For the third time in her life, Luna awoke. She was lying on a marble plinth, looking up towards a bright ceiling. Hexagonal panels tessellated perfectly, many subtle shades of blue merging together to form the image of an open sky. Just like her Rhizome Nine's Botanical Garden.
When Luna sat up she saw that this was also a garden. In a space twice as wide and three times as long as her own botanical garden plants grew, flowers bloomed, fruit ripened, fields of grass danced in the fanned breeze. And though the plinth she rested on was at the centre of a cobblestone courtyard, it was also ringed with life. Arrangements of flowers in every colour imaginable surrounded the marble base like a halo.
Luna jumped down from the marble plinth, allowing herself a few skipping steps forward as she touched down on the floor. Then she examined herself. She was no longer wearing that deep purple hoodie that'd taken her on her odyssey through the city. Instead she was back in a long flowing dress and lilac blouse: a genuine relief. For a moment she could have mistaken it for her own, familiar dress. But it was something more. With each step she took the patterns of white thread shifted across the Tyrian purple: spinning petals at first, a bird jovially flapping its wings, a pair of hands clasping in agreement. Some sort of nanotechnology woven into the fabric made this all possible.
As a last check Luna checked her birdcage ornament. It was back where it was supposed to be: a necklace, hanging at her chest for all the world to see.
Where was she? Who had placed her there, and why? The garden was devoid of people. No-one had come to greet her as she woke, or even performatively ignore her. But even with no-one to ask Luna somehow knew the answer. Something deep inside of her knew that she was in the palace, near its heart.
On one side of the plinth a pathway marked out in golden bricks ran across the cobblestone, disappearing into darkness as it passed through a great archway into the next room. Was that the way she was expected to go? It seemed so, especially given the strips laid down along each side. At regular intervals those strips glowed with a low but unmissable pulse of light, which waited in front of Luna for a few seconds before sprinting off along the route.
Luna sighed, nodded to herself and, with trepidation, started walking the path that had been laid out for her.
The next room, once Luna had passed through the archway, was a cavernous hall. Columns of granite supported a distant ceiling. In the spaces beyond the golden path various machines were displayed, sparking electronics and glowing laser emitters and liquid-filled tanks with people inside. Luna could tell they weren't connected to anything else but were just placed here for display.
At the end the guiding strip-lights took Luna sharply to the right, onto an even grander hallway. The columns were now of marble, and they were decorated with intricate spirals of gold and silicon like they were part of some oversized computer chip. Chandeliers hung and swayed above Luna, crystals glimmering in the light they gave off in a way that suggested they were more than mere sources of illumination. The direction this opulent hallway was leading Luna it would run through the very centre of the palace, practically arterial. Luna continued walking on.
As Luna approached the end she found many dozens of people awaiting her. Two lines of them formed on either side of the central brick and light-strip pathway, with impassive, deferential expressions on their faces and ramrod postures, hands clasped behind backs. Gaulems and humans both stood there in their impeccably tailored formal wear: Luna recognised GTM-GM-D-W80 and GTM-SM-A-K30 in their sharp black suits, and in the line on the other side GTF-YM-B-AR3 was among those wearing black-and-white lady's maid uniforms.
"Hail! The Princess!" the cry went out, clipped and crisp. Then the people lined up on either side bowed deep towards the centre; the Gaulems as one, the humans missing the timing by only milliseconds.
Luna stumbled to a halt. The idea that all these people would abase themselves in her honour struck a discordant note. It wasn't right. She would never have asked for this. Wringing her hands together she shuffled over to the righthand side of the path and spoke to the human at the close end of that line. "Please… You don't need to act like this towards me."
There was no response from the person in question.
Nor did speaking to the person on the other side have any effect. That Gaulem stayed still in their nearly horizontal bow.
From further up the lines of attendants came a voice, far enough along that Luna couldn't tell who had spoken. Softly but unwaveringly, they said, "Please continue, Princess. Father is waiting for you."
Folding her arms as though she could squeeze the moral revulsion out of her body, Luna nodded to herself and carried on forward. As she passed between the lines of attendants, still silently bowing, she could see the end of the path they were guiding her along. The golden brick route she'd followed all this way gave way to a wide and imposing staircase that led up towards a colossal door of pure white.
Luna stopped before the very first step. She sighed to herself. Then she hiked up the front of her skirt – the nanomachine patterns rippled away from where she held it in her hands – and began to climb.
o-0-o
The pure white door closed behind Luna once she was through to the other side, a ponderous yet somehow utterly silent swing on its hinges. What was not silent was the solid thunk as the door's lock dropped into place. Then a fanfare of synthesised music sounded, drawing Luna's attention away from the door and to the front of the room she'd finally arrived in.
In front of her was open space, a chrome floor that almost seemed to make the air feel heavier above it. Two spotlights danced across it as the synthesised fanfare grew louder, before coming to rest focused on a single spot. With understanding, Luna cautiously walked forward to stand there. In front of her was a towering platform, the two spotlight beams bearing down on her from either side of a hefty and ornate chair… a throne? Luna could almost call it that, save for the silvery strips of metal that criss-crossed the back rest and the various connection ports studded into it, infrastructure for who-knows-what implants and cybernetics.
And in that chair sat the man who had summoned Luna, whose throne room this was.
Though the lights bearing down would have utterly blinded human eyes, Luna could look up at the king-like figure who gazed upon her. His grey-blue coat, trimmed with gold and silicon devices, hung from his shoulders, flowing down behind him like a cape. Weighty boots sat on his feet tapping weightily against the surface of the regal platform. Where his right eye should have been a complex device sat, with many lenses and sensors scrutinising Luna's every move. This was the man who ruled the city of Rhizome Nine. This was the man every citizen of Rhizome Nine addressed as 'Father'.
"Sigma?" Luna said.
The man in his throne adjusted his posture; his hands clamped down on the rests on either side resolutely. "I've not been addressed by that name in quite some time," he said, his voice low and rumbling. Maybe sensing the subtle twitch of alarm on Luna's face, he gently added, "It is not unwelcome."
Luna fidgeted as she stood there, gazing up at Sigma on his throne. She felt like she was supposed to say something. But what could she say? Was this really Father, the man who ruled the city of Rhizome Nine with an unbreakable grasp? The man this version of Alice had dedicated her life to tearing down? Any words she tried to say caught in her throat.
"When we realised you had vanished from this palace," Sigma – the Doctor? Father? – said in his soft but commanding tone, "of course, it required an immediate response. Not a single resource could be spared, scouring Rhizome Nine for you. I am glad that they succeeded. It is good to have you back here, Luna."
Sigma paused for a moment, raising the back of his hand to his chin. Luna could just about hear the whirs as his eyepiece zoomed in.
"But not, it seems, my Luna."
"Sigma? What makes you say that?" Luna feigned shock and surprise. The Nonary Game had been the best training for that imaginable. Even so, Sigma's expression stayed unfazed. With a defeated nod of her head, Luna said, "You know about the Morphogenetic field. About alternate timelines."
"Of course," Sigma replied. "The fate of humanity was at stake when I founded this city. Every tool available to me had to be used to the fullest extent."
Luna took a moment to look around the throne room she stood in, the palatial theatre this version of Sigma had built for himself to project his rule. She took in the pure white ceiling, details shrouded by distance and an almost-electrical haze, where the spotlights that beamed down at her were mounted; she surveyed the marble columns that held that ceiling up, her eyes following the roads of metal strips as they criss-crossed the surface, rising up from Sigma's dais and connected him to everything outside this chamber.
"Why…? How did you come to build this place?" Luna asked. "What happened, back then?"
Sigma's left eyebrow rose into a bemused arch. Then, he let out a low whistle. "Ah, of course. That is a story I have told my Luna many a time. But you, Luna, have never heard it before. Let me explain."
Luna politely and solemnly nodded.
"My story began when I was still quite young. I was still a student, intending to go through graduate school and completely unaware that fate had another role in store for me. But then I met someone who changed my life completely. A man with wisdom and foresight only seen once in each century."
A sinking feeling enveloped Luna's chest. "Brother…" she murmured.
"Yes. The man called himself Brother. He explained to me his understanding of the state of humankind, and the plans he had made to fix the world."
"You… didn't try to stop him?"
"Oh? Is that what your Sigma did? How strange, to glimpse how a different path could have led to an alternate version so estranged from myself." He shook his head gently but resolutely, like a teacher admonishing a small child. "No, I did not. The world needed what Brother did for it."
"I know what they did!" Luna cried out. "Radical-6. The antimatter reactors. Six billion dead! You can see it, the Earth in the sky above your Rhizome Nine." Disappointment and betrayal tremored in her voice. "It's true, then. You did join Free the Soul, Sigma."
"That is, perhaps, a step too far into untruth," Sigma replied, clasping his hands together. "It is true that I agree with Brother about a great deal. What he showed me was undeniable: by the year 2028, humankind had degenerated to the point where they could no longer solve the problems in front of them. Brother saw that clearly. And so he tried to fix the world himself. He purged civilisation from the world by the means of Radical-6, in the hope that the humans who survived would have proved themselves virtuous, disciplined, and pure enough to create his new world.
"It was here where we had our… disagreement."
For a moment a trickle of hope rose in Luna's chest, a moment of recognition of the Sigma who would dedicate his life to the AB project and the undoing of Free the Soul's crimes. But that hope disappeared as quickly as it had swelled. There was none of that in what Father had actually accomplished.
"Fortunately," Sigma continued, "Brother's and my projects could operate in parallel. In many ways they benefited each other, even as we worked independently. And whether the pure new world was established on Earth or on the Moon, our mutual goals would be fulfilled."
Luna thought back on everything she had seen while making her way through the city of Rhizome Nine. "So… you made a better world by giving all the citizens here cybernetic enhancements? By using your control of those implants to bind them to your system, make them grateful to you?"
"Not quite," Sigma replied. Gazing down through the spotlight at Luna, he said, "Let me explain to you Brother's great mistake. He believed that it would be possible to take the humans on Earth and correct the flaws that had led to the degenerate old world. Over his long life he tried several different means to accomplish this: through teaching, through faith, even going so far as to initiate a systematic scheme of cloning, several generations of humans who could be genetically screened for imperfections and then raised as Brother saw fit. He believed it was possible to mold the superior human beings who would populate his new world.
"I understood that this would never work.
"Human beings, as they exist, are bound by their history, their instincts, their biology. Brother could never have succeeded in erasing their flaws. Even now, his Myrmidons are just yet another faction, scrabbling for control of the surface of the Earth. Brother's ideals have withered away, in such conditions. The only way to bring about a superior, incorruptible people who would bring about the new world… is to create them from scratch."
"You mean…?" Luna's voice trembled; the question fell away.
Sigma understood anyway. "Yes, precisely," he said. "Only Gaulems, created pristine, are worthy of the new world."
With that Sigma waved his right hand, a regal, finely-controlled loop in the air. In response to that commanding gesture the dais opened up, the marble surface on that side of Sigma's throne shifting back to expose the inside of the pedestal. From within that cavity, as the spotlights swung away from Luna to highlight it, rose a second throne, only slightly smaller than Sigma's and equally adorned with connection ports and inlaid networks. In front of this new throne a sequence of stairs emerged and spiralled into place, a shallow pathway descending all the way down from the top of the platform to the floor where Luna stood.
"All I wanted was for my Luna to take her place at my side," Sigma intoned, gesturing at the new throne. "That was what drove me, in the search after she – you – disappeared. That was why I committed every resource at my disposal to bringing you home."
Luna held out her hands apologetically. "But I'm not your Luna," she stammered.
Sigma cut her off with a gentle shake of his head. "I know. Nevertheless, you are still a version of her. You're still Luna. You are just as pure and incorruptible, and as deserving of inheriting everything that I've built here. Because that is the answer to your question. Why did I build the city of Rhizome Nine?
"I built it for you, Luna. My daughter."
Luna took an involuntary step back. "You're… just giving it to me?" she stammered.
"The future was never mine to give. I merely held it in trust for you, and for the superior beings who will create and inhabit it."
Luna's fellow Gaulems, he meant by that. "What about the humans who live here, in Rhizome Nine?" Luna asked. She had a disturbing inkling of what Father had planned for them, why he hadn't yet brought them up as he explained his plan. The course of action Sigma was implying was opposed by everything that Luna was.
"I required their labour," Sigma replied, the tone of his voice utterly unconcerned, "for the construction of this city, and to ensure all systems were firmly established before the real citizens arrived. Once you rule Rhizome Nine, you can do with the humans as you will. Who knows? Perhaps you will judge some individuals as being virtuous enough to flourish under the guidance of superior beings, under your instruction and that of the other Gaulems. That will be your choice to make. As for those who cannot coexist with the perfect world…" He sighed. "I have a perfect faith that you will do what is right for this city."
o-0-o
Sigma's entire lengthy speech had made it clear what Luna had to do. Bowing her head, as meek as she'd been when accepting orders from her own Sigma and Akane during the lead-up to the Nonary Game, she began to climb the stairs.
Behind her the great white doors swung open. Luna didn't look back, but she could tell that the attendants from outside, human and Gaulem both, were filing into the throne room to watch her ascend. Instead she carried on up the staircase, step by step.
When she reached the top, the sole of her shoe falling gently on the smooth surface of the platform, Luna glanced Sigma's way. He gestured, a strait-laced but encouraging waving of his hand, towards the seat of the empty throne. Luna nodded, then reached out towards the throne's armrest.
As the ABT of her hand touched the throne Luna's awareness expanded. Modules – ones that she wasn't even aware this version of herself had – connected with the devices running through the back rest; from there the network at her grasp blossomed out, first covering the entire palace and spreading out from there to become a web of control running through every part of the city. All centred on these two thrones.
For a whole second Luna could barely think at all. Nor could she hear the cheer that came up from the crowd of attendants as she sat down, overwhelmed as she was by the new sensations. But then she remembered what she'd intended to do.
Luna didn't have to look far through the network of new connections. Not even outside the palace, but just buried away beneath it, lay a series of cramped, dimly-lit chambers connected by narrow corridors. As Luna acclimatised to the new senses she'd been granted she found Alice and Quark restrained in what could only be described as high-tech dungeons. In one Quark was unconscious, held up only by the cables attached to and supressing the devices in his helmet. In the next cell along Alice was restrained several times over, grimacing as a low level of electric current passed through her entire body.
With a simple act of Luna's will both of them were released, the doors to both their cells unlocked.
Hopefully the two of them were resourceful enough to effect their escape from there. Luna returned her awareness to the throne room. She glanced the other throne's way and said, "Thank you, Sigma."
"Of course," Sigma replied, vindicated pride edging into his voice.
"But," Luna interrupted Sigma before he could speak again, "I've done everything I need to do with it."
Sigma's face first dropped into a confused grimace. Then his eyes narrowed in frantic alarm, and a moment later went completely blank as Sigma diverted his attention into the connections at the back of his throne. When Sigma returned his voice growled with wrath. "What? Luna, what are you doing? Don't you know that they will tear down everything of worth here, if you give them the chance?"
Luna bowed her head once more: respectfully, but no longer meek. "Yes. I think that's the point of it, really." She shook her head sorrowfully. "This place is wrong, Sigma. And I think you see that too."
Sigma stood up from his throne, stepping ponderously Luna's way. "I see," he said bitterly. "You don't understand. You're not able to. This is all because you're from some other universe! That's why you're acting like this. My Luna wouldn't…"
"I don't think that's true, either," Luna said with a sad shake of her head. "I only sought out Alice and Quark because of this." She reached for the birdcage hanging at her chest and drew out the scrap of paper that had been left inside. "This told me where to go. It was just on me, when I got here. I think that means your Luna put it there. She was the one who contacted Alice, before I even got here."
As Luna presented the note paper to Sigma his face contorted in anguish.
"I'm sorry, Sigma," Luna continued, "but your Luna disagreed with you, too."
"No!" he exclaimed, hammering his fist against the armrest of Luna's throne. "That's not possible. Luna… My Gaulems. Perfect beings, that I created. It is not possible for them to commit this sort of sin."
"I think that's true, in a way," Luna replied, her natural kindness evident in her voice. "The Gaulems were designed to want to do the right thing. You succeeded at that… I don't think your Luna is the only one who sees what's wrong with the city you've built."
With that, Luna took one last look through the network the throne had granted her access to. Even with this much control over the systems of Rhizome Nine Luna wouldn't be able to dismantle them. Everything was load-bearing. The system this Sigma had built fed on itself. She'd made the start that was available to her, setting Alice and Quark free to do what they could.
Instead, Luna reached for the part of the palace network where the Gaulems' minds were stored. Just as the Gaulems of Luna's timeline all operated from Lagomorph's mainframe, the minds of the Gaulems who had greeted Luna outside the throne room and those elsewhere in the city were contained by a supercomputer tucked away in a chamber behind Sigma's throne room, where they could communicate with each other and access any part of the network they'd been granted permissions for.
Luna reached out for that supercomputer, connected to each of the Gaulems running inside, and then…
o-0-o
Went back.