ice in water. She is being violated, systematically and thoroughly—and because she is part of Him, she feels His pleasure as He roots through her and takes what He pleases.
A village, under a sky made of trees—
A child, learning to walk in the grass—
A stone, in a pool by the river—
Observer sighs. Oh, that’s good, say a trillion voices.
Sarya, with her mother and her father and a fire—
Sarya, chasing glowing insects in the grass—
Sarya, watching her mother and father being eviscerated by Shenya the Widow—
Observer moans. Oh, say a trillion voices. Exquisite.
And now the memories accelerate. They flick through her mind almost too quickly to see—but not too quickly for Observer, who welcomes them into Himself with a cacophony of pleasure. She feels His every reaction as He shreds her mind and takes every part of her. She feels His appreciation for a childhood that spanned lightyears outside the Network. His delight only heightens as she relives her adolescence on a water-mining station. And now the blur of memories slows again as it nears the present. Riptide, with Eleven and Ace and Roche and Mer and Sandy…the quick detour into her mother’s memories—which Observer consumes with passion—and then Observer stops. A single image hangs frozen in His massive mind.
An infinite sea, a dead sky, and a gleaming stone in her hand.
She is part of His mind now, which means His shockwave of astonishment passes through her as well. It takes an eternal fraction of a second for the realization to spread across His entire enormous self, out from this point to His farthest cube.
Impossible, say a trillion voices.
Sarya fights, but it makes so little difference that Observer doesn’t even notice. She focuses every splinter of her strength on hiding that particular memory, and it makes absolutely zero difference.
All this time, breathes Observer, staring at the image. That’s how It was beating Me.
Sarya’s head turns against her will. Her eyes move without her control. Through the haze of holograms and her own furious tears, shocked beyond thought, she watches as her own body moves without her permission or intent. She sits forward in her seat. “Hey, ship!” she says to her absolute horror.
“Input command,” says the ship.
“Stand down all weapons,” she says, and she says it cheerfully. And then she feels herself grin. “And prepare the faster-than-light drive.”
“All weapons systems standing down,” says the ship. “FTL drive online. Please input spacetime re-entry coordinates.”
She hears its answer through more than one set of ears. Through Observer’s eyes, she sees her own hair rise up off her shoulders. She looks like a goddess, hair floating in the light of the holograms that frame her. Only with Observer’s many senses could one tell that her eyes are not her own. They are Observer’s. She stares at them from the outside as the mouth moves. “No re-entry,” says her mouth, and it smiles. “I doubt we’re coming back.”
I had no idea, say a trillion voices in her head. I started this adventure by causing a little trouble, and I’m ending it by transcending space and time. I am everything you were, Daughter. I can do everything you could do. Finally, after half a billion years, Network has made a mistake. It has allowed an enemy to engage It on Its own territory. I will become everything It is. I will replace It, across a billion star systems. The Network tends toward order, they say. Not mine. And Observer laughs from a trillion mouths. Observer tends toward its total and complete opposite.
Outside, Observer raises trillions of eyes to the burning heavens, where millions of lives are being snuffed out every second. He allows Sarya to sample one of His countless trickles of information, to watch the destruction with His senses. She can see the Human environment as easily as if it were a hundred meters away. It’s just as described, a gray cylinder spinning in the void. She wants to reach out and touch it, to tell her fellow Humans that she tried, but that she is no longer one of them. She wants to ask them not to hold her responsible for what comes next, whatever it is.
“You okay?” asks Mer. Mer is crouched in front of her former body now, gazing into her former eyes. She is not looking through them at the moment, but she can see him through the eyes of the cheerful Observers milling around the two of them. She wants to cry something—though she doesn’t know if it