Compelling Science Fiction Issue 2 by Joe Stech & Michael Ryder & Tommi Virtanen & Meg Elison & Steve Rodgers & C.L. Kagmi

Author:Joe Stech & Michael Ryder & Tommi Virtanen & Meg Elison & Steve Rodgers & C.L. Kagmi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Compelling Science Fiction Ltd.
Published: 2016-06-12T06:35:07+00:00

Oelinium

by Steve Rodgers

It’s not clear exactly when I became a god. Once, when I was a creature of nerves and sinew, I read that some cultures believed a god existed purely through the worship of its followers. If true, I’d add that those worshippers must be truly sentient—creatures who can gaze at the stars with something more than dumb, placid stares.

By that definition, I’d say it happened sometime in the past ten years.

Ten years by my internal clocks of course. Not ten rotations of this forested orb around its orange sun, because that would have been an altogether different thing. Set far beyond the normal habitable zone of a weak star, this verdant carpeted rock had a year measured in decades, and should have been covered by hard ice. Instead, its methane-spewing volcanoes had turned this lonely outpost into a hothouse. A terrarium brought to life by the Hypution.

I focus on the world below me, trying to light regions of my biological mind that once perceived things differently. Green and blue, the color of life, a swirl of clouds covering an endless expanse of forest and liquid. A drop of water hovering in a black bowl.

When they removed my eyes, I thought beauty was gone forever. Yes, I received something in their place: light sensors with infinite precision, visions of probable futures, colors far beyond the normal spectrum. But these were poor substitutes for a soul ripped away. With nothing but quantum intermediate values to replace my senses, my thoughts are cold echoes of what they once were.

I am a thing of logic now, rage against it though I may.

I zoom in on a patch of 200 meter tall trees, covered by a panoply of red vines and flowers. Plants once derived from earth-stock, turned by the Hypution into something else entirely. And there, between the two-meter thick branches, threaded by a riot of yellow blossoms, is a city of the Avids. Or so I call them. Bird-like beings with four sets of talons; creatures I believe descend from crows, though I can’t be sure. Their cities of wooden planks and woven rooftops nestle deep in the canopy, but still far above the forest floor. Threaded monuments to me peek above the treetops, where I can see them easily. Those cities sprang to life in the past four years, after sentience first came upon them ten years ago. Sixty generations of creatures filled into a pinprick of time.

I try to summon wonder at this: the first sentient life, outside the cyborg-stained planets of the Patronage. Perhaps this had happened before, given the myriad of Hypution-touched worlds. But if so, it had never been acknowledged. And gazing at the alien cities, I do feel a tinge of awe, despite the Monitor’s attempts to yank me away. Defying my metallic overlord, I struggle to hold on to that mystery a moment longer, converting just a few more neurons to my purpose.

The beginning of the end of my life occurred on Holinard, in the middle of the 27th century.

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