2023-08-21

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The air is stuffy in the helmet. It shouldn’t be, I know there is an independent air supply, for use even when there isn’t outside air. Somehow, the helmet manages. My hands ache for the manual override, to open the visor, but can’t for the same reason audio, subvocal, and neural interfaces are disabled: I’m a prisoner. Currently being frogmarched on a marathon. Who knew that the hurt box was so far from the cells?

When the helmet does finally come off, I’m ready to fight. My arms are still restrained behind my back, and the collar is still at my neck, but I’m ready. I’ve always had sharp teeth. Picture my disappointment when there’s no-one around. Picture my surprise when I see that I’m in a garden. The cuffs drop to the floor and the collar follows. I turn but the door has already snicked shut, my fingers can’t grip the cold white ceramic, and there are no other imperfections in the surface. The walls snake all around, meeting the naked sky above, too bright, and perfect.

“Good afternoon, Lucia,” calls a voice. I look down the winding gravel path. Bushes, thick but trimmed, have parted to the touch of an old man. His face is a map of the plains, contours widely spaced. He should look much older; he should look dead.

I stifle my reply. A corpse can’t fight. Instead, I nod, and the man walks closer, moving forward in a simple gown. A trio of stars, the imperial sigil, are fixed to one side, silver, and glittering. Finally, he is close enough for me to see the eyes. At first, I’m surprised to see they are not gold. Then, angry at myself. Of course he wears contacts, he’s a thousand years old, but still only human.

“Will you walk with me? I have tea by the pond,” he smiles, before turning and walking away without my answer. Angry, I poke my tongue but follow anyway.

---

“I do it all from here, by the way,” are the first words from his lips.

First, he pulled out my seat and poured for both cups, before taking his own. He had looked at me for a moment, then spoke.

Again, I don’t reply. I consider not drinking, but my throat needs it to clear the memory of the helmet. Allspice comes first, then cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cloves. And worryingly, capsaicin, which makes me cough. At the laughter in his eyes I take another sip and this time I make it go down smooth.

“My personal blend,” he says, still smiling. “It helps get me through the day—”

The garden disappears behind a thousand shutters suspended in the air. As they flicker on, walls of text and imagery roll by. A large calendar sits under a central clock, reading the eighth month of two hundred years prior. The next event is scheduled in one minute and titled ‘splash’.

“—But that’s not important for now,” he says, banishing the feeds back to nothing. The returning light causes me to blink, and I go for the tea again. This time, it’s stronger but I blink away the tears.

“You’re not much of a talker,” he observes, after a time.

I nod and he sighs.

“This would be easier if you worked with me.”

I shrug and a small blur blows past, before bombing the pond. The man rises and makes for the water. A towel has appeared in his hands, and he collects something from the edge. Someone from the edge. At most eight or nine, she has the same dark hair as the man. Something in her face is familiar, but I can’t place it.

“Lucille, you know I don’t like it when you jump in the pond. It disturbs the fish,” he scolds her. “If you want something, you can just ask me.” Leading her over, the man introduces us. “Lucille, meet Lucia.”

“Hi miss Lucia I like your name can I have your cake?” she asks in one breath, eyeing my untouched chunk.

“Absolutely, if you pull him in with you next time.”

“Thank you miss Lucia I will try,” she giggles, taking the piece.

I watch her departure; the girl’s small form runs to a small grassy hill in the near distance. She spreads the towel and lies down in the sun to dry. Something nags me.

The man is looking at me, and I curse at myself. The girl broke my silence. I speak, making effort to curl the words.

“What do you want, Imperial Majesty? A rat? My friends know as much as me, but none of them are here.”

He nods, sips, speaks.

“No. And of course not, they’re dead.”

I know the words are true, and I wasn’t expecting different, but they hurt. Conrad, Eve, and the others. Dead for wanting a better world. So why aren’t I?

“What, then?”

“Who rules the Empire?” he asks, ignoring my dropped honourific.

I look at him and he shakes his head.

“Yes, and no. I’m the Emperor, yes. I sign the laws, I’m on the signs, I take the taxes, I control the fleet and own the stars. And yet, I don’t rule. Why?”

I deign to raise an eyebrow. My eyes flicker to the hillside and the girl. Her hair flutters in a faint breeze, reminding me of someone in a vague sense.

“The people don’t rule, Majesty. They’re not wearing the robes, on the signs, or naming the stars.”

He laughs, a rolling sound. Not particularly happy, but not contemptuous either. Just, present. A laugh given as it was expected. For the first time, I can read his eyes. They match the laugh.

“Of course they do, Lucia. But not most of them.”

He brings back some of the displays, causing a thin twilight. The calendar is still there, stuck on a day two hundred years prior. The other displays are coated in fleshy tiles.

“Here are my Keys. The five hundred people that matter. There’s the rich, the military and police, the bureaucrats and industrialists, and the diplomats. I need them to rule, and if I don’t keep them happy, then everything will fall apart. Why did you kill the Admiral?”

The sudden change from lecture to question throws me, and I tear my eyes from the grassy hill where they again had drifted.

“Because he’s a war criminal,” I say. “His blockade of New Mars killed a million people.”

“And saved the Empire,” he says.

“I don’t see the upside.”

“You don’t like the Empire? The government that keeps a trillion souls fed and watered?”

I look at his Imperial Majesty. Founder of the Empire, and its ruler for a thousand years. Five hundred worlds, and a rule of law that never changes: keep the poor in the dirt and the rich in champagne. Death for the dirt, and perpetual life for the gold.

“No, Majesty, I don’t. There are hundreds of billions like her, who will age and die for no good reason, except for your Empire,” I gesture at the hill.

He follows my gesture, then returns. Something has changed. For the first time, the emperor’s eyes show emotion.

“Inverse correlation is a startling thing,” he says. “A person can care for another so much that they can’t ever bare change. One can care for a small group, to a lesser degree. But what happens when the group becomes too large?”

I fill the trailing silence.

“They become what, nothing? You can’t be serious.”

He waves his hand.

“No, not nothing. Just numbers. That’s all they are. When the Admiral was given a choice between one or ten thousand, he chose one.”

“Ten thousand million deaths?! For letting New Mars secede?”

I can’t keep the disgust off my face.

“At least. Because today it’s New Mars. Tomorrow it’s Perethon. Next week it’s Goliath and next month it’s old Earth. Then they ally, then we have two empires, and then we have war. Real war.”

I don’t reply.

“But unlike the Admiral, I want that. So, thank you. I had hoped he’d fail, but the power vacuum in his place will do just as much damage.”

I look up. There is a strange light in his face now, real emotion shining through. Like the mask has been stripped.

“What?”

“Why do you think we restrict neural scanning?”

He glances briefly at the hill, at the young girl.

“Because… if everyone lives forever, you can’t control them.”

“That’s why the keys want it restricted,” he says, gesturing at the wall of faces. “More or less. And unfortunately, because they want it, I must want it. At least, officially.”

“Are you telling me that you both want war, and to make neural scanning public? I don’t get it.”

He drums his fingers and tells me something with his eyes, looking at the hill. She has finished the cake now.

And then, I have it. Lucille was the emperor’s daughter, dead for two hundred years. My eyes flick from the calendar to the hill, then to the emperor.

“Yes, she is my daughter. Exactly as she was,” he replies, holding my gaze hostage.

“How? Why?”

“We saved the first six years but lost the next twenty. And after that incident I couldn’t bear to lose her again.”

“So, what? You keep her young forever? To live the same day over and over?”

“Yes. If she is allowed to grow, she might do as she once did. Strike out, wipe her records, and work against the empire.”

At this, he slumps a little in the chair.

“My daughter’s rebellion and her death, New Mars, your assassination of the Admiral. A thousand cuts and a thousand more occur every day. The Empire is finished, Lucia. It was all over the moment Keys stopped dying and prevented the masses from doing the same. They’ve been changing for a millennium, but we’ve stayed the same. What good is a ruling class when they hold back the rest?”

He coughed and wiped his mouth.

“A war might have fixed things. It would have been a good excuse to give neural scanning to the people: why bother training a thousand new soldiers from scratch, when you can just bring them back?”

His words sit strange. Admission of fault from the Emperor should be impossible. He could never admit that he was wrong, and that my whole life has been fighting the good cause. But here he was, in front of me, while my friends died in the same fight.

“I had to kill your friends. Public appearances.”

“But not me, why?”

He learns forward.

“The empire is dead. But I can’t be one to lead what follows. And my—” he indicates the monitor of faces “—Keys won’t accept anything but my blood.”

The words burn in my chest.

“Are you adopting me?” Is all I manage.

“There is no need. I did not clone her only once.”

The truth strikes and I slump in my chair, silent. Of course I recognise the girl. She is in my image. She even has my name, almost.

He leans back, satisfied, and speaks.

“But the keys won’t have it. To them, you are treason personified. No matter what, your body will leave here cold.”

“No matter what?” I reply, realising I have been given an offer.

“Does your mind leave in that body?” he asks, gesturing at me. Then, he turns and looks at the hill. “Or in hers?”

His words strike me.

“You would kill her? So, that I could be groomed to take the throne, and take the ashes once the Empire falls?”

He shakes his head and looks at the girl on the hillside. I follow suit.

Two hundred years of the same day, never changing and never growing. The same fate of the Empire, for the last millennium.

“No. I would set her free.”

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