“Basically?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, in both cases. But we decided that having me be the founder of both would serve the mythology the best, so that’s what we said.”
“Were you an actual prophet?”
“Yes.”
“So you knew the things you were saying about the Interdependency and the principles of interdependency would come true.”
“No, of course not.”
“But you just said you were a prophet.”
“Anyone can be a prophet. You just have to say that what you’re talking about is a reflection of God. Or of the gods. Or of some divine spirit. However you want to put it. Whether those things come true isn’t one way or another about it.”
“But what you said did come true. You preached for interdependency and it happened.”
“Yes, it was good for me that it turned out that way.”
“So you didn’t know they would.”
“I already told you that I didn’t. But we certainly worked hard to make them happen, and to give it the appearance of inevitability. And of course the whole mystical angle helped too.”
Cardenia furrowed her brow. “You’re a founder of a church.”
“Yes.”
“But listening to you, you don’t seem to be particularly religious.”
“Not really, no.”
“Or to believe in God. Or gods.”
“I really don’t. And when we designed the church, we intentionally made the divine aspect of it as ambiguous as possible. People don’t mind having the mystical aspect of a church being poorly defined as long as you make the rules of the church clear. We did that. We modeled a bit off of Confucianism, which strictly speaking wasn’t a religion, and added bits we thought would be useful from other religions.”
“So you don’t believe in your own church!”
“Of course I do,” Rachela said. “We created a set of moral precepts to bind the various human systems together. We did it because we thought it was desirable and to some extent necessary. Since I believe in those precepts, I believe in the mission of the church. At least, the mission of the church when we founded it. Human institutions tend to drift from their creators’ intent over time. Another reason to have clear rules.”
“But the divine element is fake.”
“We decided that it was no more fake than the divine aspect of any other religion. As far as the evidence goes, in any event.”
Cardenia felt a little light-headed. It was one thing to believe the predominant church of the Interdependency was bunk, which was a thing Cardenia had believed for as long as she could remember thinking about it. It was inconvenient when, strictly speaking, you were now head of that church, but she could at least keep that to herself. It was another thing to have the founder of the church, or at least the core of memories that comprised her, confirm it was bunk.
“Naffa was right,” Cardenia said. “The Interdependency is a scam.”
“I don’t know who Naffa is,” Rachela I said.
“She was a friend of mine,” Cardenia said. “I had a dream where she appeared to me, as you, telling me the Interdependency was a scam.”
“If I were telling this story, I would have said that I had had a mystical vision of the Prophet,” Rachela I said.
“It was just a dream.”
“In our line of business there is no such thing. Emperoxs never just dream. They have visions. That’s what we do. Or what we were supposed to do, when I became the first emperox.”
“Well, I had the thing, and it wasn’t a vision. It was a dream.”
“It was a dream that made you think. A dream that caused you to search for wisdom. A dream that made you consult me, the Prophet. Sounds like a vision to me.”
Cardenia gawked at Rachela I. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I worked in marketing,” Rachela I said. “Before I was a prophet. After, too, but we didn’t call it that after that point.”
“I’m having a hard time believing what you’re telling me.”
Rachela I nodded. “That’s not unusual. Sooner or later every emperox activates me to have a conversation like this. Most of them respond like you do.”
“Most of them? What about the others?”
“They feel happy they guessed it correctly.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t feel anything about it. I’m not alive. Strictly speaking, I’m not here.”
“‘You’re always alone in the Memory Room, and never alone in the Memory Room.’”
Rachela I nodded again. “I said that. Or something close enough to it, anyway.”
“Is the Interdependency a scam?” Cardenia asked, directly.
“The answer to that is complicated.”
“Give me the short version.”
“The short version is ‘Yes, but.’ The slightly longer version is ‘No, and.’ Which version would you like?”
Cardenia stared at Rachela I for a moment. Then she went to the bench in the Memory Room and sat.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
Chapter
10
“I have an itch,” Marce Claremont said to his sister.
“Where?” Vrenna asked.
“My entire head,” Marce replied.
As required, Marce had shaved his entire head short of eyebrows and eyelashes, and had been fitted with cultivated hair and a beard, each embedded in an epidermis-thin substrate of actual skin, which had been secured to his own with the use of a glue made from, or so the person applying it to his face told him, real human collagens. Next came the thumb pad, which made Marce feel like he had tape on his hand, against which he had to mightily fight the urge to pick it off. Then the contacts which changed his eye color and iris pattern, and which included holographic fake corneas that would give the illusion of depth to the fake retinal pattern.
“I can barely see out of these contacts, either.”
“It’s not a bad eye color for you, though,” Vrenna observed. “Maybe keep those in after you get on the ship.”
“You’re funny.”
The two of them were waiting on the elevator that would take Marce down to the lobby. The newly hired crew for the Yes, Sir were told to collect there in order for their papers to be processed and then to be bussed to port, to head to the ship. That was convenient for Marce, who could blend in with the rest of the new crew.
But it also meant that these were literally the last moments he would spend with his sister, possibly in his entire life.
“Tell Dad I’m sorry I didn’t get to say good-bye,” he said, to Vrenna.
“I will. He’ll understand. He won’t be happy, but he’ll understand. He’ll be okay.”
“And how about you? Are you going to be okay?”
Vrenna smiled. “I’m pretty good at being okay. If nothing else, I’m good at keeping busy. And the thing is, rumor has it that no matter what, everyone on End is going to be really busy soon. I have an agenda, anyway.”
“What’s on the agenda?”
“The first thing is to dangle Ghreni Nohamapetan off a building for kidnapping my brother.”
Marce laughed at this, and then the elevator bell dinged and the door opened.
Vrenna grabbed her brother in a fierce hug, gave him a peck on the cheek, and then pushed him, gently, into the elevator. “Go on,” she said. “Go tell the emperox everything. Save everyone if you can. And then come back.”
“I’ll try.”
“Love you, Marce,” Vrenna said, as the door started to close.
“Love you, Vrenna,” Marce said, just before it did.
Marce had twenty floors to get his emotions in check.
The elevator opened up to a couple dozen people milling about and three people in official House of Lagos crew uniforms. One of them looked over to Marce as the elevator opened up. “What the hell are you doing in the elevator?” she asked.
“I was looking for a bathroom,” Marce said.
“Well, there’s not one in there. Get out of that.”
Marce got out. The crew member held out her hand for his papers; he handed them over.
“Kristian Jansen,” she said, looking at them.
“That’s me.”
“Any relation to Knud Jansen?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I shipped with him once. He was from End, too.”