Around the table, other people worked good-naturedly on their six plaits.
“Not like that, Michel.” Joanne took Michel’s half-formed plait from him and laid it out on the table before her. “Hold these two strands between your third and fourth fingers to keep them out of the way. Like this, see?”
Claude touched her hand.
“You are very good at this,” he said. “A natural, in fact. Tell you what, why don’t I help Michel? It will save you being distracted.”
Joanne gave a little smile of triumph and went back to her work. Next to her, Claude whispered something in Michel’s ear. The latter frowned as he tried to understand what he was being told, then comprehension dawned and he made a gulping noise as he picked up his strands again.
The six plait really was quite simple, thought Maurice. It was just a case of repeating one pattern over and over again to form a spiraling twist from the oddly moving strings. The thing was, Armstrong didn’t seem to quite grasp this. He kept getting the third movement in the sequence the wrong way round.
“Here, why don’t you let me have a go?” suggested Maurice, getting impatient and suddenly gripped by a desire to touch the strange plasticlike material of the strings.
“Hold on a moment,” said Armstrong, turning away from him. “I nearly got it there…”
All around the table heads bent forward as the group twisted and turned the strands. The occasional curse or giggle could be heard as a strand slipped loose or a pattern collapsed. The work was hypnotic, yet strangely satisfying. Outside of the bar, the descending night ran silkily down the spider web of the bridge, swallowing up its long white spans, gradually engulfing also the soft splashing of the waves on the beach. Inside, Joanne came to the end of her plait.
“Finished!” she said, proudly setting her bracelet down before her and looking around the table.
“Very good,” said Claude, but Joanne didn’t hear. She had just noticed Michel’s plait.
“How are you doing that?” she asked. Michel’s plait did not rise up in a spiral, like those of all the others seated at the table; instead it was a flat ribbon, a neatly symmetric pattern seemingly ruled upon it.
“Claude told me how,” explained Michel in tones of quiet satisfaction. “You simply reverse the sequence on alternate goes.”
“Oh,” Joanne sniffed.
“That’s clever,” said Craig from across the table, watching Michel’s fingers closely. “I think I’ll give that a go.”
They worked on for a few more minutes until everyone was sitting breathlessly, waiting for Maurice to finish. Maurice had finally got the bracelet away from Armstrong. Now he quickly twisted the last strands of his plait into place, feeling the strangely pliable material of the n-strings beneath his fingers.
“All done,” he said to the waiting table.
“Well done, everybody.” Claude gave them all a one-man round of applause. “You have completed the first part of the game.”
“How have we done?” asked Joanne, casting a look at Michel’s plait.
“You’ve all done very well,” said Claude. “Now for the second round. Here we can change the rules. In the second round you are not given your strands for free. You have to buy them.”
“How much do they cost?”
“I will give each of you eighteen strands in exchange for one of your completed bracelets. This will mean you can make three more bracelets. Do you still wish to play?”
Maurice looked at Armstrong. Maurice was enjoying this.
“I do,” said Armstrong, who always wanted to win.
“We can make a bracelet each this time,” said Maurice.
“Hang on,” said Craig, “that’s not fair. That means Maurice and Armstrong are at a disadvantage.”
“Why?” asked Claude innocently.
“Because they can only make three bracelets between them. We can make three each.”
Claude nodded, and Maurice had the impression that he had been waiting for someone to point that out.
“Okay,” said Claude, “are you saying in this game we should all start equally? Well, why not? Whoever said that any game should reflect life?”
He laughed at his own joke. This time the rest of the table did not join in.
“Now, who wishes to buy some more strands?”
The people seated around the table each handed Claude their bracelets, who handed them back eighteen strands each that he had taken from who-knew-where.
“Ah, not you, Michel. You get thirty strands, to reflect the greater amount of work that went into your bracelet.”
Michel beamed as he collected his strands.
“But that’s not fair!” called Joanne.
“Yes, it is,” said Claude. “It is harder remembering where you are when you are making two movements. Also there is some effort involved in learning the opposite pattern. Michel worked harder; therefore he deserves a greater reward.”
“So why didn’t you tell any of us what you told Michel?”
“Why should I?”
“Because it’s not fair that one of us gets extra help.”
“So you are saying that extra knowledge is unfair? It wouldn’t be right if one of you were to use an AI, say, to advise you on how to make your bracelets.”
“Yes,” said Joanne.
“Does everyone else agree?”
The rest of the table nodded. Claude put a finger to his lips.
“Okay,” he said, thoughtfully, “we said that for round two the rules could change. So we are agreed that, from now on, extra help is not allowed?”
“Agreed.”
Maurice raised a hand.
“Yes, Maurice?”
“Are you sure you don’t work for Social Care?” he asked.
Everyone laughed at that. The night was pleasantly cool and a party atmosphere was taking hold.
“Okay,” said Claude, “I will now teach you the eight-fold path. Take four strings in your hand like this…”
Claude taught them the eight-fold path and the reversing right fold. The bar they sat in cast a circle of light into a darkness filled with the sound of nothing more than the splash of the waves. Douglas took a break to fetch some more beers from the crate at the back, and Claude downed one before showing them the double impasse and the one-strand weave. The alcohol began to take its effect on all of them. Claude was giggling as he forgot the pattern for the eighteen plait for the third time and the rest of the group gradually joined in until they were a shaking mass, gasping weakly at nothing in particular. They drank more beer and counted the growing piles of strands and bracelets that they were accumulating before themselves. Maurice and Armstrong passed strands between themselves, trying to form a Schrödinger’s Cat’s Cradle.
“Now take the middle bit here and twist it around itself like this,” said Claude. “Whoops!” He laughed as the half-seen threads collapsed in on themselves to form a tangled mess. “I always get that bit wrong.”
Claude’s sheen of mysterious untouchability was evaporating in the alcohol haze. Maurice was coming to the realization that this was just another person, albeit one who had played the n-strings game many times before. Claude was losing the air of a sage and becoming more like a salesman: some of his comments seemed to be alluding to a deal in the offing.
“Isn’t it good to do something all on your own, without the interference of Social Care?” he would say slyly.
“What I like about these things is the way you can understand them,” he told Joanne, swigging beer from a bottle. “You make them yourselves; you know how they are made. You don’t need an AI figuring out all the details.” The comment sounded like something that Claude had rehearsed: a line he had been instructed to drop into the conversation.
“You know, people used to live on what they produced for themselves,” he had said, laughing, as Joanne and Michel had passed across a complicated double helix in return for the three hundred and six strands that Claude formed by performing a complicated twi
sting action on successive bundles of n-strings. “…and then AIs and VNMs came and offered them something for nothing. Are they any happier for it?”
“Show me how to do that,” said Joanne, leaning forward as she tried to follow the complicated movement of his hands. Claude paused in the action of pulling strands from nowhere.
“Sorry, single strands are too difficult for beginners.” He smacked his lips thoughtfully. “But I suppose I could show you this, instead…”
They huddled close together as Claude demonstrated a new move, and Maurice lost interest for a time as Armstrong called his attention back to their growing pile of bracelets.
“Come on,” Armstrong urged. “Donny and Craig are pulling ahead of us.”
Maurice picked up some of the strands, ready to restart the process of folding the Cradle. He ran two of the n-strings through his fingers, experiencing the odd sensation they gave of stillness, even when they moved. Twist them in the wrong direction and it was as if they weren’t there at all.
They got back to the work. The splash of the waves, the clinking of beer bottles on tables, the sounds of chatter…
It was only a short time later that the whole table noticed that Joanne and Michel had come from nowhere to build up a decisive lead. The pile of double helices in front of them seemed to be growing at an astonishing rate.
“Good work,” Craig said approvingly.
“Hey, that’s not fair!” Armstrong called out. “Look what she’s doing!”
Joanne was taking hold of the ends of a double helix and twisting them around and over themselves in the same complicated motion that Claude had used. When the bracelet was a tangle of strands, she would gently pull it apart and there would be two of them. She had the grace to blush and look embarrassed.
“Claude showed me how to do it,” she apologized.
“And why shouldn’t I? It’s not in the rules.”
“But it gives her an unfair advantage,” called Armstrong, in his agitation kicking one of the beer bottles that lay at his feet.
Claude adopted a thoughtful pose, and Maurice became more convinced than ever that he was delivering a practiced speech.
“So you are saying that replication is unfair, Armstrong? Just like AIs give one an unfair advantage in this game.”
“Exactly!”
“Yet you come from a society where these advantages are assumed on a daily basis.”
The sound of the waves could be heard distinctly in the room, that and the skittering echo of Armstrong’s beer bottle finally spinning to a halt.
“Yes, but you can’t compare this game to the way we live.” Donny’s words dripped with all the bitterness and bile that had built up within him since his wife had walked out.
“And why not?” Claude asked gently.
“Because…” Donny began. His voice trailed away to nothing.
“I know one reason why,” said Claude softly. “Because we choose the games we play, and yet the way we live is immutable. It is imposed upon us from our birth by the Watcher and Social Care. Well, what if I were to tell you there are other ways to live?”
Craig leaned forward. “I’ve heard about this,” he said excitedly. “I knew a girl on Lorient; she talked about people getting out from under the gaze of the Watcher and living a different sort of life. It’s an old-fashioned sort of thing, she said, getting back to basics.”
“Not old-fashioned at all,” said Claude. “It gives humans a chance to live as they should do, thinking for themselves, not as unwitting slaves to the will of AIs and Social Care.”
“Somebody’s coming.”
They swept the colorful strands of the n-strings into pockets, onto chairs, pushed them up their sleeves. They started to giggle at the futility of the task. There were so many of them. Too many. Armstrong was even shoving them down the front of his trousers, smirking at the obscene bulge they formed. Joanne shook her head at his childishness.
“It’s Saskia,” said Craig as a pale face appeared in the darkness. Saskia strode into the open-fronted space of the café.
“You know that Social Care are coming?” she said, taking in the scene in the midnight-bright room. “How much have you been drinking, Craig?”
“Not enough,” muttered Craig, and they all collapsed with laughter again. Maurice began to push n-strings down the front of his trousers, imitating Armstrong.
Saskia’s eyes fell on Claude. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” she asked. Craig couldn’t stop giggling.
“This is Claude,” said a still sober Joanne, placing her hand on his dark wrist. As he clasped it in his own, Joanne looked up with dancing green eyes. “I wonder how Social Care knew that we were here, Saskia?”
Saskia flicked her dark eyes around the table. “I don’t think that she should be able to make such accusations unchallenged, Michel.”
“Don’t start, Saskia,” Craig said, suddenly serious again. “Who’s coming?”
“One of the Stephanies.”
The assembled people looked at one another.
“We should go now,” Armstrong decided, pushing back his chair in a clatter of beer bottles. “Claude, it was nice meeting you.”
“You don’t have to go,” Claude said quietly. “I have a ship waiting not one minute away. Join the game, Armstrong.”
Maurice felt more tempted by the sudden offer than he would have imagined, but Armstrong was shaking his head.
“Not for me, Claude. I’ve got nothing to hide from Social Care.” He shook his head again. “I’ve got nothing against them, either.”
“What about when they stop you from drinking?” Maurice asked.
“They’re just doing the job,” Armstrong replied, drunkenly sanctimonious. “And I’ve got mine to do, too, Maurice. I signed up for duty on this planet and I’ll see it through. It’s the same with Social Care. You get the rights, you accept the responsibilities.”
“You should be getting them out of here,” murmured Saskia to Michel. “It won’t look good for you if Social Care realize that you let your team play the n-strings game.”
“All right, I know,” said Michel. He gave an apologetic shrug.
“Way to spoil the party, Saskia,” Joanne murmured.
“Be quiet, Joanne,” Michel said. “Come on, everyone, back to the flier.”
Slowly, with a scrape of chairs and further skittering of bottles, they began to make their way from the table. All except one.
“I’m not going.” Donny spoke up, his voice darkly sullen. “Claude, tell me some more about this new way of life of yours.”
“Look out,” Craig called. A disc came spinning out of the night; it bounced off the table and fell to the floor.
“Hello, Stephanie,” said Saskia.
“Hello, Saskia.”
Maurice shivered. This Stephanie was a personality construct of the human Stephanie, who was no doubt even now being woken and bundled onto a flier so she could be rushed across the world in order to speak to the erring crew.
“I see you have all been playing the n-strings game. It’s a charming diversion. I have played it myself a few times.”
“What, in digital space?” Joanne’s voice was sweetly sarcastic. “You have precious little chance of leaving your world, Stephanie.”
“Don’t be so prejudiced, Joanne,” Stephanie replied lightly. “I have the same rights to self-fulfillment as anyone in what you like to call the atomic world. Besides, I don’t need to walk in the physical world to realize that the concept behind this game is flawed.”
“It’s a diversion,” said Craig. “Look!”
Fine silver bars were silently growing downwards to block the open front of the café. Everyone present made a dash for the cool space outside. Claude whispered something into the heavy silver ring that he wore on his little finger.
“It’s not a trap,” called Stephanie. “It’s for your own protection. You need to think sensibly about this, so as not to be rushed into an unwise decision
.”
Armstrong scowled. “Who’s rushing us, Stephanie?” He raised his voice. “Claude, what do you mean when you say there is another way to live? Whose idea is this?”
Claude was scanning the sky. Up above, Maurice thought that he saw a pinprick of light drifting across the stars.
“Oh, some old guy from history,” said Claude distractedly. “I don’t remember his name.”
Maurice could see that Craig had now taken Saskia off to one side. He could hear the harshness in his voice as he berated her.
“What’s going on here, Saskia? Why did you tell them what we were doing?”
Maurice strained to hear Saskia’s answer, spoken in a self-righteous whisper.
“I didn’t want to tell them anything. Craig, you know what they’re like. Social Care always know what you’re thinking. But I promise, I didn’t want to tell them anything!”
Craig said nothing to that.
“Hey, you don’t suppose you’re the first person to come here, do you?” said Saskia suddenly. “Claude’s been up and down the coast for the past week, looking for people to join his commune, or whatever it is.” She reached out and touched the bracelet that Craig had tied around his wrist. “That’s a six plait,” she said. “I can do that.”
Something was dropping towards them. A sleek teardrop shape, the light of the café reflected off its burnished side.
“It’s the Borderlands,” said Claude. “This is my ship. You are welcome to come aboard with me. I can get the Borderlands to reproduce. Give you a ship of your own.”
“I’m coming,” said Donny.
“But Donny, what about your children?”
The disc holding the personality construct of Stephanie rolled on its side like a wheel, following them away from the café into the night and the noise of the waves that splashed invisibly all around them.
Donny clenched his fists. He was unshaven, his hair hung in greasy strands. The barely suppressed anger that had burned so brightly within him for the past weeks flared white-hot for a moment. With difficulty, he restrained it.
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