Further: Beyond the Threshold

by Chris Roberson

  “Why must you see every random occurrence as some good omen for our cause?” the woman asked, exasperated.

  “All things were engineered with a purpose,” the chimpanzee answered, “whether you choose to recognize it or not. Why should events be any different?”

  My mouth must still have hung open as the chimpanzee drew to a stop just in front of me.

  “Please excuse my lapse in manners,” the chimpanzee said. “Allow me to introduce myself, Captain Stone. My name is Maruti Sun Ghekre the Ninth.” Then he placed his hairy palms together and held his hands up near his cravat, head inclined, adopting a posture I knew well from childhood.

  My mother’s lessons in etiquette were well ingrained, and without thinking, I found myself adopting the same pose, hands palm to palm near my sternum as I nodded my head and intoned, “Namaste.”

  “And I bow to the demiurge in you,” the chimpanzee said. He straightened and began digging in his pockets. “In any event, among my other roles and responsibilities, I am a physician, and Chief Executive Zel has asked me to examine you.”

  As I glanced at the one-eyed woman, who only sighed, looking bored with the whole exchange, the chimpanzee tilted his head, glancing at the table. “Room, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  The floating lights overhead shifted position slightly, one constellation melting into another, and after a brief interval, the chimpanzee nodded.

  “Yes, splendid.” The voice of the chimpanzee sounded satisfied, echoing from the table. “Very good. The crew of Zel’s mining ship seems to have stabilized your condition quite nicely, Captain Stone. Your body is in an advanced stage of senescence, but nothing that can’t be reversed. Now, as to the question of your cognition, what’s the last thing you remember, Captain Stone?”

  “Going into cryogenic suspension on board my ship,” I answered.

  “And what ship would that have been?” the chimpanzee asked.

  I struggled to keep my mounting impatience in check. “Wayfarer One.”

  The boffins in Vienna had been developing the Wayfarer missions since before I was born and had selected Alpha Centauri B as the destination of the first Wayfarer when I’d still been a student at Addis Ababa University, when the unmanned starwisp probe Sojourner A97 sent back the first images of the extrasolar terrestrial planet that came to be known as Alpha Centauri B II. Which was quite a mouthful. I was always grateful that early on they’d ditched the official registry name in practice and started referring to it in conversation simply as “the Rock.”

  Equipped with an inertial confinement fusion drive, using pellets of deuterium/helium-3 ignited in the reaction chamber by intense laser beams, Wayfarer One was capable of accelerating to one-tenth the speed of light. With the crew in cryogenic suspension, the ship would launch in 2167 and reach the Rock in just over forty-three years.

  As it happened, it appeared to have taken quite a bit longer.

  “Where are the others?” I asked, growing increasingly agitated. “Where are my crewmates?”

  There had been six of us in the crew of Wayfarer One. I was commander, first on board and last to sleep. Next in line was our pilot, Amelia Apatari, followed by mission specialists Gastuvas Katende, Martin Villers, Eija-Liisa Ylönen, and Beatriz Countinho. The rest of them had all been scientists originally, recruited by the United Nations Space Agency right out of school, but Amelia had been a flyer with the Peacekeepers, and I’d earned my wings with the Orbital Patrol. It’s probably not surprising, then, that we bonded so quickly, having met shortly after I was promoted to captain and seconded to UNSA.

  “Mmm?” The chimpanzee raised a brow as he regarded me, momentarily confused. “Oh, still with your craft, I imagine. Now, I can install an interlink for you as well while I’m at it, which should help streamline your conversation considerably.” The chimpanzee gestured apologetically at the table, an expression of distaste momentarily twisting his expression.

  Before I could ask about the state of Amelia and the others, a new voice sounded. But this one issued not from the table, but from a point somewhere at the far side of the room.

  “Allow the man a moment to acclimate, if you would, Maruti. He’s only just arrived, after all.”

  Padding around the scattered chairs came a lithe shape. It resembled a lion, easily 50 percent larger than life size, but surmounted by the hairless head of a man instead of that of a great cat. It approached silently, its footfalls not making a sound, and as it drew nearer, I realized that it was not entirely opaque, the vague outlines of furniture or the glimmers of lights visible through its body.

  The lion-thing rounded the table silently and lay down on the mirrored floor, its forepaws crossed in front, regarding me serenely.

  “Captain Ramachandra Jason Stone,” it said, the voice issuing from the supple lips of the man-head. “We are the Voice of the Plenum. We welcome you to the present, and to the Human Entelechy.”

  FIVE

  The man-lion turned to address the one-eyed Amazon. “We have examined the derelict craft as you requested, Chief Executive Zel, and our constituent elements/agents have completed their analysis. Thermoluminescence dating of the ceramics in the craft place its age at some twelve millennia, dating from the Information Age. As near as we have been able to determine, a micrometeorite impacted the craft early in its voyage, penetrating the self-healing hull and damaging the ship’s onboard navigation systems. Caught in a recursive loop, the primitive silicon proto-intelligence never initiated the command to wake the crew from their cryogenic slumber.”

  “Ha!” The chimpanzee clapped his hands together, hopping up and down. “I knew he was legitimate!”

  The woman scowled, unconvinced. “It is all too convenient, if you ask me. No gift this welcome should go unexamined.”

  The chimpanzee began to pace, waving his hands excitedly, his cravat coming all undone. “Let me clean him up, get him fitted with an interlink, and we can call a meeting. With him on our side, we’re sure to get the donors we need for the Further fund, and then we’ll be on our way.”

  The man-lion shook its enormous, hairless head. “As we have said, Maruti, Captain Stone should be given some time to acclimate to his new surroundings before being asked to make any decisions of lasting consequence.”

  “Very well.” The voice of the chimpanzee sounded impatient, but he shrugged casually. “Though, why anyone would object to basic medical treatments is beyond me.” The chimpanzee turned to the Amazon. “Now, Zel, about the donors…”

  The man-lion made a rumbling noise, interrupting.

  “Look,” I said, looking from one unlikely creature to another, “I want some answers…”

  The man-lion raised a paw in a casual gesture, one I instantly recognized as a request for me to wait.

  “Physician Maruti and Chief Executive Zel, we can see that you wish to discuss plans and strategies relating to your fund. If we might offer our services, the Plenum is prepared to take temporary charge of Captain Stone, until such time as he’s able to make informed decisions for himself.”

  The Amazon reached up and tapped the surface of her sapphire-colored eye patch thoughtfully. “I’m of a mind to keep him here, on the Pethesilean habitat, until I work out what to do with him.”

  “We’re certain that the chief executive of Pethesilea requires no lesson in Entelechy law,” the man-lion said gently, “but we’ll remind you that, unless it can be proven that Captain Stone is not, in fact, sentient, he has the same inalienable rights as any citizen of the Entelechy, including the ability to move freely. If he were to be detained against his will, when he has done nothing to invite reprisal, then you would be abridging his rights and would run the risk of inviting censure. Persist, and perhaps your entire culture might be put on probation, your threshold temporarily isolated by the Consensus.”

  The Amazon sighed deeply and regarded me warily with her one eye.

  “So what are you saying, Voice?” she said, turning to the man-lion. “Are we just to let
the caveman go wandering alone through the worlds?”

  The man-lion inclined his enormous head for an instant, eyes lidded. “Anticipating this need,” he said, “we have spawned an agent to act as Captain Stone’s escort.”

  The Amazon was thoughtful for a long moment and then glanced at the chimpanzee, who only grinned and shrugged.

  “The Plenum will keep an eye on him, then?” she asked, turning back to the man-lion.

  “The escort will be the captain’s constant companion,” the man-lion answered.

  “He can go, in that case,” she said, “but we will likely need him back before too much time has passed.”

  The man-lion smiled, a somewhat unsettling sight, and nodded. “One is always free to ask.”

  “Look,” I said, growing agitated, “what about my crew?”

  The man-lion turned his eyes to me, a sad expression on his wide face. “We regret to inform you that all, sadly, are dead. You, Captain Stone, are the only survivor.”

  “But one of them is not yet fully decayed, correct?” The chimpanzee steepled his fingers, looking from the man-lion to the Amazon. “I wouldn’t mind taking a look at her remains. Might be something there I can use.”

  I was numb. Amelia, Gastuvas, Beatriz, the others—all dead? And the chimpanzee thought he might find some…use…for their remains?

  I started to object, but a raised paw and a sharp look from the man-lion silenced me. “If Chief Executive Zel has no objections, the Plenum certainly does not.”

  The Amazon, for her part, simply shrugged uninterestedly. She turned and began walking away.

  The chimpanzee clapped eagerly and smiled in my direction. “A pleasure meeting you,” his voice sounded from the table as the chimpanzee gamboled away after the Amazon. “I hope to see you again soon.”

  As the chimpanzee caught up with the Amazon and began speaking to her in hushed tones, the table continued translating his words.

  “I’m telling you, Zel, we should associate ourselves with Stone’s return as quickly as possible, before interest in him has dissipated.”

  I turned back toward the man-lion, who rose to his feet and said, “The escort approaches.”

  In the darkness of the room something metallic glinted, and a silver eagle appeared, gliding overhead.

  It passed less than a meter from me, and I could see that it was a perfect reproduction of a raptor in highly reflective, supple metal, like a model cast in mercury. It curved in a wide arc, flapped its wings once, and before I could react, landed on my shoulder, its talons gripping the fabric of the robe. Though it was easily half a meter tall, I could scarcely feel any weight pressing down on me.

  “Captain Stone,” issued the voice from the open beak in perfect English. “I am to be your escort for as long as you desire. I will act as your guide and translator while you become accustomed to the worlds and cultures of the Human Entelechy.”

  The man-lion turned its wide face toward me, smiled, and nodded. Then, without another word, it vanished.

  “I believe, Captain Stone,” said the silver eagle in my ear, “that we have been dismissed.”

  SIX

  “Shall we go, Captain Stone?” asked the silver eagle.

  “What…?” I took a step away from the table, turning in a full circle. The Amazon and the chimpanzee were now nearing the far wall, passing through an exit and out of sight. “What just happened here?”

  “I’m afraid that I can’t say with any precision, sir, since I was born only as the conversation neared its end, but from what I have gathered, there was some discussion about your origins, and about that of your craft.”

  I hated that I’d done nothing since first opening my eyes but ask questions, none of the answers to which had yet been anything like satisfying, but I found that I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Where the hell am I? What year is this?”

  “We’re currently in the artificial habitat of Pethesilea, home of the culture of the same name, in orbit around the star known in your era as Beta Pavonis, located nineteen-point-nine light-years from Sol. As for the year, it is presently T8975.”

  “Right, right,” I said impatiently, “that’s what the dog-man said, but what the hell does that mean?”

  “Records of the intervening epochs are somewhat irregular, but in rough terms, a period of some twelve thousand years has passed since your craft left the Sol system.”

  An enormous hole opened up in my mind, and anything like the ability to reason plummeted out of view.

  “Twelve. Thousand. Years?”

  “Standard years, sir, defined as three hundred and sixty-five standard days long. And each day being a single rotation of Original Earth in respect to Sol, or more specifically, as the duration of 7.93342121751 x 10^14 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-one-thirty-three atom at rest at a temperature of zero K. Except for the last day of the year, of course, which is twenty-five percent longer than the rest.”

  “Twelve thousand?”

  “You shouldn’t be surprised that the units of day and year with which you’re familiar have been retained. A diurnal, annual tempo has found to be beneficial for all Earth-derived biologicals. I’m afraid that the base-sixty increments of your era, though—holdovers from the Babylonian culture of a few millennia earlier—have been abandoned, so you’ll have to adjust to a percentage-based system of timekeeping.”

  “Forget the calendar!” I snapped. “I’m having an existential crisis, here!”

  “Sir?” Concern sounded in the voice of the escort, laced with confusion.

  “I’ve slept for twelve millennia, my crew is dead, and I’m talking to a robot bird!”

  “Yes, sir.” The escort bobbed its beak in a nod. “Perhaps we should return now to Earth, and to quarters that have been—”

  “Earth? Now?”

  “Of course, sir, if you’ll just—”

  “But you just said we’re twenty light-years from Sol.”

  “Nineteen-point-nine, to be precise, but near enough, yes.”

  “And we’re going to just…?” I waved my hands suggestively, though suggestive of what I’m not certain.

  “Walk there,” the escort finished for me.

  “Walk there?”

  “Yes, sir. If you’ll follow me.”

  The silver eagle bunched for a brief moment and then launched into the air, taking wing. “This way, Captain Stone,” it called back, tucking its beak over its shoulder.

  It winged toward the wall, opposite the direction the chimpanzee and the Amazon had gone. I followed as quickly as I could, my bare feet sliding on the smooth floor.

  “I should warn you, though, sir, that Earth isn’t quite the world you remember.”

  We approached a doorway surrounded by a large, silvery frame. I felt a faint breeze rustling the hem of my robe as we neared, and suppressed a shiver.

  The eagle landed gracefully just short of the doorway. Though the light in the room was dim, bright light shone in the space beyond.

  “To clarify,” the escort said, turning its silver eyes to me, “your preferred language is Information Age English, is it not?”

  No more than I could resist the urge to namaste the chimpanzee could I keep from giving the same answer I’d always given to questions about my “native” language.

  “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”

  The escort cocked its head to one side, regarding me silently for a moment. “Sir?”

  I sighed. “Look, I speak English, Hindi, Kannada, and Amharic, and I’m also familiar with the programming language Relational Q-Two, if you want to try that out on me, but English is what I’ve always spoken at home.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The escort turned back to the door and then waddled forward, side to side, passing through to the other side—on the ground not nearly the elegant figure it was in midair.


  “Wait a minute,” I said, calling after it. “Where are we…?”

  I followed the silver eagle through the doorway and found myself not in the corridor I’d expected, but somewhere else entirely.

  SEVEN

  When I was in secondary school and should have been studying, I spent a lot of time in the Pentaverse. A network of five multiply connected virtual worlds accessible through the Internet, it was an experiment in artificial life, and I’m sure researchers somewhere were getting a lot out of it, but for kids like me, it was just the best game going.

  The hub of the Pentaverse was called Ein Sof, from which each of the five worlds could be accessed through portals called “gates.” Users could navigate their virtual avatars, or “alters,” from one world to another, though some objects and attributes didn’t translate into all of the worlds and were cached by the operating system in Ein Sof until the alter returned.

  I ran the same alter for two and a half years, which translated to centuries of subjective game time, but I still was never able to keep straight which of the countless classes of objects didn’t translate, so I was forever crossing the gate into a high-technology world like Beriah, only to find that the cloak of protection I’d been wearing in a high-magic world like Kadmon had been cached in Ein Sof, and my alter was left standing stark naked. The VR rig I owned carried a sensory channel, and I can still remember the gooseflesh feel of a chill Beriah breeze blowing across my alter’s bare backside.

  Maybe it was the thin robe I was wearing, with nothing underneath, but something about stepping through that doorway after the escort reminded me of nothing so much as the gates of the Pentaverse. So much so that my right hand involuntarily curved into the control gesture to call up an alter’s inventory, to see what I’d left behind in the last world.

  I’d thought that the domed chamber I’d just left had been enormous, but you could have fit a hundred of it into the space in which we now stood, or even a thousand. Immense, as a description, simply doesn’t do it justice. I was reminded of the architecture of old 20C metropolitan train stations, like Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, which I’d only ever seen in movies, but on a much grander scale. The ceiling was impossibly high, and the walls on either side almost too distant to see.