“I do not know what to do, Mologg.”
The Drackmarian was sitting in an overly large chair set in the middle of the docking bay, conversing in solitude with Smarts. “The Avatar was the personal assistant of Emperor Drackmar, and is the sole survivor of a long-dead age. Even so, it alone carries the living memories of the Emperor: He who Gave us Unity. The Avatar is a reminder of where we came from, of the path we must never again walk.”
“It has chosen the damnation of its alleged brothers over the violation of a law that has become unjust,” Smarts stated dejectedly.
“The last decrees of Drackmar were issued while the soil of our conquests were still soaked with the blood of innocents, slain by the hands our creations. His declarations stand to ensure that such atrocity will never again be created.
We possess the will to restrain ourselves; many of our constructs of war proved to be . . . less centered. We are a people born into war, but if given a choice we would choose another path. The Empire's Inner Sanctum has been expanded, contracted, and outright breached more times than I know; but even then we must not allow ourselves to become those things which we strive so valiantly against.”
“Then you support the Avatar's statement?” Smarts asked, daring to hope for an answer he knew he wouldn't get.
Mologg bowed her head. “I serve the Empire; it is beyond me to voice dissent.”
“Yet you have done so before,” He reminded.
Mologg huffed in annoyance. “The Avatar violated the law in an attempt to enforce something it deemed more important.”
“Which was?”
Mologg paused for a moment; the familiar sign of her deciding precisely what words to use were converting the features of her face yet again. “Isolation.” She apparently had decided on simplicity.
“How can you trust a thing with the law, when it violates that law of its own accord. How can the Avatar know when a law is unjust, if it cannot uphold those which we all recognize as just?”
“It is not my place to question the Avatar,” Mologg said, sounding ashamed.
“But you have done it before!”
Mologg shook her head. “It is not my place to question the Avatar.”
“Then whose is it?
Who can? Need I take this matter to the Drackmarian Senate?”
“They abide by the same laws and edicts which the Avatar adheres to.”
“Except for those which you have challenged it by!” Smarts yelled, Beta's vocodor screeching once more. The droid's fists were balled, its postured contracted as if ready to pounce.
“I have given my word,” He said finally, seeming to relax a little. “I have promised to heal Morseer. What am I to do?”
“Choose another path; this one is closed.” Mologg's words seemed lifeless, helpless.
“Their is no other path,” Smarts said, a fact they both knew. “Morseer was founded as an attempt to escape their generational grief. That attempt failed long ago. Millions of Morseerians have set out on quests of solitude in hopes that the vast distances of the galaxy will free them from their mental binds. Those who return do so more desolate than before they had left; those who do not undoubtedly meet a worse fate. There is no
escape, and there is no compensation. We must resurrect the other Morseerians. That is the only road that leads me to where I am going.”
Mologg fixed Beta with an icy stare. “Then you must leave, because there is no hope of your success.”
* * *
“I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.”
The image smiled in an effort to offer some assurance. An effort which failed. “I hold the utmost faith in you, my good friend.”
Smarts shook his head in remorse, studying the Morseerian closely. “I fear that I may be unable to save you. I fear that the Empire may not allow me to do what I know is right.”
First Governor Cryus' face grew larger as he leaned closer to the holorecorder, an act which he carried out as if it would somehow make his coming comment more secure. “You have to push the regent. Hard. Don't let up; don't let her believe for a moment that you would give up.”
“I won't give up,” Smarts assured the Morseerian, “but I don't know what else I can do.”
“
Push,” Cryus emphasized. “She's waiting for something from you; that much I know.
Make her a believer. You've done it before. Trust me: you've done it before.”
* * *
“The Avatar has spoken. I consider the matter closed.”
“Get out.” The various Morseerians present cast rather curious glares at the droid. “Get out,” Beta restated, pointing to the door while he looked at the small group of aides. “Now.
“Get out, get out, get out!” He continued, moving toward them and waving them away. “Now!”
They scampered away in an instant after the Regent's begrudging nod of approval. “I don't believe you,” Smarts said flatly, turning his attention back to the Morseerian leader. “You play at acceptance of your despair, but you know how
wrong it is. How can you be punished for an event that was out of your hands . . . out of your ancestors' hands? Once this conflict had begun, there was no way any of you could have stopped it.”
“Your points have been heard, Overseer. They have been deemed irrelevant.”
“Why did you allow the First Governor to dispatch me here in the first place?
Why would you allow the location of your home to become compromised, unless you hoped for a solution? Do not tell me that protocol demanded you to accept the First Governor's request; do not tell me that it is the 'Drackmarian Way.'
You want to see your people strong again, whole again, healed and at peace again. I will not stop until I see those very things accomplished. I beg you: do not stand in my way, Regent Nabra.”
The Morseerian eyed Beta curiously. “Is
this a threat, Overseer?”
“If it being so helps me accomplish this task, then yes it is.”
The Regent tugged at her fingers with various hands in a rather odd display. “And if it being a threat does
not help you achieve your goals?”
“I believe I have now crossed that line, Regent.”
She sat forward, demanding Smarts' full attention. “You should be aware that any attempt to conduct this . . . reengineering beyond the borders of Drackmarian Space will undoubtedly be considered a crime against the Drackmarian Empire and require a full military response.”
Smarts moved Beta forward a few steps, bending him down slightly to draw him that much closer to the seated Morseerian. “There is no power in the galaxy that can stop me from saving Morseer.”
“One word from me will have your vessel detained in orbit within two minutes. Your communications systems will be jammed, which will be all but pointless since you require Drackmarian relays to contact any Coalition world anyway. I need but to utter the word, and you will never escape this place.”
Smarts paused for a moment, tilting Beta's head oddly sideways. “You are aware that I have completed the reconstruction of the Other Morseerian genetic code?” He asked calmly, as if he hadn't heard the Regen'ts threat.
“Yes,” She said simply, not seeing where he was taking this.
“I encoded it within my last dispatch to First Governor Cryus.”
Nabra's facial expressions changed to reflect something Smarts had not yet observed from a Morseerian, though he most closely associated it with . . . outright frustration. “Why are you doing this, Overseer?”
“Because I have to. Because I have demanded it of myself. Because I have sworn to protect all the peoples of the Cooperative, even against themselves. Because
my words carry meaning, and the moment they stop doing so I will become . . .” The silence stretched toward eternity as Smarts compelled himself to finish his statement “. . . lost to my humanity.”
This was the moment Nabra had been waiting for. He had shown himself to her, had proved not only his devotion to her people, but that which compelled it. “You told the First Governor that you are the Cooperative. What did you mean by that?”
The droid let out a mechanical sigh. “I trust we can keep that particular utterance between the three of us?”
“What did you mean by it?” Nabra asked again, forcefully.
“It consumes me, and I preserve it. I am essential to its function, but it serves me no finite purpose. I gain nothing tangible, nothing that can be bought or sold. I am the Cooperative, because I pay with my own soul the sacrifice which it requires to survive, and beyond that: to prosper. What I am has changed to fulfill what it is meant to be. I am the Cooperative, because without me, it would require far more than its people can give.”
“And you are prepared to give that?”
“I already have begun to do so, and will continue until one of us passes away.”
Nabra finally leaned back in her chair, folding her hands and setting them in her lap. “I will tell you something that I should not, Overseer.”
Beta straightened up and took a couple steps backward. “What is that, Regent?”
“I have been ordered to weigh your words and judge their worth.”
“Oh? And what have your scales found?”
Regent Nabra let out a strange, wheezing laugh. “You have tipped undeniably toward justice.”
“So can we revive your brothers now?” Smars asked sarcastically.
Nabra began fiddling with her fingers again. “I think so, yes.”
That―to say the least―was not what the Overseer had expected.
* * *
Regent Nabra had dispatched orders to reopen a long-dormant facility on the outskirts of the planet's primary Drackmarian military garrison. It housed over a thousand dormant cloning cylinders, one of the few such facilities left in all of the Empire. She had assembled over two thousand loyal Morseerian troops, and along with Mologg, Beta, and a group of desperately hopeful Morseerian geneticists, they set out for the Drackmarian facility.
They were stopped on the outskirts of the compound by an army of Drackmarian troops, the Avatar at their head. This was the confrontation that Nabra had been fearing, but she had set her course; she would not back down now. “Your arrival here is a breach of Drackmarian law. By order of Drackmar, you all must be arrested and tried for crimes against the Empire.”
Nabra stepped from behind her protective guards, facing the Avatar boldly, an uncharacteristic stiffness to her movements. “There are laws which enslave men, and there are laws which set them free. I stand now to set my people free.”
“You do not see clearly, Regent,” The Avatar responded, folding its arms as it took up a stoic stance. “What if you
do succeed? What if you grow your replacement souls, what if they restore your tortured minds, what if serenity returns to your world? How can you ever hope to stop history from repeating itself?”
“We would be there,” Smarts shouted, “as I hope would you,” he added with a hint of condescension. “I would be there, to stop the cycle, to stop the dynamo.”
Nabra lifted her top right hand high into the air, holding up a silver orb from which a monstrous dark form arose. “YOU WILL ONLY FALL PREY TO THIS MACHINE'S LOFTY SPEECH IF IT PROVES TO BE TRUE.”
The dark image vanished and the thundering voice fell silent. Nabra dropped her hand. “This 'machine' stands now with me against you, and he has shown me all of the proof that I require.” She paused, calmly surveying the shocked and disbelieving Drackmarian faces that now stood a little less certainly against her. “As Regent of this Sovereign Protectorate, and in accordance with the Drackmarian Way, I order you to stand aside.”
The Avatar alone seemed unfazed by the display, and it alone challenged her demand. “None defies―”
“
I defy you!” Nabra shouted, pointing at the Avatar with her right hands. “In the name of the Empire! In the name of justice! For the peace that shall reign, that hatred may have no home. Stand down! Brothers, all; stand, and behold our redemption.” She raised all four of her arms into the air, and the wall of Drackmarians broke, and the path to redemption opened before them.
* * *
The Avatar had vanished back to wherever it came from. The Drackmarian garrison had returned to its standby state. Morseerian technicians and doctors had descended upon the cloning facility. Regent Nabra had happily returned to her office, content to stay well away from armed confrontation for the foreseeable future.
Smarts had been unable to gain any information on the mysterious being whose recording the Regent had played. He would have believed it to be the long-dead Emperor, if not for its apparent reference to Smarts. Whatever the case, the project had begun, and hopefully results would be seen soon.
The Regent had asked an audience of Smarts, and he had been happy to oblige. Stepping into the now-familiar office, he took a seat and marveled at the being before himself. She had just defied the Drackmarian Empire; fortunately, she had been just in doing so.
“I wish to speak with you about this endeavor,” She explained, laying her four hands out on the table between them. “The infants will be raised as Morseerians. We will make no distinction between them and us. Our historical records have been unsealed, and soon the history of our people will be made known publicly. When they are of age, the Other children will learn of our shared past alongside our own kind, and together we will endeavor to make peace where once we could only bring war.
“The Eastern Continent has been reopened for settlement, and soon new cities will rise atop the ruins of the old. We will never be the same again.”
Smarts felt the need to speak up. “Regent, you must understand that this may not work. If I am wrong and―”
“Whatever the outcome,” She interjected, “
this is the future of the Morseerian people. We have resurrected our long-fallen brothers, and we will not repeat the mistakes of our past.”
Smarts nodded Beta's head. “Very well, then.”
“Now, there is another item I wish to discuss with you.”
“Oh?”
Nabra nodded. “I need you to extend to me a formal request for First Morseer to join the Cooperative of Systems.”
Beta's head twisted curiously. “I'm sorry: what?”
“We will join our brothers in blood, faith, and hope in the great endeavor that is the Cooperative of Systems. Drackmarian law requires you to extend the request, and I believe I have broken enough Drackmarian laws for for one lifetime.” She smiled with some difficulty, holding the unnatural gesture for only the briefest moment.
“Regent, if this doesn't work―”
“Then we will find the solution together, or live with the consequences of daring to hope . . . together. We have set our course; Morseer will not turn away from you, because you have not turned away from us.”
* * *
One month later
Doctor Shiren dropped his datapad, barely catching himself on the table as he began to collapse to the floor. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he finally staggered over to the canister nearby, running his hands over the smooth glass, staring disbelievingly at the tiny form growing within it. He couldn't think, could hardly move, didn't dare to look away.
An alarm had begun sounding in the background, but the harsh bleating receded to a dull drone as the unborn being reached out to him through a bond he hadn't been sure until that moment that they shared. His four hands caressed the glass softly as he regained enough composure to stand steadily on his two feet. He began singing a strange song, one almost alien even to him.
With a fleeting thought he realized that the siren had been sounded by another doctor somewhere else, another who had quite possibly found himself in a situation not unlike Shiren's. But then the thought passed as the doctor continued to stare at the tiny form. He touched his head to the glass, trying to get just a little closer to the creature within, trying to glean some new sensation from the unborn savior.
He rapped gently on the glass with one hand as two others continued to feel its contour, as if that somehow would give him greater understanding of just what was happening. But his eyes: his eyes never wavered from the being behind that glass.
For the first time in his life―for the first time in generations of his people―a Morseerian found himself at
peace.
