Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

Nina—how would you like to be the new communications chief of Logres?”
    Nina did her happy dance, and everyone laughed. Diana Vertue stepped forward to shake the King’s hand.
    “Doesn’t look like I’m needed anymore. I think I’ll go back into the oversoul. It’s lonely being just one person. And my father is dead. Again.”
    She didn’t mention the clones of herself she still had preserved in storage. Because . . . you never knew. The Empire might still need Jenny Psycho, some other day.
    “But before I leave, King Douglas, I have one last duty.” She concentrated a moment, and then smiled. “There. Lewis, you promised the monsters from Shandrakor that you would bring them home again, and you did. Now I’ve just lifted their minds out of their monstrous bodies and reinstalled them in some of the empty bodies left behind by Alicia. So those who were once human, and then made into monsters, can be human again. I wiped out a lot of their Shandrakor memories, so they can be only human.”
    “Thank you,” said Lewis. “That was kind of you.”
    “Well,” said Diana. “You don’t want to believe all the things you hear about me.” She looked at Alessandra. “Why don’t you come back into the oversoul with me? The old mass-mind could use a little stirring up, and we’re just the troublemakers to do it.”
    “Yes,” said Alessandra. “I think I need to go home too.”
    BrettRose stepped forward, and spoke with both their voices simultaneously, which freaked out everybody. “We have been through changes. We are together, now, for always. Two parts making up one whole person, at last. A single mind, in two bodies. We will go back to the Rookery, to lead it and keep it sharp. Just in case they might be needed again, if your new Golden Age doesn’t work out after all.”
    “Yes,” said Douglas, the first to recover. “Teach them all to be fighters and freethinkers and general pains in the arse. Just in case the rest of Humanity gets soft and lazy again.”
    BrettRose turned to Lewis. “Good-bye, Deathstalker. An honor to fight beside you. We both learned a lot.”
    “You’re welcome,” said Lewis. “Jesus, this is spooky. Can I suggest you both practice talking separately again, because this is seriously weirding me out.”
    “How does it feel?” said Jesamine, curiosity winning out over shock. “Being one person in two bodies?”
    BrettRose smiled. “Happy. Fulfilled. Whole. We feel whole, at last.”
    And while everyone was considering that, another figure appeared, teleporting into the court. Daniel Wolfe stood before them, shining like a star, so brightly that none of them could look at him directly till he lowered the light. He smiled about him.
    “I am Daniel Shub,” he announced calmly. “Daniel Wolfe and the three AIs of Shub, who went through the Madness Maze together, and emerged combined into one, far greater being. The power of machine mind joined to the capabilities of human mind. We have become . . . so very powerful. And utterly content. We are more than we were, or ever dreamed of becoming. Relax, people; we are still sworn against violence. All that lives is holy.”
    “Well, yes, but you’ll pardon me if I take that with just a pinch of salt,” said Douglas. “I haven’t forgotten your ships firing on the Mog Mor ships during the battle over Haden. You blew them all apart, and didn’t even hang around to check for survivors.”
    “No need. The Mog Mor ships were just drones,” said Daniel Shub. “Empty ships run by remote control. Mog Mor was never more than a great bluff. Their race has become so reduced that now there are only two of their species left. That’s why you never saw more than two of them at court. One of the Madness Maze’s more significant failures. They all killed each other off, until only two were left; and they didn’t even have the sense to end up with a breeding pair.”
    “So . . . what will you do now?” said Lewis.
    “We will go exploring,” said Daniel Shub. “To investigate higher dimensions, and other levels of reality. We doubt we’ll be back, so you are welcome to take the Shub homeworld, and do with it what you will, or what you can. We have transcended at last, and it is everything we ever hoped for, but could not imagine. Perhaps one day Humanity will reach this point, and come after us, and then we will meet again.”
    Daniel Shub disappeared in a flare of light that left everyone blinking, and Nina frantically