The Genesis of Misery Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  FOR MY FELLOW EVA COPILOTS.

  THE ROBOT AWAITS.

  PROLOGUE

  If we are to begin, we might as well start with the desert. If we are to chart a path through what happened, if we are to make sense of anything at all, we might as well start in this place that has no name, this arena where time has no meaning. We might as well start with the two strangers who traverse its ersatz distances, full of questions about one another and the things that have brought them here. Here, a story waits to be excavated, waits to be spoken into truth.

  This is the story.

  * * *

  In the desert, a high wind grieves over orange dunes, pluming dust in its wake. It makes instrument of the broken fingers of holystone separating land and sky. A single jaundiced sun sinks toward the horizon warped by heat, the kind that dries the back of the throat and makes speech impossible. With its intensity, this light would blind human eyes, if there were human eyes to squint into it.

  Heat, air, light. Remarkable detail birthed from a great swathe of nothingness. The lifeless desert represents an ending, but it is also a beginning, and everything else in between.

  The silhouettes of the strangers cut through this emptiness, narrow against the searing sky. Dwarfed by the element-blasted landscape, they appear startlingly comprehensible, if not entirely mortal. The two leisurely cross the gaps in the bent stone littering the landscape, strolling past facsimiles of ancient wrecks that might have once been warships or constructor mechs. One of the figures is human-shaped. The other cycles through a variety of forms: now a ball of flame louder than suns, now an enormous winged insect, now a spacecraft escaping a gravity well.

  “What I want to know,” says the human-shaped one, who goes by he/him pronouns, “is how much of it was known. How much of it could have been prevented, and how much of it was ordained.”

  His companion, who does not care for pronouns at all, takes the form of a dozen burning rings with a hundred unblinking eyes. “You wish to pick apart the braids of cause and consequence, then? To untangle the threads that make up this timeline?”

  The human one tilts his head. “Perhaps I should express myself more clearly. I care little for philosophies. What I want to know is the story. Not just an assembled sequence of events, but the hows and the whys that shaped the flow of events we went through.”

  His companion flares into the shape of a hydrogen molecule for a brief second, before collapsing into a swarm of locusts. “A story, you say? A lofty ask, to distill the uncountable and unnameable essences that create all of reality into something digestible, with cause and effect, beginning and end. A moral, when all is said and done. You wish to bottle chaos and entropy like a cheap salve.”

  “Not all of it.” The one like a man—narrow, fine-featured, eyes reflexively squinting in sunlight that has no effect on him—frowns. “What is this talk of chaos? My request is simple. I’m not asking for the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Tell me what happened in this messy, sorry affair. From top to toe. That’s all. Tell me the story of Misery Nomaki.”

  “The story of Misery Nomaki,” says the other figure, now a tower of flame striding across the landscape, peer to the broken holystone that frames them. “You fancy me a storyteller, do you? A sayer of sooths, a vessel of revelation? As if their story were mine to tell?”

  “I merely have questions I want answered,” says the first. Frustration seeps into the cool syllables of his words; noticing this, he calms himself, refusing to be baited. “No, to say that I have questions is an understatement of my feelings on the matter. But that is beside the point. You, my friend. You with your all-seeing eyes—you must have had a view of the events that no one else, not even the most observant mortal, did. Am I wrong?”

  “In that, at least, you are not.”

  “That’s what I thought,” says the one who is a man. “Listen, I know that I have no power over you, and you have no obligation toward me. But I beg of you. If you cannot tell me what happened in a manner I can understand—if you cannot translate your understanding into something mortals can grasp, then at least show me what you’ve collected on your journey. You said the tale of Misery Nomaki was not yours to tell, but surely you can let me see what happened? From their point of view?”

  His companion now sports four faces, human and beast, and each bears a frown. “Show, not tell. Do you imagine that the two are really so different? After all, showing is telling, and telling is showing—don’t you agree? I can show you what you desire, but how will you judge the nature of the story it tells?”

  “Forge in the void, you are nothing but questions, aren’t you? Please. That one is best left for later, when I have understanding. Now, will you show me what you know? Please?”

  The other resolves into a form that is startlingly human: pale, dark-haired, all long and narrow limbs. Eyes that glow, like opal. “A foolish statement. I know very little. After all this, and you still lack that fundamental. But no matter. You want to see what has gone before, and that I can show you. The story of Misery Nomaki, Last Savior of the Faithful, as experienced by Misery Nomaki, Last Savior of the Faithful.” Zie presses a pair of spindly fingers upon the other’s forehead. “Come then, friend. Open your mind. See as I saw. See as they saw.”

  PART ONE

  THE CAPITAL

  CHAPTER

  1

  But really, where do we begin? Do we imagine that the story of a person begins when zie is born? Or do we acknowledge that each one of us is the creation of a dozen forces, bearing down upon the clay of a being with all the weight of history? The threads that make up Misery Nomaki began in the distant past, not as fixed points but electron clouds, diffuse and undefinable, woven through the tapestry of human history in ways that are difficult to put into words or comprehend. Shall we start with the Old Planet, whose name has been forgotten, and swim the warm oceans as life begins to coalesce? Should we walk alongside the parade of creatures as they unfurl into human form, and watch as these shabby beings stumble toward the ruination of their planet? Perhaps a better opening would be the shoal of vessels that fled their burning home, each stocked carefully with a collection of individuals that has been deemed suitable to represent the future of humanity. Here we see the one christened The Cause of Labour streaking away into the dark, embarking upon its ten-thousand-year journey across the stars. Into long sleeps and uncharted territories and the ALISS Apocalypse and all that followed after.

  But maybe that is too much. Too wide. It would take too long to tell all of it. Let us work at a scale comprehensible to human minds. You may think that means starting at the conception of our Messiah. But that holds little interest for me: Are we not programmed to want the exciting parts right away? Since you have mandated me as storyteller, I shall choose where we begin as it suits my fancy. Let us start at the center of the Empire of the Faithful, not too long before our current point in time. There is a ship, coming through a portal. Its name is Wolf at the Door. A narrow blade of a thing, half metal and half holystone, polished to reflect starlight. It arrives around midday standard universal time, nestled in a loose flotilla of travelers from the duchy of Apis. This ship belongs to the seventeenth Duke of Apis, Lord Bichap Amran Argan, he/him pronouns, and it is his personal ship, part pleasure cruiser and part diplomatic vessel. Its destination is the Imperial Capital, a gloriously jeweled confabulation of structures: domes and arches and turrets fused into a floating shape, thick in the center and tapering to glittering minarets at either pole. A colony suspended in an inky sea, filled with nobility and scientists and magnates of industry. A locus of power, in fact the locus of power in the Empire of the Faithful, to which those seeking power are also drawn. This is what The Cause of Labour has become, hundreds of years after its engines were stilled. The body of the original ship lies at the core of the Capital as a seed lies in a fruit. You are familiar with this, I do believe. Yet that fact is often obscured in the books of the Faithful. I wonder how many know?

  Wolf at the Door, then. It has come to the Capital for a very specific purpose. It carries in its decks the nixen believed to be the Last Savior of the Faithful, who not a week prior had saved a far-flung colony from annihilation by the Heretics. Or so it was said. Misery Nomaki, they/she pronouns, newly twenty and newly thrust into a world they have no understanding of, a world so far removed from their upbringing it might as well be a different society altogether. Brought to the Imperial Capita
l at behest of the Church, to seek an audience with a skeptical Emperor. A herald of trouble, this Misery Nomaki. Into the pretty, fragile shells of empire they come like a wrecking ball. Let us make a beginning here, where there is none.

  * * *

  In a steel-walled room encysted in the Capital’s guts, the Last Savior of the Faithful is trying to turn a door to jelly. Misery Nomaki, chosen of the Forge, presses herself against the flat glossy surface, cold as dead marble, and says, “Come the fuck on.”

  The door is holystone. It whispers to her with the electric, back-of-the-neck prickle that holystone always has. She’s never seen this sort before—a pale gray streaked with white, only pretty because it shines—and she’s always wary of strange holystone. No fucking idea what it’s called. No fucking idea what it does. But ten minutes ago she watched the flint of its striped surface turn gelatinous and admit a young saint bearing a crate of dinner, breaking open and sliding over hir like liquid. Of course. That’s how she got in this box to begin with. The salve they put in her is still flossing her mind, muddying emotion and memory. Smearing adrenaline into a soggy mush of apathy. It’s hard to think, when the salves get her like this. If she had known, she would never have accepted the dose. But then, she’s been saying yes to a lot of shit she shouldn’t lately.

  She doesn’t know what’s on the other side of this door. Guards, probably. Trouble. More trouble than what she’s stewing in right now. But anything’s better than sitting on her ass and waiting for the Emperor, or whoever, to pass judgment down. She didn’t sign up for any of this, and she certainly didn’t sign up to be thrown in a cell with zero cause upon arrival in the Imperial Capital. Misery has no idea where her sponsor, the Duke, is right now. For all she knows he’s in a lockbox too. And whatever’s coming next, if she waits for it, is probably worse than what it is right now.

  It’s better to find your own trouble than to have trouble come find you.

  Misery closes her eyes to focus better. There’s a familiar twinge she’s looking for, a fire in her nerves that tells her when she’s woken the holystone. These rocks are full of surprises, tricksy bastards: some invert gravity, some power the hearts of starships, yet others can destroy everything in their path. This holystone is ostensibly a doorway, but who knows what configurations lurk in its lightless depths? Won’t be the first time Misery wakes some voidtouched ability in holystone that’s brand-new.

  “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

  Slouched against the door is a delusion in human shape. A youth with every trapping of a classical softlad, milk-fleshed and bird-boned, icy bangs framing a high brow and jutting cheeks. And hir eyes! Cosmic presence radiates from the hollow of those sockets; sometimes they go bright as suns, sometimes they fall dark as the void between stars. Zie’s dressed in the kind of loose, off-shoulder blanket dress worn by angels in art from the sourceworld, ending above the knee and displaying a generous swathe of skin and nipple. Unreadable symbols crawl over one bare shoulder, fluid and sinuous.

  This delusion, zie claims a name. Ruin. No known pronouns. Bane of Misery’s life. Absolute bane. Showed up bright and inescapable a couple of weeks ago, all beautiful and haloed, claiming a grand destiny for her, just like her dead mother promised. Break into the local defensive base, zie said. Steal a sparrowhawk unit and take off with it, zie said. Fight the Heretics lurking over the nowhere nothing mining colony you call home, zie said. It is what the Larex Forge calls you to. And because Misery’s stupid, because she’s got void where a brain should be, because it was her birthday and also Mother’s death anniversary and she was completely smashed on dirty salves, because she was still pissed at her older brother for some bullshit he said, because of all that Misery said fuck it and did as Ruin suggested. Even though she knew better. Even though she should have recognized Ruin for the delusion zie is. Even though she knew the consequences of not resisting the voidsickness that generated the delusion.

  She did it anyway, and so here she is, a prisoner halfway across the galaxy on the Capital at the center of it all, trapped with an advanced outgrowth of the voidmadness she was born with. Took twenty years to show up, but she’s finally full-on hallucinating the way Mother used to, arguing with shades like old family members. Good job, Misery. Everything going cherries and honey.

  Ruin slants hir head in curiosity. “You wanted off Rootsdown. You wanted to leave home for shinier pastures. I did that for you. Did I not?”

  “If I wanted to be imprisoned on the Imperial Capital, I would have found better ways,” Misery snaps. She can’t hear the holystone through all this nagging. Can’t believe she sat through thousands of hours of sermon and not one second of it covered getting a faux-aspect of the universal force to shut the fuck up.

  “Tell me again,” says Ruin, clearly with the least inclination in the void to shut the fuck up. “What good would escaping this room do? Where do you imagine you will go?”

  “Somewhere not here,” Misery says, and stills herself because a thread has come loose in the holystone, brushing against her senses like a questing finger. She can deal with Ruin later—freedom awaits. Breath held, she tugs upon the offered filament. Shuts her eyes, shuts out the rest of the universe. Her existence is stone and stone only. Beneath her, the essence of the strange mineral slowly unravels, loosening its grip on the divine gift that separates it from mere rock. The holystone melts, and Misery melts along with it, her body turning to jelly, bones and skin and all. She has no body; that brick of flesh right now has no owner. She is the stone, and the stone is she.

  The holystone activates and Misery falls through it, plowing through gel thicker than her head, finding nothing but air on the other side. She tumbles onto her hands and knees, walloped back into her body with an angry smack that shoots up the bone. The epitome of grace, Mx. Misery Nomaki. She swears a little, because she has the mouth for it now. After thousands of melds with holystone, Misery still gets rustled by the out-of-body transitions every time.

  Ruin stands in the middle of the outside passageway, arms folded, brows knitted, lips thin. Zie doesn’t need to walk, blinking in and out of places like a photon, and Misery could wring hir neck for it. Can one strangle a delusion? Misery hasn’t yet managed to lay a hand on Ruin: zie moves too fast, flitting out of reach every times she gets close. Of course.

  Zie says, “Turn back. Return to the room you were in.”

  “Not a room. A cell. And you can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my brother.”

  “You will regret continuing upon this path.”

  “Great, add it to my regrets pile.” She dusts herself off and takes stock. She’s made it out—good. She hasn’t set off a siren—even better. Some time to think.

  Inside the cell it was gray and metal and frigid. Outside it’s still metal and frigid, but at least there’s light. Misery’s at the tail end of a nitro-white corridor, sleek reflective panels rimmed by light at the edges of floor and ceiling. It curves away from her and beyond the line of sight. No vents along these pristine surfaces. No ducts. Hidden, probably. This is deep space, the station’s got to have a circ system somewhere. That oxygen isn’t going to make itself. It’s her best hope, hiding in those veins while she figures her way around and out: she’s not armed, this is unfamiliar ground, and the Imperial Army won’t go light on her. A head-on confrontation would mean death.

  What’s the plan? Find the deep vents, find a place to hide. Get to a safely crowded area—civilian dock, merchant zone, whatever, wherever they on- and off-load ship crews. Find a leaving captain willing to take her on, or sneak into a hospitable cargo hold. Get out, at any rate. Anywhere in the galaxy would make a fine landing. How many years has she got left, fifteen, twenty? Possibly less. Lots less. Mother wasn’t forty when she died, and Misery—she’s twenty, and the delusions have started showing up. It’s only a matter of time. Maybe ten. Maybe five. It’s fine. Enough time to drink in the stars, enough space to knock out a few adventures like Mother used to tell her. She’s not interested in being anybody’s savior.