The Water Bear

by Groucho Jones

  “We’re from the future.”

  He sat with his chin in his hand, expressionless.

  “You appear to be serious,” he said, after Brin told him the parts of their story he needed to hear. “Can your ship send me a cryptographically signed message, confirming all that?”

  Brin nodded. “You have it.”

  He stood and paced the room, too rangy for it, constrained by the walls. “You know,” he said. “The simplest course for me is to inform my superiors.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “We need money,” said Brin. “And medical services.”

  “You have wounded?”

  “A man dead.”

  “You want him... what, resurrected?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that’s illegal.”

  “This is the Smear.”

  He laughed, an agreeable laugh, thought Box, for a secret policeman, in a remote and likely corrupted outpost of civilization. She watched his feelings play over his face, as he considered his options.

  Who are you, officer Revelstoke?

  Not a poker player.

  Or a good one.

  “Let me think about it,” he said. “In the meantime, keep a low profile. In particular tell this one to run slower.”

  He shook his head.

  “I suppose this is what we get paid for.”

  The following day, Box watched Kitou weave her way through the market, this time with her three escorts beside her. The friendly waves of the market traders were less in evidence. Box didn’t like that there should be police, waiting for Kitou to go on her run. It implied the industrial heft of a Soviet-style surveillance operation.

  All for three strangers.

  Box re-read her political backgrounder. Avalon had the hallmarks of a benign kleptocracy. There were no personal political freedoms here, yet the populace was prosperous and happy.

  Happy is cheap.

  And prosperous is relative.

  The real money flowed through Avalon Station, 35,000 km above. This was owned by the Avalonia Cpy, a private corporation, and presumably Revelstoke’s political masters. Her historian’s nose told her that profitable sinecures like Revelstoke’s were bought and sold, so as well as being a Captain of the Security Police, Revelstoke was likely a petit oligarch himself.

  A recipe for corruption.

  Are you corrupt, officer Revelstoke?

  She suspected the company didn’t much care.

  But what did she know? She was extrapolating, from similar-looking places on Earth. She was a stranger. She resolved to try to suspend judgement.

  For a while, at least.

  Half an hour later, Kitou called.

  [Can you come to me?] she asked.

  Brin was doing her own exercise routine. Chin-ups and crunches. More in a session than Box had done in a lifetime.

  [Yes, why?] Brin replied.

  [Mr. Revelstoke wishes to visit the Water Bear.]

  Box followed Brin down the crooked street to the harbor front. It was a wet morning, and the slippery concrete splashed under their feet. A brisk wind blew white spume over the corniche. They chose to run fast. It felt delightful to be out in the weather.

  Twenty minutes later, breathing hard, they crested the brow of a long hill, that floated above the tops of the low clouds, to reveal a glorious sunrise. Kitou was sitting cross-legged, talking animatedly with Revelstoke.

  “Ah, here they are,” he said with a smile. He seemed a happier secret policeman than yesterday.

  “Alright, let’s talk,” he said.

  It was a beautiful day in heaven, with the fresh wind in their faces, looking out over a billowing cloudscape, the painted towers like a child’s toys in the sand.

  Box felt a thrill of endorphins flow through her.

  A prowler descended.

  “Our ride,” said Revelstoke.

  They climbed into the pilotless machine, which surged soundlessly into the sky. They rose like an express lift, until the horizon curved, and the sky grew dark, and the stars became pinpricks of light. The ship spoke in their sensorium.

  [I have you, Avalon prowler.]

  They assembled in the ship’s gymnasium, which the Water Bear had, by a clever application of gravity, repurposed as a conference space. The exercise machines had folded flat in the walls. The practice ring had risen to become a soft crystalline table. The ship had even made gravity, for Revelstoke to pace in.

  “I’ve found you your money,” he said. “But you have to go get it.”

  Pax nodded. “Do you mean, steal it?”

  “Yes,” said Revelstoke.

  No surprises here, thought Box. She knew from Earth history that military units on covert missions sometimes had to misappropriate resources.

  Steal clothing from washing lines.

  Rob the occasional bank.

  “How much do we need?” asked Pax.

  “For a ship refit and a full-body resurrection, plus ten years of covert ops, about 250 kg of gold.”

  “Why gold?”

  “Because I know where there is some.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s an unusual strategy.”

  “Just tell us.”

  “Steal your own money.”

  “From where?”

  “From the central bank on Praxis.”

  “Explain.”

  Revelstoke stood up and paced. “One,” he said, counting off his fingers. “There’s no victim. After all, we are supposed to be the good guys.”

  “Yes,” said Pax.

  “Two, you have insider knowledge. You’ve been there; you’ve seen it.

  “Three, no one will ever suspect what has actually happened. I promise you, as a policeman, the idea that this group travelled from the future to steal its own money will never emerge as a law enforcement theory.

  “Finally, you have the codes. You have the Water Bear’s private key. You can prove her identity. It’s the perfect crime.”

  “But,” said Pax. “The Civics.”

  “Yes,” said Revelstoke. “The Civics.”

  “Who are they?” asked Box.

  “The AIs that govern our society,” said Pax.

  “Like the City of Praxis?”

  “No, Praxis is a person, like the Water Bear. The Civics are a composite intelligence, that provide our political system.”

  “They’ll know straight away,” said Revelstoke, “that there are two Water Bears, in different locations.”

  Box said, “How?”

  “Because they’re as smart as can be.”

  “What Mr. Revelstoke means,” said Pax, “is they’ll deduce the truth, which is merely improbable. The question is, will they allow us to do it?”

  Revelstoke said, “I think they will.”

  Box said, “Why?”

  “Game theory,” said Revelstoke. “Dr Box, why did you begin operations here in a state of deliberate visibility, starting fights and spending on trinkets, when your mission requires the utmost secrecy?”

  Box shrugged. “We spent information,” she said. “To buy options.”

  Revelstoke nodded. “Exactly. The Civics work on similar principles, but on a much larger scale. They occupy saddle points. They keep those positions open as long as possible. When they intervene, they make the least intervention possible, until they have complete information, then they act decisively.”

  “Like the art of Po,” said Brin.

  “So, we’re an option?”

  “Yes, a wavefunction that needn’t be collapsed. The appearance of a second instance of a Po warship is an interesting event.”

  “Why don’t we just talk to them?”

  “No one talks to the Civics.”

  “This system works?”

  “It has for ten thousand years.”

  “Then go for it.”

  “So,” said Revelstoke. “Let’s plan a robbery.”

  “One more thing,” s
aid Box.

  “Yes?” asked Pax and Revelstoke, in unison. Brin stifled a laugh.

  “How much is 250 kg of gold?”

  “It depends on what you mean by much,” said Pax. “It’s a weight we can carry.”

  “I mean, what’s it worth?”

  “Its monetary value?” said Revelstoke. “What can it buy? A ship refit costs about 25 kg. A human resurrection slightly less.”

  “Then steal all of it,” she said.

  “Explain,” said Pax.

  “Don’t mess about with 250 kg. Forget what you can personally carry. That’s amateurish. How much is actually there?”

  In addition to his role as Navigator, Pax was the ship’s financial controller. Fifteen years in the future, he could walk in and withdraw this money.

  “About a hundred times that,” he said.

  “Steal it all. Most military operations fail because of logistics. Why take the risk of running out of cash? Trust me. Make up a number. Double it.”

  “She’s right,” said Revelstoke.

  “Agreed,” said Pax.

  “How do we steal 25 tonnes of gold?” asked Brin.

  “Deceptively,” said the Water Bear.

  Kitou reappeared, carrying a weighty grey cylinder, the size of a hatbox. She laid it on the slab. Beads of moisture slid along its surface.

  “What’s this?” asked Revelstoke, although his expression suggested he knew.

  “This is Alois Buss,” said Pax.

  “Our friend,” said Kitou.

  “Amen that,” said Brin and Pax.

  “Well,” said Revelstoke. “How dead is he?”

  “Not too seriously,” said the Water Bear. “His neural structures are repairable. When he wakes, he’ll be the same individual.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I extracted his brain through the control room ceiling of the city of Threnody, before it was destroyed by a physics weapon.”

  “How?”

  “Shaped gravity pulse.”

  Revelstoke winced. “He was alive at the time?”

  “Conscious.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “Tell us about it,” said Box.

  “There’ll be psychological trauma.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said the ship. “He was still sensing when I got him here.”

  Box shut that idea out of her mind.

  “Why didn’t his wetware sedate him?” asked Revelstoke.

  “There was separation,” said the ship.

  “We’ll have to erase those memories,” said Revelstoke.

  “Of course.”

  “But...”

  “I understand,” said Pax. “There may be significant damage. Do what you can. Cost, we all agree, is no issue. Bring him back to us.”

  “We were responsible for poor Alois,” said Kitou.

  “We are responsible for him,” said Brin.

  “Amen that,” said Pax.

  5 ∞ Androform Alois

  2056

  The Water Bear slid into its dock, like a wasp invading a chrysalis. Box felt a swell of pride when she heard one worker whisper Po warship to another. This was her wasp. She had to admit it had a certain fuck-you beauty.

  If Praxis was a thousand Manhattans, then Avalon Station was all the worlds factories, as though the glowing entrails of a gas refinery had been strung along a hundred kilometers of space. The thousands of misshapen pieces were held together by a thread: a hyperloop train that went from end to end in a minute. Pax said the string formation was intended to reduce its attack surface, since a string is harder to hit than a cube or a plate. To Box’s eyes it looked accidental, like a bristling industrial town, with irrepressible life growing out of every crevice, or a techno party gone haywire; she found it intoxicating.

  Pax Humana. That was the name the Avalonia gave to the centuries of peace, since the Tung had stopped trying to destroy Avalon Station, and instead decided to live there.

  Of course it wasn’t called that. Pax, from the Latin. Avalonia, from her imagination. That was how her wetware replayed it to her. She imagined it came from a much older language then Latin.

  How long had the Tung been here? According to her wetware, six hundred years.

  Since Michelangelo’s David.

  Since Copernicus.

  Arrivistes.

  Now they were everywhere, wispy cartilaginous obscurities, air breathers, that had the ability to turn corners using spat silk, and thus move much faster than humans in weightless conditions.

  In another time and place, they’d be nightmare creatures.

  Box was wearing their silk now, a confection of adaptive pashminas, just enough of it to be decent, perfect for the sweltering humidity. With a thought, she could whip them all into her hair and be naked, and no one on Avalon Station would notice. Sometimes she did, for the experience.

  Kitou and Brin had cautiously surveyed the local bacchanalia, and assigned themselves to protection duty, and took turns outside Alois Buss’s surgical suite.

  Looking fly in police uniforms, thought Box.

  The suite was in a mildly disreputable part of the Station, between gun shops and discothèques. The guns were more serious here than on the surface. They looked like military hardware. Without her asking it to, her wetware kept track of every purchase, tapping into the Station’s payment systems. It reminded her that what they were about to do was illegal.

  She got the sense that nothing couldn’t be bought or sold in this place, with the right budget.

  Alois was in the clonal phase of his treatment. The suite had extracted a single nucleus from his brain tissue, and implanted it in a donor egg, taken at random from Box, Brin or Kitou. One of them would become his biological mother. Gestation would take several days. Maturation, in which he became a viable human again, would take months.

  The surgical suite was called Cloethe, and she was a citizen of Avalon Station: a cyborg of Tung manufacture, with a human personality. Box found her delightful.

  Cloethe explained that restoring Alois’s exact wiring was the objective.

  “Not a problem, surgically,” she said, “but culturally important. Thousand worlds custom requires that a person has neurological continuity, or else they’re a copy.”

  “Why’s that a thing?” sked Box.

  “Without continuity, the original is considered to have died, with all the moral, legal and emotional loss that entails.”

  “It’s important to Alois?”

  “Quite likely.”

  “And that’s why saving his physical brain was important?”

  “Yes, otherwise we could’ve restored him from a backup, without the complexity. That’s what we do in the Smear.”

  “I don’t understand. What does continuity even mean? What about sleep? What about unconsciousness? Is that continuous?”

  “It is. The difference is tissue. Living brain tissue. Frozen is fine.”

  “You do a lot of this work?”

  “It’s my purpose.”

  “How does it feel, to have a purpose?”

  “My prime directive is to desire it.”

  “A complicated answer.”

  “I’m a complicated person.”

  “How difficult is Alois’s surgery?”

  “Your ship did a very good job under the circumstances, but I have to consider every neuron. It will take me a month, of carefully sequenced surgery and recovery, to restore the same person.”

  “When will he be awake?”

  “I plan to briefly revive him tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Really?”

  “Yes, and I need you all to be there. His friends. It’s vital.”

  “We’ll be there,” she said.

  “Alois?”

  “Ship? Where am I?”

  “You were in an accident.”

  They were all together in the visiting room of the surgical suite, which resembled a mortuary, with drawers where Box imagined the bodies were kept. Box felt ch
eated. For 25 kg of gold, she’d expected equipment. A Swiss rejuv clinic would’ve handled this more theatrically.

  “Big accident?”

  “Yes.”

  Alois’s brain was nowhere to be seen. She tried not to imagine its condition.

  A soup, becoming a pudding.

  “Ship,” said the brain through a speaker, “I can’t see or feel anything. Are the others alright?”

  “Yes,” said the ship. She was physically present, wearing her androform body, which mirrored her gamespace persona, down to the viper tattoos.

  “What’s my prognosis?” asked Alois.

  “Optimal,” said the ship.

  “How long?”

  “Alois,” interrupted Pax.

  “Pax, my good friend. How are you?”

  “I’m well,” he said. “I’m here with the team.”

  “How is Threnody?”

  “What do you remember?”

  “I remember going to bed.”

  “Threnody is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Details later.”

  “The Fa:ing?”

  “Safe, as far as we know. Escaped through their wormhole.”

  “Down the rabbit hole.”

  “Yes.”

  Alois sighed, despite having nothing to sigh through.

  “All those years,” he said.

  “Validated, Alois.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true. And me?”

  “Growing a new body.”

  “Am I a backup?”

  “No, we got your physical brain. You’re real.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that.”

  “Now you should rest.”

  Box spent her days on the planet, haunting the souk and the coffee shops. Avalon was starting its high summer, and the city was steaming. She’d taken to wearing the local dishdasha, in place of her adaptive skinsuit, or her Tung scarves, which would’ve got her arrested. There was monsoonal rain, heavy and warm, then baking hot cobbles and concrete; so hot they hissed.

  Box loved this place. She could live here forever. She learnt the rhythms of the market. Every day, before dawn, the ships would arrive in the harbor. They were real ships, wind powered ocean vessels, sailing over the water from places unknown. They’d unload in the docks. Some of it would go to the markets. Most would disappear on lorries, bound for places unknown.