The Gray Machine

7 Anomalies, Shadows

Rajna the Magistrate sought a course of action. In a hall bedecked with ivy-bound onyx statues of cat deities, stretching between the great Ikoem reception hall and the cloistered cavern chamber of councilors, she considered how – and at what cost – she might do what must be done to pull her universe back from the brink. She studied her own lanky reflection in her pristine bathing pool, her pocked, blemished skin a shade of red so dark it blended into the last flaming rays of sunset behind her. She saw standing there a dark star, absorbing the terrible weight of it all.

She turned to the glowing lacquered skull, her eyes glazed. The skull was that of another magistrate, eighty years deceased, superheated and then frozen in a rare variety of resin, a process that destroyed all organic tissue but bone and nerve. The crystallized neuron network was therefore preserved, a perfect superconducting computer core, programmable to access limitless information.

The skull pulsed with amber light, seeking the vessel in which the Ambassador had absconded to the furthest reaches of Eridu. In a crystal basin, Rajna took in the telemetry from the lost vessel in cameos of hard light. A bleak desert on a distant world stretched out before her, encrusted with hunched, dedicated flora. Sheksama and her child were nowhere to be seen, but Rajna noted the body of Shaksama's attendant, lying next to the vessel in the ritual repose of honored death, the sand beginning to devour her.

Someone was coming across the desert. A young man with pale skin, meandering heavily, yellow hair flapping. He limped and stumbled as he went. Then he discovered the body. Rajna watched him look it over with wonder and...something else. Something like hunger. Then he kissed her.

The signal went dark, cut off by the constant shifts and rotations of the universe.

She turned and felt sick. So the story was the same everywhere. The lust of men, the need to conquer, to devour, to engulf...

"This, of all worlds, is the hell you have run to, Sheksama?" Rajna said, her voice echoing, colorless. She considered the anthems that the Gray Purpose chanted every morning in the streets of Nu's capitol: Ho! Ho! The Great Gray Road, forward to Eternity!

Did they chant the same upon the distant world where Sheksama had fallen?

What could be known about these... humans? She set an intention with her fingers on the burnished skull, closing her eyes. When she opened them, the skull flung out an overwhelming array of smoky projections. A mind-boggling array of video clips, pictures, audio recordings. Heads of state in gray suits with artificial hair, silver buildings crumbling, endless ranks in unison, the color drenched from their faces...fires, floods, famines, committees...flags atop dead-eyed statues of dying soldiers, swarming streets, passersby under black umbrellas, wasp-nest prison cells ten levels high...tanks, transactions, logistics, cities clinging to putrid shores like geometric cancers, walls within walls within walls, gray, gray, gray...

They had been conquered over the centuries many times, without them even knowing it, through promises of strength and brotherhood, good harvests and good values, carried on the backs of millions of slaves toiling under hot sun. Hatred was the very mortar of the Purpose. Efficiency churned out poison, and rampant inefficiency kept the producers starving and the consumers blind. It was in the lines and edges, the ruthless right angles, the contrast of black ink upon virgin white paper. It was precise war, sterile science, fervent belief. It was the hunger in the young man's eyes before he kissed Sheksama's slain attendant.

Rajna turned away, cold, and lost. She could look no more.

They had all but taken it, she realized in horror.