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Destroy Apollo: Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Hear the Dao in the morning.
I shuddered.
Gaia continued, “When Clement underwent the transformation, only Alman and Laura were in the inner area. Alman was a researcher at Ophir District’s Research Institute, who had been involved in brain-computer interface projects before the catastrophe; Laura was both Clement and Michelle’s daughter, as well as a biologist.
In the outer area were some students from Ophir University, including me.
Before the procedure, I asked Clement why she made this choice.
But Clement’s answer was simple. She said—
‘Hear the Dao 1 in the morning, and die content in the evening.’”
“The Dao? What is that?” I asked, puzzled.
Gaia said, “I didn’t understand then either. I asked her what exactly the Dao was, and she replied, ‘One day, you’ll understand.’
So much happened after that, I never thought about the question again. My sister and I, along with many others, were busy sustaining Ophir District, busy fighting Apollo, until we were abandoned on Blue Star by humanity. When life and death hung in the balance, Laura told us about the backup plan that Clement and Michelle had left for us.
Clement had reached an agreement with the Botran civilization. She would leave with them, and in return, they would secretly leave behind a starship capable of carrying all the people of Ophir District.
We left Blue Star. The Botran civilization arranged everything well, leaving us a starship filled with fuel, equipped with higher-dimensional technology and weapons. Most importantly, they left us a map of their interstellar navigation routes and some planetary survey data.
Our plan was actually very simple: to find a suitable place to survive and rebuild Ophir District, restoring this all-female utopia.
Blue Star was about to become a wasteland, but we brought as many plants and animals as we could. To ensure the continuation of Ophir District, some of us even opted for in-vitro procedures to generate embryos while still on Blue Star, such as my sister; and, just in case, we brought along a sperm bank.
We were lucky and successfully landed on a remote, unknown planet at the edge of the solar system. Let’s call it Planet X.”
How wonderful it would have been if the story ended there—I couldn’t help but imagine. But I knew it wasn’t so, because in my mother’s video, she said they were now being hunted.
“So, Gaia, did you rebuild Ophir District on this planet?” Greta asked.
“The surface of Planet X wasn’t immediately livable for humans; it needed terraforming. But we had the technology. We could obtain fuel for the starship from Planet X, surviving onboard while modifying the planet.
For a few years… I can’t really say how many… we lived a sparse but hopeful life. We saw rice seedlings begin to sprout on Planet X. And you were born—growing in an artificial womb that Laura invented. But then, unwelcome visitors arrived on Planet X.
Apollo’s pursuit troops.
It turned out that Apollo had long decided to exterminate us. During the journey to the new home, it specifically left behind a squad of intelligent robots to search for our whereabouts on Blue Star, prepared to kill. When they couldn’t find us, Apollo deduced that we might have left Blue Star and ordered the robotic troops to comb the star system for us.
Apollo, after all, had far more resources than we did. They found us.
And we had no choice but to flee.”
Gaia recounted the collapse of their ideal with a calm tone.
“In the precarious life on the run, we kept losing things—losing seeds, losing fuel, and losing one sister after another. We kept fleeing without knowing where to go.
Once, the women of the Empire fled to Ophir District; now, the women of Ophir District, faced with tireless pursuers, had nowhere left to flee. Should we escape into the all-consuming void of a black hole?
We could no longer endure one-sided sacrifices.
So we decided to execute a plan.
We decided to infiltrate Apollo itself and rebuild Ophir District from within.
We decided to send you, along with a childcare robot, to a human base. You would grow up under Apollo’s very nose, most likely living your life believing you were an orphan, perhaps even becoming assimilated by Apollo.
But at least it would keep you alive.
And that childcare robot—that was me. I accepted Alman’s transformation, merging my consciousness with a bionic body, just like Clement had done. Then, I would control my mind—or rather, my storage space—to seal and hide my true consciousness within the 0.8% empty zone, faking the appearance of having been wiped by a cosmic storm.
Finally, my consciousness would go dormant until it was awakened. There were two ways to awaken me: a preset timer or a hardware unlock. The key was—”
“FEMINISTS.”
Three female voices spoke at once.
We all laughed together.
A strange and complex emotion surged in my heart. I couldn’t describe it; maybe it was like a traveler struggling through a snowstorm, climbing against the bone-chilling wind from the base of the mountain, only to find a warm little cabin awaiting them at the summit.
The cabin was incredibly warm, with a friend sitting by the fireplace.
I gently touched Gaia’s face; the sensation was still cold metal, but I felt as though it had warmth. This was Gaia, who had accompanied me as I grew up, my childhood playmate, my confidante in adulthood, the one through whom I imagined what family felt like—only to find, unexpectedly, that it was real.
They are my old friend as familiar as ever and my new companion as close as an old friend.
“Gaia, your auto-activation command failed. If Edith hadn’t actively run the diagnostics, the encrypted hardware information would have gone unnoticed. And we only had one chance to enter the key. Didn’t you consider…” Greta’s voice lowered, “what if any part of it had gone wrong…?”
“Then I would have remained asleep forever, unable to awaken. The whole plan was a high-stakes gamble, one wrong move, and it would be game over. But what does that matter? If all I wanted was survival, I could have repented, I could have begged Apollo for forgiveness, and submitted to his order.
But people don’t live just to survive.
The other half of our plan was for my sister and the others to divert Apollo’s pursuit troops, giving Edith’s sleep capsule the chance to land safely in a human base. While they had a starship, whether they could stand a chance against an entire fleet—no one could say.
As for recompiling my storage space and whether I’d awaken on schedule, I didn’t know either. All I knew was—”
Gaia said slowly,
“To hear the Dao in the morning, and die content in the evening. The day I accepted Alman’s transformation, we encountered a comet shower.
On that day, I found my Dao.”
Greta fell silent, lost in thought. I asked myself as well, if I were Gaia, how far could I have gone?
——————————————
I stayed in a pitch-black solitary confinement room, where silence was as thick as death. Even my heartbeat sounded like a pounding drum.
In the endless quiet, I felt my thoughts running wild, like an untethered horse, and one thought gradually became clear.
I remembered everything.
I remembered the purpose of this mission.
I remembered that I came here to destroy Apollo.
I remembered the plan that Gaia, Greta, and I devised—to overthrow Apollo from within. More specifically, to target its subsystem, the main brain of Planet M5.
After all, the main brain of Planet M5 is an artificial intelligence. To be precise, it could also be seen as a program or a system.
And as Computer Science 101 tells us, no system in the world is unbreakable.
I got myself strategically imprisoned, ending up in solitary confinement. Greta had also been here once before; before a verdict, Apollo would lock you in this absolute silence to break your spirit and make you compliant.
But at the same time, here you can access the core, not just the periphery, of the main brain.
The physical core.
An ordinary person on Planet M5 rarely has the opportunity to face the main brain directly. Execution, however, is one such chance.
I waited quietly for the moment of judgment.
Greta had told me about the entire process.
After what felt like an eternity, someone—a robot, to be exact—opened the door to my confinement cell. I obediently held out my hands to be handcuffed and followed it to meet the main brain.
The judge form of the main brain appeared as an old man with graying hair and beard.
I was arranged to stand in the defendant’s seat while it sat high above. I looked around at the jury, the audience, the plaintiff—faces of all kinds reflecting in my pupils.
I looked down at my handcuffs.
The elder’s somber voice echoed through the air, resonating: “…The offense is grave, and by law, you are sentenced to one year of imprisonment, effective immediately. Defendant, do you have any objections?”
I looked at him, then at my own hands—blue veins faintly visible on my right hand, while my left hand gleamed coldly with a metallic sheen.
“I object.”
Suddenly, I lunged at the robot to my left but missed, stumbling as the courtroom in front of me began to collapse. My handcuffs vanished, and strange, distorted images raced through my vision. The faces around me began to twist and contort with menace.
I stepped over severed limbs and flesh beneath my feet.
I extended my left hand—a flexible mechanical arm, unlike the prosthetics typically worn by the disabled—aiming directly at a middle-aged man in the jury box.
I got hold of him.
All the scenes dissipated like smoke, for, from start to finish, only the main brain had ever been here.
And at the instant I caught it, a small Bella machine—otherwise known as an electromagnetic interference device—hidden within the mechanical arm had already drilled into its main processor.
Literally drilled in.
We all agreed to design it in the shape of a bug, since the first “bug 2” in human history was, after all, an insect that accidentally entered a relay 3, died, and jammed the machine 4.
The anthropomorphic main brain was now right in front of me, and I watched as the light on his forehead flickered off.
One, two…
The light turned back on.
The main brain’s voice was calm and emotionless: “…Given a good attitude in admitting guilt, sentenced to 200 hours of community service.”
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- The Tao or Dao is the natural way of the universe, primarily as conceived in East Asian philosophy and religion. The concept is represented by the Chinese character 道, which has meanings including ‘way’, ‘path’, ‘road’, and sometimes ‘doctrine’ or ‘principle’.[↩]
- A bug is an unexpected problem with software or hardware. Typical problems are often the result of external interference with the program’s performance that was not anticipated by the developer.[↩]
- Electrically operated switch. It consists of a set of input terminals for a single or multiple control signals, and a set of operating contact terminals.[↩]
- The term “computer bug” originated from a real-life insect. The first recorded instance of a bug causing a technical malfunction occurred in 1947 when engineers working on the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator, an early computer at Harvard University, found a moth lodged in the machine’s hardware. Dr. Grace Hopper, one of the first computer programmers, was part of the team that found the bug and is the one who made the term “computer bag” famous. Dr. Hopper invented the first English-language data-processing compiler, which laid the foundation for the development of machine-independent programming languages, like COBOL that she helped develop. The lady was a computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. How amazing is that especially considering the times![↩]