Snippet – Sufficiently Analysed Magic

This story probably requires some explanation.

Back in 2013, I wrote a novel entitled Sufficiently Advanced Technology (see link below) that was published by Elsewhen Press. For various reasons, I wrote the novel to be relatively self-contained, and while I planned to write a sequel fairly quickly one thing led to another and it never actually got done. It was not particularly successful at first, to be honest, but in the years since then it has actually done very well and I got a great many questions at the Glasgow WorldCon about just when the sequel was going to come out. After much discussion with the publisher, I agreed to write a second volume.

The basic concept of Sufficiently Advanced Technology was that the Confederation, a hyper-advanced human civilisation, trying desperately to figure out how to become transcendent beings, discovered, much to their surprise, a world in which magic appeared to be very real. Their mission to Darius revealed the existence of a device that basically warped reality, a device that was linked to the so-called sorcerers and granted them their powers. The device was destroyed, but in the aftermath they discovered a number of children – the Darius Children – had been born with strange powers of their own. The Confederation resolved to study the children in hopes they could discover how humanity could to evolve to become a transcendent race.

That was sixteen years ago, in universe.

Now read on.

If you are interested in providing comments, I am happy to send you a copy of the original novel. You can also download it from the sites listed below:

Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Prologue

Pandora dreams.

She doesn’t know how she knows she is dreaming, but she is.

It is odd, for one such as her to dream. The Darius Children sleep together, their minds touching gently as they relax, lulling each other into a deep relaxing slumber that leaves them rested when they open their eyes once again. Pandora knows it is rare for humans to communicate on such a deep and primal level, almost impossible without crossing hardwired ethical lines, and yet she accepts her life as normal. It is all she knows.

And yet, she dreams.

Her mind explodes out of her body, out of the mental nest, and out into the universe. She finds herself drifting high above the galaxy, watching the stars as they circle the Great Attractor at the heart of the Milky Way. She sees life in all its many and manifest forms, from aliens practically akin to humanity to creatures so strange that communication is almost impossible; she sees life flowering across the universe, flowing out of rocky worlds and gas giants; she sees civilisations rise and fall, coming into existence briefly and then fading away, as if they had never been. She knows that some destroy themselves, or are destroyed by others, or stagnate … or go on …

As if the thought changes everything, the universe seems to dissolve around her. Her thoughts are pulled onwards, deeper into the reality of the cosmic all: she sees ancient entries flittering in the darkness between the stars, or peeking out of dimensions that exist at right angles to her own; she senses, more than sees, giant eyes peering down at the universe, watching and waiting for something to happen. The universe shifts, growing darker. Some civilisations are wondrous beacons of light, others are stagnant … still others, she realises numbly, are cancers, poisoning the reality around them. She feels unwell as she stares down, her stomach queasy. It bothers her at a very primal level, ancient instincts warning her she needs to run. It is the first time she has ever felt unwell.

The universe shifts again, pulling her mind towards the Great Attractor. The immense black hole at the centre of the galaxy reaches for her, yanking her into a darkness that seems endless. She falls into the singularity and sees … light. Light everywhere. Her mind’s eye is almost blinded by the sheer brightness, at the heart of the black hole. It shouldn’t be there … she shouldn’t be there. This is not a human place. Powerful waves of pure thought buffet her, battering at her mind. She grits her teeth and tries to force her mind to accept, closing her eyes briefly to impose some kind of order on the reality around her. She understands, now, what it feels like to be a fly, buzzing through the human world. Here, she is the fly. The minds around her are so big, so immense, that all she can see is just the tip of the iceberg. It really is not a human place.

She opens her eyes and sees … gods. Humans … no, entities that look human and yet are so much more. They are almost caricatures of humans, from men so old and wise their wisdom shifts around them like a shroud to muscle-bound brutes and women so beautiful it is hard to look them in the eye. They are huge, towering above her … she feels her mind try to expand, try to understand what she is really seeing, but recoils helplessly the moment she catches a glimpse of what lies beneath. They are not human. They are … gods.

What you are seeing isn’t real, a voice whispers. It is quiet, so quiet she cannot tell if it is real or just a figment of her imagination. It is merely a way to visualise the world in a manner you can comprehend.

Pandora swallows, hard. She is drifting in the centre of a towering chamber, a council chamber … a chamber built for entities that exist in multiple dimensions, an chamber so strange that trying to look around makes her head hurt. The gods pay her no heed. They do not seem aware of her presence, or perhaps they simply don’t care. She is little more than a fly on their scale, perhaps even less. She cannot touch them. She cannot talk to them. The deafening racket around her drowns out anything she might say, or think …

An entity walks into the light, passing through her as if her body – her mind – simply doesn’t exist. And yet, she has the brief impression of a wink before he walks on … she stares, trying to comprehend the entity’s true nature. It is impossible. She sees aspects of the whole, but not the whole itself.

“The Children of Darius are nearing adulthood,” a voice says. The speaker is an old man, wearing a tattered black cloak and a wide-brimmed hat that conceals his eyes. Two ravens rest on his shoulder, their eyes seeming to peer into Pandora’s very soul. “They pose a threat to the Cosmic All.”

The voice buffets Pandora, battering her like a gust of wind. She feels her mind threatening to snap and grits her teeth once again, trying to keep her awareness from spreading too far. The words are simple and yet, she is almost painfully aware of undercurrents she cannot even begin to comprehend. The gods are whispering … no, they are having multiple conversations at once, the words spinning around the chamber in hopes of consensus.

“The Confederation does not know what to make of them,” the newcomer says. His voice is smaller than the rest … she doesn’t know why. “It will be many years before they are ready to make the jump into the light.”

Loki, a voice whispers. He is Loki. Watch him.

The conversation hums around the chamber. “The Confederation cannot be allowed to make full use of the Children,” someone – many someones – says. Pandora realises, to her horror, that they are talking about her, her and the rest of her family. “They must not become a …”

Pandora shudders as something crashes into her head. A word … no, a concept. A meme. The gods speak in riddles … no, it is something so dark and disgusting and dangerous that she cannot force herself to look long enough to understand it. The gods themselves recoil, waves of horror rushing through the chamber and buffeting against her mind. Pandora feels sick, her stomach twisting painfully even though it is in another world. The gods are disgusted … they are scared. Their fear is a physical force … Pandora stares at the entities, so powerful that she cannot even begin to grasp the true scope of their power, and wonders what could scare them so. And what it has to do with her.

“They will not,” Loki says. His voice lacks the undercurrents, the whispers of contextualisation that aid comprehension, she hears from the others. She doesn’t know why. It crosses her mind to wonder if he is lying to the gods, or if he is merely trying to prove his sincerity to his peers. “The matter is well in hand.”

“The” – the meme flashed across the chamber again, battering her mind – “must not be allowed to come into existence,” the gods said. Pandora couldn’t tell which one was speaking. They all seemed to be talking, their words blending together into a perfect – and terrifying – harmony. “You will ensure it doesn’t.”

Loki bowed. Loki didn’t.

Pandora feels her head twist again, the reality spins around her as her awareness opens up to encompass the godly realm. It is huge beyond comprehension, the laws of reality shattered beyond all hope of repair, held in place only by the purest thought … sheer terror shoots through her as she realises they know she is there, and they don’t care. She isn’t alone, either. There are smaller entities all around her, creatures that brush against her awareness and push her back into the darkness …

She sits up in bed, drenched in her own sweat. The bedchamber feels … wrong. She reaches out with her mind, her awareness brushing against the other minds. They jerk awake too, snapping out of their nest. It strikes her that she is the only one who has had the dream. The others were sleeping peacefully, until she woke them.

“Pandora?” Henri’s voice is quiet, trying to be considerate of his peers. “What happened?”

Pandora shakes her head. The dream is already fading, the memories falling into the abyss. She can no longer recall what she saw, save for the sense of overwhelming dread. Something bad is going to happen. She knows it in her bones. Henri crawls over and wraps his arms around her, holding her gently; she feels his thoughts brushing against her, lulling her back to sleep.

And yet, when she opens her eyes a second time, she recalls little of the dread too.

Chapter One

Pandora stood on the platform and looked down at the world below.

She floated miles above the ground, high enough to take in the planet’s curve. It was a remarkable sight, a reminder that the Confederation could produce planet-encompassing Rings and star-encompassing Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds and yet, no matter how advanced humanity had become over the years, they couldn’t match the work of mother nature. Clarke had never produced an intelligence race of its own, nor had it been discovered until well after the Confederation had mastered the art of living permanently in space. The surface was almost completely natural, the small town surrounding the research station the only place where the landscape was marred by technology. The blue-green orb was utterly enchanting. She had wondered, as a child, why some folk remained on planetary surfaces, but she got it now. The landscapes her family took for granted simply didn’t exist in space, even on the largest Dyson Spheres.

Her eyes drifted upwards. She couldn’t see the network of automated defence platforms overhead, or the entry station, but she knew they were there, pressing against her awareness like deadly thorns. The Darius Children weren’t precisely prisoners, she had been assured, yet they weren’t exactly free to go either. It had been understandable when they had been children, when the two hundred babies had been brought to the isolated research station, but now … she was torn between wanting to explore the Confederation, claiming her legacy as a child of the greatest civilisation that had ever existed, and remaining in the nest, where she was loved. And safe. She found it hard to comprehend the nervousness outsiders felt, when they encountered the Children, but she couldn’t deny its existence. Who knew how they would be treated, when they finally left the research station behind?

She looked back down. “On my command, drop the outer shield.”

The air rustled beside her, a solid-light hologram fluttering into existence. “I hope you’re not planning what I think you’re planning.”

Pandora grinned at the avatar, a direct link to the AI overseeing the settlement, even though she found it a little disconcerting. She could feel her peers – and the researchers – in her mind, and she knew they were real, but it was impossible to be sure with the AI. There were times when she was sure it was an intelligent being, its thoughts brushing against hers, and times when it was nothing more than a machine – or a hologram. She didn’t pretend to understand it. It veered between giving the settlers whatever they wanted, the fabbers churning out everything from food and drink to extreme sports gear, and putting seemingly arbitrary limits on what it was prepared to give them. The one consistency was its refusal to produce a genuine spacecraft.

“You make it sound like a bad thing,” she said. “Don’t you trust me?”

“You children are extremely honest,” the avatar said. It had chosen to manifest as a bird, something that sent a shiver down her spine. She wasn’t sure why. “But we do worry about your safety.”

“There’s no danger,” Pandora said. “Deactivate the force shield.”

The bird seemed to hesitate, a rustle of lightning-quick thought brushing against her mind before the force shield snapped out of existence. Pandora smiled, stepped up to the edge and jumped, the gravity field wavering slightly before the planet’s greater mass took control and yanked her downwards. She threw out her arms and whooped as she fell faster, the blue-green blur slowly giving way to mountains and rivers and the tiny settlement, resting on the edge of a tropical beach. She felt a rush of warmth and gratitude for the researchers, who had worked so hard to craft a wonderful place to grow up. She had never had a day of illness, or deprivation, or poverty, in her entire life. It was hard to believe, sometimes, that previous civilisations had lacked the Confederation’s post-scarcity economy, the technology they needed to satisfy the needs and demands of their entire population. It seemed impossible to accept that anyone would willingly live that way.

Her mind expanded rapidly, brushing against a handful of her peers on the beach below. Francis was on the water, surfing on a board that appeared marvellously flimsy; Joanne was lying on her back, the warm sunlight lulling her to sleep; Andrew and Janet were playing a game of chess, a difficult task when each player was very aware of the other’s feelings, perhaps even their thoughts. And several others were brushing against each other, exploring their bodies in a manner that would have shocked even the most sybarite pre-space society. Pandora gave silent thanks to her ancestors, for developing the technology they needed to overcome the limits of their bodies and the demands of their society. There was no risk now in sexual contact, no reason not to share bodies as well as thoughts. It truly was a paradise. It lacked only one thing.

The freedom to leave, she thought.

She pushed the idea aside as the beach grew below her, then shaped a thought and stopped her fall, bare millimetres above the sand. There was no shock, just an instant halt. She hovered in the air for a long moment, then lowered herself the rest of the way. The sand was hot against her bare feet, the air warm and welcoming without being too hot. The first researchers really had done a good job, she reflected. It was a shame they hadn’t stayed around. But outsiders really did find the Children disconcerting.

“Hey,” Henri said. He was sitting on the beach, wearing a pair of trunks and nothing else. “Nice landing.”

Pandora smiled. The researchers didn’t pretend to understand quite how she could stop herself with the power of her mind, or any of the other strange abilities she and her peers had inherited from their parents. The Confederation could build planet-sized starships, and hurl them across the galaxy at speeds beyond her comprehension, and yet it was completely mystified by the Children. It was galling, in so many ways. The Confederation had developed the technology to break laws of physics her ancestors had regarded as immutable, yet they couldn’t understand how the Children did what they did. It was almost as strange as their parents, back on Darius. No one had understood them either.

“It was fun,” she said, finally. “How was your meeting with the researchers?”

Henri frowned, his emotion colouring the mindscape. “It went poorly. She had trouble even looking at me.”

Pandora winced. There were few secrets amongst the children. It was very hard, almost impossible, for any to lie to their peers, when their emotions and most of their thoughts were open books. There was simply no way to maintain the lie without the awareness that they were lying shading their thoughts, betraying the truth. She had no concept of privacy because she had none, nor did her peers. Henri wasn’t even trying to hide his concern and bitterness, and fear. If the researchers had never managed to get used to the Children, despite working alongside them for nearly eighteen years, how would the rest of the Confederation cope?

She felt a wash of pure sympathy for the outsiders. They would never know the sheer joy of sharing thoughts and emotions. They would never understand it wasn’t something to be feared. The Children had no bullies, no dictators; there was no way for any of them to use fear or force to keep the others in line, not when they could all feel each other’s emotions. There were no outsiders amongst the Children, no one ostracised by the rest. They were individuals, true, and yet they were also linked together.

And yet …

The Confederation had few taboos, let alone laws. There was little reason to be a criminal in a post-scarcity society, and the few that existed could normally be tracked down very quickly and placed in isolation, if they refused to be treated for their condition. A society as old and mature as the Confederation could overcome almost anything, retaliating criminals and accepting that the young and immature made mistakes, mistakes they could acknowledge, accept, and put firmly in the past. But one taboo remained unbreakable and that was that you did not violate someone’s privacy without a very good reason. You did not go into their minds.

And yet, that was exactly what the Children did.

Pandora felt cold, despite the heat. It was difficult, if not impossible, to keep from reading the researchers’ minds. Every word they spoke brought a wave of emotions with it, every touch opened – however briefly – a channel into their minds. Pandora had seen thoughts and memories from a hundred researchers, learnt their secrets – the little shames that were embarrassing even to those born and raised in the Confederation – and felt their shock and horror as they realised their minds had been read. She thought, sometimes, that the researchers would have been happier if they’d remained on Darius, a world populated by witches and wizards out of a children’s fairy tale. It had been absurd, and no one understood how the Darius Machine had given some people magic powers, but …

Henri leaned forward, his mind brushing against hers. “You want to spy on their meeting?”

Pandora hesitated, then allowed him to lead her off the beach and through a maze of foliage back to the research centre. No expense had been spared to make the centre look as homely as possible, although expense was relative when one realised there was no reason the researchers couldn’t have built themselves a giant castle each and still had plenty of resources for everything from medical labs to defence stations. The buildings looked wooden, blending neatly with the tropical foliage; she smiled, briefly, as they walked around a swimming pool and a small bar before nearing the research centre itself. Her mind reached out, gingerly. There were no Children inside the complex.

“In here,” Henri said.

He opened the door to a small hut, left empty after the last occupant had left two months ago, and led the way inside. The AI’s drones had cleaned the interior from top to bottom in preparation for a researcher who had never actually arrived. It was a curious blend of primitive chic and modern technology, the latter worked carefully into a walls to keep it as concealed as possible. Pandora didn’t know why they bothered. She had studied history. The primitive chic, the pretence the researchers were roughing it, was insulting to her ancestors, the ones who had truly lived in a primitive environment. They had had no choice, back then. Now … sure, there were people who chose to really rough it, to live in habitats where nothing more advanced than a horse and cart was permitted, but they could quit at any moment. Her ancestors hadn’t known it was possible. To them, it hadn’t.

Henri lay on the bed, large enough for three or four full-grown adults. Pandora lay beside him and took his hand, his thoughts flowing into hers. She saw his urge to leave the centre, to explore the universe; she tasted his fear that they would never be allowed to leave, that they’d be nothing more than prisoners for the rest of their lives. She saw herself through his eyes, a beautiful young girl shining with life and love, and tasted his attraction to her, just as he tasted her own attraction to him. The urge to roll over and make love was almost overwhelming, but she resisted as his awareness drifted out of his body and floated across the chamber. She followed, her head twisting oddly as she passed through the walls and out into the open air. The world itself bent around them …

… Something nagged at her mind, gone before Henri could sense it …

… And then they were in the conference room, hovering invisibly over the table.

She felt a flicker of guilt as her mind surveyed the chamber. Professor Exurban, the de facto head of the research team; Professor Aliya, a paraphysical researcher; Professor Alexis, an xenospecialist who studied ancient alien technology; someone she didn’t recognise, a young-seeming man with old eyes, his thoughts calm and intensely disciplined. Colonel Truman, she picked up from Henri’s thoughts. The man had presented a blank face, but the agitation behind his mask had been blindingly obvious. Pandora didn’t know why he’d bothered trying to hide it.

“The blunt truth is that their abilities shouldn’t exist,” Aliya said. She was one of the longest-serving researchers, a brown-haired woman who had spent the last five years on Clarke. “They defy everything we know about how the universe works.”

She spoke with quiet intensity. “Telepathy. Telekinesis. Astral projection … a bunch of other abilities, none of which make much sense. They really shouldn’t be able to do half the things they do, certainly not in the manner they do.”

Truman leaned forward. “In what way?”

“They can communicate telepathically with each other, at least to some degree,” Aliya said. “This communication appears to be instantaneous, faster than hyperwave signals. We put one of the Children on a spacecraft and punched it up to just below the speed of light, yet they were still able to communicate even though the time dilation effect should have rendered it impossible. Their telekinesis is even stranger … frankly, I think the only thing limiting their abilities is their own lack of belief. The more they learn to combine their abilities, the more they’ll be able to do.”

“You have the finest sensors in the Confederation,” Truman said. “Can’t you tell what they’re doing?”

“No,” Exurban said, flatly. Pandora tasted his frustration. “The attempts to monitor their brainwaves have proven futile. We should see some activity when they use their abilities, but … very little. Certainly not enough. The environmental sensors see nothing. We can pick up tractor beams easily, but their telekinesis simply doesn’t register. There are some very faint flickers on the quantum sensors, when they push their abilities to the limit, yet … not enough to determine what they’re actually doing. As far as we can tell, their abilities are not rooted in science.”

Truman’s brief flicker of amusement lit up the mindscape. “Magic?”

Exurban looked irked. “The Darius Machine was not magic. It was nothing more than a piece of highly-advanced technology. We don’t understand how it worked, let alone how to build our own, but given time we will eventually solve the riddle. If we start thinking of it as magic, as something inexplicable, we will effectively be giving up.”

“Our ancestors might comprehend that the tech we use here is not magic,” Truman pointed out, “but it would still take them years to duplicate it for themselves.”

“Yes,” Exurban agreed. “And given time, we will unlock the secrets of their abilities.”

“If we have time,” Truman said. The cool urgency coloured his thoughts. “How long can we keep them here? Should we keep them here?”

“They lack for nothing,” Exurban snapped.

“Except freedom,” Alexis countered. “We call them Children, but the youngest amongst them is seventeen. It is just a matter of time before they attain their majority and demand the right to leave Clarke. What do we do then?”

Truman’s thoughts were cold, hard. “Do they pose any danger? Their powers …”

“Don’t think of them as powers, but abilities.” Exurban sounded very firm. His emotions told a different story. “It’s hard to be sure. Their abilities could be very dangerous, but there’s no reason to think they’re sociopaths. Their empathy is off the scales. Their ability to be aware of how their fellows are feeling makes it very hard for them to jump onto the slippery slope. To be honest, I’d say they were more mentally stable than most teenage humans. Far too many of us need to hit thirty or forty before we stop indulging ourselves and develop the maturity to grow into fully-rounded human beings.”

He paused. “That said, their telepathy is going to cause problems. No one likes having their mind read.”

“And it won’t be long until the first lawsuits get filed,” Alexis put in. “It’ll be an interesting legal case, that’s for sure.”

“Quite,” Truman agreed. “So … what do we do?”

The question hung in the air. Pandora held her breath, tasting the surge of emotions running through the air. What could they do? What would they do? The Confederation couldn’t legally keep them prisoner, but … it would be difficult to leave the planet if starships weren’t permitted to pass through the system. She honestly didn’t understand the problem. But then, she was used to a life without privacy. The researchers weren’t. She could feel their unease at having their minds read, their skin crawling even though they knew the Children weren’t doing it deliberately.

“We keep studying the Children, and helping them to develop their abilities,” Exurban said, finally. “And hopefully we can find a way to teach them control before it is too late.”

“They don’t want to learn,” Aliya said. “To them, their existence is natural. It’s the way things were meant to be. They no more want to shut their telepathy down than the average child wishes to be isolated from the datanet. Or have his eyes poked out. And frankly, I’m not convinced they can learn. There are just too many things about their abilities that don’t make sense.”

Henri’s mind slipped back into his own body. Pandora followed, her awareness flickering back in the blink of an eye. Her chest heaved as she took a breath, suddenly very aware of her own body once again. Henri let go of her hand and sat up.

“They’re never going to let us out, are they?”

“That’s not quite what they said,” Pandora reminded him. She could feel his anger – and desire to be free. Henri wanted to travel the stars, to explore the universe … he wanted the freedoms enjoyed by the rest of the human race. “If we can figure out how to control ourselves …”

“Yeah,” Henri agreed. “If.”