Dark Memories Submerged by I. T. Lucas
Kian
From his spot at the head of the conference table, Kian watched the open door, waiting impatiently for the rest of the council members to arrive and take their seats.
His office was the last place he wanted to be while his wife and newborn daughter were home, inundated with the never-ending throng of well-wishers. Syssi’s parents were there to help, but so was Okidu—the reason why a council meeting was unavoidable less than two days after Allegra’s birth.
Thinking about the cutest kryptonite in existence, Kian smiled. Since the first moment he’d seen her tiny face, he’d been overwhelmed by the love he felt for her and known that he would move mountains for her.
If it were up to Kian, he would have taken a paternity leave and stayed home with his baby until she was old enough to go to college.
The feeling of holding her in his arms was indescribable. It flooded him with such enormous amounts of oxytocin that he felt as high as if he’d taken a drug. Then again, the cuddling hormone was precisely that. It was nature’s way of ensuring that mammals took care of their young.
Had it been like that with Beatrix? The human daughter he’d had with his human wife over nineteen centuries ago? Kian couldn’t remember. But for the first time ever, he could think of her name without feeling a pang of sorrow in his heart and churning in his gut.
He’d paid a dear price for marrying a human at nineteen, and an even bigger one for having a child with her. Foolishly, he’d believed that he could hide his immortality and all it entailed from her, but it had been impossible. When his wife had become suspicious, faking his own death had been Kian’s only option.
Lavena had suspected that he was a sorcerer, or a demon, or whatever other nonsense humans had believed at the time, and she’d feared him enough to share her suspicions with others. If she had, the villagers would have hunted him down, and he would have been forced to kill them all.
She’d left him no choice.
After faking his death, Kian had watched over his wife and daughter from afar, helping whenever he could without revealing himself. He’d watched Lavena remarry, had watched Beatrix grow to adulthood and have children of her own, get old, and die.
It had been the most difficult time of his very long life.
“Are you ready to begin?” Shai asked softly, his blue eyes full of compassion and understanding.
His assistant wasn’t an empath per se, but he was incredibly attuned to Kian’s moods. Had Shai realized that Kian had taken a trip down memory lane?
“Aye.” He nodded at his assistant. “Let’s begin.”
While Kian had been distracted by his memories, the last council members he’d been waiting for had arrived.
“This is council meeting number 473,” Shai announced. “Aside from Onegus, all council members are present.”
The chief had a prior engagement, and since the meeting was informative in nature and the council wouldn’t be voting, Kian had excused him. Besides, Onegus already knew about Okidu and his gift. Amanda, William, and Bridget were in the know as well, but they’d come to take part in the discussion.
That left only Brandon and Edna out of the loop, or maybe just Brandon.
Kalugal had somehow found out about the gift, and he had no doubt told Rufsur, his second-in-command, who in turn had told his mate, Edna.
Kian still hadn’t figured out how Kalugal had found out so quickly, but he was determined to get to the bottom of it. If Kalugal was spying on him, that was a major breach of the accord.
Although, if the spying had been done out of curiosity and not with malicious intent, Kalugal could claim that it hadn’t been a breach and get away with it. At least legally.
Kian’s anger and mistrust would be personal, which was much worse.
“Some of you know what’s on the agenda and why I have summoned you less than two days after my daughter’s birth. Arguably, it could have waited until Monday, but I didn’t want those of you who haven’t heard about it yet to feel left out.”
He looked at Edna and then at Brandon. “On the morning of my two thousandth birthday, Okidu presented me with a very special gift— the blueprints to build more of him. For months, he has secretly been filling up thirty-six thick handwritten tomes with instructions and schematics that have been hidden inside his operational memory.” Kian waved a hand at William. “Don’t ask me what that is. I’m sure William can explain it better.”
Edna shook her head. “I’m not interested in hearing the details of how it was hidden. What I want to know is why it was hidden in the first place, and how it was retrieved nearly six thousand years later. I was under the impression that the Odus were found with their memories wiped clean.”
“They were. Okidu doesn’t know who encrypted them nor why. He rebooted after his drowning incident during Carol’s rescue, and the reboot released those hidden memories. Along with the schematics, the reboot also released a new operational protocol that enables Okidu to better understand feelings and to make more autonomous decisions. One of his first decisions was to reboot Onidu, so he could help him write down the instructions and have them ready in time for my birthday. He tricked Onidu into submerging himself in the bathtub by telling him that Amanda had commanded it.”
“Oh, boy.” Brandon groaned. “We are in big trouble.”
Kian nodded. “My sentiment exactly. We now have two sentient cyborgs, who are indestructible and dangerous, and who have the emotional intelligence of toddlers.”
“I disagree,” Amanda said. “I watched Okidu with Syssi and Allegra. He’s very protective of both. Every time someone stops by to congratulate you and to see the baby, he hovers closely and makes sure that they keep their distance because they might be carrying germs on their clothes that are dangerous to the baby. This is precisely what our mother programmed him to do—to protect her children, and by extension, her grandchildren.”
“I noticed.” Kian turned to William. “Did you have a chance to go over any of it yet?”
Given how red-rimmed the guy’s eyes were, he hadn’t slept since the journals had been delivered to his office in the lab.
“The amount of information is staggering, and most of it is new. It will take me months to go over the entire thing. Maybe even years.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I still haven’t deciphered all that’s contained in Ekin’s tablet. My progress is in step with humanity’s. I can’t do it all alone.”
In a way, Kian was glad. If a genius like William needed so long to decipher the information, Kalugal couldn’t do anything with it even if he somehow got a hold of it.
Not that he was going to.
“What do you plan to do with the information once it’s deciphered?” Edna asked.
“I don’t know yet.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’m glad that we have plenty of time to think it through and don’t have to rush our decision. Even if we decide not to build any more Odus, the technology contained in those journals might usher in a new technological era, a quantum leap in our knowledge, and by extension, humanity’s.”