Marque of Caine

by Charles E Gannon

The first paw raked across his chest.

  Raw impact. Flying sideways. A deep slash of breath-robbing pain. And then—

  Chapter Forty-Six

  JUNE 2124

  ZHASHAYN, SIGMA 2 URSA MAJORIS 2 A V

  Gasping, Riordan found himself sitting bolt upright in the smart couch, hands clutched to his intact chest. “How—?”

  “I will answer all your questions about Virtua later,” Laaglenz interrupted. He studied Caine from beyond the orrery of the interface apparatus. “Next time, allow yourself to be immersed in, rather than questioning of, the experience. Regardless, you seemed to find Virtua quite realistic.”

  Riordan exhaled raggedly, releasing the terror and tension of the death spasm. “Everything except for the scenario itself.”

  Laaglenz’s mouth twisted. “How ironic. It is one of our assessment models.”

  “Of what? A Ktor invasion of Earth?”

  “Occupation would be a more accurate term, but yes.”

  “Well, I’ve never seen Ktor wearing robes. And I doubt they keep extinct terrestrial predators as pets.”

  “Interesting, but tangential. However, it is crucial that you appreciate the dangers of behaving recklessly in Virtua.”

  “I thought there weren’t any physical consequences to using virtuality.”

  “Virtua is not ‘virtuality.’ Not only is the data and sensory infusion infinitely more dense, but the neural connection is correspondingly more complete. It is rare, but lethal trauma in Virtua can cause cardiac arrest. So caution is required. Also, you would normally be given an exit code to break the link to what you would call Virtua’s ‘server.’”

  Of all the supercilious, impatient, and dismissive Dornaani Caine had met, Laaglenz was rapidly developing into the one he liked least. “Still, I’m surprised that so many users keep going back. An exit code and caution can’t eliminate all the danger.”

  Laaglenz let the fingers of one hand roll lazily to the side. “Yet that is the unavoidable cost of participating in Virtua. Because it is a shared rather than personalized experience, its simulations cannot be easily started or stopped. Nor can they be edited to remove the quotidian necessities of daily life.

  “Virtua’s origin as a testing platform requires it to duplicate reality in every detail. Only a scenario that contains every potential variable has the power to test every possible permutation and every possible outcome. Because we can adjust any variables along an established timeline, we can create alternate pasts, presents, and futures, and so, assess why each one’s outcome is different. Without this flawless modeling capability, we would not be able to identify and refine long-arc metaconcepts.”

  Caine broke in as Laaglenz paused to inhale. “Define metaconcept.”

  Once Laaglenz’s inhale was completed, it reversed into a long sigh. “Very well, we shall progress at human speed.”

  And suddenly, Riordan wasn’t seeing the room anymore, he was floating inside a transparent orb. Laaglenz was in an identical sphere alongside him. Beneath them, the trailing arms of the Milky Way glittered, adorned with an infinitude of stellar sequins the size of dust motes.

  “Metaconcept,” Laaglenz began flatly. “Explicatory example: the baseline rarity of intelligent life in the universe must obey a calculus. We can explore this metaconcept and its dynamics heuristically by positing relevant variables and then refining them for testing within Virtua.” The Milky Way turned slowly. They began rushing in toward the stellar cluster that was the home of all five known races.

  “We start with a single pertinent variable that may be broken into opposed propositions: either all intelligent species emerge spontaneously, or some percentage of them are the products of uplifting.” Their bubbles plummeted to the surface of a green world where an unknown exosapient species—mind-bending agglomerations of tentacles, eyes, and flipper-feet—were spreading out from a large orbital lander, cataloguing and gathering local fauna.

  “The concept of uplifting brings forth a multitude of other questions. Do all intelligent species have an equal predisposition to experiment with it? If not, why do some evince a greater tendency than others? More subtly, what determines the type and extent of uplifting that they employ?”

  Their bubbles were suddenly inside a laboratory. One of the exosapients was artificially fertilizing two different creatures. The first was a skinny, big-eared, big-eyed badger analog. The second was a six-legged amphibian. “Two examples of possible variations in uplifting,” Laaglenz said in a bored tone. “In the first creature, uplifting assists a species hovering on the edge of intelligence to cross that divide. In the case of the second creature, uplifting occurs at an earlier stage, providing a less certain but subtler push toward eventual sapience.”

  Their bubbles flew up through the ceiling of the laboratory. In an instant, they were in deep space, high above the system’s ecliptic. They watched the planets spin feverishly around their yellow star, then dove back down after several centuries had elapsed.

  In the same marshland of the same planet, the badger analog’s now-distant offspring were exploring further beyond their burrows. Their front paws were slightly more articulated, so they handled objects more adeptly. Several showed a nascent interest in the possibility of scaling a tall fern. In a nearby stream, several of the modified amphibians ventured ashore and stayed there longer, their lungs expanding far more than their ancestors’ had.

  Caine’s bubble dissolved along with his immersion in Virtua. Laaglenz was now seated in a saddle chair, just out of reach. “I presume you see how this applies to the races of the Accord.”

  “I do.” Actually, Riordan wasn’t at all sure that he did see the significance, but memories of Uinzleej’s hypotheses were inspiring a vague hunch. “Whether or not some, or all, of the species of the Accord are uplifted, each presents an opportunity to search for signs of it. But in doing so, we will immediately notice a statistical aberration in our sample. We shouldn’t have that many opportunities, that many races, in so small an astrographic region. And we have a concrete basis for that assertion.

  “The Collective’s survey fifty light-years beyond the Accord found no additional exosapient species, nor did it detect any radio emissions originating within a further thirty light-years. So there is a ‘sapient-free shell’ around the Accord that is eighty light-years thick and nine times its volume. Consequently, either the concentration of sapient species that occurred in Accord space is extraordinarily dense, or there is a surrounding volume of space almost ten times its size where the concentration is extraordinarily sparse.”

  “Or—” Laaglenz began.

  “I’m not done. The third, and far more likely, scenario is that the incidence of intelligent species within Accord space has been dramatically increased by external factors. Uplifting could be the cause, but there is a second likely variable: transplantation. Lastly, I dismiss the possibility that the dead zone surrounding us was depopulated by the Oldest Ones’ xenocidal sweeps because your survey found no signs of such destruction.” Riordan leaned back, arms crossed. And waited.

  If Laaglenz was impressed or surprised, he gave no sign of it. “The metaconcept requires consideration of additional uncertainties. How many species that uplift others are themselves products of earlier uplifters? How many races have received uplifting from both? Is humanity itself an example of that phenomenon?”

  Riordan’s surprise at the last broke forth as an exclamation. “Why would humanity be an example of double uplifting?”

  Laaglenz waved a didactic finger from side to side. “A particularly promising branch of the hominid evolutionary tree may have been the recipient of late-stage uplifting to give it dominance over the others. And in terms of early-stage uplifting, we should revisit the strange fortuity of the extinction-level event that shattered the dominion of Earth’s dinosaurs, yet left its biosphere primed for small proto-mammals that were better able to survive the aftermath.”

  Riordan shook his head. “There must be some chance
in the universe. Some luck, both good and bad.”

  “Yet how, from this distant vantage point, may we discriminate events of intentionality from those of happenstance? It is imponderable. Let us instead evolve the metaconcept to include the corollary your conjectures imply: that because the Accord’s concentration of sapient species is statistically abnormal, it is probably a tainted sample. Many or all of the races may have been uplifted, transplanted, or both. But note how all these speculations ultimately bring us to the most important, and tantalizing, mystery of all: why?” Laaglenz’s lamprey mouth lingered upon, almost seemed to taste, that final word.

  Riordan shrugged. “If the Elders foresaw the Final War, they might have moved some species out of its path.”

  “If true, then transplantation, rather than uplifting, is the variable most responsible for the tainting of the local sample of sapience. It also implies that the transplantation was not haphazard but purposive. Logically, the Elders would have chosen to preserve complementary species, to create what I call an optimum blend.” Laaglenz indulged in a smug pause. “Which is, of course, precisely what we observe.

  “Consider. We Dornaani, as the most advanced, were to serve as guards and mentors. The Slaasriithi were included to bring life to as many worlds as could support it. The Arat Kur would exploit the resources of lifeless worlds to maximize industrial productivity. The Hkh’Rkh may have been intended as defenders. And humans were to have served as explorers, pioneers, and, ultimately, to ensure synergy between the races.”

  “And the Ktor?”

  Laaglenz’s mouth crinkled irritably. “The Oldest Ones may have insinuated them to disrupt your part in this mixture, just as they groomed the loji to disrupt ours.”

  Laaglenz leaned far back in his saddle seat. “This illustrates the value of metaconcepts.” Riordan’s puzzled look elicited another burbling sigh. “We began with the question of the rarity of intelligence, a vague wondering as formless as a lump of clay. But by broadly interrogating that question itself, we have sculpted our curiosity into a nascent theoretical shape that defines a general metaconcept.

  “On its own, it does not reveal or convey anything of substance. However, it stimulates narrower inquiries that build toward a more concrete analysis and understanding. However, the more exacting our examination becomes, the more it points us to a fundamental mystery. What criteria did the Elders use in choosing these specific races?”

  Riordan understood, nodded. “And if the local species are complementary, then you should be able to reason backward to those criteria. That, in turn, provides hints about how the Elders thought about different kinds of intelligence, and maybe, their motivations for earlier uplifting.”

  Laaglenz rose. “This is where the modeling power of Virtua becomes indispensable: positing and testing the different origins of intelligence, the shapes they impart upon species, and how those different species may be integrated into an optimal blend. A detailed articulation of such hypotheses involves concepts that are both multilayered and multivalent. You would be unable to track them. However, because of Virtua, I can simply show you that process in action.”

  Riordan shook his head. “And how do you ‘show’ the process of examining the hypothetical complementarity of species?”

  Laaglenz sounded surprised. “Surely it is obvious. Even to you.” When it was clear that the answer was not obvious to Riordan, the Dornaani exhaled and waved his hand at the dangling metal mobile overhead.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  JUNE 2124

  ZHASHAYN, SIGMA 2 URSA MAJORIS 2 A V

  Riordan was suddenly roving between worlds of the Accord, some that he had visited personally, most of which he had not. But rather than being there himself, he was a spectator inside some other person’s mind, yet fully aware of all their sensations and intents. The scenes were as diverse as the locations.

  —Wielding primitive hand-tools, Arat Kur labored in the subterranean reaches of what was apparently a lush Slaasriithi world…until, in the distance, Riordan saw the dim outline of distinctly human ruins: the iconic New York skyline.

  —Slaasriithi and Arat Kur worked a lichen-blanketed plain beneath the midday ghost of gas giant Epsilon Indi Two. But they did so under the watchful eyes of Hkh’Rkh, who held their traditional two-handed halbardiches at the ready as humans in dark gray uniforms observed impassively from a distant VTOL.

  —A pack of feral Hkh’Rkh bounded through a dense clutter of yellow and teal foliage, two of their number exploding into mauve smears. Before their remains spattered to the ground, an open sled powered by six gimballing, ducted propellers whined overhead, safari-garbed Ktor laughing, pointing, reloading rifles that were almost the size of rocket launchers.

  —From the margins of the Capitol Mall, Riordan saw himself sliced to ribbons by the saber-toothed tiger. As his shredded body fell into the Reflecting Pool, the robed Ktor turned their weapons upon the scattering insurgents. They fell in windrows, swallowed by the waist-high weeds…

  Riordan started as he came out of the hurried montage of experiences. “What…what?”

  “These are not random scenes, human. These are but a few of the outcomes that result from introducing slight changes to the same model.”

  “And what were you modeling, the failures of the Elders’ ‘speciate blend’?”

  “No. This was a much narrower, short-horizon model designed to explore possible outcomes after Nolan Corcoran discovered the Doomsday Rock. However, since the model’s timeline and causal chains have been overtaken by subsequent events, it is now offered primarily as an entertainment scenario.”

  “As entertainment?” Riordan tried to reconcile a Dornaani’s enjoyment of the scenes he’d just witnessed with the horror he’d felt being in them.

  “Yes. Although it still provides us with useful data points for how events of the last ten years may determine the fate of the Accord. In this case, after running the post-Doomsday Rock Discovery scenario through dozens of iterations, we discovered a number of watershed events. Identifying such inflection points, even in retrospect, improves our ability to detect new ones in advance.”

  “So you’re trying to predict the future.”

  “I suspect not even the Elders believed that was possible. But it improves our understanding of the variables and interactions that led to the present, and therefore, helps us foresee the places, people, and events that are likely to significantly shape the future. For instance, the larger model from which this variant scenario was developed is called the Accord Endgame Assessment. In all its variations, it has been run uncounted thousands of times, now mostly by open-use participants.”

  “Open-use participants? Are they the ones who visit it for, er, entertainment?”

  “Yes.” Laaglenz rose from his seat. “They elect not to follow the experimental restrictions upon behaviors that deviate too greatly from the prevailing social norms.”

  Riordan frowned. “But can’t you just edit out their actions, replace them with something statistically normative?”

  Laaglenz was genuinely disoriented for a moment. “Do you not understand, human? There are no a priori assumptions, no limits on activities, no scripts. Virtua is a total system, a world that provides complete freedom of action to its users.”

  “So how do you build that? Do you start with modular game shells that Virtua expands by generating new details in response to user actions?”

  Laaglenz’s eyelids sagged: impatience, boredom. “All of Virtua’s scenarios and simulations are ultimately derived from the Prime Model, the only universe left in finished form by the Elders. However, they also left behind partially completed models. We expand, change, or adapt these worlds by altering their fundamental values or variables. Their scope ranges from discrete regions to nearly complete universes.”

  Riordan held up a hand. “Wait. Are you saying the Prime Model is a complete universe?”

  “I am.”

  “What the hell does that even mean?”

/>   “It means exactly what I have now repeatedly told you: there is an entire, fully-iterated universe bounded within the Prime Model. Significant portions of others are bounded within what you call the limited ‘shells’ we use.”

  “So you are saying that the world, the entire universe, of Virtua is already fully generated, down to the last subatomic particle?”

  “Human, do you derive some strange pleasure by using different words to reiterate the same misperceptions? The universe of the Prime Model has always existed, complete and whole. There is no generation involved. The only alterations to its dynamic cause-and-effect chains are those imposed by user actions.”

  Riordan shook his head. “That’s impossible. How can Virtua—a finite system within the real universe—contain a subset of information as infinite as the universe itself? How can any program, any system, hold and manipulate so much data, track so many separate functions?”

  Laaglenz’s expression did not change, but the gills on the left side of his neck rippled. Asynchronously. “How indeed?” he breathed in a tone Riordan had never heard in a Dornaani’s voice: distracted ecstasy. One of Laaglenz’s eyelids fluttered.

  Riordan wondered if being in Virtua too long could cause madness. “So,” Riordan resumed carefully, “there are multiple users active in any given iteration of a model, at any given time.”

  “Of course.”

  “But how is that coordinated? Your users must be widely separated, have different lag times, might even be on different planets.”

  “User proximity is not essential. Real time interplanetary and interstellar participation is effected through connection nodes in different star systems.”

  “Real-time interstellar participation?” Riordan was about to rebut with “No, not possible,” and then remembered the crash of the Corcoran simulacrum. It had been instantly reported to overseers twenty light-years away. “So these nodes are…what? Some kind of wormhole communication network?”