Infinity's End

by Jonathan Strahan

  A door opened, and Anander laughed with delighted surprise.

  “Ojami!”

  She came crabwalking across the dirt floor, supported by the limbs of her waldosuit. She laughed at Anander’s astonishment. Her blind eyes, hidden by the black polymer of a cybervisor, swung toward him.

  “Hello, Anander. How was your trip?”

  He touched her shriveled hand. “Long, wasteful, and to all appearances, fruitless. What are you doing all the way out here? We thought you were on Oberon.”

  “Yes, that’s what I told InterOrbital. Got my travel clearance and said my goodbyes. And then I hacked the pilot, hooked around Uranus, and flew straight here. For five Terran years I’ve been living in this hole. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  She tipped her head, ever so slightly. The waldo-suit lifted a carburized limb, waving him toward the far end of the room. Anander’s ‘tome kicked in, heightening his attention. He focused on Ojami’s face. She had no control of her body, hence no body language, but to his heightened perception, the smallest twitch of her cheek was revealing. There was urgency in her manner, he noted. She behaved as if she were on a strict schedule.

  “They must be going frantic back in Operations,” Anander said as he followed her ticking, clicking waldosuit across the room. “You were the best Visualizer they had.”

  “And you were Outreach’s ultimate smooth talker.” Ojami grinned, her facial expressions eerily disconnected from her movements. Her voice, like her body, was a cyborg enhancement, independent of the movements of her lips. Still, it sounded very much like real speech. “That’s why we’re both out here, Anander. We’re both the best at what we do.” She added after a moment, “Anyway, Visualizers don’t get frantic. We just switch to a different perspective.”

  Ojami steered her waldosuit through the open hatch of the media capsule. An import from the inworlds, the machine had been crudely lodged in the contours of Warren’s natural rock. Anander followed Ojami inside. With the hatch shut, the outside world dimmed. They were in the immanent realm of infospace.

  “I’ve been promised a presentation,” Anander said as the walls filled with stochastic fog. “Are you the one who’s going to give it?”

  Ojami smiled in answer. In the foggy walls, an image coalesced. Printed paper, lines and dots. A scan of the Darklings’ sacred document.

  “The Darklings summoned me eight years ago.” Ojami’s face moved as if tracking images. The walls filled with assorted graphics: chemical equations, orbital paths, charts of the solar system, graphs and tables. “They needed my help to answer a question. I assume you know what that question was.”

  “They wanted you to determine,” Anander said, “whether or not human beings were living in the Kuiper Belt.” He didn’t wait for Ojami to confirm his guess; he could read confirmation in the set of her lips. “And you told them no, I’m sure.” Anander turned in place, admiring the panoramic collage.

  Ojami’s face, aided by the pneumatics of her suit, swung side to side, reviewing the chamber’s riot of images. Now it swung to him.

  “I told them I would think about it.” She twitched a cyborg limb at the surrounding pictures, causing one to expand. A field of dots: rows upon rows. “The Darklings showed you their data?”

  “They showed me a kind of sacred scroll.” Anander shook his head, amazed they were discussing this. Two of InterOrbital’s greatest minds, chasing snatches of local folklore. “Like sheet music. That’s what it resembled.”

  “They’ve been collecting that information for decades. Studying the icy bodies in the belt. The document you saw is highly refined, something of a triumph of signals processing. You’re not wrong to compare it to sheet music. Basically, it’s a record of subtle, unexplained orbital perturbations. Unexpected shifts in the movements of the rocks.”

  Ojami swept aside the Darkling document, drawing forward an animated model of a section of the Kuiper Belt. Tiny dots moved in stately arcs, a model of orbital mechanics.

  “The belt is a giant chaotic system,” Ojami said. “Easy to model at a small level, highly complex at a macro level. Since the q-com revolution, we’ve had the computational resources to track and model its behavior with very high accuracy. That’s what the Darklings have been doing. They watch the rocks, they track the movements, they feed the data into local storage. The core of this habitat is essentially a giant, superdense supercomputer.”

  “As with all Darkling habitats,” Anander said. “I know their ways.”

  Ojami’s waldosuit flexed and settled. “The point is, we don’t expect to see a lot of wacky, wild behavior out there—just as you don’t expect to see billiard balls wiggling and jumping around a pool table. If we do, it’s worth investigating. Even if the anomalies are quite subtle.”

  “How subtle are we talking?” Anander asked.

  Ojami’s waldosuit raised a claw. It took Anander at least three seconds. Then his heightened powers of attention kicked in. He saw that her claw—ever so slightly—was twitching.

  “Just striking enough to be noticeable,” Ojami said. “Of course, we’re talking about a cosmic perspective. But once you know what to look for, the phenomenon begs for explication. The rocks out there aren’t following the patterns we expect. Rotations, revolutions—they’re all jittering in a very strange manner. Those thousands of icy lumps? They’re moving, Anander. Flying. When we graph the orbits, we don’t see lines. We see very complicated waveforms.”

  “Like strings,” Anander said, “plucked and vibrating.” He immediately shook his head. “But that’s silly. I mean, it’s silly to speculate about people living out there. There must be some large mass—some big rock, some undiscovered planet—exerting a gravitational pull, throwing off the calculations.”

  Ojami shook her head. “A hidden planet, just rolling along? Completely hidden from our sensors? C’mon. We’ve charted the place; we’ve mapped the big players. I don’t know if you appreciate how fantastically delicate the sensors are.”

  “Could radiation produce this effect?” Anander asked. “Some kind of space dust? Isn’t there a phenomenon whereby the energy from the sun—?”

  “The heliospheric current,” Ojami interjected.

  “Yes, yes. Isn’t there a place where it hits the background cosmic radiation, creates a kind of electromagnetic storm—?”

  “You’re thinking of the termination shock. All these phenomena have been thoroughly studied. And accounted for. Anander.” She laid a mechanical claw on his arm. “This is why the Darklings called me here. Me, in particular. Do you understand?”

  Anander’s mind lurched into a higher state of concentration, analyzing the social aspects of the situation. Ojami was the solar system’s most accomplished Visualizer. Her brain’s connectome, like his, had been modified for specialized functions. In contrast to his, Ojami’s had been fine-tuned for advanced mathematical analysis. Neural systems that normally processed vision, motion, sound, had been rewired, harnessed, to enable superhuman feats of spatial rotation, Fourier analysis, hyperbolic geometry... Inside her head, Ojami saw math, felt math, heard math in a way Anander could never understand.

  The Visualizers served InterOrbital as an elite caste of advisors, interpreting the output of the government’s cyber-oracles. For a Visualizer of Ojami’s status to embark on a frivolous ghost chase, out here on the empty frontier—

  “It’s madness,” Anander said. “An interesting anomaly, yes. An intriguing mathematical mystery. But there simply can’t be human life in the K-Belt. Not under current conditions.”

  “That,” said Ojami, “is what I’ve been trying to determine.”

  She scuttled across the small floor. The media capsule—attuned, like Ojami’s cyborg supplements, to subtle changes within her brain—recomposed its scattered collage, bringing to prominence a set of graphs and tables. They combined, collapsing into a web of linked values. The whole intricate jumble began to flex and evolve, changing according to some set of internal rules, rotated
perhaps through the planes of higher dimensions—

  It was a mathematical structure far beyond Anander’s comprehension. He gave up trying to understand what he was seeing and simply waited for Ojami’s explanation.

  “You know,” she said, her cyber-voice blurred by the effort of concentration, “the K-Belt was settled...once upon a time...”

  “By the Ascetic sects, yes.” Anander nodded. It had taken place many thousands of years ago. Early colonists—a small and eccentric group of trans-faith mystics, inspired by a potent blend of French philosophy and Buddhist doctrine—had fled the riotous affairs of the inner planets to pursue a life of monkish meditation far from the reach of civilization. In the crude ships of the day, they had journeyed into the dust and dark of the outer orbits—and vanished. Within a century, all communications had ceased. The Virtual Wars had drawn attention from their plight. By the time anyone thought to mount a search, all trace of the Ascetic colonists had vanished. Not even the hulks of their ships were found.

  “They died,” Anander said, “and drifted off. They’re gone.”

  “Or,” said Ojami, “they’re not.”

  There had always been rumors. Tales, popular romances, stubborn crackpots insisting that the Kuiper colonists had somehow survived. Only the Darklings took those old stories seriously.

  And, apparently, the mathematical genius at Anander’s side.

  “They’d have to have constructed a large-scale habitat,” Anander said. “They’d be running reactors. There’d be a radiation signature. We’d have detected it.”

  “A moment ago,” Ojami said, “you were prepared to believe in undiscovered planets.”

  “And you were right; it was a ridiculous notion. But dead planets don’t draw attention. Human habitations do.”

  “You forget,” Ojami said, “we’re talking about a group of Ascetics. People who devote their lives to minimizing their energy use. Which is why they flew out there in the first place.”

  “They still have to live. Unless you mean to suggest...” Anander’s scalp tingled. “You think they’ve solved the simulation problem?”

  Ojami’s face went eerily still; even with his upgraded attention, Anander found it hard to read her expression. “There are a lot of ways to limit resource consumption,” she said. “You don’t necessarily need to scan your brain into a chunk of silicon. Ancient yogis got pretty far with nothing more than mental discipline. Meditation, Anander. No technological aids, no genetic tailoring. Just practice.”

  “Even yogis can’t survive in a vacuum.”

  “I’ve been running the numbers,” Ojami went on. “Taking what we know of metabolic processes, mental states, thermodynamics. It might be possible, with the right modifications...” Her crabsuit clicked. “Of course, what we’re talking about would scarcely be recognizable as human. But it would be embodied. It would think like a human. Dream like a human. At a very, very sluggish pace.”

  “You’re talking about hibernating,” Anander said.

  “I’m talking about human modification. Maximizing the efficiency of thought.”

  “Meditating.” Anander laughed. “You might as well freeze yourself.”

  “Freezing is a fast and catastrophically destructive process. This would be like gradually slowing down. Slower and slower, over the millennia. Evolving toward a lower entropic boundary.”

  “Brains in ice cubes.” Anander shook his head.

  He stared into the depths of Ojami’s model. The nodes of his connectome twitched, settling into new patterns of fixation. In the giddy vertigo of a eureka moment, Anander suddenly saw it, the vision Ojami had limned. Brains on ice, refined and reduced, purged of every buzzing distraction. The superfluities of life stripped away, consciousness’s noisy symphony pared to a five-note leitmotif. What Buddhists called the “monkey mind”—screeching, chattering—would have been scientifically tranquilized.

  He could almost believe in them, these orbiting souls, each gripped, dreaming, in a fist of ice.

  Reality smashed the fantasy.

  “But why the perturbations? Even if they’re out there, chasing Nirvana on ice—why not just float in peace?”

  Ojami’s waldosuit flexed. “It wouldn’t break the energy bank to produce the movements we’re seeing. Superconcentrated gases, microreactors, crystalline assemblers...With the right techniques, the right computers, a whole heaping lot of patience...”

  “Yes, but why? If everything you say is true—tiny hibernating scraps of humanity, wheeling in the sky, sketching waves with chunks of water crystal—why create this peculiar display?”

  “For the answer to that,” Ojami said, “you’ll have to continue your tour.”

  The interview was over. Ojami had told him all she could. Her crab limbs gestured. The hatch to the media capsule opened. Anander stepped out into the mob of waiting Darklings.

  “IT’S AN INTRIGUING theory, certainly,” Anander said to Maximilian, “but it doesn’t make much sense.”

  They were in another tunnel of the Darkling habitat, this one steeply sloped. Anander and his secretaid scrambled up a series of sculpted handholds, the Darklings bustling and scrabbling around them.

  “Do you think she bungled her calculations?” Maximilian paused to wipe sweat from his eyes.

  “Ojami make an error?” Anander laughed. “No, I trust her math. As far as I’m concerned, she’s demonstrated that the scenario is possible. But plausible? Probable? I can hardly call off Project Snowfall for a fanciful hypothesis.”

  Anander paused, mopping his hot face. They had been climbing for some time, deeper into the spinning ball of rock. Their bodies were lighter, but the air had grown warmer, almost oppressively hot. The tunnels in this area were heavily trafficked. Every breeze smelt of furry bodies.

  Anander frowned up the rocky passage. Simulated firelight ruddied the walls. “Let’s say the ancient Ascetics pulled it off. Perfected the art of human hibernation, entered a kind of permanent hypersleep. Why would they cause these strange perturbations? It’s silly.”

  “Come, inworlder.” The Darklings plucked his hands, whispering as they stroked him with their furry limbs. “Listen. You will soon understand.”

  They had come to the end of the tunnel. A small, square metal door gleamed in the rock. One of the Darklings pressed a button. The members of the council were eerily silent, and indeed, this whole section of the habitat had a stillness that made Anander feel, too vividly, the weight of the rock around them. He held his breath as the door opened. The Darklings ushered him through.

  The room beyond was a fever dream of applied geometry. Bladelike shapes and angled shadows studded every surface. Anander recoiled from sharp protrusions jutting on all sides. Pyramidal projections thronged the walls, the ceiling, the floor, leaving only a few thin paths where a person could walk. The chamber was enormous, hellish, like the center of a gigantic cheese grater.

  The door shut. Anander realized with a start that he was alone. He saw that the door, too, was crowded on its interior side with spikes. Inquisitive, he touched one. The formation was abrasive, spongy to the touch. It wasn’t sharp. Pliant, rather. Anander suspected it had been fashioned of some kind of mineral wool.

  “Of all the—” He fell silent. His voice sounded dull, dead, without the ring of latent harmonics that ordinarily enriched human speech. At once, Anander realized where he stood. These foamy shapes were baffles, sound dampeners, angled to capture and absorb acoustic waves. The cave was a giant anechoic chamber.

  The instant he understood the room’s function, Anander guessed at its purpose. He turned.

  A man came toward him along the paths.

  The stranger was tall, lithe, almost elfin, with the tiptoe tread and ethereal mien of a person accustomed to low gravity. He made little sound as he approached. In the carefully architected hush of this cave, even a footstep raised no echo. He gestured toward a set of chairs hung from the ceiling.

  They sat, together, swaying slightly, amid field
s of soft spikes, suspended in the supernatural silence.

  “Well,” said the man. The word expired softly on the placid air. He pointed at Anander’s waist. Anander realized that he still held, tucked into his belt, the sacred scroll of the Darklings.

  Anander took out the document and looked again at its rows of dots, arranged like sample points of a wave function. The stranger nodded. “Music,” he said.

  There was a peculiar quality to the man’s voice beyond the unearthly flatness of the air. He spoke with a lilt, not quite singing, but with regular rhythm and definite pitch. His intonation was decoupled from meaning. Though he glided among four pitches in two syllables, lengthening his u into a rich diphthong, Anander couldn’t tell if the man had made a statement or asked a question.

  Looking closer, Anander saw that the man’s ears were plugged. The two black implants weren’t simple inserts, but cyborg structures embedded in the flesh. Wavering between awe and unease, Anander realized he was looking at an Aesthete.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me what this means.” Anander handed over the scroll. The man took it gently, even reverently, but his gaze was abstracted, fixed somewhere on the spike-studded ceiling. Where might he be from, Anander wondered. Titan? Umbriel? Some crazy sky city over Neptune? They did things differently in the gasworld towns. The people, in their cramped habitats, were dreamy, inward-looking. They were connoisseurs of art.

  “Do you... understand... music?” The Aesthete spoke haltingly, accenting his words in strange places. Their hanging chairs had begun to sway and precess, stirred by effects of the rotating habitat, the carbon tethers flexing to smooth the movements. A pleasant effect.

  “Not the way you do, I imagine,” Anander answered.

  The Aesthete’s attention wandered; he seemed to be listening to some mysterious internal tune. Which, of course, he was. He spoke again:

  “The... Darklings brought me here because they say... I understand... music. Years ago they... summoned me. They say I can tell them what this...” His eyes dropped to the scroll, the coded dots. “Means.”