The Wau arrives at the Sanctum with a thrilling agenda. Once again, emotions resurface, despite the Armors' AIs' pressure. That's a good sign.
In the cosmic void surrounding the non-void, isolated from the Transients by a distance as vast as technology allows, he reopens the secret files: David Ilsner, Caliban, Babel.
The Starfleet, consumed by a very human madness, had launched an assault on a League colony ship in the Caliban system. The Wau seized this opportunity to move up the interstellar frontline and separate the attackers. When his Halcyon appeared on the radars, the Tygers (heavily armed Ravens used by the fleet) scattered. A pre-programmed Exocet missile advanced into the heart of the frontline, orbited Caliban-1, then returned.
The Wau suspected this Exocet had a secret mission, which he now understood, having safeguarded his earlier thoughts in a mental box.
The specific EV of the Sanctum, autonomous and filtering, notifies him that three files require his attention: message from Patricia, Patricia's status, and insurrection on Orion Prime. Orion Prime, thinks the Wau. The war tribunal. They must have sent a very convincing alert message for the LE to bring it up, he thinks.
First, the Exocet.
In the meditation chamber, facing the glass bay overlooking nothingness, the Wau unfolds the data. Caliban appears, round and white on a black background. The Wau's transhuman gaze spots the League's small orbital stations.
Caliban-1 is completely covered by clouds, including at the poles. It could be mistaken for a gas dwarf, if such a concept existed, but the cyclones and hurricanes are clearly visible, along with gentler, white clouds rich in oxygen and water. This planet might sustain human life. But from this photo alone, no land or ocean is visible.
The Wau switches filters, moving through electromagnetic, ultraviolet, infrared, albedo spectrums…and the image turns black. As if there were nothing there. From these readings, one might think Caliban-1 is an illusion, yet it clearly has mass, as evidenced by orbiting stations. Another filter, the so-called entropic filter, based on "entropic waves," a poorly understood concept inherited from the Transients, is also applied. Entropic waves "tell the story" of actions occurring in a place and propagate in all directions at the speed of light. Entropic waves cannot be masked and are used in high-stakes criminal investigations.
Yet this filter also returns blackness. The Wau concludes there is a device associated with the planet that negates its entropic presence. Intuitively, this device must possess technology equal to or exceeding that of the Transients. Entropy being deeply related to information, this naturally explains its absence in the LEs.
One mystery solved, another, even larger, opens up.
This deserves considerable reflection. The Wau is emotionless, yet he notes with reasoned bitterness that the game might be definitively too difficult for him. He sees, like distant storm clouds, technological walls rising against him.
The Wau opens Patricia's file. She sent a summary of her meta-search on all the Ilsners. The data is considerable, and he jumps directly to the section on David Ilsner.
All responses are terse and identical: I'm sorry, but I have no information on this subject.
Failure, again. Unless David Ilsner had obtained the device that cancels entropic fields?
The Wau checks the second alert concerning Patricia. She appears in recent death notices from Geneva. An abnormal cardiac failure, with a huge insurance cartel launching an investigation. She was unable to transfer herself into the After. The incident gradually transforms from a news item into a criminal case, then into an extrahuman matter, with the discovery of her macabre museum of desecrated Xenos.
The Transients eliminated her. And it's the Wau's fault.
Next case. Revolt on Orion Prime. The LE has compiled billions of camera data points. Surprisingly, the League of Antioch, despite being heavily outnumbered, has entirely captured Francisco-1 station, aided by a significant figure: Gorylkin, whom some call the Saint of the Xenos. A rebellion funded without regard for cost by an ultra-rich Earth family because... of course. Dorian. Once again, the Wau's fault.
Overwhelmed by his analytical AIs, the Wau feels nothing but acknowledges his triple failure. He closes everything and rests his golden visor against the bay of emptiness. Is there an edge from which to rebound, or is everything lost?
He recalls the strange intuition felt while diving into the abyss. What his brain couldn't clearly label, the AIs find by bridging unconscious to unconscious.
A memory. At the UniNox. The polished wooden hallway. On a wall. A dusty excellence award. His eye saw it fleetingly for a split second, but the AI extracts a clear image, refining it until legible.
Award of Excellence from Universities in Xeno Linguistics Awarded to David Ilsner by the Human-Xeno Council of Paris Sorbonne
Not only failures today, then.
The Wau notes David Ilsner's name on a folded paper, then forgets it in a mental box. He returns to the star fortress, removes the Armor, and returns to Lennox. Cass runs with great strides as if she were an untiring robot, arriving at UniNox without even being breathless.
Annoyed by wasting time and by failures, she expands her psychic perception and locates Aloysius in an AI laboratory.
There he is, surrounded by smooth white AI terminals, state-of-the-art, like a 4th-millennium Stonehenge. He's leaning over another terminal, this one pierced with electrodes as if examining a biological brain. Inside the terminal, no informatics, but a strange silver liquid substance.
Cass draws his attention with a "hello," sustained by a forced smile. He rises slowly like an old man, placing his working glasses onto his chest.
"Hi Cass. I'm working with my AI…colleagues on an experimental model adapted to Lennox crystallization. (Seeing no reaction, he adds) For the Afters. The cubes. Cass? Are you with me?" "Fascinating," comments Cass, who couldn't care less and hands him a folded paper.
With a vocal command, she shuts off all connected AIs in the room, including portable LEs.
She violently breaks through his psychic defenses with a technique called "door forcing," momentarily forcing open his mind. Within that brief instant, she gives him instructions: "Samuel Aloysius, take this paper, read it. Tell me if you know the person named inside somewhat, well, very well, or perfectly, without saying their name. Then fold it back and give it to me. Ask the AIs to reconnect. Forget everything from when I ordered the AIs to shut down."
The old scholar reads the paper, laughs slightly, "Oh yes, I know him rather well," folds the paper, returns it.
"The AIs disconnected. Give me a second, Cass. What happened? A solar flare? Anyway, tell me why you came. Let me guess, a question about the Transients? Sometimes I try to find something interesting to tell you about it, but I feel like I've told you everything already. Maybe someday you won't suddenly run from our conversations and can tell me more about your projects, which seem fascinating." "Precisely. I'd like to invite you to dinner, Sam. To thank you for our past exchanges." "An old wreck like me with a lovely woman like you? (The AIs reconnect pleasantly.) If I'd known my studies on freedom would open such opportunities, I'd have been more persistent. So, see you tonight?"
Cass glanced at the wall clock, which displayed decimal numbers. It was morning on Lennox. She definitively forced through Aloysius's psychic barriers—thin and rigid—and erased all traces of this psychic violation.
"Your research is absorbing you, Sam. The sun has just set."
The professor checked his watch. Indeed, it was evening. In the corridor, the sun's bluish glow was already shifting to violet. His stomach rumbled. He took off his lab coat, put on a Lennox parka decorated with sewn-on anarchist badges, and apologized.
They descended to Cass's apartment, crossed the entangled door, Cass donned the Armor, and they found themselves in the Sanctum's living quarters.
To Sam, however, their time had been pleasantly filled by wandering conversations about the mysterious streets of the vertical city, culminating in Cass introducing him to an unfamiliar yet upscale restaurant tucked away in a quiet corner. Initially intimidated, Sam was quickly put at ease—Cass had left a long coat at the reception (had she had this coat before? He must have been distracted). He now found himself seated across from this mysterious, obviously wealthy student, scanning a menu filled with poetic and appetizing names.
Outside his hallucination, he sat opposite a two-and-a-half-meter-tall Wau, perched upon an austere bench far too high for him, facing a nutrition bar and an opaque glass filled with synthesized water derived from the hydrogen of dying stars. The place was comfortable, yet the furniture oversized and overly dark. They were at a distance exceeding that of the most distant photons ever emitted by a star.
The Wau went straight to the point. He needed Aloysius to clearly formulate his thoughts so he could simply verify that they were perfectly expressed, describing the subjective yet sincere truth of his knowledge.
"I'd like to discuss David Ilsner."
"David Ilsner… now there's a name from a distant past."
"Did you know him?"
"Yes. I worked with him occasionally. But... I'm curious, how do you know him?"
"A family friend. My mother studied linguistics extensively, and she spoke about him."
The Wau felt an indefinable amusement within Aloysius's psyche.
"Are you David Ilsner's daughter?"
"No? Was he a seducer?"
"Can we call the waiter?"
The Wau conjured a waiter in Aloysius's mind. He bowed before the professor, who declared incredulously:
"Your sea urchins are from Earth? How is that possible?"
"Indeed, sir," replied the waiter obsequiously, in a scholarly Earth accent. "They were harvested the day before the Drift and stored in Raven-aquariums."
"That's terribly expensive, but may I, Cass?"
"You may. I'll have sole. Thank you."
The waiter bowed and disappeared from Aloysius's mind.
"Thank you for this invitation, Cass. My feeling is it will be expensive, but then again, you could well be the daughter of the President of the HS for all I know. Since this dinner is a thank-you for our previous exchanges, and since you want to know everything about that rascal David, I'll ask you one question in return, and you must answer truthfully. Agreed?"
"Agreed. So, David was a seducer?"
"David Ilsner was an arrogant genius whom one could only adore or hate. He was brilliant in the sense that he took unexplored paths, found original solutions, appeared to be doing nonsense—and yet, damn, it worked. It always worked. The University, particularly UniNox, aims to produce post-transient humans of a New Renaissance, capable of anything. That's exactly what David was. My motivation is the preservation of Lennox's Afters, and I dedicate myself fully to it. But David—his attention wandered to any subject, absorbed everything, and always made a contribution. Additionally, he never followed the traditional academic path: no diploma, no thesis, no papers... He worked from hotel rooms, preferably with one or two women in his bed."
"Was he a Transient?"
"Oh, that obsession again… no. He was a human with all-too-human flaws. And we hated him for that: he arrived without a degree, unknown to academic circles, yet he was smarter than anyone—smarter than you. He'd take your research subject, fold it in two, and suddenly it would appear in a new light, neatly solving your problem. He'd leave you to write the thesis—'now that it's done,' as he'd say. 'It was so easy, old friend.' Then, of course, he'd brag in front of journalists, making you feel stupid—and to top it off, he'd sleep with your wife."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Indeed. I had two wives back then, one married to two men simultaneously, and he slept with both wives and the husband."
"Did it hurt?"
"Jealousy is a medieval emotion no one buys anymore, not even in fiction. It mostly freed up my time for research. David, even through his sexual life, was a blessing for science."
"You mentioned journalists. I found no articles."
"Are you a detective?"
"Who knows?"
"Ah, Cassandre's famous 'who knows?' You haven't looked hard enough."
"There are no articles about him, I guarantee you."
"Oh, hence your question about altered LE entries... I see where you're going."
"Let's move on. Did he work on every topic? It seems linguistics was his strong suit."
"Was. He's dead... in case you wondered."
"Are you sure?"
"I'd be surprised otherwise... although the universe is full of surprises."
"Noted. Linguistics, then?"
"Not exclusively. His work on Veritatis provided the foundation for everything built since. But yes. He became interested in what's called generative grammar. Familiar?"
"Enlighten me."
"Before the 2100s, there were many dialects in the SH. Dead languages, like English and Chinese—heard of those? Certain studies noticed that these languages, despite differences, had evolved from some fundamental original languages—similar to how all living beings descended from one common ancestor, a single cell in the ocean billions of years ago. Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that proposes languages share fundamental grammatical structures. For instance, 'the apple is red.' You associate a quality with an object. Such structures—predicates—appear everywhere. When we encountered Xenos, who have thousands of civilizations, each with dialects deeply connected to their cultures, we studied their languages primarily to understand them—sometimes nobly, sometimes darkly. But David pondered a generative grammar for Xenos."
"For which civilization?"
"For all civilizations, including humanity. A universal generative grammar."
"Why?"
"Do you want the official reason or what David confided to me while getting dressed in my living room? Don't answer—both, obviously. Officially, he found an unknown language on a kind of cave painting or Xeno carving on some deserted world... afterward, he traveled one or two years among purely Xeno worlds for research. He returned with nothing—except this lunatic notion of a Xeno proto-language. He turned out to be right, of course. Privately, I know he had fallen for a woman at the time, and the trip was more honeymoon than fieldwork."
"You didn't give me the unofficial reason."
"He saw it in a dream."
"The proto-language?"
"Does it matter?"
"That all sentient species, even billions of light-years apart, who never have and never will meet, share languages derived from a proto-language, with scattered traces everywhere? Yes, that's a huge issue—one beyond our grasp. We may never find the solution since it's not physically distant, but temporally so. Still, if we can't see the mountaintop, we can imagine it."
In his psyche, Samuel carefully removed the violet-red flesh of a sea urchin with its iodized aroma, accompanied by a thick rust-colored cream. In reality, he nibbled a nutrient bar. Finishing his last bite, he asked:
"Strange restaurant. You come often?"
"Yes."
"You know, that street where you brought me... I know it well. I've never seen this restaurant."
"Certain?"
"Certain," he said, smiling and playing along. "Let's continue. Except for mythical creatures, like the Travelers from the Xeno religion of Those-Who-Wait, we move straight towards the future. Causes precede effects. The center of a circle is always the innermost point farthest from its edge. Mathematics exists beyond our perception and culture. Abstract elements—yet these are tools advanced civilizations use to interact with reality."
"We're all children of the Blind Gods."
"They're at the beginning and end of time, outside the universe and within all things, in the infinitely large and infinitely small. It's a ritual prayer, but one day, I feel it will simply be reality."
"And thus, universal generative grammar was theorized."
"Allow me a brief digression. Among humans, the division of languages is associated with the myth of the Tower of Babel. Could we be dealing here with an inverted Babel?"
"You claim not to know David, yet you use a very particular term linked to his story. Are you hiding things from me, Cass? Important things, I mean."
The Wau glanced around. The answer was sadly ironic.
"The truth is that I know the term 'inverted Babel' relates to certain things connected to David."
"Alright. David Ilsner conducted extensive research worldwide, notably among Xeno civilizations. He found himself on a planet named Caliban-1. Perhaps you've heard of it—it's located on the frontline of the conflict between the Antioch League and the SH."
"I've heard of it," replied the Wau, feeling like a predator slowly closing in on its prey.
"A rather inhospitable place. I'll spare you the details but…"
"No, please, tell me the details. You'll earn two desserts."
"I'll skip them anyway—my memory is faltering. Caliban has 12% oxygen, no toxins, tolerable with the right vaccines. He likely had some tough times there, but he clearly discovered something significant. Then he disappeared. But before vanishing forever, David sent a series of messages. Messages curiously distorted by anomalies, though we managed to reconstruct parts of them. He'd found something he termed an 'Inverted Babel,' along with a dead Xeno language from an unknown civilization. You know isotopic excitation can determine a structure's age, right? David made readings. Just guess—how old would you say the structure was?"
"One million years?"
"Older."
"Hmm, three billion years?"
"Date of life emerging on Earth. Even older."
"Five billion years? The formation of planets."
"Even older. The structure predated the very first planet."
"Fifteen billion years?"
"The Big Bang. It'd be truly bizarre if this Xeno city existed before that date, wouldn't it? And yet—it did. The ruins were even older."
"Sam… time didn't exist at the Big Bang."
"Excellent point. So how to explain the dating, assuming it wasn't an anomaly? Come on, show me the breadth of your imagination!"
"Did it originate from another universe?"
"Good guess, but incorrect. The dating indicated infinite age because the structure wasn't built in the past but rather in the future, by beings traveling backward through time."
"So the Travelers of the Xeno religion exist?"
"Apparently so."
"Then why does the HS never speak about them?"
"We'll get there."
"Wait—do you realize what you're saying? Travelers, Caliban-1, generative grammar… I feel like I've just discovered Atlantis or those Transient ruins on Mars that gave us the Drift. Why hide all this?"
"But I haven't hidden anything, dear. As the poet said, there are more mysteries on Earth and in Heaven than are dreamt of in philosophy. The Caliban-1 case is intriguing, but what about the Dark Galaxies? What of Tybalt, the fractal-dimension planet? What about encrypted messages we receive from within suns beyond the Magellanic Cloud? Or dark matter, suspiciously clustered in places unreachable by the Drift? Or the Owls, the Xenos of Booz, who claim to receive messages from Transients living in a parallel universe, who say the multiverse is part of the Blind Gods? Or the New Horizon expedition, where a Xeno-human ship ventured into the infinitely small using Transient tech and returned two years later, crew missing? Or Kugelblitz Lucifer, worshipped by followers of the Emprise, psychically transmitting advanced technological schematics across distances challenging our technologies? Compared to these mysteries, Caliban-1 barely deserves a conspiracy tabloid footnote."
"Fine, back to David Ilsner. He sends messages."
"Yes, one big message partially transmitted to us. And now we reach the moment where I'll have your full attention. You'll love this."
He paused deliberately. The Wau concentrated with full intensity.
"The message arrived. And the Transients got agitated—rather, they vanished briefly. For a few hours, they disappeared. You know there are always two Transients sitting on the SH Council? They vanished for those few hours. Same for the permanent judge of the court on Calchas-3. When they returned, Caliban-1 began becoming elusive—impossible to analyze. Everything related to that planet started vanishing."
"LE entries."
"If you'd said that sooner, we'd have saved time."
"The work of Transients?"
"Possibly."
"What's this wall separating us from Caliban-1?"
"Entropy is a physical concept from thermodynamics, helping us quantify disorder. Entropy generally increases—chaos grows. For instance, if you tidy something messy, your effort creates more disorder overall—imagine yourself sweating after cleaning a room. Yet science and universal anomalies taught us everything has an opposite: matter and antimatter, negative-mass objects. Today we know entropy spreads from one system to another, perhaps via waves, a particle called the chaos boson, or both—we don't fully understand yet. Some scientists hypothesize Caliban-1 contains a machine emitting anti-entropy. Thus, Caliban-1 absorbs information and disorder instead of emitting it."
"But it's in your mind, and now mine."
"Oh yes, like most forces, it weakens with distance squared—and we both have strong minds. Still, you'll notice it requires extra effort to think clearly on the topic. That's why I didn't immediately connect Caliban-1, your Transient obsession, and the LEs."
"So David Ilsner found something on Caliban-1, and the Transients intervened. Rather than destroying the planet, they installed an anti-entropy device, causing the discovery to fade over time. What exactly was the message?"
"It spoke about dating the inverted Babel. It also contained a linguistic guide for the Stellar language, found abundantly on-site—a written-only language, convenient since many Xenos lack vocal organs."
"This language learned only through obscure Xeno religions?"
"It's anecdotal for us because Caliban-1 is in human space, radiating anti-entropy, explaining our lack of interest. But for David's Xeno friends, it was an electric shock. You see, it has grammatical traits of a unified interspecies language. Because that language is precisely the proto-language. All religions use it: the Emprise dreaming of unity under one leader, the Unity Cult seeing it as spiritual fulfillment, the Humble Epic of all life, and of course Those-Who-Wait. Stellar language spread faster than starlight, becoming the galactic lingua franca—except for humans, paradoxically its discoverers."
"Wait—I lost track. The Stellar language has been used by Xenos for centuries."
"Exactly. David Ilsner made this discovery before vanishing forever, in 2498—more than 300 years ago."
"But you said you worked with him."
"And you said your mother knew him. You lied. I'll skip dessert since I doubt we're even in a restaurant. We had an agreement. My turn for a question, Cassandre, if that's even your name. Who are you? A Xeno? A wandering AI? A Transient exile?"
"I still have questions."
"Answer this one first."
"I know you like me, so I'll answer honestly. But if I give you this answer, I must vanish from your life. You'll have the memory of me and my response, but you'll never see me again. Do you want the answer?"
"My dear Cass, I value truth above friendship, though I'll miss you. Tell me."
"I belong to the Wau Order."
Samuel leaned back, as if the revelation weighed heavily. He probably blamed himself for not guessing.
"Those tall figures in armor?"
"I'm wearing the Armor right now."
"And where are we?"
"You'll never know that, and if you ever did, I'd erase your memory."
"Very well. You've honored our agreement, and my curiosity is satisfied."
"Were you alive in 2498?"
"Oh yes, and quite old even then. During a seminar on Earth, I met a Transient and asked for eternal life, which he somehow granted with a mere sigh."
As Samuel mused aloud about postponing his transfer into the After—a sterile place, he believed—Cass inwardly collapsed.
Aloysius carries the Transient mark. He's been altered by a Transient. He probably has some genetic tracker that already revealed the Sanctum's location. I've ruined a millennium's effort in minutes. It's over. I no longer deserve the Armor.
"You've gone quiet, Wau."
"Your revelations aren't exactly great news for my mission."
They both rose, and without removing the Armor or lifting the illusion, the Wau escorted Aloysius back to UniNox. It was midday when the Wau dissolved the illusion. The old man startled under the blue star's brilliance, then looked up, staring at the metal giant.
Curious bystanders snapped photos.
"Farewell, Sam. It's been a pleasure knowing you."
"Don't despair, Cass. One last detail—David knew a thousand women but had a soulmate named Julia Prahi. She was famous then. She probably knows more. Everyone knows David sent her a private message from Caliban-1. She worked for some political figure or government… I forgot."
The Wau said nothing, mentally absent. Samuel quickly added:
"Yes, Julia is probably dead too, but she's in the After. They say no one returns from the After—but you're a Wau, aren't you?"
The Wau nodded. Turning on his heels and walking through the UniNox gardens, he responded silently to himself:
Not for much longer.