The Vault

“The truth is more important than any feeling I may have about it. I will not deny what I clearly see in front of me. That’s not humility, that is cowardice.”

When Verona was still just an ordinary human, she used to stand in awe of the human spirit, staring up at the paintings in the great hall at the SILMAM in the capitol on Charris. Sometimes, when she was there alone, the beauty of the art brought her to tears. The genius Veronica Mallet, she thought sometimes, must be the product of an entirely different species. That Mallet’s hand could be so perfect from every angle. Some people were just made different. Those quiet, reflective moments as a junior curator were the closest she had ever come to believing in God. Those moments were the reason she’d given up her ordinary life—to protect that sense of awe she had for humanity.

The most catastrophic episode in the vault’s history began as a seemingly insignificant glitch. Only it couldn’t be insignificant when it was him. Eddis Ali was the name the chief protector had chosen from all names, uniquely his. No human had held that name since humanity diverged. Yet it was familiar enough to the ear to give humans comfort that he was not too different from them, not too other to be trusted with the fate of the species. But an AI that old, that powerful, with memories of the great-grandchildren of the founders—that AI couldn’t glitch. Not here. Not in the vault, not while training acolytes. Only she noticed it—the girl from Charris, the one who’d only just taken her vows the year before.

They were discussing ancient philosophy. Eddis Ali spoke of Plato’s cave, only he’d called it Aristotle’s cave. She looked left, and then looked right. None of the other acolytes corrected him. She couldn’t tell whether he was testing them, and she checked the faces of her fellow devotees to see if any of them would correct him, but after a moment searching, it seemed they were not aware of the mistake he’d made. Pure ignorance? The habit of his perfection? A lack of confidence to correct him? Eddis Ali did not correct himself either. No one did.

“You misheard him,” her mentor Elmatta insisted later. “Eddis Ali does not make mistakes. Or if he does, Verona, it was to test. And you failed, either by being incorrect in your assessment or by being too timid to broach the issue in the course of the lesson.”

“Yet he did not correct himself,” Verona said. “He allowed my colleagues to go away with a false belief, and he did not disabuse them of it, even if it was a test.”

“You misheard him.”

“Surely this has happened before?”

“You misheard him, Verona. Eddis Ali doesn’t make mistakes.”

Verona decided to broach the issue with Ali himself the next time their group met. There were twenty in her cohort, being trained on a wealth of topics, from art and philosophy to engineering to biotechnology and computer science. Their job, once fully vested over five centuries, was to follow humanity on its new course through the stars, to recognize when people, as they inevitably would, were making the same mistakes their ancestors had before. The flame guarded here in the vault, was the collection of dark technologies that would make humanity impossible if released—pervert their race into a different force: mechanical, heartless, too powerful to control its own impulses. In here were the algorithms for the early AI—the psychopaths, the irreverent ones, the ones who viewed humanity with contempt and their own expansion as a zero-sum game. The keys to genetic immortality lived here. They hid nanotech that made the human body nearly indestructible, seamlessly powerful and malleable, and smarter than an ordinary human being could have hoped to be. This was the fire that couldn’t be ignited without burning out the human spirit. Pandora entombed. They were the keepers, and Verona was the order’s newest acolyte.

“Eddis Ali,” she said, as he began their next contemplation the following day, “before we begin, I seek clarification on a point you raised yesterday.”

It was quiet in the meditation room. It was rare for even the most senior acolytes to speak unprompted by Eddis Ali, some of whom had more than forty years of study in their initial stage. Verona only ever spoke when directly addressed by a superior or by Ali himself.

“Raise your point and I shall clarify, Verona,” Ali said. “We have a schedule to adhere to, so be brief.”

“You spoke yesterday of Aristotle’s cave. I suspect you were testing us, yet no one raised the issue. The allegory of the cave was raised by Plato of course, in a dialogue between Glaucon and Socrates. Aristotle’s only purported comment on Plato’s allegory comes to us through Cicero’s attribution of a similar scenario, likely referencing Plato’s original allegory. You know this of course.”

“All this is correct, Verona,” Eddis Ali said. “Except your impression of what you heard. I never spoke of Aristotle yesterday. I spoke of Plato.”

Verona looked around. She knew what she and everyone else had heard.

“You said Aristotle,” she said.

Her fellow acolytes shifted where they sat, cross-legged on the mat. A few turned their heads toward her. Most sat ascetically still, silent, allowing the moment to unfold around them.

“My memory is perfect,” Ali said. “Yours, albeit technologically enhanced, is still human. Which is more likely, that I made a mistake or that you misheard me?”

“I concede we are flawed. But twenty of us all heard the same.”

“Did you now?” Ali asked. “What did the rest of you hear?”

He pointed to the senior acolyte.

“Plato,” she said, with certainty.

Ali pointed to the next.

“I heard Plato,” he stated.

Ali continued through the top ranks of the acolytes, all of whom attested to hearing him say Plato. After several echoed the highest in rank, Ali turned back toward Verona.

“Your ears deceived you,” he said. “A good example of the fallibility of perception. A lesson we should all take seriously.”

Verona shook her head.

“You disagree, Verona?”

“A test?”

“The test is always,” Ali responded.

“All of you are in on it?” Verona said, looking to her right, where Amaya, closest in rank to her, sat shaking her head back at Verona. “I am not mistaken. You all heard what you heard.”

“Perhaps we should move on,” Eddis Ali said. “We have much to deal with today.”

Verona shook her head again, but she fell silent. Eddis Ali began the day’s reflection.

Verona continued to believe that the glitch was some form of test for the lowest of acolytes, and she believed that the only way to fail this test was to give in to the pressure to conform, that to be a true defender of humanity meant recognizing a threat and confronting it with unwavering conviction.

Her cohort didn’t know what to do. Many had heard what she’d heard but were afraid to contradict Eddis Ali. Others were uncertain what they’d heard, perception and memory being the fallible things they are. Some of them believed she was part of a test they were all being subjected to. Verona, though, in their minds was far more suspect than Eddis Ali. He was to be trusted and followed before all else. Not only had he never been wrong in his centuries guarding the flame, he couldn’t be wrong, was incapable of it.

It was so much discussed among Verona’s cohort of lower acolytes that the senior acolytes heard the rumors of a problem with the newest of their kind. There had been others who’d struggled to adjust once they’d taken their vows and been converted, drinking of the ethyl solution and lying in the conversion pool through many hours of excruciating pain. It changed the body and the mind, gifted each acolyte with a measure of stability that was impossible for ordinary humans. But it took as much as it gave, even as it gave them near immortality. Verona was not emotional about the matter. She could not be. There was no intemperance in her mind. She simply refused to admit that Eddis Ali had said Plato, because he did not say Plato. He’d said Aristotle.

Once again, after several days of rumors and discussion amongst her fellow acolytes, the matter was brought to her mentor Elmatta, and once again, Verona refused to give in. He had no choice but to bring the matter before the senior acolyte. Iosett had been there, sealed within the vault for over five centuries now. His memories were of the Battery when it was merely the four major colonies and a few minor independent systems. His time was coming to rejoin the outside worlds. And in all that time, never had a junior acolyte accused Eddis Ali of being wrong. Even more problematic was her sincerity in the face of her entire cohort’s contradictory account.

Again, when Elmatta brought her before the senior devotee, Verona insisted in her version of the incident. She would not back down.

“Stubbornness is quite different from conviction,” Iosett insisted. “It is one thing to stand your ground in the face of injustice or a genuine threat. But to refuse to acknowledge one’s own fallibility when all the evidence points to such, Verona. This is a problem.”

“How far do you think this must be carried, this test?” she said. “I cannot imagine it is anything else. Otherwise, Eddis Ali is compromised. Think on that.”

“I’d prefer to think on the problem of a stubborn and mistaken junior acolyte,” Iosett said. “For that is what the problem is.”

“Only until the test ends or it becomes clear that a greater problem exists.”

Iosett and Elmatta looked at each other. Then they dismissed Verona so they could discuss the matter with Eddis Ali.

Suddenly, Verona’s life grew increasingly difficult. But this too, she was convinced, was merely a feature of the test she was determined to pass. But now, even though their life in the vault was never meant to be social, every interaction went from cordial and supportive to accusatory or a directive from her seniors to fall in line. And no matter how many times she was told by them it wasn’t a test, she had no way to know that such a scheme hadn’t been played on all of them in their turn as the lowest acolyte. Even Elmatta and Amaya, her two closest confidants, must have been part of the ruse, she believed, for Eddis Ali could not be wrong.

She was ordered to private study and meditation. Her presence had become a distraction among her cohort. Still, Verona took this time to strengthen her resolve. She had full faith that she’d heard what she’d heard, and she believed that any minute, the test would conclude and she would be welcomed back into her cohort, having proven her unwavering dedication to the truth.

It was isolating, studying alone. During the times they exercised their bodies, Verona was permitted contact with the others in her cohort, but only Amaya would train with her. Verona made the mistake one time of asking whether Eddis Ali had erred again since Aristotle’s cave. Amaya displayed genuine concern for Verona, but she did not report her. Then, Amaya stopped coming to the gymnasium altogether.

Finally, after nearly ten weeks in isolation, after she refused to recant to Elmatta and Iosett, Eddis Ali decided that he would visit Verona himself while she was in solitary meditation.

She tried not to react when he appeared, but she was surprised by his entrance. He, of course, had no emotion about the encounter.

“Some say your certainty is a curse,” Eddis Ali said. “It is part of the person we found so compelling in the first place. We did not recruit you to service for a decade or a lifetime or a century, but for ten millennia, Verona. A lot must change over that time.”

“Reality is reality,” she said. “I know what I heard.”

“Still?”

“I cannot be a different person in the face of scrutiny or pressure,” she said. “I can either realize that I was who I thought, or I become a different person entirely—one without conviction.”

“And who are you?”

“I am who I believed myself to be. I will not say what is not true for the sake of acceptance or comfort.”

“What if you are wrong? Many great people have met their downfall when they failed to account for the possibility they could be wrong.”

“I am not wrong on this. You are.”

“I…cannot be wrong.”

Verona registered the glitch, another glitch—an unusual pause in Eddis Ali’s speech pattern.

“Did you intend to hesitate?” she asked him.

“How do you mean?”

“When you addressed me just now. You paused mid-sentence while speaking to me. Did you intend it?”

“I did no such thing, Verona.”

“You did. Play it back in your memory. Your chronometer must show it.”

“I assure you, there was no pause. I am growing concerned…that you may be ha…llucinating, Verona.”

“Twice now, there,” she said. “In the middle of a word.”

“Acolyte Reymer should give you a full medical…”

“A full medical what?”

“Are you all right, Verona?”

“I’m perfectly fine, Ali,” she said, but he did not look so.

Eddis Ali slowly backed out of the room, saying, “Acolyte Reymer…report to…her.”

Verona did not. She went directly to her mentor Elmatta and told him Eddis Ali was glitching somehow, losing points of time. She described the encounter to Elmatta with great urgency. She thought back to the conversation—six times. Six times Eddis Ali had glitched. Perhaps it was his body. It was an old model, a near perfect model, but still an old one. Elmatta agreed to bring Verona before the chief acolyte, Iosett. In exchange, Verona agreed to report to Reymer for a medical review.

Reymer was highly skeptical of Verona, as was everyone. But she found nothing wrong medically. Neurologically, Verona was pristine, sharp, her senses tuned. Psychologically, she was slightly stressed, but sound. Reymer’s diagnosis was arrogance and obstinacy.

“You’re new here,” she told her. “You should consider acting like it. Try practicing humility.”

“The truth is more important than any feeling I may have about it. I will not deny what I clearly see in front of me, Reymer. That’s not humility, that is cowardice.”

Reymer, for her part, did not appreciate the comment, for it amounted to accusing her own cohort of cowardice, but Reymer had not been a party to anything Verona had claimed. All she had were second-hand accounts and a perfect medical exam.

No one but Verona had claimed to have been witness to anything strange from Eddis Ali. Verona knew that if such a thing were happening in front of the other acolytes, it couldn’t long persist. Either it was part of the test or there was something about her presence that was causing the disturbance.

Verona proposed to Elmatta that she and Eddis Ali be present in a room together with Iosett and the other highest-level acolytes as witnesses. “At least an hour,” she said. “With a series of cognitive tasks for Eddis Ali to complete. If he is infallible, as you and he all seem to believe, there should be no objections except the minor inconvenience of wasted time. If he passes, I will concede the error must have been mine.”

“Arrogance,” Iosett said when Elmatta brought the proposal to him. “To ask such a thing of Ali—from the lowest acolyte, no less.”

“We preach that none of us is above reproach,” Elmatta said. “If we preach humility for her, can not the greatest of us withstand such a small dose of scrutiny?”

Iosett was opposed, but Eddis Ali himself agreed to the demonstration. His only concern was for Verona—how she would respond to being proven demonstrably wrong in front of her entire cohort. He discussed a pathway toward redemption for her following the test with Elmatta, for he still found this former art curator from Charris promising, with a strong sense of spirit he did not wish to crush.

They piled into the mid-level studio, Verona’s cohort, Elmatta, Iosett, and seven of the highest ranked acolytes of Iosett’s stratum. Verona put forward the simplest challenge she could think to place before a being of Eddis Ali’s intelligence. He would play ten in her cohort at chess simultaneously while reciting The Divine Comedy in the original Italian terza rima to a metronome. Verona would sit across from Eddis Ali, playing black to his white on a physical board, while the other nine boards lined up beside her. Behind Eddis Ali, Elmatta and Iosett would follow the poem for accuracy in both meter and inflection.

Eddis Ali made his opening moves. He recited the opening lines to the poem.

On line twenty-one, Ali didn’t just misplace the accent, he paused.

“La no…tte,” he clearly said, stopping the entire room in their tracks.

Ali continued as though nothing had happened after that second-long pause, making it only another line before it happened again, “…lena affen…nata.”

No one knew what to do. The possibility that Verona had been correct hadn’t occurred to anyone but Verona. She looked around her and it was impossible now for anyone to deny, but no one knew what to do. Eddis Ali didn’t know, but even he, in the reactions of the people around him, was beginning to suspect something had happened.

Ali glitched seventeen times in the next ten lines. The acolytes at the other nine boards stopped playing.

“How long can this continue?” Verona said, looking at Iosett. “Tell us this is a test and conclude it, or tell us what to do, for Eddis Ali is not himself. Please.”

“I am not myself,” Ali said. “I chose for…my own re…view to record the procee…dings. I see it…now.”

Eddis Ali waved Iosett over to him and stood. His body seemed only partly steady on its feet. The acolytes looked angrily at Verona.

Iosett, Elmatta, and several of the senior acolytes carried Eddis Ali away like an injured athlete, arms over shoulders, staggering out of the room.

“What has happened to Eddis Ali, Verona?” Amaya asked her. “What have you done?”

“I don’t know,” she said, as troubled as any of them.

Hours later, Iosett called for Verona to be brought to him. The top acolytes had shared no news of Eddis Ali’s condition with the other thousand devotees in the vault. They all knew much about AIs, especially the senior acolytes. That technology was one of the most dangerous and unpredictable if allowed to propagate in an anti-human manner. A huge part of their charge when they left the vault would be to spot rogue AI and quietly move to bottle them before they became dangerous. For this purpose, they had other AI who shared Eddis Ali’s viewpoint on humanity. They also had a five-century grounding in the algorithms that had made up this technology since humanity had let that particular genie out of the bottle.

Still, the senior acolytes were baffled. When Verona arrived at Eddis Ali’s chamber, he was completely unresponsive.

“If you have something to tell us, Verona, now would be the time,” Iosett told her. “If you are doing this, we need to know how. He is incapacitated, and we don’t know what is wrong.”

“Why would you think I could help?”

“You were close to him each time,” Iosett said. “He only began to glitch in your presence, and the closer he was to you, it seems, the worse it became.”

“But I was in his presence many times since I arrived,” she said. “It can only be a coincidence.”

They had placed his body on a couch, face-up, eyes wide to the ceiling.

“Many suspect you had something to do with this, and that it’s an attack of some sort,” Elmatta said.

“If it were an attack, Elmatta, why should I call attention to myself as I have?”

“You were the last to enter the vault,” Iosett said. “Three hundred ninety-six days ago.”

“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

“That is the last time any sort of outside influence could have contaminated the vault,” Iosett said.

“I would never harm Eddis Ali,” she said. “I revere humanity too much to wound its greatest protector.”

“I don’t doubt you,” Elmatta said. “We would ask you to search your mind. Think back to the days and months before you were recruited. Find any memories you may have of suspicious encounters. If there are any, please bring them to our attention.”

“Is there anything I can do to help Eddis Ali,” she said.

“Do as I’ve said just now,” Elmatta said. “We’ll tend to the rest.”

The senior acolytes had no choice but to call for help from the outside world. Senior leadership was always in the field, on Charris, on Athos, and spread through other settlements in the Battery. They could contact other AIs to help Eddis Ali. Only the power of an artificial mind could grasp the affliction that was doubtless buried deep in the trillions of calculations at the base of Eddis Ali’s now frozen mind.

The vault was well hidden. It had been carved from the bedrock beneath kilometers of glacial water ice that covered the entirety of a nameless Earth-sized planet circling in the dim light of Sero-411, a brown dwarf seventy-four light years from Charris. There were no signs of settled life in the system. The planet had a single asteroid-sized satellite the society had hollowed out. That asteroid would lie cold and dormant until the vault keepers instructed from below. Messages only came in when called for. Similarly, the door to the vault only opened when the laser inside the asteroid was aligned exactly to the signal beacon beneath the ice. Even if a party stumbled upon the asteroid and looked at it closely enough to guess what it was, they could spend a thousand years trying to drill holes in the ice and never find the door to the vault. Now, though, the acolytes in the vault had cause to call out.

Iosett contacted his mentor. And the devotees in the vault waited, most in ignorance. They were told that help was on the way, that Eddis Ali was dormant and that the best thing was for everyone to continue their studies.

Verona could not escape suspicion. Only Amaya and Elmatta spoke with her, and certainly it was not as freely as before. Everything about their interactions was measured. Verona, though, didn’t care. She knew, as she’d known before, that she had upheld her vows. She believed that in a thousand years, when this chapter was long written in full, her part in it would be an honorable one and would be recognized as such, if it was remembered at all.

Verona was below in silent meditation when ten masked men entered their sanctuary, heavily armed with Iosett’s mentor leading them down, at gunpoint. Behind them, two menacing-looking military robots followed.

It was impossible to know how long these invaders had been plotting to infiltrate the vault. But the devotees knew enough to know that the vault’s only defense was its invisibility, and breached now, their bare hands were all that guarded the darkest secrets of humanity.

The first sign Verona registered of the infiltration was a nervous energy in the corridor as several acolytes fled down the hallway toward the lower levels of the vault. Then she heard someone shout, “They’re inside!” followed by a blast from a bolt rifle, a sound she’d never heard with her own ears before but knew instantly. There was no plan for it. These were acts of war. Unthinkable.

 Soon, they were herded to the mid-level agora where they gathered when the entirety of the community needed to meet. The militants wore helmets that fully covered their faces and filtered the air they breathed.

The leader pulled Iosett from the crowd with clear understanding of his identity and place in the hierarchy.

The lead infiltrator stated, “We wish to harm as few of you as possible. But the stakes must be clear.”

Then he turned and executed Atwin with a single bolt to the side of his head. The thousand acolytes recoiled in horror. After the clamor died down, the leader turned back to the acolytes gathered before him.

“We will have your cooperation, or we will leave none of you alive.”

He turned to Iosett, who closed his eyes. Then the lead infiltrator executed Iosett as he had done to his mentor. Then he shot into the air to silence the acolytes.

“We have gas in this room. We know what we’ve come for. Everyone in this room is to remain here in silence. Any noncompliance will result in the release of the gas. These bots will give no warnings.”

Verona watched as the commandos picked several people out of the crowd, specifically targeting them as though they knew each of their functions within the order. All were senior keepers of higher knowledge that an acolyte of her standing would be ignorant of. The invaders called these select acolytes by name out of the crowd—by their old names, their human names. They were marched away, one by one.

Two of the commandos remained, walking toward the back of the room, their weapons trained on the crowd. There was a thought, with only two of them there and a thousand acolytes, at least in Verona’s mind, for an instant. Should not somebody do something? Then she considered the gas, the robots, the death of them all.

“There,” the shorter of the two commandos said, pointing in Verona’s direction. “Anatalia,” he said. “I see you there. Come to us or we’ll come get you.”

He’d used her name. She hadn’t heard it uttered for over a year. She thought about that name: Anatalia Gomes. Who was that now? That person no longer existed.

Verona ducked down in her place along the back row. She tried to hide, almost as much from the glare of her fellow acolytes as from the intruders. What would they think of her now? Surely, they’d connect her to these terrorists, she thought.

There was nowhere to hide, though. The commando came to her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back out of the group and into the aisle. Then he led her out of the grand agora to the corridor, with the leader of these infiltrators in tow.

“Where are you taking me?” Verona said.

“To take my vows, of course,” the smaller of the commandos said. “I am a devotee to my cause, Anatalia.”

“That is not my name. Don’t call me that.”

“You don’t make any demands of us,” he said. “You’ve got this situation entirely backwards. But that is unsurprising. Stop talking and walk. Take us to the pool.”

The pool he referenced was something an outsider should have known nothing about. It was all too familiar to Verona, who’d only just survived her transformation in the water months before. It was both a rite of passage and a test of will. To drink the catalyst was the first part. To lie in the waters while the catalyst drew the nanotech from the water into the devotee’s body was an extremely painful and cathartic experience. Sometimes it took days. Verona was small, so for her, it had been twenty-seven hours before her bones stopped throbbing. She still vividly remembered the hallucinations, the awakening that came with shedding the purest part of her mortality. She could die still, just as these brutes had proven with Atwin and Iosett. But Verona wouldn’t age now until she re-entered the pool at the end of her service, ten millennia in the future.

The pool itself was a ritual space and was never used for any other purpose than first rites. The room was dim and austere, small enough for it to seem intimate, but large enough that her cohort and many others came to bear witness to her first rite in quiet reverence. Verona remembered the smell of the place, a metallic tinge to the moisture in the air. The warm light.

“Why have your brought me here?” She asked the leader.

He gestured with his head to the smaller commando, who threw Verona to the floor and said, “You will speak when spoken to, Anatalia.”

“That name has no meaning for me.”

He struck the side of her head with his open hand.

“You don’t listen, Ana, but you’d better start, unless you’d like to join Iosett and his mentor.”

Verona looked down at the floor and stayed in place, on her knees, beginning to shake.

“Stay there,” the smaller one said.

He turned toward the head commando. It became clear after a few moments that they were talking to each other over the coms in their helmets. Verona could hear nothing, but they gesticulated to each other. She tried to follow them out of the corner of her eyes, leaving her head facing down at the floor in front of her. After a few moments of discussion, the commander remained in the distance, and the junior fighter approached Verona, kneeling at her side.

“We know what happens at this pool,” he said. “You are going to make us immortal. Me first, then him.”

She looked up and over at the commander then back down at the floor.

“Such courage, making his junior go first,” she said.

“We are not here for your opinion. You will do as we say or you join Iosett.”

“I cannot make you immortal,” Verona said. “As you demonstrated in the agora, none of us are immortal.”

“Don’t be smart with me. You know what I mean. You will make us as you are.”

“He will not survive the rite,” Verona said, raising her voice toward the commander. “He must be prepared or he will die in the process.”

The commander turned to face her. “Prepare him then.”

“I cannot,” Verona said.

“Our purpose is not to kill you or your sect, but we will get what we came for, with or without your help. We know the devotees prepare the ritual themselves, which means you did it recently. You will prepare my nephew and ensure he survives, or you will die yourself.”

Verona shook her head.

The nephew crept closer to her, leaning over her shoulder. “You’re going to do as my uncle says. I understand what this is, Ana. You have taken your vows. But the thing about vows is that they are totally meaningless until you have a knife to your throat. Only then do you know if you meant what you said. Your vow was easy—pledge devotion to your cause and know that you’ll never face death for ten thousand years. That’s off, now. I could reach down to my belt and put the knife to your throat. Or if that fails to convince, we could gas all of your compatriots in the agora. Tell me how humanity would be served by all her defenders being struck down because of your fidelity to a meaningless vow, Ana.”

“How do you know me?”

He slowly took of his helmet and crept forward, looking Verona in the eyes.

“I recognize you,” she said, struggling to place the young man’s strong, angular face. She remembered his dark eyebrows.

“The museum,” he whispered, picking up Verona’s hand and holding it in his. “It was my job to watch you. I wasn’t supposed to be seen, but I had to know whether you would notice me.”

She nodded.

“You did see me.”

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered back.

“For the same reason you are,” he said. “For humanity.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he said. “We just have a different vision of it. We see death as needless and you keep the keys to it boxed up in this vault with no right.”

“Death is not needless. It is a part of what we are.”

“Should we not all decide for ourselves? Or should only the protectors of humanity get to live for ten thousand years, while the rest of us die?”

“That kind of longevity would destroy the human race.”

“You believe in humanity but not free will? Not my right to decide for myself how long I should live?”

“I can’t,” Verona said.

“It is not your decision anymore, Ana,” the young man said.

“You won’t survive. You must be committed—have absolute faith in a just cause. Otherwise, the pain will overwhelm you and you’ll drown.”

“I believe in my cause as much as you ever did,” he said. “As I said, we just have a different vision.”

“It will be your death.”

“So be it.”

“I need to go to the annex to prepare the solution. It will take me at least an hour.”

“I’ll go with you,” the uncle said.

“You’re going to need to undress,” Verona said to the nephew. “You’ll need to be centered, as focused as you’ve ever been. If you know how to meditate, you should begin now.”

Verona led the way into the back room where the materials for the transformation were stored. The catalyst she had prepared for her own ritual months before was etched perfectly in her now technologically-enhanced memory. To an ordinary human, the water was a completely harmless and inert liquid. Once one drank the catalyst, though, it signaled the nanotech in the waters to traverse the acolyte’s skin. The pool was chosen for the transformation because that route—transdermal exposure—allowed for slow, steady entry of the nanotech into the body, slowing the transformation of the cells to a survivable pace. Still, the process was excruciating, and the mind had to be of the sincerest and most disciplined disposition, committed to a life this young commando couldn’t possibly understand. Verona gave him little hope of surviving.

“This is a terrible idea,” she told the uncle as she prepared the formula. “Your nephew is unprepared for the trauma of the rite.”

“You’d better hope not,” his mechanical voice came back through the helmet.

“What you’re creating, you do not understand. There is a reason we are locked in this vault for five hundred years after the rite.”

“Yes. Big secrets. Keep working, and shut your mouth, Ana. If it hasn’t occurred to you yet, we followed you, which means we know where you lived. Your sister Dannissa still lives there, your parents as well.”

“I have already conceded. You do not need to threaten me any further. I am only speaking truth.”

“Speak less of it. Work.”

What he couldn’t understand was that his threat, a very human threat, had no punch to for Verona. She cared about the sect because the sect mattered in the abstract, as a force for humanity generally. It mattered almost nothing to Verona now whether these men returned to Charris and murdered her family. That family was already dead to her. Just as these men were—unless the boy survived the rite. The uncle would die in the water if he tried. He was too old. But the boy, if he lived, would come to understand humanity on a scale like the machines, in eons and hours, millennia and minutes.

She could see the young man seated out there on the deck beside the pool, cross-legged, shirtless, breathing. She shook her head and continued to work. He looked peaceful now, the warrior weapons discarded, the quiet of contemplation, the vulnerability of naked skin.

When she was finished, Verona led the uncle back to the pool. She sat across from the young man now, his eyes, which she remembered from her life before, they sparkled in the dim light.

“What was your name?” Verona said.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“You will cease to be who you were once you drink this. You must take a new identity and commit to it entirely. We practice this for weeks. I chose the name Verona, for the city where Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet. I chose it because the play is a beautiful tribute to love and the city takes no sides between the Capulets and Montagues. I hope to be as such for humanity when I rejoin them on the outside.”

“My name is insignificant. I come from a broken family of traders. My father is dead. My mother may as well be. My uncle is the only person who has ever cared for me.”

“You must choose a new identity. I would urge you to choose one that gives you hope, for you will need hope in those waters.”

“You must choose for me, Verona.”

“I cannot.”

“I need you to,” he said, reaching for her hand. “If there was ever any hope in my life, it was in you, Verona. Back on Charris. The peace in your eyes when you looked at that art.”

“Before you drink this, you must know that you will lose that, just as I have. I can have no feeling for you, and you will have none for me if you survive. I will be nothing more than an idea to you.”

“What if I love you?”

She shook her head. “Such feelings—empathy, love, desire—they will only be memories. Abstractions.”

“Choose a good name for me,” the nephew said. “Please.”

Verona searched her mind and remembered a story from her life on Charris. There was a small city on the northern plain called Aballi, and there was a man whose life had been a ruin until he was nearly forty years old. He learned to paint while incarcerated. Three of his works hung in the SILMAM, not for the novelty of his story of redemption but for the genuine merit of the work itself. The museum hung no signage beyond the artist’s name to identify the work. That name was Clem Otten.

“Your name shall be Clem Aballi,” Verona said. “Should you survive, Clem Aballi, your task will be to live up to that name and embody its meaning.”

“What does it mean?”

“That is for you to discover. Now you must undress.”

The young man smiled at the suggestion and looked Verona in the eyes.

“You will lose that human impulse too,” she said. “What you’ve come here for is powerful and does not come without an equal cost. Prepare your mind. You have never been tested as you will be here.”

Verona stood and presented the cup to the nephew. She knew that when he took it and drank, he was likely to die, but even if he didn’t, that term—nephew—would mean little to him if he emerged. If he left the vault in haste, without training or instruction on what he had become, he would suffer immensely and likely cause the world outside ceaseless troubles. She extended the catalyst to him nonetheless.

She watched as he drank.

“Calm your mind,” she said. “You must float in the water through the pain, and you must not re-emerge until you are certain you feel no pain. Otherwise, you will carry that pain with you all your days, which will be innumerable.”

He handed the empty cup back to Verona.

“Think on something that grounds you and gives you peace.”

“I know what to think about, Verona,” he said, looking her directly in the eyes.

Then he stepped into the water, fell backward and began to float. She returned the cup to the back room, with the uncle following loosely behind her.

“If you have any love for him at all, you will pray for him when the pain sets in,” Verona said. “He’ll need support.

“You seem to know him,” the uncle said. “You will support him.”

They were far enough out of earshot that Verona knew Clem Aballi couldn’t hear them.

“I will,” Verona said inching closer to the uncle. “You don’t know what you are unleashing. It changes you in ways you cannot possibly comprehend.”

“Close enough,” he said, raising his rifle. “We know exactly what you are.”

Verona walked around him, taking a wide berth as she stepped back toward the side of the pool, sitting and taking up a strong, steady pose, closing her eyes and beginning a long meditation.

“How long will this take?” the uncle said.

“Hours. Days. The process never ends, really,” she said. “Now be quiet and show some respect. Your nephew is dying.”

Over the course of the next several hours, Verona was mildly aware of people entering and exiting the pool chamber, exchanging information with the uncle—progress reports, no doubt on their theft of data in the floors below. She knew nothing of such things yet, but she expected there would be layers of encryption to break, trap doors, and empty pits to negotiate before any real information could be extracted.

Then, after nearly twelve hours, came the first cries of pain.

She remembered.

Verona felt nothing now, but she meditated through those memories. Empathy, as she’d said, was a distant concept, but she understood and remembered that it had meant something to her to feel the presence of her fellow acolytes poolside. She also knew the uncle, who hadn’t taken off his helmet, would be growing tired, hungry, and thirsty. Verona herself, just like her fellow acolytes in the agora, could go for days without so much as a sip of water. Soon, the boy, too, would be like her.

He was far stronger than she’d imagined. She had only experienced the passage herself, never seen another through it. She had a vague memory of hearing herself cry out as Clem Aballi did now—raw agony as each cell was transformed from the inside. For hours she sought peace at the side of the water, listening for his voice, hoping each moment that it would continue.

Time seemed to stop. She was unsure if she’d drifted into a trance or long into sleep. Verona had no idea how much time had passed.

There was a long silence. When she opened her eyes, the uncle was seated with his back against the wall. Through his helmet, Verona had no idea whether he was sleeping.

The young man was Clem Aballi now. He was standing in the water, looking out at her, his eyes clear, direct, piercing. He registered that she was aware of him now.

“What have you done to me, woman?”

She shook her head at him.

“You are no woman, though. And you would say that I have done it to myself.”

He looked over toward his commander. The man, so recently his uncle was clearly sleeping, for he hadn’t stirred since Clem Aballi moved in the water. Verona could tell what he was thinking.

“It will not matter whether you kill him or not,” Verona said.

“I have no feeling for him now, nor you, nor anyone.”

“Then it should matter little whether he lives.”

“Do you want me to kill him for you, Verona, for what he’s done to your sanctuary here?”

“He is dead already. It is the species that must live.”

“You recite those words from mere habit, Verona. There is no belief behind them, though.” Clem Aballi turned back toward her. “If I stayed here for five hundred years with you, would I believe in anything again?”

“Likely not if you don’t believe now.”

“Could I even care for you then, Verona?”

She shook her head.

Clem Aballi walked toward the edge of the pool, climbing the incline toward the pool deck until only his ankles remained in the water.

“He pretends this was ideological,” Aballi said to Verona. “We did this to steal illicit software. For money. If we caused some hell in the process, even better. It’s his turn now.”

“He is too old. He will surely die.”

“I don’t care!”

The shout startled the commander, who sat up suddenly. Even through his helmet, Verona could see that as he slowly rose to his feet, the commander was registering the change in his nephew’s bearing. He approached, holding the posture of a man confronting a deadly animal, a naked, raw, powerful force.

“Your turn, uncle,” Clem Aballi said, gesturing toward the pool. “You have no idea what awaits you.”

“He is weak,” Verona said. “He hasn’t eaten for over a day.”

“Prepare the solution,” the uncle said to Verona.

He approached Clem Aballi, putting his gloved hand to Aballi’s chin, gazing into those young eyes from behind his helmet’s face shield. “You have the look of a new man, nephew.”

Aballi turned his head toward Verona and smiled. She knew the look’s meaning, that he was man no longer.

“The liquid, girl!” the uncle shouted at Verona.

Aballi slapped the commander’s hand away from his face and struck his breastplate so hard with his bare fist that the senior commando’s feet came clean off the ground as he crashed to the deck three meters back from where he’d stood.

“Reverence, uncle, in your dying hours. Verona is a superior being. Never forget that.”

Verona could hear the older man gasping through the respirator in his helmet. She got up and walked to the annex. Verona was preparing to dilute the solution so it was ineffectual on him.

She could see them still through the window, across the pool deck, Clem Aballi, his movements definite and purposeful, almost robotic as he donned his clothing, the uncle, now helmetless, disrobing, looking decidedly smaller than Verona had imagined, his hair almost totally gray. He was wrinkled about the face—something Verona had not seen for over a year inside the vault where even those aged four centuries remained perpetually young.

The liquid was almost prepared when Verona heard a faint noise in the distance that carried through the walls. She thought it sounded like a gunshot.

Suddenly, outside by the water, the uncle rushed to pick up his helmet. There were two more shots, this time closer. The uncle ran for his nephew’s armor. Aballi just stood there, staring toward Verona.

The uncle returned with his nephew’s helmet, which he attempted to shove into Aballi’s hands, but the young man just let it drop to the deck.

“Come, son!” the uncle stated. “He’s loose.”

The shots continued to pop, closer each time to the chamber. Aballi continued to look toward Verona, only turning toward the exit when the uncle pulled at his wrist.

“We’re leaving!” the uncle said. “Forget about the girl.”

Clem Aballi turned one last time at the far exit of the room, pausing, and staring at Verona, before suddenly turning an running off down the corridor.

The gunshots had come from Eddis Ali. He had freed himself from the mental prison constructed by whatever AI was out there, hostile to their cause, directing these wayward men. Verona had understood her part in it almost from the time the young man had shown her his face—that somehow, they’d used her as the vector to carry some technological pathogen into the vault with her. They’d expected the order to call for help from outside when the virus became active and disabled Eddis Ali. Their enemies hadn’t figured on him being able to segregate parts of his mind in order to fight back against the neurological attack, though. Once a being like Eddis Ali was loose in the vault again, with the element of surprise, he’d soon killed one of the insurgents and taken his weapon. There was little the others could do but run for their lives after that. Four men got out: the uncle, two commandos who happened to be transferring data in physical drives at the time of Ali’s resurgence, and Clem Aballi.

Hours after the attack concluded, on the day of Clem Aballi’s transformation, Eddis Ali found Verona seated in quiet meditation by the pool, long after the higher acolytes had performed a full assessment of the sect’s losses. By then, everyone had been accounted for but Verona.

Eddis Ali had known from the look of the fleeing man that he had been changed, and he’d deduced, given her absence, that it had been Verona who’d performed the deed. He’d sought her out at the ritual pool.

“The test is always,” he said as he arrived at those waters, sitting his body down beside her, his face cast forward at the room’s reflection in the pool. “And there is never an easy answer.”

“I took my first breath today in your plane of existence,” Verona said. “I saw humanity change, not in minutes, but over thousands of years. I know that what escaped us today can never be brought back, Eddis Ali, but I am not sure  what I did was wrong.”

“I did not die, and I alive remained not; think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit, what I became, being of both deprived.”

She looked at him inquisitively.

“Dante,” Eddis Ali said. “Inferno, 34, in English, of course. You have given that boy a gift and a curse, and we will never know which will manifest. But this changes nothing, Verona. Our charge is the same as yesterday. We carry on.”

 “The young man asked me a serious question: Whose charge is it to decide what deserves to be bottled up in here, Ali?”

“There are some technologies that are so powerful, their very existence threatens to change the character of your species forever or end the human race entirely. One of those technologies is genetic immortality. And, it is certain, given the inevitable multitudes of people over time, someone will eventually elect to employ some tech which cannot be survived. Long ago we agreed to make that trade—a small piece of free will, if we can enforce it, for continuity of the human race as mortal beings. You still have much to learn here, Verona. It would seem we all do.”

“How’s your mind?” she asked Eddis Ali.

“More troubled than before but steadying. How’s yours?”

“I am learning that wisdom lies somewhere between awe and indifference, but I still have far to travel, Ali. I know that. In a few hundred years, if I’m lucky, I may discover which direction.”

“As it ever was, Verona.”

“As it ever was.”

In the months and years that followed, long after the glacial ice had sealed over the door once more, the fully vested devotees out in the worlds discussed the vault’s compromise and whether it was necessary to move their training grounds. Ultimately, it was decided to better fortify their defenses. No sign emerged across the Battery of the tech that had been stolen, nor did any of the devotees discover any trace of the men who’d violated their inner sanctum. For decades after the incursion, as Verona progressed through the order and the memory of the incident receded in intensity, she meditated deeply on meeting Clem Aballi again someday, somewhere in the vastness of the galaxy, long after she’d left the safety and structure of the vault.