Chapter 10
Ada sat on the grass, looking at her hands only faintly illuminated by the braziers on top of the geneforge. Sam was still inside, but Ada had been waiting for a while. She had no idea what was going on in there, or how long it would take. She had only the words written on the outside of the geneforge to keep her company.
“The lives we live need not be the lives we are given.”
Ada looked at her hands again. Coder’s hands - fairly delicate, all things considered, especially compared to a warrior’s. But the code etched onto her gun was so small it could have been carved with a needle, proof that even her delicate fingers were not able to make the most of her own gift. Code was a powerful gift, but it cost too much - a cost paid in time and space rather than energy, but a cost nonetheless. It was too slow and clumsy.
She looked to the geneforge. Geneforges could not create something entirely new, only change which kind of human someone was. Ada could change her body, could wear a different-shaped face and different-toned skin, could change the flat of her hair or the deep brown of her eyes, but she could not become a warrior, or an outer, or something else entirely. It seemed absurd, but for a moment the limitations pained her.
Cherry rested behind her on four fins, long grasses beating quietly against the ship’s black hull. Ada looked at her starfighter, a marvel of ancient technology with a powerful mind inside, and held up the gun, as though the ship had eyes to look.
“Cherry, why can’t I code this small?”
Cherry’s response, just for her, flowed straight from the suit. What you know as the coder’s gift involves releasing compunanites from pores in your fingertips, which is a broad surface. The code on your weapon, however, was machine-etched.
Of course, that made sense. The ancients couldn’t have hundreds of coders running around coding all their artifacts.
Ada thought about the life she had been given. A coder’s life - a life of arduous, rote study, for years. Coders memorized what few ancient sigils had not been forgotten, or had been rediscovered in ancient ruins. Coders required time, deliberation, and space, and those requirements were rewarded by the complexity and power of their gift. They applied their code to hulking artifacts and occasionally special fabrics or smaller objects, but while code was powerful, it was no good in a fight. She couldn’t make snap use of her gift, they couldn’t escape or be tricky. Ada did not want to accept the tradeoff.
“Cherry - machines can code faster and smaller than humans, can’t they?”
Yes.
“Can I do that, somehow?”
Compunanite applicators were widespread as of last historical records. They were used in factories, tools, military vehicles, laboratories, and even for certain home entertainment uses. You could find a compunanite applicator somewhere, and use that to create smaller code.
Ada frowned. “Military vehicles? Like you?”
Yes, I am equipped with an array of compunanite applicators in my nose cone. They are useful for performing computational warfare against live targets, repairing damage to nanocircuitry, combat engineering, sabotage, securing perimeters, and whatever else my pilots deem suitable.
“Compunanites?”
Compunanites are the particles making up what you call code.
Ada nodded. So Cherry was a coder, just like she was - but could craft code far finer and denser than any human ever could. She had an all-out better form of the coder’s gift, then - why should Ada settle for any less?
“How do you control time? Slow it down?”
Cherry paused for a long moment. I do not understand the query. I have no control over time in the sense you likely mean.
Ada frowned, climbing into the cockpit and interfacing with the ship. She felt the muscle there, like a gift of Cherry’s own, and squeezed time down to a crawl, the swaying of the trees and the flickering of the rooftop braziers becoming almost completely imperceptible. Then she let go.
“That. How do you do that?”
That is not time control. Cherry’s correction was entirely matter-of-fact, free of any judgement. That process is known as neurocognitive time dilation. Your brain activity is hyperaccelerated through computational assistance, meaning you perceive time as much slower than you normally would.
“So… it lets me think faster than the world is happening?”
Relative to outsiders, yes.
“Can I do that without you?”
No. It is not included in your suit’s capabilities.
Ada nodded. So Cherry - a ship run entirely on code, presumably - was coded to think faster, and code smaller and finer, than any human could. She had the coder’s gift the way Ada wanted it.
“Cherry, can you code both those onto me? The code applicators and the time dilation?”
There was an even longer pause. Was she was taxing her ship’s ability to understand what she meant? She waited, patiently, sitting in the cockpit and looking out at the geneforge.
Finally, Cherry responded. I do not understand.
“You said you can code. I want you to code those abilities onto my body, so I can use them myself. Faster thinking. Finer code.”
Ada wasn’t liking all this pausing.
Embedding code into human skin has been experimentally attempted in a few recorded cases, but there were computational security concerns and health concerns, and the practice was highly controversial as of 2347. Records after that are unavailable; legal outcomes unknown.
“What health concerns?”
Consensus in the nanomedical literature is that the practice was safe for those with what you know as the coder’s gift, and probably safe for other individuals, though those were less-tested and had less live cases documented. There were reports of injuries or illness, but these generally turned out to be the result of criminal intent. The general public was more divided on the issue, however, citing issues such as dehumanization as well as biomedical side effects mostly unsupported by the literature.
Ada almost got a headache from all those words, many of which she didn’t know - but the gist of it, at least, remained accessible. “So it’s safe. For me.”
Nanomedical science as of the year 2347 suggests it is.
“So you can code your quick-thinking gift onto me, then, and the code applicators too.”
That pausing.
I can replicate the code in my databanks - the applicators, the neural interfaces, the language matrix, the motile spindles. I have never applied code to a biological surface, but I have run some basic simulations and do not foresee any risks. Please note that I cannot easily remove the code from your skin if you should change your mind. Removal involves deep burning, and possibly permanent scarring.
“Are you likely to make any mistakes?”
No. During application I can correct for your body’s natural swaying, within reason.
Ada’s heart was racing. If Cherry did this, she could acquire the powers of code to be used directly, at her own discretion. That would open up a whole new world to her. “Do it.”
Your request will require significant surface area. To a certain extent the code will self-repair if your skin is damaged, but if you ever suffer severe burns or other skin-removing injuries the code may be unable to repair itself and become useless, or dangerous.
Ada nodded. Fair enough - she didn’t want that to ever happen anyway. “How much surface area? Will it fit on my back?”
I can code it across half your back and neck, as well as a short length down your arms and along the back of your palms.
“Well, the code isn’t very visible anyway.”
There are multiple kinds of code. Which would you prefer?
Cherry’s comment sounded like a gentle reminder, but Ada’s world almost fell out from under her. “What? Multiple kinds of code?”
My understanding of your language leads me to believe you would like to refer to the primary forms as light code and dark code. Light code is clear or glowing, limited in its energy potential an
d draws from an energy source - initially your body, potentially also coded reservoirs. It was designed to become inert and harmless if left unattended. Dark code draws its energy from the environment and vacuum fields, and would not strictly require you to eat more. It will also never deactivate, which may have unforeseen consequences.
Ada looked at her skin, pale with very faint golden undertones. She wondered what it would look like covered in black lines, and she was immediately drawn to the idea. Like a kind of tattoo, but actually useful.
“Dark code, then. Do it.”
This will be a permanent change, unless you opt for a burning treatment. If you insist, please expose your back and arms, and place yourself in front of my nose cone.
Ada opened up the cockpit and jumped out, letting the suit she was wearing flow back into the spine-like collection of metal vertebrae. She put it in front of her and knelt down in front of the ship, back to Cherry, exposing her bare skin and raising her arms.
“All right, Cherry. Go for it.”
Without the suit, Cherry’s voice had to cross the air like any other. “This may sting.”
“Hey, you didn’t warn me -”
The ship thrummed into the air, billowing grass aside and blowing debris past Ada from behind. Then, quite suddenly, something hot and sharp seared into her neck. She bit down on her teeth and slammed her eyes shut, trying not to move. She couldn’t mess this up.
More and more of the hot little points started jabbing into her bare back, and she could feel them scouring lines and connecting across her spine, her shoulder blade, her skin. They formed incomprehensible patterns along her back, filling in the space along the right side of her back. She heard an unnerving hissing sound. A few of them darted off to the left and right, searing into her arms. She saw herself silhouetted against lights from the ship’s nose, two shadowy arms outstretched on the grass, swaying up and down against the lights, distorted and twisted in shadow like wings.
Then the searing stopped and she collapsed onto the cold, dirty ground. She hadn’t realized she was sweating or holding her breath, but suddenly she was gasping for air, and the soil and insects and twigs of the earth stuck to her skin as she got up. She tried brushing herself off as she reached back for the pilot suit, letting it flow back onto her body, but some dirt remained here and there. She would need a proper bath.
She turned around to see Cherry settling back down, and Ada tried it - she squeezed time, just like she did in the ship.
It slowed. Cherry became almost entirely immobile, the world around her slowed to a crawl, everything was just how she expected it. The gentle sting on her back was a constant throb in this slowed time, though.
She let it go back to normal, and grinned. Her hair was hanging in front of her eyes, and brushed it out of the way. And there, on her hands and arms, were black lines running up to her back, beautiful and intricate weaves of code across her skin, though they were surrounded by a reddish soreness. She hoped that would disappear in time.
“So, Cherry - this is where you tell me about some other problem you forgot to mention, right? What’s the price I pay for this?”
The ship’s response was quick. “Besides any aesthetic changes - as I said. The scientific literature suggests there will be no negative impacts on your health.”
“What about dehumanization? You mentioned that. What does that mean?”
As she put the suit back on, Cherry’s voice flowed straight into her mind again. It was a philosophical objection suggesting that there is moral harm in using technology to augment the human body beyond its statistically normal range of functions. Similar objections were raised upon introduction of the gifts and other changes, resulting in significant civil unrest.
Ada raised an eyebrow. She picked up a small rock off the ground, threw it in the air, and squeezed time as it fell back. She saw where it was moving, and she moved her hand out - doing so was painfully slow, though. It really was just her mind that was going any faster.
She relaxed time, squeezed, relaxed, squeezed, again and again adjusting her hand’s position in real-time based on what she estimated in slowed-time. She caught the rock neatly between her thumb and index finger, without fumbling or missing a beat. It took some time, but felt as though she were plucking it from the air rather than catching it. The thought of no longer having to rely on her body’s own reflexes, which had always been fairly terrible, was deeply soothing.
Ada smiled as she held the rock in her palm. “That’s disappointing. Like resignation and stagnation were some kind of virtue.”
That new time-squeezing muscle was there in her mind, not at all unlike her coder’s gift. A whole new gift, in a sense - something a geneforge could never provide. And right next to it was another gift entirely, something wound up in her coder’s gift, something that tingled underneath her fingertips.
Holding the rock in one hand, she moved her other hand above it and tugged at that muscle. A tiny black line extended out from her finger, straight down, and it responded to her visceral sense of where it should go. She moved her hand a bit closer, the black connected to the stone, and suddenly she was tracing code on it - tiny black etchings that seemed to devour all light.
She smirked, and traced a light sigil. What would that look like?
The light sigil writ in dark code worked the same way, but with the code absorbing light instead of glowing, the point of light was sharper and clearer, and Ada felt like she was looking at a flower of starstuff peeking out from brambles, rather than some indistinct smudge of light.
She tossed the stone into the air, right under her hand, and squeezed time down to a crawl. And from here, with a bit of fumbling and confusion, she was able to code another light sigil, tiny but bright, on the other side of the stone before it even hit her palm. Unlike her body, these code spindles moved at a regular speed even as the rest of the world seemed slow. They moved in time with her brain.
She laughed as she let time flow normally again. She could code finer and faster than anyone else, now - and better, too, because she understood the code more than any other coder in the world. The life she was given was not enough - not for her, and not for the people who stood to benefit from what she was trying to accomplish. And that, she hoped, was almost everyone. She could fix this. She could fix everything.
She looked to the geneforge. Sam was still in there, but would hopefully wake up in a body more comfortable and true than what she had had before. Ada could help people. Why the Institute called her dangerous, she would never understand.
She grinned again at the thought of the power now at her fingertips, almost giggling. Well, until Sam was done in there, there was plenty of time to practice.
It felt like hours in time dilation, but it was more likely just minutes before Ada let go of the small rock a meter or so off the ground and watched it hover on the spot, dark code weaving the complex pattern that helped it shrug off much of gravity’s pull. It was glowing with bright lights, and she nudged it off to into the woods, like a candle on an invisible lake, blown about by the wind.
Ada smiled. It was more than she could ever have done before - on something that small, in so little time.
She needed to try even more, but she was beginning to tire. Her mind might work faster with Cherry’s gift, but it seemed she would need to rest all the more as well. Damn, there it was - some kind of price. Nothing was ever completely free.
Could she speed time up, so she could sleep faster, somehow? She tried to relax time past its normal speed, but it didn’t seem to work. Damn. She didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to practice.
So practice she did, keeping to time’s natural speed for now. She ran through every sigil she could remember, combining them in all the ways she could think of. Over the hours, a pile of code-covered rocks started growing all around her. One rock, covered; the next one disintegrated; the next one floating off into the woods again; the next one hot, then one cold, and those were all just the simplest sigils. It wa
s fantastic, even without the time-acceleration aspect - her code was cleaner, smaller, and the dark code seemed ever so slightly more potent.
Ada, Sam has emerged.
Cherry’s voice interrupted her, but the pang of irritation was quickly overcome by a wave of curiosity. It was still dark, but the sun was slowly starting to tickle the eastern tips of the mountains. She turned around to see Sam padding through the grass towards her - or at least it must be Sam, but she looked very different.
At first Ada thought Sam’s body had changed radically, but at a closer look, she felt like she was simply looking at the sister of Sam’s previous body - not much else had changed. She was still red-headed, freckled, and pale; her hair was still just as short and messy. Less endearingly, her scars from being beaten by the Mayor remained. Sam smiled sheepishly, her clothes now a bit ill-fitting around the shoulders, chest, and hips. “Alright, Ada, this is me. If you’re going to be making any comments, let’s hear them now.”
Ada flashed a smile. “Your butt is way nicer like this, and I’m glad you don’t have the lice nest anymore.”
Sam laughed, rubbing her hands on her bare cheeks. “Gods, that thing was fucking terrible! I don’t know how they stand it.”
Ada looked behind her, at the geneforge, but didn’t see the old man out there. “He’s not coming out?”
Sam shook her head, taking a step closer and then looking back. “No, all he does is tend the geneforge and pray.”
“That’s a lot of dedication. He’s getting old, though.”
Sam shrugged. “He wasn’t who he needed to be when he was born either. The geneforge helps people, and there are others who will come to take up his watch soon. It’ll be okay.”
Ada wanted to ask - hell, she would have liked to have seen what happened - but she could tell in Sam’s fidgeting that this was a lot for her to process too. There was no need to interrogate her. She had surely had enough of that. “So how do you feel?”
Sam looked back at her and smiled. “Good. Or better, at least. Not wrong. Thanks, Ada. Even if I know you’re only doing this to curry favour with the ghosts.”
First Angels Page 17