A Sinner's Eden

***Tirnanog, Aerie Flagship***

***Magnus***

I gave off a thoughtful snort as I studied the corpse hanging from the wall.

Zacharias had indeed kicked the bucket after two days of being hung upside down. My second sight told me in no uncertain terms that his heart had stopped beating and whatever electromagnetic field his body generated had dropped down to environmental levels.

From my point of view, he was dead as a rock – the thought had me chuckle inwardly.

In the end, nobody had spoken up in Zach’s defence. No matter how small the risk of his fantastical tale being a crafty lie was, as long as there was a risk, nobody would take the chance of keeping him around for longer than necessary.

I had to give it to him that he shared quite a lot of information about the enemy.

Personally, I never got the feeling this particular clone was truly on our side. As Zach forewarned in the beginning, the whole story felt like he was trying to use us for his benefit.

Like me, Vanya had been there most of the time and looked exhausted. Both of us had only stepped out for physical necessities. Mary and Felix shared shifts till it became clear that Zach was no longer in a state to flee even if he wanted to.

“Do you think this fantastical story he dished us was true?” I asked Hochberg’s matriarch.

“Yes,” she replied tiredly. “I couldn’t read his mind, but I believe what he told us was mostly the truth. At least I can’t see any obvious inconsistencies with what we can confirm. It’s the only explanation for the quite strange behaviour our enemies displayed. An intelligent tool-using alien though? That’s a big one to swallow. I have looked through all the records my clan has access to and we never encountered something on the level Zach described. At least nothing which can’t be traced back to human origin.”

“There are the drakes,” I pointed out. “They are quite intelligent and we can communicate with them.”

“There are also the night-terrors who display above-average reasoning capabilities. As you have seen, they also build social structures if their numbers are allowed to grow unchecked.” Vanya shook her head. “And while I admit what I learned about the drakes baffled and concerned me, there is no known creature of pure Tirnanogian origin which uses tools. I have spent a lot of time with Loopsfast and while he is a smart creature, he also seems utterly incapable of understanding complex mechanisms or math. That part of their mind seems underdeveloped.”

“Hmm…” I nodded slowly while I studied the UI chat which had been going on between Astra, Thalia, their parents, Mark and me.

I started it the moment Zach dropped the alien bombshell on us. Before, everyone had been wondering whether going public about Gaia was the right thing to do. Now, everyone involved was at least of the opinion that it was time to include all of the clan leaders in our little cabal of those who were in the know. “It might be time for some more mind-blowing revelations.”

Vanya frowned. “Is this about the impromptu meeting your elders called for?”

“Yeah.” I got out of my armchair and stretched. “I suggest you find a way to clear your head, because in two hours, what we have to share will widen your horizon. Oh, and I suppose Gurney will have a stroke. We should arrange for medical care beforehand.”

Vanya gave me a look of disapproval. “Then I will take a nap. Zach’s confession was already mind-blowing enough if you ask me.”

I halted before I left the cell. “If I may ask, why did you listen to the whole spiel when you don’t have mutations which allow you to pull all-nighters?”

The girl pursed her lips as if considering whether I deserved an answer to a stupid question. “Simple. It was a unique chance to profile one of the enemy’s leaders within a controlled environment. Even if my psychic abilities were of no use against him, that doesn’t mean I can’t form a mental model of his persona the old-fashioned way. It’s called profiling.”

With that she left the room, leaving me to wonder whether the girl had ever been something other than a ruthless leader of her clan.

Five hours later I found myself answering, as I found, inane questions about our interactions with the entity who called herself Gaia.

We had come clean with the clan leaders of Hochberg, Aerie, and Jeng. Giving them the gist of it had taken the better part of an hour and garnered all sorts of responses. From outright disbelief to careful questioning of our sanity down to buying into the credibility of the people on our side. There was a wide spectrum among the elders of Clan Aerie, while Hochberg and Jeng had yet to voice their thoughts in a meaningful manner.

“Is there truly no possibility that Zach’s clone might have some psychic ability?” Elder Casey Ortega asked. “What if he influenced you?”

As a member of the fifth strata and a stringent believer in the Church of Gaia, she was inclined to question the validity of our claims more than all the others.

“May I point out that I was the only one who visited Zacharias?” I replied. “Astra was at Mount Aerie all the time. Thalia and Mark were also never even close to the clone’s cell. Unless you suggest Zach might be able to influence people beyond the horizon, there is no chance he could have corrupted them with some imagined story to confuse us.”

“Still, with only four people being able to interact with Gaia, that puts you in a quite questionable place,” Elder Hayne Ortega pointed out. “If you are right, then this Gaia might have the answers to all our questions. Not only practical ones but also of metaphysical and moral nature. It puts a lot more power in your hands than most would be comfortable with.”

“A problem which will naturally solve itself with time,” Thalia replied. “As we already explained. Once more people get the ability to interact with her, our perceived status will lessen.”

Ahmad Gentry, head paladin of Clan Jeng shook his head. It wasn’t often that the huge bug-like man spoke up instead of Jeng’s ancient, so everyone at the table turned to listen. “It was made quite clear that even if this Gaia entity might have the answers to a lot of questions, her ability to interfere with our current problems is quite limited. The question we should ask is how this knowledge affects our stance towards Thich. I also want to say that we don’t blame Aerie for keeping Gaia a secret. Before Zach’s confession, they were unlikely to be believed.”

Gurney leaned forward. “So she is what is messing with my nanites? How can we stop her?”

“Do we want to?” Juliana Rumen questioned back.

“If I had to choose between Gurney no longer having control of his nanites or not, I would choose the former,” Mary interjected. “Though, I am not clear whether this Gaia is any better. There are some deeper considerations to think about here. I will need time to digest this.”

Gurney didn’t look pleased about having his brainchild taken out of his hands, but it was clear nobody gave a fuck.

Vanya raised her voice for the first time in this meeting. The matriarch had been unusually silent so far. “I need to clarify a few inconsistencies in your story. First, you said that Gaia was very helpful on multiple occasions and you believe she has humanity’s best interests in mind.”

I raised a warning finger. “So that we don’t misunderstand each other. We are the hardware she runs on. Gaia should at least be interested in our well-being as we are in taking care of our bodies. If not for extraordinary circumstances, I don’t think she'd care about individuals. Just as we don’t care about the fate of individual cells.”

The matriarch nodded slowly. “What I am driving at is her ability to interact with the physical world. You said she once woke you up to warn you of imminent danger?”

“Yes,” Astra affirmed from her seat next to me. “Though, the way she did it seemed to exhaust her greatly.”

“How did Gaia perceive that danger?” Vanya questioned. “I simply can’t imagine an entity as you describe being as limited as Gaia pretends to be. Even if Gaia is indeed a purely energy-based lifeform, an energy field which somehow gained sentience, she still needs at least some awareness of what is going on in the physical world. What I don't understand is why she would pretend to be lesser than she is.”

The matriarch tilted her head and suddenly invited the entire congregation to a UI chatroom before she began rapidly posting a complete transcript of the entire meeting so far, ending it with a peculiar message.

[Vanya Hochberg]: ‘The jig is up, Gaia.’

The left side of Gurney’s face began to twitch at that. “I have programmed the UI interface. Believe me, there is no way someone who isn’t even showing in the member list in chat could post a message.”

[Gaia]: ‘Evidently.’

And with that, everyone in the room went nuts.