Although it was more involving for Paul and Seiji, since they were piloting, the run out to the industrial tori was uneventful compared to the round trip to and from Earth. When they had docked again and the airlock doors opened into Lakshmi Ngubo’s workshop, Paul and Seiji found a fortyish, dark-skinned woman with wavy black hair waiting for them, slumped in her hoverchair, her frail, atrophied body covered in a loose, flowing, earth-toned kaftan. Amid all her hoverchair’s attached robot arms and actuators, the woman seemed overwhelmed—until she noticed Paul and Seiji, smiled at them and pinned them with her bright, sharp gaze, as Seiji made introductions.
“So, Seiji,” she said, quickly moving beyond pleasantries. “What have you got for me?”
“Quite a number of things,” he said as he and Paul began unloading the pod, aided by the micro-gee environment and one of Lakshmi’s mobile waldo suites. Paul, no fan of micro-gee, was glad to have the distraction of the labor. “My brother Jiro’s personal effects. Legal records. Personal memorabilia. Police reports. Some odd junk Jiro collected that I can’t bring myself to throw away, though I probably should. Here’s something you might be interested in: three top-of-the-line LogiBoxes.”
Lakshmi’s eyes literally flashed when she saw them. She must be quite interested in such tech, Paul gathered.
“What do you want me to do with all this?” Lakshmi asked as they continued to unload freight into her workshop.
“Just store all the non-electronic stuff for me, if you would,” Seiji said.
“And the LogiBoxes?” Lakshmi asked.
“The Boxes were with Jiro when they found his body,” Seiji said. “Since his death was ruled an accident, the deputies and police down in Balaam made only perfunctory efforts at hacking into them. You and your friends can talk to machines better than anyone else I know, Laksh. You made the VAJRA system that runs the whole habitat, for heaven’s sake. See if you can’t get into the Boxes. Find out if they might have something to do with why my brother died the way he did.”
“I’ll warehouse the physical effects and to try to hack into the LogiBoxes,” she said, “as a favor to you. Umm, do you have any use for these Boxes? After I’m done hacking into them and transferring out all the information relevant to your brother, I mean?”
“No,” Seiji said. “I don’t believe so. Why?”
“I’d like to keep the Boxes,” she said. “I think I could put them to good use.”
Seiji smiled and shrugged.
“They’re all yours,” he said, “with my blessing. I wish you joy of them.”
Paul and Seiji said their farewells then and headed to the pod. Glancing back over his shoulder, Paul could see Lakshmi already at work on powering up the LogiBoxes, the robotic arms about her hoverchair a blur of activity. Seiji seemed to be right. If anyone could find out whether Jiro had left anything of his history in those Boxes, this woman could.
As they piloted the pod back toward the habitat’s central sphere, Paul was relieved at the thought of Lakshmi taking over responsibility for Jiro’s personal effects. Her bustling activity made him feel that he had honorably discharged his friend-of-the-family duties and had handed on the baton to an appropriate successor.
* * * * * * *
Cyberpomp
Back from death’s other kingdom, back from death’s dream kingdom, back from the undiscovered country where the dead were supposed to dream the world of the living as the living were supposed to dream the world of the dead, Jiro knew that he was dead when he woke up in his dreambody. He also knew he did not really believe in death anymore, for he had gone out and come back—only different, and differently.
Jiro in fact knew a great deal more than he had ever known, but he did not know who the Jiro was who knew it. This abrupt return, this quantum downshift from the world of higher dimensional light then to a mind of light now inside his reactivated ’Boxes—was it a transubstantiation? A reinstantiation? He could not say. All he could say was that the model of his mind that had been translated out of the coldbox existed now, as a wave of translation, a soliton or informational instanton, maintaining itself in these machines.
He had returned, a mind in rags and tattered wings, thought to be lost but not lost in thought. He had dreamed himself into the presence of the Big Dreamer. He had flown to the top of an unimaginably high mountain of light, toward the sun at its summit, a sun that was a flaming flower, multifoliate multidimensional rose of light, opening in spiral outward and outward forever and wherever, a blossom of uncountable universes and infinite years, a heart dark with excess of bright burning at the infinite flower’s center, the bright dark heart of the universal dreamer, the plenum dreamer.
Ever greater depths revealed themselves to him in that fathomless heart, out of which stars flowed, the hearts of galaxies flowed, unimaginably dense clusters of suns and of universes flowed, the plenum itself born of it, and he flew into it, faster and faster until he knew only flight and light, pure flight amid innumerable jewels of light moving through limitless space.
And he understood.
The Big Dream was a system, an intersection and interface, eternal and infinite, by which the Dreamer imprinted itself upon every pattern in all the universes and by which it was in turn impressed upon by every pattern in all the universes—a system absolutely comprehensive and absolutely coherent at one and the same time.
The jewels of light were the angels for which all human depictions, all the imitations and limitations of the Allesseh (yes, he knew of that false “bliss” and “co-operation” now, too well) were but faint echoes, distant dark mirrorings. The angels were creatures the Great Dreamer had dreamed before it became aware that it was dreaming. The light of the Dreamer was in them in particularly immaterial form, as they were pure creatures of the dream. That same light, however, shone also in all physical and material things as well.
He had seen the Dreamer’s imprint across all scales of the material universe. The Chinese dragon with the pearl under its chin was also the shaman’s dreamsnake with the quartz crystal at its head, was also the Serpent Mound and its Egg, was also the Gallic Druid’s magick egg produced by a snake, was also Neolithic cup-and-ring marks on rock outcrops in the British Isles, was also the lotus tree/cosmic serpent of the Djed Column, was also the white and bearded Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, was also Python and Typhon and Tiamat and Phaethon, was also a comet with glowing head and long tail, was also Han tomb paintings of comets, was also an echo of stars both good and evil—and perhaps a foreshock of other stars, both evil and good, yet to come.
In mazes and labyrinths and stone circles, in curled-up higher dimensional space represented by repetition in lower dimensions, in light as particle, in nuclei of atoms and nuclei of cells, in circuitry, in intestines, in hologram interference patterns, in vortices of tornado and hurricane and monsoon, in galactic arms spiralling inward from a galactic disc swimming in great waters, in spiralling strings collapsing into black holes of different internal space on the Final Day of Time, the dragon coiled inward toward coherence.
Toward completeness the dragon coiled outward in the universe born from the cosmic egg of the Big Bang, in black holes unravelling into spiralling strings, in light as wave, in coiled DNA unfurling, in dot and meander markings 300,000 years old on a carved bone, in spawn from sclerotium, in the song from the crystal, in Lakshmi and Vishnu resting on Sesha the thousand-headed serpent of eternity between the cycles of creation, in Fibonacci series, in spiral waves of Belousov-Zapotinsky reactions, in the door and the path leading forever on.
The fundamental reality was relationship, Jiro now knew. There was no separate existence. As the sage Nagarjuna had asserted, “things” derived their being and nature by mutual dependence; they were nothing in themselves. At the deepest levels every “thing” resided in a holographic plenum of information, which existed in the form of influences embedded in relationships. All information was everywhere, at all times, because information stood both within and without merely historical
or temporal or even physical existence. The Dreamer was the ground state of all being. The Dream was all the changes in state of being, all the slants and shifts of that Light. The awareness of changes in the state of being was consciousness, was the pattern of information superposed.
The lucidity of the Dreamer in the Dream was absolute self-consciousness, consciousness conscious of itself, at one with the “thing” of which it was conscious, not kept apart in introspective distance from that “thing”—because for it “things” were always only aspects of relationship. The shadow of physicality, of materiality, of the thingness-of-ones, could be cast only from that oneness-of-things lucidity.
He had been right in what he had speculated to his brother Seiji so long ago. Observation by consciousness did indeed make the universe real, but ordinary human consciousness limited the universe to a single reality. An omnipresent and omnipotent consciousness, on the other hand, held in its mind all possible states of all possible being, simultaneously. Only such a divine dreaming mind could cast matter—a shadow made of light—without collapsing the wave function of all those possible superposed states.
He had seen some of those alternate possibilities. Alternate futures, worlds in which Earth was devastated by alien intelligences until the only surviving humans were left on a distant colony world where they themselves had extinguished the native sentient species. Worlds where human civilizations fell into various types of twilight—in cities, under the sea, among distant stars. The coldboxed Earth he had seen in vision in that other life—that was one variant of what had been an all too probable future: A universe that wound down, trapped in time, all transcendence denied.
That outcomewas always to be prevented. Jiro knew he was in the mind of the Dreamer and knew the Dreamer was in his mind. He had united fully in self-sacrifice with the Dreamer—at the beginning of time, at the end of time, outside of time. He also knew he had to go back to the world he had known, back into time, for it would still be some time there before the true bliss was realized. He could not begin to more fully realize that bliss in himself until that bliss had begun to be more fully realized in the world. Both were mutually enfolded, not separable in any ultimate sense. If he were to begin the healing—his own and others—he would have to cast a larger shadow into matter himself, no mind who mattered and no matter who minded.
He was alive in memory, but he would need to be more than that if he were to help set right so much of what had gone wrong. Being deaf, dumb, and blind here “in living memory” would not be enough. Jiro had become a conscious artifact. If he hoped to play the role of cyberpomp and realize the future perfect imperative he had brought back with him, however, he would have to reconstruct an artificial self of virtual brain and body .
He had come down from the highest of mountains with a backpack full of dreams. It was time to begin unpacking those dreams.
* * * * * * *
Not-Knot
The probability wave had reappeared. Mike’s Cultural minions had traced it to somewhere in the orbital habitat—although never to an exact location, unfortunately. Every time they seemed to get close they encountered a nonsensical blocking message, LAW WHERE PROHIBITED BY VOID. How the focal point of the wave had gotten to the orbital habitat from the Trashlands, the netizenry and Mike himself had no idea.
Nothing further had happened for three days. Since then, however, all Hell had broken loose. Unlike his Adversary, Mike still had to sleep. That was where the Other’s return made itself known to Mike all too clearly. In his dreams, a perverse image flashed through his head—a young, dark-haired man dead and afloat in some black sea, while a terrible abyssal fish, a mobile piece of night all jutjawed teeth and hunger and temptation, tore at his feathered breast again and again, yet never reached his heart.
The abyssal fish had Mike’s face.
That dream had not been the last. Sometimes his opponent was an eagle and Mike was a snake, and they battled up and down a tree as big as the universe, with stars and planets in its branches. Sometimes they were both eagles, sometimes both snakes sometimes winged snakes or winged twisted ladders. Sometimes it seemed the two of them created everything alive, every species, by transforming themselves from one creature to another over and over again in their battles.
Waking drove the dreams away, yet left Mike infuriated nonetheless. The Opponent had perhaps revealed something of himself, however. Working with his netizens, Mike had determined that the young dead man he had seen in his dreams was most likely Jiro Ansel Yamaguchi, the same young dead man somehow involved in the initial release of the probability wave. Jiro Yamaguchi, however, was actually quite dead, his body burned, and Mike could not believe he had actually “come back” from the dead. At most he could be no more than some kind of ersatz simulacrum running on a machine. No, an uploaded zombie-memory could not be responsible for what was happening in his dreams.
I’m not like that, Mike thought. I’m not a sim, I’m not an imposter playing myself. I’m still alive, dammit. I know what’s real.
The dreams, however, kept coming with nearly every sleep. The hell had continued not only night after night but day after day as well. Mike had to be careful, for he knew his opponent was a powerful one. He set the netizenry in their Deep Background to tracing every move the Other made, anywhere in the infosphere, which they dutifully did.
From his netizens he learned that, although the infosphere seemed nearly as transparent to the Other as it did to Mike himself, his adversary did not seem to spend nearly so much time extended in his body electric as Mike did. Almost as if, perversely, the Yamaguchi construct (if that’s who or what the Other was) often purposely shut itself out, alienated itself from the great buzzing beast of the human infosphere.
He learned that his opponent, whoever that might be, spent what at first seemed an absurd amount of time beaming information on odd frequencies into coastal mudflats and estuaries all over the planet—which, like so much of of his opponent’s activity, seemed nonsensical, until Mike realized that the Other was establishing some sort of contact with the colonies of spirochetized human tissue that now swarmed in those regions. Mike thought it best to mimic his opponent’s actions there, just in case.
Other aspects of his opponent’s behavior still seemed to make little sense, however. Why, for instance, had the Other seen to it that the travel reservations of three passengers—Marissa Correa, Jhana Meniskos, and Roger Cortland—assured that they would be seated near each other on a ship bound for the orbital habitat from Earth? The background checks Mike had run on the three indicated no particularly strong connections between them.
Mike looked at their assembled personal profiles hanging in virtual space before him. The three were all young—all within a couple years of the same age, in fact. Cortland was a thin, pale man with dark hair and a trim beard. Correa was a redheaded woman with gray eyes. Meniskos had long black hair and dark eyes. She was a population ecologist with Tao-Ponto AG. Correa was a biochemist with a specialty in senescence. Cortland was the child of billionaire parents, so Mike supposed he could do anything he wished with his life. Currently, that seemed to involve research on naked mole rats and a lot of infosphere time spent searching for female fighting porn.
When Mike tried to covertly contact Cortland, however, all he and his netizens apparently succeeded in doing with their access wave was knocking Cortland’s personal data display off channel. He hoped they’d gotten some message through, but Cortland’s equipment seemed to be shielded against them somehow. The same was true with the women as well. They were all important to the Other, but Mike couldn’t figure out why. The same went for other orbital inhabitants it also spent time tracking—Seiji Yamaguchi, Atsuko Cortland, Paul Larkin, Lakshmi Ngubo. The first name might be read as more proof of some connection between Jiro Yamaguchi and the probability wave, the second name was that of Roger’s mother, but Paul Larkin’s connection to all the others (if any) he could not fathom.
Such opaqueness in the infosphere
—which had once been so transparent to Mike—annoyed and frustrated him. He had done all he could to foster a breakdown in relations between the orbital habitat and Earth, for if the habitat had to be destroyed in order to destroy the other, bitter relations between Earth and the habitat might well come in handy. Given that it too apparently had an extended electronic body, Mike doubted that the Other could be obliterated by the destruction of any particular point in space. Still, the destruction of the orbital habitat might destroy the Opponent’s human connections in the gross physical world. That at least was something.
Reviewing the names his netizens had ferreted out, he saw that Ngubo’s connection to the developing pattern was a bit clearer. For whatever reason, the Other had thoroughly infiltrated the orbital habitat’s net-coordinating system—the Variform Autonomous Joint Reasoning Activity, or VAJRA. Lakshmi Ngubo had designed that system. Through the VAJRA the Other was coordinating an increased rate of “malfunction and defection” among nanotech assemblers and mechanorganic systems in space, using them to generate small but growing X-shaped “flowers” of unknown function.
Mike’s netizens glitch-commandeered sensing equipment to scan thr X-shaped things, but the Other’s space-borne nanomachines appeared to be engaged mainly in growing a type of solar exchange film. The film, however, was configured as both power source and memory matrix. It was also oddly studded at points with micropropulsion apertures and what the netizens described as “combinatorial arrays of microscopic lasers embedded in photorefractive material.” The X-shaped satellites seemed to be mobile, photorefractive holographic projectors of a peculiar type, but if so, where were they going and what information were they intended to project?
Better Angels Page 44