"Why would I buy a company and shut it down? Companies exist to make money. Buying one only to shut it down wouldn't do much for our bottom line, would it?"
Shekinah struggled to grasp the words. She shook her head.
"Winfinity has over seven hundred million shareholders,” Evan said. “They work hard to get through their indentures, then they work hard to move up, then they expect us to take care of them when they are old and retired. And we do. What would you tell all our shareholders, when we had to cut their benefits because we bought some companies and closed them down?"
"You could make a law."
"Again, why? Do you know how much it costs to enforce laws? What happens if we have to increase court costs because we made too many laws? What would you tell them then?"
"But ... these companies create dumb things, when they could be making something smart!"
Evan's eyes narrowed. “How smart are you, on a human IQ scale?"
"I don't know."
"How painful was it, to get there?"
The shade of Alex danced in front of her, faceless. Paul, bending over her in that capsule on the Moon. Telling her that she had become all she could, he was mapping her mental function now, she might lose some of it.
Tears came. She closed her eyes to hold them back. “We can be made better."
"Why?"
"Because it's the right thing to do,” Shekinah said. “Because you should care."
"Should I care about a steak? Should I care about a chicken?” Low, dangerous. Anger overwhelmed his other fragrance.
"Please,” Shekinah said.
Evan McMaster turned around. “No. This meeting is over."
Shekinah pushed herself forward on trembling legs. The WIN-SEC men grabbed her arms. They were very strong, and it hurt. She cried out.
"I'll do anything,” Shekinah said.
Evan McMaster came to her and cradled a tear-soaked cheek. His smile was like a snarl. He stunk of anger.
"Anything?” he asked.
"Anything."
Evan laughed, spraying spittle in her face. “You have nothing I want."
"Please!"
"This meeting is over.” Evan turned.
The WIN-SEC people led her out to the steps. They let her go, but waited around and watched her.
She made her way down the steps. It took the rest of the afternoon. She had time. They would not let her go back to the Moon.
She was an angel, but she would never again fly.
Adele knew she wouldn't live through her third rejuve. Because of the doctors. Her optilink whispered inferred meaning into her ears, even when they didn't speak. And she knew the gossip. Once, mostly, twice, for some, a third time, for none.
If Alex was here, he would have figured out a better process, Adele thought. But he was probably outside the limits of the solar system now, still drifting along a long, slow parabola that would take him back to her, only about twenty-six hundred years late.
She also knew because of the requests. Before you go in, whisper one secret in my ear. Where is Alex Farrell? Where did he go?
Good luck with that, Adele thought. She'd had her own memories repatterned. She didn't remember Alex's trajectory herself. She didn't remember entirely what he did.
Self-preservation, really. Winfinity had absorbed Nanolife by fiat and made her a Chief Executive. Then a Perpetual, when she proved to have true skills. They had allowed her to rejuvenate once, twice, and now, a third time.
She hoped to open her eyes to the thrill and energy of a body young, so exquisitely sensitive and perfect. She remembered her last awakenings, the feeling of wonder, that perfect moment of realization: I would do anything for this.
Winfinity had treated her well. As good as it could. But she still wondered what would have happened if Alex had stayed, if he had worked on the problem of rejuvenation, if he had decided to see his project through in body, rather than by escape. But he had never been interested in the in-between work. He wanted to see the end.
There had been days, dark days, when she thought of telling Winfinity where he had gone. When people first asked, in reverent tones, what he was like. When they asked where he had gone. The mysterious man who reinvented the world, and then disappeared.
Then the inference algorithms began to get very, very good, and Adele went to Mars, to the Independent people who lived outside of Winfinity, and had a very small part of her memory erased. The other Perpetuals knew she did it. But it was easy enough to tell them it was too painful to remember Alex. Only the very, very old found that hard to believe. And only a few of the very old ranked higher than her in the Winfinity regime.
And, in some ways, they didn't really care. The Moonies’ generation ship had gone out into interstellar space, and they didn't waste time looking for it. Alex's ship was considered as a relic of that same age. Because it was a new world. They had happened upon the great fortune of the Spindle Drive, and instantaneous interstellar transport was a reality. She had stood on the cold green surface of Alpha Centari A's single ocean-heavy world. She'd heard the songs of its fractal bushes. And she'd left, like the rest of Winfinity, because there was no trade to be had with the bushes, even if they did prove to be intelligent.
But they'd found other worlds, other life. None of it intelligent. None of it more than a shade of the Earth's teeming biosphere. Sometimes she wondered about the meaning of that, late at night. Winfinity had no answers. The Consumeristians thought they had answers, but she could not believe them. They were too convenient, too pat, too facile.
It wasn't a terrible empire they had created, she thought. In many ways, no worse than government at the end of the 20th Century. People didn't have to work for Winfinity. They could join a hundred rival corporations. Of course, Winfinity benefits were always greater. And when you were considering a ten or twenty-year indenture, why would you go with a lower return? And it did make sense to hold back rejuvenation for the vast majority of the population. It kept population in check.
And it was the ultimate incentive. She would give anything to be young again.
They had given her a comfortable room in Winfinity City, overlooking the restored town of Rogers, and the rolling hills that framed the One True Shack. Those were icons too, for the people who did not remember where they came from.
They even surrounded her with young, cheerful medical staff who smiled too much, as if they knew she could read their minds. Like the young girl who came to see her that morning.
"Are you ready to be young again?” she asked.
They are trying to comfort you, the inference algorithms whispered.
"Sure,” Adele said. Her voice was screechy with age.
"Nothing to it,” the girl said. “You'll just wake up, young. Of course, you probably know that."
This is a statement calculated to put you at ease.
"If I wake up."
She is shocked and afraid. She is thinking about calming you.
Adele waved her hand. “Sorry. Never mind.” Let me die with my mind intact, please.
They wheeled her into the room with the tanks. It was always nice, going in the tanks. Warm and soft. They put her in. Her optilink fed her a last question about Alex. She thought, one more time, I could turn him in. I could tell them what he's done.
But she didn't remember. She didn't remember at all. She remembered helping him. She remembered putting something in space to spoof Winfinity. But she did not know where. She remembered being very relieved when Winfinity took the Spindle Drive and began venturing outward, rather than looking in.
She did remember the name of his ship, the Hades.
Where I am going soon.
She slipped beneath the warm liquid, tasting its familiar salty tang.
She closed her eyes, wishing to open them once again.
Alex Farrell opened his eyes, thinking, Something's wrong.
Nothing had changed. The cramped little cabin was the same as it had been when he closed his eyes.
The little light-strips still glowed with the same intensity, the instruments floated in front of him, and the soft molded foam he reclined on felt as if he had just lain down.
He raised an arm. It rose smoothly, effortlessly. Not stiff, not slow, not in pain. He could have just dozed off, a few minutes ago.
It didn't work. I woke early. His heart thudded. What if he couldn't get back into suspension? What if he couldn't turn the ship around?
How far was he off? Had he ever gone into suspension at all? He glanced at the instrumentation, expecting it to show a date some time in 2032.
august 5, 4834
Alex sat up straight in his seat, banging his head on the low ceiling.
No. It had to be a joke.
There was no way they'd worked out suspension so well. The geeks on the Moon had told him: Most likely, you die. Second most likely, you are in terrible shape, like hundred-ten-year-old man. Third most likely, you something strange from transcription error in the medical nano. They'd also warned him that many of the ship's systems were likely to fail, so even if he did awake, he might have no control.
He scanned the display. Other things jumped out at him: nanotech runrates averaging 99.5%. Better than when he was launched. Nanosystems didn't refine themselves for better performance. Their timeline was always clear: increasing replication error, until the system dropped off an efficiency cliff to become dumb matter again.
Alex had the instruments display his relative position. It showed a dotted line, arcing through the orbits of the planets, terminating near Venus. He zoomed out and saw his entire arc, with time and distance markers. The ship thought it had been on a 2,800-year journey, at least.
The geeks. They sold me out. They never put me under. Win-Sec was probably on its way to pick him up.
Alex turned on the communications scanner. Nothing. It didn't even show the low-power blocks where the geeks sent packets between the Moon and Mars. Flat down to the noise floor.
He frowned. It should show Earth bleed, even in the inner system. He aimed the directional antenna first at Earth, then at Mars. There was nothing coming from either planet.
Of course, they disabled communication, he thought.
Either that, or he really had gone 2,800 years into the future, and humankind had moved so far beyond the electromagnetic spectrum that he couldn't even talk to them anymore.
Pyramids to nanotech, he thought. Nanotech to ... what?
The instrumentation fed him visuals, but the optics were only rudimentary. Fuzzy images of blue-green Earth floated ahead of him. Spectral analysis of the atmosphere showed:
24% o2
75% n2
1% other, including co2, argon, and helium pollutants below detectable levels
Wait. He called up the last reading taken, right before he left.
20% o2
78% n2
2% other, including co2, argon key pollutants include oxides of nitrogen, cfcs, and various vocs
He aimed the optical array at Mars. The wavering, uncertain image of a green and salmon-colored globe, punctuated by blue spots, floated in front of him. Its atmosphere was 15% o2, 80% n2, 5% co2 and other gases.
They'd done it! They'd terraformed Mars! He had gone forward.
He turned the camera on Venus. It showed a smooth white globe. For a moment Alex felt a thrill of panic. Then he realized that the smartfog was supposed to stay in place until he came back. He had the ship transmit the command to drop the camouflage.
"Command acknowledged,” the ship's voice said. “Camouflage will dissipate in about eighty hours. Arrival at Venus in about ninety-six hours."
Spectral analysis told him the atmosphere was unchanged, but his nanotech was already communicating with the ship, telling him it had a breathable atmosphere with slightly higher oxygen content than Earth. Than the Earth he remembered, anyway.
The nano even fed him images, vague and grainy clips of endless pine-like forest under a brilliant white sky. Clips of a brilliant crystal city, brooding in twilight. It told him that it was twenty-three degrees C in the city on that long night.
I did it, he thought. But, deep down, Alex felt a deep unease. Because, by the numbers, his ship should be limping along, and he should be dead.
Or did I have help? he wondered. And, if so, from whom? Or what?
On the display, Hades flickered a tiny bit closer to Venus.
* * * *
Venus howled. The wind cut through the channels of his empty polar city, picking haunting notes from the knife-sharp edges of the diamondoid buildings. Lights within reflected and refracted through their translucent interiors, bathing the streets in a cool blue-white glow. The sky was heavy and gray, like lead, the far horizon shading to lighter gray above the hidden sun.
I never named it, Alex thought, as he walked towards his tower. Walked because he had never thought of transportation. Or the nano had degraded to the point where it dropped off the design chart. In his dataspecs, the nano efficiency showed 27%. Barely hanging on the edge of the cliff that fell towards dumb matter.
Which answered one question. His nano had degraded in-line with his forecasts. So he really was in the future.
Or was he a simulated mind, plugged into some future virtuality?
Alex shook his head. He didn't want to think about that. But it would explain a lot. His too-easy reawakening. Hades’ increased nanoefficiency. He could be nothing more than computation.
But Alex doubted it. There were too many things, done too right. The alien overtones of the wind on the edges of his buildings. The little errors, like the razor-sharp edges and lack of transportation. Even the smell of the city, sharp with the tang of co2 and an unfamiliar, astringent odor something like pine.
And the sense of being alone. His footfalls on the diamondoid pavement were the only sound other than the wind. Nothing moved, except his shifting shadow cast by the light of the buildings.
If Shekinah could see this, what would she think? Alex wondered.
"Communication restored,” the nano interface whispered in his earpod. He had transmitted archived specs to reverse its decline. As he watched, the efficiency bar slid up towards 28%.
"Why isn't there any transportation?” Alex asked it.
"Some complex structures were abandoned as efficiency decreased."
"Is there food?"
"Yes."
"An observatory? Someplace I can look at Earth?"
"Ground-based observatories would be useless due to residual shielding. There were no plans for an orbiting observatory."
"Have you detected communication from Earth?"
"That was not part of the original dataset."
Alex cursed. “How am I supposed to find out what happened to the rest of the solar system?"
"There were plans for an interplanetary ship. It is complete."
"There were?” Alex said, shaking his head. He didn't remember plans for a ship. He'd expected to come here and invite the people of Earth to join him on his new world. “Did you broadcast the invitation to Earth?” he asked.
"Yes. There have been no replies."
Damn. Alex wondered again if progress had taken Earth past any kind of electromagnetic communication. What if he literally could not talk to them?
Alex turned onto a wide avenue. He could see his building, rising like a crystal art-deco sculpture, at its end.
"Can I take the ship to Earth now?” Alex asked.
"It will take several days to fuel. Would you like this to be done?"
"Yes, please."
He sliced open his shoe on the razor-edges of the steps that led up to his building. As he watched, blood welled from a thin line on the top of his foot. He tried to smile through the pain.
"Can we fix the sharp edges?” he asked the nano.
"Sharp edges?"
"On the buildings and stairs. They seem to come to a single-atom point."
"It was not known that you desired rounding."
"I desire it."
/> "That will require active rework of the city, which will render portions of it unusable."
Alex imagined layers of slick gray nano coating the city. “Start in areas farthest away from me."
"Proceeding."
Alex was relieved to see an elevator waiting open in the lobby. Warm light spilled out of it. Something like woodgrain decorated its interior. He put his hand on it. It felt too cool and too smooth, like the rest of the diamondoid.
"Do the other buildings have elevators?"
"Some."
Great, Alex thought.
The elevator rushed upwards and its doors opened on his penthouse. Alex gasped. The far wall, transparent, looked out over a blue-white fairyland. His city rose and fell, swooped and spired, towards black lands. The gray splotch of the sun was offset to the east. In a month or so, the sun would rise and cast shadows down the broad avenue that led to his building.
This was what all those futurists always wanted to do. Tear down the city whole and start anew. Not piece by piece. A single integrated whole, designed for utility and beauty.
I've done it.
Alex found food. Little tangerine-sized spheres with a foamy consistency. They tasted like oranges. Slices of something too perfect and regular to be bread. A large, slightly greasy red slab that looked and smelled a little bit like beef.
He toasted the ‘bread’ in an old-fashioned toaster and paced the living room while he ate. It tasted like very good whole wheat bread, despite its looks.
He went to the transparent wall and looked out over the city. In the city, nothing moved. He could hear nothing, not even the howl of the wind. It could have been a picture painted on a wall.
Suddenly, a strange feeling welled up in Alex. It felt as if his chest had been opened up and hollowed out. It felt like his guts had been carved from ice. He hugged himself and shivered.
I'm alone.
He used a wallscreen to access the city's entertainment library. He played music, Halfway and Kraftwerk and Antony Palmiero and The White Plague, very loud. He had the wall show old movies, Genero and The Matrix and Fugue State and Windex, with no sound. He pressed his face up against the diamondoid, wanting to touch the characters that glowed within.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #214 Page 7