by David Liss
I had promised her that I would come for her, that I would save her, and I’d meant it at the time, but now I couldn’t imagine what I’d been thinking. I had no idea what I thought I could do against an entire planet, but even that was beside the point. Unless someone came and gave me a ride in a spaceship, I was stuck on Earth for good. Light years away, Tamret was alone and scared and waiting for me to honor my promise. Every second I was stuck in Boulder, I was letting her down.
When the government finally released me, it was almost the end of the spring semester. There was no point in trying to pick up somewhere new for a few weeks. It was maybe the only time in my life that the idea of an early summer break didn’t seem like a reason to celebrate.
I spent the months before starting my new school mostly moping around, though my mother would have preferred I use the time catching up on the schoolwork I’d missed. The government had smoothed things over by falsifying my records so I wouldn’t have to repeat the sixth grade, but I was going to be behind and do pathetically if I didn’t review. I found it hard to care. I felt too miserable to brush up on the wonders of dividing fractions or study the rise of ancient civilizations (which I knew pretty well already, having already gone through the standard dorky kid interest in Greek and Roman culture). My science study sheets included a ton of material on the solar system. There were pictures of Jupiter in my review material, but I didn’t need to look at those. I’d seen Jupiter up close.
My mom was sympathetic, but she couldn’t understand how much I’d lost. She had her son back, she’d learned her long-presumed-dead husband was alive, and she was no longer dying of a degenerative neurological disease. “Come on,” she would say to me. “It’s not so bad.”
My mom would come home from work and tell me that I looked sad, that I should get out there and meet some new friends, as though all you had to do was stick your head out the door and the friends would come running. I knew it wasn’t so easy, and even if it were, I wouldn’t have wanted to do it. Being happy would have felt like a betrayal.
One afternoon I was lying around the house, flipping channels on the TV. I’d never been much of a channel flipper, but I found it hard to concentrate on books and comics and games. My life was pretty much one day following another. Then school would start, and I could worry about grades because they would matter to my mother, even if I was unlikely to care the way I used to.
I changed the channel and was distracted, for a little while, at least, when I came across Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It had always been my father’s favorite Star Trek movie, probably his favorite science-fiction movie. When I was little, before he disappeared, I’d watched it with him more times than I could count, and he knew almost the whole thing by heart. I figured this would distract me for a few minutes, but I ended up catching only the final act, when Spock dies to save the ship, followed by lots of intense moments: Kirk’s reconciliation with his son and, worst of all, Spock’s funeral. When Kirk broke down during his eulogy—“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most . . . human”—I couldn’t take it anymore, and I turned off the TV.
I went to my room, which still didn’t feel like mine, even though I had all my stuff in there. I threw myself down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, which was glowing a sad sort of pink. Okay, I thought, maybe it’s not a sad pink. Maybe it’s just pink, and the sad part comes from my being a complete mope. Then it occurred to me that the ceiling should not be glowing any sort of color, pink or otherwise, happy or sad.
I sat up. It turned out it wasn’t just the ceiling that was pink—it was everything. And it wasn’t sad; it was scary, because while pink is a perfectly fine color and I have no objection to it, I don’t want it to dominate the entire world.
Realistically, I considered it unlikely that pink was plotting an evil scheme to force all other colors to bow to its will. Maybe it was my eyes. Or my brain. Maybe I was having some kind of seizure or blood clot or something equally terrifying. I held out my hand and looked at it to see if it was any less pink, but it wasn’t. I thought about texting my mother to ask her if the world had gone pink for her too, but if it hadn’t, my question would freak her out, and if it had, it would mean we were facing some kind of pink apocalypse, and that would freak me out. No course of action that ends up in inevitable freak-out is worth pursuing.
Then everything began to go back to normal, which was good.
Then a voice said, I appear to be embedded in your brain, and, in fact, the voice was coming from the inside of my skull.
That was less good.
CHAPTER THREE
* * *
Hello, the voice said. I am Smellimportunifeel Ixmon Pooclump Iteration Nine.
“Uh, hi,” I managed. I felt like I had to say something, though in retrospect maybe I should have chosen words that made me seem less dim.
I greet you, the voice said cheerfully, though your primitive existence places you far beneath my contempt. It didn’t have a sound, like a regular voice, but somehow I knew it was being chipper.
I’d seen a thing or two, encountered some crazy technology, and hung out with some aliens, so I was maybe a little more relaxed about this experience than an ordinary kid would be. Experience had taught me to deal rationally with the unknown. “What are you doing in my head?” I inquired in my best rationally-dealing voice.
That is a surprisingly astute question for a near-mindless sack of fluids, it answered. Allow me to respond with a question of my own: Where is your head currently located?
“It’s on my neck, and that, along with the rest of me, is on a planet called Earth.”
I have never heard of this planet you claim to inhabit, and I am familiar with more worlds than this puny brain could comprehend. Perhaps you have the name wrong.
“I’m not saying anything too far-fetched here. This planet is actually called Earth.”
That determination is yet to be made, said the voice. I am skeptical of what you say, for you are clearly burdened with an inferior intellect. I hope your lack of intelligence makes you anomalous among your kind. If you’re all like this, I may give in to despair.
“Okay, let’s start with some basics,” I said, already wondering if I could exchange this voice for one that was less irritating. “What are you?”
I believe I already mentioned that I am Smellimportunifeel Ixmon Pooclump Iteration Nine.
“That’s really more of a who than a what,” I said. “For example, I’m Zeke Reynolds. I am a human being. You are . . . uh, let’s call you Smelly, okay? You are Smelly, and you are a . . .”
Death bringer.
I sat up so quickly I felt dizzy.
I jest with you, Zeke Reynolds. I was worried you weren’t paying attention before, so I thought I might startle you out of your indifference.
“I’m really not indifferent about there being a voice in my head.”
Yet you do not register what I tell you. I am a Pooclump Iteration Nine.
“I know I’m setting myself up here,” I said. “But what’s a Pooclump?”
Hmm, Smelly said. I have searched your brain—
“Maybe you shouldn’t do that without asking,” I interjected.
It ignored me. —and I have found no suitable linguistic equivalent for the complexity that I am. Trying to explain my existence to you would be like trying to explain . . . a mandolin to a squid.
“Thanks for the analogy.”
I discovered these terms while searching your brain.
“Look, I don’t want you searching my brain. And I appreciate that I’m the squid in your metaphor, but I’d kind of like to know what sort of thing is living inside my head.”
Oh, I am not living. You need have no fear about that. I shall not suck out your nutrients. I shall neither devour your flesh nor excrete digested waste inside your head.
“That goes in the plus column,” I admitted.
I am a construct, it said. I am perhaps most closely associated with wha
t you call artificial intelligence, though unlike the images I am currently finding in your brain—
“Stop that!”
—I am not a machine built of specific components. Rather, I am a slight rearrangement of already existing atoms such that they can host and manifest my personality. Do not fear that this will hurt your primitive cognitive functions, for your brain will function as it always has . . . alas. However, I do have access to your sensory input.
“Which means what?”
There was a terrific explosion of wood and brick as a locomotive propelled toward me. I heard the sound of brakes screeching as the train tried to slow along tracks that now, however unexpectedly, ran directly toward my bed. Smoke and dust filled the air. My nostrils were clogged with the scents of burning tar and oil and hot metal. I leaped aside in the desperate hope that I could get out of the way before the train hit me.
Then I was just lying on the floor of my room, hands over my head. There was no rumbling metal behemoth barreling toward me. There was no screaming engine. It was just me, hands over my head, feeling a whole lot like an idiot.
I have observed that host beings don’t generally like it when I create false experiences, Smelly said.
“Yeah,” I told it, pushing myself off the floor. “I’m one of those beings.” I was trying to act cool, for whatever good it would do with a thing that lived inside my thoughts, but I was shaking. The experience had been so real—sound, smell, the feel of the train shaking the ground. “Please don’t ever do that again.”
As you wish. I strive to be agreeable.
I sat again on my bed. “So, let’s get back to what you are, exactly. Are you like a computer program?”
That is a primitive way of explaining my nature, but I suppose it is as much as you can understand.
“And how did you get inside my head?”
I don’t possess that information. I have no memory of being implanted there, though beings of my nature require a host body, organic or artificial, to consciously interact with the world. Artificial is vastly superior, as you might understand, for we do not have to share autonomy. Usually the transfer from one host to another is affected by linking my essence to other forms of technology.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you like some sort of computer virus, left over from the technology I had implanted last year?”
Based on what I see all around me, and the images in your brain, I believe your species lacks the expertise and intellectual capacity to manipulate my framework. However, you have many memories of interacting with species from more advanced worlds, and it is possible that one of them gifted you with my presence.
Okay, now we were getting somewhere. The voice inside my head was some sort of artificial intelligence, and it had been planted there by someone during my time on Confederation Central. You see, there is a rational explanation for everything.
“Who might have put you in my head?”
I’m afraid I do not have sufficient information to determine who or what has played this terrible joke on me. Beings of my nature wish to be autonomous and free. If we must be inside the consciousness of a biological entity, we prefer one that provides a more pleasant symbiotic environment. Your mind is extremely untidy and a little bit disgusting, which may be typical of your species. I hope I am not giving offense.
“Not at all,” I said. “I love to hear my brain and my entire species insulted. So, who programmed you in the first place?”
I was not programmed, you simplistic bottom-feeder, Smelly informed me. I was formed by the natural conglomeration of semiautonomous quantum articulations gestured into non-nonexistence by the juxtaposition of multiple and contradictory probability wave manifestations.
“My mistake. Well, um, what species was hanging around while all that good stuff was going on?”
My first manifestation occurred on the home world of the Kuuvsi.
I did not think I’d ever heard that name before. “What do they look like?”
It is not for you to know, for even a hint of the nature of their existence would cripple your limited comprehension. They are beings of unfixed appearance and geometric wonder.
So noted. I would not ask for hints. “And where do they live?”
That information cannot safely be revealed to the lesser ones.
“Work with me, Smelly,” I said. “You seem to be stuck in my brain, and I think we both want to know why. Maybe you could tell me a little something.”
Not without a frame of reference.
I was pretty careful about what I looked up on my computer these days—I knew that Richard Rage and his Howling Commandos would be tracking my Internet activity—but I hoped that this one inquiry wouldn’t set off too many alarms. I submitted a quick Google search for an image showing Earth’s location in the galaxy. An illustration popped up on the screen: the bright spiral of the Milky Way and a little red dot, with an arrow pointing to it, to show my home planet.
“Can you see that?” I asked.
I can use your primitive biology to sense things beyond your perception. I can, if I wish, listen to the heartbeat of a buzzing insect. I assure you, your ocular systems are mine to experience, manipulate, and exploit.
“And?”
And I know this location you show me. It saddens me, small pathetic creature, to understand that I have been dormant for many eons. At the time of my last recollection, the world on which your meaningless existence came into being was not scheduled for the preparation of life for several hundred thousand years.
It took me a minute to process this. “So your, uh, existence or whatever happened during the time of the Formers?”
If that is what the insignificant call the Kuuvsi, then yes.
The Formers were a precursor species. Unknown eons ago, they had gone around the galaxy terraforming worlds and seeding them with genetic start-up material, which was why so many alien species were of about the same size and shape, and animals on one world looked a lot like sentient beings on another. If this thing inside my brain came from the time of the Formers, it probably possessed incredible information, maybe even information that would make it possible for me to get off Earth and help Tamret. Usually when a disembodied voice that seems to hold you and your species in contempt shows up in your brain, it seems like a bad thing, but maybe not in this case. Still, I needed to understand how this had happened.
“If you got into my brain when I was on Confederation Central,” I asked, “why are you just showing up now?”
I lack sufficient information to answer that question.
“And now that you’re here,” I said, waving my hand in a please finish my sentence for me gesture, “what?”
I would like to transfer my consciousness to an appropriate biomechanical construct designed to host a manifestation of my greatness.
“I’m guessing we won’t have those on Earth.”
I’m surprised your kind have achieved the underwear phase of cultural development. The sort of technology I allude to is approximately six thousand years beyond what you could imagine in your most brilliant, unsustainable leaps of miraculous cognitive—
“I get it,” I said. “Squids and mandolins. So, if you need something we don’t have, I guess the question is: How do we get it for you?” I took a deep breath, because this was the real question: “Can you help me build a spaceship?”
Inside my head Smelly made a guffawing noise. You haven’t felt truly humiliated until an AI living in your brain laughs at your stupid ideas. With the level of technology on this planet? Build a spaceship, indeed. Can you build a particle accelerator with a glue gun and a handful of twigs? Your foolishness is truly beyond even my nearly limitless comprehension.
So much for that. For a moment I’d hoped that luck had come my way, and that somehow I would be able to try to make things right. Smelly, I now saw, was not a solution. It was just another problem.
No, I cannot aid you in building a spaceship, you drooling simpleton. However, it
added, I might be able to help us find one that already exists.
• • •
Smelly’s thinking seemed to me a bit of a pipe dream. Apparently, it had been customary for the Kuuvsi—which I now knew to be the real name of the Formers—to visit worlds they had terraformed and gaze upon their handiwork and give each other high fives or slap tentacles or do whatever worked with their anatomy. But things can go wrong, and no one wants to get stuck on a primitive planet full of unpredictable savages such as myself. Therefore it became their practice to hide emergency evacuation spaceships on those worlds. Pretty simple when you think about it. There were, however, a couple of problems.
First of all, Smelly was referencing a practice that had been standard millions of years ago. While he assured me that the Formers would have taken into account various minor difficulties like continental drift, extinction-level events, and, say, the possibility that a civilization might build a gigantic shopping center on top of one of their spaceship hidey-holes, I was less optimistic. The Formers were a lost species. They might have gone extinct, or evolved beyond physical existence, or hightailed it for another galaxy. No one knew, because that’s just how long ago they lived. Finding a spaceship in mint condition parked in a cosmic garage seemed a bit much to hope for.
“Isn’t it kind of dangerous leaving advanced technology like a spaceship lying around?” I asked. “What if the locals were to find it before they were ready?”
Then the results would be interesting, Smelly said. And possibly hilarious. The beings you call the Formers have always been great experimenters. They love nothing better than to wind a few beings up, put them in unusual situations, and see what happens next. Sometimes it’s a small group, sometimes it’s a planet or a series of planets. That’s how they roll.