Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  So God, Nicole thought in her room, remembering the discussion, is the ultimate designer, the ultimate engineer. He or She or It shapes the moment of creation in such a way that, billions of years later, living beings attest to the wonder of creation.

  'There's a part of this I still don't understand," Nicole had said to the two Michaels and Simone near the end of the evening. "Why must God create so many universes to conduct this experiment? Once the existence of a harmonious outcome has been verified, doesn't the task become easy? Can't the initial conditions for that universe simply be replicated?"

  "That's not a difficult enough problem for God," Saint Michael had responded. "God wants to know the extent of the zone of harmony in the hypersurface of creation parameters, plus all the mathematical characteristics of the zone. Besides, I don't think you yet appreciate the scope of God's problem. Only a minuscule fraction of all possible universes can end up harmonious. The natural outcome of the transformation of energy into matter is a universe with no life at all, or, at best, aggressive, temporary living creatures who are more destructive than constructive. Even a small region of harmony inside an evolving universe is a miracle. That's why the whole enterprise is such a challenge for God."

  Big Michael had then jumped up again. "What God is looking for-is a universe which, before it dies in the Big Crunch, has achieved total harmony. That's not just every living species from every world working together for the mutual good, but every subatomic particle of His creation actively participating in that harmony. For a while, I myself couldn't comprehend the full grandeur of this concept. Then Saint Michael told me about a species that makes living beings out of rock and dirt, as our biblical God did, by transmuting and rearranging the elements. Total harmony requires that advanced species like us use our technological tools to transform inanimate and nonliving things into creatures that contribute to the harmony."

  Nicole remembered that she had announced, at about this point in the conversation, that her mind was overloaded and she wanted to go to bed. Saint Michael had asked her to wait just a few more minutes so that he could summarize what he felt had been a slightly disorganized discussion. Nicole had agreed.

  "Going back to your original question," Saint Michael had said, "each of the Nodes is part of a hierarchical intelligence gathering information throughout this particular galaxy. Most galaxies, including the Milky Way, have a single superstation, which we call the Prime Monitor, located somewhere near their center. The set of Prime Monitors was created by God at the same moment the universe began and then was deployed to learn as much as possible about the evolutionary process. The Nodes, the Carriers, and all the other engineering constructs you have seen were in turn designed by the Prime Monitor. The entire activity, including what has been going on since the first Rama spacecraft entered your solar system years ago, has as its objective the development of quantitative criteria, for use by the Creator, that will enable subsequent universes to conclude in glorious harmony, despite the chaotic tendencies of the natural laws."

  Nicole had not been able to say anything for over a minute. "This conversation has been absolutely mind-boggling," she had finally said, activating her wheelchair. "And now I am completely exhausted."

  But not so exhausted that I can sleep, she thought. How could anybody sleep after having had the purpose of the universe explained? Nicole laughed to herself in bed. I can't imagine what Richard would have said after that discussion. A good theory, perhaps, but how does it explain the African dominance in the World Cup between 2140 and 2160? Or is the meaning of life no longer 42? She laughed again. Richard would have appreciated Saint Michael, no doubt, but he would have had hundreds of questions. We would have made love as soon as we returned to the room and then talked all night…

  Nicole turned over on her side. The ramifications of what she had heard that night were overwhelming. But was any of it really true? Nicole understood that she would never know for certain. It is a beautiful, stirring concept, she thought. As Nicole drifted off to sleep, visions of universes exploding into being danced in her mind's eye.

  9

  Nicole woke up refreshed and with a surprising amount of energy. She started to push the button beside her bed, but decided against it. Instead she struggled into her wheelchair. She rolled over to the windows and pulled the curtains.

  It was a beautiful morning outside. There was a little creek off to her left, and three children, probably between eight and ten years of age, were skipping stones across a small pool in the creek. As Nicole gazed out the windows at the perfectly simulated fields and trees and rolling hills, she felt temporarily young and full of life.

  Maybe I should let them repair me after all, Nicole thought. Replace all my damaged and worn-out parts. I could live here, with Simone and Michael. Maybe I could even teach my great-grandchildren a thing or two.

  The three children left the creek and raced across a green field to where the horses were enclosed. The boy ran the fastest, but he barely beat the smaller of the two girls. The trio laughed together and called the horses over to the fence.

  "The boy is Zachary," Big Michael said from behind her. "The two girls are Colleen and Simone. Zachary and Colleen are Katya's children, Simone is Timothy's oldest."

  Nicole had not heard him enter the room. She turned around in her wheelchair. "Good morning, Michael," she said. Nicole glanced back at the window. "The children are all gorgeous."

  "Thank you," Michael said, walking over to the window. "I am a very lucky man," he said. "God has granted me a fascinating life with unbelievable riches."

  They watched in silence as the children played. Zachary mounted a white horse and began to show off. "I was sorry to hear about Richard's death," Michael said. "Patrick told us the story yesterday. It must have been horrible for you."

  "It was," Nicole replied. "Richard and I had developed such a wonderful friendship." They faced each other. "You would have been so proud of him, Michael. He was a different man in his last years."

  "I suspected as much," Michael said. "The Richard I knew would never have volunteered to place himself in jeopardy, especially to save the lives of others."

  "You should have seen him with his granddaughter Nikki, Ellie's little girl. They were inseparable. He was her 'Boobah.' … He found tenderness so late in life."

  Nicole could not continue. A sudden heartache overwhelmed her. She drove over to the bedside table and took a drink from the bottle of blue liquid.

  She returned to the window. Outside, the girls were now on horseback also and some kind of game was under way.

  "Patrick told us that Benjy had grown into a fine adult," Michael said, "limited in some ways, of course, but quite remarkable considering his basic ability and the long periods of sleep. He said that Benjy was a living tribute to your talents, all of them, and that you had worked with him tirelessly, never letting him use his handicap as an excuse."

  It was Michael's turn to choke up. He turned to Nicole with tears easing out of both of his eyes and placed his hands in hers. "There's no way I can ever thank you enough for raising those two boys with such care. Especially Benjy."

  Nicole looked up at him from her wheelchair. "They are our sons, Michael," she said. "I love them very much."

  Michael wiped his nose and eyes with a pocket handkerchief. "Simone and I want you to meet our children and grandchildren, of course," he said, "but we both agreed that there was something we should tell you first… We didn't know exactly how you would respond. However, it would not be fair not to tell you, because otherwise you might not understand why the children are reacting—"

  "What is it, Michael?" Nicole interrupted. She smiled. "You're certainly having a hard time coming to the point."

  "I am indeed," he said, crossing the room and pushing the button beside Nicole's bed twice in rapid succession. "Nicole, what I am about to say is a bit delicate… Remember last night, when we told you that both Simone and I had alien companions?"

  "Yes, Michael,"
Nicole said.

  "Look outside," he said after a moment's hesitation. "There's someone I want you to see."

  Michael came over beside Nicole and took her hand. She stared out the window. A woman in her late forties, athletic, with dark copper skin, had left the house and was walking quickly toward the horse compound. Both the woman's figure and her gait seemed familiar to Nicole. The children saw the woman, waved, and came toward her on their horses.

  Nicole watched Zachary yell the woman's name and suddenly she understood. Nicole was thunderstruck. The woman turned around briefly and Nicole saw herself, exactly as she had been when she had left the Node forty years earlier. It was difficult for her to keep her emotions under control.

  "It was you that Simone missed the most," Michael said, acknowledging the look of astonished recognition on Nicole's face. "So it was only natural that the aliens fashioned a companion for her from your image. She is a remarkable simulation. Not just her physical appearance, which you can see for yourself, but also her personality. Simone and I were amazed, especially in the beginning, at what a perfect duplication job they had done. The alien talked like you, walked like you, even thought like you. Within a week Simone was calling her 'Mother' and I was calling her 'Nicole.' She has been with us ever since."

  Nicole gazed at the simulation of herself without saying a word. The facial expressions and even the gestures are correct, she thought. She continued to stare fixedly as the woman approached the house with the three children.

  "Simone thought you might be a little upset, or maybe feel displaced, when you discovered that this simulation of you had been living with the family for all these years. But I assured her that you would be fine, that it would simply take a little while for you to adjust to the idea… After all, as far as I know, no human being has ever been replaced by a robot copy of herself before."

  The alien Nicole picked up one of the girls and twirled her around in the air. Then all four of them bounded up the steps and across the threshold of the house.

  They call her Granny, Nicole thought. She can run, and ride horses, and toss them in the air. She is not phthisic and confined to a wheelchair. An emotion that Nicole did not like, self-pity, began to grow inside her. Maybe Simone has not even missed me that much, she said to herself. Her 'mother' has been here all these years, at her beck and call, never aging, never asking for anything.

  Nicole sensed that she was going to cry. She pulled herself together. "Michael," she said, forcing a smile, "why don't you give me a minute to prepare myself for breakfast?"

  "Are you sure you don't need any help?" he asked.

  "No, no… I'll be fine. I just want to wash my face and put on a little makeup."

  The tears came a few seconds after the door closed. There is no place for me here either, Nicole said to herself. There is already a granny, a better one than I could ever be, even if she is only a machine.

  Nicole said almost nothing on the ride back to the transportation center. She was still quiet as the shuttle left the Habitation Module and pulled out into space.

  "You don't want to talk about it, do you?" the Eagle said.

  "Not really," Nicole said into the microphone in her helmet.

  "Are you glad you went?" the Eagle inquired several seconds later.

  "Oh, yes … absolutely," she replied. "It was one of the most outstanding experiences of my life. Thank you very much."

  The Eagle adjusted the flight of the shuttle so that they were moving slowly backward. The huge illuminated tetrahedron dominated the view out their window.

  "The replacement procedure could be performed this afternoon," the Eagle said. "By early next week you would look younger than Big Michael."

  "No, thanks," said Nicole.

  There was another long period of silence. "You don't seem very happy," the Eagle then said.

  Nicole turned to look at her alien companion. "I am," she said. "And I am especially happy for Simone and Michael. It's wonderful that their life has been so fulfilling." Nicole took a deep breath. "Maybe I'm just tired," she said. "So much has occurred in such a short period of time."

  'That's probably it," the Eagle said.

  Nicole was deep in thought, methodically reviewing everything that had happened to her since she had awakened. The faces of Simone and Michael's six children and fourteen grandchildren swept through her mind. A handsome lot, she said to herself, but without much variation.

  It was another face, one she remembered clearly from her own mirror, that returned to her mind's eye most often. She had agreed with Simone and Michael that the other Nicole was an unbelievable likeness, an absolute triumph of advanced technology. What Nicole had not even been able to discuss with them was how strange it was meeting and carrying on a conversation with herself as a younger person. Or how peculiar she felt knowing that a machine had replaced her in the hearts and minds of her own family.

  Nicole had watched silently while the other Nicole and Simone had laughed about an argument that Simone had had with her little sister Katie years before at the Node. As the alien had recalled the details of the story, Nicole's memory too had been refreshed. Even her memory is better than mine. What a perfect solution to the whole problem of aging and dying. Capture a person in the prime of her life, with all her powers intact, and preserve her forever as a legend, at least in the eyes of her loved ones.

  "How do I know for certain that the Michael and Simone that I talked with yesterday and this morning are the real humans and not just an even higher-fidelity simulation than the other Nicole?" Nicole asked the Eagle.

  "Saint Michael said you asked several pointed questions about Big Michael's early life," the Eagle said. "Weren't you satisfied with the answers?"

  "But I realized while we were in the car an hour ago that some of that information may have been in Michael's biographical file from the Newton, and I know that you had access to that data."

  "For what purpose would we possibly have gone to such lengths to mislead you?" the Eagle said. "And have we ever behaved in a similar fashion before?"

  "How many more of Simone and Michael's children are still alive?" Nicole asked a few minutes later, changing the subject.

  "Thirty-two more are here at this Node," the Eagle answered. "And more than a hundred in other places."

  Nicole shook her head. She remembered the Senoufo chronicles. And her progeny shall be spread among the stars… Omeh would be pleased, she thought

  "Have you perfected, then, your ex-utero development of humans from fertilized eggs?" Nicole said.

  "More or less," the Eagle replied.

  Again they flew in silence for a long time. "Why didn't you ever tell me about the Prime Monitors?" Nicole asked next.

  "It wasn't permitted, at least not until you awakened. And since then the subject hasn't come up."

  "And is everything Saint Michael said true? About God and chaos and the many universes?"

  "As far as we know," the Eagle said. "At least that's what is programmed in our systems. None of us here has ever actually seen a Prime Monitor."

  "And is it possible," Nicole asked, "that the whole story is a myth of some kind, created by an intelligence above you in the hierarchy, as the official explanation to give out to human beings?"

  The Eagle hesitated. "That possibility exists. I would have no way of knowing."

  "Would you know if something different, some other explanation, had ever been programmed in your systems before?"

  "Not necessarily," the Eagle said. "I am solely responsible for what is retained in my memory."

  Nicole's behavior remained unusual. She interrupted her protracted periods of silence with bursts of apparently unrelated questions. At one point she asked why some Nodes had four modules and others three. The Eagle explained that the Knowledge Module created a tetrahedron out of the Nodal triangle in about every tenth or twelfth Node. Nicole wanted to know what was so special about the Knowledge Module. The Eagle told her that it was the repository of all the acqui
red information about this part of the galaxy.

  "It's part library and part museum, containing a colossal amount of information in a variety of forms," he said.

  "Have you ever been inside this Knowledge Module?" Nicole asked.

  "No," the Eagle answered, "but my current systems contain a complete description of it."

  "Can I go there?" Nicole said.

  "A living being must have special permission to enter the Knowledge Module," the Eagle said.

  When Nicole spoke again, she asked about what was going to happen to the humans who would be transferred to the Node in another day or two. The Eagle explained patiently, in response to one short question after another, that the people would live in the Habitation Module in a test environment with several other species, that they would be closely monitored, and that Simone, Michael, and their family might or might not be integrated with the humans who were moving to the Node.

  Nicole made her decision several minutes before they reached the starfish. "I want to stay here only for tonight," she said slowly. "So that I can say good-bye to everybody."

  The Eagle looked at her with a curious expression. "Then tomorrow," Nicole continued, "if you can obtain permission, I want you to take me to the Knowledge Module… Once I leave the starfish, I want all medication suspended. And I want no heroic efforts if my heart goes into distress."

  Nicole looked straight ahead, through the front of her space helmet and out the window of the shuttle. It is definitely the right time, she said to herself. If only I have the courage not to waver.

  "Yes, Mother," Ellie said, wiping her tears again. "I do understand, I really do. But I'm your daughter. I love you. No matter how much logical sense it might make to you, there's just no way I can be happy about never seeing you again,"

  "So what am I supposed to do?" Nicole said. "Let them change me into some kind of bionic woman so I can hang around forever? And be the grande dame of the community, sententious and puffed up with self-importance? That is certainly not very appealing to me."