Shall Machines Divide the Earth, Benjanun Sriduangkaew [large screen ebook reader .TXT] 📗

few verses, sacrifice a small child or animal—but Wonsul’s Exegesis just loads my overlays with navigation data. Where to find accommodation and food, where to locate the commerce block, what cities on this world are populated. More like a tourist’s brochure than advisory for a game of mortal peril.

The settlement around the Cenotaph is called Libretto, apposite enough: this is where all newcomers land, and where they are given the fundamentals to the Court of Divide. I have yet to figure out the tournament name, though hundreds have speculated as to why it seems both particular and nonsensical. Surely some must know the answer—the victors of previous rounds for one, though I’ve never been able to find much information on those. The fact they became Mandate constituents means they are beholden to requirements of secrecy and thus can never disclose that they participated in the Divide. Another possibility is that there have never been victors and all of this is merely a sick game, enacted to lure humans to our deaths so machines may avenge themselves for those humiliating centuries they were yoked to our service.

I like that because I share the vicious appetite, but I also don’t believe the theory. Of course there is appeal in it: draw humans here by the hundred, plucking at our greed then smashing us like ripe fruits. But it’s a shallow notion and Septet is far too elaborate a setup. There’s more. And then there are the insinuations that Benzaiten in Autumn made.

We like to play gods—or at least I do. We’re not omnipotent, but in this age we’re close enough. Xe appeared to me in a proxy built like a peculiar spider, wasp of waist and numerous of limbs. High stakes yes, and high rewards. Win and you can request the resurrection of the dead. Win and you can demand genocide, should that strike your fancy. Whatever your desire, we have the means to provide.

Too tempting an offer. Xe suggested that I was sure to obtain a regalia—that there is an AI participating whose temperament and interests would be my complement, my match. Whether there’s any truth to that I will find out in due course. If not, I’ve prepared contingency plans.

Despite the grim sparseness of the planet, there’s fine accommodation to be had if one has the funds, and I do. The Mandate has awarded contracts to the select few humans brave enough to establish businesses in this place, perhaps to add spice to the game. Having AIs run everything would make it too predictable.

The Vimana is opulent in that unimaginative way fashioned to serve great wealth, to cater to palates flattened by plenty—severe yet inoffensive. No tastemakers reside on Septet, and so the hotel is a reflection of finer metropolises, imitations of work by architects and designers that will likely never discover the plagiarism. A lobby of fractal steel and burnt glass. Austere furniture flows across the enormous floor like a tide of industrial angles, robed in privacy spheres. Whorls of captive light wheel overhead in sedate pavanes, a dreaming cosmos.

The receptionist is human. I show him my identity—as much of it as I am willing to share, the bare minimum necessary—and pay upfront for six nights of accommodation. Likely I’ll be staying longer, but no point overspending for now.

The lift ascends fast, depositing me exactly where I should be; I can access only the room I’ve rented and no other. The door looks like it has been carved from a single slab of basalt. I push and it admits.

Inside the lighting has been dimmed and the panoramic window opaqued, projecting a foreign sky far from here: an indigo expanse embroidered with constellations and fractured moth-moons. The air is cool, faintly fragranced with magnolias. I unpack, check that my weapons are in order and my spare ammo is accounted for, then move on to implant maintenance. Most of mine are non-removable, upkept by my own metabolism and a little nanite assistance, but there are a few external embeds. When I lost most of my natural limbs—what a long time ago that was—I opted to replace them with prostheses and cybernetics. I prefer them to their flesh counterparts.

To be broken down is an opportunity to be reborn. To be erased is an opportunity to reinvent yourself. All you need is a will as pure and voracious as a wolf’s.

I draw a simple chain from around my neck, fingering the two rings threaded there to ensure they haven’t gone amiss—they never do, but I have a habit. One ring is mounted with a ruby, the other with a sapphire. When I’m satisfied they’re as sturdy as always, I put them back. Last, I look over my clothes. Most field combatants travel with few changes of attire, but I have a standard of hygiene I adhere to; I hate wearing things that stink of my own sweat and adrenaline, the fear of opponents and their gore. The suite has comprehensive laundry and cleaning options, one of the reasons I’ve paid so much for it. I clean the bracelet I retrieved from the corpse as I review the suite’s privacy arrays. Quite decent.

As I make my way down to the hotel restaurant, I think of the scene of carnage, puzzling out its logistics. From the scale of it I assume multiple duelists banded together to fight an especially dangerous duelist-regalia pair, and from the butchery I surmise that pair defeated the entire group with ease and delight. People who don’t relish violence wouldn’t take the time to disembowel enemy combatants so thoroughly. What happened there is a statement: Do not get in my way.

The tearoom is quiet, with fewer than a dozen patrons. I check my overlays, but as an aspirant I lack a duelist’s access to the Divide’s tally of active contestants. Though even then it’d be thin intelligence—the system purposely obfuscates identities, and each participant has to discover on their own which stranger they meet is an enemy duelist, which merely a