by Gadi Migdal
“Yes, all of them are real,” Emily answered him.
“Most of them are even original, from the time of the Seventh,” Olivia added with pride.
“Amazing. What do you do with them?”
“Do?” Emily was surprised. “Read, of course. That’s what books are for.”
“I know,” Max laughed. “I just didn’t think that anyone read books anymore, it’s easier just to experience stories.”
“We enjoy them,” Olivia said. “We have almost 800.”
He nodded and smiled at her without saying a word.
“So Max, what do you do in your life?” Emily asked.
“Do?” he was surprised.
“Yes, what kind of work do you do?”
“I don’t work, Mrs. Costa. My parents’ business is working well. Charlotte, our brain, manages it. My parents, my brother and I spend most of our time looking for good stories.”
“So, you sleep all the time?”
“Of course. What else is there to do?”
Emily gave him a perplexed smile and served him another piece of pie.
“What kind of business do your parents own?” Olivia asked quickly.
“It produces entanglement communication components,” he smiled.
“Great!” Olivia marveled aloud. ‘Calm down, stupid,’ she ordered herself. No need to overdo it and get excited about every single thing he says.
Max nodded. “Definitely. It’s a really good business. Thanks to it we have a good life. What do you do on your farm?”
“We grow fruits and vegetables and cook homemade food. Our business is called Mini Neifar.”
“What? That’s you two? I always eat your salads when I wake up. No wonder everything here is so delicious. I love your products.”
For the rest of the conversation, they discussed food and recipes.
Max and Olivia went for a walk in the fields. It was pleasant and quiet outside.
Walking with a young man was exciting. Olivia hadn’t experienced that for years.
“Where is the rest of your family?” asked Max.
“There is no more family. My dad lives with his new wife on the other side of Lisbon. It’s just my mom and myself living here.”
“Divorced parents? That’s a rare phenomenon these days. It’s easier to sleep than get divorced.”
“Actually, it was the stories that split them up. My dad, like everyone, wanted to sleep and dream. But Mom is unable to dream. The gap between them grew and they eventually separated.”
“She can’t dream? That’s terrible! How can she live like that?” The shock in his voice was real.
“It used to be easy, Max. Until a few years ago, she still had friends who stayed awake. But in recent years it’s gotten harder. Now there’s only me. I stay awake to keep her company.”
“And you don’t experience stories at all?”
“I try not to. Sometimes I get into the machine for a story for a few hours.” All at once she went quiet when she understood the meaning of her words.
He laughed heartily. The meaning of what she said did not escape him. “Dreams for a few hours? You’re a romantic girl, Olivia.”
She laughed too and shoved his shoulder. “It’s hard for me to get into complex stories that last for days or weeks. My mom will be so lonely, so I make do with superficial stories. They indeed have no depth, characters or plot like the long stories, but they help to pass the time.”
He laughed. “And sometimes it’s nice to dream that you are a frustrated housewife, meeting her dream knight who fulfills her desires. Right, Olivia?”
She blushed. “Honestly — yes, Max. That’s correct.”
“Well. Who knows? Sometimes dreams come true.”
She tried to change the subject. “I hook up to the machine at night. I don’t like the dreams I have without it.”
“I get it, I also don’t like dreaming without the machine, it’s not as interesting.”
“That’s not what I mean. When I dream without the machine, I have terrible nightmares.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Olivia. That’s another reason to dream with the machine.”
They continued to walk in the field. The moons had not yet risen and the stars were shining.
Olivia noticed that he had his arm around her shoulders for several minutes now. It was nice.
“Is there no solution to your mother’s problem?” he asked quietly.
“No. Her neurons don’t enable entanglement. Doesn’t matter if it’s the dream machine or a learning helmet. It’s a very rare defect. There are only eight or nine people like her in the galaxy.”
“That’s terrible. Nine people who will never be able to dream. Poor souls.” His lips were very close to her ear.
“And what about you, Max? Do you spend all of your time sleeping?” asked Olivia, thankful that her blush was hidden by the darkness.
“Of course. Why live life just once, if you can experience a thousand years of life in an infinite number of places?”
“But what about real life? Don’t you want to see your parents or your brother? Don’t you want to have children of your own one day?”
“I think it’s a little early in our relationship to be talking about kids,” he teased her.
Again, she was grateful for the darkness. Her heart beat powerfully. His hand was no longer on her shoulders, but around her waist.
Olivia moved the conversation in a different direction. “When did you wake up? How long did you sleep?”
“I woke up this morning after sleeping for six years. I meant to go back to sleep within two hours but, in the meantime, I discovered that I have very good reasons to stay awake.”
Her heart beat fast. “How old are you, Max?” she asked him and noticed that her voice shook a little.
“I’m 93, how old are you?” he asked.
“61.”
“A child! Good lord, I’m going out with a minor.”
“Stop it Max,” Olivia laughed and smacked him in the shoulder.
Suddenly she stood facing him, in his arms. They stood there, pressed up against one another.
His hands moved from her waist to her buttocks. It felt so right.
“Maybe we can relax here on the ground?” he whispered in her ear. “A little rest won’t hurt us.”
She chuckled as he lay down on his back and pulled her along with him.
She looked at the two moons which rose in the lit-up night sky.
Max lay beside her on his back. Olivia observed him and stroked his bare chest.
“That was wonderful, Max. Just wonderful!” she whispered in his ear.
“Yes, that was definitely nice,” he grinned.
“How did you learn those things?” she asked him as her hand stroked him, descending towards his belly.
I spent about twenty real-time years as a Sultan in a harem. When you dream of sex dozens of times a day, for dozens of lifetimes, something of it remains etched in your real life.”
“And I thought there was no point in stories.”
Olivia awoke to the sound of robotic activity in the field. They worked around her and were careful not to hurt her. She sat up suddenly and look around. The sun was already high in the sky, and Max was nowhere to be seen. Even his clothes had disappeared. She got dressed, and marched home in confusion.
Her mother was in the kitchen.
“Good morning, Mom. Did you see Max?” she asked.
“Of course, sweetheart. He took off back home three hours ago.”
“He took off without saying goodbye? Why was he in such a rush?”
Emily looked at her and didn’t answer. Olivia approached the screen and asked Nathan to connect her with Max.
She heard a female voice, but the screen remained dark. “Hell
o, Olivia. My name is Charlotte. I am Max’s house intelligence. He asked me to give you a message when you call.”
“Message? Why does he have to send a message?”
“Because he went back to sleep.”
“What?! When? How could he go back to sleep?” Olivia noticed that she was yelling.
“Half an hour ago. He asked me to tell you that you are amazing and wonderful and that you are everything he could wish for himself in life. He also asked me to explain that if he were not able to connect with the dream machine, he would love to spend his life with you. However, given that he can experience plots that offer him so much more than what you can give him, he preferred to go back to the machine.”
Olivia sat silent and stunned before the screen.
“I’m really sorry, Olivia, I told him that he’s an idiot. He refused to listen to me,” the artificial intelligence said gently.
Olivia didn’t respond.
“Goodbye, Olivia,” Charlotte added, then disconnected.
Emily stood behind her and hugged her.
Olivia raised her tearful eyes to her mother. “I don’t understand, Mom. We had such a magical night together. Why did he go back to sleep?”
Emily leaned over and kissed her daughter’s face gently. “Because he’s an idiot, my dear. There are men like that too.”
Chapter 13
The Seventh
Tom supervised the takeoff. Nola appointed him as her deputy and gave him full control of the ship’s computers.
Andre finished checking the engines and reported that everything was in order.
A five-hour flight would bring them to Neifar 6, one of the eight wormholes mapped around Neifar. From Neifar 6, they would reach Jenkins 3, one of the first wormholes that humankind had discovered, and from there they would fly to Earth.
Nola had not been notified of this. She just knew which way she had to fly, which was fine with her.
The Whole knew which way to fly, and she was part of the Whole. It decided to start the journey in humanity’s mother world.
Nola was excited as legends from her childhood were becoming reality. All the inhabited planets and tens of billions of people – it had all started from one small planet – it was almost inconceivable.
They stayed in her living quarters. Tom sat beside the ship’s control panel, immersed in the screens. Nola stretched out on a big cushion behind him. Delegating authority to Tom left her available to experience the flight. She opened all of the implant channels and connected via the ship’s computer to Singa’s sensors. She absorbed the information from the ship’s sensors as it accelerated to a tenth of a percent of the speed of light and flew toward the wormhole.
Humans without an implant couldn’t experience the flight this way. They only saw lines of information on the screens and information terminals which reached them in the form of pictures, numbers and text. They had never experienced it. Nola experienced the ship’s reports directly. Pressure sensors, cameras, gravity sensors, microphones, radiation sensors, temperature sensors and acceleration sensors; all of these were directly within her. Nola experienced the open space and the ship’s speed. For a few hours, she was the Singa. The feeling was amazing. It was the complete opposite of a cluster. Instead of a closed, managed, planned and controlled area, Nola experienced endless space, no sense of direction and incredible speed. After three hours, she disconnected from the ship, and remained sitting in thoughtful wonder. She had had no concept of the existence of such things. From the corner of her eye she saw Tom smiling at her. She turned her head to him and felt that her head moved ridiculously slowly when compared to the speed she had experienced moments before. She grasped her head and smiled at Tom, “everything suddenly feels so slow.”
Tom laughed. “I know that feeling well. Direct connection to the ship is an amazing experience. Right, Commander?”
Nola was surprised. “Absolutely. I didn’t know that humans without an implant could connect to the ship.”
“They can partially experience it through a neural helmet,” replied Tom. “But not me. I have an implant of my own. I put a lot of pressure on the council until I got it.”
She knew that he was speaking the truth as soon as he said that. That explained his presence on the ship.
“Why did you want an implant, Tom?” she transmitted to him.
To her surprise, he did not respond.
She repeated the question aloud. “Why did you want to get an implant, Tom?”
“I thought I could keep in touch with my oldest daughter that way,” he answered calmly.
It didn’t work, Nola understood.
“Did you manage to talk to her?” she asked, knowing well what the answer would be.
“No, unfortunately, I was not able to develop a transmission ability. They explained to me that after age fourteen or fifteen the brain can no longer create the necessary nerve circuits. I got the implant at age 53. I’ve already come to terms with the fact that I will never speak with my daughter again. At least I know what abilities she has and what a wonderful experience it is. It also makes it easier for me to command ships.”
The Whole had blocked his transmission ability. Nola suddenly knew that with complete certainty. There was no problem with his nerve circuits. The Whole simply didn’t want Tom to speak with his daughter. It would disturb her functioning as a cluster coordinator.
“I am sorry to hear that, Tom, but if you have no transmission ability, how do you connect to the ship?”
He smiled and turned the back of his neck to her. With his right hand, he moved a small piece of skin. A communication outlet was visible.
“You connect the implant to the ship computer through the human interface?” she asked him in surprise.
“Yes, commander.”
“Aren’t you afraid? The history of those interfaces isn’t so good.”
He laughed, “what would I fear, Commander? There are no active hackers in any of the community worlds. All of them are deep in their dreams. Nobody will erase my memories or steal information from me. In any case, my human-machine interface is very modern and totally safe.”
Nola looked him over. He had done all of this in order to maintain contact with his daughter. Could the longing for his daughter possibly cause problems for the trip?
“How did you even manage to get an implant, Tom? I thought that the covenant forbids that.”
“Over the years I pressured my wife and the other members of the council. In the end, the council members gave in.”
“How is your wife related to it?”
“My wife is the head of the council.”
Mika? Head of the council? She gave a daughter to the Whole? And Nola had accused her of sacrificing the coordinators. She felt a pang of grief. She had been too quick to judge the head of the council.
“I met your wife, Tom, she is a very impressive person.”
“Thank you, Commander, she said the same about you. Even though I have to say I was surprised that she supported the idea of me going on this journey.”
“You were surprised?” Nola wondered aloud.
He hesitated for a moment. “Truthfully, I think that she doesn’t trust the cluster members.”
‘That makes sense,’ thought Nola. The head of the council believed that the Whole had a council managing the egg-layers. She may suspect that the coordinators’ implant could be monitored by the egg-layers’ council. It was entirely reasonable that in recent months she had been afraid to speak near Tom. Maybe she even felt relieved that he left on a mission.
It was clear to her why he was on the ship; he was perfect for the Whole. A father who had insisted on getting the implant. A father that the Whole could use. A father who volunteered to go on a mission for the Whole.
“When were you on Earth?” she asked.
“I got back from
there 4 years ago, Commander, I spent a year and ten months there.”
“I thought there weren’t any people left on Earth.”
“It changes. In the last hundred years, people began returning there and establishing protected domed settlements.”
“Why? Is it possible to live there?”
“As I said, Commander, only under a protective dome. The methane and carbon dioxide levels are still too high to be compatible with life. Earth is not suitable for human habitation, nor will it be in the next million years.”
Nola considered the meaning of this. “Are there any animals left there?”
“Almost none, Commander. The acidity of the oceans wiped out most aquatic life forms, and the situation on land is not much better. The outbreaks in the Seventh Extinction wiped out 95 percent of life forms on Earth. That is, whatever hadn’t already been killed off by humans.”
“So why do people even go there? Just for nostalgia?”
He shook his head. “No. I think they go there mainly in order to escape their previous lives.”
‘People need purpose in life,’ Nola pondered.
“Why were you sent there? What does Neifar need from Earth?” she asked the city man.
“I wasn’t sent, Commander. Neifar doesn’t need anything from Earth, it’s a dead world. There are no life forms more complex than insects, small reptiles, and underground rodents. I asked to go there. I volunteered to work on one of the experimental settlements.”
Just as she thought. The Whole had convinced Tom to volunteer.
‘Why? What is special to you about that dead, abandoned planet?’ she asked the Whole in her head.
No answer came.
“To live on Earth? I thought that the volcanic eruptions were still going on,” she said.
“They have dwindled in the last hundred years, Commander.”
“But it’s still too poisonous to live there?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“So why do people bother to travel there? Just to live under a dome?”
“No, Commander, they don’t go there because of the domes. They come because of the challenge. Each dome has an area of 50 square kilometers. We cleaned all the Earth under the dome and planted plants in it. We discovered that the soil is still fertile. Now, all of the active domes are able to create enough oxygen and food to sustain themselves.” There was evident pride in his voice.