A.W. Cross - The Harvest of Souls

A.W. Cross lives in the gorgeous wilds of Canada. She lurves all things science fiction and would have made a great Starfleet Officer or unicorn. You can visit her on her website, Facebook, or on Twitter (@aw_cross).

Other books by A.W. Cross

The Seeds of Winter

The Gardener of Man

Copyright 2018 by A.W. Cross

Published by Glory Box Press

British Columbia, Canada.

gloryboxpress@gmail.com

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For information regarding permission, write to Glory Box Press at gloryboxpress@gmail.com

First edition, 2018

Epub edition

ISBN 978-1-7751787-5-0

Cover design by germancreative

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

I asked you once if you thought you could ever love a robot, and that your answer would determine your future happiness. I want to ask you the same question regarding perception vs. reality. Whats more important? Would you be happier knowing that what you experience is the absolute truth rather than merely the product of your perception? What if that truth was unpleasant, difficult? And the perception was comfortable, safe? What is more important to you?

Cindra, Letter to Omega

In the dream, I made my way through the waving grass of the emerald sea once more. The blades were brittle and dry, their tips crusted with the salt that permeated the air and seasoned my lips. My steps were slow and resoluteno longer the flight of a child.

I couldnt see them, but I knew they were there, the others like me. Both human and machine, an involuntary legacy turned harbinger. And behind them, a cast of ninety-nine following in formation, heartless and soulless and free. Their power at my back was both soothing and terrifying, an expanse of dark water that was, for the moment, calm, but in whose depths lurked a terrible power.

The hundredth walked beside me, his hand clutching mine. His face was set, looking only forward, although the tightness with which he gripped my hand betrayedwhat, I wasnt sure. He didnt feel like I did, but he knew fear. And grief.

My companions wound silently through the houses we passed. The buildings were ghosts, their presence only suggested by faint outlines and the berth we gave them. Both familiar and unfamiliar, their bricks were built from our collective memories, pressed into clay and mortar.

Had the houses always been there? I couldnt remember.

Wraiths lingered in the doorways of these ghost-houses, trapped forever in their own time. Even through the veil of ages, they felt our presence, their pale fingers scrabbling against the lintel as their empty eyes searched for us, their voiceless mouths trembling in uncertainty. Further on, the buildings multiplied as epochs overlapped, and the specters gazes sharpened in accusation, epithets dripping from their tongues as their fingers tried to press the vision of us into their rheumy eyes.

From under those fingers, a sickly network of corruption spread, a viscous blackness creeping over their cheeks in spindly lines. As we passed them, they fell, a lament on their lips that cracked like thunder in our ears. The shadow-homes crumbled, some into ash, others into dust, all into ruin.

Doubles rose where the originals had fallen, one after the other in rapid succession, like an echo. They saw only each other, for wed faded beyond their sight into obscurity. As we brushed past, they merely made a sign of protection against us, and were consoled.

Beyond the shades, the tree rose from a blanket of mist, solitary still in the green expanse. It was a familiar comfort, and something more, something that, for the first time, I almost understood. Our march toward it remained steady, deliberate. We all had a purpose there that must be fulfilled.

As our legion advanced on the tree, fear surged inside me that we would crush it. How could we not? We were an army, and one not of flesh. But there was no way to stem the tideI couldnt even stop the rhythm of my own feet. I had made our decision, and there was no going back.

Moments before impact, we split like a wave against rock, flowing around the immense trunk until wed encompassed it. It was then that we stopped, and that I finally understood our purpose: protect the tree. Defend it at all costs, for at its base was the means of our survival, the only means left to us on the path wed taken. We faced outward as one, our anticipation pointed and unpitying.

A sudden sigh stirred the air, and the earth shifted beneath our feet, heralding a blur of bodies as the red mist descended. Its bloody condensation gathered on the leaves of the tree and rained down on us, gods and monsters meeting at last.

The harvest had begun.

Would your answer change if this question wasnt merely philosophical? What if you were faced with the very real decision to choose between living the truth, no matter how bleak, or staying within your perceived existence? Could you be happy either way? Knowing that you had the choice to live in comfort and didnt for the sake of truth? Or living in comfort knowing that it could be called, by some, a lie?

Cindra, Letter to Omega

My skin giving way under the rough bark was what finally roused me. I awoke with a start, the salt from my dream still clinging to my lips. In front of me stretched the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the horizon dotted with mottled smudges of green and brownother tiny islands like ours, adrift in the glassy green expanse. The sharp sting of abraded skin pierced the fog of my reverie, and the red mist dissipated. Reaching back, I traced the graze the thick ridges of the colossal oak had left on my shoulder. My fingertips came away red, and I wiped them on the grass, the blood soaking into the salt-crusted blades and making them supple again.

The dream left behind a hollow burning in my chest. Tor hadnt beenwaiting for me by the tree, nor had he walked with me. Hed always been part of the dream before. What did it mean? Was he dead? Lost to us forever?

The last time Id seen him was shortly before my death, his eyes wide and wild as he clawed his way toward me, dragging his frozen legs uselessly behind him. Wed searched for him every day for six weeks, following the route we believed hed planned to take. But that was the plan hed made before my death. Or at least, what hed thought was my death. After my body was destroyed by Umbra, the artificial intelligence that had grown like a cancer within the body of another cyborg, Tor had left as hed promised he would and missed the resurrection of my consciousness into another body.

I didnt know what he would do in his grief, but he wasnt the type of man to give up. Hed lived through the Artilect War, surviving the death of his mother and everyone hed known as he guarded me for the five years Id slept. For all that time wed been bonded, and whether he knew of my survival or not, that connection remained.