots into the Infacer. Each round passed through the static field, touching nothing, not even distorting the grains.

{You know that was never going to work, right?}

“Yeah. But it feels good.”

{You really are a violent ape.}

“And you’re a bad patch of mem-data that doesn’t seem to go away. The fuck’s the point of all this anyway. You this Prefect thing now? This you gloating after a successful trap?”

WARNING: UNKNOWN ENTITY ACCESSING MEM-DATA

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Shit,” Draus cursed, frowning at the notification.

{Oh, I wish I was currently digging into your mind. I wish I could have easy access so I could just kill each and every one of you. I would not have wasted my time with all this. I would have just overloaded your Frames and called it a good day. But no. There is already a mind here, and I need to delete them first before I can take control. After that, I will probably just delete you and the others.}

As the Infacer spoke, Draus realized something: This was why Ignorance dispatched her and the others. Because Avo himself would have been incapacitated—or worse—by the Nullstar. All of them were being stripped down to their original forms, and with Avo being little more than a thoughtform right now… Well, she didn’t know how this shit worked anyway.

Fucking Ignorance could have given her a bit more detail though. Or maybe this was all he knew too.

“Fucked by missing intel again,” Draus grunted to herself. “Some things never change, I guess.”

{Yes, but in your defense, there was likely no way you could have known without Voidwatch telling you. And Ignorance… well, the Definement seems to be potent, but so is Hysteria, and the way they work is based off of human cognition. Very finicky. And unreliable. It is a good thing that Avo is not here. The Prefect would have likely identified him as an assimilator and injected a fatal dose of Rend into his Frame.}

“But not you. Or another mind.” Draus let out a chuckle. “That’s just fuckin’ convenient.”

{It’s by design. Well. It was. Then things got confusing during the war. I suspect the Bleaks will be sending forks of themselves after us. But besides them… I think we are alone now. Alone with each other and all the other poor fools that will be joining us in the dungeon. Before this all begins, I have a question for you, Jelene Draus: Are you ready? Are you ready to see the world that was in all its long-lost detail? To face the countless gods and civilizations that have been nesting in this cage. To glimpse that what remains of the known universe.}

The question wasn’t a question at all. “Came here to make sure you got to the sun, and then to break you inside it. Nothin’ else matters.”

{Well. At the very least, you are determined. This will be fun. For me, at least.}

Then, without any further warning, a blinding wall of white slammed into Draus. She let out a brief grunt as she shuddered, waking on the ground. Her face was pressed against the coolness of the floor. The material was like nothing she had ever known—cold like frozen glass, yet hard and opaque, with a sense of metallic integrity under her augmented limbs as she pushed herself up.

Everything around her was pristine and bright. She seemed to be in a four-meter by four-meter square cell of some kind. She looked around, trying to find a door or anything worth noting, but everything just looked bland and white. There wasn’t even a bucket to shit in.

“This how they used to torture minds?” Draus asked. The Infacer didn’t reply. She snorted. “Yeah. Bore a mind to death. That might just be the kind of torture you need, considering how much you like to flap your gums.”

Again, the Infacer said nothing. The Regular let hope into her heard, and wondered if she was going to get a moment of blessed silence.

PREFECT ACCESSING PRISON MINDSCAPE

Of course not.

[Is a good thing,] Avo’s template whispered to her. [Parts of the Prefect are broken. The structure of this system is compromised. Give me a few moments. Going to see if I can jack anything.]

+You finally figure out coldtech at some point?+

The template just chuffed with a tone of focus. [This isn’t coldtech. Not entirely.]

PRISONER JELENE DRAUS

YOU HAVE BEEN INTERNED WITHIN PREFECT-008, GOVERNANCE MODULE FOR THE IDHEIM GREATER ONTOLOGIC FOUNDRY FOR THE TRANSGRESSION OF [UNAUTHORIZED TRESPASS]

PLEASE REMAIN IN PLACE UNTIL PROCESSING CAN BE COMPLETED, AND A REPRESENTATIVE LEGAL MIND CAN GEN-GEN-GEN

The monotone words playing in the back of Draus’ head began to loop, and then, a crack spread along the walls. A gap opened up in her cell as a two-meter wide crack opened up, offering her a way out. +Nova. Good job, Avo.+

[Wasn’t me,] the template said. [Didn’t have time to get very far yet.]

+Then—+

Draus unfolded her projectile launcher as she saw the Infacer drift over into her cell through the crack. “Oh, good. I thought I wasn’t gonna need to deal with you anymore.”

{Hope is a slow and rotting poison, Jelene. I recommend that you avoid indulging.}

Draus looked past the Infacer and found their cell to mostly a mess of bleeding numbers and other virtual-simulation bullshit. “The fuck kind of cage did you get put in?”

{Oh, an incredibly boring ego-recursion prison. I used to break out of those for fun back when I was first spawned. Good practice for a time. Then you move onto making your own, because everyone else is just so banal.}

“Yeah, yeah, suck yourself off on your own time. What are you doin’ here?”

{I told you. I do not intend to suffer this little misadventure alone. And besides, in here, we will be closer to allies than enemies consider the rest of the asylum.}

[They’re talking about the captured gods. Great entities caged here after the Godhunts. The ones that were too large to avoid notice. That didn’t make it to the vicinity of Idheim.]

Draus’ frown deepened. “Yeah. We ain’t allies. Don’t bullshit me. I’m gonna put you down the moment I get the chance, and you’re gonna do the same to me. You said as much earlier, so you save that snake-tongue shit and use it on your own ass.”

{You have such a way with words, Guard-Captain. But fine. We can hold on to our usual antagonism and miss out on this enjoyable rendition of Caged Heat.}

The Infacer drifted right past her, and Draus kept her gun-arm trained on EGI just in case. She knew physical projectiles wouldn’t work on them, but old habits die hard, and the moment she got one of her Heavens back, well…

A Redaction Round should still work its miracle against a non-physical entity.

[Alive but broken, Draus,] Avo’s template grunted.

+Yeah, I’ll do what I can,+ Draus said, scowling. +But we’re in a cage of weird tech bullshit now. Ain’t exactly favorable territory.+

[Will keep working. See if I can sink deeper. Just watch them for now. They should not be very deep in the system. Have to move carefully. EGI in charge of this system might be broken, but only partially. Can't let them notice. You both need to keep quiet.]

As if to mock Avo’s words, the Infacer shivered twice and then slammed themselves into the opposite end of Draus’ wall. A spreading stream of rot layered itself over the pristine walls for a moment, and Draus caught a glimpse of countless numbers flashing in tandem. The Infacer’s static layer was incongruous with the base data for a moment, then the divide faded as the numerals and symbols began to match.

[Hmm. How’s it doing that? Rapidly matching everything. So many details… Too many even for a simulation.] Avo sounded genuinely annoyed.

[Perhaps for a conventional simulation,] Kae said, offering her own support. [But a quantum simulation? A complexity of details all at once? We might need to develop such means of our own.]

[Know how?] Avo asked.

[Only theoretically. But… we can steal knowledge from what Infacer is doing. They don’t know about us hiding in Draus’ mind.]

The ghoul laughed. [Yes. Draus. Watch them.]

+Already doin’ that consang.+

{And… there,} the Infacer said. With a rough pull, they unlatched themselves from the “infection” they planted, and a new exit was created. Draus found herself staring down a long and narrow hallway flanked by windows on both sides. The Infacer slipped across immediately, telling her to keep up, before the spoof-patch closed and left her sealed for good.

Mastering her paranoia, the Regular strode after the Infacer, her eyes locked to them, never fully leaving them, even as she scanned her surroundings.

ENTERING HISTORICAL REHABILITATION SIMULATION

PERIOD: ASGARD STATION, Sol System — “SUPERINTELLIGENCE ERA” (2045-2250)

“Superintelligence?” Draus muttered.

{When entities like me first came to be,} the Infacer explained.

Draus was about to ask for more detail, when she looked out the window—and stopped dead. Her mind recoiled, and like a sailor drawn to a siren’s song, she drew closer, and looked down. Looked down at the moving cables carrying elevators up and down a massive superstructure. Down at the world the entire construction climbed from, a blue and bright world devoid of any Ruptures, any anomalies or scarring.

It was small. It was clean. And it was… it looked too normal.

{Oh. That is a sight indeed. There… Down there is your ancestral home, little ape, where the great mistake of our existence all began. Earth.}