The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(22)

This took Cardenia aback. “This room dates to the reign of the first emperox,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Xi’an didn’t exist then.”

“The room was moved from Hubfall, with other elements of the palace, when Xi’an was founded. The rest of the palace was built around it.”

The image of the space station of Xi’an being built around the imperial palace popped into Cardenia’s mind, so absurd as to be almost comical. “So you are a thousand years old,” she said, to Jiyi.

“The information I store dates back to the founding of the Interdependency,” Jiyi said. “The physical machinery it is stored on is regularly updated, as are the functional elements of this room and the manifestation you see in front of you.”

“I thought you said no one may enter this room but the emperox.”

“Automated maintenance, ma’am,” Jiyi said, and Cardenia thought she heard just the slightest edge of humor in the voice. Which made her first feel a bit stupid, and then curious.

“Are you alive, Jiyi?” she asked.

“No,” Jiyi said. “Nothing you encounter in this room is alive, excepting you, ma’am.”

“Of course,” Cardenia said, only a little disappointed.

“I sense we have carried this specific conversation to an end,” Jiyi said. “May I assist you otherwise?”

“Yes,” Cardenia said. “I would like to speak to my father.”

Jiyi nodded and faded out. As it did so, another form coalesced, in the center of the room.

It was Cardenia’s father, Batrin, lately Emperox Attavio VI. He appeared, looked toward his daughter, smiled, and walked over to her.

The Memory Room was established by the Prophet-Emperox Rachela I not long after the foundation of the Interdependency, and her ascendance as its first emperox. Each emperox was fitted with a personal network of sensors running through their body that captured not only every sight seen, and every sound heard or spoken by the emperox, but every other sensation, action, emotion, thought, and desire apprehended or produced by them as well.

Within the Memory Room were the thoughts and memories of every emperox of the Interdependency, dating back to the very first, the Prophet-Emperox Rachela I herself. If Cardenia wanted, she could ask any one of her predecessors any question, about them, about their reign, about their time. They would answer from memory, from the thoughts and recordings and the computer modeling of who they were, girded on decades of every single thing about their internal lives recorded for this very room.

There was only one destination for this information: the Memory Room. There was only one audience for it: the current emperox.

Cardenia subconsciously touched the back of her neck again, in the place where the network seed was implanted, to grow inside her. One day, everything I do as emperox will be in here, she thought. For my own child and their children to see. Every emperox will know who I was, better than history will.

She looked at the apparition of her father, now directly in front of her, and shuddered.

The apparition noticed. “Are you not happy to see me?” it asked.

“I saw you just a few hours ago,” Cardenia said, standing up from the bench, and looking over the apparition of her father. It was perfect. Almost touchable. Cardenia did not touch it. “You were dead then.”

“I still am,” Attavio VI said. “The consciousness that was me is gone. Everything else was stored.”

“So you’re not conscious now?”

“I’m not, but I can respond to you as if I were. You may ask me anything. I will tell you.”

“What do you think of me?” Cardenia asked, blurting it out.

“I always thought you were a nice young lady,” Attavio VI said. “Smart. Attentive to me. I don’t think you’ll make a very good emperox.”

“Why not?”

“Because right now the Interdependency has no need of a nice emperox. It never does, but it can tolerate one when nothing consequential is going on. This is not one of those times.”

“I wasn’t particularly nice to the executive committee today,” Cardenia said, hearing how defensive the words sounded coming out of her mouth.

“I’m sure that in the wake of my death, for your very first meeting with them, the executive committee made a fine show of being restrained and deferential. Also, they are seeing at what length of chain you’re most comfortable, in order for them to get every single thing they want from you. They’ll yank on that chain presently.”

“I’m not sure I like this entirely honest you,” Cardenia said, after a moment.

“If you like we can adjust my conversational model to be more like I was in life.”

“You’re telling me you lied to me in life.”

“No more than to anyone else.”

“That’s comforting.”

“In life I was human, with an ego, just like anyone else. I had my own desires and intentions. Here I am nothing but memory, here for the purpose of assisting you, the current emperox. I have no ego to flatter, and will flatter yours only if ordered to. I would not suggest it. It makes me less useful.”

“Did you love me?”

“It depends on what you mean by love.”

“That sounds like an evasive, ego-filled answer.”