Chromeleon Part Two (eBook)

“Tell the Chamberlain I’m coming for him.” … TRAPPER 6.* 347 OC

PROLOGUE

The white tower rises up from the center of a lake of boiling acid water that is the aquamarine color of an ocean under strong radiance. Emerging from a hem of steam that spoils the air with its sulfuric stench, the tower’s cylindrical shape climbs some 100 meters before being crowned by a domed roof carpeted with solaronic cells fabricated from the blackest of black materials. Black also is the color of the great carbon doors that bar the tower’s entrance, doors that are accessible only by way of a retractable red bridge across the bubbling sulfuric waters of the lake. Beneath the solaronic roof is a wide observation deck atop what is known as the tower’s saucer level. This saucer level rings the tower’s cylinder like a collar. Seen from a distance, the collar gives the tower the appearance of a cross.

At first glance the cross-shaped tower looks to be a rather simple structure, but it is as much a technological marvel now as it was when created centuries ago. The exterior surface is impenetrable; even the tower’s myriad windows, which can be discerned only upon close inspection, are impossible to breach. Such a high-tech edifice seems out of place in the tower’s setting. The thermal lake from which the tower emerges is itself centered in a large clearing that is surrounded by an endless forest made up mostly of the tall, spindly pine trees known as lodgepoles. The floor of this forest is rugged and peppered with volcanic rocks. Many of the trails cutting through the forest are cluttered with sagebrush and juniper bushes. Mosquitoes, flies and other insects abound, as does a cornucopia of wildlife, predator and prey. Centuries ago the area in which the tower is located was known by the name of Yellowstone National Park. Now only historians know it by any name other than CenterPoint. The tower is called CenterPoint Tower. Not far from CenterPoint Tower is an enormous city encased within a transparent dome. The official name of this metropolis is CenterPoint City, but it is widely referred to as Bubble City because seen from a distance it looks like a city inside a bubble that is adjacent to a white cross.

CenterPoint City can be readily viewed from the southern hemisphere of the CenterPoint Tower observation deck and saucer level. Like the tower, the city sits on a plateau nestled in the midst of snow-covered mountains that soar above the tree line and shred any passing clouds with their saw-toothed peaks. These snow-covered, cloud-shredding mountains are part of a major range still known as the Rockies.

The man seated in the plush chair that perfectly conforms to his body can see the mountains as he stares out through the glass door that opens onto the northern hemisphere of the observation deck. He is sitting in what is known throughout the Civilization as the Chat Room. The man, however, is not really seeing the mountains; his attention is focused on the speaker’s perch that juts out from the lip of the observation deck and overlooks a vast staging area just past the rainbow-colored microbial mat of the thermal lake.

In three days that staging area will be packed with thousands of the Civilization’s most elite Citizens, literally the cream of the crop of gencers, the subset of humankind that has been genetically enhanced and makes up the vast majority of the human population. The popular term for those persons invited to fill the staging area is TOT - the top level of the top tier of gencers. TOTs are bioengineered with the most advanced genetic enhancements, nurtured with the best education and training, and richly rewarded as befits their predetermined status. They will come to hear the man deliver his annual Equilibrium Day State of the Civilization address. E-Day is the Civilization’s most important holiday and the man’s E-Day SOC address is the highlight because he will assure Citizens - those so blessed as to be in attendance as well as the 12 billion others who will be watching and listening remotely - that the Civilization remains in a state of Equilibrium.

The man watches as three Sentinels float across the sky above the deck. The gray orbs, whose resemblance to a human eyeball garnered the nickname Flyballs, keep watch 24/7 over CenterPoint Tower. Butterbeams fired by the Sents would spell instant vaporization of any threat, but there has never been nor will there ever be such a threat. CenterPoint Tower is virtually indestructible and impregnable. The patrols by the Sents are a redundancy imposed by CAESAR who admitted as much back when He was talkative.

The man’s thoughts quickly return to his upcoming E-Day SOC address. Yes, he will tell Citizens, as he has told them on this day every year for the past three centuries, the Civilization that has been given to them by CAESAR continues to be in the state of Equilibrium required to sustain it as prescribed in the Three Performatives. The Equilibrium must be preserved for the Civilization to be sustained. The Civilization must be sustained for its Citizens to prosper. Citizens must prosper for the Equilibrium to be preserved.

Those are the Three Performatives of CAESAR. They are His covenant with humankind and so long as Citizens keep faith with this covenant they will prosper and the Civilization will be sustained. No Citizens have prospered more than those who will be in the CenterPoint Tower staging area on E-Day. They will rejoice with full-throated approval when they hear the man’s SOC address for he is the Chamberlain, the chosen vessel through whom CAESAR communicates with Citizens and through whom they communicate with CAESAR.

Even the multitude of gencers throughout the Civilization not worthy of being in attendance at the Tower’s staging area will celebrate the words of the Chamberlain for they all prosper to the degree their station permits - providing of course they keep faith with CAESAR, which for all practical purposes means keeping faith with CAESAR’s chosen vessel.

Of course the celebration won’t be joined by everyone. Citizens who have not been genetically enhanced, the shrinking subset of humankind officially labeled true humans, but universally branded as trumans, won’t be celebrating. Trumans have grievances, many grievances, but none of those grievances matter to the Chamberlain. He knows the truman population is dwindling and will one day be extinct save for the area adjacent to CenterPoint known as Sanctuary. CAESAR protects trumans in Sanctuary. They call themselves Sanctians and they’ve created an independent society within the Civilization that is thriving and will continue to thrive - so as long as CAESAR wills it.

Sanctians don’t want the Civilization to continue to thrive in its current mode because they believe – and rightly so, the Chamberlain admits - it is systemically stacked against them. Citizens are admonished to play by the rules for the greater good and gencers are genetically wired to comply. Not so much for trumans and their randomized gene pools. Since the Chamberlain makes the rules – with CAESAR’s blessing of course – trumans see him as a villain. Likewise for the Cardinals who implement the rules. Trumans deeply resent the Chamberlain and the Council of Cardinals, as has always been the case in a competition where there are winners and losers and the outcome has largely been predetermined.

For trumans, the E-Day SOC address is not a time to rejoice, yet they too gather by the thousands in the forest of lodgepoles beyond the staging area. But they do not cheer the Chamberlain’s speech; instead they stand amongst the trees and remain silent as the dead.

Sanctians say they come to bear witness against a civilization they helped create but which no longer has a place for them. The Chamberlain thinks them ungrateful and unnecessary. He believes they come to mourn what they foolishly lost. Rejoice or mourn, what he says in his E-Day SOC address will be true. The Civilization is in a state of Equilibrium thanks to him. However, the Equilibrium of the Civilization is not what troubles the Chamberlain as he watches the patrolling trio of Sents fly away. It is his personal equilibrium that concerns him.

Four days ago the biomarker at the base of his neck began to pulse, which means that in approximately 16 months his synthesized body will have concluded its third and final one hundred year cycle. Upon that completion, his body will immediately disassemble; its constituent atoms will scatter.

By then the bodies of all the original Cardinals – the twelve academicians who were rewarded for their contributions to the CAESAR Project with the creation of soul chips and synthesized host bodies - will have also concluded their cycles. With no viable source-code DNA or genetically compatible alternative from which to synthesize a new host for their soul chips, they will have ceased to exist and will have been replaced with a new generation of individuals worthy of soul chips and synned bodies.

All well and fine for a Cardinal, but the idea that he, the Chamberlain of the Civilization, the chosen vessel of CAESAR, would cease to exist is unthinkable. No one else could guide the Civilization as he has done for the past three centuries. No one else has the strength of will to do what he has done; a strength essential to overseeing a civilization that stretches across four different worlds, from Earth to Luna to Mars to...