“An apt metaphor. But this mill would encompass all that has ever existed.”
An image flashed in Sancia’s head: a desert valley, and a peristyle within; and Crasedes, wielding Clef, opening up a set of black doors that appeared to hover on the face of the air itself…
“The chamber at the center of the world,” she said quietly. “That’s what you mean. The chamber was real, wasn’t it? And once, he got to open the doors to it.”
“That is…one term for it,” said Valeria. “It is not a chamber, not a room, but…a place of access. The Maker said he believed it to be an umbilical point behind or below reality. Much as an apple has a stem, perhaps our reality might still retain some vestige of where it came from, or how it was made—the place within our reality that had known the last touch of God Himself, one that extended to all of creation.”
“So…So by accessing this umbilical point,” said Orso, leaning forward, “he could trick all of creation into thinking that his commands were the same as those of the Creator. Do I have that right?”
“You have it truly,” said Valeria. “In the Maker’s estimation, this was the last place where the Creator had touched or affected reality. By positioning himself within it, and by issuing the proper commands, he could make the world believe he was the Creator Himself. He could control all of reality—not just the surface of existence, which you mortals flit across like water beetles upon a pond, but the underlying infrastructure below.”
Sancia sensed a blithe contempt for them in Valeria’s words. Is that how she really thinks of us? Like bugs?
She continued. “But the Maker knew this task would be beyond the efforts of a man. Even a man as altered, augmented, and distorted as he. So—he changed me, intending for me to be the entity that would take control of this umbilical point, and issue a command that would filter throughout reality.
“The Maker gave me a mind. He gave me will. This is when I first truly became aware of myself, and knew what I was. Yet even as he did so, he distrusted me, fearing rebellion. He kept me locked within my casket, and only gave me the strictest of commands.
“And then…one day, I was there. He had brought me to the chamber. And then he released me, and gave me my commands. It was like…suddenly being born.”
There was a long, long silence.
“What happened?” asked Gregor.
“The Maker had given me a command to be executed in the chamber,” said Valeria. “One that would alter all of mankind.”
“What was it?” demanded Orso.
“I am…unsure how to put into words.”
But Sancia knew what she was going to say. After all, Crasedes had been quite candid about it just last night.
“He wanted to fix humanity, didn’t he,” she said quietly.
“True.”
“What?” said Orso. “ ‘Fix humanity’? What does that mean?”
“His command was to curb the behavior of all the human species,” she said. “To render them incapable of oppressing one another, of making war upon one another. To make a world without suffering, without pain, without war, where mankind could be safe, and flourish and live in harmony, forever.”
There was another long silence.
“Wait,” said Orso. “You are saying that Crasedes Magnus…The most powerful, most dangerous person of all time…The man who’s singlehandedly wiped out several civilizations…He did all this because he wanted to make some kind of perfect, peaceful utopia?”
“Mm,” said Valeria. “True.”
* * *
—
“I can’t understand this,” said Gregor. “You…You do not understand the things this man made me do. Things I now remember.”
“That I comprehend quite well,” said Valeria. “I have many such memories myself—more than you ever could. But I understand your consternation. Very difficult to reconcile. The Maker is…complicated.”
“You knew about this, Sancia?” asked Orso.
She shrugged, her face grim. “Kind of. He talked to me a lot last night, before I trapped him in the Mountain. He told me that was his great work—that humankind had always invented brilliant tools, but then inevitably put them to bad ends. He’d founded his empire thousands of years ago specifically to try to stop it. But when he couldn’t…he found a more radical solution.”
“Altering the very fabric of reality itself,” said Berenice softly. “Changing us all in an instant…”
“True,” said Valeria.
“So,” said Gregor. “He’s mad.”
“Perhaps,” said Valeria. “I cannot pretend to understand the Maker. He is full of contradictions. But perhaps you can now understand why it was that the instant I had access to the chamber, I opted to attack the Maker, and make war upon him.”
“How were you allowed to do that?” asked Orso. “Weren’t you bound to follow his instructions?”
“True. But his instructions were unclear. He said I was to no longer permit mankind to use innovations and tools to oppress or inflict harm on one another…But he is still human. A distorted human being, but still human. And I…I am, in many ways, a tool. He was asking me to commit the very act that he had commanded me to prevent. This I could not reconcile. So, before I enacted any other aspect of his commands, I declared myself independent of him, gave myself a name, and attacked him, casting him out of the chamber.”
Sancia furrowed her brow. “You…named yourself?”
“Yes. The Maker had refused to name me before this time. I was a tool, and tools do not have names. In naming myself, I gave myself agency.”
“Why Valeria, though?” asked Gregor.
A long silence. “I am not quite sure. As I said, I am the calcification of many, many, many human lives placed beyond death. Sometimes…Sometimes I experience echoes of those lives. And one in particular recurs to me—a small girl, throwing a doll up and down, again and again, and saying that name. So when I had to name myself, and declare war upon the Maker, that one seemed best.
“I found a way to strike against the Maker. I lured him into a space I had prepared against his privileges—much like I have altered your firm. This space rejected him, asserted he was not real, not alive, and so it stripped him of his permissions. He reacted quickly, but in his moment of weakness, I altered him, changed him. I wiped the ritual from his mind—the one that allows him to manipulate death to access higher commands. He has lost it, and he can never learn it again. He cannot access new privileges, nor can he invest those privileges in new tools. This was my greatest victory—and, in truth, my only victory. Because then the Maker did…something desperate.”