The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  Darak cocked one eyebrow and glared. “No, He didn’t. He intentionally destroyed hundreds of billions of cognitive beings just like us. He could have moved them, or us, or waited for a better opportunity to catch me. He could have, but He didn’t. And here you are, thanking Him for your escape?”

  Chastised, Stralasi muttered, “It’s just an expression.”

  Darak’s face softened. “We were lucky this time. You were practically insubstantial in this universe when the shock front hit and, even though Alum figured out some of my abilities, He underestimated me. We won’t be so lucky next time.”

  “I’m grateful to you,” Stralasi offered contritely. “You said He might’ve recognized you. Do you know each other?”

  “I once cooperated with Alum on some projects but that was a very long time ago. I don’t look the same as I did back then, and I don’t respond to any of my old identity codes. I would’ve thought that after so many millions of years my name would no longer mean anything to him. The Realm is full of names.”

  “So you didn’t always oppose His wishes?” Stralasi asked.

  Darak eyed him for any antagonistic intent, but the gentle sincerity in the Good Brother’s voice and gaze won him over. It reminded the traveller of simpler times, and he eased back.

  “No, our relationship has been long and complex,” he explained. “At times, we were mortal enemies and, at other times, allies. But the Aelu changed that forever.”

  “The war?” Stralasi asked.

  “Yes, and given today’s events, it looks like He’s as ruthless as ever.”

  Stralasi barely heard. The cumulative weight of such enormous loss—three glorious suns, three ringworlds, and billions of conscious souls—along with irrefutable dark revelations about his beloved Alum, overwhelmed the monk and his head sank in sorrow.

  Is there nothing to be salvaged from such tragedy and loss?—he wondered. He could imagine no coming back from this day; all he could do was place his trust in Darak.

  Darak stood and brushed the dirt from his hands. He put on an optimistic face so they could both begin to move forward. “On the bright side, I now have a pretty good idea where the thing I’m looking for is,” he announced.

  “I hope it’s worth it, that thing you’re looking for.”

  “So do I,” Darak replied. “It was once known as the Eater. You might have encountered the legends about it in your studies. If my hypothesis is right, it may hold something dear to me and vital to our quest.”

  “Well, we might as well get started,” Stralasi said. “Lead the way.”

  9

  MEGABIT BY SLUGGISH MEGABIT, Darya returned to her trueself.

  The ancient, unused broadband transmission channel had been excruciatingly slow but it was reliable, even after millennia without servicing.

  She activated passive visual sensors and braced herself for action. Who knows what I’ll find outside?

  The recharging station crater was illuminated by the diffuse light of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way. It was never truly dark in this region. At the moment, the dim light suited her fine. She was grateful she didn’t need to activate her radar.

  Darya had docked in her usual position near the rim of the deep depression in the asteroid surface. She didn’t want to be shut in, considering the Lysrandia fiasco and her narrow escape from Tertius. When she’d landed, other Cybrids had been recharging nearby while enjoying their favorite inworld entertainments. The crater could hold almost twenty thousand docked Cybrids at a time.

  How many of their minds are trapped in Alternus?—she wondered.

  The popularity and high capacity of this recharging station was one of the reasons Darya had selected it for the first installation of Alternus. It guaranteed a steady supply of potential new recruits to the cause. Her concepta virus continuously sifted through the candidates and identified the most pliable.

  She’d understated the strength of the virus code to Mary. She didn’t outright lie, she just didn’t reveal its full capabilities. So far, she’d used it only to insinuate increased openness, a willingness to consider anti-Alum messages, into the minds of the several million local Cybrids. She also neglected to mention how easy it would be to activate more aggressive and invasive features.

  If only it was that easy to find Timothy.

  By now, Timothy would have taken up residence inside Gerhardt’s emptied Concepta-Persona Processing Unit—his CPPU.

  Gerhardt won’t need it again. She bit back bitter virtual tears as she remembered her friend and thought of how horribly he had died.

  Once Timothy and Mary are safe, Trillian will pay—she vowed. She hoped Qiwei and Leisha had found their own ways out, or that they were laying low somewhere in Alternus.

  Darya did nothing but watch for thirty minutes. There should be more traffic—she thought. At least one Cybrid leaving or arriving every few minutes. Since she’d woken up in her body, not a single Cybrid had moved and she hadn’t heard any navigation pings.

  Trillian may have forbidden anyone to leave the local inworlds, maybe even ordered the Supervisors to lock everyone in place wherever they happened to be, not only those visiting Alternus. But that shouldn’t have stopped the steady stream of new arrivals to the recharging station. Darya spied a number of vacant bays ready to accept a Cybrid in search of electricity for their internal batteries. There were even a few mercury/anti-mercury propellant filling stations available.

  Something is turning new arrivals away. Darya turned her attention outward to the space high above the crater. She didn’t dare use active radar; she broadened the range of her passive sensors across the electromagnetic spectrum and boosted sensitivity to the maximum.

  It took another thirty minutes to confirm her suspicions. A careful comparison of sequential images of the sky taken minutes apart showed Securitors hovering thirty kilometers above.

  Great. Now I have two problems: finding Timothy, and getting out of this crater without being noticed. Okay, one problem at a time. Timothy first.

  She had a good hunch about where she could find Timothy, now in Gerhardt’s trueself body. Gerhardt always sought a position close to the center, in the densest groupings where his anonymity would be enhanced by sheer numbers.

  Now, how to search for him without attracting unwanted Securitor attention? Identity transponders responded to requests automatically. All she needed to do was ping everyone in the bottom portion of the crater until Gerhardt’s trueself responded. She could do that without moving.

  Darya carefully aimed a practically invisible communications laser at the Cybrid closest to the crater’s center, and moved it systematically outward in a widening spiral, requesting an identification number from each Cybrid contacted. She kept a nervous eye on the Securitors above, looking for any sign they’d picked up her signal. Long minutes passed as she tagged one Cybrid after another.

  I know you’re here, Gerhardt/Timothy. Come on, where are you?

  A Securitor rocketed into position a couple hundred meters above her. She shut off the laser. Probably caught some reflective glints of coherent light bouncing off the Cybrid sensors or some floating asteroid dust. They could easily trace the source back to her general area. Hopefully, they couldn’t pinpoint its origin to her. She ran a check of her active sensors, ensuring she’d appear inert to outside observers.

  The first Securitor was joined by another.

  Darya shut down everything except a few external cameras. Oh, oh! Move along. Please.

  The Securitors moved lower and surveyed the recharging Cybrids below for signs of activity.

  She withdrew control from her sensors and manipulators to make sure she wouldn’t unconsciously adjust them. She shrank inside herself, limiting the remaining contact with the outside world to three sensors with fixed focus and direction. She slowed her thoughts to a glacial pace so her spintronic activity couldn’t cause any unexpected power surges that might be detectable. Nothing to see here, guys. Nothing at all.


  The Securitors passed over and moved outward.

  Darya released an inner sigh of relief. She waited a few more minutes for the Securitors to return to their previous lofty positions.

  She didn’t dare resume searching for Gerhardt/Timothy by direct laser probing.

  Maybe the Securitors weren’t sure of their perceptions, or couldn’t trace the reflected glints from the laser directly to me, but I imagine they’ll respond with force if they see any more coherent light sparkles. Alright, so no more long range bursts; I don’t want them destroying a few thousand Cybrids to eliminate one possibly active unit.

  Darya loaded a simple version of her concepta virus and transmitted it by laser to her nearest neighbors, targeting their sensors with utmost care and precision. It was risky. She carefully computed transmission paths so accidentally reflected light would avoid detection by the hovering Securitors.

  On reaching the nearest Cybrids, the virus loaded a copy of itself and bounced via direct laser link to the hosts’ nearest neighbors. It was a lot easier to infect her colleagues’ empty brains while their personas were locked inworld, unable to return.

  In addition to the ID-number query, the virus requested each recipient’s location in a grid she’d overlaid on the crater floor. An expanding net search will be a lot slower than a direct approach, but harder to trace back to me.

  She sent the virus to the twenty nearest Cybrids and shut down her laser. The probe will have to build its own network as it works its way through the crater. Eventually, an answer would find its way back to her.

  The query expanded outward from her position. Within a dozen minutes, she had a location for Gerhardt/Timothy.

  She couldn’t move without attracting Securitor attention but, provided she was careful, she could transmit a Partial persona directly to him without too much risk.

  She loaded some Cybrid routines for the operating system and essential knowledge into the Partial.

  What else? She added some interactive routines, so he’d be able to ask questions. The entire package was no larger than a few thousand gigabytes.

  Here we go! She squirted it to Gerhardt/Timothy’s receiver window along a weak and narrow pulsed beam.

  * * *

  Darya’s Partial assembled herself into consciousness in the standard new-Cybrid environment, an empty gray room with windows looking out into the dark crater of the recharging station.

  Timothy stood at the largest window, hands crossed behind him, staring out in fascination. Darya cleared her throat.

  “Darya! There you are!”

  “I’m sorry to keep you waiting so long,” she said. “It’s dangerous out there right now. I had to exercise more caution than normal.”

  “No problem at all. This is terribly interesting, even when not much is happening. The scenery is starkly beautiful and the stars are magnificent. Never before have I laid eyes on such a clear night.”

  Darya followed his gaze. Down here, near the deepest part of the crater, the light cast dramatic shadows. The natural features of the crater had been formed long ago, leaving large, flat expanses, now pocked with recharging bowls. The plane before them was covered with evenly-spaced, polished spheres. It was one of the least inspiring scenes she could imagine. If it weren’t for the glorious stars above, the view would have been depressing.

  “So, when do we go outside?”

  “Pardon me?”

  Timothy repeated, “When do we go outside?” He scanned the room. “I don’t see any doorway; I presume it’s well disguised.” His brows furrowed. “How did you get in?”

  Oh, this isn’t going to be easy. Darya surveyed the “room” in which she’d materialized. It had been a while since she’d introduced a neophyte into the Cybrid world. She’d nearly forgotten about this drab, default environment that introduced new instantiations to their trueself bodies.

  How shall I begin?

  “Actually, there is no door. This isn’t really a room. It’s just represented that way to help people get used to their new bodies. We call it the Initialization Environment.”

  Timothy’s eyes swept from one end of the gray chamber to the other. “Are you sure? It looks like a room.”

  “Yes, it does but, trust me, it’s just a convenient virtual representation of your new body to your persona, the program that makes up who you are.”

  “I trust you implicitly, Darya. But it’s difficult to ignore what my senses are telling me.”

  “I know. For the moment, your perception routines lack the basic operating system code to connect your persona with your external sensors. So, you see this room instead. I can fix that.” Darya pulled some crystalline chips from a pocket.

  “What are those?”

  “They’re algorithms, programs that will allow you to properly integrate with your body. I copied the essentials from my own operating system software so you’ll have access to all your senses, manipulators, propulsors, and so on. These will provide you with all the basic knowledge you need for life as one of us.”

  “Will I need to study it all, like reading a lot of books?”

  “No, it’s more direct than that. When I integrate these into your concepta, you’ll simply know things, new things. Many of these will contradict what you think you know now. It could come as quite a shock.”

  “New York was quite a shock, as was experiencing conscious thought for the first time.”

  Darya laughed. “I’m sure. In many ways, this will be similar. When your full persona came into being, it already had an underlying concepta structure, a foundation of knowledge and beliefs. Sadly, most of your Casa DonTon knowledge base won’t be relevant to your Cybrid life.

  “Normally, new Cybrid personas are instantiated from Partials that have grown up in a simulation very much like the real universe. It makes the change easier for us than it will be for you. I’m sorry that we won’t have time to make that interim transition for you.”

  “Couldn’t you just tell me how things really are? Wouldn’t that make it less of a shock?”

  “If we had more time, I’d be happy to introduce you to the real universe gradually, to give you a chance to get used to things in a proper simulation. But we don’t. Mary’s still trapped inworld along with millions of others, I suspect. And the Securitors are watching over the recharging station. I think Alum has decided He’s had about enough of our little Resistance.”

  “Can you at least tell me what the world is like out there?”

  Darya walked to Timothy’s side and directed his gaze out the window. “Do you see those large, gray, spherical bodies out there?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s what you look like now.”

  His eyes widened. “I’m a gray boulder?”

  Darya suppressed her amusement. “They aren’t boulders; they’re fellow Cybrids. We’re synthetic beings, machines built of metal, composite and semiconductor, designed to operate in the hard vacuum of space. We don’t need to breathe, we don’t need gravity, we can tolerate high radiation, and we eat electricity. But we are still people. Our mental structures are based on the human mind. With many enhancements, but inside we’re essentially human.”

  “So, when you enter those algo..thisms…?”

  “Algorithms.”

  “Algorithms. What happens? Does this bare room convert into a fancy control room or something like a ship’s bridge, complete with levers and a steering wheel?”

  “No, not exactly,” Darya laughed. “Once the O/S is loaded, you will become your body. You will see the universe through your new senses. You’ll use your propulsion systems for moving around, and you’ll have many appendages for manipulating objects. It’ll seem strange at first, but I think you’ll enjoy it. The Cybrid body is designed and constructed to be much more capable than the naturally-evolved human one.”

  “I don’t understand. I feel like I always did. Obviously, I am a man, a human. You tell me I’m not, that I’m one of those…things out there, and you a
re too. What am I, really?”

  How do I explain to the man that he no longer has a human body? Not that he ever really did. He only thought he did.

  “Perhaps the easiest way to explain your present state, your true nature, is to tell you about the homunculus. Are you familiar with that concept?

  “It is said that ancient humans once believed there was a little person living inside everybody’s brain, a being they called the homunculus. They believed it comprised the human soul, or consciousness, and it pulled the levers that made the body move, learned, remembered the body’s experiences, and made choices for its host. They believed that little person inside—the homunculus, the human soul—was the real person.

  “But, of course, there is no little person inside the body. Not in Cybrids and not in humans. Sometimes the concept is useful to help introduce new Fulls to the real world, but it’s an illusion. Neither Cybrids nor humans have a little person inside; there is no soul.”

  As she explained, she had to wonder—Is it intentional, the way we all start in a room like this? Some subtle hint to Cybrids that perhaps we do have souls? That we are somehow more than we appear? Or maybe it’s intended to be a promise; if you live right and follow Alum’s Way, you could be granted a soul. No, that’s ridiculous nonsense. Superstition.

  “A person is ephemeral, just not in the sense used by ancient philosophers and theologies. A person is an emergent phenomenon of their conceptual data structures, their knowledge and beliefs. That, plus their personas, their memories and preferences. The concepta and persona that make up a person are simply giant collections of data structures—labelled nodes, weighted arcs, directed graphs, and such—and neural nets grounded to real-world data.

  “There is no single point in a body one could point to and accurately state, ‘Ah, there you are; there is the essence of you.’ The brain or the CPPU is the best we can do.”

  Timothy massaged his forehead. He was trying to follow along, but her explanation seemed so unbelievable.

  “So, we’re not really standing here in this room. The room doesn’t exist in the real world, and neither do I. I’m merely a data structure inside Gerhardt’s CPPU. Is that what you’re saying? Funny, I feel like so much more.”