We traveled onward for some hours, and at one point I was sure we had just traveled out of the structures but were not truly outside as the street had a roof of its own, a ship of some kind had crashed here and now was being held up by the buildings on either side. Distantly to my right as I stepped out I could see it curved downward, eventually crushing the street there, where to my left it continued on for hundreds of meters before cutting off at some other buildings it had rammed before coming to a halt. We crossed the street and were traveling through buildings once more.
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The architecture on this side of the street quickly changed as it became clearer we were getting nearer to the core of the Great Library. There was no room that did not have books lining every wall, even though the place we now walked through clearly had been a restaurant of some kind, luxurious dining tables were still set with crystalline goblets and silverware that was definitely silver. Arthris reached out and brushed one of the table cloths and then pulled her hand back, and when nothing happened she reached out and gripped it firmly in an armored fist.
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“If this place is so old, how is it this didn’t disintegrate at a mere touch?” She asked, glancing over at me.
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“That may seem like cloth, but believe it or not it is a metallic mesh meant to take on the look and feel of cloth.” I replied.
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She seemed taken aback by this by her body language and she stared closely at it. “How is that possible? It doesn’t look remotely metallic, it just looks like an ordinary tablecloth…”
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I shrugged. “I’m sure I’ve got the information on how to even reproduce that somewhere but it would take time to look up, needless to say that this is an expensive commodity that only the rich could afford, thus the status of this place before everything went to…”
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“The fragging oblivion.” She finished. “Well, since no one is going to really mind.” She, in what left my stomach doing somersaults inside of me, whipped the tablecloth off the table without so much as barely stirring one of the crystal goblets.
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“You… did not… have to do… that…” I said the words breathily as I took in strained breaths.
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“I know.” She said with a smile in her voice as she neatly folded up the tablecloth before putting it in a pouch at her waist. “But it was fun.”
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“To so needlessly risk our lives?” I said with irritation. “If you had sent so much as one of those goblets crashing to the floor you might as well have sent a flare up.”
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“Indeed.” She said, seeming to come to a realization of her actions. “I… didn’t think that through.”
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“Obviously.” I growled. “You don’t seem like the kind of person to just take risks like that or I’d have refused to journey with you…”
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She nodded. “I think it is this… this place… I don’t feel myself here.”
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“Just be more mindful in the future.” I replied. “One slip up on accident can doom us, let alone that…”
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She nodded and we continued to move through the tables, all of us giving them a wide berth as we realized just how much noise could be so easily made just by bumping one.
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“Something I don’t get…” Arthris whispered as we left the restaurant behind and started moving into larger structures more thoroughly dedicated to being places of literature. “Is how, after an entire war was waged over this planet, and a ship literally crashed on top of that restaurant, is how all the goblets, silverware, everything, still be so neatly arranged…”
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I thought on it myself and realized she was completely right. “That… is very strange.” I said. “I wonder if there was some kind of technology at play that was actually keeping everything perfectly arranged unless someone purposely moved something.”
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“There was.” The AI interjected. “Every dish, utensil, and crystalline goblet is interlaced with magnetic metallic slivers, whether meant to be invisible to the naked eye, or not. Each would only release when interacted with by the field a human body naturally generates and the moment that field is no longer in place, would immediately reinstate. When that particular restaurant closed its doors for the final time just before the first day of the planetary siege here the owner made a point of setting everything up as though business would resume as normal the next day in the hopes that one day, it would. As you can well see, it never did.”
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“That isn’t depressing in the slightest.” I said with extreme sarcasm.
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“It was also…” Arthris said solemnly. “Majestic in a way. It was a small act of defiance in the greater scheme of things. Witnessed by absolutely no one except possibly by those who would simply sneer at it, they went to the effort anyway on the eve of the destruction of everything they knew and were helpless to stop. There is nobility in that.”
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Surprised by her statement and thinking over her little tablecloth trick in the restaurant I mulled it all over and wondered, if she at some point, had either been in the restaurant business herself, or had dreamt about it as some other life. I put the thoughts from my mind as we approached the edge of the building we were in.
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It was at this time we actually started to move outside for the first time, and instead of simply getting glimpses of the sky through fractured and broken ceilings and windows we finally stood under it and looked upward.
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I found my breath once again stolen away. Ships had crashed to earth, many of them, their wrecked and bent superstructures sticking from the skyline of the city like buildings in their own right that had simply started to break apart and fall. A surprising many buildings of the city still stood, though none were undamaged in some way, most of them still rose, majestic and mighty, even in the death of the entire world. Then… there was the sky itself.
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“This is not possible…” I whispered.
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“What isn’t possible?” Arthris asked, looking at me as her squad fanned out and checked the street for threats.
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“This sky… it can’t exist… not anymore.”
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“Why?” She asked again, looking at it herself. “It looks like a normal sky to me.”
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“Yes… exactly… but the Banishment Protocol… I myself journeyed here, or where here used to be, after all was said and done, after the war burned out and there were no great civilizations left in the cosmos, just survivors and refugees… I needed to see my homeworld for myself, to see if what I had been told was true and that it was gone forever. And it was. I saw for myself that it was no longer within the solar system, it was in some bygone place, never for me to see again, till now. But even so, even if somehow it can show us its true sky, this one is a lie.”
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“I’m starting to feel like a broken record here.” Arthris said, shaking her head with a light chuckle as she asked again, “Why? Why is it a lie?”
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“Because I know these constellations, they are the ones I grew up with as a youth, as a child, and many of these stars that you see burning in the sky, they no longer exist. The enemy destroyed them, snuffed them out with their titanic star ending machines. A good deal of those stars aren’t there anymore, yet this sky shows them… and how can it show a sky even remotely similar to the one it did? I searched that solar system, and if there was a rogue planet anywhere nearby I would have found it… this sky is… it is everything I remember and that just can’t exist.”
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“Well, wouldn’t the light from all those burned out stars, or, sorry, destroyed stars, wouldn’t it still be traveling? Still en route? Do you know what I mean?” Arthris asked.
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I nodded. “Yes, that makes sense.” I said. “So, from the point of where my homeworld used to be, one could still see the original night sky, especially since the star in my native solar system survived the war, or, well… whatever one would call a galactic genocide. But still, this sky can’t exist here, I don’t understand…”
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“No offense.” Arthris said. “But I am kind of relieved that there is finally something here which puts you off guard.” I looked down at her sharply as she raised her hands defensively. “As I said, no offense, you’ve just seemed so… inviolate… like nothing can phase you, everything was just, normal for you, whatever it was.”
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I started nodding my head. “I can understand how that might be… unnerving. But believe me, old as I am, there are still wonders out there, in creation that still leave me breathless, or puzzled, or in this case, both of those things and a little disturbed on top of it all.”
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“If I may.” The AI interjected and we both looked down at her from the sky. “Upon enactment of the Banishment Protocol this has been the image of the sky that I have seen since that day, a perfect model of what it was at that time, but with one exception. She pointed and using whatever system she was using to project her image to us, overlaid our gazes with a single circle, indicating the anomaly. “That star, I have no record of its existence.” She stated. “I have spent many hours trying to study it but…” She shrugged. “Astronomical equipment was not in high demand at the time of the war, any facilities that had such equipment were either destroyed or my connections to them were and what little I do have at my disposal are too weak to truly study it, but I can tell you with complete certainty that on every star chart I have at my disposal in this world's history and that of many others, there are no records of a star there so it is my question to you, Enkir, do you know of that star?”
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I studied it, a tiny, distant white pinprick of light, unremarkable on its own, but something about it… gave me a feeling of peace to gaze at it. I slowly shook my head as I looked back down at the image of the woman. “No, I have just cross checked with the database in my armor and I have no records of its existence. It shouldn’t be there either.”
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She nodded. “Is there any chance you could grant me a copy of your records? I have been… starved for knowledge here, in this place, and I would very much like to know what is going on in the greater galaxy.” The image she projected, the woman's face, had a hint of an addict to it, of someone with a desperate craving and seeing a chance to satiate it.
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“Don’t be stupid, machine.” Arthris answered before I could. “There is no chance we are giving you anything after what you’ve done here, and especially not knowledge. There is no telling how you could abuse it.”
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Arthris was still staring daggers from under her helmet at the AI’s form when she noticed me staring at her. “What?” She asked.
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“Guard… it… closely… or… Use it wisely. Which will you end up choosing General Arthris of the Judicators? We have an ally here, one who has, with no benefit to them, chosen to share much information with us, that they didn’t need to, to be our guide and to protect us. They have even been honest with us about their actions to the detriment of our opinion of them which speaks volumes about their honesty and they could have tried to leverage their obvious position of power against us for the knowledge they wanted but instead gave a gentle request. Tell me General, how good are you and yours at making allies and keeping them? Because where you are from, maybe you have the power base to be that clumsy with diplomacy, but as I said before, if you choose the wrong way to end that phrase here, on my worlds, in this place, it is going to get you killed and I have lived a very long time by not “Guarding Knowledge Closely” but instead “Using it Wisely” and I see a powerful means to do so here. I have a great deal of information I have gathered over the years, a very great sum, but I cannot possibly pour through it all to extract meaningful data in decent periods of time. An AI would be the perfect tool to use for that very purpose, by giving her what I have, she could in turn go through all of that information in a fraction of the time I could and more so glean information I would most likely miss on top of that. Divine Earth be praised that sounds like an amazing trade to me! And here you are, spitting on the deal of a lifetime while spitting in the face of an ally who has already proven themselves to us and is most likely our only ticket to survival here. If I did not know better, General…” I said, walking directly up to her and staring down at her (to her credit I saw no sign of her flinching or even tensing up as I did so even though her whole squad was now no longer watching the streets, but now singularly me.) “I would think you were trying to get us killed.”
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She simply gazed back up at me, black visor impassive, body language quite relaxed, she made no move to grab at either her pistol or power weapon, she just stared back at me. Then she came to a decision, she stepped away, lifted her hands to her helmet and pulled it clear. What I saw beneath spoke volumes of the person I was starting to get to know. A face of many scars, criss crossing her face in overlaying patterns, her right eye was artificial and a harsh red glare stared at me through it, her left eye was brown and stared at me with a burning passion to match the red of her artificial one. Her hair was sheared close to the scalp but there was enough of it left to tell it was a dark brown, possibly even black, couldn’t quite see in the darkness. Her skin was red and puckered in many areas but her original skin tone seemed to be of a slightly dark complexion, she was possibly just tan, it was hard to tell. Now that she had the helmet off she stepped right back up to me, her head craned all the way up to look at me.
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Understanding dawned on me and I reached up and grasped my helmet, slowly twisting it to the left as I mentally unlocked the seals and with a hiss it came loose. I felt cool, balmy air that I had never thought to feel again, to taste again and as I lifted the helmet loose I pulled in a long lungful of it. I turned the helmet around in my hands to stare into the lenses. Two plates came to meet in the middle, forming a naturally deflective curve so hard rounds would be likelier to ricochet to the side than solidly impact and penetrate. Two lenses stared out at me from inside armored rings, it wasn’t pretty and this thing was no work of art like I had seen many other powered armored variants in all creation, but it was built for protection and it had done its job very well for a very long time.
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I lowered the helmet and stared at her with my own bare face. My own eyes I knew were green by this point in my life, toxin build up in my body had long turned them that color and for some reason they had stayed that shade despite those toxins long being removed, I wasn’t sure why but I wasn’t a doctor either. I knew I might almost look albino, my skin rarely ever saw sunlight and it certainly wasn’t seeing any now. My own face had its own fair number of scars, though numerous healing processes prevented a great many others from showing, I could still feel them, beneath the surface.
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I stared back at her, in her one good eye and we made and held eye contact for some time before she seemed satisfied. I saw her make an ever so slight nod as something inside her mind was made up.
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“I have stared upon the guilty many times Enkir, I have condemned a great many, most of them claiming innocence, but when I did I always made sure to look those in the eyes that I condemned. Not one soul ever went to die that I was not sure was guilty.”
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“Guilty of what is the question.” I answered. “We are all innocent of many things and guilty of many others, what is worthy of death, what isn’t? The society that answers these questions must understand that it speaks volumes about itself and its own worthiness to live in so doing. Power does not grant one righteousness, it grants them responsibility to use that power wisely. Those that cannot do die, even if it is only within at first, where none others can see. Power that is hoarded, corrupts from within, it destroys like a cancer, until finally it reduces the mind to nothing more than a repetitive rinse, wash and repeat of “Protect what power I have, and accumulate more.” Over and over and over. I watched Empires and Republics fall over this, entire civilizations burn to the ground because of fools seeking to pursue power at the cost of their very souls. Power, Arthris, will kill you, sooner or later, if you hoard it, even if no one around you can tell you are dead.”
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Her gaze had softened, almost imperceptibly as I had spoken, maybe something I had said had managed to get through to her, I did not know, but I as I met her gaze, I saw the slight softening of her hardened face.
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Finally she spoke. “Not guilty.” She whispered and I saw her squad relax slightly as she did so. “There is wisdom in your words, Enkir, wisdom I have seen before and I condemned it to the flame. Now I see it again, and I know it to be wisdom this time and I will not so callously cast it aside. I apologize for my recklessness and I will not seek to speak for you again but understand that where I am from, an… Artificial Intelligence is a most heretical thing and for good reason and I won’t pretend to trust this thing.” She nodded towards the image of the woman standing behind me. “But I will trust you will know how best to deal with it, for now. Lead us on Enkir, time is still against us.” She now replaced her helmet and I do so with mine as well.
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As it closed back over me and reconnected with my armor I breathed in the filtered air of my homeworld with a tinge of disappointment. It had been good, even for that one small moment, to have a taste of home.
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I turned back to the AI. “I cannot share the vast records stored within my armor's database over any kind of wireless connection. I will eventually have to make a hard connection somewhere, something strong and reliable so it will have to be close to your core.”
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The AI took a moment to process that before she nodded. “Very well.” She said, “Once I have helped you find the book you are looking for, we can have a trade in knowledge.” She said.
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“Lead on.”
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She turned on her heel and moved across the street and I hurried after her, General Arthris at my side, her squad forming up around us seamlessly
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and then Add to home screen.