Gods of the Game #3, Chapter 1

[Here we go, starting a new book and returning to our M/W/F schedule. I'm hoping this will be a much easier book to write, and that we'll be all wrapped up with both this novel and this series by early Nov, after which I plan to return to Throne Hunters #5. It's been some time since I've written in the world of Game of the Gods, so please allow for a rough start - I'll definitely be coming back to polish after the tale is done.]

The process was fully automated, clinical, efficient, dispassionate. Three hundreds yards beneath the wind scoured surface of the Ellsworth Mountains an empty science hummed along at minimum power. Hallways were silent. Dust lay upon consoles, equipment, muted the gleam of surgical tables, made it so that the rhythmic beeps, the sole source of sound, were muted. Darkness like velvet but for one corner of the complex were a large cylinder stood, filled with gel through which the occasional large bubble arose slowly and around the hovering figure. 

The figure of a man. Youthful but with a sculpted musculature, the kind of physique dreamt of by artisans in ancient Greece, by painters like Michelangelo, by the gene-sequencers of the 22nd century. Tubes ran from his orifices, wires from adhesive pads attached to hundreds of locations across his body. His eyes were closed, his eyelashes beaded with minute bubbles, and behind his eyelids darted his eyes, side to side, as if he were gripped in the throes of a nightmare. 

His handsome face grimaced, relaxed. His jaw clenched, and then he spasmed, as if slowly growing conscious of being submerged.

The monotonous beeping accelerated, hit a high pitched melody, and a monitor came to life across which began to flow code as it was executed. 

An extraction protocol. 

Sedatives pumped into the man, who became quiescent. 

A deep hum as gears and machinery came to life, and the vat detached from the wall. Emergency lights overhead began to flash. A door whisked open to admit a flatbed harness robot which positioned itself before the vat just as extensors laid it down with impossibly precision upon the load bearing harness. Tubes yet connected the vat to its wall-mounted cradle, but mechanisms within each irised closed just before they detached and with a hiss retracted into the wall.

For a moment all was still as systems checked double checked triple checked and then green lights lit up on various consoles. Vital statistics appeared on panels set in the robot’s flank. The warning lights ceased to flash, and the robot rolled off, the vat so filled that there was no sloshing, the man within carried in perfect peace out of the room in which he’d been grown, and the hallway outside lit up unnecessarily, each segment fluorescing and growing dark as the robot rolled smoothly through the complex. 

But for the sticky sound of the rubber wheels, all remained silent. 

The chariot reached a pair of bay doors which opened before its silent imperative, revealing a hangar. Within a drone the size of a cart and horse rested where it had stood for decades, and only now did it come to life, its undercarriage disgorging a complex array of silver arms and grippers which descended upon the vat, adhered, coupled and extricated the vat from the robot. Into its belly the vat ascended, where it socketed and connected.

The robot flatbed trundled back out the room to return to its charging station and power down, possibly for another decade.

Huge plasteel doors above the drone carrier folded back to reveal a frigid shaft that rose into darkness. The drone’s VTOL engines came to life, exhausts burning an impossible blue, and it rose into the shaft. Ascended, its markers causing the side of the shafts to briefly flare into visibility as it went up, up, and then the giant bunker hatch retracted, revealing the Antarctic sky. 

The drone accelerated with punishing force, its cargo shielded from the acceleration by the gel, and upon reaching a cruising altitude of several thousand feet the drone rotated, locked into its target coordinates 10,062 miles away, and then spooled up its triple turbofans to full power and shot off across the turbulent skies. 

In moments it reached Mach 9. An oblique cone of superheated air enveloped its hull as compression caused the temperature around it to rise to several thousand degrees centigrade. A thin sheath of plasma, orange-white, hugged the leading edges and belly. The air around the drone refracted and shimmered as a lensing effect caused light to bend through gradients of pressure and heat. The shock front instantly vaporized moisture, opening a cylindrical void before it through the clouds and leaving lightning-like discharges in its wake.

The drone burned a corridor through the firmament and daylight bent to its passage.

Within its claustrophobic cargo hold, the man slept on.

*

A powerful older man stood beside the landing pad just outside the training center. Dawn was breaking. The lower edges of the eastern clouds were lighting up, delicate traceries of pale gold and butter yellow. A warm wind blew down the valley as if urging its bifurcating stream on, to pick up the spume and hurl it out into the void when it finally tumbled over the cliff at the valley’s end.

Built like a bulldog, clad in a Brutal Deluxe tracksuit, his closely shorn hair white against his dark skin, he stared up at the heavens to the south, hands linked behind his back. 

Any moment now.

There. 

A star-bright amber spear with a violet halo appeared, a thin, dark wake trailing it where it seared through the clouds. 

It was coming in impossibly fast. 

No sound. Not yet. But as the plasma sheath faded to a clear heat-shimmer tunnel, a spreading pressure began to build behind his sternum which became a double-boom as the drone decelerated violently, condensation cones and shock diamonds manifesting about its fuselage. The windows in the dorms rattled and a rising turbine howl filled the air as the drone cut through the wind shear to settle upon the grass which whipped in spirals. Heat shimmered over the pad, baking his sinuses dry, and the air took on a distinctive scent of ozone and hot dust. 

It’s arrived, he announced telepathically, unnecessarily, and then shifted his weight, uneasy, as a robot harness rolled into place beneath the cargo bay which split and lowered the vat onto the waiting harness.

Virgil’s response was amused. How’s our boy looking? 

Healthy, far as I can tell. The coach peered through the thick glass as the robot began rolling uphill to the doctor’s lab. It’s him. It’s really him.

‘Course it is. What did you think, Sindre, that we’d spun up the wrong player?

Sindre strode after the robot, hands still linked behind his back, heart heavy, brow furrowed. No, that’s not what I meant. I… I don’t know what I meant. But it’s him.

Virgil remained silent. Perhaps he understood.

Curious players had appeared in the doorways of their dorms. The lowslung buildings were tough, but nobody could sleep through those sonic booms. 

“Coach, what’s that?” The call from the Fireball, her voice cutting through the morning stillness. 

“You’ll find out soon enough. Back inside, now. You’ll miss the rest when the training starts up.”

Nobody moved back to their bunks. Of course not. They’d known something, someone was arriving soon, but from the distance couldn’t make out the figure who lay in the vat. 

They’d learn soon enough, and then Virgil would have to reap the whirlwind.

The robot chassis carried its cargo into the medical building. Sindre followed it through the side bay door. Dr. Bierhals, the primary team doctor, Dr. Exley and Virgil were waiting within, but nobody spoke.

The chassis robot rolled across the broad, open plan room to where a receiving cradle awaited the vat. In the harsh, sterile light the figure within was clearly visible. The full-body immersion tanks had been shifted aside, one of the steel operating tables removed entirely. The chassis robot levered the vat up and inserted it smoothly into the cradle. Dr. Bierhals nervously checked panels, his rimless spectacles flashing whenever they caught the light. But the process was automated, and Sindre could hear the sockets engaging as the cradle whirred to life and instantly began filtering and reinvigorating the gel. 

“There he is,” said Virgil, limping forward, his weight resting heavily on his walking stick. Where Dr. Bierhals was cadaverous in aspect, Virgil looked like he truly had one foot already in the grave. His golden curls hung lank, his face was pallid, his eyes sunken alarmingly ringed with purple. 

But his smile yet retained its irrepressible wattage, and his grin was wide. 

“Everything looks good,” said Dr. Bierhals, tapping away on his tablet. “Total delivery time: one hour and forty-seven minutes.”

“Not bad, not bad,” said Virgil, limping right up to the vat’s curvature. “He’s obviously, enviously healthy. How’s his mind?”

Dr. Bierhals lowered his tablet with a frown. “Echo production is hardly my area of expertise, but as far as I can tell, the memory formation process has gone as well as it could. No ischemic shadows, synaptic pruning anomalies, or parasitic echo-loops detected. Implanted episodic structures show uniform hippocampal indexing and expected emotional valance gradients.”

“Hmm,” said Virgil, pivoting to spear the doctor with his smile. “In English?”

Dr. Bierhals scowled. “Neural activity is clean. No phase lag. The memory weave looks to have taken. The lattice is holding. We’ve got a healthy mind in there.”

Sindre resisted the urge to growl. “That’s because he’s yet to wake up. The moment he realizes who and what he is…”

Virgil turned back to the floating figure. “What matters is that everything up till this moment has been a success. This Charoen is stronger, fitter, and more lethal than the original ever was.” He placed his hand on the glass. “If Charoen had been afforded optimum nutrition, training, and environment from birth, he might have achieved this level of perfection. But I doubt it.”

Dr. Bierhals set his tablet aside. “Sindre’s point still stands. Charoen was fiercely independent and proud. If your onboarding is less than ideal, he may suffer a self-referential schematic collapse. Total mnemonic destabilization. His limbic system could reject his emotional anchors, triggering catastrophic derealization.”

“Complete identity decoherence,” agreed Dr. Exley, his voice soft with dread. “Autobiographical collapse.”

Virgil glanced back at them, expression innocent. “Am I meant to infer that would be bad?”

Dr. Bierhals’ expression closed like a fist.

“I jest! Dear doctor, everyone, relax. You may think me little more than insouciant irreverance, but honestly, do you think I’d go through all this effort to then improvise the crucial final step?”

“Sure,” said Sindre, voice gravelly and low. “That sounds like exactly like your style.”

“I’m wounded.” Virgil placed his hand over his heart. “But know this: my approach shall be guided by nothing less than a profound respect for the creature that has come into our midst.”

“Creature?” demanded Dr. Bierhals.

“Oh yes. This is no mere human. Perhaps the right term then is ‘ubermensch’. What we have here is the perfect foundational composition enhanced by the very best technology I could afford--and you know I have deep pockets when it comes to getting the best. This isn’t Charoen, not as you knew him. This is an amplified and simplified version.” Again Virgil turned back to the vat. “He is an emissary, a vehicle that shall allow humanity to bring Prometheus’ fire back to the heavens. I have no illusions that we have produced a well-rounded person destined for longevity, happiness, and personal fulfillment. This is a tool. A beautiful, wondrous tool, the weapon that we shall wield against the forces that oppress humanity. Charoen is dead. This is not he; this is his cry of defiance given flesh, this is his impossible talent given form, and we shall wield it, Brutal Deluxe shall bring him to the field and follow him to victory against the very best that the Premiere League has to offer.”

“He’ll hardly be the only enhanced Echo to take the field,” said Sindre. “The only bioengineered marvel.”

“True. But none of those impossible monsters are as impossibly monstrous as this creature before us. This miracle of science and wonder. This beast of athleticism and power. None of them had such fantastic clay to work from. You ask me how I’m going to integrate him, stabilize him? The answer is simple. I only need to do as much as is necessary so as to get him on the field. So that he directs that rage against our foes.”

“This is a person you’re discussing,” said Bierhals. “A human being.”

“Echoes have yet to be granted full personhood,” grinned Virgil. “The Republic is torn, and thus there is shade in which we may act as monstrously as necessary to achieve our ends. But!” Virgil raised his hand to cut off their immediate objections. “Before you quit in a righteous huff, consider this: you have your own obligations to him. You are his only buffer from my unusual and predatory intentions. If you object, I understand. But you have it within your power to mitigate my abuses. You believe this creature a man? Then stay and train him, educate him, provide him the context he needs to overcome my own needs.” 

“You’re inhuman,” said Bierhals.

“Close enough. I’m practical, pragmatic, even, to a fault. But you. Yes, you too, Sindre. If you quit me now, you’ll leave the team to process and accept his entrance into the team without your assistance. Am I leveraging your affection to my own mercenary ends? Yes. Does that make my words any less true? No. So. Legally I am within my rights, at least for a few months longer before the issue is put up for vote again. Until then? Curse my name, but prove me wrong in making this creature an actual person.”

Sindre crossed his arms and exchanged a glance with Bierhals. He had nothing to say. Nothing new that he hadn’t wrestled with over the past couple of months, no new revelations. Seeing Charoen in the vat made his pain all the sharper, his self-loathing and uncertainty all the more poignant, but he’d known this moment was coming, and the shape of Virgil’s plans, for too long to act shocked now. 

“He’s right.” Sindre couldn’t help but shake his head in bitter resignation. “Our only hope is that we can help this Charoen in such manner that when Virgil is done with him, he’ll have a chance at something more. A chance at humanity. A life. That’s why I’m here. For him, and Jessie.”

Bierhals made a sound of disgust. “Why is it that the more I seek to do the right thing with this team, the more loathing I feel for myself? That’s your true genius, Virgil. Your ability to position every choice between terrible and abhorrent. I can’t bring myself to abandon this Echo, so I’ll remain. But you will have your comeuppance.”

“I can’t wait,” said Virgil, eyes gleaming feverishly. “But hopefully my complete and well-deserved tragic fall will come after we win the Premiere Championship. Now, to business. When can we eject him from the vat?”

“When?” Bierhals raised one supercilious brow. “He is ready. It’s why he’s here. We could awaken him now, if we wanted.”

“Good,” said Virgil. “Then initiate the procedure and leave us be.”

“Now?” asked Sindre. “Right now?”

“Why wait?” 

Bierhals rubbed at his face, exchanged a glance with Exley, then shrugged. “And why not? Why delay the horror? On your head be it.”

“On my head,” agreed Virgil with easy equanimity. 

Dr. Bierhals tapped a few commands into his tablet. The lights about the base of the vat began to flash. “It’s done. It should take about five minutes for the gel to drain. The chirurgeon will extract him, remove the tubing, wash him, then guide him to consciousness.”

“Thank you, doctor. Your assistance has been invaluable.”

It was a clear dismissal. Dr. Bierhals gazed at the vat one last time. The gel level was already dropping. Unhappy, he ran his fingers through his thinning hair, then stalked out of the room, Exley at his heels. 

“You, too, Sindre.” Virgil’s tone had grown soft. “What’s to follow is strictly between me and Charoen. I’ll send for you when it’s time.”

Sindre hesitated, wrong-footed. “You sure? I…” Virgil’s gaze was calm, steely, and utterly unwavering. “Very well.”

Frowning, he quit the medical facility and strode out into the morning light. The doors closed behind him. The smell of the sea replaced that of the antiseptic and astringent interior. A handful of the players had descended to examine the drone. The two doctors were moving toward the large rec and kitchen building. 

Warm wind whipped past Sindre. He stared out at nothing. In moments a new Charoen would be finally birthed into the world. 

Into Virgil’s care.

For the millionth time he questioned his role in this madness, and found himself hemmed in by his own crude morality and Virgil’s masterful manipulations. 

“What’s done is done,” he whispered, knowing it an abdication, and feeling little more than contempt for his own complicitness. “Do better from hereon out, old man. Do better.”

But his words rang hollow. Casting one glance back at the closed door, he grimaced, linked his hands behind his back once more, and walked away from where a tragedy was unfolding.