Chapter 156: And if I say no?

Jelly’s words hung heavy in the air.

James glowered up at the small robot, but he felt rock by the Animus’ revelations. If they were true. But how could he contest his account? How could he argue with a creature whose motivations and goals spanned millennia, who could see across galaxies, who could take in all of humanity at a glance and find it lacking?

An ornery defiance arose within him.

He couldn’t argue with the Eluthaarii.

But he could refuse it, deny its twisted logic, its overpowering argument.

“You know,” he began, figuring out what he was about to say even as he said it. “That would all be much more impressive if you guys hadn’t come down from your infinite galaxies to waste time scrabbling in the dirt with us poor monkeys.”

“Ah, yes. Now we come to the crux of the matter. How I love the thrust and play of this moment! Resentment, anger, shock: revelation, a broadening of the scope, cruel largesse. More shock! Confusion, demands for explication. Honorable tolerance, wounded altruism, patience and greater revelations. Silence! Profound silence as everything is contextualized. Then, hopefully, a more modest and humble appreciation, tenored by a hunger, a yearning for immortality, for greatness, for literal apotheosis. Oh yes. That’s often, when all is said and done, what this ends up coming down to. Humanity, Zorathians, all you meager mortals hunger in the depths of your squalid little souls to become the stuff of stars. Stellafication. Emancipation from your fleshy little bodies, so prone to sniffles and colds, cancers and being ruptured. To live more than the scope of your allotted years, to count your existence by the contractions of entire stars and not by mere revolutions around your quaint little star. Power!”

Jelly’s voice had risen to an exultant shout. “Yes! And why not? Why should you not be one of the appointed? Surely you are, if not more deserving, then no less deserving than any other? Why shouldn’t you expand, encompass more, swim into the void and stare upon sights that no human has ever imagined?”

Jelly paused, considered.

“Though that new telescope of yours is quite nice. But still, the images it is capturing is paucity itself! You cannot imagine how delightful it is to swim through nebulae like a dolphin through the waves. To stretch forth your hand and shelter entire planets while you cast others into shadow. And your mind! Complexity itself! Yes, you would remain yourself, but yourself magnified a million billion times. A curator, a lover, a tender of eternal gardens. With one garden in particular being especially noteworthy: that from which you sprung. Do you have any idea how satisfying it is to act as a caring god for your own kind?”

“That spot’s already taken,” growled James.

“By whom? Oh! You mean God. Your Catholic God, yes? Quaint. Also? Weird. Have you never stepped back and considered how weird it is to eat the flesh and blood of God’s Son every weekend? Transubstantiation. Get outta here!”

James lowered his chin. “You can mock Him all you want, but it changes nothing.” Never had James considered himself deeply devout, but now, faced with the yawning abyss of universal totality, he grasped for familiar truths. “Nothing can replace our Creator.”

“Oh come on.” Jelly sounded exasperated. “I mean, yes, faith is a key offshoot of our gift sixty millennia ago - see the lion-headed men your ancestors worshipped - but enough already. Trust me. I’ve been around the block, and I’ve never met or seen credible evidence of an actual deity. The Zorathians worship Zorav, a world turtle so vast that all the land and sea are but a mote of dirt in its eye. Do you think Zorav is real? Of course not. Every other species out there has gotten it wrong. Only you guys - and not all of humanity, either, just your particular sect of Catholics - got it right. C’mon.”

James clenched his fists. “There’s no point in arguing with you.”

“You’re right there, because I’m right. I mean, c’mon James. The Nemesis appeared as demons because that was what the System deemed the most evocative appearance of your species’ greatest foe. Nothing else came close. You summoned ‘angels’ for the same reason. Your ‘Benedictions’, your ‘Miracles’ - all artificially chosen for maximum impact. And honestly, if your God was around, wouldn’t he have intervened by now? Before we Eluthaarii could wipe out 95% of your species?”

James stared at Jelly feeling humiliated, furious, and only more resolved to defy the Animus.

“Fine, fine. Let’s drop that thread. If your God’s around, cool. He’ll either do something or he won’t, but we should proceed regardless. So. You know what I’m going to offer. Apotheosis. But see, I know you. You’re the rare and selfless monkey who actually doesn’t want power for its own sake. So let me give you a pitch that might actually appeal, yeah?”

“I know what you’re going to say. Patronage of Earth. Taking care of humanity, of my friends.”

“Hey, that’s right. Well done! But let me finesse that. If you say no, we’ll be disappointed but we’ll survive. In fact, we’ll just swap the next most qualified candidate into your place. We want quality and not quantity, so if we walk away from this reaping with five new Eluthaarii, well, grand. So, think on that: your saying no just means you’ll die, it won’t prevent us from getting what we want.”

“Excuse me,” said James with a dangerous smile. “Is this meant to be a motivational speech? Because if so, it sucks.”

“Hmm. All right. I’m not finished. The heart of Patronage lies with your being able to oversee your species’ recovery from the System. That means being a benevolent god. You will be dedicating the vast majority of your presence and self to what’s happening beyond this solar system, but will still be able to leave enough of James Kelly to participate, protect, nourish, and encourage humanity to get back on track. But to do it as you think best. To avoid making the same mistakes. To be responsible caretakers of your planet and its resources. To take care of the poor and weak, to prevent the accumulation of power and wealth in the hands of the few. You can remake entire cities, fold empty ruins into the ground, spread a new gospel, or - not. You can be as hand’s off as you like. Block the occasional incoming asteroid, or just step in to prevent wars or the outbreak of disease. It’s up to you. But the one thing you can guarantee is that humanity will not just recover, it will bounce back like never before. But with lessons learned. Think of what you could fix, James. Equality. Justice. Bountiful energy for all. A new golden age following this brief interregnum of violence and terror.”

James fought the urge to visualize what Jelly was offering.

To use limitless power to heal and repair. To guide humanity. To nurture Nature and biodiversity back from the brink of a sixth global extinction. To prevent the worst instincts of humanity from ruining everything again.

To create an utopia.

“Also,” added Jelly, “I’ll make sure your Crimson Hydra buddies are alive and well. Jessica, Colonel Hackworth, the whole crew. Everyone happy and settled in for long and productive lives.”

“And if I say no?”

“Well. You see. You don’t have to be happy to cross the finish line. You just have to cross it. Being Eluthaarii is its own argument. Nobody becomes one without quickly changing their priorities. So I’d be willing to be pretty nasty to encourage you to agree.”

“Nastier than you’ve already been?”

“We’ve been impersonally nasty thus far. But that could change.”

James narrowed his eyes.

“We could, say, summon each and everyone you care about and kill them before your eyes. Believe me when I say we can kill you humans in spectacularly horrible ways. We’re talking mind break, then time reversal, then to mind break, etcetera, etcetera. I mean, I don’t even want to go into it, but making them think it’s you that’s doing it to them…” Jelly trembled. “Yuck, yeah? But pretty matter of course. Question is whether you have the fortitude to watch them all die, or how many it’d take before you changed your mind.”

Revulsion curdled James’s guts. He closed his eyes and fought for calm.

“It’s such an easy choice. And being an Eluthaarii is grand! The ascension is Reservoir Cube fueled, as you can imagine. But we’re not talking one or two. We’re talking the millions upon millions that we’ve been harvesting in this sector since the 1940’s. The process is complicated, but we’ll handle the details. All you need to do is, at the key moment, will your ascension. You’ll permanently change the very laws of the universe as they pertain to you, allowing you access to simultaneity, pan-dimensional presence, and a pretty sweet amount of temporal traversal. There’s no real point trying to explain it all, you’re too limited to understand, but trust me, it’s a trip.”

“I have to will that power to make me a god?”

“Yeah, we can’t force it on you. Hence all this convincing I’m doing right now. Once you agree, you’re given a metric boatload of raw power, enough to extinguish entire stars, and then presto-pronto, you will yourself to become a god. Done. All that power gets used up, but you’ll be able to harvest ambient power from then on, so no problem.”

James stared at the ground.

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“So what do you say?” Jelly bobbed in the air. “You in? Once we elevate you we’re going to make the sales pitch to two others and then we’re leaving this corner of the Milky Way.”

James glanced at Serenity and the others. They remained frozen, expressions locked in place.

“There was never a way to win, was there?”

“Hmm? Win? Against the System? No, of course not.”

“I thought, in the beginning, that we could.” James smiled softly. “That if we played our cards right, were ruthless enough, organized and used the best attributes of humanity, we could level up fast enough to defeat the demons.”

“Meh, not possible. The System is adaptive. The faster the target species levels, the quicker it accelerates its own program. You can never get much of an advantage.”

“Which is why I thought cheating would do the trick.” James shook his head. “Stealing the Reservoir Cubes. Breaking free of the Pit. Using the Bifrost - the portal key - to contact other alien races.”

“To be honest, that’s exactly what we hope for from a target species.” Jelly sounded almost chummy. “Occasionally we get species’ that just chug along, trying to level, to do everything the System asks of them. They never do very well. By the time the Pits open up they’re almost completely wiped out, and they never really get past the low 20’s in the Pit. Sometimes we’ll elevate their primary warrior, but really, it’s disappointing all round. No creativity. No thinking outside the box. And that’s what we need from Eluthaarii. Our real enemies are - I mean, man - they are vicious. You gotta bring your A-game out there amongst the stars. Just following orders won’t cut it.”

“So you were happy when I used the Light Eternal to crack the node. Meladrix tried to convince me not to. She attacked me thereafter.”

“Yeah, Monitors, what can you do? They take their jobs so seriously. Their job is to tempt you off the path and then try to prevent your leaving it. A fine line to walk. Meladrix is really great at her job. She had a huge impact on you. I love how she took Jessica’s image. What a hook. Got right under your skin.”

“Is?”

“Oh yeah, we brought her back after you killed her, told her to chill out. She did a really stellar job. And yes, we were thrilled when you grabbed the Cubes. Only one in four target species ever manages that one. So rare, but not all that rare.”

James felt a morbid curiosity. “And breaking into the backrooms behind the Pit?”

“Now that’s where you really shone. I’ve been meaning to ask you. What inspired you to summon your demiplane in the closing portal?”

“Instinct, I guess.”

“And that’s why we love you, James. That instinct. When push came to shove, you always knew which way to jump. Since we’re being candid with each other, when did you figure me out? That limited version of Kames Jelly felt quite hurt at being left behind.”

“It just came to me. After dealing with Nathrax. That we couldn’t trust anything given to us by the System, including you.”

“Smart. Love it. And then dumping all the angels. Interesting move. But it hurt you in the long run.”

James felt almost clinical, amused, numb. “We wanted to clear the backrooms.”

“Backrooms. Ha. Cute name. Well, you did, but in doing so you dumped 2,800 points. The Zorathians could have recovered those. You’d have bumped your Arete and Death Attack to 4,812. Your fully charged Death Attack would have been double what it is now. Enough that you could have killed the Seraph in half the time.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered,” said James dully. “This was all still part of the game.”

“Well, no, this isn’t supposed to happen. Almost never does. To break into an ever-collapse facility and kill a Seraph? That’s fabulous. Sure, we Eluthaarii would have caught up with you regardless, but if you’d killed the Seraph before it could have alerted us, you might have pulled it off. Though of course there’s the snafu of there never being more than five Reservoir Cubes in here at a time due to the Seraph teleporting them to a safehold. But still. Serious kudos on this little stunt. Just affirms everything we think about you. James, I know you’re not susceptible to flattery, but believe you me when I say you’re a real catch.”

James stared sourly at the Anima. “Thanks.”

“Well, good chat. You’re a top candidate. That Death Attack, managing to break in here, killing our Seraph. Astounding. Speaking of.”

The slaughtered spider began to glow. A second later it rose into the air, its abdomen healing over, legs twitching, head reconfiguring itself as all its eyes restored themselves to health.

James clenched his jaw.

The seraph bowed low.

Greetings and gratitudes | Humble apologetics | Awe and fear

Jelly ignored it, and the Seraph flew up to hover over the dimensional spindles where it busied itself in restoring production lines.

“Right. That leaves us with one final item. What’s it going to be James? A big old ‘yes’ and a ‘welcome to the team’, or the start of some brutal, trauma-inducing persuasion routines that’ll make nobody happy? I’ll start on Jessica, by the way. Teleport her here, tell her the worst possible version of what’s going on to really amp up the betrayal, then assume your form and personality as I get to work while you watch, invisible.” Jelly shuddered. “Nasty stuff. Shall we skip it?”

James stared at the ground. His eyes felt dry and sandy, his body trembled with impotent rage, and he didn’t know if he wanted to scream or sob.

He thought of the billions of dead. The screaming crowds. The pain. The massacres. His lost companions. Laney. His girls.

How it had all been futile all along.

How they’d never even had a chance.

James looked up at Jelly. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

“Sweet!” Jelly did a little pirouette. “I knew you would. You’re a smart guy. And who doesn’t want endless power? I know I did. It’s the ultimate salve. Don’t worry James. In a few moments all your anger and pain will wash away. This is going to be the beginning of a beautiful eternity.”

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