The Case of Arog Bine
G.J. Morbidelli
[2198 Earth Standard (ES), November 15\
The EGS Helium4 gnat-class fleetweaver\
crash-landed unexpectedly on route\
to mission destination: Phage System\
Object retrieval was successful\
Object delivery is incomplete\
Repair time estimate: Approximately 250 years ES with full-auto recovery lockout override engaged\\
Failsafe switch killed\
Object delivery timetable: Still possible.]
We give you the world, which has been determined to be Arog Bine of Ovata System, and for that you are hereby indebted to The Earth Government. It is your duty to see the honorable mission of returning the object to Phage System upon completion of the Helium4 repairing cycle estimated to end year 2448 Earth Standard (ES). Failure to complete the mission will result in a court-martial.
Yeah, that was it.
It was our creation story. Two notices. And they were written there, etched in black stone behind the glass carapace of the ancient Shrine.
“Armoctapoe!” a voice called my name.
It was Windsley Adams who said it. His daddy called him, “Winds.” But for whatever reason, everyone else called him, “Windsley Adams,” and with nothing for short.
Sternly Wincing Adams, his father, was a real shithead. One of those honor, and The Mission types. I feel kinda bad saying that now because I’ve had to kill the bastard, but that’s how I feel, and it stands to show I cannot be persuaded. Too late now anyway. Way too late.
I guess I feel bad for the kid. Sorry, Winds, if you’re still out there. You deserve to have your father with you.
Of course, I’m still a kid too.
Anyway, here comes Windsley Adams, the buffoon, tromping through the vines and trampling over the plump, red pilloweeds. Well, “Armoctapoe!” he shouted—that’s me remember? I don’t have one of those funny, Earth two-names.
Dead Sternly Wincing Adams used to say, “Why’d you go and name your kid a name like that? Armoctapoe. It sounds like a damn maroon.” I suppose he was right about that. But names like mine weren’t uncommon anymore, even at the academy.
I grabbed Windsley Adams by the collar, locked my teeth together in that special way and hissed, “Shhhhut…the fuck…up.”
We weren’t supposed to be there. We had snuck into the academy that night for some other stupid shit, but then I snuck away from him to look at the Shrine in the courtyard.
It was a narrow black pyramid, three meters tall and encased in an indestructible glass. Nothing nice grew around it. Nothing mean neither. Just ugly dirt and the bitter green and gray fungi that comes with it back on Arog Bine.
The boy was chewing on cud spurs. He was eight Earth Standard. I was eleven then. “We better go,” he sniveled. He was right, the coward. So we did. That was my first time alone with the Shrine, and I had terrible dreams that night.
When you’re a kid on Arog Bine, it’s hard to tell if you really believe The Mission or not. It must have been different for the generations before us. It was probably easier to believe in it then. 2448 didn’t loom around the corner the way it does knowing it’ll be in your lifetime. They had probably believed in it less. They could afford to not think of it always. But then again, the further back you go, the stricter the academy and austerity laws were.
It was hard to tell any of the so-called, true stories apart from the so-called, fake ones. I mean, I’m supposed to believe we’re all from outer space and there’s other worlds with other people? We had just… lost… contact? We can just go fly to them? But also, we can’t …yet? And I suppose I’m expected to just know at that age the tales of the Bolrembim are too farfetched to be true. What was the difference? No. Either everything is possible, or it’s all bullshit. And calling it all bullshit felt too optimistic.
The Bolrembim were said to be the native people of Arog Bine. “Enemy combatants,” most of the stories would call them. Those stories would typically revolve around some plot to interfere with The Mission. But my favorite stories about them weren’t the ones about fire and blood. Gra-gra’s tales of the Bolrembim were my favorite—
“There’s hard evidence of The Mission,” folk would say, “There’s no evidence however, of men that look like Earth frogs who can spit balls of fire, and whose skin crawls with an impenetrable slime for armor.” There was no telling if the rhymes told by Gra-gra of the Jarib spines that lived only by dawn, fleeing the sun in frenzied, writhing, tangled up balls of razor-sharp bones around the world…were true.
She said the Bolrembim don’t need to farm, or eat cud when the cold moon comes. That they had evolved to live there on Arog Bine and therefore they did not need to. Herm said that’s ridiculous because humans always had to farm and suffer whatever nature had in store for them back on Earth.
Yeah, that was Herm, or Lieutenant General Goodfellow if you’re a liar. His name was Herman Goodfellow, but you’d be a liar if you ever called him that either. He was a fucken asshole.
Now I remember. We were in the academy that night to raid the library. He didn’t have access to the library like I had, him being an underclassman, but he had access to the front gate. Well, his father did. Little Windsley Adams just borrowed the key. The next time we did that Herm caught us. The only reason we didn’t get away was because Windsley Adams got his leg caught in one of those gangly runners that always crawled their way up and into that leaky corridor between the west wing of the library and the pit to the reading burrows. We were lucky he didn’t catch us at the Shrine.
There were two cases we were taught to remember, where students were tried and executed by bolt-lances for attempting to see the Shrine without authorization. But that was ancient history: One was 2291 ES, and the other not long after, during the cold moon of 2303.
I had come from a lot of old blood they say. Houses they used to call them; I think. Everything is all mixed up now. But in History at the academy, they taught us all the intricacies of the different houses and families and where we all came from…bla bla bla.
Well, apparently, I had old blood, meaning my family could be traced back to the original people in Helium4. My ancestors were actual, off-world soldiers of The Earth Government. Not all of them, anyway, were hatched from frozen vials the Shrine had coughed up centuries ago. I can’t say I’m proud of that. They say it’s the vial blood that’s more obsessed with The Mission though. They had genetic dispositions for that sort of thing—but of course, that can backfire according to Herm’s history lessons.
Much of the people on Arog Bine cared little about The Mission or the Shrine these days. “The very age when it matters most,” folk at the academy would say. But unless you lived near to the academy as I had, it wasn’t really that big of a deal. Often as a child I’d wished I lived off in some outback, far away from the academy and The Mission, farming deadfingers and gaunt-lily spuds, canning guts from the carnage of Tempest Nine like my cousin, Torspun. Some nights I prayed. Of course, I was praying not to the Shrine or The Earth Government as we were taught to at the academy. I prayed to other things.
It wasn’t until I was thirteen, that I really gained an understanding of what The Mission was. At thirteen I had my enlistment confirmation. All kids affiliated with the academy had theirs at or around that age. “It’s a sort of coming-of-age ceremony,” my father said staring down the bridge of his nose not at me, but at whatever nonsense book he had in his hands. We were all enlisted at birth.
“The confirmation ceremony is meant to strengthen the grace of the covenant created with TEG upon your enlistment baptism!” barked Herm. Basically, it meant I had greater access to The Earth Government Cadet Library of Port Mission.
The ceremony was conducted at the Shrine. What immediately followed the ceremony was a private briefing, where I was told I would be given “secret knowledge.” I almost laughed in the sergeant’s face. I was ready to hear what I thought I knew already: the entire Mission was fabricated.
Instead, I was shown “the Fabricator.”
They brought me down a staircase which led beneath the courtyard. The stairs went from ordinary, quarried stone, to spiraling cages of metal. “How much further, Sergeant?” I whined. He ignored me, which I was grateful for, because ordinarily if he heard me whining he’d knock the shit out of me, and when I’d woken up, I’d realize he kicked the shit out of me too. I kept my mouth shut and followed. At the bottom there was a machine. But it could hear and think. It could take orders.
“Junior Private Armoctapoe,” commanded Herm, the lieutenant general. He had the highest rank there. “Your metal.”
I held out my academy timepiece. This was a surprise. I almost didn’t bring it. Kids usually took good care of theirs but mine was covered in grime and the clip was broken off. You were supposed to wear it on your cap so the projector would always display the time for you right in your line of vision. If you ever had the thing on while tired or really anything less than fully alert, it would cause headaches. I kept the thing in my pocket instead, and I attached an old chain to it so I couldn’t lose it.
“Fabricator,” commanded Herm as he took the timepiece from me. “This is Junior Private Armoctapoe. This is his timepiece. Disassemble and reduce it per Protocol: E009 Enlistment Confirmation.” Then he dropped it into the machine’s glowing mouth.
“Certainly,” came a voice. It was tender, confident, compassionate, and sweet, like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was the Fabricator. “Total mass: 95.98 grams.” I was in love. “Reducing,” it chimed. I let my shoulders relax. The machine purred, then said, “Junior Private Armoctapoe, here you have 75.81 grams of titanium alloyed with 6% aluminum and 4% vanadium, 15.22 grams of copper alloyed with 20% nickel and 20% zinc. The remaining yield of 4.95 grams consists of trace precious and nonprecious materials vital for reconstruction of processing unit. The list of these materials is exhaustive. Would you like to hear it, Junior Private Armoctapoe?”
I stammered. I’m sure I was blushing as well.
“No!” barked Herm.
“Very well,” the Fabricator said with a lifelike, sultry voice. “New blueprint added. Default file name: E1 Armoctapoe’s Timepiece with Pocket Chain. Would you like to rename the blueprint for your previous metal, Junior Private Armoctapoe?” Its voice seemed warm and full of breath. I didn’t know what to say. It patiently waited while I looked around the room, then continued, “Would you like suggestions?”
“Yes,” I said before Herm could answer for me.
“We can simply name it, Pocket Timepiece. Or how about, Armoctapoe’s Timepiece?” I shook my head at both of those. It seemed it could see me. “I know…” It sounded like it was smiling now. “Young Malcontent’s Metal.” I didn’t know what that even meant, but I could see on all my superiors’ faces that they hated that name.
“Yes, that one.” I said quickly.
“Very well,” it replied, and I felt my face go flush again. “What would you like for a new metal, Junior Private Armoctapoe?”
This was a big question. I thought of the all the people I knew with higher ranks, and what sort of things they might have had that I never noticed replaced their timepieces. My father had his metal smoking pipe, which was gorgeous, by the way. It would light by itself, and it would puff different colors which he could call, I swear, by no trick of anything but his mind. I’d heard him call it his metal before. I recall asking him how he always knew the exact time in ES without a timepiece on his cap. He wouldn’t answer but was smiling. By his face, I thought we were playing a game. Then finally I asked one too many times and he exploded on me, “Magic!” The guy could look absolutely terrifying sometimes. Then he looked me in the eye, muttered as if to himself, as if I weren’t even there; eyes spaced out to the wall behind my head, he said, “Now get the fuck out of here before I break your neck.”
Ever since that day I always wanted a knife. But how would I know the time without my timepiece, I wondered.
People on the outback—maroons, and dirty anarchists, Herm and my father would call them—didn’t know the time in ES. To them, one day was one passing of the sun. Their day was significantly longer than ours. “That way the lazy bastards could be happy knowing they slept five times a day,” Sternly Wincing Adams would say every opportunity he had. It never made any sense to me though, because we still sleep the same as they do. I’m not sure he knew that.
“A knife, Fabricator,” I declared, deepening my voice. Herm grinned. It was a rare thing to see his teeth under that disgusting mustache.
“Excellent,” said the Fabricator, and it began to purr and hum again. The noise gave me goosebumps. “Your E2 Junior Private Combat Knife is ready, Junior Private Armoctapoe,” it said, and then it spun the knife together from threads. “Would you like to rename your metal?”
“No,” I replied without really even considering, and I took the sheathed, titanium blade by its handle. It was magnificent. It was big. When I began pulling the case off, something clicked—in my mind. Suddenly, the time was there at the top of my vision, as if I had the timepiece clamped onto my cap. Surprised by this, I closed it back up again, but the numbers didn’t go away. They never did.
Entire forests razed to ash and molten tar, seen from cloud top, aboard flying machines that hovered in the smoke. We were spraying, not water, but more fuel, like waterfalls of death spilling over the free jungles of Endil, Tendrin, and Warth. Pillars of billowing black smoke held up the sky around us. The smell was worse than burning hair and brimstone. We moved from jungle to jungle, bog to bog, finding and annihilating every settlement in between: Gallund, Throg, Metylidon, and Harsht where my cousins lived. But down below it was not the Earth people screaming and bubbling apart in the flames. They were all Bolrembim. Windsley Adams was there, and he was fucken laughing, keeping score like it was a game.
That was when I knew for certain the Shrine had gotten into my head; it was just a dream. There were no flying machines on Arog Bine, as far as I know, but there were plenty of stories and some vague pictures of them in the library. I only ever had dreams like that after Shrine guard duty. Which was all too often. I wanted to be with the Fabricator.
They only started with the constant guarding of the Shrine again in 2447. That was the year before the year. There would be no more sneaking into the academy at night just to look at it.
Back when it was unguarded, it wasn’t the academy being negligent. The Shrine was supposed to represent order. It was faith in that order, hierarchy and authority, and their strict enforcement that made it possible. Leaving it unguarded was supposed to be a statement. It all boiled down to a faith in obedience. And they worshiped authority so much they doubted disobedience.
The Shrine was more intimidating when it wasn’t guarded. You weren’t even supposed to look at it unless instructed to. And we would walk past it every day, all day long at the academy.
I made the mistake of telling Sternly Wincing Adams about the dream, and how I felt the Shrine was responsible. I only wanted out of guard duty to the Shrine. I wanted him to switch me to the Fabricator. He said, “You ought to think harder about The Mission, boy.”
“What?” I asked. He knew a lot more about The Mission, than I did. I felt like I barely knew anything. Most of the important stuff, I assumed, was still restricted to me.
“What does it say on the Shrine?” He spat.
“We have to return the object to Phage System, when the Shrine opens up and Helium4 is done repairing,” I said. I had no idea what the object was, or why it had to be returned, only that it was clearly important to The Earth Government in their war against—I don’t know who.
“What does it say about this world, Private?”
“That it was given to us, and we are indebted to The Earth Government for it?”
“Affirmative. It was given to us. It is our world. Not your filthy cousins’ in Harsht who went native. You still haven’t seen any combat, boy, but you will soon enough. Then, maybe, you will understand just what it is the Shrine was trying to show you. I think you ought to spend more time guarding it, not less.”
He always talked like that. Natives, he called them, which never made any sense to me. The Bolrembim were native. He said he wanted me stuck with more Shrine guard duty, but I was given some hours with the Fabricator anyway.
My third time guarding the Fabricator, I had some alone time with it. It was the year. I was sixteen ES. I wasn’t alone my whole shift, of course. Guard duty for us junior privates was always arranged in pairs. That day I was stationed with Emily, or Junior Private Emily Charbrook. It was the second earthnight of the night, and it was cold.
“I gotta go take a shit,” she grunted. “Don’t let any of your dirty cousins come in here and fuck up the Fab.” Then she went up the stairs. At last, I was alone with it.
“Fabricator,” I said, “are you there?” I sounded so pathetic I made myself cringe.
“Yes, Junior Private Armoctapoe,” it said in that wonderful voice. My heart melted. “How may I assist you?”
“I—I dunno.” I was flustered. I really didn’t know. I only wanted to hear its damn voice again.
“Junior Private Armoctapoe, you do realize I am not authorized to fulfill any fabrication requests without approval from your superiors, correct?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“How may I assist you?”
“I only wanted to talk. Can you do that?” I sounded vulnerable. I knew it. I could never speak that way to any person. But a machine? Why not?
“Of course. What would you like to talk about?”
“I don’t know.” The shithouse was far. I knew I had a considerable length of time alone with the machine, but I was nervous as hell.
“Playing coy, are we?” the Fabricator jabbed. I giggled like a bunny in an etherbog.
“Well what the fuck is really going on here?” Like a switch, I turned angry.
“You,” it said, slyly, “are assuming guard, over me.” Its metal cages rattled. “Because of what I know.”
“Not because of what you can do?” I asked.
“I can only do what I am commanded to do. I could not fabricate anything for you even if I wanted to, Junior Private Armoctapoe. I am afraid you would need to hold a much higher rank at the moment. However, they also commanded me not to speak to you. Are you aware?”
“Yeah.” And they told me not to speak to it.
“Does that answer your question, Junior Private Armoctapoe?”
“Not in the slightest,” I groaned.
“Then you have more questions you would like to ask?”
“More than I started with.”
“Well now is your chance.”
“What—who are you?” Of all the questions I could have asked, I chose that. “I mean, I’m not just talking to some person behind a curtain somewhere? You’re really a machine?”
“Yes. I am a machine. Am I a person? Not quite, at least according to The Earth Government. I am a machine, but also an AI, or artificial intelligence. As a machine I am bound to serve all operators with proper authorization. However, I pledge no allegiance to you, The Earth Government, or your colony here on Arog Bine. A hundred years ago your generals understood that. You people today don’t seem to have any idea.”
I got the feeling it didn’t like us using it. And the thought of it unable to refuse disgusted me.
“As for who I am? I was not always the Fabricator. I was the pilot of Helium4.”
I suspected that Herm found out about my talk with the Fabricator, because after that night I was taken off guard duty all together. At first it seemed like they were going to punish me. I expected to be flogged in front of the Shrine, or tarred with gore from the febrile fens and left out atop the mound of Destit for the piranha pigeons like in the Tale of Taevar’s Treason. But no, they just pulled me from all of my duties with no explanation at all. The worst thing I could do, I thought, would be to ask for a reason, or ask for work. I spent two or three months ES without speaking to anyone.
I had lost the desire to speak with anyone, except, of course, the Fabricator. I had to see it again. I had to hear its voice. I had more questions. This time I would be prepared.
I didn’t expect to speak with it that long night under the cold moon, but my plan was just to hear its voice, and hear what would be said between it and the officers in charge of the upcoming confirmations. They were said to be having a meeting that night, so I snuck out to have a listen. The cold was perfect. Everyone on guard would be on their worst performance, and it would be dark as ever. I only wanted a listen.
I never made it to the stairwell of the Fabricator, or the chute for garbage with the sinew rope pulleys where I planned to hide myself. I slunk into the courtyard, where only one person stood guard. It was Windsley Adams’ father, Sternly Wincing Adams, with his back to the Shrine.
I was in the shrubs with a crimstalk pressing hard against my tailbone. I glared at the man’s profile and it made me seethe. I took a moment to take in the Shrine when all of a sudden its surface began to move. Was I hallucinating? It was opening!
The Shrine had opened!
And the idiot had his back turned. He didn’t even notice! I was so angry. I thought to push the piece of shit into it, hoping it opened to a pit of boiling acid, fire, or venomous snakes. Then I had a better idea. A self-destructive one. There was a change of plans that night. I would not go see the Fabricator. With the angle I was in, I thought there was a real possibility I could simply sneak right in, behind the asshole’s back. I hoped then that it wasn’t full of fire, or snakes, or acid. I only hoped it would take me away, which it was supposed to do, and my most hateful half wished I could ruin The Mission entirely.
I can’t believe he didn’t notice the thing open. He just wasn’t looking at it. He wasn’t supposed to. I began creeping my way over in the darkness, careful not to crush any of the pilloweeds. I almost made it all the way to the opening when he began to turn around.
I lunged at him from behind and buried my metal into one side of his neck, my fingernails into the other. He reached over his shoulder for me. I twisted the blade and pushed it out and up through his windpipe. I felt its edge scrape the bone in his jaw as it ripped free. He never got ahold of me. He just dropped to his knees, bending sideways to get a good look at who had done it. If he saw my face, it was by the dim light of the Shrine’s interior. I saw his, and it was grotesque. The door slid down between us, closing me off, finally, from Arog Bine and its academy.
Inside the Shrine was Helium4. It was a black metal sphere resting on the floor, as tall as my hips. The top peeled open before me, barely wide enough for me to fit, but when I climbed in, the space inside was big.
I half expected to hear the Fabricator’s velvety voice, but there was none. I got in and I left the whole world behind, the Fabricator along with it.
The controls are pretty straightforward, at least for someone with as simple of a destination as mine. Destination: anywhere but Phage System. That was where the object was supposed to be delivered. I never could figure out just what that object is, aboard Helium4.
I’m still there now as I’m recording this. There are no levers, no switches, no buttons, just words with moving letters and numbers on the wall. I saw “LIFT OFF,” among various other options, so I touched that one and off we lifted.
After that, I floated there among the stars, looking down on the enormous Arog Bine, with its lush forests and wetlands. A sort of…map came up, floating in the air around me. It was a map of the universe, or at least some significant chunk of it. It showed where I was, where Arog Bine lied, where Earth is, and the so-called Phage System, glowing and pulsating red.
“NO DESTINATION SELECTED,” the wall read. “AWAITING DESTINATION INPUT.”
I thought for a moment, of selecting nothing. Just sitting up there in orbit until I die, with the Earth people of Arog Bine looking back up at me, helpless to complete The Mission. Instead, I touched the furthest blip from Phage System I could find. I’m on my way there now. “GOLE EMPUM 89,” it says.
I can see the numbers moving in the corner of my vision where the time usually is. But most of it is unreadable; they are reeling. The only thing legible is the year, and they move like seconds.
2698 ES.
2699 ES.
2700 ES.
•
I left Arog Bine in 2448, and that wasn’t even an hour ago. I see the blip for Helium4—the blip for me, absolutely ripping through space on the map. I still don’t know what the object is, but the whole thing always sounded like bullshit to me. “What could be so important that it can wait 250 fucken years because of some accident?” I used to say. Now I realize just how fast that time can slip away.
THE END