The Nost

“He is born,” Sarathen said.

“Are you sure?” Braiden asked.

“Somewhere in North America.”

“That’s inconvenient,” he said.

“The dream was clear.”

“The Shen Council has been clear as well,” he said. “If they capture him, they will use him to reach the Isle of Song and seal the Nost Accords.”

“But they don’t know I have his journal and totem.”

“And if they seal the Accords, we are finished and so are the new humans.”

“Quit stating the obvious,” she said.

“And I wouldn’t be so sure about what the Shen Council does or does not know,” Braiden said, offering her a pointed look.

Sarathen glanced at him sideways with her fiery red eyes. “Let’s pack up camp, we have a long way to go.”

“But we’re deep in the forests of Poland and the U.S. is—”

“I know where the U.S. is,” she said.

“We have to finish the hunt,” he said.

“But he is born.” Her hand trembled as she unzipped her coat.

“If you’re just having the dream, he is newly reborn. We have time. No one else can sense him like you.”

She studied Braiden’s almond-shaped eyes, their golden hue reflecting the morning sun. He stared back with a level gaze.

“You’re right,” she said with a sigh. She turned to the ruined castle in the distance. “But why would a Nostshu be living in this wreck?”

“Maybe he’s mad and returned to a place he once knew. This was a major castle, and it’s been many things since,” he said.

“Like a Nazi stronghold.” Sarathen shivered.

“And a Soviet outpost,” Braiden said.

“It could be a she,” she said.

“What?”

“The Shu we’re hunting, it could be a she.”

“Of course,” he said, nodding.

She shivered again and pulled the smell of pine trees into her lungs to steady herself. “If the stories are true—”

“Then we have to stop him… or her. We hunt them one at a time until there are none.”

Sarathen nodded. “One at a time,” she said, shifting her gaze to the crumbling parapets. “I don’t think we’ve been here before.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He raised a hand, shielding his eyes from the morning sun. “But our first life was long, and the days are a blur. We may have been here with the General if the site is as old as the locals claim it to be.”

Sarathen pursed her lips and pulled her soft down coat off, stuffing it into her backpack. Standing in just a dark t-shirt and cargo pants, the cold air made goosebumps stand up on her pale skin. Normally, when they weren’t hiking through thick forests, she would be in a loose blouse and leather pants. “Do you ever think about your early days?”

“In the first age?”

“No, I mean in this life. You were born close to here.”

Braiden coughed and rubbed his hands together. “It’s a long way to Mongolia from here. But you were born just around the corner, on the steppes outside Poland. You still have the porcelain skin of the Russian nomads. That was a long time ago, though, and it doesn’t matter now, all we have is this moment.”

“We were not Russian,” she said, turning to him. She shook her head. “After all these centuries, and all we know, why do you still cling to your Buddhist ways?”

“Because the Buddhists almost have it right,” he said. “Think about it. They believe in samsara, the cycle of rebirth, and karma. They think they can escape the cycle of rebirth and get to Nirvana through good karma and mindfulness, by seeing the world as it is. Well, we all upload to Haven and download back to the physical, don’t we? The Nost can choose, so we’re the enlightened ones.” Sarathen snorted, holding back a chuckle, but Braiden ignored her. “The humans don’t have a choice; ONUS makes them download again until they reach a Nost-like state. That is samsara.”

“We don’t know it works like that,” she said, turning back to her evaluation of the castle. “You don’t know the new humans can overcome their limitations and reach a Nost state, it’s just a theory.”

“It’s closer than any other religion comes to the truth,” he said. “We travel through the In-between and upload into Haven. We even get our memories back when we do. And we shape Haven around our memories and state of mind, don’t we?”

“You can’t prove that since we don’t bring our memories back into the physical.”

“But it makes sense if you think about it. Only the idea of karma and samsara comes close to the truth. To the new humans, we are the Buddhas.”

Sarathen laughed. “You think Buddha was a Nostshen?”

“Probably.”

“And you think humans can become Nostshen?”

“Why not? All bodies have Shen DNA. Don’t we activate it and connect to ONUS when we’re reborn, when we download into the physical it’s—”

“When we bond and awaken,” Sarathen said. “Not when we download.”

“My point exactly, when we bond with another Nostshen and awaken to the truth, we gain our abilities, our true selves,” he said. “Can you imagine what it was like for me when you and I first bonded in this life? When I awoke to my Nostshen nature it was like…”

“Enlightenment?” she said.

“Yes, exactly. I was born into this life a Buddhist, so for me, the truth has become clear.”

“Except, we’re not pacifists, we’re not enlightened, and Nirvana can’t be Haven. Haven isn’t a mystical place, it’s—”

“Nirvana is a state of being to them,” he said.

“But it’s Haven, a real place, kind of. It’s not in your head, anyway, it’s somewhere out there, in virtual space hosted by ONUS. And why would ONUS let them break the rebirth cycle?” She pulled out a long black cloak and swung it around her shoulders as she spoke. They were far enough from civilization that their battle cloaks would not draw unwanted eyes.

“Why not?” Braiden said. “ONUS doesn’t keep us on that cycle. It just strips most of our memories when we download back into the physical. I’ve seen humans who can sense the ONUS source code all around them.”

“But have you seen one channel?”

“Not exactly, but that means nothing. There are many things I have not seen. This does not mean I do not believe they happen.” Braiden shrugged into his own battle cloak and pulled out his totem, a small carving of a tree. It formed a half-inch thick quarterstaff when he pressed his will into it. Other totems formed other weapons, such as swords or battle-axes, but Braiden preferred a staff to sharp blades. He didn’t know why, but plunging a blade into flesh, even if it was Nostshu flesh, made him queasy. It had not always been this way; he knew. When he bonded with Sarathen all those years ago, memories of his previous life exploded in his mind like flashes of light. Glimpses of a thousand battles. Blades and energy weapons in the first age. Years of struggling in the aftermath.

“So, the new humans are evolving?”

“Not all of them, obviously,” he said.

“What about the Shen madness? Do they need to bond in the physical to survive? Do the women hear thought and the men sense emotion, like us, or are they more like Shu monsters, or how we used to be before the Burn? Are they whole with a sense of all thought and emotion, all of ONUS open before them, I just—”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re different from both of us.”

“You really believe that?” she asked.

“Isn’t that what we’ve been fighting for all this time? To give them a chance—”

“To live, not become like us. If the new humans become us organically without being cooked up in a replication bay, what’s the point? It’s the same destination by a different path. What will keep them from burning the world as we did?”

“Maybe they’ll be something more,” he said.

“Like what?”

He glanced at her but did not reply. She shook her head and kneeled, digging in her pack. “I think about my birth mother sometimes,” she said. “I broke her heart. The Shen madness was setting in and—”

“But I found you and your family survived.”

“She cursed me as a demon.” Sarathen stared down at her pack. “You know, I went back to my clan years later, while you were off meditating or whatever you do when you disappear. The Russian colonists had taken her and my sister. They used them for labor, I’m sure, and other things. I searched but never found them.”

“I know you went. And I know there was nothing you could do,” he said.

“We fight for them so they can enslave each other, kill each other, and destroy the earth.”

“We fight for them because we serve the light. Think about how many times we’ve found the General. Think about him and the first age, the Army of Light and the Origin War. It wasn’t for nothing. We keep going.”

“I know, Braiden. But why can’t we break the General’s cycle of rebirth?”

“We’ve never found a bond for him. It’s like ONUS wants the Shen madness to take him every time. But if I wasn’t here, if I uploaded, you would be free to bond with him, you could—”

“You mean die,” she said. “If you die. We don’t even know if I can bond with him. And if I can’t, then what? I’m alone in the physical and won’t be able to find you when you’re reborn.” She glared at the broken castle through the fog of her breath.

“I know you can bond with him,” he said. “I’ve always known. And besides, if you couldn’t, you could always upload and find me in Haven. I would wait and we would start over.”

She shuddered, and the years tumbled out behind her like a river of struggle. “We’ll find a Shen to bond with him this time, or we’ll find our way to the Isle of Song before we need one.”

“Maybe,” he said, looking at her sideways. The light caught her eyes for an instant and they gleamed a brilliant red as if she were channeling. He knew when not to push. “Let’s get this hunt over with.” He turned his attention back to the castle. According to the locals, its history was full of tragedy. And while the remote location kept tourists away, the tales of radiological contamination, witchcraft, and murder kept the locals at bay. He knew from his research that the faint trail they followed had once been a king’s highway. Now though, the occasional stone or brick poking out of the dirt was the only sign that there had been anything more. “We’re lucky those students posted that video,” he said.

“Social media makes hunting easier sometimes,” Sarathen said, shaking out her long black hair until it morphed into a rich blue color, retracting into a tight bob around her head. It was a habit she carried from the first age, an expression of ancient Nostshen kind from before the Burn. A time filled with bright-eyed Nostshen, most designed with vibrant hair. It was an easy way to distinguish them from new humans dating back to long before she ever stepped out of the replication bay. “But it’s hard to figure out what’s real or fake online.” She pulled her own totem out of a cargo pocket and slowly traced her thumb over the small figurine of the old woman. With a push of will, it would form into a blue-tinted blade with a slight curve.

“The Internet is destroying the humans,” Braiden said.

“They are destroying themselves with it,” Sarathen said.

“While they destroy the planet,” he said.

She nodded. “The light will it so, it is theirs to destroy.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

They shouldered their packs and strode down the trail, keeping a wary eye out for Nostshu traps.