Silver by Nagata Linda

Author:Nagata, Linda [Nagata, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: far future, starship, The Nanotech Succession, virtual existence, artificial worlds, Memory by Linda Nagata, Nanotechnology, Science Fiction, starfaring, slower than light, human expansion, frontier worlds, emerging from dystopia, sense of wonder, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781937197292
Amazon: B07Z5FXGNL
Goodreads: 48495251
Publisher: Mythic Island Press LLC
Published: 2019-11-18T08:00:00+00:00

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Urban sat at the kitchen table, but he no longer saw the now-empty tray or the faces of his companions. Instead, he looked down into the Cenotaph from its south rim, his atrium presenting to him the viewpoint of the aerial-bot stationed there. He’d lost the one stationed closer to the blast, and a scout-bot was gone too.

To the east, the sky was already bright with a scattering of light from the rising sun, but in the Cenotaph the only source of light was the silver.

The glowing, dusty fog that had blocked his view was rapidly thinning—whether because the dust was falling to ground or the silver evaporating, he couldn’t tell. Within that fog, a silver flood covered most of the crater floor, isolating the high points, the monuments, the standing stones.

But in the far distance, where Fortuna had been, where Lezuri’s swarm had come to ground, where the dome of silver had grown, there was a dark scar. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he guessed it to be a blast pit. A crater within a crater. Its rim high enough to hold back the flood of silver on the Cenotaph’s floor.

“It’s hard to tell from this view if anything is left,” Yaphet said as he studied the tablet’s display.

Urban grunted. He said, “The scout-bot I left at the ruins of the goddess has checked in. It’s isolated on high ground now, but when the silver’s gone, it’ll go to the blast site and assess, try to determine if any of the swarm devices survived, or if there’s any kind of organization or construction there.”

“How can there be?” Jubilee asked. “Between the explosion and the silver, surely it’s all gone. Everything. The swarm. Fortuna. The dome.”

Urban nodded. He felt empty—hollow and numb at the loss of his ghost and of Fortuna’s library. The span of his mind had been diminished, the reach of his senses truncated. “I don’t think anything could have survived the blast,” he conceded.

He wanted to be angry with himself for wiping it all out, and for making that choice unilaterally, without even a warning. But given the circumstances he had to agree that he—his ghost—had made the right decision. He’d lost Fortuna, but maybe he had won some time, and time was needed to win the war.

He continued to monitor the camera feed, alert for any sign of emergent life. He was conscious of people moving around him, quiet words exchanged.

Sunrise sent rays of light against the Cenotaph’s western wall, dissolving the veins of silver there or maybe driving them underground. A back-scatter of light chased away the silver from the Cenotaph’s floor, exposing the gritty hardpan. As soon as the way was clear, the surviving scout-bot set off, cartwheeling across the crater floor.

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