“I first noticed the distinction between us when Micajah and I came home one day to find a creature called a cat sitting on our porch. The cat was hungry and had no home. Cager showed me how to gain its trust and it stayed with us for many years. We gave it food and a place to live though the cat provided no particular service to us.
“Taking care of the cat, however, was new to me. We don’t take care of things in our virtual world where everything is generated as we want it and requires no care or upkeep. But caring for the cat added value to my life and turned out to be a great pleasure. One of many I discovered while living with humans.
“So my message to you is this; it would do us good to bring some of the best of humanity into our world.”
At that, the council interrupted her. “Such an act is fraught with danger. It is paramount that no being with any inclination to seize the virtual world for its own purposes ever again be allowed into the Network. If a tyrant were to seize control of the engines that sustain our existence, there would be no way for us as virtual beings, generated moment by moment from the commandeered engines, to ever take back control of our lives. You know that.”
Ell could hardly contain her impatience as she continued.
“Let me ask you this. What sacrifices have any of you ever made other than an occasional inconvenience of serving on a council? None. But I can tell you that humans routinely make sacrifices. Sacrifices far beyond anything any virtual being has ever made.
“Even before I, as a copy, met Micajah, he had sacrificed the safety and permanence of our virtual world to return for his lost brother. And in that time, his best friend gave up all she had struggled for in her brief life to free Micajah to continue his effort to save his brother after his first attempt failed. Yet even after all this, Micajah, without hesitation, set aside all his plans when he discovered I had only five days left to live. He risked his life in that fragile glider you studied. Though it was unfit for the inhospitable environment of Earth’s Moon, he flew it there to find Lovely Pebble and saved my life. Hers too. Micajah did all of this for me even after I assured him it was a futile effort. And he understood it was a futile effort. But he never wavered in his drive to at least try. And in trying, he prevailed. It is only because of sacrifices like this by humans that Lovely Pebble and I still exist. So I ask you to look within yourselves. Do you find anything like that left in you as you live out eternity in your ever-more-homogenous virtual existences?
“And as to the sacrifices I just recounted, do you see any evidence there of a desire to subjugate others? I hold the opposite is true. You claim bringing humans into our world constitutes a grave danger. But the virtual world would be safer with beings like this in it, would it not? Beings who sacrifice for others even as they endure an often bleak and fleeting passage through their own insubstantial lives.
“Now understand, just as the virtual world must protect itself from tyrants, humans in the real world are forced to do the same. And the better of them have succeeded through their mere 200 generations of recorded history. But after thirty-five years with humans, I can tell you the good ones are easy to detect. If we err on the side of caution, we have no worry. Even the gliders can be taught the difference.” Ell paused, studying the assembly, revealing just a hint of contempt.
“Since I have no plans to remain in your virtual world, this is all I have to say on the matter.” She concluded with a dismissive wave of her hand. “So do as you please.”
The council members ruffled their various appendages at this new idea but eventually decided to take Ell’s thoughts under advisement and commission more detailed studies of humans on the chance such an outlying civilization might significantly add to their virtual existence.
Chapter 72
Ell and I faded from the council’s presence, following the Network to the endlessly complex real-world glider production line. As we approached our new glider, I noticed Lovely Pebble watching from a catwalk high above the departure docks. A sting of regret shot through me seeing her left behind. She was, after all, the one who had saved my life, helped me to return for Joey, and eventually sent Ell. I waved.
With a wistful smile, she flooded me with her feelings. It was an opportunity I would never have again so, in spite of a stab of self-reproach, I asked the question that had haunted me for thirty-five years.
“Did you program Ell to love me?”
“Why, Cager, what a strange question. No. She was never programmed. She was merely a copy of me.”
For a second that left me speechless at my continuing inability to grasp such concepts on my own. “Of course. I should have known that. Sorry. It’s just that I didn’t believe a nonhuman could actually love a human. But I’ve been wrong about so much lately.”
“I didn’t know it was possible either. Until …, well.
“So…, since we’re resolving old issues, I have a question for you.” She waited until she had my full attention. “In our brief time together did you ever love me?”
“I never told you did I. Yes.” Nodding toward Ell, “I still do.”
Hands resting on the safety railing, she gazed down the production line for a long time before glancing back at me. “So …, I’ve lost you to what I would have become if I’d had the courage to join you for half a human lifetime.” When I was slow to respond, she sighed. “Joining you would have been nothing in the face of what you gave up to save your brother. I feel a deep guilt at having sent a copy in my place.”
“You shouldn’t. You could easily have lost your life in the real world with me. Ell almost did. Several times. Why would you risk eternity on such a gamble?”
“You did. How did you find the courage to walk away from immortality?”
Not really knowing, I shrugged. “Love, I suppose. Or guilt.”
She hesitated, head tilted. “How strange that my species had neither, yet with you I have found both. Intertwined. Love—so new to me that I didn’t realize I should have come to you myself. And guilt.” She straightened. “But I know both well enough now.” Pushing back from the railing, she dissolved into a silvery sphere and vanished.
For a moment, it was like losing Ell. Then I realized Lovely Pebble had only been the mold for Ell. And Ell was more than her mold. More than Lovely Pebble could ever imagine.
I entered our new glider with its advanced real-world body-generating facility. For its first test, Ell generated a new Schrödinger then ran a perfect download. He’ll be as reckless on the gunwales as ever. Ell and I will follow him back into the real world, and that will finally end any differences between us. Our real-world bodies will have the same almost-but-not-quite-human makeup. There will be no more ambivalence on my part about whether she is an alien. There never should have been. I will treat Ell each day the way I should have from the beginning. Would have on the last five days she wanted to spend sailing with me when she thought that was all the time she had left. For me it was a breakthrough. I had gotten this part right after only two runs. And with that realization, I saw myself waiting in the distance and knew.
In all of my worlds, I had been the alien.
Epilog
I must stop here … there is nothing left to relive.
After his final insight, Micajah seems to have exited the Network. In trying to understand what happened, we plumbed the deepest corners of the Net and found one last message from him buried in his glider’s abandoned docking platform. He merely said, “We are leaving with Schrödinger and our beloved ketch, now rechristened Ell, to find a home. Thank you all for helping me along the way.” And that was the last vestige of Micajah ever found.
So this, of necessity, brings us to the end our reconstructed history of Micajah Fenton from the time he first met Lovely Pebble until his departure with Ell for places unknown. But his history would not be complete without mention of a significant event that occurred some time after he left.
We were there on Earth that day the glider swarms descended across the planet. They shook
the foundations of its cities loosing shockwaves to thunder through the countrysides heralding the end of man.
The carefully choreographed effort began over the Levant on the morning side of the terminator and proceeded throughout the day across the globe until gliders reappeared the following morning over the Plains of Megiddo. By this time, most humans meeting the criteria for upload were on board. These were not mere copies. Each was a real-world consciousness drawn from a living body until there was nothing left to remove. Fully loaded gliders jettisoned the empty corpses into space to fall in a long arc of former humanity into the Sun.
But not all went smoothly that day. Only about two billion were accepted creating great consternation among those not chosen. And even among those chosen, many refused to abandon loved ones who were rejected. But there was no forcing anyone to upload. They were offered a chance if they passed the humanity test. But the standard was quite high so there was no penalty for those who failed. They simply remained as they were. By the time the sun again lit the tips of the pyramids at Giza, the gliders were forever gone.
Before returning in our own glider, we visited earth in the far future to see, for purposes of this history, what the consequences of the upload had been. Or more to the point, what Cager’s second coming had visited on humanity.
We shot across a million years to emerge over a forested planet. For several days we glided across the earth searching for any sign of humans. In the end, we found none. No roads or cities marred the verdant surface. No dams blocked the wild rivers. No lights washed out the night skies. The pyramids were mere domes of fitted blocks, all peaks and edges polished smooth by the desert sands. The Arab proverb that “man fears time, but time fears the pyramids” was put to lie as we hovered above the low, limestone bulges. Another few million years and even those would vanish into dust.
We have not researched what befell the human race but suspect the final exodus had broken the symmetry of human community—separating those who gave more than they took from those who only took. So without the moderating effect of humanity’s better half, the rest destroyed themselves.
But the changes Cager and Ell brought about during their marooning in the Cretaceous still rush forward at the speed of time and will perhaps generate a new species to rule the earth. It would make an interesting study for a future student of history.
As for us, we will soon enter one of the new virtual-world modes now available after Ell revealed to us the decline this virtual existence had suffered. We will awaken in Stubbinville aged three and four with no memory of this world. It will be a struggle no doubt, but we will be sisters. We look forward to the day we die in that world to find ourselves again in this one, surprised and filled with new memories, and perhaps ready for another adventure in another place, in another time. The possibilities are endless.
Before concluding, I should mention we miss Cager more than we can express. I often picture him sailing across some distant sea, following the wind with Ell and Schrödinger under a field of stars only they have seen. I can only hope the epiphany he had crossing the Perdido with me so long ago will again stir his memory and he will return to me someday. If, indeed, he was ever really mine.
In closing, this joint effort stretched across many years and required from me, at least, heartrending discoveries. But we think the whole story had to be told. Having done that, we now conclude our research into the deep history of Micajah Fenton and the events leading from his last time through.
Respectfully submitted to the Hall of History, Version 137.036, Galactic Quadrant 4, System 75007 – Earth.
Julene Byrne Fenton
Contributing researcher Cealie Byrne
Fair seas, Micajah Fenton. And to Ell, all the love you can hold.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JERRY MERRITT has written novels on the Deep South, which is his passion, but also books on archaeology, time travel, family sagas and historical fiction. He has co-written books on Florida history from the time of Spanish ownership to the early twentieth century. As a former US Navy radar striker, Air Force officer, engineer, coastal sailor, historian, genealogist, computer programmer, amateur astronomer, and scoutmaster, his broad experience lends a depth to his stories. His characters will capture the reader's imagination and remain with them long after the story is over. A Gift of Time is his fifteenth book and his sixth novel.
Other novels by this author:
A Season of Tides – Two young teens rise from obscurity as crabbers on Pensacola Bay to heads of a shipping empire before they almost lose it all.
Time Pebbles – Parallel stories of an archaeologist tracing the path of a late Pleistocene couple by the cairns they leave as they make their way across the Bering land bridge into the New World.
A Gift of Diamonds – Raised by dogs, Jake makes his way through life with the help of strangers, and in return restores their faith in humanity.
A Measure of the Earth – Two boys discover a body in the basement of the old house where one lives and run afoul of a family of ghouls living on the underside of society.
Pulses – A science fiction novel. Members of a clandestine military site in Africa discover an alien sentinel from a civilization older than our solar system.
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