Selva lunged forward and grabbed at the hologram’s neck with claws extended. Her hand passed right through, the Keeper jumped back on reflex.
“My, my,” the Keeper chided. “I thought you’d be interested in finally meeting me.” She wore a white toga with red trim, and no obvious signs of advanced technology or cybernetic implants.
Selva growled, “Don’t expect a warm welcome, after all those times you tried to kill us.”
“Not all of those were on my orders, and my agents can get rather inhumane in their practices.”
“So, now what?” Selva folded her arms. “You decided to talk?”
“You’re really a Keeper?” Cobb asked. “No bullshit?”
“Indeed I am. I am Norla, one of the founders of this world.”
Kadelius dropped to his knees.
“Get up!” Professor Temerin hauled him to his feet. “That is a tyrant, not a god!”
“Hah!” Norla laughed. “Hardly. We wanted to give this world a great gift!”
“A sustainable, perpetually-stable civilization,” Selva said. “Only problem is it’s a utopia, and utopias can’t exist. It’s in the name.”
Utopia, translating literally to ‘No Place’ or something similar; Eric’s Meridianite language lessons had given him deeper insight into the Latin- and Greek-derived words still in use with modern science.
“I know that!” Norla spat. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to get as close as we can.”
“Except these people are your Guinea pigs.” Zandra gestured to Kadelius, Sir Wotoc, and Captain Prex. “What gives you the right to mess with their lives like that?”
“What gave the artilect Athena the right to create your species? We are not the ones to blame here, it was the inhabitants who rejected our gifts.”
“Yeah, the lab rats got a little uppity,” said Eric. “You stuck these people on a faraway planet full of dinosaurs, without technology! And cholera? Why would you bring that along?”
“Our ecological plans were never completed. But you are missing the point.” She turned, indicating the rendering playing out before them. Across the river was the city, two tall grey towers rising above the skyline, and on the other side of the path on which they stood was a grassy park. People in Ancient American clothes and business suits strolled past. “This was New York City, Ancient America’s cultural and financial capital, at the turn of the third millennium, Old Terran calendar.”
“Well before my people, then.” Felden looked around. The simulated people ignored him, and the others, as if they were invisible time travelers.
“Why are you showing us this?” Selva asked.
“So I may convince you to cease your interventions and leave us to continue our work on this world, for the good of mankind.”
“What good will that do? Perhaps you’re not aware of what’s going on out in the rest of space, but the Interstellar Dark Ages ended centuries ago. Civilization is united in the Stellar Compact, for the first time since...ever.”
Norla asked, “And how long before it falls again? No empire lasts forever—ask the Romans, the British, the Americans.” She gestured to the holographic scene. “These people, they built a society on finite fossil fuel resources, lived beyond the limits of their single planet. It collapsed their civilization.”
“Or so you say,” Eric muttered.
Norla glared at him. “It is indisputable science! Why should we, as intelligent beings, be so arrogant as to think ourselves above the laws of nature?”
“That was your plan, to make a world which avoided that?” Selva asked.
“After all the death and misery that is history, we wanted to see if there was hope for man.”
“And?” Temerin asked.
“It does not look good. Humans are violent, irrational, deeply self-destructive, forever trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
“Or perhaps it’s your criteria which are wrong,” Selva said. “Sure, we shouldn’t get arrogant, but we’re also more than animals. It’s in the nature of intelligence to change its environment, find better ways to use the world around it. To demand people live in a static civilization means forcing them to deny a fundamental part of what they are.”
“Not static in every way,” Norla replied. “Our intent was a civilization focused inward, on self-improvement, instead of ever more outward expansion.”
“But still trapped in your little experiment.”
“Until such time as they learn to live together in peace, sustainably.”
“Impossible in this life,” Temerin said. “You must realize.”
“And now you’re supporting Dulane, manipulating him from behind the throne,” Selva said. “I wonder what he’d think if he found out.”
Norla shrugged. “I promised him an everlasting empire, what more could a conqueror want?”
“So the peaceful way didn’t work, and you’re trying some good old-fashioned totalitarianism? Graduating from Malthus to Stalin?”
“We will drag humankind into enlightenment if we have to! Will you stand in our way?”
“What is there to oppose? This planet is a backwater, you’re a delusional old hag who refuses to accept defeat.”
“You would do well not to challenge my power. I control the swarm ships in orbit. Now, will you let me continue our good work in peace? Perhaps even join us, since you seem equally concerned about the future of man?”
“I don’t think so.”
Eric piped up, “Yeah, you’re going down, asshole!”
“In that case…” Norla moved her hands as if tapping a display.
The computer console beeped, Felden checked a screen. “Uh, guys. We’ve got a problem.”
“What sort of a problem?” asked Temerin.
He called up a schematic of what looked like a missile. “Oh, maybe about four or five megatons.”
Eric’s blood ran cold. She’d launched a bomb! But from where? The replicator ships, it had to be.
Selva closed her eyes, falling into a cybernetic trance, before recovering and turning to Norla. “Thank you. That just let me access the command processors in the replicator ships and lock out your control.”
“NO!” Norla’s face twisted in rage. “You will die!”
“Someday, eventually.” Selva took Zandra’s laser pistol. “But not today.”
She cracked a bolt into the computer console, the hologram vanished and the smart-matter dome flowed away.
“Time to go,” Felden said.
