Sentients in the Maze Read online

  Sentients in the Maze:

  by Chogan Swan

  Copyright 2016 Chogan Swan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, businesses, organizations, places and events are imaginary or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, corporations, entities or events is coincidental. This book contains adult situations and sexual themes, but save your money if you are looking for erotic titillation; it’s just part of the story, not the purpose. PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT CONTENT.

  Table of Contents

  Welcome!

  Chapter * Prelude (Demoness)

  Chapter 1 (Perchance to Dream)

  Chapter 2 (Bad date)

  Chapter 3 (Brave New World)

  Chapter 4 (A little repair work)

  Chapter 5 (A trip to the store)

  Chapter 6 (Plans)

  Chapter 7 (Home and Time’s River)

  Chapter 8 (Letters from home)

  Chapter 9 (Dancing the Charleston)

  Chapter 10 (A medical opinion)

  Chapter 11 (New Beginnings)

  Chapter 12 (Ties that bind)

  Chapter 13 (New Opportunities)

  Chapter 14 (A Growing Boy)

  Chapter 15 (Memories)

  Chapter 16 (Training)

  Chapter 17 (Better Together)

  Chapter 18 (SimSoc 2.0)

  Chapter 19 (Building Alliances)

  Chapter 20 (Loops)

  Chapter 21 (Ooh! That Smell)

  Chapter 22 (Family Reunion)

  Chapter 23 (Weaponized Sporotrichosis)

  Chapter 24 (Ambush)

  Chapter 25 (Race)

  Chapter 26 (Community)

  Chapter 27 (Best Laid Plans)

  Chapter 28 (Enemy Camp)

  Chapter 29 (Strange Bedfellows)

  Chapter 30 (Into Darkness)

  Chapter 31 (Darkness)

  Epilogue One (Jonah)

  Epilogue Two (HumanaH)

  Epilogue Three: Stopping a Disastrous Plan with Science: The Dynamics of Self-Interest

  Author's Dedication & Afterword:

  Appendix of Original, Uncut Chapters

  Chapter 3 (Original) — Brave New World

  Chapter 4 (Original) — A little repair work

  Chapter 5 (Original) — A trip to the store

  Chapter 14 (Original) — A Growing Boy

  Chapter 16 (Original) — Training

  Appendix Ends

  Welcome!

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  Chogan Swan

  Chapter 0 — Prelude (Demoness)

  Lynchburg, Virginia August 8th 1905

  Tiana signed the letter on each of its sixteen pages then folded it in a neat bundle and slid it into the oversized envelope. She stood, lifted her skirts and tucked the envelope into a pocket next to the longer of the two kukri knives strapped to her legs. The night air and the sounds of cicadas and tree frogs drifted in through her open window, along with the low voices of people in the street a block away. Moving to the window, she took a deep breath, her fingers caressed the mahogany window frame and its leaf patterned carvings. She loved this house, loved the combination of the painstaking artisanship in its details, its elegant architecture and the hidden science behind its design.

  From her vantage at the second story window, her eyes followed the path of the gas street lamps as they wound up Main Street and east down the gradual inclines of the banks of the James River. The sad whistle of the Northern and Western passenger special from Richmond, still a few miles out, drifted to her ears as it worked its way up the grade to Union Station.

  Then Edward’s cry from the basement changed it all.

  “Oh God no!”

  She heard his feet flying up the basement steps. Tense and quiet, he spoke as he came, knowing she’d hear him even if he whispered.

  “Tiana, message on the wireless telegraph. Men dressed in sheets have surrounded the Richmond office. They’ve blocked the exits and are burning the building. Jamie just now managed to send. He said they were going to make a break for it then the signal stopped. Twenty-three are still inside.”

  Tiana was already running for the basement, snatching the Borchardt machine pistol from the desk as she passed.

  She vaulted the stair railing to skip the final flight, and he met her at the basement steps. “Guard the basement door,” she snapped. “I have to launch the nursery’s independent cycle. Don’t let me get trapped down there.”

  She dashed down the basement steps to the concealed door, pushed the coded keystones and pulled the outer door open. The inner door was already sliding down the rails. She picked up the bag by the wall and followed the massive concrete block as it backed down into the crèche. When the opening widened enough, she slipped into the white, domed chamber and dropped the letter and the bag into the chest by the wardrobe then sealed its lid.

  Finished there, she bounded to the structure in the middle of the room. The nest, Edward called it. He said it looked like a huge weaverbird’s nest. Tiana—being much more intimately acquainted with its every detail down to the molecular structure—didn’t agree, but humans were always looking for patterns and similarities, no matter how tenuous. Her hands flew over it, adjusting nutrient bladders and feeder tubes, reprogramming the maturation cycle.

  Too much to do; too little time. If only she’d finished the updated memory crystal, but the old one would have to suffice now. No time to start a refresh—one way out.

  Finally, finished with the launch cycle, she paused for a second and put her hand on the branch, the cocoon-shaped parcel in the middle.

  What am I doing? Praying?

  Were Father William’s homilies taking root after all these years?

  She wheeled and sped back up the tunnel, slapped the code into the keystones to release the counter weight that would lift the concrete door back into place then slipped into the upper basement and closed the stone veneered outer door. The tiny gap in the mortar closed then disappeared as she ran her fingers over the edge where it met the surrounding wall.

  Tiana turned and leapt up the stairs. The relief of leaving the crèche was like a weight lifting from her.

  Edward stood at the top of the stair. He’d pushed the plantstand out of the alcove and took cover in the indentation. Back against the wall, a gun in either hand, he used peripheral vision to watch the hall in both directions. When she came sliding into the foyer, he glanced at her, pushing a lock of his sandy hair out of his face. His eyes were haunted.

  “Can you think of any reason we should change our emergency plans?” he said.

  She paused, listening. “The train is at the station right now. Once on it, we could move faster than any local threat, but there is nothing guaranteeing Thuggees won’t be waiting for us at the next stop. All the options down that path box us in too much.” She pulled the Borchardt from her waistband and chambered a round. “We already have saddlebags packed. Let’s take Snowfoot and Ranger. We can avoid the roads for a while.”

  Edward nodded. “Is there anything else we need to bring?”

  Tiana pulled a scarf from her pocket and tied it around her head. “No. Let’s go.”

  They crept back through the house, picked up their emergency bags from the pantry and paused at the kitchen’s back door.

  “Why a
re there so many people on the street at this hour?” said Tiana.

  “Miss Ferguson’s coming-out party,” said Edward, nodding toward the house west of them. “I had to decline most regretfully.”

  Tiana frowned.

  “What?” said Edward.

  “Let’s go . . . carefully.”

  Edward shifted the saddlebag slung over his shoulder to clear his preferred shooting hand. He flipped the Borchardt’s safety off and quietly eased the back door open.

  “Wait. Let me go first,” she said.

  “Your protective instincts—” he said, stepping through the door.

  Damn the man for a fool!

  She knew he’d been hit as soon as the cough of the suppressed rifle shot reached her ears. She reached out as he staggered sideways and pulled him back in the door. The metallic smell of his blood sprang into the air as he collapsed on the floor.

  “Why did you do that?” She dragged him away from the door and across the dining room.

  He gasped for air. “Because even you can’t dodge bullets in the dark, Tia,” he said.

  Thank God, still conscious.

  “The bullet went through. It’s not bleeding too badly,” she said, knotting her headscarf around the wound.

  “And where would we be if it were you wounded instead?”

  “Can you get to the hiding hole on your own?”

  “I can make it. See, good deeds are rewarded sometimes. If I hadn’t insisted on a hiding hole for the Underground Railroad, you couldn’t go out and clear the rascals out of our way. I would never have been able to do that on my own.”

  “Yes, yes. It was brilliant of you, getting shot like that. Now go!” she hissed, helping him to his hands and knees. Clumsily, moving like a three-legged dog, he worked his way toward the safe spot.

  Not stopping to watch him go, she snatched her shoes off and stripped out of her clothes in efficient ripping motions then crawled to the fireplace.

  Using a piece of her blouse, she reached up the flue and scrubbed soot onto the rag then wiped her face and hands with it until they were black as tar. The rest of her striped limbs and torso were already dark enough. She raised the holster, strapped just below her tail, to a more useful position in the middle of her back and pulled her knives from their sheaths. There was only one window in the house already open. Staying low, she skittered across the floor and back up the stairs to her room.

  Careful not to cast a shadow across the window, she moved to the opening and listened. She caught a few phrases.

  “Manushya-Rakshasi. . . Mahila Danaav. . . .”

  Hindi!

  They were talking about her.

  That confirmed her theory. The Thuggees had been recruiting below the Mason-Dixon line, probably through the Klan. She took a quick glance at the grounds twenty feet below her then spent a few moments processing the image in her mind—three targets visible. She gathered herself into a crouch and dove out the window, blades ready.

  Chapter 1 (Perchance to Dream)

  In the beginning there were images, sounds and sensations void of meaning. The clarity of self-awareness gradually coalesced into dreams.

  The dreams unrolled, taking on more meaning and color: nursing at her mother’s breast, learning to crawl then walk.

  Her first self-reflective thoughts spilled out.

  I am nii. I am female, remembering my life.

  Then she realized, it wasn’t her life. These were memories from the earlier branch. Unease began to grow as her sense of self clarified,.

  The dreams continued: now filled with long periods of peaceful community, the faces of friends, family, lovers; accomplishments that came with a full life. Deeper understanding developed; receiving the memories this way meant she was branching.

  The unease crystallized.

  There was only one reason she would be branching; the earlier branch was dead. That was why she lived.

  Without that death, she would not be here. There would not be a ‘her’ remembering events that had never happened to this body. Until the memory crystal began releasing its information, she had been no more than potential. That meant there would be a gap. She would never remember what happened after the earlier branch had planted the memory crystal into the chrysalis. She might never know.

  If she took an identity as an extension of her former self, she would be incomplete. The thought made her feel hollow. She didn’t like the blank—discontinuity. How could she cope with that?

  She chose.

  I will be someone new; I am born today.

  Perhaps starting over was better.

  It would be healthier as a new person but with inherited memories. She felt hopeful at the thought. And perhaps… It was possible, barely, that the earlier her still lived, somewhere far from her responsibility to—herself—this new self.

  Even as she decided, the memories continued to unfold. Now came a long period of strife and battles between the stars; planetfall to a primitive world; a time orienting to a new environment, the first partnering on this world then preparing the crèche and planting the branch—an emergency contingency. Finally, the thought as the earlier her finished the memory crystal,

  If you wake to this, you might be the only chance.

  The memory stream ended. For a time she rested, assimilating. She had been Tiana, a nii female. She was not sure who she was now. She slept. Her dreams were troubled.

  ~~~{}~~~

  “Our telemetry shows the escaping niiaH ship heading for this area.”

  The defense coordinator pointed to the three-dimensional star chart half-way between the two major galactic spiral arms that radiated out from the bar-shaped center where two minor arms branched. “Your ship’s memory core has all the information we have on the area.”

  He touched the chart again, increasing the scale as though that would help uncover the enemy’s hiding place. “Right now it’s not clear how the struggle is going in other sectors, but we’ve managed to lock the enemy forces in our sector into battle where we have the advantage and can eradicate them all. All but that one.... I’m sorry to send you alone on such a long and dangerous mission, but we have to eliminate them all and we cannot spare anything else.. Your host crew is loading now, You need to leave before the trail is too cold to follow.

  He touched her arm. “We’ve given you the best tracking system we could put together. We’ll stay in contact as long as we can to pass on any other information we uncover, but the rest of the task force will be departing for the battle with the parasites in two cycles. We must stop them. You might be the only chance to make sure this doesn’t start all over again.”

  ~~~{}~~~

  Waking hungry, she raised her hands, wiped the protective sealant and cocoon fragments from her face and opened her eyes. As she moved, the expended nutrient tubes disengaged from her arms with a series of light tugs as they fell away. The green phosphorescent globes in the crèche were dim, but she could see to move.

  She stood, wobbling at first.

  Looking up at the ceiling tiles made her wondered if the house still stood above her then she reached out to where the nearest globe revealed a rotary switch. She turned the knob and was not surprised when the bulbs in the twelve grease-sealed sockets failed to light. She remembered her earlier self had set the crèche to complete its cycle in ten decades. There was enough light to prepare to emerge. It was enough that she had survived so long.

  She sniffed the air. The passive ventilation system was working. Faint smells of the outside world filtered in, some familiar: roses, grass, magnolia—others not. The crèche would have finished its cycle near the end of summer. It was probably August 1995 Gregorian calendar.

  Her earlier incarnation had called this chamber the nursery. Wry amusement pricked her. Yes, her nursery had survived well. The room was a sixteen-foot circular dome. White ceramic tile floors and walls were intact and clean; all the seals against dust had held. The water tank was full. A shelf full of canning jars filled with d
rinking water—each containing a small silver ingot—occupied the east wall. Walking carefully to her supplies, she took a cotton towel from one of the sealed cedar chests and wiped the gel from her hands. Then she opened a jar and drank in a steady stream. She could feel her neural net awaken as her body hydrated. She put the jar down with a happy sigh. Her automatic reaction to satisfaction sparked a hope that all the hard-learned mannerisms she had acquired were still working. She smiled. Yes, that was the appropriate thing to accompany amusement. She wondered what her new face looked like.

  Next order of business was bathing; she unsealed a charcoal filter and screwed the canister into the water system then opened the valve and the vent to allow the water to run through the showerhead. The sound of the tank losing its vacuum seal assured her the water supply had survived uncontaminated through the decades. She waited for the water to come through the pipes and flush the powdered charcoal from the canister. She stepped under the water and stripped the gel from her dark skin. The next jar contained her favorite bathing soap. Memories awakened by the smell filled her mind as she scrubbed herself. It was good she was a new person; she would have felt the loss of the former life too keenly. It was still difficult to realize that everyone the earlier her had known was gone.

  The water sluicing over her body stimulated her skin’s sensory net. After a few seconds of enjoying it, she turned the tap off, stepped out of the shower and walked to the cedar wardrobe. She opened the doors, revealing the mirrors on the backs and a row of sealed sets of clothing. None of it would be in fashion, but it would be better than going out in nothing. Especially considering that, without clothes, she would never pass for human, even with any conceivable adjustments to her new body.

  It was still too dim for seeing fine details. She reached up to the chain that turned on the overhead light. The generator’s motor clanked then rose to a steady hum as the five-hundred pound weight that drove it began its slow descent from ceiling to floor. The emergency incandescent light began to glow. She would have five hours of light before she would have to lift the weight back to the top of the track.