The face spoke.
‘I am Maroun,’ it said, in a voice that thundered through Jon’s mind, ‘I will show you the fate of the Degenerates and how we built the Protectorate on foundations made from their soft corpses.’
Like Shana before him, but in much greater detail, he saw in his mind scenes of past events.
He saw the gentle, peaceful cultures of the Degenerates in their last days. He saw their pathetic attempts to remove all danger from their meaningless lives; how they shrank from pain; their gnawing fear of death. He saw the people, apparently happy but in reality assailed by a million doubts, going about their myriad activities, unaware of the approach of the fatal scimitar. He saw their violent overthrow by forces both internal and external; saw their populations enslaved and brutalised.
Maroun spoke again: ‘And so was formed the Protectorate; so-called because we exist to preserve all that is proud, strong and manly in humanity. People who obey orders without concern for their own safety; people prepared to leap into the furnace in the service of the Great Khan.’
Jon felt a tremendous need to speak out against this interpretation of history but he realised that would be extremely unwise. All he could do was hope that Maroun, whoever he was, could not read his thoughts.
‘Now behold our army!’ the voice thundered, ‘let inferior breeds throughout the universe tremble at their approach!’
The visions changed again, this time into something Jon could recognise because he had been there not long previously. It was the room with the pods and somehow he could clearly see inside each one. At once he noticed that he was seeing the same features again and again and he soon realised that there were only ten male types (of which he was obviously one) and fifteen female types. Again and again he saw Shana’s face in casket after casket.
With his new knowledge, the explanation was obvious.
‘Clones!’ he said to himself.
To his surprise Maroun answered him. ‘Yes. But not just clones, clones made in the laboratories of the Protectorate. Clones composed of proteins utilising amino acids not found in nature; genetic material using artificial bases; all designed so that the creature composed of these substances will be stronger and longer lasting. Add blind loyalty to that robust frame and you have the perfect soldier.’
But something has gone wrong with your plan, Jon thought in the secret places of his mind, for I do not possess blind loyalty to the Protectorate.
As Jon studied the comatose individuals in the caskets he became aware of something else: he could sense their mentalities. In some, he could see a little bubble of awareness slowly rising in a dark column of unconsciousness. This was obviously the true meaning of the Gate of Light: it was simply the awakening of the individual from this form of stasis – just as he and Shana had done not long ago. This was what Jarz had meant when he had said that soon they would have enough arrivals to enter the Gate of Light en masse.
He decided to risk a question.
‘When I was – unconscious – I thought I was in a forest surrounded by dangerous animals. Then I met strange creatures that wanted to kill me. Was that all a dream?’
‘Not exactly a dream. You and all the other warriors were embedded in a digital simulation of an environment that we had designed. Your individual minds were linked so that you could interact with each other. What one saw, the others saw. The simulation was not perfect due to the extremely large number of variables but it was basically consistent.’
Basically consistent, Jon thought, just a few errors like Shana’s green sky and my red one.
‘And why was it necessary to put us in that simulation?’
‘Your brains could not be shut down completely whilst you were in stasis. They would have slowly decayed. Therefore we provided them with a minimum amount of stimulation to keep them healthy. And we set challenges to eliminate any soldiers who were not adequate for our purposes.’
Akraz and Zarka. The Lords of the Sands thought Jon. While Maroun had been speaking he had discovered that he was now fully immersed in the strange environment and now understood what it was. Somehow he was linked into a kind of neural net that included the minds of the people who were still in stasis; a hangover no doubt from the time when they had thought they were all on the Hill. And he was also aware that there were files of records which showed the detailed actions of the Protectorate from the time of these “synthetic humans” (what other description could there be?) up to this exact moment. Just as Shana had proved to be a natural adept on the hill in this virtual world it seemed that he possessed similar abilities in this true, master version of that system. If only he had more time…
‘Soon all the warriors will be awake and we can begin new conquests,’ the dread voice continued, ‘but you have now learned all you need to know to be an effective soldier. You will be called when you need the Educator again.’
And this time it did end. Once again there appeared to be an audible snap! inside his head and his eyes opened under their own volition and he saw Shana looking down on him with concern written on her features.
‘At last!’ she said, ‘I thought you were going to stay in there forever.’
‘No such luck for you,’ he grinned and tried to rise from the couch.
And collapsed on the floor. Instantly it was as if someone had driven a rapier through his head. As he tried to rise his vision was suddenly filled with dancing blue and yellow zig-zag lines, overlaying an abstract pattern of squares within squares within squares. With his new knowledge, he realised that he was having a migraine. A very bad migraine.
Shana helped him back onto the couch.
‘It will pass soon,’ she said, running soothing fingers over his temples, ‘I had it too. It will pass.’
His eyes had been shut but that only made the zig-zag lines even more vivid. He opened them again and looked at Shana, trying to ignore the visual disturbances that overlaid her.
‘Shana,’ he finally whispered through his pain, ‘I saw so much! Learned so much! And I could see your mind! Read your thoughts! It was incredible, frighteningly incredible!’
She nodded. ‘I felt your mind come into – well, come into view I suppose you’d call it. I could see all the information pouring into you. And,’ she concluded, somewhat bitterly, ‘you were getting a lot more than me. It seems that the Protectorate doesn’t want its women warriors knowing too much.’
Jon gave a weak smile, trying to ignore the fact that Shana’s face was now embedded in an infinite series of ever-decreasing rectangles. ‘That fits in with their world view, I guess. I saw what you had seen and much more I think. I saw the overthrow of the people they call the Degenerates and their state of oppression. The Protectorate is a terrible threat. And it seems its lust for conquest is far from satisfied. We are meant to be its new shock troopers.’
She nodded again. ‘Yes, I know what we are. We are synthetic humans, built from improved versions of proteins and genetic materials. Meant to wear out much more slowly so we’ll be as useful as possible to the Great Khan.’
‘Now we know why things seemed wrong before; all those little details that didn’t make sense. All because the simulation was not perfect. And it didn’t need to be, of course – because we had no life before the simulation. All the things make sense now, like – like your hole…’