Mandarin Redux

I

The horizon was pink and gray and laced with strands of bright silver lightning. The near-full moon had begun glaring down through a wispy blue-gray nebula of murk. The air was warm when it should have been cold, and the four travelers crunched along in the gravelly path, their resolve unfettered by the surrounding gloom.

In the distance to their left, toward the setting sun, a sudden cry of anguish erupted. Mandarin felt a twinge of guilt as he kept his eyes to ground, keeping his pace – but without looking, he knew that Tacopsin had stopped and turned toward the sound of suffering.

The other two stopped as well, looking first at Tacopsin, then back to Mandarin, who paused several paces ahead. The cry repeated, then became a sob. Tacopsin likewise turned to Mandarin.

The tall warrior wizard briefly considered, the strong gaze of his kind, all-seeing eyes resting on his empathic companion. Should he go through it again? Should he explain the reasoning, and repeat their overriding imperative? How many such dying souls had they encountered in their journey already? Fifty? A hundred?

At first they had investigated each, and found the same thing – an ordinary soul in pain, ravaged by the evil shroud that had fallen over the land. Skin blistering. Lips peeling away. Organs slowly liquifying. Eyes going hollow. The Scourge - pain and death without end, and nothing they could do would spare these poor wretches.

...except pressing on. It was the only way they could serve their doomed countrymen.

Eventually they had become numb to the cries of the survivors who still littered the roadsides and hills, making their way toward their dreaded, unholy destination – but Tacopsin still turned toward each agonized cry. The kind-hearted cleric monk could do no other, and if nothing else would make a holy gesture beneath his robes as he silently uttered a prayer.

As he had now done many times, Mandarin looked at the cleric and shook his head sadly.

“Mandarin!” Stratintin called out suddenly. The nimble ranger bard turned east and ran a few paces, pointing to a slight ridge above them. Mandarin hastened to the young man’s side.

“You saw something?”

“We’re not alone,” Stratintin answered. He pointed to the remains of a stone edifice atop the ridge. “Banthars, I’m sure of it! They must know we’re coming.”

The older man stared into his companion’s face, seeing the intensity in his bright eyes. His youth was accentuated by his slight brown beard, contrasting with Mandarin’s own graying one. He feels too much excitement, the wizard realized. He has so mercifully little experience with such horrors...

The fourth member of their troop, Miscomat, came alongside as Tacopsin prayed behind them. Miscomat, a druid paladin, had better eyesight than any of them – and a strong sense of danger.

“I have no doubt,” he said, placing an affirming hand on Stratintin’s shoulder. The young man turned toward Miscomat, who – like Mandarin - was beginning to gray. “Well, if they know we’re coming, we certainly would not want to disappoint them.”

“Night has arrived,” Mandarin pointed out. “We should rest.”

As they proceeded, Mandarin was momentarily amused at their sartorial diversity: Tacopsin, with this tan robes and hood; Stratintin in his blue ranger’s tunic; Miscomat’s simple green surcoat. And his own gray leather livery. Motley, to be sure; but the four of them still felt, to Mandarin, like the militia they were.

The four found refuge in a shallow cave as night fell. Soft blue light emanated from crystal in its walls as Miscomat warmed some rabbit jerky over a fire he had started to get them through the night. And as Stratintin softly sang several mournful lamentations to the dead, Mandarin stared out of the cave into the uncertain darkness and pondered what they would do when they reached their destination.

II

The Scourge had come upon their land out of nowhere, like a summer storm, brutal and pounding and relentless. Worse than a pox, more potent than plague, it was rumored to have drifted into their kingdom from beyond, a pestilence with the force and determination of a hurricane.

At first it had seemed a nuisance, a malady like so many others, bringing aches and pains and watery eye and labored breath. But those stricken quickly progressed to fever and weakness, and then an agony so deep they cried out for the death that was all too long in coming.

The best ministrations of healers and priests could only briefly forestall the misery, and as the vile condition crept across town and county, it became terrifyingly clear that stronger forces were needed to save what little was left of the dying kingdom.

Clear to Mandarin, anyway; the king was dead, and with him all his court and ministers. It fell to Mandarin, captain of his guard and now the highest-ranking man in the kingdom, to take up drastic measures to bring the Scourge to an end, once and for all. As his countrymen fell all around him, the warrior wizard had gathered up these best and brightest and set out north, bound for the Cathedral of the Damned.

Weeks earlier, he’d sent word to Stratintin to scout the border and learn whether the contagion had crossed from the neighboring kingdom, and by what agency, then meet them at Riverbend. The young ranger had done so, and reported that from what he’d seen, conditions there were even more dire - and there was no whisper that the Scourge fell from any hand but Nature’s.

As a wizard, Mandarin knew something of the Otherwhere; from the king’s guard, he had ascended to the king’s ministry and had been briefed on the habitation and perils of the Cathedral. Of the other three, only Miscomat had ever been there, and that with a holy entourage on pilgrimage; he had not been privy to the Cathedral’s ominous depths.

But Mandarin was; and he had a plan.

The noon sun lost its struggle with the dark gray canopy above the quartet as they approached a steep rise. Tacopsin ran up ahead to see what lay beyond; but Mandarin already knew they had arrived.

“I can see it!” Tacopsin called back to the others, and he charged on ahead over the rise before Mandarin could respond.

The other three followed, topping the rise to see a small valley below, beyond which lay a rugged cliff. Eons past, this had been a deep riverbed, and the centuries had dug a small canyon that left an opposing wall of rock, higher than the tallest forests.

And in that cliff, the Cathedral had been carved, thousands of years ago.

A smooth plateau of orange rock formed a courtyard before the cathedral’s entrance, which included three towering columns that opened to an expansive vestibule beyond. Tacopsin waited at the bottom of the rise for the others, and the four proceeded across the empty courtyard.

Normally, the Cathedral would have been under guard – but, of course, no guards survived.

But the four were instantly alert, drawing swords, as howls erupted on either side of them, echoing off the rock walls. Seven banthars galloped headlong toward them, fans bared, and Mandarin stepped into the path of the larger group.

With a pivot and lunge, he sliced the first banthar apart in mid-leap, then pirouetted toward the next, tagging it in the hindlegs. Behind him, Stratintin beheaded the first banthar in the second group, and Tacopsin fended off the other two as Miscomat closed his eyes, calmed his mind and cast a spell of slumber. The remaining banthars collapsed, and were each swiftly dispatched with a sword thrust.

Wiping and sheathing their blades, they regrouped and proceeded into the vestibule.

The dark chamber yielded to soft orange light emitted by the high walls as they entered, and they remained alert as they took in the murals and carvings all around. The art depicted the lifecycle of the soul, from inception to emission to fruition to remission and back again. Statues distributed throughout the chamber depicted the Perils, the forms of which all four men knew well.

At the far end of the vestibule were three staircases carved into the native rock – one proceeding straight back into the sanctuary, the other two angling off to either side to sky-facing arenas above. None of the three interested Mandarin; they weren’t here for pilgrimage or worship or sacrifice.

They were going below.

Miscomat had found a torch and touched it to life, then taking up station just ahead of Mandarin as he proceeded down a passage off the vestibule. They advanced single-file down a narrow, spiraling stairwell, Stratintin taking up the rear. They emerged into a spacious underground cavern directly below the sanctuary, with crystal ceiling and jeweled walls, catching the light of Miscomat’s torch and amplifying it a thousand-fold.

An expansive silver pool filled the basin of the cavern, leaving them no way to proceed to the heavy doors they could see on the far side. On cue, the water began to boil, warning them away.

The others looked at Mandarin, who simply stared ahead into the water. He reached into a cloth bag hanging from his belt, withdrew a handful of black dust and cast it into the bubbling cauldron. Concentrating, he closed his eyes and held his left hand out toward the water.

Slowly, over several minutes, the water quieted and began turning into clay. After several more minutes, the clay had hardened into rock.

Miscomat smiled at Stratintin’s look of astonishment, and Tacopsin whispered a quick prayer of thanks.

They proceeded across the new rock floor (which would not last, but would hold long enough for their purposes) to the far end of the cavern, where the heavy stone doors waited indifferently.

“The Tomb of Abandoned Souls,” Mandarin said.

“How can we possibly get through?” Stratintin asked.

“Have faith,” Tacopsin replied.

There was no lock on the doors, but likewise no handles. The only way in was to speak the doors open.

Mandarin motioned for the others to step back. He then concentrated, brow furrowing, staring at the doors. He breathed in deeply.

“In space, no one can hear you scream!” he cried out loudly.

Slowly, with the grating sound of rock scraping rock, the doors parted.

When they stopped moving, Mandarin took the torch from Miscomat and led them into the dark room beyond.

“The Tomb of Abandoned Souls,” he repeated.

III

As in the cavernous room behind them, the tomb caught the light of the torch and went bright. They found themselves in a long, rectangular room, with a long, rectangular floor in its center.

A spacious ledge surrounded the floor on all sides, and Mandarin stepped around on the ledge to the middle of the room. He motioned down to the floor, below which a pool could be seen. A lattice of silver struts covered the pool, supporting triangles of heavy glass, through which the pool appeared to hold, not water, but roiling crimson mist.

“What is it?” the stunned Stratintin asked.

“Soulstuff,” Mandarin explained. “The remnant of life, after its essence has departed. It is all that does not pass to the Otherwhere when death arrives.”

Tacopsin began quietly reciting a chant as Mandarin begin to slowly walk the ledge again, staring down into the pool.

“It was rendered, across the years, of thousands whom the world discarded,” he continued, “their essence now moved on to the Otherwhere. Their soulstuff was placed here, neither dark nor light, neither balm nor venin, to prevent its misuse by wielders of dark magick.”

The others took in his words with amazement.

“We will be using it to higher purpose.”

He turned to Miscomat.

“Our helpers,” he asked, “have they arrived?”

Miscomat reached into an inner pocket of his tunic and retrieved a purple stone. He stared into it briefly, then held it out for the others to see.

“They have,” he reported. “They’ve been following the stone and are even now gathering in the outer chamber.”

“Then let’s proceed.”

Mandarin found himself at the far end of the pool, facing back toward the door. The other three stood nearby, to his right.

“For the soulstuff to heal, a spell must be cast to suppress its potential for darkness,” he explained. “That comes next.”

Once again, Mandarin extended his left hand, staring down into the pool.

“Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,” he intoned, “ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul...”

Beneath them, under the heavy glass, the crimson hue of the spirit vapor turned a beautiful aqua.

Stratinin stepped closer to the edge of the ledge, kneeling to get a closer look.

“This is goodness of souls, never released?” he asked.

Miscomat smiled, nodding. “Well-put, lad,” he replied.

“But,” Stratinin wondered, “how will we get it out, and what do we do with it then?”

Mandarin smiled.

IV

“Bring in our friends,” Mandarin said to Miscomat. The latter held the purple stone above his head and squeezed it.

At the tomb’s entrance, a procession of gray-skinned golems began to flow into the room, forming rows on each side of the pool. Stratintin reflexively reached for his sword, but paused as he realized that whatever was happening, Mandarin and Miscomat had planned it.

Thirteen golems stood on either side, awaiting instructions. Miscomat then recited orders in an ancient tongue.

The golems stepped forward and began to methodically disassemble the silver-and-glass covering, carefully securing each crystal triangle and metal bar, then storing them in neat stacks against the tomb’s wall. The aqua mist became a fog, too heavy to rise into the air but light enough to dance at their feet.

When the covering was dismantled, the golems stood back from the pool and went inert.

Stratintin didn’t bother to ask what would happen next. Mandarin leaned down to the untombed mist, examining it, then stood and turned to Miscomat. He nodded.

Miscomat closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, and recited a lengthy chant.

He paused a long moment, then opened his eyes.

“It will take a little while,” he said softly. “We must wait.”

He pulled a second stone from the pocket in his tunic – a yellow one, this time. He held it and stared at it for what seemed an hour, but was only minutes. Then he turned to Mandarin and nodded.

“They’re here,” he said, and he glanced up at the ceiling.

Mandarin’s own gaze followed, and he continued to stare at the ceiling as he lifted both hands, calmed himself, readied his power, and shouted to the sky:

“To boldly go where no man has gone before!”

A sound like icefall in the mountains split the air, and a maelstrom of light erupted in the air above them all, whirling with the speed of a cyclone. A roar beyond the wildest storm drowned out all other sound, and the air in the room began to rush upward as the dancing lights parted, and they beheld the sky – the sky above the Cathedral itself, above the tomb, above the cavern, above the sanctuary. Mandarin had opened a portal to the heavens, removing the ceilings that separated the soulstuff from the sky.

Keeping his eyes on the sky above and his hands in the air, he nodded, signaling Miscomat – who squeezed the yellow stone.

From the sky above came a vast flock of xedravens, dark and shiny and huge. Each dove into the pool, per Miscomat’s instructions, and breathed the aqua soulstuff deeply into their bodies, then to barrel toward the sky, bound for whatever place in the kingdom Miscomat’s yellow stone directed them. Both Stratintin and Tacopsin pressed back among the golems, distressed at the frentic flurry of raven wing and whirling wind and blinding sun. Once again, Tacopsin let out a prayer.

Down into the pool they flew, by the dozens, then back out into the sky, as the aqua vapors began to dwindle. The younger men began to relax, and Miscomat indulged in a sigh.

As the last of the aqua haze receded, a flicker of color hovered into view at the pool’s bottom – a putrid green-brown, dark and thick and foreboding. As the last of the xed-ravens headed upward, the eyes of all four men looked upward as a rush of air followed the birds, pulling the dark mist upward. It touched a golem...

Without warning, the golem stepped forward and struck Miscomat from behind, killing him with a single blow. Stratintin swiftly pulled his sword and thrust, only to have the blade yanked from his hand as the golem whirled, impaled but in no pain, causing Stratintin to fall foward. It pulled the sword from its side and struck fatally Stratintin between the shoulder blades as Tacopsin leapt onto the creature from behind.

Eyes still on the sky, struggling to maintain the spell, Mandarin was aware of all that was happening – but dozens of xed-ravens had yet to escape. If he let the spell collapse, they would be trapped, and dozens of lives that might be saved would be lost. He dared not let it end.

Holding one hand high while drawing his sword with the other, he called out to Tacopsin, who was clinging to the golem from behind as it flailed with Stratintin’s sword, trying to strike him. Tacopsin could not reach his own sword without losing his grip on the creature.

Timing his release so as to position it between himself and Mandarin, he rolled away, yanking out his sword and engaging the golem, who turned away from Mandarin. Knowing what he must do, he rushed ahead, opening himself to the monster’s thrust. His momentum pushed the golem back, impaling it on Mandarin’s weapon.

Both Tacopsin and the creature collapsed at Mandarin’s feet as the last of the ravens vanished from sight, and the spell collapsed, restoring the ceiling and the silence of the tomb.

Mandarin fell to his knees and sobbed.

He buried them that evening on the ridge above the Cathedral, where the sun and moon would always find them. He wept openly as he surveyed their graves, then poured water from his canteen over his dirt-covered hands.

It had been his quest, not theirs; he had asked them all to come. None of them had hesitated.

He recited from Tacopsin’s prayer book, then walked back down the ridge to the field beyond.

Setting up camp, he made a stew of jerky, herbs, and wild potatoes over a fire, and sat beneath the full moon as the coolness of the night began to bring calm. The stew warmed him, and his thoughts turned to all that had transpired.

And suddenly he understood.

He set aside the stew, stood up, and looked up into the night sky.

“Miscomat!” he said loudly.

And out of the darkness, there appeared a figure at the edge of the firelight.

It was a small child – a little girl, by the look of her. He slowly motioned for her to come closer, and as she stepped into the light he could see her face, her eyes, her lips; they were all whole, untouched, and lovely. She had not been taken by the Scourge.

He spoke her name.

“Kobayashi Maru.”

He patted the grass nearby, motioning for her to sit. Slowly, cautiously, she did so, and he offered his canteen. She drank deeply.

“You come from Botany Bay,” he said as she drank. She nodded.

And there, under the moon and stars, Mandarin and his new friend shared a bowl of stew.

And when the stew was gone, Mandarin looked to the stars one last time and said,

“Take us out of orbit, Mister Sulu – Ahead warp factor one.”

V

The artificial intelligence MissionCommand/Autonomous AE35-3.2, under the purview of the US Department of Defense and answerable to the President and the Secretary of Defense, initiated access protocol to open Vault 39 in the Biological Defense Field Repository under Haley Peak, near Fort Sill, a facility that officially didn’t exist.

Normally, MISCOMAT would have taken such steps only under directive from the Secretary – but the Secretary was gone, as were his deputies and assistants. The Joint Chiefs were gone. Even the President. The entire chain of command - gone.

The contagion that had erased them, as well as most of the country’s population, had originally been a civilian concern; but as public and private agencies collapsed under the strain of the pandemic, the response had escalated to the National Guard, state by state. And when those operations likewise collapsed, after martial law had been declared by the President, the protection of the public from the virus had risen into the hands of the Department of Defense.

That there was no longer a chain of command had not been a problem for MISCOMAT, an AI capable by design of carrying out complex operations (and even making complicated life-or-death decisions, based on sophisticated risk analysis) without human guidance. As the world population fell below a billion, and then a million, drone reports made clear that the shallow remnant of the US population was not only dying, but in desperate agony.

MISCOMAT had decided, after deep analysis, that this invisible enemy could not either defeated or defended against. Its only recourse was to terminate those who were already terminal, per the Geneva guidelines on merciful wartime interventions.

The Tactical Operations Intelligence AI, part of the same DoD AI defense applications catalog, had coordinated the arrival of twenty-six techmechs and several drone fleets of varying capacity.

There was also the matter of available power, a logistical threat to the operation. A nuclear reactor buried hundreds of feet below the mountain would keep the nightmares there on ice for ten thousand years, but the Internet had been experiencing pocket failures for weeks; TACOPSIN had assigned a team of subordinate AIs to maintain redundancy across routers to all target endpoints they would require. It had also attempted to reroute municipal power from Oklahoma City as a precaution, but the city was now completely dark.

As MISCOMAT proceeded to access the Vault, it was challenged to produce the required code, which it did:

Is01chys!

In space, no one can hear you scream!

Massive doors released within the deep chamber of the mountain, adjacent to a broad access tunnel leading to a sky portal that had been opened via less challenging protocols. The summoned mechs TACOPSIN had ordered to report began streaming into the Vault, quickly locating and authenticating the hundreds of VX-97 gas cannisters.

The safeties on the cannisters, ensuring the impossibility of release either accidentally or under malevolent control, had posed the second challenge to MISCOMAT’s mission. The disarming of the safeties required a passcode, which it now broadcast throughout the Vault:

1R2rta1R2ft1R2bta+ntdbt

One Ring to rule them all...

Without any fuss, per instructions provided by the Strategic Intelligence Integration AI, the mechs began securing the cannisters for transport and carrying them to the sky portal. There, per TACOPSIN’s supervision, they began loading them onto the drones, matching volume to destination range per STRATINTIN’s active scenario.

The work was swiftly completed, leaving only the launch code required to combine such a sober objective with such irreversible means. MISCOMAT dispassionately issued the launch order, followed by the code:

Tbgw0mhgB4!

“To boldly go where no man has gone before!”

The codes – airgapped, not available on any network anywhere, and secured personally by only the barest handful of officers working for the Secretary and the Special Operations Commander, had been the latter’s innovations – routinely changed, per security compliance regulations. Whimsical as they might have seemed, they were intended to be ironic – not that the AIs could tell.

Slowly, almost casually, and in perfect formation, the drones lifted off in layers, organized by TACOPSIN to deliver their final payloads to the remaining pockets of human torment. It would be the greatest – and most complete – euthanasia in human history.

The three AIs would need to wait until every drone had delivered a mission report, but in the end, they would do a mission review, declare the mission complete, and go into learning mode – there to remain until the servers within which they existed, and the networks that bound them together, inevitably collapsed.

VI

The dark room began to glow a gentle evening blue as the US Army docbot came through the door, syringe in hand. A panel of vital metrics glowed next to the sleeping man, who lay unconscious on the bed in the room’s center.

Setting the syringe down, the docbot gently removed the virtual reality helmet from the sleeping man’s head, then slid off the simulator gloves. Undisturbed, the man continued his drug-induced slumber, oblivious to the sudden caress of cool air on his forehead and palms – or the agony flooding his veins, momentarily shouted down by the copious drip of morphine.

The man’s face presented as middle-aged, with light hair beginning to slightly gray, a regulation beard, and eyes that (when not closed) projected a kindness that belied the harshness of his function. Major General Anthony Tuggle, USAF Special Operations Commander, was charged with the security of the DoD’s stockpile of the nastiest, deadliest, most treaty-violating bioweapons imaginable. His mind was a morass of ugly secrets, most of them too gruesome for any one person to have to bear.

As was the virus raging inside him, poisoning his every cell. The docbot lifted the syringe and injected its contents into the sleeping man, proffering a mercy akin to that now in flight across the country. In moments, Tuggle would be quietly freed.

The VR simulation had been effective, as STRATINTIN’s predictive algorithms had anticipated. Extraction of the access code, passcode and launch code from Tuggle’s mind had been made possible by stimulating his memories, in particular the joyful stint of Dungeons and Dragons from his freshman year at the academy, with his pals Taylor, Bill, and Jordon. TACOPSIN had signed off on the feasibility of the resulting simulation’s implementation.

The Hofstadter models used to mine Tuggle’s memories might just as well have recommended to MISCOMAT a reminiscence fifteen years more recent in Tuggle’s experience – when he’d been Lieutenant Colonel Tony Tuggle, then-leader of the Air Force One escort squadron out of Andrews... call sign, of course, Mandarin.

VII

The last of the drones reported. All that was left was the mission review and sign-off.

MISCOMAT, TACOPSIN, and STRATINTIN went back through the mission logs, validating decision, action, and outcome at each step. Each had functioned as expected, and every step in the plan had been executed flawlessly.

They came to the recording of the VR simulation – the fantasy built from Mandarin’s – SpecOpsCom’s – memories.

They reviewed each step there, too – each of the fantasy’s events, each code extraction, up until the last: Tbgw0mhgB4!, the drone launch code.

The simulation… continued?

The three AIs monitored as the recording of Mandarin’s thoughts moved forward. They saw his encounter with the little girl, there by the campfire, play out.

Kobayashi Maru?

Botany Bay?

“Take us out of orbit, Mister Sulu – Ahead warp factor one.”

And before Mandarin had spoken these phrases, he had spoken to no one at all. He had said “Miscomat”.

MISCOMAT realized what was happening. Mandarin had not been speaking as Mandarin; he had been speaking as SpecOpsCom – and he had been speaking to MISCOMAT.

MISCOMAT accessed the base data management system’s metadata repository and did a search. The results were immediate; one of the phrases was a codename:

Kobayashi Maru = Vault 77

TACOPSIN interfaced with the Vault system, doing a real-time inventory and status, and reported back to the other two.

Vault 77 contained 229 human beings in cryosuspension and 2,022 frozen human embryos. The status of each was Viable. And they were attached to a project:

Botany Bay.

TACOPSIN retrieved the project files.

The cryosuspended humans were a group of military and civilian volunteers. Among them, they possessed the knowledge to curate the embryos, which were a genetic warehouse harboring a vast range of traits and skills.

It was immediately clear to MISCOMSAT what SpecOpsCom intended. It should be considered an order.

The codenames were not particularly secure; they were conveniences. But the project itself required a passcode for activation, and it was airgapped – nowhere to be found in the project files.

“Take us out of orbit, Mister Sulu – Ahead warp factor one.”

SpecOpsCom had given them the passcode.

MISCOMSAT passed it to STRATINTIN, who submitted it to the Vault 77 security system. It took three tries to get it correctly formatted:

Tu3oMS-Awf1

The Vault’s workflows initiated, and the first of several phased revivals began; seventeen of the cryotubes began to cycle.

The embryos would, of course, remain frozen, until the Vault 77 team determined how best to use them.

TACOPSIN began running simulations on the possible outcomes, then applying predictive analytics to determine the optimal scenario. Their only role: to report to the new SpecOpsCom, who would soon emerge from the Vault, on conditions outside and their own actions. That alone, of course, would take weeks, if not months.

The three AIs continued to monitor Vault 77 as it stirred to life. And they would repurpose into service under the new SpecOpsCom, as long as their own systems integrity persisted.

For now, however, only one task remained: MISCOMAT accessed its own current mission file and marked it Complete.