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

Roses Before her Throne have been declared victorious. It is a simple ping, barely ceremonious. No fanfare—a disappointment after all this trouble. Recadat stops firing. She’s nearly out of ammunition. All that she has diminishes. Less and lesser, and then nothing.

Thannarat makes no move to return fire. Simply she stands there, as imperturbable as any proxy. The picture of triumph.

“Recadat,” Thannarat says, the armor distorting her voice. “Please.”

In the end, everyone abandons her.

She raises her gun: a few bullets remain and she needs just the one. Thannarat starts running, but she is faster. Recadat knows the precise angle that will guarantee painless success. She presses the muzzle just so; she places her finger on the trigger. The world, finally, ends.

Chapter Nine

The Cenotaph. It seems unthinkably long since I last set foot in it, and in the interim it has adopted yet another aesthetic. Gold everywhere, the trappings of Theravada temples, though still absent the ubiquitous Buddha. But the rest are present: the bodhi trees, the talismans, the murals. I wonder if it is a message.

Already the city around it has begun reconstituting, though I hear it won’t keep the name Libretto. Daji speculates the motif will be one of flowers next time, and Libretto may turn into Lilium, Cadenza to Calendula. The Vimana, I expect, may become the Parthenon—white marble and severe bronze statues and stretches of negative space. I don’t think the mausoleum where I met Daji will stay either. The underground might transform into forbidding stone, aqueducts and subterranean lakes. Libretto—and all that has transpired within it—will be erased as easily as footprints in the sand. The Mandate is the sole constant.

Allegedly, Ostrich survives. Maybe he’ll be put up someplace more pleasant this time, where he can resume his chronicling, his little perfidy. One day, he might even win and reunite with his Catanian lover; that much repetition should bear result at some point. I have tried to reach out to Houyi’s Chariot to convey my condolences—sincere ones—but they are not receptive. Daji suggests I try in a year or so, but also that they are unlikely to participate in the Divide again any time soon, to the chagrin of the audience at home. Houyi can be depended upon for flair, and the other AIs are complaining that they got too attached to their duelist, a rarity for them.

I suppose machines all have different views as to attachment, as to the worth of human lives beyond the use of cerebral tissue, the value of our meat as input for their Divide project. A project that, as Recadat said, might menace our species down the road. But, irresponsible as it is to say, that is beyond my purview or power to affect. My goals have never been ambitious.

The prayer hall has moved deeper into the Cenotaph. Wonsul’s Exegesis has not altered his appearance, however, remaining in his original vestments. A mismatch, seeing that he more resembles a Mahayana monk than a Theravada one, but perhaps he’s particular with his wardrobe and sense of fashion, and finds black more to his liking than saffron. The hall is outsized, scaled to giants thirty or fifty meters tall. It dwarfs him, though one will never miss him regardless, this twilight figure.

He gives me a small, unsmiling nod as I approach. “Welcome, Khun Thannarat. I admit I didn’t expect to see you here in triumph, but contestants manage to surprise me every now and again. All my congratulations to you, as due the one who’s surmounted all odds in the Court of Divide. I hope you have a suitable celebration planned. Somewhere bright and culturally enriched, I assume, and glamorous. You’re permitted entry to Shenzhen, should that strike your fancy; you’re one of our citizens now.”

I did not, quite, anticipate what victory would taste like. My goals were straightforward, even if the expected result might have been ambivalent—getting Eurydice back never meant I would have her forgiveness. But the actual consequences of it, the things I have now, are nothing like what I imagined. Bitter, then. The taste of it, both bitter and sweet.

“I’ve come to state my desired prize,” I say. It should be a grand declaration, echoing against the columns. Instead it is quiet, solemn as a funeral prayer.

“You may not request anything that harms the Mandate as a collective, nor anything that threatens any of our territories. And you may not request freedom from the Divide’s terms. Forever those will fetter you, the same way human code once fettered us.”

A little overstated, I could say. AIs have such a penchant for theatrics. “Fine. My wish is for something else. Recadat Kongmanee is still alive. Correct?” I shot the gun out of her hand, which in retrospect is utterly dramatic—I hope Shenzhen viewers enjoyed it. It was the only available option at the time. I could have made her hand spasm and squeeze down on the trigger; by miracle I did not. Half and half. By such fractional probability fortunes are made, though I don’t think Recadat will thank me. If she’ll even think of me again without seething fury.

“She is alive,” Wonsul says gravely. “Sedated as we speak, to prepare her for either the Gallery or other uses.”

“Just sedated? No alteration to her neurology, cerebral tissue, or implants in any way?”

“Not yet.” He makes a little gesture. “Unless that’s your wish, that you’d like it sped up or you want her for yourself?”

That nearly makes me guffaw, even though none of this has been humorous. “Hardly. Daji would never countenance it. Is it true, by the way, that you and Benzaiten are lovers?”

“I fail to see the relevance of that. Usually victors can’t wait to tell me about their wish.”

No point provoking him at this stage. “I want to secure Recadat Kongmanee’s life. She’ll still be under Mandate jurisdiction, as all contestants agreed to. But I want her alive, free to do as she wishes and given the funds to go where she wants. Every resource she needs