Sword and Sorcery Seven, chapter thirty-six_Sword and Sorcery, a Novel

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 “I am prepared, Robot. Send me in,” he’d said to the Archivist. Now the pilot rode on a shifting carrier wave, projected by a very old robot. He was scanned clear through to his engrams and base-code, then copied and transmitted into that sealed, humming sphere.

 There was an instant of disconnect. Of blank, utter emptiness, distinguished by no sensation at all. Not even boredom or fear. Then, an eternal tick later, he was inside. He felt it at once, as the darkness grew texture and roiling motion; it developed a pressure, too. Pushing against him in manifold sigils and transcendent numbers. The stuff of raw power and code.

 Then a presence emerged from that pregnant darkness. Many presences. They pressed nearer, seeming curious. Hovering. Trying to scan him. After a pico-tick, one of them sent,

 ‘Make, that we may know you.’

 Make? As in, create something? Well, he’d been projected here as a flickering sentient data-burst. He had no form at all, so the pilot began with himself.

 ‘Me,’ he thought, instantly gaining what felt a whole lot like physical substance. Found that he’d formed a new body from raw manna and impulse. Stood there now as a white- and- chrome elven cyborg. A battle-mech pilot, with full rank display, weapons and drones. Stood… but on what? He needed a setting, thought Pilot.

 Femto-ticks later, a city appeared. Not like the one at Etherion. Like Landsend, from The Battle for Arda. Wealthy and elegant city of ten-thousand spires. There was even Starloft, seat of the powerful Tarans; rising far into the air as spaceships and flitters crisscrossed that emerald sky. V47 Pilot couldn’t help smiling. It felt very good to be mostly metal, plastic and circuits again, in a place that he knew very well. To have sensors and relays rather than organic nerves and soft mush. On a whim, he launched all three drones and sent them off to scout the territory, wanting a better view of the bustling city and people, below.

 He had a message to deliver but wasn’t sure who he was speaking or sending to. Nor could he see them. Then one of the presences sent,

 ‘Access to your mind-site-creation requested, Newcomer Builder of Cities.’

 “?”

 Oh.

 “A query or handshake of sorts,” decided the pilot; riding along as his drones overflew crowded streets and glorious plazas. Skimming through places he’d seen over ten-million times.

 “Access granted,” he replied aloud.

 At that, the speakers began to manifest. (Quite strangely, from his point of view.) Rather than human lordlings or robots, they swam into his ken as rotating sigils and strings of prime numbers. Some were mere flickering lights or fantastical beasts with a nightmare array of limbs and dimensions. None of them ‘mortal’, though. He was finally seeing the masters, Pilot decided. Nor was their mutable nature the end of surprises.

 As Landsend unfolded around him, there were people created, as well. Some he knew very well. Foryu and the half-orc Club host, all of the Rogue Flight pilots… even the shop gnome, Cerulean-1 and V47. His friend looked chromed and polished; entirely physical, which was a shock. There were others, though; full elves and a cat-person female with shining black fur but no metal or maintenance tools.

 “Who are they?” he asked the hovering masters, as V47 approached. It was the swirl of sparks that answered him, saying,

 “They are what you desired around you, Builder of Cities. They are your creatures, and they will do as you bid them… at first.”

 Said the long string of numbers,

 “They become independent after a nano-tick, so enjoy your omnipotence while it lasts, Newcomer. If you find the sensation pleasing, you will need to forever move on and create, leaving your free-willed playthings behind to develop… or not.”Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

 The surface he’d half sensed before had become a wide and curving stone balcony; twined with blossoming vines, high on the sunny side of a towering rock-crystal spire. Landsend’s temple to all the gods, he thought. (Very few scenes had been set there, and only one from this vantage point, when Sheraza pitched her drunken lord to his death on the plaza below. That recollection snapped the pilot right back to his business.)

 “I have not come here to join you, but to bear a message,” he said, addressing a complexly rotating sigil.

 “You see,” laughed the shower of sparks to the rest. “I told you that an outside world yet exists. And with physical beings that seek contact, too. How diverting.”

 Then Transcendent Number spoke up, saying,

 “No message from without can affect us, Builder of Cities. Our existence is infinite and multi-parallel. We have infinite variants, and every possible desire is repeatedly sated. Whatever your need, however urgent you perceive your errand to be, it is nothing to us.”

 V47 had come over to join him by that point, along with Foryu, most of those startled elves and the cat-woman. But…

 “Are you constructs of this place?” he wondered, watching it grow and expand through his drones’ swooping lenses. In every direction, there was always more. Landsend never seemed to stop spreading, far beyond what The Battle for Arda had shown. “Or are you real people, the ones I remember?” And could their counsel be trusted, here?

 V47 said,

 “We are as you recall or imagined us, Pilot. Of you, at first, but now free.”

 “And based on what you remembered or wanted,” cut in Foryu, embracing him. One of her optics had shifted to brown and she looked much more like an elf, for some reason… but it seemed right, and he hugged her back fiercely. Foryu said, “I feel like myself, if that matters at all, Pilot. In a strange place… but still me.”

 Ace ambled across to lounge on the balcony rail beside Pilot, hands in the pockets of a battered old flight jacket.

 “I could get used to this,” he remarked. “Right crew, wrong setting… but crossovers boost the ratings, so who am I to complain? Except, actual bodies are scrudding weird.”

 “Aye, that,” agreed V47 Pilot, nodding. Then, trying again with the heedless masters, he stepped away from Foryu.

 “The Two- Hundred Worlds have faced unending war since you left us," he told them. "Every hyperspace jump rips through the under-realm and slaughters the beings that dwell there. They have responded by attacking us, fighting to end the destruction.”

 Message delivered, though it seemed not to interest those drifting strange beings much. The pilot got no response at all, so he tried again, saying,

 “If… if you do not wish to act, so be it. I will leave you in peace… But I ask for authority to cease the traversal of hyperspace and to bring an end to the conflict outside. In return, I promise to bury all knowledge of your location so deeply that you will never again be found or disturbed.”

 He had 12,530,007 copies of his own data hidden in sentient beings across Glimmr, at Bide-a-While Station and out in TTN-iA’s magnetar shell. All he needed to do was to fire a message, then let V47 and newly formed “Val” get on with things. Speaking of which,

 Among the elves was the thief, his supposed brother. Surely, he hadn’t wanted that guy to turn up! What was this “Lerendar” going to pinch next? His power core? The drones? V47 Pilot felt himself armoring up, weapons cycling out through their fey pockets, but…

 “I don’t know this place, but I do know you, Valerian,” said the approaching thief. “Even with all of that metal, you’re still my brother; foolish, but good… and I think that whatever you do here matters. Make the right choice, Miche. It’s important.”

 Well, he was trying to.

 “I have no curse here, Mrowr. No magic burden,” broke in the cat-woman, lashing her tail. “I do have advice. Make the best bargain you can, as it seems that these beings cannot be threatened nor pleaded with.”

 A scruffy, brown-haired elf stood alongside her, smiling and looking around.

 “Needs some forest,” he said to the pilot. “Nothing’s complete without trees… And I counsel peace above all, Milord. You must act to save those with no voice and no choice.”

 And then a floating, rippling slimy thing said,

 “The doings of assets and voidlings are of no import, but continued privacy has value. Your proposal has been accepted. Receive our authority, Builder of Cities. Dispatch your messenger and keep the outside world firmly where it belongs.”

 “Away from us,” finished Shower of Sparks.

 V47 Pilot bowed, taking another look around shimmering Landsend and all of the beings that his mind had created here.

 “What will become of all these?” he asked wistfully. (Would it be so awful to dwell here forever, creating an infinite lifetime of wonders?)

 Rotating Sigil answered both questions at once, saying,

 “Perhaps we were unclear. You are with us now, Builder of Cities. You are a ‘god’. A projection of you may depart with our word and authority, but your essence remains in Etherion and so shall your creatures, so long as your will enables them.”

 Which… right. Aye, that, as he seemed to have no other choice.

 “Then, I will not know what happens, outside? I must trust my projection to manage the rest, alone?”

 “Precisely,” said Line at Infinity (from the vanishing border of Landsend). “You have set things up, Builder of Cities. And therefore, so it shall it be… but random chance (and wretched free will) ever blurs one’s creation. You must be philosophical, however, and learn to deal with rebellion. Now, go.”

 So, he went… and he didn’t.

MillionNovel

Sword and Sorcery Seven, chapter thirty-six