Chapter 9:
The Children of the Astrolabe
A-KA WALKED TO THE VENT and stood there, catching his breath. Then he exerted some effort to pry aside the grille blocking it off. Instead of letting A-Ka finish, Heishi had him move to one side. There was a huge bang as he sent a punch against the grille.
“Come with me.” Heishi pried the grille the rest of the way off, grabbed A-Ka’s hand, and climbed up.
They entered an expansive underground space, the junction point of several sewers in Phoenix City. A-Ka limped ahead, clutching his abdomen, his feet staggering through blood and his eyes spinning with vertigo.
When Heishi discovered the wound A-Ka had been hiding, his expression instantly changed. “What happened? Were you hit? Why didn’t you say anything?”
A-Ka shoved Heishi aside, but Heishi came back, holding him tightly. “Don’t move! Let me take a look!”
A-Ka had lost so much blood that his head spun. Heishi hurried to help him flat on his back, taking off his own jacket and spreading it out on the ground before letting A-Ka lie down. He then unbuttoned A-Ka’s collared shirt. The bullet hole wasn’t large, and upon seeing it Heishi flicked his weapon. With a sound, it shrank as if it had a mind of its own, turning into a pair of sharp tweezers.
“What…is that?” A-Ka asked.
Heishi didn’t respond. He merely lowered his head and began to pull out the bullet. The pain that shot through A-Ka was so great that he screamed.
“Don’t move!” Heishi hissed nervously.
Despite Heishi’s words, A-Ka twitched and shuddered through the procedure until Heishi finally extracted the bullet and tossed it to the ground, where it landed with a clink. Taking off his own shirt, Heishi pressed it against A-Ka’s abdomen.
“We don’t have any disinfectant, so we’ve got to get out of here quickly.” Heishi was a little at a loss for what to do next.
A-Ka found it strangely funny to see him so anxious now. “No worries, I won’t die.”
Heishi suddenly hugged A-Ka with a strength so immense that it hurt. At first, the force of the gesture worried A-Ka, but he then sensed that Heishi was trembling.
“Sorry… Sorry…” Heishi mumbled.
“What did you say?” Was he joking? A-Ka couldn’t believe the words coming out of Heishi’s mouth.
As if Heishi also noticed that he was being too emotional, he let out a long sigh and stopped. “I’ll carry you on my back. We need to get out as quickly as possible and find some medicine to prevent your wound from getting infected.”
Heishi forestalled any argument on A-Ka’s part by picking him up. A-Ka’s entire body felt boneless, so he slumped against Heishi’s back like a dead dog.
“You made that weapon yourself?” Heishi asked as he walked.
“Mhm,” A-Ka said from his position on Heishi’s back. The firmness of Heishi’s stride gave him comfort. He turned his head, watching the walls of the dark, deep sewer as they passed him by. It was as if they had returned to the day when he and Heishi escaped from the City of Steel. “What about yours? Where did your weapon come from?”
“I found it in the Creator’s ruins,” Heishi answered. “It’s an ancient weapon that can be controlled via thought.”
A-Ka was very interested in this, but he really was not in a position to study it further; he decided that he would borrow it from Heishi after they got back. “What’re the Creator’s ruins?”
“The place where everything came into existence. During the Golden Age, it was the center of the world. It was then that the Creator made this realm.”
“You’ve remembered your past?”
“Only a portion. Your world is called the Astrolabe, and it’s controlled by a preset program. The CPU that controls the Astrolabe is buried under the ground, where no one can find it. It’s called the Nucleus.”
“I…don’t get it. That’s not what the history books say.”
“You can think of the world as a huge ecological spaceship. On a certain day in the distant past, it came from the depths of the galaxy and stopped here. The goal of this experiment was to study the origins of life, and through that, to discover some of the laws governing the microcosms within the universe.”
A-Ka was stunned.
Heishi continued, “So, this ecological spaceship underwent the passage of time for tens of thousands of years before finally turning into what you see today. The programs that had been coded in, through the energy provided from the underground of the Astrolabe, adjusted and controlled the laws of the entire world. Like, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, tornadoes…
“The Creator did some experiments, and after establishing the ecological petri dish of the Astrolabe, left this place. Humans were free to evolve and flourish. Then, about five thousand years ago, some adventurers discovered the laboratory in the Primeval Heart. Within it they discovered several technologies, including ones to create the clones and computers. In the depths of the Eastern Mainland, they built another laboratory, where they created Father.”
A-Ka dimly sensed that Heishi might be the key to unraveling all of this. He held his breath, not daring to disrupt Heishi’s story. After a long silence, Heishi continued.
“Originally, Father’s earliest purpose was to be a computer monitoring system that the Creator set up to oversee this world. It reported every result of the experiments back to the Creator, and it was also in charge of terminating any experiments that extended beyond their expected limit.
“Later, the Creator felt that Father’s determination criteria were too rigid, and it was difficult to maintain the numbers that he wanted anyway, so he didn’t use it on our world. But the adventurers didn’t know about this past decision, so they created a new Father with its consciousness that we know. After it awoke, it continually expanded its own capabilities, linking up with the Nucleus of the Astrolabe. At the same time, it acted to remove the parts of this petri dish that had gone out of control according to its calculations.
“Thus, both Father and the clones rebelled, creating the City of Steel that you know now. Right now, Father is preparing to perform the final linkage between it and the Nucleus, to end this experiment that has gone on for tens of thousands of years. It will clear all experimental results so that it can begin anew.”
“Then, what about the Creator?” A-Ka asked.
“He has already vanished,” Heishi said. “He left our communication range, so Father has no way to make contact with him. According to Father’s own protocols, it will end the entire experiment, stopping all of the movements of the Astrolabe, before turning itself off to conserve power.”
“And that’s to say…” In that instant, A-Ka felt a flash of terror.
“In the not-too-distant future,” Heishi said, “after annihilating all of the sentient organisms this world created, the Astrolabe will terminate its power-producing functions. The surface will become a desolate land of sand and stone—a dead world that waits for the return of the Creator.”
“When will that happen?” A-Ka asked, his voice shaking.
“Very soon. Feiluo has gone to investigate this countdown, but it’ll be within a year,” Heishi said. “But, before the Creator left this world, he made an emergency system. This emergency system is equipped with the power to determine whether or not to terminate the experiment, but it does not rank higher than Father’s commands. When it issues its command to the Nucleus of the Astrolabe, I’m not sure whether the Nucleus will obey the command of the emergency system or those of Father.”
“Where is the key to the emergency system?” A-Ka asked.