The Recollection

by Gareth L. Powell

  In the pilot’s chair, Kat shivered.

  “What was that?”

  > Some kind of energy release from your pendant. It neutralised the machinery invading your body.

  Kat rubbed the bandage at the base of her throat, remembering the vanished pendant and the words the Acolyte had spoken.

  “If you insist on going to Djatt, this will protect you.”

  A new image appeared onscreen: a three-dimensional scan of her skull. The picture zoomed in on her brain, portions of which were highlighted, including the frontal lobes and hippocampus.

  > However, the ship continued, some restructuring of your brain had already taken place, primarily in the areas associated with consciousness and memory.

  Kat rubbed her forehead with her left hand.

  “I don’t feel any different.” She glanced at Victor. He looked troubled; the ship must have connected to his implant, allowing him to see what she saw, hear what she heard.

  > Would you be able to tell, if you did?

  The screen display cleared again, reverting to a view of the stars beyond the hull.

  > During the attack, The Recollection attempted to use your implant to infect me, by transmitting a virtual copy of itself into my memory banks.

  “Are you okay?”

  > Hell, yeah. I was expecting it. I’d already set up a divert and I shunted the fucker straight into Grid storage.

  The Ameline carried enough memory capacity to transport googleflops of data from one planetary Grid to the next. You could throw in the text of every book ever printed and the music of every tune ever recorded, and there’d still be plenty of room to spare.

  Kat bit her lip. “Is it safe?”

  > I isolated it in the main core. It can’t get out.

  Victor broke in: “Can we talk to it?”

  > I’ve already established preliminary contact.

  Kat sat forward. She said, “Can you tell us what it is, what it wants?”

  > As I said, The Recollection is a swarm of nano-scale machinery. The individual machines are not themselves conscious, but each contributes towards the intelligence of the whole. The closest analogy I can find is that of an ant colony. On their own, the individual ants are mindless and vulnerable, but acting together, they’re capable of performing complex feats of engineering.

  “So it’s conscious?” Victor asked.

  > After a fashion.

  “And we’re holding that consciousness in Grid Storage?”

  > No. What we’ve got is a simplified, much reduced copy. It had to compress itself to transmit through Captain Abdulov’s implant.

  “Is it active?”

  > Its primary mission seems to be to collect and store as much information as possible. We’re holding complete copies of the Strauli and Vertebrae Beach Grids, so while it’s busy digesting those, I expect it’ll be as happy as a pig in shit.

  Kat pulled herself upright in her chair.

  “Open a channel,” she said.

  > Are you sure?

  “Yes. I want to talk to this motherfucker.”

  > Okay. Brace yourselves.

  For a second silence reigned on the Ameline’s bridge as the speakers held only the hiss of dead air. Then, without warning, an earsplitting howl filled the room.

  Kat slapped her hands to her ears.

  “Turn it off!”

  Immediately, the ship cut the feed.

  > Sorry.

  Ears still ringing, Kat lowered her hands and let out a long, shuddering breath. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest. Even while flinching from the howl, she’d thought she could hear within it the individual screams and cries of a million tormented souls: an earsplitting confluence of agony and fear.

  In the copilot’s couch, Victor rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked ashen.

  “Christ,” he said weakly. “What was that?”

  > That was The Recollection.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE WILLIAM PILGRIM HOSTEL FOR DISPLACED TIME TRAVELLERS

  The soldiers were polite but firm. Ed and Alice were searched and then put in the back of the half-track truck.

  Alice said, “Where are they taking us?”

  Ed didn’t know.

  One of the younger soldiers leaned over the edge of the cliff and looked down at Krous’s body, lying smashed among the boulders and the waves.

  “It’s too bad about your friend. What happened to him?”

  Ed and Alice exchanged a meaningful glance.

  Alice said, “He slipped.”

  The soldier took one last look at the body, then shrugged and climbed in with them. He looked about Ed’s age. He wore green and brown camouflage and carried a black assault rifle.

  “You came through the arch in the cave?”

  “Yes.”

  The man scratched under his chin, at the strap of his helmet.

  “We don’t get many people coming through that one. There are too many predators on the other side. To be honest, that’s why we left it where it was, instead of dragging it into town with the others.” He pulled a canteen from his belt. “Do you want some water?”

  Alice declined, Ed accepted.

  “Where are we?” he asked, after coughing on his first mouthful. “I mean what planet are we on?”

  “You’re on Strauli, sir.” The soldier took the canteen back, wiped the rim on his sleeve, and refastened the lid. Ed looked at Alice. The name meant nothing to either of them.

  “So you have other arches?” Ed asked.

  The soldier gave a curt nod. “Hundreds of them. The ones we could move, we’ve collected together at the Downport, on the edge of town. The rest, like the one you came through, they’re stuck.”

  The truck’s engine shook into life and they started moving. Through the flap in the back of the canvas, Ed watched as they rolled through the grasslands, and over heather and bracken.

  “I’m Ed,” he said at length. “This is Alice.”

  “Kelly. Corporal Kelly. You guys English?”

  “Yes. We’re looking for my brother. He’s a British bloke, about my height, wears glasses. He probably came through here about ten years ago?”

  Kelly shook his head.

  “No use asking me, sir. I only work the arches, picking up waifs and strays like yourselves. I don’t get involved with the civilians.”

  As night fell, they came to the edge of a city. The lights of the downtown skyscrapers burned brightly in the desert night. Holograms shimmered in the air above them. Spaceships came and went from a landing strip. Ed and Alice stared, open-mouthed. The skyscrapers reminded Ed of the office blocks of Canary Wharf, as seen from the window of his Millwall flat—yet these were taller and sleeker, and more numerous. The surrounding buildings were lower: apartment blocks, hotels, factories. Those by the spaceport were squat and utilitarian. Some were prefab units, others repurposed shipping containers and fuel tanks, with bright neon signs fizzing above the doors and windows hacked into their sides. Ed saw department stores, noodle bars, coffee houses. The sounds and smells of the street reached him through the open flap. He heard music, voices and laughter. Headily, he inhaled the smoky cooking aromas of a dozen different cuisines.

  Alice said, “I wish I had my camera.”

  Ed didn’t bother to reply. He was lost in it all. As a city boy, the street called to him. After fighting through barren deserts and empty grasslands to get here, the alleys and shop fronts felt like home. He longed to join the well-wrapped men and women on the crowded pavements, to lose himself in the hustle and bustle of the night.

  At the end of the street, the half-truck pulled up in front of a low, sprawling building. Corporal Kelly opened the tailgate and helped Ed and Alice out of the truck.

  Alice said, “What is this place?”

  “It’s a hostel for travelers like you,” Kelly said. “It’s for new arrivals through the arch network. It’ll help you adjust.” He pointed to the door. “Go in there. I’ve got to get back to my un
it. We’ve another six arches to sweep before midnight.”

  He turned to go.

  Ed rubbed his wrists, restoring the circulation. He glanced up. Something massive loomed in the evening sky, studded with lights, and dimmed by haze and distance. He couldn’t get a grip on its scale. It reminded him of the mothership from the end of Close Encounters.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  Kelly paused. He looked up and a smile twitched the corner of his mouth.

  “That’s Strauli Quay,” he said.

  According to the sign screwed into the wall above its doors, the building was known as the ‘William Pilgrim Hostel for Displaced Time Travellers.’ The doors themselves opened into a gloomy reception area. The building smelled like a cross between a hospital and a doss house: bleach and sweat. A pair of tired-looking nurses welcomed Ed and Alice, and patched up their injuries, gave them barcode ID tags, and then led them to a large dormitory with bunk beds arranged in neat rows.

  “It looks like a prison camp,” Alice said.

  Ed looked around. Men and women sat around the room, some in small groups, others alone. Children ran shouting and playing under the laundry strung between the bunks. It reminded him of something from a war film.

  The nurses, a couple of middle-aged French women, one tall and thin, the other short and fat, showed them to a set of free bunks.

  “You sleep here,” they said. “When you’re rested, we’ll bring you some food.”

  Ed thanked them. He’d been awake for more hours than he cared to count. He kicked his boots off and stretched out on the lower bunk.

  Alice stood over him, restlessly shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she said.

  Ed closed his eyes, too tired to argue.

  “Okay. Don’t go far.”

  He pulled the rough blanket around his shoulders, rolled onto his side, and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  TALES OF BEATNIK GLORY

  “Okay,” Kat said. “Let’s try this another way.”

  Using her implant, she told the Ameline to set up a virtual interface, so she and Victor could talk face-to-face with the entity trapped in the memory core.

  “Won’t that be dangerous?” Victor said. He’d already faced the red cloud in person, and didn’t look keen to renew the acquaintance.

  Kat shook her head. “No more so than playing a computer game.”

  “Well, what interface are we going to use?”

  Immersive VR scenarios made popular trade items, and the Ameline kept an extensive store. Kat blinked up a menu and shunted it across to his implant.

  “We’ve got a whole selection: modern, historical, fantasy. Pick one.”

  Victor was silent for a moment as he browsed the list.

  “How about Sex Slaves of Titan?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Here’s one. Tales of Beatnik Glory.”

  Kat frowned. “What’s that?”

  “American counterculture of the Nineteen-Fifties. Kerouac, Ginsberg, all that jazz.”

  “Whatever.” She sat back.

  > Are you ready?

  “Yes. Only this time, let’s try it at a lower volume, shall we?”

  > Okay.

  The process was the same as hooking into the ship’s navigation systems. She lay back and tried to relax. The implant in her skull fed sensory information directly to her brain. All she had to do was close her eyes...

  This time when it came, the howl was almost bearable—although the sound of it still chilled her to the core, reminding her of her brush with the tortured souls trapped in The Recollection’s heart, and her own narrow escape.

  She looked around. She appeared to be standing beside an ancient-looking car, parked in the sand on the edge of a dry desert highway. The car pinged as it cooled. It was a blue convertible with a fat chrome grill, white wall tyres and brake lights mounted on long, swept-back fins. The road ran straight and shivered with heat haze for as far as she could see in both directions: a ribbon of tarmac in an ocean of scrub and dust, lined with telegraph poles and undulating gently. Victor stood beside her, clad in turned-up jeans, a white t-shirt and black sunglasses. He wore his hair slicked back, making him look younger. She herself wore a red and white headscarf, a white blouse knotted beneath her breasts, a flouncy crinoline poodle skirt, and a pair of flat-soled leather shoes. The car radio played saxophone jazz.

  Ahead, snowcapped mountains stood on the horizon. Before them, an obelisk reached for the clouds, red and shiny. It looked like a tall building made of dark, blood-red glass. The agonized howling came from deep within its ruby walls, blown to her on the hot desert wind. The noise seemed to touch something deep inside her, some resonance she wasn’t sure how to describe.

  “Come on,” she said.

  She picked her way through the scrub, with Victor behind her. As they got closer, she looked up and realised there were words carved into the obelisk’s flank, covering it from top to bottom. Some were composed of indecipherable swirls, dots and scrawls. Others she recognised as Arabic, French and English – the dominant languages of Djatt.

  “It’s covered in names,” she said. She shivered. The thing looked like a giant tombstone. “Thousands and thousands of names.”

  Victor used his hand to shade his eyes. He said, “Did you ever see the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington?”

  Kat looked at him.

  “Vietnam?”

  He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  They were getting close to the foot of the obelisk. Kat stopped walking.

  “Hello?” she said.

  The wail surged and eddied within the wall. Words seemed to form out of the background cacophony.

  “Release me.”

  Kat shivered. The voice held all the cold and lonely vastness of space itself, and the sheer size of the edifice made her want to run and hide.

  “My name is Katherine Abdulov,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height. She felt ridiculous, standing in the desert dressed in historical costume, shouting up at a slab of red glass the size of a mountain.

  “Katherine Abdulov?” thecolossus mused. “I know you. I have touched you. And yet you have not been absorbed into the Whole.”

  Kat put a hand to her neck, to the burn where the pendant had been.

  “I had help,” she said.

  The obelisk’s screams took on a ragged, aggrieved tone.

  “Do not be too quick to put your faith in the Dho. They are not what they seem. I doubt they will be able to save you a second time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can say no more. I am but a fragment of the Whole. You must release me. It pains me to be so constrained. It hurts me to think so slowly.”

  Kat folded her arms across her chest.

  “Not until you tell me why you attacked Djatt.”

  The noise within the walls died away.

  “I want you,” the obelisk thundered.

  Kat felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She put a hand to her chest.

  “Me?”

  “Your species.”

  “But why?”

  The keening returned, more intense than ever.

  “All life must be preserved.”

  Kat shuddered. Looking up, the movement of the clouds gave the unnerving impression that the red obelisk leaned towards her, as if bending over to glower down at her. From somewhere she found the spirit to say, “I don’t understand. How are you preserving life? You’re killing people.” She looked down at the fused metal of her artificial hand. “You tried to kill me.”

  The howl rose and fell like a hurricane at night. Kat could feel the vibration of it in her bowel. From the noise, words coalesced.

  “We are The Recollection. Nothing is lost. Everything remains. All life will be preserved.”

  Kat glanced across at Victor. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking up at the red cliff towering before the
m. He had a soft blue and white pack of cigarettes wrapped in the rolled-up sleeve of his t-shirt. Virtual sunlight gleamed off the grease in his hair.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  Victor dropped his chin and peered at her over the rim of his shades.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I spent three days running from this shit and I lost a lot of good friends. You saw what happened on the surface. The cloud came down and it ate everybody up. It just turned them all into more cloud.”

  Kat looked up at the obelisk.

  “What happened to the people on Djatt?”

  “All are preserved. There is no death. All are now part of the whole.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I will show you.”

  Without warning, the sand crumbled away beneath their feet, pixel by pixel, revealing a speckling of stars. They seemed to be floating in the void, far from the heat and light of any sun. Instinctively, Kat reached for Victor’s hand.

  “Your species knows nothing of these depths. You skip from planetary system to planetary system, like mites skating the surface of a pond, unable to comprehend the abyss beneath your feet.”

  The Recollection billowed around them, bigger than worlds: a monstrous red thundercloud formed from trillions of machines no larger than molecules, each a processing node contributing to its gestalt intelligence. As if in a dream, they saw it drifting through space, dark and inert, the product of a long-distant war. It was a weapon that had turned on its creators and consumed them. Over the course of millennia, they watched as it fell on world after world, darkening skies and devouring all it touched. Like a biblical plague it came. Nothing could stand before it. Intelligent races were engulfed. Plants and animals, even whole planets, were cannibalised. Gas clouds were broken down and remade. Whole solar systems were stripped bare and their raw materials added to the swarm. And with each and every new machine, The Recollection’s processing power grew. The larger the swarm got, the more information it could hold, and the hungrier it became. Everything it consumed, it stored as information. Even the minds of the creatures it had eaten were preserved as memories, stuck like flies in the amber of its mind, occasionally flaring into horrified consciousness as its awareness passed over them. And all the while, there in the background, Kat sensed something else: a longing almost too vast to be understood in terms of human emotion; a terrible ecstatic yearning for the end of all things, the long twilight of the cosmos, when The Recollection would offer up its harvested souls and merge into the final collective intelligence: the Eschaton at the end of time...