Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  Where am I? Who am I? Help me!

  She threw herself onto the couch and buried her head in her arms. This is despair, she thought, sobbing with great gulping breaths into the soft fabric of her dress. Where do I go from here? If it had at all been possible, she might have seriously considered opening the airlock to bring an abrupt end to the debilitating emotions.

  But the release of tears seemed to bring a clarity to her thoughts. The primitive flushing of hormones from her system still had its uses. When the rush of grief had passed, she found herself thinking in closed loops rather than open-ended arcs that terminated in aching emptiness.

  Not since her acceptance of the inevitability of the Spike had she existed solely within one skull, but it seemed that she could still do it. It was just a matter of getting used to it again. Some part of her, some primal region left dormant those long decades, had remembered what to do, and for that she was grateful. She didn’t care how it had happened, just that it had happened.

  And besides, it wasn’t as if she would need to do it indefinitely. In a couple of days, she would be back where she belonged, part of herself again.

  She sat up and smoothed herself out, breathing deeply and evenly. The couch beneath her was sodden, as was her gown. She felt as though a fever had burst, leaving her weak and sweat-logged. The gown would have to go; it was a simple matter to rearrange its self-organizing fibers into something more suitable. When she stood up, she was dressed in an environment suit not dissimilar to Alander’s, only cleaner and better fitting. She stretched and felt the fabric tighten around her midriff. Much better, she thought.

  Alander was elsewhere in the hole ship. His memories of the trip from Upsilon Aquarius revealed the existence of a number of berths tucked away in the walls of the ship, along with refreshment and ablution facilities. She was sure the ship could provide for just about any eventuality, even serious injury, if Alander was prepared to share that high-tech suit he was wearing. Despite having been heavily modified down the years, she was still essentially a creation of flesh and blood, and, newly aware of just how isolated and vulnerable she was, considerations like safety reasserted themselves. In Upsilon Aquarius there was no benign Vincula to keep an eye on her, no pooled awareness ready to ensure that she didn’t walk into danger or to accept her final memory dump if she did. There was only danger and the unknown. As uncertain as Sol politics were, it had been a long time since she had faced such a void.

  Or such a period of inactivity while she waited for the hole ship to arrive. Fortunately, not every resource she had grown accustomed to had been left behind at Sol. She had an extensive library of books and music, along with many other forms of passive art, at her disposal. She could also participate in something more interactive, should she wish, slaving her senses to one of the many experiential simulations produced in recent years. Given her circumstances, though, she didn’t think diving too deeply would be appropriate. A book, perhaps. Something light.

  She had finished the first two volumes of Eva Sallis’s Memoirs of an Arsonist and was partway through the third, tapping idly as she read to a very old recording of Kalevi Aho’s “Insect Symphony,” when Alander emerged from his cubicle. She looked up from where she lay on the couch and instantly saw the confusion in his eyes. It didn’t surprise her. Although she could no longer delve into his mind the way her greater self had, she could guess what he was going through.

  He came to a halt in the entrance to the main chamber. “Caryl?”

  She mentally put aside her book and stood. “Hello, Peter.”

  “What are you doing here?” He looked around. “I thought... The Tipler... How...?”

  She felt a great deal more sympathy for him now than she had at any other point in their exchange. “It’s okay, Peter. You’ve been to Sol, remember? I’m Caryl’s original. We’re on our way back to Adrasteia.”

  The fog parted; his expression changed to one of relief, then, almost instantly, shame. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He passed a hand across his eyes. “I don’t know why I forget these things so easily.”

  “I do.”

  He looked up at her with a gaze that was suddenly very intense. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I know why it happens. I know all about your breakdown and why it happened.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it’s not easy to explain—”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “No, I know that.” She forced herself not to snap at him; she had to be patient. “Basically, it’s because you’re an engram, Peter. You’re a copy of person programmed to think it’s that person. Because you’re not that person, that causes an immediate and constant conflict.”

  He gestured irritably. “So? I’m no different than anyone else in the survey program in that regard.”

  “Not essentially, no. Your problem could have happened to anyone. But it’s a definitional thing, as opposed to a fundamental thing, and it expresses itself differently depending on personality. Your engram is defined as Peter Stanmore Alander, even though it fundamentally cannot be. In some people, the definition imposed by the engram architecture is enough to overcome the conflict—they want to believe in it, perhaps, strongly enough to make it seem true—but in others, like you, the definition isn’t enough to erase the obvious discrepancy. The memories that you are told are yours belong to someone else; key concepts that you are supposed to believe no longer ring true; people you once knew and maybe even loved now seem like strangers. All because, deep down, you don’t believe it when you tell yourself—or are told from the outside—that you are the same as your original.”

  He was staring at her now with an expression that made him look inhuman, almost robotic. “You’re saying it’s a scripting error? That somewhere in the program that’s supposed to make me me, there’s a line saying the opposite?”

  She shook her head. “You know as well as I do that engrams aren’t simple software agents. They’re tremendously complex, even if, ultimately, they aren’t as complex as the real thing. You are not so much the victim of a slight text error as...” She clutched for a metaphor. “... as a shortcut that went wrong. Some people made very successful engrams; others did not. Peter Stanmore Alander did not, I’m afraid. Something about him broke the mold every time it was applied to him. The definition has been undermined by your personality. So it’s not just this version of you that’s been having problems, Peter. As far as we’re aware, nine out of ten of his engrams failed.”

  He blinked a few times and turned away, an expression of both shock and pain on his android face. She thought for a moment that he might be angry with her, but he just stood with his back toward her and was silent.

  “I could try to repair you,” she said. “There might be something simple I can do to—”

  “Keep your goddamn head out of mine.” His voice was low, but its tone was sharp and menacing. A vein pulsed on his gray-skinned skull. “You’re as bad as the one I knew on the Tipler. She was always poking around in my mind. And your so-called ‘higher’ self, lifting my memories, taking something that you had no right to touch!”

  “But Peter, I wouldn’t be taking anything from you. All I need is—”

  He spun around sharply, the anger in his expression alarming. She took a hasty step back.

  “You wouldn’t be taking anything from me? Is that what you just said?” He stepped forward, compensating for the distance she had put between them. “You’d be repairing me, right? Fixing the problem like I was nothing more than a broken fucking appliance. You’d put me back the way I was, regardless of who I am now. You’d erase me.”

  He stopped for a moment, trembling, then dragged the back of a hand across his mouth as he stepped away from her once more. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be taking anything away from me,” he said quietly.

  She waited a few moments before speaking.

  “I... I don’t understand,” she said nervously. “Are you saying you don’t want to be like your original?
”

  “Of course I don’t!” The admission seemed to surprise him as much as it did her. “I’m not just some dog you drag out to a paddock and shoot because it’s got rabies. I’m not wrong, Caryl. I’m just...” He waved his hand frustratingly before him, as if trying to find the right word. When it finally came to him, his arms dropped to his side and his body seemed to sag. “I’m just different,” he said, and slumped onto the couch. “That’s all.”

  He sounded like a petulant teenager. She waited to see if he would add anything else, but he was silent for a long time, sitting on the couch with his eyes closed.

  “Are you inside me now?” he asked after a while. He kept his eyes shut.

  “No,” she replied honestly. “On my own, I don’t have the ability to do that without you knowing. The rest of me examined you, with the Vincula’s help, and distributed the knowledge.”

  He shook his head slowly, then straightened in the seat, as though consciously pulling himself together. Then he looked at her with an expression of determined objectivity. Whatever he was feeling, he was burying it deep from her eyes.

  “You’ve changed,” he said, indicating her environment suit. “Do you need anything else? Food? Sleep? Arachne can give you anything you want along those lines, you know.”

  She did know. They had already had that conversation, although she wasn’t about to set him off again by pointing that out. She didn’t need any of the things he offered, either. Her greatest problem was the lack of herself.

  “A room,” she said. “I’m sure you don’t want me under your feet the entire trip.”

  “Okay.” He nodded. “Arachne—”

  “A room has been arranged,” said the hole ship.

  Despite the smooth, quiet tone, both of them jumped at the sound of the AI’s voice. Alander’s expression mirrored her own astonishment.

  “You will take instructions from me?” she said.

  “Of course,” came the emotionless response. “I have been programmed to—”

  “But I thought you could only take instructions from me,” said Alander, with an edge of panic. “I thought I was the only one you would speak to!”

  “That arrangement was between you and the Gifts, Peter. I operate under a separate command protocol.”

  Of course, she thought. While it was one of the gifts, it wasn’t one of the Gifts.

  “I don’t want her doing anything without me knowing,” Alander told the AI. “She’s not to change our course or be permitted to call anyone. If she tries, you’re to check with me first. Understand?”

  “I assure you that none of her commands can in any way conflict with your own, Peter.”

  “You don’t trust me?” she asked him, feigning indignation.

  He didn’t honor the jibe with a reply, nor did she push the matter any further. For now, it was enough to know that the hole ship would answer her questions. Maybe it would do more than just obey her orders, since she, unlike Alander, was prepared to explore other forms of communication.

  “I’ll leave you alone with your suspicions,” she said. Then: “Arachne, you said you had a room for me?”

  “Yes, Caryl. You will find it on your left as you pass through the egress corridor.”

  Ignoring Alander’s look of annoyance and frustration, she left the cockpit and followed the short corridor along to the room the AI had indicated. It was tiny and contained little more than a narrow cot and a wall-mounted bench, but it suited her needs. Had she required toilet facilities, she was sure the Gifts would have provided them, too, but, like Alander, she was very nearly self-contained in that regard.

  She stretched out on the bed. The scenes she had just endured with Alander were among the most intense she had experienced for many decades. She wasn’t used to physical exchanges on the whole, let alone ones so emotionally charged. She was feeling drained but not tired. It would be a relief to finally arrive at Upsilon Aquarius, where she would be able to converse with someone who wasn’t likely to fragment at the wrong phrase.

  “Arachne?” She spoke with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling. “Thanks for talking to me. I’m surprised but pleased.”

  “You’re welcome, Caryl.”

  “Do we have to just talk, though? I have numerous other senses I can utilize.”

  “I am aware of them and can interface with any you wish to utilize.”

  “Okay, then.” She abandoned her external eyes and groped outward by subtler means. “I’d like to see where we’re going, if that’s possible. Is there any way—?”

  Before she had finished, she found herself surrounded by a flawless simulation of the gifts on Adrasteia: the ten orbital towers and spindles, each unique and glinting in the bright sunlight. The illusion was so perfect, it was as though she was actually there. Moving through it was as easy as willing herself elsewhere; and she jumped in rapid succession through all of the various rooms: from the text-based Science Hall to the more hands-on Lab; through the Map Room, with its millions of glowing stars; the Gallery and the Library, all holding promise of a universe rich in life and wonders; pausing at the Surgery; the Hub; and the hole ship’s Dry Dock, rich in alien technology; but none so rich as the great hall holding the tower-building machines and the Gifts themselves, vast and mysterious, seeming more concrete somehow than the spindles.

  She stopped in the Dark Room and floated for a while in its empty blackness.

  “This is the final gift we bring,” the Gifts had said. She understood that comment about as much as Alander did. Did they mean infinity? Serenity? The purity of the void?

  Or maybe there was something here she simply couldn’t see, that humanity would only discover once they could penetrate the geometries of space itself.

  She didn’t know, and right now probably wasn’t the time to worry about it, either.

  “Why did the Spinners come?” she asked, wondering if a more powerful means of communication gave her access to higher-level information.

  “That has already been explained to Peter Alander,” said the hole ship.

  She smiled at the rebuke. Yes, this was definitely more sophisticated than simple instruction-confirmation. “Okay. But the Spinners are travelers, yes? Wandering across the galaxy, helping out needy, less fortunate races wherever they go, right?”

  “That statement is more or less true.”

  She sensed evasion and pursued it. “What do you mean by that?”

  “The behavior of the builders of the gifts is much more complex than humanity’s. Would an ant understand your motivations? A unicellular bacteria?”

  “Some motivations, yes. All species need to find resources and to reproduce—”

  “All Earth species,” interrupted the AI.

  “There are other biological models? Will I find them in the Library?”

  “You will find much that is alien to you there, Caryl Deborah Hatzis.”

  She shook her head in irritation. “Please don’t use my middle name. I can’t stand it.” But it must know that already, she thought, if it knows my name. And to know that, the hole ship must have scanned either her or Alander at some point. It’s deliberate; the hole ship is trying to put me off guard.

  “Will you at least tell me which model the Spinners belong to then?”

  “All information regarding the Spinners is confidential.”

  “Why? What are they so afraid of?”

  “They have no reason to be afraid of anything.”

  She laughed lightly. “Everyone is afraid of something.”

  The hole ship didn’t respond, though. Nor had it any cause to; after all, she hadn’t asked it anything.

  “What about the other colonies?” she asked. “You told Peter that none of them have been contacted. Is that true?”

  “Nothing is known of our builders since leaving Upsilon Aquarius. It is possible they may have contacted other colonies, yes, but that would depend on where their journey takes them.”

  “This is different from what you told
Peter. You said Adrasteia was the only one.”

  “At that stage, that was the case.”

  ‘To your knowledge, has the situation changed?”

  “To my knowledge, no.”

  “I’m beginning to have doubts about your knowledge, to be honest.”

  Again, silence. This time she didn’t push it. The brief conversation, combined with Alander’s memories, had confirmed the intractability of the Spinners’ AIs when it came to details about themselves. She was beginning to suspect that it was more than just intractability, though: The information simply wasn’t there to be accessed. If the Spinners didn’t want to impart too much of themselves into their gifts, then there had to be something they were afraid to reveal, something they didn’t want other species to find out about. But what? And why?

  Her discomfort with the whole scenario wasn’t helped by the fact that all contact had been lost with Upsilon Aquarius. Not knowing what had happened to the survey team was undermining her conviction that Alander had made a mistake by leaving Sol when he did. They needed to know, and this was the only way to find out. But that realization came with its own problems. Just what was she and Alander heading into?

  There are civilizations who take delight in the destruction of others.

  The thought haunted her as she lay on the cot, staring at the ceiling.

  2.2.2

  The velvet blackness of space was peppered with distant, exploding hellfires drowning in bubbles of choking dust, feathery nebulae stirred by violent shock waves, and enigmatic singularities brought forth naked, screaming and howling in X-ray frequencies....

  Alander was haunted by such images during his waking hours all the way back to Adrasteia. Had they been nightmares, he might have felt less troubled, but they were inspired by his growing perception of the universe: that it was an unsettled, angry place in which humans didn’t belong. If the Spinners themselves were afraid to show their real faces, what chance did he or anyone he knew stand?