Book 8 – Chapter 7 – Unsolvable Riddle

Dust, dust, and more dust. The entire room and every other room I walked through was filled with nothing but dust. Some parts of the fortress had no lights, and Journey’s stark white powerful headlights would make the entire way forward feel like I was walking in a glitter fog of some kind.

Very disorienting. It even kicked up the biohazard sign a few times when it considered the air too filled with particles to be safe. The reason dust hadn’t settled was due to the ventilation of this fortress still being active.

And very quickly it turned from fortress to maze as I realized this was cudgeled together from a few different templates, all glued together. Gravity was universally always pointing down, but that didn’t always mean the sections of human fortress was built to have gravity pointing in that direction.

Mites.

Somehow the entire fortress was still functional. Every screen I passed showed the outside battle raging, with swarms of fish chasing after two targets jumping left and right, or flying all over the place. Keeping the peace out there, good work team.

While this place was huge from the outside, the inside was easy to navigate thanks to it being spacious. Bunk beds, infirmary, engineering bay, and a few other sections of note were passed by, but all of it had large ceilings, and wide open air that let me see further off. Catwalks were everywhere further past the inner layer, and all of them converged on a center smaller sphere with two doorways.

Looked almost suspended, with all the catwalks holding it still in the center. And gravity all seemed to point directly down at it. So this must be the source of everything.

I climbed up one last set of punctured metal railings, then jumped down at the center sphere. I landed without trouble, and the doorway before the heart of the biome opened up silently. Welcoming me in.

Inside was a command bridge of some kind. Or three command bridges fused together. Three tiers of catwalks, each filled with stations and screens, all showing the outdoor fight again. Many of them looked to have HUDs with targeting reticles. A few showed outline images of gun turrets in green, orange and red. Most of the screens showed orange or red, but a few were all green.

And before all of it was a massive window wall that curved with the sphere, showing the outside.

I slowly walked through this dead and empty bridge, headlights searching around for more.

It was on the bottom tier of the three catwalk tiers, floating over a pedestal of some kind. Nobody could miss this kind of thing. A box of cubes, all fused together. Shifting, constantly in very strange ways. Some of the cubes would shrink then vanish away. Others would appear out of nowhere, grow, move, and eventually vanish like they’d moved through an invisible wall. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human.

I walked down all the catwalks, reaching the bottom tier of the fake bridge, and made my way to the mite treasure.

Lights flashed across all the screens, and then everything went dark. Before lighting back up with a single line across all screens. It moved like a disturbed wave, and a voice came out of the speakers, matching the line’s motions.

“Welcome intruder.” A rather obnoxious young man’s voice crackled out from everywhere around me. “I am Speaker. I am in charge of speaking for the Judge.”

I already had my blade and armguard up, pointed out into the wider room. Nothing else in here that I could see with the soul sight, nor anything on Journey’s HUD. Just an empty bridge room with screens everywhere.

Another voice crackled. This one sounded completely robotic. “DESIGNATION: JUDGE. FUNCTION: GUARDIAN OF TREASURE.”

Cathida flickered over the headset comms. “Uh oh. We might be in trouble here deary.”

“I’m going to guess Relinquished did find her way inside here? Who are these two?”

“It’s not machines, but they’re worse. These are mite programs. They’re half-insane already.”

“We’re all a little insane already, what’s special with these two?” I asked. “Are they famous?” Then another thought came to mind: “Wait, we’re deeper than most people ever reach, how do you know these two? … Are you hating on them just because they’re robots? Cathida, I thought you’d grown up from that.”

“Not at all deary,” She sounded aghast at that. Offended even. “My hatred is completely justified. I’m hating because this is the Guardian pair. It’s a pair of virtual intelligences that handle this particular mite type of mite treasure. They’ve basically sealed off hundreds of caches so far in the last seventy years. Doesn’t matter the strata. Imperial records have all the dirt on these two.”

“And by screwed what exactly do you mean?”

The terminal answered for her on its own. “Your little voice in your head means none have answered our riddles three correctly thus far, would-be thief.”

Eavesdropping much. Though there really isn’t any other sound in this entire room besides me, so I’ll give points to that.

“You’re a mite program then?” I asked. Internally, I was poking Superior for answers.

Mites aren’t saying anything reasonable.

Should we take a shot everytime they answer gibberish?

No, I think even Wrath wouldn’t be able to outheal the liver damage from that. Best I could describe what they’re saying back… if the mites were artists, this would be me asking them if they added some red in their latest painting. The answer is yes, there’s some red in here, am I colorblind or something? They don’t see how the AI guarding their chest is any different from the chest, the walls, or the rest of the biome. It’s all part of the package they made.

“We serve the Creators above all.” Speaker said. “Your prior kin have entered our sanctums with such hope to pillage their great work, and greed deep within your filthy little hearts. They left with naught but despair. But have no fear, you too will soon be leaving with the same.”

“How many of my prior kin are we talking about?

“RECORDED PRIOR ATTEMPTS: TWENTY TWO THOUSAND, FOUR HUNDRED, TWENTY NINE.” Judge spoke out. “SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS: ZERO.”

“Thus speaks the judge.” Speaker said, “My riddle has never been defeated thus far. Never.”

“Because Speaker here has to switch to a new riddle once it’s solved.” Cathida said. “As far as imperial records and logs that the old bat had access to, the furthest we’ve understood this mite pyrite is that Speaker comes up with riddles, and Judge… well, judges if the answer’s correct.”

“Why two separate entities?” I asked. “Can’t Speaker judge if it’s question is answered correctly or not already?”

“I certainly could. However, it would be most uncouth to bias the results.” Speaker said, offended. “Judge is pure of thought. It has not created my riddles, it serves as the impartial one. In the past, it used to be quite a conundrum to protect these treasures from filthy treasure-hunters such as yourself, but now alas, no amount of fairness can save you anymore. My riddle is unbeatable. UNBEATABLE.”

“ I thought you said there should be three?” I checked over the console, looking around to see if there were any settings or anything there. Just proactively.

“There are three.” Speaker answered. “But none have heard the second or third riddle, since none have defeated my first. Before you were born, I have already won. You have lost before knowing you were even playing the game.”

“… Cathida, is it me or does it sound almost gleeful?”

“You’d be utterly insufferable if you came up with a riddle nobody can ever figure out the answer to.” Cathida said. “It also never shuts up about it. Acted exactly the same way in all historical records of prior attempts.”

Yeah, that checks out.

“How many attempts do I get at this?”

“ATTEMPTS ALLOWED: ONE PER HUMAN.”

“Thus speaks the judge!” Speaker followed right after, almost screaming it out. Sounded almost like a fanatical zealot.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Or… ah. I see where this was going. The universe was conspiring against me, and now openly taunting me with what I couldn’t have: “Cathida, where are my loyal minions? Why can’t I have minions like this?” I pointed one finger at the console. “All I get is an angry old bat, an arguably insane ex-spider, and a lost Deathless who’s probably hard at work tarnishing my name.”

I took the seat and sat down deeply in it, hearing it crack ominously as the relic armor’s weight pulled down against it. To my great joy, it was the kind of chair that could even spin around. I did so, of course. “What is going on with my life that I end up like this. Where did I go wrong?”

“You went wrong the moment you stepped into this sanctum and defiled it with your filthy boots.” Speaker hissed out. “Begon, miscreant! Waste our time not!”

“No way. I’m getting out of this fortress with loot.” I said, putting a halt to the spinning. “And I’m going to get it out of your hands one way or another.”

“Very well, you may try.” Speaker said, sounding incredibly smug. “Are you prepared, thief? I shall ask three questions. All must be answered. The judge will determine if they are answered correctly. Fail any, and you shall never be allowed ano-.”

I slapped my hand on the console. “Cathida, if you please, eat a soul fractal here.”

The armor complied, nanoswarm spilling out of my armor, inscribing a small fractal on the console. I jumped into it, and reached out for the server, expecting a short but quick battle with whatever was holding my treasure chest hostage.

I was on a rowboat. Water was all around me, with a white fog lifting across the world. The terminal didn’t feel like anything like the prior terminals I’d been in. I couldn’t see anything else here besides endless white and dark nearly black water under me.

The rowboat moved on its own. No oars or anything. Slowly it moved, and something beyond the white mist began to unfold.

It was at that moment I realized I’d messed up. Relinquished was still the most massive digital construct I’d ever seen. Danger wise, this didn’t quite match up.