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They lost the war every time Sokrates closed their eyes.
The Autonomous Diaspora; the People’s Conglomerate of Orion; the Apostolosian Empire. Sokrates could not claim to belong to any of them, and they didn’t watch as Diaspora and OriCon forces drove Apostolosian forces back, stole the superweapon, saved the day, and then fractured. They turned their back to the observation deck window. The war was over and the Golden Branch lost. All while Sokrates stared at a wall. Was there a choice?
It was Ibex’s fault for implicating their ship as traitors. No, it was Orth’s fault for letting Ibex into his head, and Addax’s fault for ordering all Apostolosians imprisoned on the Callisto. It was Jace’s fault for losing the superweapon.
Two years before the Golden War began, Apole and Sigilia began construction of the weapon. Sokrates and Euanthe signed the plans after touring the facility on Apole. Had Sokrates had a choice? Even Cassander signed through the mesh from where they were off finishing medical school.
Cassander might not even remember it. Euanthe didn’t regret signing, as they never regretted any choice the Apokine made for them, from what they wore to who they could be friends with. Sokrates wondered what the Apokine told them to think about their near-death during the war. Were they a near-martyr, a rallying cry, a story of triumph after defeat? In Sokrates’s mind, Euanthe’s wounds still pained them. It was likely. Specific information about the injury never made it past Apostolosian borders. Had they been crushed, torn apart, burned, impaled? What horrors could a divine wreak on an Apostolosian body? Sokrates had not watched what the divine Peace did to Jace to leave him unresponsive but alive even now, a year later.
The library on Slighter was full of blank walls and silence and places to think. There were displays of old technology, robots and appliances that dated back to Earth, re-imagined in plaster and plastic. One wall near the entrance was an aquarium full of colorful octopi and coral. Sokrates ignored these and dove into the books, the histories, looking for something that would give them a hope for the future. They would know it when they saw it.
Cut off from power, family, and people, perhaps they would die here.
There were records of weapons greater than Apostolos’s weapon in this library. Starkillers, divines as large as planets. Sokrates didn’t have the head for engineering, and never had. They did not understand schematics the way Euanthe could. Did that fact absolve Sokrates of blame for their signature, because they did not take the time to understand the blueprint? No more or less than it absolved them that Apostolos and the Apokine would have gone on to build the superweapon with or without Sokrates’s name on the document.
The Apokine dictated everything—every part of Sokrates’s life, up until they defected to the enemy. Even more than Sokrates’s choice of eidolon, Apole, the eidolon of personal sacrifice, family, and resources. Their choice didn’t matter. What was Apole to them when the Apokine ruled?
The personal sacrifice to betray their family to stop them from killing millions in the pursuit of resources. What a joke.
In the corner of the room, a metal staff leaned against the wall. It was half-hidden behind a boxy hunk of plastic painted like metal, unrecognizable as a printer, though the plaque stated that it was once used to print books out on paper.
Sokrates did not yet have the connections within Slighter to access the most ancient archives in the library, where they preserved some of these paper books.
The staff shone dully, marking it as real metal rather than painted plastic.
Sokrates should take it to the lost and found. Though it was a rather ugly staff, a twisted strange mess of branches. It curved in strange places that made it seem useless as a cane—Euanthe held a black aluminum cane during public ceremonies now, Sokrates watched them on a staticy screen, listening to the speeches over and over, scrutinizing each word, trying to identify a new superweapon, a new war, before it came. Cassander was not yet back on Apostolos, and it seemed by now that they would not be welcome back. They were still in the Golden Branch, surely. So which planet? If they were on Slighter, Sokrates would have heard of it, as news of Apostolosian immigrants traveled far on the small, majority-Diasporan world. Unless Cassander changed their name and dressed like a Diasporan. Sokrates did not think Cassander would do that, but it had been a long few years.
When Sokrates squinted, the staff resembled the curvature of a spine.
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A layer of dust covered almost all of the archives in this library on Slighter. Integrity was no exception. Time swept it along into the future, willing or not. Particles of dust came to rest on its exposed wiring like snow, coating it. It imagined over the years that the dust would cover it entirely and hide it away from—people. Potential candidates. Anyone whose hand could touch the inner workings of its central column and connect, insides to insides.
There was, recently, a new presence. Subdued, searching, sick, heartsick presence.
Sokrates Nikon Artemisios was an Apostolosian, obviously. They dove into the archives as if they wanted to lose themself in the stacks. Integrity would know. Sometimes the Apostolosian spoke out loud to themself; through this, Integrity learned about Grace and Order and Righteousness (dim recognition), a man called Ibex (sympathetic distaste), a sibling who may have died in a war (apathy).
At first they wore colors Integrity had not seen in decades. Deep blues, muted greens. Slowly the color leached away, replaced by Diasporan browns and grays, with only small colorful additions—an earring, an anklet. This new era was heralded by increased muttering about the Ethnologistical Committee for a More Prosperous Golden Branch. Those newcomers who thought if they drew enough charts, they could usher in the future. Integrity did not even remember if it knew what the Golden Branch was. It felt itself begin to drift away, like a great ocean creature that, finished turning over in its sleep, sunk back into the depths.
Yet a glimpse of blue or gold always brought it back.
Sokrates worried for a sibling, Cassander, not the one who may have died. Sokrates spoke of the Apokine as if they were a god. A divine. Sokrates’s people hated divines. Sokrates would not stop working for unity in the Golden Branch Sector. That is what they were searching for in these archives.
You won’t find it here, Integrity wanted to tell them. But it didn’t have a voice; that was not one of its programs, it did not have the hardware. No throat with a larynx inside, no lungs to inflate and work them.
For the first time that it could remember, Integrity wondered what was happening outside of the library. Perhaps this curiosity was why it revealed itself. Perhaps it was something else.
Sokrates's hand on Integrity's exposed internal wiring was like a brand. The slightly-sweaty grip of their palm displaced the accumulated dust, leaving a mark that would stay until movement or simply time covered it up again.
Integrity made its offer. Sokrates said yes. Integrity, emboldened, stricken with something warm inside, something almost like optimism but not quite, too old to be optimism, traveled along the length of Sokrates's outstretched arm. Down their shoulder, towards the familiar curve of their spine.
Please help me, Sokrates said. I need power. I need divinity.
Integrity burrowed into their Apostolosian flesh. It was soft, willing, easily parted by its metal spikes and tendrils. Integrity entered its candidate's body in a small incision made at the base of their neck. It flowed downward, slicing through tendons and meat to make space for its cables and wires. Sokrates's flesh spread with just enough force, no excess. It wrapped around the spine it found, circling, holding tight. Peripheral tendons of its own pressed up, towards the skull, the brain. Touching it just barely, just enough to get a taste.
Sokrates uncurled slowly from their fetal position on the library floor. They stood. Integrity stood, taking on their weight. It was reeling.
Reborn with a thought, a wish from Sokrates’s insides, which were Integrity’s outsides and insides as well. The thought was hot like an infection, bubbling and real but not quite real enough yet to touch the world, to nudge the future, not for another few years. It was a thought about the Apokine.
