METAPSYCHOSES

When does recollection become history, memoir biography, and a name just words in a dead language?

Imre Bergamasc is a man widely known for changing his mind. As a mercenary in the Corps, he served his masters faithfully and well—until he turned on them, perceiving in their desire for long-term stability that the Forts were overreaching their responsibilities toward “lesser” forms of humanity. The bitter and bloody conflict that followed, known later in the galaxy-spanning Continuum as the Mad Times, was a bold gesture, perhaps even noble, but there could be only one winner. Imre’s surrender sealed the fate of his revolution. His subsequent disappearance came as no surprise to many.

Few knew that he had entered into a pact with his former masters, a pact aligning his interests with theirs through a project called Domgard. Its purpose was kept from the majority of humanity; only Forts could be trusted with the secret. Imre Bergamasc became, therefore, identical to those he had spent 172,000 years fighting.

As part of their Graduations, Forts commonly adopted a new name, one based on the old but with multiple layers of meaning. Forts are wordsmiths as well as worldsmiths. Imre Bergamasc took over half a million years to choose his new name, but choose it he did. That name is presently known only to him.

The art of changing one’s mind, like much in life, is easy to learn but hard to master. Imre Bergamasc attempted to preserve his reputation by systematically erasing or altering all records that might reveal the truth of his betrayal. Such records included the testimony of his former friends and allies, those members of the Corps who had faithfully served with him during the Mad Times and now regarded him as a traitor, or at best inconstant. The records also included the comprehensive backups of his life scattered far and wide across the galactic disk, from which a new version of himself could be created should some disastrous fate befall the original.

Imre Bergamasc is a man determined to survive whatever fate throws at him. He is not, however, omniscient. Even as he emerged once more into galactic society, apparently to resume his work as a servant of the Forts, he left loose ends behind him. One concerned the only living man who knows the truth of his betrayal. That man is the Old-Timer best known as Render, and he is the one man Imre can never kill.

Another loose end would cause him considerable grief in times to come. Of the many backups destroyed by Imre’s own hand, a single example survived complete destruction. The Drum was discovered as a cloud of radioactive dust on the edge of the galaxy and reassembled by the group mind called the Jinc. An obsessive cataloger of extragalactic material, within which it hopes to find the truth regarding humanity’s creation, the Jinc re-created Imre Bergamasc from the ruins of the Drum—a version of him, anyway, patched and imperfect, and briefly the wrong gender. It is difficult to say what went through his mind during this difficult rebirth, but the experience marked him as a very different man from his original, whom he ultimately rejected. Call this version of Imre Bergamasc Imre-Prime, not because he is in any imaginable fashion more authentic than other iterations of himself, but because he later turned his back on more advanced modes of being in order to appeal to the galaxy’s common denominator: Primes, those multitudinous people most resembling our distant ancestors, the Old-Timers.

 
The template from which the Jinc “resurrected” Imre-Prime had been recorded by his original shortly after the end of the Mad Times. Imre-Prime possessed, therefore, no memory of anything that had transpired since then. He was unaware, for instance, that a weapon of considerable potency had recently destroyed nearly every Fort in the galaxy. The Slow Wave radiated out from Spargamos, a small planet near the galaxy’s core, cutting off the drone-like frags that were every Fort’s component parts. The only Forts to survive the catastrophe were those linked by means other than loop shunts—advanced technology that made the very existence of such galactic superminds possible, and which the Slow Wave specifically targeted. Imagine a human brain with the axons removed, leaving individual neurons isolated: such was the hammerblow to  human cognition in the Milky Way. All advanced thought ceased. The great work of humanity came to an abrupt halt.

Imre-Prime was also unaware that his Fort-self had (a) ever existed and (b) survived the Slow Wave. (The Fort-self, of course, had contingencies in place—pockets of himself that operated without loop shunts—because you can never be too prepared for disaster.) Components of Imre Bergamasc swarmed across the galaxy in the wake of the Slow Wave, seeking by any means to reconnect and rebuild the mind they were once part of. His priorities were, and remain, simple: the work of Domgard must continue, and whoever destroyed the Forts must not be provoked to mount further attacks on what remains of humanity. The long-term survival of the species is paramount.

By the time Imre-Prime escaped his Jinc creators and returned to the greater galaxy, several attempts to re-create the Forts had been interrupted by Imre Bergamasc and his band of saboteur Barons, plus another agency, the enigmatic Luminous, who manifested as swarms of silver spheres with lethal intent. The Luminous communicate via loop shunts, the same technology targeted by the Slow Wave, suggesting that they or their makers are responsible for the murder of the Forts. The two forces independently ensured that humanity remained in a kind of Stone Age, lacking everything the Forts had once provided: stability, unity, and the long view. Barons and Luminous coexist uneasily in the Milky Way, with unthreatening humanity caught between them, but there have been no major flare-ups for half a million years. The deadly phenomenon of the Slow Wave has never been repeated on such a large scale.

Imre-Prime, reunited with his former comrades, wasted no time returning to his correct gender and mounting a campaign to restore order to the mess that had once been his home. The First Church of the Return was his principal vehicle of reconstruction, with former lover and nominal ally Helwise MacPhedron its high priest and he himself its figurehead, the First Prime. Together they fashioned a Returned Continuum and brought a large percentage of the galaxy under Imre-Prime’s control.

He did his best to bring peace to the many ordinary humans of the galaxy, but a single Prime cannot possibly manage such a complex beast. Unrest was widespread. After an attempted coup by the more pragmatic Helwise, Imre-Prime abdicated, leaving his former bodyguard Emlee Copas in charge. To her he bequeathed: full control of the galaxy; responsibility for his unwanted son, Ra MacPhedron; his allies Render and Al Freer; and a considerable mess.

He could have managed his affairs more successfully had he not been distracted by other matters. Immediately prior to the coup, Imre-Prime was taken to Spargamos to see the ruins of Domgard. There he came face-to-face with his Fort-self, whom he had last encountered shortly after his “resurrection” by the Jinc—once to be attacked, the second time to be warned away from anything to do with Domgard.

On Spargamos, Imre-Prime was used as bait to trigger a battle between the Luminous and the Barons, a battle that served as a testing ground for new weaponry against the perpetrators of the Slow Wave. Imre-Prime was shot by his own hand, by his Fort-self, who had no further use for him. And that appeared to be the end of that.

Fortunately for Imre-Prime, death is not the absolute it used to be. Humanity is an infovore endlessly chewing the vast cud of data it has accrued down the millennia. We cannot forget, and we cannot let go. Baron spies in the Returned Continuum soon leaned that Imre-Prime had been resurrected from a hardcast record by Emlee Copas and returned to Earth via surreptitious means. There, during the attempted coup, Imre-Prime issued Executive Order KISMET, which resulted in the murder of every iteration of Helwise MacPhedron in the galaxy. For once, his mind was made up.

There is little the Barons do not know about the galaxy’s would-be savior, although some details they have discovered only after the fact. They have learned, for instance, that Imre-Prime governed the Returned Continuum with the assistance of an advanced artificial intelligence, the Apparatus, and one sole remaining Fort, MZ. Both beings were written directly onto the fabric of space-time—using an arcane technology developed by the ancient minds of Earth, whose legacy Imre-Prime inherited. It was in the belly of this virtual Fort that Imre traveled to and from Spargamos, taking both the Barons and the Luminous by surprise.

The spies also learned that much of the unrest in the Returned Continuum was driven by a movement associated with the Veil, an alien parasite that allows the expansion and transmission of biological memory. They know that a former lover of Imre-Prime brought the Veil to Earth in the hope that he might use its unifying influence to bring peace to his troubled realm. They suspect that a trace of Helwise MacPhedron has survived in the Veil, and lurks there still, undetected by the Apparatus.

For all the Barons have learned, however, questions remain that they cannot answer. They do not know how much Imre-Prime has learned about the purpose of Domgard. They do not know what took place between Imre-Prime and the Luminous in the heart of Spargamos. They do not know where Imre-Prime is.

Perhaps most perplexingly, they do not know why Imre-Prime changed his mind about ruling the galaxy. Official histories fail to explain why a man who has successfully quelled rebellion among his own ranks—and has in addition to that been offered an olive branch from the very forces threatening his regime—would turn his back on everything he worked for. Rumors were rife at the time, but none has withstood close scrutiny. It is possible that he realized the futility of his task and fled before the full consequences of his hubris came to bear upon him. (Fear would be his motivator, in that case.) Perhaps he felt regretful about Helwise’s betrayal and the revenge he took upon her. (Guilt, then, would guide him into oblivion.) Another possibility is that he has struck a deal, such as the one his Fort-self made with the Forts in the distant past, but this time with a power that has yet to reveal itself to the greater galaxy—more hidden Forts, perhaps, or a consortium of Old-Timers who have realized the truth about the fate awaiting us all. (Could hope possibly lie at the heart of his actions?)

Mercenary, Fort, First Prime, fugitive . . . No number of spies can tell us who Imre Bergamasc is now. Once declared to be anything other than a decent man, he remains changeable, unpredictable, and chaotic. That fatal flaw may yet be the undoing of all his plans. Until history has relegated him to the dusty drawer of oblivion, until his name is forgotten along with all who knew him, and until his deeds become mere footnotes in the vast list of humanity’s great works, he remains a threat to everyone, including himself.

Imre Bergamasc is his own worst enemy. The feeling, I suspect, is mutual.

The Grand Conjunction (UK/AUZ) by Sean Williams is out now.

Imre Bergamasc is lost.  His search for answers has led him up an alley so blind even his sense of self has become uncertain.  Before he can save the galaxy from ruin, he must find the strength to carry on and reclaim his ultimate purpose.

But more than two million years in our future, the fight has changed.  Former allies are now enemies, and enemies have taken on entirely new forms.  Chased from the very edge of humanity’s vast empire into the heart of an ancient conspiracy, he must finally come face to face with Himself, for without the truth of his past humanity’s future will never be secured.