(2019)
(Part of A Matter of Time)
500 years hence
The official name of that place was Kardashev Chthonian Station 11, but for the Tibetan workers that was Naraka, the many-layered underworld, abode of demons, the abyss of ice and fire. There was no time in the bowels of Naraka: day and night merged into a penumbra broken only by the dim glow of the burning crevices.
The machines clattered at every instant, the power plants buzzed and crackled ceaselessly, the exhaust water sloshed and hissed on the red-hot rocks below, bursting into columns of burning steam that filled all space, dotting the rough stone walls with onyx droplets. This was not an environment for human beings. And yet human beings did dwell in it, within exoskeletons of metal and plastic, resembling spiders more than men, crawling in pressurized corridors under the burden of tools and replacement parts.
Chiung no longer remembered what the stars looked like as they turned in the vault of the sky. What had he done to end down there? Had he murdered? Yes, certainly, he'd killed a man in a brawl, somewhere, sometime... above. He couldn't remember the reason, either; maybe it had been taken from his memory so that he couldn't justify his crimes. It felt like a dream, an image from another life, another turn of the wheel of Dharma.
Order from chaos and chaos from order, there's the story of the Middle Kingdom, where his bloodline had lasted so long. The earliest bud of civilization on the great river, the centuries of the warring kingdoms, the golden ages of emperors, the iron ages of warlords, united under the barbarians of the north, divided under those of the west, gathered in a promise of new glory under the red banners, broken again by the time of hunger and the high sea. The many republics had hated and envied each other, and fought each other fiercely in the days of the Democidal War, and now were united again under the arms of a man born in the heart of the world.
They had barely survived in their refugia beneath the Himalaya. As the Unification was announced, they had crawled out of the tunnels crusted with grey ice, to gaze on the caravans passing under the cliffs reddened by dawn. Promises of a better life for those terrified survivors, promises of peace and abundance.
Indeed, many promises had been kept. Glittering cities rose once again on the teeming islands of the east and the warm hills of the south; groves and lakes graced the plains once covered by desert sand; the poisoned layers of ash and rubble now lay beneath parks and porticoes. A long and healthy life was once again available to all, and humankind was growing in number once again. Of course, that number had to be kept under control: if not by aiding death, at least by restricting birth. A small price to pay, all considered.
There was reason to praise the Heavens, but few did. Many faiths had accompanied humankind through the darkest times promising a final redress, but the day of redress had now come and past. The Christ had come to take the elects to his kingdom, and none had been found worthy. The Mahdi had come to rule the faithful, and none had obeyed. Maitreya had come to teach the forgotten doctrine, and none had listened. Only one prophet among the multitudes of history had achieved his plans, and now he sat in glory on the Moon, beholding the world from above.
The completion of humankind's great plans required the energy of Earth – all of it, from stratosphere to mantle, from mountain summits to ocean floors. For those who tended the algal fields along the low coastlines, for those who cleansed the mountains from the discarded devices of death, for those who directed the work of nanomachines in the industrial cores, and for those who simply raised the new generation, the first one perhaps that could not remember hunger and uncertainty, in the cities reborn.
So Chiung went back and forth, up and down the tangle of corridors deep in this pocket of tectonic activity of Earth's crust. The same labor every hour of every day of every year, cutting off broken parts, bolting and welding replacements, filling with adhesives the cracks in the rock walls, unburying tangles of wires from the fallen debris; always the same, the blinding showers of sparks, the deafening racket of the hydraulic hammers, the hiss of steam escaping into the upper world.
He wasn't in pain, he could be thankful of that. Wondrous systems in the exoskeleton kept his body intact and healthy, kept him sated and hydrated and free from waste. He was there for punishment, not for torture or maiming or even mockery; he had ceased for a while to be a man, his humanity had simply been placed on hold until he had repaid the world of what he had taken. How much energy was a life worth? Even if he had known the amount, he couldn't perform any calculation here in Naraka.
Other wretches moved about him. Chiung did not know their names or histories; he could only suppose they were there for similar reasons. Perhaps from other parts of the world, from the gleaming domes of the furthest south, or from the artificial islands slowly spinning in the tropical gyres. He could not communicate with them; they weren't here as a community. Their community was out, sewing the world back together, groping for the stars.
No time, no space either; the galleries did not resemble any environment humans were tuned for, and the exoskeleton kept him able to work in any orientation. Sometimes he worked for hours before realizing he was hanging from a ceiling. Up and down looked the same, except in the deepest chambers where one could see the immense glow of Earth's asthenosphere peeking through the broken layers of rock, refractory pipes miraculously plunging into the red mass. Everywhere else it was the same stone, the same steam. Even geology scarcely helped, for he mostly operated far below the sedimentary layers, in that compact granite that had formed in the planet's first years.
One day respite came in his labor. He found himself following directions to a large circular holding room with a flat floor, packed with crates and canisters, and no further instruction. The sound of the machines still made the ground pulse beneath his feet, warm and throbbing like a living body, certainly more living than he. But then a message came, and reminded him of himself.
It called him by name and told him to rejoice, speaking in that flowing Altaic idiom that had become the language of Earth. His penance was near its end. He was about to regain his humanity – could he be trusted with it, in this new turn of the wheel? Memories of the world above flooded his mind, finally allowed through the subcellular shackles, with an exhilarating pain as when blood returns to circulation in a frozen limb.
And then He – the father of humankind, the maker of the new world, He who had pulled the human species back from the abyss – looked at him through a sideral distance. His face, created out of all the billion faces of Earth, contained Chiung's as well.
In the gaze of the Mighty there was justice, but also compassion. And in that moment Chiung heard His voice. Enraptured as he was, he could not comprehend the exact content, nor describe it to others. But in that moment he knew with burning certainty that his debt had been paid, and he was redeemed.
The self-moving chains that clawed his body loosened. His clouded mind took a moment to realize it, but for the first time after undefinable ages he was free from himself. The heat was unpleasant – yes, unpleasant, a judgment, a sensation, after the numbness of the caves, where all his senses had confounded in shapeless noise. Even pain – not the blinking screech of a mechanical sensor, but pain of his own living flesh!
He realized he'd fallen on the stone floor, but the exoskeleton had kept his muscles functional, and slowly he stood up again. Chiung lifted his head and saw a cool light filter through the crimson glow of the abyss. Stairs led upward, into a fresher, calmer place. Night awaited, but even the full Moon would be a greater strain than his eyes could bear in that moment.
No guards or workers came – what for? He climbed himself the stairs, though he felt that the stairs themselves were rising at a fantastic speed, across the layers of Earth. Here he was being born again from the Hadean mineral depths, rushing through the Archean lagoons, the Proterozoic seafloors, the Paleozoic reefs, the Mesozoic forests, the Cenozoic plains, into the light of the Age of Man, which, too, had to be redeemed from unforgivable mistakes.