Read Online Heretics by S. Andrew Swann - Free Book Online

own visit to the Hall of Minds right now,” Brody told him. “Judging by the time between your arrival and Dr. Dörner’s, it seems to take them about three hours.”
    Mallory looked from Dörner to Brody and back again. “Do you know what they’re doing?”
    â€œInterrogating us,” Brody said with a weak smile. “Probably more thoroughly than we were expecting.”
    â€œDon’t make light of this!” Dörner snapped at him.
    Brody’s fragile smile shattered. “What else have I got?” he spoke through gritted teeth.
    â€œAt least you weren’t conscious through it. At least you didn’t feel them—feel it—” Her voice choked off, and she turned away from both of them.
    Brody whispered, “I don’t think it makes it better.” Mallory rubbed his palms on his legs, trying to regain his equilibrium. “Is it what I think it is?” Mallory asked. “They implanted a bio- interface, and they hooked us all up to a computer—”
    â€œ The computer,” Brody said. “I have Sharon’s description of where they took us. Unquestionably a ritual space devoted to exactly what they did to us, although I suspect their own people undergo a less abbreviated initiation.”
    â€œIt’s not an initiation,” Dörner said. “It’s rape.”
    â€œI doubt it is truly consensual, even among their own people. Once a culture devotes this much energy to something, opting out is rarely an option.”
    â€œWhat are they devoting energy to?” Mallory asked.
    â€œThe preservation of their ancestors, at its base. Their entire history downloaded and stored like so many files in a library. Though I wonder how they access that wealth of information.”
    Mallory looked at him and felt a deep unease.
    â€œI’m not a computer specialist,” Brody went on, “but from my history I know that even at the height of the heretical technologies, no one ever was able to extract coherent information from a static recording of someone’s mind—human or AI. There always needed to be some sort of brain hosting it.”
    Mallory didn’t know what was more disturbing, having his mind implanted in some heretical AI, or having it implanted in someone else.
    Dörner was right, they had been raped. They had been violated more thoroughly than any physical assault could have done. Their captors had stripped them down to the very soul, stealing things that were to be between only God and themselves. The entirety of their existence.
    When a pair of guards brought Dr. Leon Pak into the room, glassy-eyed and unresponsive, Mallory felt as far from God’s grace as he ever had in his life.
    Â 
    Alexander Shane watched as they carried the last of the offworlders from the antechamber. He had been the youngest, and the physical part of linking to the Hall of Minds was easiest for him. The mental part, though, was the worst. He had seen it in the displays monitoring the connection; he had resisted retrieval to an unprecedented degree.
    His men left him alone in the antechamber. None had questioned what he was doing. He doubted any of these men would. He had handpicked them, and each had at least two ornate glyphs upon their brows that matched with one of the fifteen on Shane’s naked scalp. At least two ancestors downloaded in common, either in this room, or in another room like it somewhere on Salmagundi.
    Therefore, most understood his thought processes, even if they didn’t completely share them. They would have been right to question him, but none did. And all of the ones who might have questioned him probably knew that leaving him alone, unchallenged, made his decisions that much harder.
    It was a questionable decision in a long line of questionable decisions. He had chosen to stage a coup and take the Triad’s authority as his own, in part because he believed they were all in desperate