I can't think of anything worse than passing an eternity of time with a trillion other people.
I am already immortal.
I want to die.
There is a lot of work to be done here.
...
"Clearly the Eugene Debs quote is from Tetsuo," said Somn. "Do you want my answer as well?"
"These answers are ridiculous," I said. "If we rounded up all the humans who have these opinions, they wouldn't form a breeding population. People are making shit up. Or else there's some secret that no one will tell me."
"The secret is that your sample is biased," said Somn. "You're asking the wrong people."
"Who else is there?"
"Contact missions are assembled from society's misfits. We all thought something else was important enough to give up our chance to upload. Of course we have strange opinions. You need to ask the people who stayed behind."
"Can't ask them, can I? Not for seventy years. And by then it'll be too late."
"I nearly stayed behind," said Somn. "I'll tell you. We have obligations to family. Obligations to the knowledge and experience of the Constellation as a whole. If everyone uploaded at once, there would be no one left to maintain the Slow People. You ought to first live a full life in this space."
"That's the secret?" I said. "Being sysadmins for the Slow People?"
"This is no secret," said Somn in a huff that didn't make it through the translator. "Tetsuo told you about his parents. He may have talked as though their behavior was strange, but that's because he has bizarre political beliefs. Uploading is normal. It's part of the universal life cycle."
"You've got to be kidding me," I said. "This is just bourgeois Protestantism. Live in a housing development, work hard, raise your kids, go to heaven when you die."
"You can't denigrate it by calling it something you don't like," said Somn. "It works for a lot of people."
"Doesn't work for me."
"Nor for Tetsuo or Curic," said Somn. "Nor for the people you surveyed. That's why we have the terraforming projects, and the contact missions that never find anybody. An anarchic society can't stay static for eight hundred million years. There has to be a safety valve."
"What about you?" I said. "Three kids and a garage; is that what you want?"
"I'm a fossil hunter," said Somn. "I love to uncover the secrets of dead life. I can be happy almost anywhere in the universe."
Real life, November 14
Curic stood bowlegged before my front porch, her antennacles twitching. "Well, I never expected to see this again," she said. "However, the original was more active in the low EM spectrum."
"That was the electrical wiring," I said. "I'm not Tetsuo. I don't need to recreate every stupid detail."
"Did you do the work yourself?" said Curic.
"Somn handled the matter shifter," I said. "That was most of the work. I'm going to redo it myself, with new data from the Raw Materials overlay."
"Show me the inside," said Curic. "I want to see how you are adjusting to your new environment."
"That's why you finally came down here? You're my case worker?"
"I'm the one responsible for bringing you to Ring City," she said. Curic climbed the porch in big straddle-steps and reached up to push the door latch. "If you succumb to space madness, it makes me look bad."
"Wouldn't want to make you look bad."
"You came to live with us," said Curic, "and the first thing you did was to recreate your old environment. People are worried!"
"Excuse me? Have you seen the rest of Human Ring? That's my old environment: a crappy one-room apartment. I recreated an environment I liked. Everyone does that. Your private island, Tetsuo and Somn's treehouse, my regular house."
"Mmm." It was almost a concession. Curic padded through the living room into the kitchen. I heard the creak of cabinets opening.
"What do you want," I said, "more Twinkies?"
"I'm looking for evidence of hoarding," said Curic. "Some refugees can't adapt to post-scarcity. They hoard food and other items they consider valuable." She leaned into my lazy susan and pushed some replica cans of food around.
"I'm not stupid," I said. "The repertoire's right outside. Where are you getting this? Are the Eritreans hoarding?"
"The Eritreans are fine," said Curic. "They form a coherent human community. You're here by yourself. Space madness may be living here with you." Curic shut the lazy susan and worked her way down my kitchen counter as though she were scanning everything again.
"Is 'space madness' a technical term?" I asked.
"I heard you were taking things from the archaeological dig," she said. "Broken computers."
"I'm collecting. People threw away things they should have kept. I have two Gnarly Aerobics cartridges. Two carts, Curic. A month ago, there were only nine known copies in the universe!"
Curic summoned up a mental picture of someone who would be interested in Gnarly Aerobics, and swiveled her gaze to lay that picture on top of me. She shuddered and shook herself out like a dog. Static crackled off her fur in the arid atmosphere of Human Ring.
"It doesn't sound good," said Curic. "Have you been bargaining with yourself?"
"That's none of your business. What? No."
"Where's your hoard? Upstairs?"
"Two doors down," I said. "Those computers don't smell very good."
"You already owned these computers," said Curic. "Their software was on the hard drive I scanned in July. Including Gnarly Aerobics, as if you cared."
"Yeah, their software," I said. "ROMs can't capture the experience of the hardware. The stack of cartridges, futzing with the RF adapter. The experience of the original controls."
"The experience of being discarded beneath gigagrams of dirt."
"I couldn't just let all this old stuff go through the matter shifter!"
"Ariel, where we come from, nostalgia for... simple mass-produced objects... it doesn't exist. It's difficult for me to understand your emotions, but I can accept them. Unfortunately, not everyone on the contact mission is a trained anthropologist. There have been complaints about your behavior."
"Why don't they complain to my face? I'm working hard here. I'm a fucking model minority."
"It's supposedly my fault," said Curic. "My bringing you to the station violated human norms."
"We broke a law. A stupid law. It's not a norm."
Curic slammed my nonfunctional dishwasher shut. "I pitched my rescue of you as a show of capability. A public demonstration of our willingness to defend the freedom of movement. There are idiots who think you don't really want to be part of this society. As such, it has been suggested I acted from improper feelings of personal guilt."
"What, survivor's guilt, from Gliese 777Ad?"
"That has come up more than once," said Curic, "but I was referring to my visit to Austin, in July."
"That went fine. What's to be guilty about?"
"You think it went fine," said Curic.
I thought back to Curic deadlifting crates into Bai's SUV, scanning my house, fireworks, live music... "Wait, is this because you peed in my sink?"
"I was born on a space station," said Curic, "orbiting Gliese 777Ad. A dead world. Even after we rejoined Constellation space, I lived on space stations. The day I spent with you was my first visit to a planet-sized ecology. I had what you might call an allergic reaction.
"I saw infinite small creatures crawling in the ground, flying through the air. Your water was polluted with synthetic chemicals. I was surrounded by noisy, primitive machines. I was coerced and pushed around by fascists. I saw how close you stand to Jenny. Young Eduardo wanted to tumble with me, writhing in grass and dirt. I was nauseated."
"You hid it pretty well," I said.
"Of course I hid it. You're the reason I came here. I'd devoted my life to preparing for another contact mission. And then I came to Earth and I saw that you really were alien. You were not pretending. All my preparation was useless.
"When
we went to the bar, we were served drinks from a communal bottle. Humans touched each other with their hands and their mouths. It wasn't just you: it was all of human society. I knew I was only encountering my own hang-ups. I tried my best to act like a human. But then we went back to your house... and you went to sleep. You lay down and your brain shut off and you died."
"You watched me sleep?"
"I know what happens, Ariel. Most species experience something like sleep. I didn't realize I'd be present in your house while it happened to you.
"I panicked. I had an irrational fear that if I stayed there I would catch sleep, like a disease. I thought to leave, but where would I go? It was the early morning; everyone else was asleep. I was trapped alone in a decaying world of the dead.
"I threw up in your sink, Ariel. I'm sorry." Curic was shivering furiously.
"It's okay," I said. "Lots of women throw up right after they meet me. Whoa, whoa, I can't read your body language. What's going on?"
"I am crying," said Curic.
I kind of held out my hands. "Do you need a hug?"
"Absolutely not."
"Well, what can I do?"
Curic took a big breath. "You're re-terraforming Human Ring," she said.
"Hopefully, yeah. It's going okay. Won't be ready for a while. You want to see what I have?"
"I want you to do it," she said. "Prove them wrong. Tear this Ring down and build it up better. Show them how little they understand humans. Show them that you belong in the Constellation."
Curic took another deep breath. "And don't fuck it up," she said.
"Curic," I said, trying to channel my anger, at what? I wasn't mad at Curic, was I? Maybe. "I should tell you something."
"Yeah?" Curic was still quivering.
"I know what you did with the shipping containers."
Quivering stopped. Curic stood rigid. Fur sticking up. Fight-or-flight response. That's what I'd been feeling. "Containers, plural?"
"Very plural."
"I never saw any shipping containers, and neither did my crossself."
"Okay, however you do plausible deniability. I know what your overlay did. You've got a weird sense of humor, you know that?"
"Ariel. If you do know, then you probably know what they're for. Please keep the secret. It ought to have a half-life of three years."
"You can't hide this," I said. "You're barely trying. What if someone finds one? They say 'Constellation Shipping' right on the side."
"No one will find one unless you tell them where to look. If the secret decays now, it's another Antarctica. It's an invasion. If you give it it a few years to work, it's a garbage patch cleanup. An act of friendship. I can't coerce you into keeping this secret, but—"
"Curic, I already told someone."
"... I see."
"If it makes you feel any better, she'll—she'll probably never decrypt the email."
"Oh, that does make me feel better," said Curic, leaning one hand against a kitchen drawer handle. "Thank you!"
I was wiping my eyes. "Now you're crying," said Curic.
"You're very observant."
"Do... you..."—forcing the words out like quintuplets—"need... a... hug?"
"Yes," I said.
Yes.
Blog post, November 26
Happy Thanksgiving! I'm eating strawberry pie. By myself. Sorry, Ma.
Real life, December 6
Hey, there's another American on Ring City who's not a spy, a diplomat, or that deadly combination, the spiplomat. His name is Adam and the poor bastard works for Reflex Games.
"Oh, yeah?" I said. "You know, I used to work in the Austin office."
"Head of development," said Adam, "Toronto." Okay, he's not actually American, so sue me. The border looks a little fuzzy from a hundred thousand miles away. (160,000 km)
Adam had met me as I picnicked in the hallway outside my house. I've created a back yard using synthetic dirt from the garbage project, and I'm growing a little patch of grass that I stole from an abandoned NASA weightlessness experiment. (Don't worry, I stole the control group.) But until the grass is able to hold itself up in normal gravity, let alone stand people walking on it, "outside" means out in the hall. I have a white-noise generator on my phone which I use to simulate a nearby brook, but I turned it off when Adam said hello.
Adam the Canadian squatted and picked a peak-of-the-season strawberry out of my bowl. "We're all big fans of your blog," he said.
"Even the part where I said Reflex was staffed by douchebags?" I said, because I gotta self-sabatoge.
"Of course we're staffed by douchebags," said Adam. "Have you seen this industry? But we've got the talented douchebags, and we all get along 'cause we're a family. A family that you're still part of. Reminds me, can I take some 3D scans of your house?"
"Am I a tourist attraction now?"
"You and the Eritreans," said Adam. "Nothing else in Human Ring really stands out, y'know? Doesn't seem that bad on TV, but then you get here, and..." He gestured down the corridor that ran for a hundred and fifty miles (240 km), encircling Human Ring and coming right back here.
"We can't put five million identical rooms in a game," he said. "That's 1980s stuff. So we're focusing on the other Rings, and on Mars."
"I see," I said. "You're here on business. You're gonna put my house in the Temple Sphere sequel."
"Not a sequel," said Adam, tut-tutting his finger at me. "It's a totally new IP. Constellation: Disputed Space will be the first triple-A title to use motion capture from real extraterrestrials."
"Why do they have the head of development, Toronto, up here doing motion capture?"
"You mean, why is the head of development in space, doing motion capture of awesome space aliens?"
"Point taken."
"Entre nous, it's a liiittle difficult to get some of this data. Like the Peregrini, I don't even know. I can't even take the cameras into Peregrini Ring or they'll melt."
"Ask the Peregrini to wear spacesuits," I said, "and stick those old-school ping-pong balls on the spacesuits, and do the motion capture here."
Adam nodded. "That's probably good enough," he said.
"You don't need to do this at all," I said. "If there's one thing the Constellation has, it's information about themselves. Just ask them for the 3D models they already have."
"We thought about that," said Adam, "but we'd need some kind of computer archaeologist to translate that data into a format we can use."
"Yeah, that's the Reflex way, all right," I said. "Do what we did last time, no matter what."
"Say," said Adam, as though he'd given this a lot of thought. "You're a kind of computer archaeologist. I saw what you did with the Brain Embryo, and the Jurassic smart paper OS. You could do this. Save us a lot of money. Get us maps, too; geographic data beyond our wildest dreams.
"I've talked to your old colleagues. A lot of the people you worked with on Recoil are now very high in the company. You're a great developer. We could use you back on the team."
I won't lie: my heart leapt. I could get back into the industry. I'd be educating people about the Constellation. Reflex isn't perfect, but it's less embarrassing than making pony games for tweens, or having every single employee of my indie studio quit, including myself.
Then I came off my high. "Uh, this is an interesting idea," I said, "but I'm a fugitive. Pretty much unhirable."
"To the United States, you're a fugitive," said Adam. "To Canada, you're a political refugee."
"Wow, it's like the same thing, but better."
"Yeah. If this is what you want, we can do it. We keep a little quiet, I doubt the FBI will risk pissing off both the Constellation and the Dominion."
"The Dominion?"
"Of Canada, dumbass."
"Oh. Well, I'm... thinking about it. What's the game like?"
"Disputed Space?" said Adam. "It's an awesome new experience. Tactical FPS but with RPG elements, branching storyline. You'll love it."
So,
like every other Reflex game. "What's in the branching storyline?"
"It's strong, very strong. Basically, Ragtime attacks Earth, big disaster, and this multinational force trains with Constellation equipment to take them down. Obviously the Constellation can't do the job themselves because they're pacifists. But we plan to make a couple Constellation races playable in the sequel."
"Uh, so," I said, "Ragtime is a negentropictropic matter cloud. You can't have a space marine shoot it with a gun."
"Artistic license," said Adam. "Obviously the Constellation can't be the bad guy. That's disgusting. Nobody wants another Ev luie Aka's Ultimate DIY Lift-Off."
"I don't want to nitpick, it's cool that you read my blog and with the job offer and everything."
"No, it's good, what is it?"
"The Constellation aren't pacifists because they faint at the sight of blood. If someone attacked Earth, the Constellation would... I don't know, but they wouldn't say 'here's some weapons, go be our Shabbas goy'."
Adam folded his arms and stared at my house like he was trying to burn it down with his mind. "It's a game," he said. "It has to have the elements of a game. It can't just be happy fun time."
"Af be Hui made eight best-selling games," I said, "in a society more fucked up than ours, and only The Long Way Around had anything like space-marine-with-a-gun. People have been making games for a billion years, and yeah, a lot of them are bad or incomprehensible, but you don't have to use those. What's it gonna take, y'know? The most important event in human history happens, and you use it to tweak the game you were gonna make anyway."
"We weren't 'gonna make it', dude, it was three-quarters done. It cost us twenty million dollars."
"Oh!" I said. "Wow, I just realized—I don't have to do this!"
"Well, yeah. No one's making you—"
"No, sorry, it's not you. All this stuff was going through my head—can I take back a job I already quit? What's the least embarassing way to prostitute myself here? Will my opinion count for anything, or are you only interested in learning what color guts should fall out when a Farang gets shot? The same shit I've been arguing my whole life.
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