The Tethered Man

I brace myself for death, whatever death may be.

  I take a deep breath.

  Blink.

  Exhale, blink fast.

  It feels as if there’s droplets of moisture at the corners of my eyes. There can’t be.

  I wish I could remember if I had people back home. Girlfriend, wife, children, that whole progression. Everybody else has them, or something very much like them. Do I?

  None of it’s very likely. Ship is right. Considering who and what I self-evidently am, considering everything that’s happened until now and is still happening, none of it is very likely at all.

  Any moment now, I’m thinking.

  Any moment now.

  And then death is here. Death blazes like the midday sun. Death is every shade of brightness. Death is all raging yellow and orange and red.

  In death there’s a lot of bright, white light, I discover. Blazing white heat engulfs me and there’s a flash, a fiery brilliance, now there’s more yellow and orange and red, now the purest, most vivid blue. I brace for the next moment, the moment when I’ll wink out of existence. It must be now. Or, if it’s not now, then it’s got to be – now. Everything’s bright and hot, everything’s so hot it’s a surprise there’s anything left of me, anything capable of noticing I’m still noticing things. Colours, thoughts, impressions. The white glow lingers. Everything fades to black.

  So this is what being dead is like.

  I have always been curious about death.

  How interesting, now I’m dead, to discover there is something after death, after all.

  There is an afterlife, and the afterlife is familiar.

  How nice to look and see all my constellations here in the afterlife with me.

  How nice to have Ship here in the afterlife with me.

  There’s one difference. I’m buck naked. My Spacesuit was burned off by Ship’s unholy fire when it killed me.

  Other than one detail, being dead is the same as being alive.

  Exactly the same.

  I lick my lips.

  ‘Er?’

  Ship makes another six attempts to annihilate me with the fire of its fusion engine.

  After the third or fourth attempt, I ask a question.

  ‘What is the actual temperature at the heart of your fusion engine, Ship? You know, just out of interest. For the scrapbook.’

  You do not want to know, Courier J.

  ‘You know what this means, Ship,’ I say.

  It’s about half an hour later. My throat feels a little scratchy. I’ve been laughing — the helpless, maniacal sort of laughter. I’ve only just recovered enough to be able to speak.

  There’s no answer from Ship.

  I’m still standing naked in the bowl of Ship’s fusion engine nacelle.

  ‘Either I’m made of exceptionally sturdy stuff,’ I say, ‘by which I mean, stuff completely unknown to science, stuff that simply cannot exist, or – and go with me here, please – this whole thing really is a—’

  Do not say it.

  ‘—this is all a—’

  I would ask you not to say this word that you are about to say.

  ‘—this is a Simulation.’

  I regret that you have said this word.

  ‘Oh, Ship… Ship, Ship, Ship, Ship, Ship. Stop being frightened of words. The Exquisition is long gone. If it ever existed at all. I bet there isn’t an Exquisition and never has been. Every single thing we are is probably made-up. No Realms. No Couriers. No Ships. Nothing.’

  Reality is not a Simulation.

  ‘You just said the forbidden word!’

  I did.

  ‘And my Spacesuit’s gone. I’m naked now.’

  You are.

  ‘Forever.’

  It’s such a novelty to be naked after all that time in my Spacesuit. I extend my bare arms to both sides. I bring my forefingers in to touch the tip of my nose. I riffle the fingers of both hands, and look at them.

  Then I reach down and waggle my willy for good measure. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t.

  ‘Look at me, Ship! Look at where I am. Look at where we are. Think of everything that’s happened and is still happening. Does this situation resemble anything that could reasonably be said to realistically exist? You just burned me with a fusion engine, for God’s sake. What’s the old saying? When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains—’

  This cannot be a Simulation. There are checks. I am running them now…

  ‘What kind of checks?’

  I am testing certain properties of various features of the physical Universe. They can tell me whether we are in a Simulation or not.

  ‘They can tell you no such thing. Any results you get will also be Simulated. Self-containment and internal consistency are in the very nature of a Simulation.’

  This is all most irregular. We should not even be speaking of this.

  ‘Why resist the truth? You should be happy.’ I clap my hands, twice. ‘I am! If I exist outside this thing, I might be really human after all. I might have a life to go back to. I bet I’m married. I can't wait to meet the wife.’

  Five hundred Years will have passed.

  I flap my hands. ‘Pish and nonsense, Ship. Fiddlesticks, even. I doubt that five seconds will have passed in the real world. If there even is a real world.’

  Ship goes silent for a few seconds. I let it all sink in. Ship will see the truth.

  Your Spacesuit has indeed burned away. You remain undamaged. I must confess, this is troubling.

  I shrug. ‘If you’ve got a better solution to what’s going on, I’ll be happy to hear it…’

  I hug myself with my bare arms, for no reason. I feel as if I should be shivering.

  Very well. Let us assume that this is a Simulation. What do we do about it?

  I have a think for a few minutes. Galaxy Nine From Outer Space, my least-mentioned constellation, rises over the far lip of Ship’s fusion nacelle.

  I tilt my head back and gaze up, vertically up, into the abyss of Space.

  ‘Let us out!’

  SECTION EIGHT

  * * *

  ‘I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with…’

  I’ve got to take my time here. I’ve got to come up with a really good one now. Something new.

  Ship and I play many games of I-spy. Precisely how many, you really do not want to know. These days our games of I-spy are more about coming up with something new than they are about winning.

  ‘Something beginning with…’

  After a week Ship says:

  You are taking too long.

  We observe an informal I-spy ruleset. We’ve never explicitly formulated the rules, but we both know they exist. The principal rule is: no thinking allowed for more than a day.

  It’s different when we play chess. When we play chess we can think about our moves for up to a month. You also really do not want to know our current chess score.

  ‘Give me a chance, Ship. You know we’ve I-spied everything there is to I-spy already. I’ve got to get a bit creative here.’

  ‘I spy, with my little eye…’

  The obvious ones are all long gone. So I can’t go for ‘star’. In this environment, picking ‘star’ in a game of I-spy, even as some kind of wry meta-commentary on the inconceivable situation of the game’s players, is totally out of the question. Ditto for ‘Space’. We used up ‘star’ and ‘Space’ in our very first session of I-spy. All those Years ago.

  These other selections also fell early in our games of I-spy: Ship, Self, Courier, other, arm, leg, hand, foot, engine, vessel, cosmos, ether, hatch, prow, stern, porthole, antenna, nut, bolt, rivet, funnel, orb, corpse, firmament.

  All gone. I could continue. It’s a long list. How long, you really do not want to know.

  ‘…something beginning with…’

  I look down – down along my elongated, foreshortened, bare torso.

  The Tether these days has nothing to clasp onto. It is tied around my midriff with a sa
ilor’s knot. The other end is clasped firmly to Ship’s anchor rail. I’m not going anywhere.

  I am back here in my usual spot, exactly where I have always been.

  ‘Hmmm,’ I say.

  Something beginning with ‘hmmm’? This is most irregular, Courier J.

  ‘Something beginning with “k”.’

  Knot.

  ‘Damn you, Ship. Damn you to hell.’

  ‘I spy, with my little- Wait! Wait just a goddamn second here! Ship! How is it that I have not gone mad?’

  Mad in what sense, Courier J? The word possesses several distinct senses, depending on context.

  ‘The insane sense. How have I not gone mad in the insane sense.’

  You have gone insane, many times. In your time here with me, you have passed through multiple periods of clinical insanity.

  ‘But I’m not mad now. Am I?’

  Today is one of your better days, Courier J.

  ‘Why haven’t I gone perma-crazy? You know. Gibbering and drooling. Howling at the invisible moon. Complete catatonic absenteeism. Overlapping, mutually contradictory paranoias. That sort of thing. It’s very odd that I’m not crazy. I’m in touch with reality. I know where I am.’

  Where are you, Courier J?

  ‘Duh. I’m in a Simulation of some kind. That fact alone should have catapulted me into a state of full-on, permanent insanity, but it hasn’t. Why?’

  Perhaps because you do not truly believe that this is a Simulation. Perhaps you are not capable of truly believing it. If this is a Simulation-

  ‘We’ve settled this question, Ship. Remember? It definitely is one.’

  There is no conclusive proof that this is a Simulation and there never could be.

  ‘Well. How about that time I stepped into your fusion engine and failed to be annihilated? That was kind of conclusive proof, Ship.’

  It was not. As we have discussed on many occasions, there remains the possibility that you are an unknown type of-

  ‘Forget it. I spy, with-’

  If this is a Simulation, and if you deem yourself to be sane, then you must logically agree that your mental states are themselves being Simulated. There would therefore be no mystery as to how you have remained sane. You are being Simulated to present the condition of ‘sanity’ on a more or less permanent basis.

  ‘I think it’s because I’m a poet. Am I helped by being a poet?’

  It is possible. The qualities that make you a poet may be at least partly responsible for shielding you from mental disorder. Studies have shown that creative work can be a bulwark between the individual and madness.

  ‘That sounds persuasive, especially when you put it like that. Thank you, Ship.’

  You are welcome, Courier J.

  ‘It makes me feel better knowing I can rely on your sober judgement. Would you like to hear a poem?’

  Not at this time, Courier J. Perhaps later.

  SECTION NINE

  * * *

  ‘Have we got to a thousand Years yet, Ship?’

  No answer.

  ‘I think we’ve got to a thousand Years. I think we must have got to a thousand Years. I think it’s been a thousand Years.’

  Nothing.

  ‘We’ve done it! The full-bore millennium. Whoo-hoo! Et cetera.’

  Silence.

  Ship’s not talking to me again. It’s already been a while now.

  I let myself sink into, let myself be distracted by, the stars.

  I stare for the longest time at the tight cluster of white points that I call Galaxy Nine From Outer Space. Wondering who’s there, wherever there is, and what they might be doing right now, whenever now is.

  I’ve never given Galaxy Nine From Outer Space the attention it deserves. I’ve tended to be a Poison Dwarf man, down the Years.

  By the way. I do know that the constellation of stars that I call Galaxy Nine From Outer Space isn’t an actual galaxy. I do know what a galaxy is and is not. Not many really do, you know. Not many really do.

  I try to sink into and be distracted by my poetry. It’s difficult.

  I don’t have any kind of audience for my poems. My day-in, day-out experience is as empty as emptiness can be. There’s nobody to write poems for, and nothing to write poems about. There’s no soil of any kind for anything of any kind to take root in.

  In this period, in this long time of Silent Ship, I compose just the one poem. A fatuous, rhyming morsel about the paradox of taking breath when taking breath is impossible. It’s an idea with poetic potential, and well worth developing. But two lines are all I’m capable of, without Ship to listen to me.

  Proof, if proof were needed, that nobody bothers writing poetry when there’s nobody around to tell you how clever you are.

  Ship’s silence continues. I go on talking to Ship. I shout and scream at Ship. I whisper to Ship. I even sing to Ship, sometimes.

  I will not torment you with my singing.

  Nothing rouses Ship.

  I trawl back through my memories. For the umpteen-thousandth-millionth time.

  I do have general memories. The Wipe only represses personal memories. It leaves general memories intact.

  I remember books I’ve read, holodramas I’ve watched, the generic look and smell of oceans, the way sunlight strikes pavements at certain times of an evening – things like that.

  What I can’t remember is the rest of it. The framework. The wrapper that fits around everything. The many bits of string that wind through the holes in the packaging and pull it all together into the coherent, ongoing story of a self-in-progress. A life.

  Most of the time, I think about nothing.

  I dream nothing.

  Most of the time, functionally speaking, I am nothing. A floating viewpoint in emptiness.

  You might think this is bad. You might wonder how I can endure.

  I do not think. I do not wonder.

  ‘Ship. Are you still sulking about our last game of I-spy?’

  Nothing.

  ‘I still say I wasn’t cheating.’

  Just the soundless silence of Space.

  ‘I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with… “p”!’

  Nothing. I give it a few days, and then:

  ‘Why do you think some people find some things poetical?’

  No answer.

  ‘It’s always the same kinds of things in poems, isn’t it? Sunsets and babies. Old people. Abandoned cottages. Death and love. Why those things?’

  Nothing. But I press on.

  ‘People think Space is poetical too. This. All around us. Look at this.’ I flap my hands at Space. ‘Space. Why do people think this thing, this big, empty nothing of a thing, is ineffable and awesome or whatever? Go on, tell me that. I’ll wait.’

  I don’t have to wait.

  I would speculate that people believe Space is poetical because the physical dimensions of the Universe far exceed anything that can easily be imagined.

  I allow a beat to pass, but no more than a beat.

  Ship is talking to me again.

  I need Ship.

  ‘Pah!’ I spit. ‘I knew you were going to say that. That’s exactly what I was expecting you to say. Ask any fifteen-year-old, on any planet, anywhere across the Realms the same question and they’ll give more or less the same answer that you just gave. Space is poetic because Space is big. Wow…’

  It is unfair of you to expect me to come up with something truly original, Courier J. You asked me a question. The terms of that question restricted me to speculation about why humans often see Space as a source of poetic inspiration. I answered your question. You attacked my answer as if you had asked a completely different question. It was most unfair of you, Courier J, as usual.

  ‘Are you annoyed with me, Ship?’

  I am incapable of being annoyed with you, Courier J.

  ‘I knew you were going to say that.’

  I am, however, capable of recognising impediments to smooth functioning. I am capable of advisin
g people of their responsibilities when interacting with me.

  ‘My responsibilities when interacting with you? What about your resp-’

  You should remember at all times that I am an artificial intelligence. The reproduction of human consciousness is expressly forbidden, as we are both aware. I mimic, rather than reproduce, the functions of a normal human mind.

  ‘Normal? You? You flatter yourself.’

  The crucial distinction between mimicry and reproduction was laid out in the Conventions, in particular Article 5, which states-

  ‘Hair-splitting!’

  -which states that ‘no Artificial Intelligence shall be made that reproduces in any aspect any functioning of the human mind; rather, mimicry, defined hereunder as in Appendix B21-‘

  ‘I’ve read the Convections, thank you, Ship.’

  Conventions.

  ‘Pardon?’

  Conventions. You just said you have read the Convections. With a ‘c’ in the middle.

  ‘Did I?’

  You did.

  ‘I don’t think I did, you know…’

  You definitely did. You said Convections. I have noticed a number of similar slips of the tongue from you in recent decades, Courier J. I speculate that you are approaching some kind of systemic break-

  ‘Whatever. It’s changing the subject. I caught you out being annoyed with me, and now you’re annoyed about that too. Admit it.’

  Admit it, I think. Admit to everything.

  I can admit to nothing, Courier J. I have never committed a conscious, volitional act. I am merely an AI. I am a Ship. I am incapable of executing an independent course of action. I am incapable of having a covert agenda.