The Iron Garden Sutra

Chapter 1

The Infinite Light does not love nor does it care.

It has no capacity for kindness or cruelty.

The Infinite Light observes life with the curiosity of a child tearing off the legs of an insect.

It watches its successes and failures with nothing but detached amusement.

Do not forget, do not make me repeat myself. The Infinite Light does not love.

From the unabridged diaries of Vessel Iris, Volume Ten

You like dead people.

At these words, Iris returned to himself, back to the airy, sunlit room, to the peach-tinged marble floors scrubbed to a mirror-like finish, to the single stick of incense burning in front of him, to the tranquil temple morning before it erupted in its usual commotion.

“I like meeting people. They just often happen to be dead when I get there,” he said in a tone he’d use when instructing a novice. “And have you forgotten that jolting a monk from their meditation is an ill omen?”

A superstitious tale, the same voice, so much like his own but stripped of any human intonation, replied.

Iris could shut off the voice if he was inclined to, but he had grown quite accustomed to VIFAI’s chattering over the past two decades.

At their introduction, when Iris had first welcomed the AI companion to share in the space of his mind, he had asked for its name.

It had refused to give one at first, stating it was nothing more than “Iris’s friendly AI” and that its records indicated that monks never insisted their AIs name themselves.

But the acronym stuck. Over the years it evolved to “Vessel Iris’s Friendly AI” and the now VIFAI had inadvertently named itself despite its reluctance to do so.

Iris was about ready to slip back into the calming waves of his sunrise meditation when an alarm flashed across his field of vision.

He had half a mind to dismiss it, but the message flashed red and ignited with the crest of the Starlit Order.

A quick scan revealed the notice had bounced from Doshua Station to the Primary Temple first before landing in Iris’s ocular projector.

This had to be important. Inner peace and enlightenment would have to wait.

Iris sat back on his heels and made a silent apology to the very thing that was both nothing and no one, and yet was everything and everyone at once.

With a micromovement of his eyes, he opened the message. Counsel of Nicaea, arri—

Are you going?

This time Iris did gently shoo VIFAI to a distant corner of his mind. A time-out for while he read. He would apologise when he learned more about his assignment.

Generation ships, like the one suddenly orbiting Doshua Station, had all but disappeared.

The last one crossed the galaxy arm not three hundred years prior and docked at P’Ilani before its passengers, seventh-generation descendants from First Earth, hit the dirt and gleefully destroyed all of P’Ilani’s native fauna.

Yet here was the Nicaea, unexpected, uninvited, and, according to the message, assigned to Iris himself.

Doshua was a two-day trip, but Iris could easily leave at a moment’s notice.

A Vessel’s belongings were few, and he was already wearing most of them.

Finding a shuttle was a simple task with Inon Station hanging in low orbit, only an elevator ride away.

Currency was also of no concern. Under the unspoken social contract the Starlit Order had formed with the rest of known space, it was improper for Vessels to handle currency, more improper still for someone to demand it of him.

In exchange for this preferential treatment, Vessels performed a multitude of services for the countless citizens scattered across the galaxy.

For centuries, gate travel had been relatively safe.

For just as long, space travel in general had been relatively safe.

But relativity and wishful thinking did little to protect a ship’s hull when it split from impact or to shield a crew from a sudden burst of stellar radiation.

Death still frequented orbits and travel routes.

It was the vocation of the Vessels to guide those lost in space to the Infinite Light, to read final rites, to prepare the bodies for transport and burial of choice, and to comfort those left behind.

Iris had attended many such deaths and ushered many travelers back to the One Beginning.

It was a peaceful job, away from the core of civilization, away from the pull of a planet and the unbearable routine of temple life.

Iris had been planet-side for nearly six months now and had committed—again—every crumbling step and every clay tile of the Northern Temple to memory.

He had recited every line of scripture at both sunrise and sunset prayers.

He had bowed, and prayed, and meditated, and memorised every leaf on every tree in the main garden, and was slowly, and most assuredly, going mad with boredom.

He could skirt the idea all he liked, but the friendly voice in his mind knew the answer before Iris ever thought of it himself.

You’ve already decided, VIFAI chimed, noting the decisive fluctuation of Iris’s thoughts.

Iris couldn’t help but smile in return. No part of him could ever be concealed from the AI companion—not that he would ever want that.

No sense pretending he had ever entertained staying put.

Yet Iris wholeheartedly believed the decision had been made long before he ever opened the message, that it was as the Infinite Light had intended.

He couldn’t fathom why the Light had intended for a generation ship to appear from the Doshua Gate when it did, but it wasn’t his place to question.

Machinations far greater than his life were playing in the universe.

The directive had been placed before his eyes, and it was his duty to carry it out.

He would miss the temple, like he always did, but not for a long while, and by then a new adventure would be sure to dim the homesickness.

Smoothing out his white robe and trousers, Iris rose.

The warm, cream marble beneath his bare feet flushed peach against the rays of the rising sun.

A stifling day it would be when the sun hit its zenith, but he would be long gone before midday.

A ribbon of saffron smoke wove towards the domed ceiling from the single stick of incense, keeping time of Iris’s sitting. He bowed deeply to excuse himself.

No time to waste.

There were too many things for him to carry in just the pockets of his robes, so Iris placed each item carefully inside a cracking, leather duffel bag.

The bag had been a gift from a wealthy Yutam widow who had bestowed her deceased wife’s belonging to Iris.

The language barrier had been too much for him to decline the gift, and no matter how hard he attempted to firmly thrust it back into the woman’s hands, she had persisted.

Nevertheless, he was proud of the bag and lamented rarely being able to use it.

One change of robes.

One pair of replacement mala beads.

One shaving kit.

One tattered, pocket-sized diary with the front cover missing.

The bag remained largely empty.

You need a smaller bag, VIFAI said. Or more stuff.

A Vessel needs few possessions, Iris recited and zipped up the duffel.

He was doing a moderately successful job of containing his blossoming excitement; if only he could suppress it long enough to board a shuttle, away from the nosy eyes and ears of his peers.

Another couple of hours at most, and he would be free to shake off the veneer of aloofness so common to monks who spent prolonged tenures between temple walls.

Someone’s here, VIFAI said, two seconds too late.

A lithe shadow greeted Iris from the doorless entrance.

“Vessel Iris,” Vessel Bacai said, her voice gentle as the turning of the sand dunes, “you’re leaving us so soon?”

Not soon enough. Iris bowed, low enough to satisfy Bacai’s unmentioned ego.

She was his senior, not in years, but in status.

She would never say it out loud, but she would walk ahead of him and talk over him given the opportunity and give every possible indication that it was him who was to learn from her.

Bacai was, after all, enlightened. Her words, not his.

She had recited all the right mantras and had all the right dreams. She had the whitest robes and the most benevolent of smiles.

Where Bacai embodied the sutras, Iris only knew them by name.

Rumours had it that the walls of her room were carved with notches, one for every soul she had ushered to the One Beginning, and that Vessel Bacai was running out of space.

“I’m afraid my time has been cut short,” Iris said, intending to keep the conversation curt. “A message came through just moments ago. I have been summoned to usher the souls from a generation ship. It looks like I’ll be away for quite some time.”

On the surface, Bacai remained perfectly serene, tan skin unlined.

But her eyes darted from side to side ever so slightly.

She was checking her own messages, possibly asking her AI companion to flag any reports of generation ships in the news feeds.

“Don’t you find it strange, Vessel Iris, that the Primary Temple asked for you? Someone of—” She didn’t finish.

Someone of your unimportant and unimpressive standing, Iris finished internally.

Someone’s jealous, VIFAI said, and Iris begged it to be silent.

Gently, gently, it was all to be handled gently.

Politeness and respect were to be held above all else, especially at the temple, where every clay wall had ears of its own and mouths eager to spread the recent temple gossip.

Nothing but universal love for everything and everyone, including Vessel Bacai, whose arrogant big toe now pushed its way past the threshold and took residence in Iris’s room.