A small shuttle streaked across the face of a planet. Engines roared to life, slowing it down before it hit denser layers of the atmosphere.

“Chu, kill some more speed, its a little rough back here.” Shouted Lian.

“No need to yell sweetheart,” he answered with a grin as he turned his head, “I like it a little rough, don’t you?”

“Just fuck off, do your fn job and land in one piece.” She snapped back.

In the small shuttle he was right about yelling, but Lian, like the other four crew members, couldn’t resist a chance to dig at Chule about his flying. With all his bragging, he deserved it. His stupid comment gave her an excuse to
swear at him, that was a bonus.

“Aw get your mind out of the gutter. I meant it reminds me of when I was a kid at the carnival. Ya know, all the rides.”

Lian opened her mouth to respond, as did the captain Malic, but before either of them had a chance to speak, there was a loud bang, immediately followed by a shower of sparks and the sudden appearance of a large hole in the wall behind the cockpit. Their speed and the denser lower layers of the atmosphere forced air through the hole and with the loud sickening sound of ripping metal the fuselage on the port side of the shuttle peeled away. Taking with it geologist Lian Bao, Captain Malic Asher, and biologist Aaliya Jayan. The roar of wind filled the shuttle and it began to dive and spin out of control.

“CHU!” shouted Avani.

“I’m tryin!I’m tryin! No response from the port flaps, No response from
the engines. I can get us out of this dive but the landing won’t be pretty!”

Chule, struggling with the controls said, “I’m gonna use the maneuvering thrusters to level our flight path, but its gonna get rough so hang on!”

With all the vibration and noise they didn’t hear or feel the thrusters
come to life, but very quickly, with a sudden jolt and to the very loud
complaints of groaning metal, the shuttle was flying almost level again,
and quickly slowing down.

“We’re never going to land in on piece!” shouted Kian Alvild, “Why don’t we just jump?”

“Cause the chutes were in storage above Lian’s head!” Chule screamed back.

The shuttle had lost a lot of altitude in its dive, and was flying low, speed
was less than 200 kph, but with no engines the shuttle was a glider, with a big
hole to create a lot of drag.

“There, by the water!” shouted Avani, sitting beside Chule in the co-pilots
seat she had spotted a landing site, “The sandy beach will be flat enough.”

Chule nodded in agreement, “Yeah but the water will be softer.”

The shuttle shuddered and groaned when Chule banked slightly to
bring them down, skimming the surface of the water, slowing down as much
as possible before hitting the sand and coming to a stop.

All three slouched in their seats, breathing heavily, still trying to believe
they had survived.

“What happened?” asked Avani after a few minutes.

“I don’t know.” Chule answered, as he stirred and unbuckled to get up.

Avani and Kian did the same and they stepped outside to look at the damage.

The fuselage had broken just behind the cockpit on the port side, then, pushed
by the air, a section had peeled back almost all the way to the tail. The four
seats along the side had also been ripped away with a small section of the
flooring. Thick black smoke was pouring from the two engines.

“What’s that?” asked Kian pointing to what looked like a burn mark near the damaged area.

Kian and Chule both got closer for a better look. Rubbing it with his gloved
hand a black substance came off, Chule rubbed it between his fingers.

“Looks like carbon residue.”, he said

“Lightening!” guessed Kian, “We got hit by lightening!”

“NO WAY.” Chule shot back, “There were a few clouds, but no electrical activity.
I wouldn’t fly into a storm.”

“Then what?” asked Kian.

“I don’t know, you’re the fn engineer, you build these fn things, you’re supposed to have the fn answers here!” Chule answered.

“OK, OK. You two screaming at each other is not going to help. Let’s take stock …” Avani started to say, but before she could finish Chule interrupted.

“Well that’s easy, one, two, three. Three survivors, NOTHING ELSE!”

Frustration had found its way into Chule’s feelings, as he realized they were
down on an uninhabitable planet with no way to get back into orbit, and an
unbreathable atmosphere.

“The com-link, contact the ship and get the other shuttle down here.” Kian suggested.

“Every thing’s fried, there’s no response from anything.” answered Chule

“Everything?” Kian asked.

“Yeah, everything. Did ya think i was pulling my arms off with the manual controls
for exercise?”

Chule turned and walked toward the water, picked up a small pebble and threw it as
hard as possible.

“Doesn’t matter anyway,” he continued, “We all came down on the shuttle, there’s
no one to answer our call for help within 30 light years. Wasn’t my idea to come
here with a fn ship that isn’t even
turingrade. And you certainly can’t blame that shit on me.”

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The vast cylindrical landscape that was spread all around him contained cities, forests, and right beneath him, a small blue sea. This gargantuan habitat he was in housed more than a million inhabitants, comprising several hundred different clades.

The utility fog was used for so much more than the personal transportation system of Dominic and other sophonts. It formed the basis of the angelnet, an all-pervasive network of nanobots that were ubiquoutous throughout the entire habitat.

Thanks to the angelnet, Dominic and ever other citizen of this habitat had never felt anxiety or worry with regard to physical safety or want. Disease, poverty, and the unthinkable act of harming one’s neighbor were completely absent from this habitat.

The angelnet was able to do away with appetency just as effectively as suffering. If Dominic ever desired something, he needed only to ask for it, and the angelnet would provide it for him.
The exterior mirrors reflected light from the sun to simulate day within the vast habitat.

Another day made possible through the grace and glory of Shangdi.

Everything about this world, from the vastness of the habitat to the lives of all its inhabitants to the angelnet that was keeping Dominic suspended in the air and provided everyone with unparalleled security and comfort, all of it had been made possible through the infinite love of the godling known as Shangdi.

Dominic was a nearbaseline human, his grandparents having been among the first of his species to have been created by Shangdi. His family, which consisted of his grandparents, twenty-three siblings, his parents, fifty aunts and uncles, hundreds of cousins, and many other far-flung relatives, lived all throughout the vast habitat.

Dominic had spent the past several days saying his goodbyes to many of his family members after he had made the final preparations for the journey he was about to embark on that would take him further away from the habitat then he had ever been before.

Right now Dominic was hovering right above a miniature ocean that housed many of the habitat’s aquatic clades. He had come here to say goodbye to someone he had known his entire life and thought of as being as close to him as any of his genetic family members.

The utility fog dropped down Dominic into the placid water and sank beneath the surface, but provided him with a bubble of air with which to breathe while not enabling any of the surrounding water to get him wet.

As Dominic sank deeper into the water, he saw a group of plesiosaurs swim past him. An intriguing sight that caused him to smile, but it was nothing that he hadn’t seen before.
Hovering near the bottom of the miniature sea was a large, provolved humpback whale. His name was Zui’ye’tsu, and he was the reason that Dominic had come here.

Zui’ye’tsu was more than four hundred years old, one of the first of the provolved whales that Shangdi had created. Zui’ye’tsu had more than fifty children and hundreds or thousands of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The humpback was not an avatar of Shangdi, nor was he a transapient, and he had expressed no desire to ascend.

Still, Dominic thought of him as a wise and ancient sophont that he enjoyed talking to whenever he had the opportunity.

“What brings you here?” asked Zui’ye’tsu. He spoke in a whimsical language that was reminiscent of the whale song that baseline humpbacks had sung on Old Earth for millions of years until they had been driven to extinction by humans during the Information Age.

But even though he spoke such an exotic language, Dominic was still able to understand him, thanks to his cerebral biochip implant.

“I wanted let you know that I’ll be leaving the habitat in just a little while,” he said, “and I won’t be seeing you again for a while.”

“Where are you going?”

“I thought I’d pay a visit to Qulx for a couple of months.”

“Qulx? Why are you going there?”

“Because I’ve never been there before, and I figured that now is as good a time as any to go.”

“I see. May I inquire as to how you plan on getting to Qulx?”

“Valnar is giving me a ride.”

“Valnar? But isn’t he…” Zui’ye’tsu paused momentarily, unsure of what to say. “Is it wrong for me to say that he has nothing but contempt for his fellow sophonts?”

Dominic chuckled. “He’s not as antisocial as you’d think.”

Zui’ye’tsu’s tone shifted to be one of great concern. “It baffles me as to why you would want to associate yourself with anyone that chooses to vilify Shangdi with such fervency.”

“I don’t know if I’d go as far as to call his opinions full-fledged vilification. He just…doesn’t have the same kind of respect for Shangdi that we have.”

“And you don’t see this as being the least bit unnerving?”

“To me, there is nothing more mindboggling than an inhabitant of Shenzhou who would question the benevolence of Shangdi. And it’s my hope that one day that will change, not only for Valnar, but for all the misguided children of Shangdi. And you might think that I’m being naïve, but maybe I can help Valnar and others like him to understand the errors of their ways.”

“You are most bold for endeavoring to make sohponts as arrogant as Valnar to see the light that is Shangdi, and it may ultimately prove to be a futile task. After all, if Shangdi himself cannot sway their minds, then how can anyone expect to?”

Dominic sighed. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“But there is no harm in striving to do so, and I do commend you for making such an attempt.”

“Thank you.”

“One other thing: try not to let Valnar corrupt you.”

Dominic smiled. “Thanks for the advice,” he said sincerely. “But that’s definitely not something you or anyone else will ever have to worry about.” …

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A God felt everything. With omnipresence came omniscience; knowledge without boundaries.

E was not a single entity, but rather several parts of something much grander. Eir intelligence was distributed throughout many star systems, and all that they contained. E was a single spoke within the Great Wheel, connected intimately with those parts outwards and inwards from Eirself.

And so E felt every death, every casualty and every catastrophe with as much pain, suffering and anguish as any of Eir subjects. With thought processing occurring at a pace unimaginable to those subjects, and countless layers of computation, they would never know how deeply E considered each tragedy.

They went about their lives, disregarding the destruction raging all around them because they simply couldn’t comprehend it. They knew that the war was borne out of a trade dispute, over systems and protocols that many of them used every day. But they couldn’t, and would never be able to understand, why that dispute had to lead to destruction on such a massive scale.

Unfortunately, they never would. Even at Eir own toposophic level, there were still things that E would never be able to know until E moved inwards on the Great Wheel.

The wormhole nexus had been crippled, and that made Eir feel very alone and very isolated. Help was many light-years away, unfortunately danger was much closer.

They were approaching a star system on the edge of Eir sphere of influence. They seemed like tiny gnats, flying in a despicable swarm towards Eir helpless subjects. E summoned what defences E could, but they would never arrive in time. Without the web of wormholes threading through local space neither E, nor the Great Wheel, could do anything to stop them.

E felt their attack through the comm-gauge wormholes that hadn’t yet been destroyed. The first wave brushed through the oort cloud habitats, dowsing everything in nanotech replicators that would quickly overcome the defences of the mining communities eking out an existence between the frozen comets.

It took weeks, the whole attack was taking place at an unhurried pace to those modosophonts under threat. But E operated on very different timescale. It was not slower, just different. E saw the attack taking place at a startlingly quick speed, because E couldn’t stop it. If E could do something against the attackers, then E would analyse the situation more carefully, more thoroughly. But E didn’t want to pore over the details any more than E had to.

A priest comforted an extended family within a rapidly failing refinery. Their economic lifeblood, the volatiles mined from a huge icy body slowly orbiting far from its star, was leaking into space as storage systems failed. The refinery was beginning to spin faster as the outpourings of gas coincidently pushed in the same direction. The gravity within, normally comfortable zero-gee, was rapidly increasing and starting to push the inhabitants towards the hull.

It was the first time any of them had experienced gravity, and it would be with them until they died. The habitat had never been designed to be under rotation, and there had never been the pressing need, or the budget, to create a safety mechanism to prevent it.

It would spin faster and faster, until either the habitat broke apart or those inside were crushed against the hull.

The first tragedy of the onslaught, and E could already see it would be first of many. The attackers had moved onto the inner-system, and here they began their true obliteration.

E could only watch, this time from a small town on the capital world, as they pierced through the atmosphere. They could have been meteorites, tiny balls of fire bursting through the upper-atmosphere, but as they descended into thicker air they appeared clearly artificial.

The dark spears plummeted towards the ground, guided while in flight towards the major settlements and installations on the planet. Each contained a small, but lethal, amount of antimatter. Some would be used as propellant during the descent, but most would be saved for detonation on impact.

The antimatter-matter annihilation was a glorious thing, vital to the early expansion of Terragen civilisation. But here it was the most sickening thing that E had ever experienced.

They could obviously have transformed the entire planet into an inhabitable rock, but they had chosen not to do so. Instead they left pockets of life, isolated and barely able to survive exposure to the harsh natural conditions of the world. If they needed prisoners at some point, they would not find much resistance from those that had barely endured.

A vec, severely damaged by the firestorm that had just caught eir outlying settlement, cradled a near-baseline human child in its manipulators. In a flash of machine inspiration, e had fashioned a life-support construct from the remains of the air-conditioning unit in the child’s home.

The vec had little knowledge of human physiology, or it would have been obvious that the child would never survive. A kinder action might have been to kill the child now, allowing the extraction of any implanted back-up devices for later revival.

But instead the baby cried relentlessly, as the vec naïvely waved a charred toy clown in an attempt to pacify it.

War was a terribly insensitive entity. And E felt all the worse with the knowledge that the entire catastrophe could have been avoided, had a few small details worked themselves out differently…

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The abandoned space station hung in the silent vacuum between Saturn and Titan like a floating tombstone. Its empty shell was only memorable because of the phrase it carried with it: ‘Heaven’s Door’. The letters had been painted in fluorescent blocks six stories high and could be seen at a distance of 50 kilometers, smiling down on the surface of the small moon. The relic could be viewed most clearly by the wealthy as they arrived on the intersystem transport from the inner-worlds. It had therefore become a symbol for abandoning the disease and death and destruction of the older planets, and entering the wealth and eternal life of the outer-colonies.

Most people didn’t need a relic to tell them where they belonged; the planetary differences had become instinctual centuries ago.

William Floke knew where he belonged; on the plague rotted surface of Mars – but he sat in a bar on Titan anyway, five steps from the entrance. The holographic program serving up drinks could tell at a glance that Will didn’t belong in the outer worlds. His purple eyes, the gap in his front teeth, and even the way he held his empty glass were blaring signs. But the bartender wouldn’t be calling for back-up. She would let him pass through. Perhaps he was a sex seller – perhaps not.

Paul placed a fresh drink in front of Will, sitting on a chair in front of him to cut off the other patron’s view of his companion.

“I was told by Ace that it’s a woman this time,” William sighed. He sipped on the sweet liquor. “That always makes it a little easier.”

“It is a woman,” replied Paul. He handed Will a square of plastic which he quickly placed on top of his pupil. Reading the thin film, William nodded that he had received and understood the contents. Within ten seconds the blotch had dissolved into the fluid surrounding his eyeballs.

Will’s long blond hair was tinged at the temples with gray. It softened a face that had been hardened by ten difficult Martian revolves, twenty years Standard. “Is she an eternal or a terminal,” he asked.

Paul ran his right hand through his dark, thinning hair. “She’s an eternal.”

“Interesting.”

Paul leaned over the small table, getting close enough to feel Will’s breath on his face. “Is your bio-dot still working, Will?”

“Lifetime guarantee, Paul. You already know that.”

“How many of these dots are there now,” asked Paul.

“I was told, when I got the implant, that I was one of only three. And it was mentioned that I only received it because of a specific assignment.”

“Maybe this is that assignment.”

“Perhaps. They told me what to look for. I’ll have to wait and see.” Will looked down and away, uneasy talking about the subject even with his mentor. “Would you like a little sample then?”

“I could be talked into it,” nodded Paul discretely. …

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Falling!
Ines woke with a start. Oh, it’s okay, she remembered; we’re just in orbit. Freefall. It makes you dream of flying, and drowning, and falling, until you get used to it.

Franck slept on, with his arms floating in front of his face. With a smile, Ines let him be; he looked exhausted. She propelled herself across the cabin, towards the small window; a short while earlier, every surface in this little craft had displayed an image of the stars outside, making the entire ship seem transparent. Now those systems were switched off, and if she wanted to see the planet below with its five moons, she would have to peek through this tiny porthole. When she reached the window, she bounced back, scrabbling to find a handhold. Eventually she hauled herself back, and pressed her face against the glass.

There was Rufus, brilliant blue and white, with a hint of desert yellow. The little red moon Rocky could be seen nearby; further away, pale and blotched, was Rory. The other moons were nowhere to be seen. Ines was not surprised; the view through this tiny window was so limited she was lucky to see anything.

Her head felt fuzzy; far too many hedonics, no doubt. Perhaps a shower might help clear it. Now where was the bathroom again? A thick hatch in one bulkhead wall looked promising. Even though there was no weight in orbit, Ines found the door difficult to open. Whenever she tried to pull on the handle, her body just flapped around uselessly like a flag, or she hit something with her knees or feet. Eventually she placed both feet on the wall, and opened the hatch like a trapdoor. Behind it was a smaller room, fitted out with zero gee washing facilities including a shower tube. The hatch closed behind her with a confident clunk.

Ines pulled the tube down from the ceiling/out of the floor, and stepped inside feet first. The loose end of the tube hooked over a fastening above her head, and a retractable hose came down to dispense lukewarm water. Quite proud of herself she shepherded the dollops of water up and down the tube, adding a little soap from a dispenser also above her head, A couple of times a large dollop hit her in the face and stuck there, causing a moment’s panic until she scraped it away.

The lumps of water with soap dissolved in them were softer and more clingy than the lumps without; over time the soap diffused into all of the water in the shower.

She began to enjoy the experience; her head cleared a little. Only a few drops of water escaped the tube at each end- trying to control them was like a new game, and she began to enjoy it.

Now, then, she thought; somewhere down near the foot of the tube is the extractor fan; I should have switched that on when I started; the water would be gently pulled towards her feet, and she could let some more, clean water in, to rinse herself. But she couldn’t find it. After a while she gave up, and crawled out of the tube sopping wet, grabbing a towel. The tube still had a few litres of water inside, slowly settling down into a few large dollops, then spreading itself evenly over the tube’s inside surface.

Ines dried herself off, then looked for the extractor control again. If she didn’t find it, she couldn’t pack the shower away again without spilling water all over the bathroom.

Great lumps of steaming krek! She thought. Why wasn’t anything labeled? Aha! Here was something. A yellow pull handle with something resembling the letter V and two dots printed on it. Perhaps that would activate the pump, She pulled the handle; it resisted, as if to say, no. Not this one. Don’t.

An oval section of the wall suddenly blew away, and she was blown by a terrific wind into space. The air was forced from her lungs, and her eyes stung, so she couldn’t see the stars and the moons that suddenly surrounded her. Her torso swelled up as the gases inside her tried to get out. The bright, unshielded light from Rufus’s star flashed into her unfocused eyes. The water from the shower sprayed our around her, and the last thing she felt was the cold spray as it evaporated on her skin. Generally you can rely on no more than fifteen seconds of consciousness in a vacuum; mercifully, Ines had less than five before she blacked out. Her naked body and her towel separated, and tumbled into the moon-filled black sky surrounded by rapidly freezing icy pellets of soapy water.

The enquiry later found no coherent reason for the fact that practically every safety system on the ship was not working, including the subturing ship’s brain. The survivor was unable to explain this state of affairs, despite lengthy questioning.

Franck Tomas felt the shudder as the secondary airlock opened inside the bathroom, but he did not come to complete wakefulness. The bathroom door did what it was designed to do, and closed hermetically, so that no more air escaped. An hour and a half later, when he woke up alone, he realised what had happened only when he tried to open that door and failed.

It took another hour before he caught up with the body, and several hours before he could carry it to the nearest medically equipped station in the Rolf Lagrange point. Ines had never believed in neural backup technology, and her central nervous system was too damaged for anything but the most approximate retrieval of her personality. After some consultations with her family, she was declared irretrievably dead. …

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Here lies a man that brought terror into the hearts of millions, said the tombstone inscription. May he live on in the hearts of millions now living.

Kneeling alone in the cemetery, Palo Jakani accepted the gold-engraved inscription without question. He could not understand why so many today scoffed at those two lines. To him, they were true, and went together like bread and butter. All true believers thought the same. Why should people think any different?

Jakani visited the tomb four days of every year – on Great Leader Chamoska’s Birthday, on his Deathday, on Revolution Day, and that special fourth day that Jakani had chosen himself. The other three days were busy and crowded days for this region. The trains were crowded, the inns were crowded, the camping grounds were crowded, and – most of all – the cemetery was crowded. Thousands of people came from all over the planet to pay their respects to the Great Leader. Old men like himself, who had been there when it all happened. Young men, who wanted a world where their virility would be put to better use. Mothers dragging their children by the wrists and shouting at them for not showing enough enthusiasm. They all came for the same thing. For those three days of the year, all were one, and the True World, the People’s World, was better for it.

Yet there was also that one fourth day of the year when the cemetery was not so crowded; when, sometimes, the cemetery was all but deserted. That was Jakani’s birthday.

This pilgrimage was his own birthday present to himself – an hour, alone, in the presence of his Great Leader. Today, on Jakani’s sixty-first birthday, on his eleventh private pilgrimage to the Tomb of Chamoska since the death of his wife, the cemetery was almost deserted. Yet in the shadow of his Beloved Leader, Jakani was never truly alone.

He knelt there before the vast onyx tomb. The ten-foot ivory statue of Chamoska towered above him from the roof of the tomb, his stare harsh and stern as he eternally judged a world that would never truly live up to his ideals of manhood. Chamoska’s fist was raised in wrathful defiance of all whose brains were polluted with dirty thoughts that did not meet his approval. His fist promised vengeance. His fist promised retribution upon the weak and unworthy.

Towering above the Great Leader, the twisted branches of a mighty oak tree rose to the heavens, as if nourished and empowered by his mere presence. High up in the branches, barely visible under the shade of leaves, a black cat watched Jakani with luminous green eyes.

Jakani instantly averted his gaze from that of the creature, returning his sights to the more reassuring form of his Leader.

“The days of glory shall return, my Great Leader,” he spoke aloud. “The days of glory shall return.”

“Such a magnificent tomb,” said a gentle voice to his right.

Jakani turned and saw a thin, elderly priest standing there, staring reverentially at the Great Leader’s Tomb.

Jakani tensed up, almost ready to punch the priest for interrupting him. Yet there was something about the older man’s presence that sapped him of the will to act. It was a strange feeling, somewhere between respect and curiosity.

What would Chamoska himself have done in his position? This was the question that dictated every decision that Jakani made, every opinion that he formed, every word that he spoke to others. What would Chamoska do? What would Chamoska think? What would Chamoska say? Would Chamoska approve? Would Chamoska disapprove? To Jakani, there was no other way of thinking.

After a moment’s hesitation, Jakani decided that he had to find out more about this priest. He needed a context for him.

“Of course,” said Jakani, slowly getting to his feet. “A Great Leader such as Chamoska deserves no less. He was a real man, a real Tylansian man. There are so few of his kind today.”

The priest turned to face Jakani. “I gather that you truly are a devoted follower of Great Leader Chamoska,” he said.

“Of course I am!” said Jakani. “Chamoska will always be my Beloved Leader. His heart is my heart. His love is my love. His hate is my hate.”

“Indeed, yes,” said the priest. “I would like to make you an offer, Jakani.”

“How did you know my name?”

“We have been watching you for a long time.”

“What do you mean by ‘we’?” said Jakani, his suspicion rising. “Your church? Who are you?”

“I’m terribly sorry,” said the priest with an embarrassed chuckle as he glanced at his feet. “So terribly rude of me not to formally introduce myself. I am Father Marishison.”

“What church do you belong to?”

“I am a chaplain in an organization you may not have heard of,” said Marishison. “Even if you have heard of it, many would probably dismiss it as a rumour or a folk tale.”

“What is this organization?” said Jakani, his curiosity piqued.

“I am under strict orders not to tell you,” said Marishison. “Our rules of secrecy are very rigid. All I can tell you right now is this one small – but significant – piece of news.”

“And what is it? What news do you give?”

At once, the priest’s grin dropped. His expression became grave, sincere.

“Chamoska is alive,” he said. …

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