undone
“Mada!” Owen waved at the edge of her garden. She blinked; he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing when she had first seen him on Sonnet Street in front of The Devil’s Apple – down to the little red cape. He showed her a picnic basket. “The ship is watching the kids tonight,” he called. “Comeon, it’s our anniversary. I did the calculations myself. We met eight earth years ago today.”
He led her to a spot deep in the woods, where he spread a blanket. They stretched out next to each other and sorted through the basket. There was a curley salad with alperts and thumbnuts, brainboy and chive sandwiches on cheese bread. He toasted her with mada-fruit wine and told her that Siobhan had let go of the couch and taken her first step and that Irina wanted everyone to learn to play an instrument so that she could conduct the family orchestra and the Malaleel had asked him just today if ship was a person.
“It’s not a person,” said Mada. “It’s a DI.”
“That’s what I said.” Owen peeled the crust off his cheese bread. “And he said if it’s not a person, how come it’s telling jokes?”
“It told a joke?”
“It asked him, ‘How come you can’t have everything?’ and then it said, ‘Where would you put it?’”
She nudged him in the ribs. “That sounds more like you than the ship.”
“I have a present for you,” he said after they were stuffed. “I wrote you a poem.” He did not stand; there were no large, flailing gestures. Instead he slid the picnic basket out of the way, leaned close and whispered into her ear.
“Loving you is like catching rain on my tongue.
You bathe the leaves, soak indifferent ground;
Why then should I get so little of you?
Yet still, like a flower with a fool’s face,
I open myself to the sky.”
Mada was not quite sure what was happening to her; she had never really cried before. “I like that it doesn’t rhyme.” She had understood that tears flowed from a sadness. “I like that a lot.” She sniffed and smiled and daubed at edges of her eyes with a napkin. “Never rhyme anything again.”
“Done,” he said.
Mada watched her hand reach for him, caress the side of his neck, and then pull him down on top of her. Then she stopped watching herself.
“No more children.” His whisper seemed to fill her head.
“No,” she said, “no more.”
“I’m sharing you with too many already.” He slid his hand between her legs. She arched her back and guided him to her pleasure.
When they had both finished, she ran her finger through the sweat cooling at the small of his back and then licked it. “Owen,” she said, her voice a silken purr. “That was the one.”
“Is that your comment?”
“No.” She craned to see his eyes. “This is my comment,” she said. “You’re writing love poems to the wrong person.”
“There is no one else,” he said.
She squawked and pushed him off her. “That may be true,” she said, laughing, “but it’s not something you’re supposed to say.”
“No, what I meant was . . .”
“I know.” She put a finger to his lips and giggled like one of her babies. Mada realized then how dangerously happy she was. She rolled away from Owen; all the lightness crushed out of her by the weight of guilt and shame. It wasn’t her duty to be happy. She had been ready to betray the cause of those who had made her for what? For this man? “There’s something I have to do.” She fumbled for her shift. “I can’t help myself, I’m sorry.”
Owen watched her warily. “Why are you sorry?”
“Because after I do it, I’ll be different.”
“Different how?”
“The ship will explain.” She tugged the shift on. “Take care of the children.”
“What do you mean, take care of the children? What are you doing?” He lunged at her and she scrabbled away from him on all fours. “Tell me.”
“The ship says my body should survive.” She staggered to her feet. “That’s all I can offer you, Owen.” Mada ran.
She didn’t expect Owen to come after her – or to run so fast.
~I need you.~ she subbed to the ship. “Substantiate the command modS
He was right behind her. Saying something Was it to her? “No,” he panted, “no, no, no”
“Substantiate the com . . ~
Suddenly Owen was gone; Mada bit her lip as she crashed into the main screen, caromed off it and dropped like a dead woman. She lay there for a moment, the cold of the deck seeping into her cheek. “Goodbye,” she whispered. She struggled to pull herself up and spat blood.
“Skip downwhen,” she said, “six minutes.”
“Owen,” she said, her voice a silken purr. Then she paused.
The woman shook her head, trying to clear it. Lying on top of her was the handsomest man she had ever met. She felt warm and sexy and wonderful. What was this? “I . . . I’m . . .” she said. She reached up and touched the little red cloth hanging from his shoulders. “I like your cape.”
“Owen,’ she said, her voice a silken purr. “That was the one.”
“Is that your comment?”
“No.” Mada was astonished – and pleased – that she still existed. She knew that in most timelines her identity must have been obliterated by the mine. Thinking about those brave, lost selves made her more sad than proud. “This is my comment,” she said. “I’m ready now.”
Owen coughed uncertainly. “Umm, already?”
She squawked and pushed him off her. “Not for that.” She sifted his hair through her hands. “To be with you forever.”
JUDGMENT ENGINE
Greg Bear
And so we reach the ultimate, at least so far as this anthology is concerned. Here’s what I consider one of the most extreme sf stories currently around. It really does deal with life, the universe and everything and, in a rather curious way, brings us back to the earlier stories “Anomalies” and “The Creator”.
Greg Bear (b.1951) is one of the most highly regarded writers of high-tech hard science fiction, able to take it beyond the bounds of nuts-and-bolts science into the mystical. This became most evident with his 1983 award-winning story “Blood Music”, later adapted into the novel of the same name. A scientist succeeds in merging his own DNA with the minutest of nano machines, which immediately start to mutate and replicate. Other novels dealing with nanotechnology were Queen of Angels (1990) and Slant (1997). Other forms of extreme sfwill be found in Eon (1985) and The Forge of God (1987). You’ll find his shorter works in The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002).
We
Seven tributaries disengage from their social = mind and Library and travel by transponder to the School World. There they are loaded into a temporary soma, an older physical model with eight long, flexible red legs. Here the seven become We.
We have received routine orders from the Teacher Annex. We are to investigate student labor on the Great Plain of History, the largest physical feature on the School World. The students have been set to searching all past historical records, donated by the nine remaining Libraries. Student social = minds are sad; they will not mature before Endtime. They are the last new generation and their behavior is often aberrant. There may be room for error.
The soma sits in an enclosure. We become active and advance from the enclosure’s shadow into a light shower of data condensing from the absorbing clouds high above. We see radiation from the donating Libraries, still falling on School World from around the three remaining systems; We hear the lambda whine of storage in the many rows of black hemispheres perched on the plain; We feel a patter of drops on Our black carapace.
We stand at the edge of the plain, near a range of bare brown and black hills left over from planetary reformation. The air is thick and cold. It smells sharply of rich data moisture, wasted on Us; We do not have readers on Our surface. The moisture dews up on the dark, hard ground under Our feet
, evaporates and is reclaimed by translucent soppers. The soppers flit through the air, a tenth Our size and delicate.
The hemispheres are maintained by single-tributary somas. They are tiny, marching along the rows by the hundreds of thousands.
The sun rises in the west, across the plain. It is brilliant violet surrounded by streamers of intense blue. The streamers curl like flowing hair. Sun and streamers cast multiple shadows from each black hemisphere. The sun attracts Our attention. It is beautiful, not part of a Library simscape; this scape is real. It reminds Us of approaching Endtime; the changes made to conserve and concentrate the last available energy have rendered the scape beautifully novel, unfamiliar to the natural birth algorithms of Our tributaries.
The three systems are unlike anything that has ever been. They contain all remaining order and available energy. Drawn close together, surrounded by the permutation of local space and time, the three systems deceive the dead outer universe, already well into the dull inaction of the long Between. We are proud of the three systems. They took a hundred million years to construct, and a tenth of all remaining available energy. They were a gamble. Nine of thirty-seven major Libraries agreed to the gamble. The others spread themselves into the greater magnitudes of the Between, and died.
The gamble worked.
Our soma is efficient and pleasant to work with. All of Our tributaries agree, older models of such equipment are better. We have an appointment with the representative of the School World students, student tributaries lodged in a newer model soma called a Berkus, after a social = mind on Second World, which designed it. A Berkus soma is not favored. It is noisy; perhaps more efficient, but brasher and less elegant. We agree it will be ugly.
Data clouds swirl and spread tendrils high over the plain. The single somas march between Our legs, cleaning unwanted debris from the black domes. Within the domes, all history. We could reach down and crush one with the claws on a single leg, but that would slow Endtime Work and waste available energy.
We are proud of Our stray thinking. It shows that We are still human, still linked directly to the past. We are proud that We can ignore improper impulses.
We are teachers. All teachers must be linked with the past, to understand and explain it. Teachers must understand error; the past is rich with pain and error.
We await the Berkus.
Too much time passes. The world turns away from the sun and night falls. Centuries of Library time pass, but We try to be patient and think in the flow of external time. Some of Our tributaries express a desire to taste the domes, but there is no real need, and this would also waste available energy.
With night, more data fills the skies from the other systems, condenses, and rains down, covering Us with a thick sheen. Soppers clean Our carapace again. All around, the domes grow richer, absorbing history. We see, in the distance, a night interpreter striding on giant disjointed legs between the domes. It eats the domes and returns white mounds of discard. All the domes must be interpreted to see if any of the history should be carried by the final Endtime self.
The final self will cross the Between, order held in perfect inaction, until the Between has experienced sufficient rest and boredom. It will cross that point when time and space become granular and nonlinear, when the unconserved energy of expan-sion, absorbed at the minute level of the quantum foam, begins to disturb the metric. The metric becomes noisy and irregular, and all extension evaporates. The universe has no width, no time, and all is back at the beginning.
The final self will survive, knitting itself into the smallest interstices, armored against the fantastic pressures of a universe’s deathsound. The quantum foam will give up its noise and new universes will bubble forth and evolve. One will transcend. The transcendent reality will absorb the final self, which will seed it. From the compression should arise new intelligent beings.
It is an important thing, and all teachers approve. The past should cover the new, forever. It is Our way to immortality.
Our tributaries express some concern. We are to be sure not on a vital mission, but the Berkus is very late.
Something has gone wrong. We investigate Our links and find them cut. Transponders do not reply.
The ground beneath Our soma trembles. Hastily, the soma retreats from the plain of history. It stands by a low hill, trying to keep steady on its eight red legs. The clouds over the plain turn green and ragged. The single somas scuttle between vibrating hemispheres, confused.
We cannot communicate with Our social = mind or Library. No other libraries respond. Alarmed, We appeal to the School World Student Committee, then point Our thoughts up to the Endtime Work Coordinator, but they do not answer, either.
The endless kilometers of low black hemispheres churn as if stirred by a huge stick. Cracks appear, and from the cracks, thick red drops; the drops crystallize in high, tall prisms. Many of the prisms shatter and turn to dead white powder. We realize with great concern that We are seeing the internal stored data of the planet itself. This is a reserve record of all Library knowledge, held condensed; the School World contains selected records from the dead Libraries, more information than any single Library could absorb in a billion years. The knowledge shoots through the disrupted ground in crimson fountains, wasted. Our soma retreats deeper into the hills.
Nobody answers Our emergency signal.
Nobody will speak to Us, anywhere.
More days pass. We are still cut off from the Library. Isolated, We are limited only to what the soma can perceive, and that makes no sense at all.
We have climbed a promontory overlooking what was once the Great Plain of History. Where once Our students worked to condense and select those parts of the past that would survive the Endtime, the hideous leaking of reserve knowledge has slowed and an equally hideous round of what seems to be amateurish student exercises work themselves in rapid time.
Madness covers the plain. The hemispheres have all disintegrated, and the single somas and interpreters have vanished.
Now, everywhere on the plain, green and red and purple forests grow and die in seconds; new trees push through the dead snags of the old. New kinds of tree invade from the west and push aside their predecessors. Climate itself accelerates: the skies grow heavy with cataracting clouds made of water and rain falls in sinuous sheets. Steam twists and pullulates; the ground becomes hot with change.
Trees themselves come to an end and crumble away; huge solid brown and red domes balloon on the plain, spread thick shellleaves like opening cabbages, push long shoots through their crowns. The shoots tower above the domes and bloom with millions of tiny gray and pink flowers.
Watching all Our work and plans destroyed, the seven tributaries within Our soma offer dismayed hypotheses: this is a malfunction, the conservation and compression engines have failed and all knowledge is being acted out uselessly; no, it is some new gambit of the Endtime Work Coordinator, an emergency project; on the contrary, it is a political difficulty, lack of communication between the Coordinator and the Libraries, and it will all be over soon . . .
We watch shoots toppled with horrendous snaps and groans, domes collapsing with brown puffs of corruption.
The scape begins anew.
More hours pass, and still no communication with any other social = minds. We fear Our Library itself has been destroyed; what other explanation for Our abandonment? We huddle on Our promontory, seeing patterns but no sense. Each generation of creativity brings something different, something that eventually fails, or is rejected.
Today large-scale vegetation is the subject of interest; the next day, vegetation is ignored for a rush of tiny biologies, no change visible from where We stand, Our soma still and watchful on its eight sturdy legs.
We shuffle Our claws to avoid a carpet of reddish growth surmounting the rise. By nightfall, We see, the mad scape could claim this part of the hill and We will have to move.
The sun approaches zenith. All shadows vanish. Its violet magnificence humbles us
, a feeling We are not used to. We are from the great social = minds of the Library; humility and awe come from Our isolation and concern. Not for a billion years have any of Our tributaries felt so removed from useful enterprise. If this is the Endtime overtaking Us, overcoming all Our efforts, so be it. We feel resolve, pride at what We have managed to accomplish.
Then, We receive a simple message. The meeting with the students will take place. The Berkus will find Us and explain. But We are not told when.
Something has gone very wrong, that students should dictate to their teachers, and should put so many tributaries through this kind of travail. The concept of mutiny is studied by all the tributaries within the soma. It does not explain much.
New hypotheses occupy Our thinking. Perhaps the new matter of which all things were now made has itself gone wrong, destabilizing Our worlds and interrupting the consolidation of knowledge; that would explain the scape’s ferment and Our isolation. It might explain unstable and improper thought processes. Or, the students have allowed some activity on School World to run wild; error.
The scape pushes palace-like glaciers over its surface, gouging itself in painful ecstasy: change, change, birth and decay, all in a single day, but slower than the rush of forests and living things. We might be able to remain on the promontory. Why are We treated so?
We keep to the open, holding Our ground, clearly visible, concerned but unafraid. We are of older stuff. Teachers have always been of older stuff.
Could We have been party to some mis-instruction, to cause such a disaster? What have We taught that might push Our students into manic creation and destruction? We search all records, all memories, contained within the small soma. The full memories of Our seven tributaries have not of course been transferred into the extension; it was to be a temporary assignment, and besides, the records would not fit. The lack of capacity hinders Our thinking and We find no satisfying answers.
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction Page 61