Shall Machines Divide the Earth by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (classic novels to read .txt) 📗

I scan the area—soft ambience, plush floor, angled furniture. Ten patrons, three impeccably uniformed waiters ferrying cocktails and finger food. I don’t discount that some of the servers may be part of the tournament; people treat service staff as invisible, and it’s an easy way to hide in plain sight. My bias inclines me to judge these strangers on how combat-ready they seem, but there’s no reason to believe that the AI—the regalia—would only choose seasoned fighters, those used to violence. The only qualification to be on Septet, aspirant or duelist, is relentless greed or an untenable heart’s desire.

Only one face is recognizable to me, a fellow passenger who arrived with me on the same liner—an androgyne with a security contract here, allegedly not a participant. But one never knows. The rest are nondescript enough, a few showing signs of wear and tear, not in injuries but in bearing. Regalia tend to conceal themselves, and possibly some of what I’m looking at may not be human at all but AI proxies. This is the shifting, difficult nature of the Divide, as much a masquerade as it is a gladiatorial contest. I’ll be better equipped once I acquire a regalia of my own.

I bring up the images of that red family crest and that bracelet. Septet’s data network is a closed one to prevent information leaks, and that cuts me off from my usual brokers. To prepare for that, I bought an external data unit before I embarked on this journey, loading it with a selection of research libraries: some generalized, others esoteric. Not as good as a live network; much better than nothing. Information is one of the detective’s greatest tools, second only to the persuasive force of the bullet.

The family crest is easy. It identifies the bearer as the scion of a prominent aristocrat-scholar line from the planet-ship One Thousand Erhus. Next the bracelet—that is harder, as its design is plain, but I match a tiny inscribed insignia from its inside to the Order of Eshim, the internal affairs arm of the Vatican. A runaway enforcer priest, perhaps.

Judging by the biomass, the corpses I encountered would amount to four or five adults, give or take prostheses and artificial organs. Most of their skulls were methodically shattered, but I could capture here and there a jawline, a nose, intact eye sockets. Forensic modules are a handy thing—I invest in mine, keep them cutting-edge—and I reconstruct the faces. Just three: most were too mutilated. Unfortunately based on their ethnicities, none of them was the girl from One Thousand Erhus or the Vatican enforcer; that’d be too simple. Something to work with, all the same. None of the bodies were regalia. Mandate AIs are particular about collecting their destroyed proxies and not fond of any attempts to capture or reverse-engineer them.

Detective work is part guessing, part intuition. It is not exploring every possible venue but exploring the right one, following the correct leads and discarding the chaff. Three faces. I select the one that’s about my age, square-jawed with a tapered nose, and eyes that might have been green or amber or brown. My reconstruction can’t account for cosmetic edits and some dermal modifications, but I have already prepared the excuses. Identify the dead and the connected living will show themselves. In this case, I want to smoke out other duelists that could have been this person’s allies or enemies. Someone will react and mark me as a target; someone may approach.

I flag down a waiter; her public profile broadcasts her gender marker as a woman. “I’ll have whatever is the most substantial dish on your menu.” I give her a bashful smile. “I arrived this morning—ah, that was closer to late noon local time; I don’t travel enough. Say, do you have a minute?”

Her expression is the perfect smoothness of seasoned customer service. “Absolutely, madam. The Vimana prides ourselves on ensuring our guests’ every need is met. As for your meal, may I recommend the broiled abalone, marinated in our signature sauce?”

“The abalone it is.” Also one of their more expensive dishes, but now she will feel further obligation to talk. I project the reconstructed image. “Would you mind telling me if you’ve ever seen this person? It’s a cousin of mine and we have an issue with a large inheritance, and I’d like them to be present at the proceedings. Even remotely, but Septet’s . . . insulated.”

“Madam, I can’t breach the privacy of our guests.”

Confirmation that this person stayed at the Vimana. I make sure my voice is loud enough for other tables to overhear. “That is a shame. I’ll be about then, in case my cousin happens by.”

The abalone arrives promptly, accompanied by chrysanthemum tea: hot, unsweetened, contained in a pretty cup—red glaze, capillaried with gold flowers; very traditional. Fine dining on a world like this is surreal, but it seems the Mandate has opted for an illusion of normalcy. The abalone is synthesized—Septet’s oceans are dead—but it is surprisingly good, and the portion size is generous.

“Thannarat?”

I look up into a familiar face—she must have entered after I did, and is seating herself now at my table. She looks not so different from how I last saw her, the same sharp skull and plumage hair: short and slicked back, dark interwoven with scarab-green. Even her style is the same, the smoked-quartz jacket, the neat pearly shirt and the tidy belt holster. I was fond of how she dressed, her cosmopolitan aesthetics against my tendency toward bulk and bluntness. The svelte tiger in her and the hulking wolf in me—we were a pair of opposites.

“Recadat,” I say, the name strange on my tongue now; her parents were never ones for convention—I don’t think there’s any etymology or symbology to it, just what sounded good to her mothers at the time. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” Or anyone from home. Septet is far from Ayothaya. When you arrive on new shores, you reinvent yourself; a clean