“We spray a biological agent on the rocks as we go. It breaks the rock down to gravel, and then into soil. The agent deteriorates after a few generations—usually a day or two.”
She snorted. “Good thing.” Otherwise it might burrow down through the shell of the world.
“Indeed. Come on, let’s go meet Lex.”
She shrugged off the gloves and let him help her with the retracted glider. “What now?” she asked with a wry smile. “Time for a spacewalk?”
He shook his head. “From here it’s easy—just a short flight of stairs to the control center. Come on.” He opened a door at the back of the room and led her into the North Pole wall, her shoes clinging to the metal floor.
They climbed down the stairs from the platform to the inside of the facility. It was at least three times as large as Topside, from what she could see, and much warmer inside. “Welcome to the Far Hold,” Colin said as they reached the main level. “We keep a full crew here at all times, monitoring the world-mind and working with her to build out the world to plan.”
The room resembled the bridge of a ship, with wide monitors at each of six workstations. Which it basically was.
“Dr. Anatov, this is Risha, Marcos, Ashton, Divia, Jacob, and Natasha.” Each one of the techs nodded as their name was called. “How is she doing?”
“Her vitals are all within normal range,” the woman named Risha responded. “She’s looking forward to seeing you today.”
Ana arched an eyebrow.
“She’s not your average mind,” Colin said by way of explanation. “As you were. Ana, let’s go. She’s waiting for us.” He led her to a doorway at the back of the room and palmed open the door.
They stepped through the open doorway into a cave. The rock walls were shot through with a tracery of glowing yellow veins, like the exterior of the worldlet. Ana ran her hands along the wall. It was smooth, almost polished, with a series of ripples in the rock that she could feel with her fingers but couldn’t see.
They followed the cavern for a few minutes, and eventually the glow began to strengthen up ahead. The cavern widened out into a high-ceilinged room that she could only describe as a cathedral.
It was magnificent.
Easily ten stories tall, the space was hollowed out of the stone of the asteroid. The surface of the rock was intricately worked in whorls and lines and swirls, and the glow from the cave continued here, but the narrow traceries were grown to wide veins of golden light that wound their way toward the ceiling.
But the mind above them was the true wonder. She had grown from the size of a football when Ana had sealed her into the seed—she was now bigger than a tree. Thoughts raced around the mind in strands of light, and the roots that anchored her to the rock were as thick as tree trunks.
Colin handed Ana a portable loop.
She pressed it up against the side of her temple, and the world transformed. Instead of a rock cavern, she stood inside the heart of a castle, but it was like no castle she had ever seen.
A giant redwood grew up from the flagstone floor into the sky, and there was no roof above. The walls were faced with gray stone and covered in colorful tapestries depicting battles and coronations and other historic events.
There was a woman standing before them. She wore a white cotton dress, with a simple circlet of gold holding back her raven-black hair. Her eyes were the blue of the Earth’s sky.
“Welcome to Forever, Dr. Anatov. I’ve waited a long time to see you again.”
AARON CLIMBED the short ladder up to the hanging branches of the apple tree. One of the girls, Harmony, climbed a ladder next to him.
“You just reach out, lift up the apple in your hand, and twist. If it comes away easily, it’s ready.” She demonstrated, pulling down one of the glowing fruits. She bit into it, and the juice dribbled down her chin, slowly fading to darkness. “Now you try it.”
He pulled down an apple, but it didn’t come free.
“That one’s not quite there yet. You can tell by the glow too. See how it’s kind of green?”
The glow of the apple he’d tried to pluck did have a tinge of lime.
“Try that one.” She pointed.
He pulled the fruit off the branch with ease this time and took a bite. It was delicious—sweet, crunchy, and tart. “Why don’t they use a machine to harvest these?”
Devon called over from the next tree. “Too expensive. Human labor is cheaper and doesn’t pollute the orchards.”
“Plus it’s a life skill,” Harmony said.
“A what?”
“A life skill. Those of us who make it up here are first in line for spots when the real colonization begins, but we have to learn life skills, because we won’t have machines to help us during the long interval.”
“That makes sense, I guess.” He pulled down more of the fruits and deposited them in the basket.
“We’re building a closed ecosystem here,” Talis said. “Everything is interconnected and the whole thing self-sufficient. The most stable way to ensure that is by emulating a feudal society—without the landholders and serfs, of course.”
“Of course, but how do you prevent that?”
Talis laughed. “Sorry, that’s above my pay grade. I leave that part to the social scientists back at McAvery.”
They stayed for an hour, moving from tree to tree. Aaron found an easy rhythm in the work and learned a little about each of the apple pickers. They were from all around the world. McAvery had apparently selected for diversity up here. His estimation of the director went up another notch.
When the next traxx crawled by, they were there to hitch a ride out to the Edge.
ANA LOOKED around the transformed room. “Do you mind?” she asked the world-mind.
“Be my guest,” Lex said.
Ana knelt, caressing the rough flagstones with her fingertips. They felt real.
A few steps brought her to the redwood tree. She recognized the bark. It was the same color and texture as the seed had been before it germinated. “A little nostalgia?”
“It was an easy-to-replicate texture,” the mind said, but Ana thought she detected a note of pride in the tone. Perhaps Colin was right about this mind being “special.”
Ana looked up. Fluffy white clouds raced by in a blue sky, high above, past the tree branches and the tall walls of the castle.
She approached one of the covered windows and pulled back a tapestry. Light flooded in, and she was blinded for a moment.
When her sight returned, she was astonished to see the rolling, grass-covered countryside, a fetishized version of the England of King Arthur, fading off into the distance. Every blade of grass was drawn with precision. The clouds were perfectly imperfect.
She sat on the stone sill for a moment contemplating the whole scene, and a cool breeze rushed past her. She laughed, surprised. “This whole thing is amazing… Lex?”
The world-mind nodded. “I have a fondness for knights in shining armor.”
Ana returned to the center of the room, where Lex and Colin were waiting.
“So, what do you think?” Colin asked.
“The simulation, or the world?”
“All of it.”
“It’s amazing. More than I ever dreamed.” Another thought occurred to her. “Is this what Hammond ‘saw’ when he first met you?”
Lex nodded. “More or less. I had fewer capabilities back then, bound as I was to the Dressler. You and Jackson freed me.”
Ana frowned, considering the implications of that statement. “Were you really so unhappy?”
Lex shook her head. “You misunderstand. I was never unhappy, just limited.”
“Are you aware what happened to Jackson?” Ana was almost afraid to hear the answer. “You were incapacitated when it happened.”
Colin watched her closely but did not interfere.
The world-mind nodded. “When I absorbed his body, I acquired his memories too.”
Suddenly the castle was gone.
They were back on the Dressler, in the midst of that rushed and horrible escape.
This time Ana was looking into the shuttle from outside. She was inside Hammond’s head.
She felt her hands unlatch the helmet, felt herself lift it off her shoulders.
Felt the terrible, deadly cold of the void pour in, freezing her skin and bursting her eyes and turning her brain to ice.
Ana screamed.
She found herself on the floor, gasping. Colin lay on the other side of the room, looking stunned.
She’d always hoped it had been quick for Jackson, but oh, the pain before it was over….
Lex knelt next to her, all sweetness gone from her face. “We both know he wasn’t the one who endangered the ship,” she whispered. “It was your fault, Ana.”
The blood drained from Ana’s face. There it was, the thing she had run from for a decade. The guilt she thought she had left behind. She’d done her penance.
She looked up, and for just a second Jackson was staring down at her instead of Lex.
She stood and turned to run, ripping off the loop and frantically palming the exit pad to get out of the room. Open, goddammit!
She looked back over her shoulder, expecting something to be chasing her. She didn’t know what, only that it would rip her heart out if she let it catch her.
Lex was gone, but the world-mind itself floated menacingly above.
The door opened at last, and she fled down the corridor.
“Ana, come back,” Colin called after her.
She didn’t stop. She had to get away from that horrible woman, the world-mind, the thing that had just called her a murderer.
Chapter Seven: Flight
LEX WATCHED Dr. Anatov and Director McAvery go.
She’d hoped that she’d feel something—some sense of relief confronting the woman who had almost destroyed her, whose actions had led to Jackson Hammond’s death.
Instead, she felt numb.
She had waited all these years to confront Dr. Anatov, and what had it gained her?
“You have to find a way to forgive her,” a voice said behind her.
She spun around to find Jackson Hammond standing there, under the branches of the great tree. He was wearing his knight in shining armor gear.
“You’ve been here this whole time.” It was a statement, not a question.
He nodded. “It’s taken me a while to come back to myself.” He took a step forward, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You’re angry, Lex, and you have a right to be. But you have to forgive her.”
She sank down on the flagstone with a heavy sigh, her white dress spreading out around her like snow. “I don’t know how.” She wasn’t good at emotions. They writhed around inside of her like living things, outside of her control. She’d never had a mother or father to guide her.
“I think that’s why I’m here.” It was as if Jackson were reading her thoughts. Maybe he was. “I’ve been waiting for you to be ready.”
She nodded. “I want to learn how to be more… human.”
He pulled her up and embraced her, kissing her forehead. “I know. The first thing to know is when to stop and take a deep breath….”
AS THEY rode the traxx, Devon and Aaron lapsed into a companionable silence. The apple groves gave way to wide fields of glowing wheat, and then eventually to open hillsides covered with bright tall green grass that whispered back and forth in the slight breeze. Light coming from plants took some getting used to, as did seeing the land arching over your head.
The traxx lumbered on, and Aaron’s mind swung back to the vision he’d seen when he touched the hard rock of Ariadne’s surface. Had he unwittingly tapped into the world-mind?
And why had he seen his father there?
Forever was a living being on a scale never before known by mankind. He’d expected something like Transfer, but bigger.
This was of another magnitude altogether. It was like dipping into another reality.
The traxx entered a copse of trees more wild and random than the apple orchard. Trees that reminded him of banyans grew in thick clusters, the ground beneath them wet and soft in places and dry in others. Colorful vines wrapped around their trunks, providing light under the dark canopy.
Devon reached up and grabbed a low-hanging fruit off one of the vines as they passed under it. He pulled out his knife, cut it open, and handed half to Aaron. “Here, try this… it’s a melon variant. Kinda half cantaloupe, half watermelon.”
Aaron took the fruit, the glowing juices spilling over his palms. Following Devon’s example, he scooped out a bit of the flesh and ate it. It was sweet and wet. “Oooh, that’s good!”
Devon grinned. “We’re living in paradise, I tell you!”
As they ate, Aaron asked some of the questions that were on his mind. “Where are you from?”
“The Allied African States.” Devon’s usual cheer was gone. “My mother and I escaped after the last revolution, but my brothers are still there. You?”
“Fargo. My father was in AmSplor.”
“Wait, Hammond? Like Jackson Hammond?”
“Yeah.”
Devon’s mouth made a little O. “Your father’s like a legend up here.”
“I wish he were still here, instead of being a legend.” Aaron spit out a seed. “He left my mother and us two kids in a really bad place when he died.” They were silent for a while. Aaron finished his melon, and together they threw the rinds into the jungle.
“Is that why you’re here?” Devon said at last.
Aaron took a minute before answering. “That’s part of it, but I’ve always wanted to be out here. To explore. To be at the start of something. There are so many endings and blind alleys back on Earth.”
“Tell me about it.”
The traxx rounded a bend and cleared the last of the jungle. The plants rapidly dwindled to nothing, and a bleak field of black rock spread out before them.
“The Edge?”
Devon nodded. “We’ve got about three hours before dark. Come on. I’ll show you what we do out here.”
COLIN FOUND the good doctor on the flight deck, strapping on her wings. The wind was rising, and the hair on his arms was standing on end from the static electricity. “Ana, you have to come back inside,” he shouted over the whistling of the wind. “The storm is starting. It’s not safe for you out here.”
She shook her head violently. “I should never have come back,” she shouted. “I thought I’d moved past all of this, but you can’t escape your demons. I have to get away from here.”
“Just wait until tomorrow.” There was a tempest brewing, for God’s sake.
She glared at him. “I’m sorry, Colin, I can’t!” With that she turned and leaped off the platform, soaring into the open sky beyond.
Colin cursed, clambering down the steps to retrieve his own set of wings. Damn fool woman would get them both killed. “Risha, let McAvery Port know Dr. Anatov has gone out on her own and I’m going after her. We may both need rescue before this is through.”
He ignored the startled look on her face and scrambled back up the stairs, intent on catching the doctor before she went too far.
AARON GAZED out across the barren plain before them. It was intimidating. It looked like the end of the world, as the green plants behind him petered out into grasses for a few feet and then to a broken landscape of black shale.
“I give you the Edge. Come on!” Devon called from up ahead. “We’re almost there.” They had followed the line of vegetation for about forty-five minutes, and he could see activity up ahead a little way along the curve of the world. They were carrying two metal tanks each across this dividing line in the landscape—glowing life on the right and dark barrenness on the left. He’d asked what they were for, but Devon had been cagey about the whole thing. He sighed and continued on after his new acquaintance, carrying his heavy tanks in addition to the weight of the pack on his back.
He shifted the pack, trying to find a
comfortable position. Who knew there’d be so much physical work up here?
They hiked for another twenty minutes, eventually reaching a small gully. They clambered down one side, handing the tanks from one to the other, and then up the other.
Aaron hauled himself to the top and dusted off his clothes, looking up into a woman’s face.
She was tall, with long dark hair and eyes that were the warmest brown he’d ever seen. “Hello,” he managed, almost stumbling backward into the gully. She caught his shoulder, steadying him, and laughed. It was a welcoming, cheerful sound.
“Hi there. I’m Keera.” She extended her hand, and he took it, smiling back at her.
“Hey, gorgeous,” Devon said, and Keera threw her arms around him.
“Hi, angel. You brought us another worker bee?”
He nodded. “Not just anyone. Keera, this is Aaron Hammond. Of those Hammonds.”
Keera grinned. “Wow, a virtual celebrity! Well, come on. We have a couple more hours before it gets dark. Let’s put you to work.”
“I’d like that.” Aaron was utterly charmed. He followed the two of them along to the work site as they chatted and caught up on events back at McAvery. Then he was introduced around to the rest of the crew. There were ten of them out here, and judging by their comfortable rapport, they had been working together for some time.
He ended up teamed with Keera herself.
“I see you brought your own tanks of bio-agent. Bring one along.” She beckoned him to follow. She also handed him a long metal pole.
They passed several of the others, who were spraying the hard shale with something out of similar tanks. They reached the end of the line, and she pointed out at the shale plain, which stretched off toward the mountains in the distance.
“We’re slowly working our way out to the Dragon’s Reach, those dark mountains off in the distance. Our goal is to have all of this planted within the next three years.”
He whistled. “That’s a long way.” He stared at the distant, craggy peaks. “They’re amazing. It’s hard to believe we’re out in the middle of the void.”
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