An unpleasant feeling is growing in Sarya’s stomach. It’s leaking through the cracks in the confidence she felt only moments ago, when she was filled with purpose and that purpose was pure. “But why?” she asks. “I mean…why—”
“Why you? Because you are motivated, to say the least, and isn’t that how Network works? It doesn’t create, It simply uses the tools at hand. It is watching you. It’s protecting you. It’s giving your fiery motivation every chance to do its job. It’s giving you what you need as you need it, slowly transforming you into a Human-seeking missile. You cannot choose not to seek your people, Daughter; it is simply who you are.”
Sarya stares at the nearest Observer; He has almost done the impossible: He has, very nearly, convinced her of the truth of His argument. “So if I live, I find my people,” she says slowly. “And if I find them…they die.”
“It was never a question of whether you would find your people,” says Observer, sadness written on every one of his faces. “The question was—and still is—can you live with what will happen when you do? Do you love Human as I do, Sarya the Daughter? Do you wish to see your species not just survive, but thrive? To take root once again, to grow into something greater and more beautiful than you can imagine? Because that is my goal, little one. And, as things now stand…you are in my way.”
Sarya absorbs this, floating in the darkness. She can feel her thousands of connections flickering, the continual flow of data rocketing between her various members. Two stories, both with gigantic consequences. Network’s version bubbles within her, full of logic and duty. Observer’s now seeps into her at the edges, made of passion and fire. Both promise the same thing: the rebirth of her species. As to which is actually true…
How can you tell when a larger mind is lying to you?
“All I want,” she says—and stops, surprised at the quaver in her voice. She clears her throat, blinking back whatever is going on in her eyes right now. Her body—rickety biological thing that it is—has forgotten that it is the nexus of a vast web of power and knowledge. “All I’ve ever wanted,” she continues, wiping her eyes angrily, “is to go home. Not home as in Watertower. Not home as in that rusty ship somewhere out there. Home as in…my people. But You’re saying that if I do find them, I doom them. Which would make me—” She breaks off. She wants to turn away from Observer, to hide those disobedient eyes, but there is nowhere to turn.
“No, Sarya the Daughter,” says Observer gently. “It does not make you the murderer of your species. Just like I am not the murderer of your species. There is only one mind who put these events into action. There is only one person who decided that your people must be made an example of. You, like countless numbers of lower intelligences before you, are no more than a tool for Its purposes.” The illuminated Observer smiles, its light stretching shadows up and over its face. “The only thing that would make you responsible, Sarya the Daughter, is if you were Network Itself.”
Sarya drifts in the darkness, surrounded by a softly chiming Librarian and a gigantic group mind. “If I were Network Itself,” she says quietly. “If.”
Observer says nothing, but merely watches her from countless eyes.
“You know,” she says. She seeks out the nearest golden gaze. “You know what It made me. And what It told me to do.”
“Observe,” says the illuminated figure quietly. “Sarya the Daughter. On one side she sees Network, the devourer of the galaxy, the systematic eliminator of perceived threats, and the murderer of her species. On the other she sees the rest of Us, the resistance, the species that fight Network—including the remnant of Human Herself. Observe as she ponders the question before her, on which the fate of her species depends. Am I Network, she wonders? Or am I…Human?”
Sarya drifts there in the darkness, frozen. Even amplified as she is, this is too big for her. It’s impossible. To go up against the godlike mind of the galaxy itself: Network. The intelligence that has spread across the galaxy like she has spread across this Visitors’ Gallery. The mind that keeps order by force, that manacles every Citizen member so cleverly and so securely that they don’t even know they are in chains. The mind that has empowered her, and the mind that has already executed her species once.
And on the other side, in Its massive shadow: the Humans. Everything she has dreamed of, her entire life. People like her. Friends. Family.
Home.
She can feel something burning inside her, a white-hot, barely contained fury. She has been blind, and it took Observer to make her see. She has spent half her life thinking of ways to fool lower intelligences, to get them to do what she wants. How could she imagine that she herself had escaped manipulation? Observer is a murderer, Network told her, conveniently glossing over the fact that even in Its own version of events Observer did nothing but help. Network Itself was the one who massacred her entire species.
“Well?” asks the illuminated Observer. “Which is it? Are you Network? Or are you Human?”
Sarya takes a shuddering breath. She doesn’t have to make this decision, she realizes. She’s already made it. She made her choice the day her mother told her the truth, the moment she learned her legacy, and she’s been pursuing it ever since. This decision was made for her, by her very nature.
“I’m Human,” she whispers.
“Pardon?” says an Observer. All across His mind, figures lift hands to ears, as if they cannot hear her.
And then she takes a deeper breath. “I’m Human,” shouts Sarya the Daughter into the mind of Observer.
And now a sigh spreads through Observer like a wave. Simultaneously, in perfect unison, every single body smiles.
“If that’s the case,” says the illuminated Observer, “then you know exactly what you have to do.”
Whatever else she may have gained, Sarya the Daughter has not lost her capacity for anger. It has grown a thousandfold. It crackles through the cells of her mind, though those cells are now spread across the cubic kilometers of the Visitors’ Gallery. Her brain is made of individual minds, each of which performs its tasks with quick and focused intensity. The Network tends toward order—she’s heard it a thousand times. But she is not Network. Sarya the Daughter tends toward what’s right.
This mind on the edge of a Blackstar is not the idiot of Watertower Station, the barely-legal with a broken Network unit. This is a mind twice the size of Watertower Station. This is a Human core with Widow instincts, wrapped in fifty tons of living metal. This is a mind that runs across millions of cleaning drones, recyclers, maintainers, transports, sanitation stations, and the helper intelligences buried in every legal brain in this darkened space. This is a Network within a Network, a seething cauldron of rage and radiance that churns right to the edges of the dark Visitors’ Gallery.