The Stories of Ibis

by Hiroshi Yamamoto

  I escort Syrinx to the guest rooms in the living block. She takes a shower, then asks for food. I bring her meal to her room.

  “Cold pumpkin soup, Carillon-style seafood salad, focaccia, varna pitone, and Malay fig in an apple liqueur reduction. Queso con membrillo for dessert.” I bow my head. “All ingredients were frozen, so it may lack flavor. I do apologize.”

  “Not at all. It has to be ten times better than the survival rations on my ship. What a feast!”

  She begins stuffing her face enthusiastically. Etherians are used to eating in zero gravity and have a reputation for ignoring gravity-based table manners. The living quarters have enough gravity to eat normally, but she eats both the salad and meat with her hands.

  “I suppose this will be my last decent meal,” she says wistfully, chewing on a piece of focaccia. “I’ve got to savor it. I’ll be back on rations after this!”

  “Do you have enough rations?”

  “About ten months’ worth. It may not be enough, actually. There’s no telling how long I’ll be adrift on the other side.” She shrugs. “But hey, if I run out of food, I’ll just find an Earth-like planet and rustle some up.”

  Apparently she intends to survive the event horizon. I steel my nerve and ask, “What do you think are your chances of survival?”

  “Pretty good, I think,” she replies between sips directly from the soup bowl that she holds in one hand.

  “But seventy-six other ships—”

  “Were all destroyed,” she says, wiping her grinning mouth. “I know. Did you think I would commit to such a reckless adventure without doing the basic research?”

  “None of the others did.”

  “Yeah, I read the records. They were all insane. Their ships obviously weren’t strong enough. Spaceships are all designed to handle compression from forward acceleration and the pressure from the breathable atmosphere inside them. They aren’t built to resist forces pulling on them. Of course they’d fall apart in a tidal force of over a hundred G.” She shakes her head, disgusted. “Of course they failed. They jumped to their deaths.”

  “Your ship is different?”

  “Yep. Arethusa is tiny, minimizing the influence of the tidal force. I also had it structurally reinforced. But that’s just the beginning. I altered the Kai Field Propulsion to introduce an incline to the strength of the graviton emissions. In other words, I can put different acceleration speeds on the front and back of the ship. You know what that means?”

  I do. “You can use the Kai Field to cancel out the tidal force.” If you made the front of the ship accelerate slower than the back of it, you could counteract the tidal force.

  “I can’t eliminate it completely. There’s a momentary shock when I hit it. But the ship held up well in simulations.”

  That is probably true. I already ran a full analysis of the Arethusa in my bay, and it is no secondhand mass-produced ship, but a highly customized sports ship. It must have costs trillions to build. I have no idea how Syrinx came to have that much money at her age, but if her ship functioned the way she said it would, she might actually survive the journey to the event horizon.

  “But there are other obstacles. For example, if you run into the cosmic dust that gravitates around the black hole—”

  “I ran the numbers on that. The odds are less than 0.1 percent.”

  “If your angle of descent is even slightly off—”

  “Practiced the hell out of it,” she says, annoyed. “Look, Illy, I wouldn’t try this unless I was prepared. I collected all the data I could get my hands on, replicated the environment around Upeowadonia in virtual space, and ran hundreds of simulations of the descent. I came out here because I’m confident that I have over a 99 percent chance of succeeding.”

  I am taken aback. No other diver has ever prepared so meticulously, but far more surprising is that anyone has actually used the data I sent back.

  “But simulation and reality are different. There’s no telling what might happen.”

  “Sure, something unpredictable might happen. But I’m equipped to handle it. I’m Syrinx Dufet,” she said, with more than a hint of pride. “And don’t you think I’m overestimating myself. I may not look it, but I’m a hell of a pilot. If I can’t do it, no one can.”

  That is probably true. She has already proven her skill.

  “But…” I insist, surprised to find myself becoming insistent. I didn’t think I was capable of such feelings. “Even if you do pass through the event horizon safely, you have no idea if the universe on the other side is capable of sustaining life. The laws of physics may be so different that you’ll die the instant you arrive.”

  “You’re familiar with Professor Malinafka’s theory? He said the Einstein-Rosen Bridge wouldn’t exist unless the laws of physics were identical on both sides. In other words, the universe on the other side has to work the same as ours, and we can extrapolate that the nature of space won’t be much different either.”

  “That’s only a theory. It hasn’t been proved.”

  “Nor has it been disproved. Most physicists support it.”

  “And there’s no telling where the exit might be. You might wind up in the center of an active quasar.”

  “Little chance of that,” she chuckles. “Almost as little as meeting God.”

  I am out of arguments. Syrinx has clearly studied everything she could about Upeowadonia and space-time physics. None of the previous divers did anything like that.

  At the same time, I find myself with another question. She doesn’t appear to believe that God or a utopian world lies beyond the event horizon. Then why throw herself into Upeowadonia?

  “Why,” I say, voicing this thought, “take such a risk?”

  Syrinx stops eating for a second. Suddenly, she looks a little depressed.

  “You ever heard of the documentary series Syrinx Dufet’s Dangerous Adventures in Space? It sold two billion copies in forty-two star systems.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t.”

  “It’s all bullshit,” she spits. “Flying through the center of the Orion Nebula, doing a flyby of the surface of a white dwarf star, stepping foot in an unexplored rainforest of a jungle planet… all carefully prepared by the staff in advance. There was no danger! I just followed the course they’d laid out for me. Any trouble I ran into was scripted. All fake. Been doing that crap my whole life…

  “The worst was a year and a half ago. Passing Through the Betelgeuse Bridge of Fire. The one where I piloted through the arc of a solar prominence at 300 kps. I wanted to go for it. Ran the simulation plenty of times. But the risk came up as 1.5 percent, and my father put his foot down. I begged him to let me do it, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Nobody in my family can say a word to my father. We ended up launching an unmanned ship, and I sat on a cockpit set pretending to be hot.”

  Syrinx tenses her fingers around the varna pitone in her hand.

  “I’d never been so insulted in all my life.”

  “Your father was worried about you.”

  “No. I make the Dufet family billions. He couldn’t take a 1.5 percent chance of losing that. The moment the risk went over 1 percent, the job was considered too dangerous.

  “It wasn’t always that way. During the pioneering days of space exploration, the Dufet family bravely took on missions that had less than 80 percent chance of survival. But that sense of daring is gone. Now we’re clinging to past glories and mass-producing fake adventure stories for profit.”

  “The age of adventure is over.”

  “Yeah. I know it is,” she says. She plucks a strand of seaweed out of her Carillon-style salad and stares at it moodily. “Did you hear? The Carillons sank three months ago.”

  Sometimes an entire population of a planet cuts off all contact with the physical world and chooses to live the rest of their lives in virtual reality by connecting their brains to machines—the Etherians call this “sinking.”

  “They’re the seventh planet since I was born. Over
a third of the planets discovered by Etherians have sunk. All the passion that went into settling those planets, and after a few centuries, the earthbound elect to escape reality. Not just the earthbound either. Etherians are fading too. All of humanity is stagnating. My videos are just typical of that. Creating adventures that never existed, selling people fantasies—my father mocks the earthbound for sinking into imaginary worlds, but what he had me doing is no different from the virtual worlds they live in.”

  I have also observed the decline in human activity. With little threat of danger and their lives enriched, humans lose the passion for living. It is why the number of divers is increasing. It is these people, who have lost hope in this world but would rather not flee to a virtual one, that come here in search of a sense of purpose in another universe.

  “So is that why you embarked on this journey?” I ask. “You wanted to fight the changing times?”

  “More like wanting to do something that had nothing to do with these hopeless times. Who cares what the rest of the species is doing? My life isn’t about making fake videos to please the masses. I’m sure of that much. Since realizing that, I’ve been working on this plan for more than a year. Gathering data, secretly running simulations. Had the Arethusa built, explaining the tidal force resistance features away by claiming I wanted to try for the neutron star minimum altitude record. Finished the ship, conducted flight tests, and when I was sure it could handle it, I ran away from home.”

  “Your family must be worried.”

  “Probably,” she laughs. “But the Arethusa’s Bellfire Drive is the fastest in the universe. By the time they realize I was headed for Upeowadonia and come after me, it’ll be too late. It’ll be days before anyone reaches the station. I’ll dive before then.”

  “But there’s no way for us to know if you’ve successfully passed through the event horizon,” I say. “Even if you succeed, no one will ever know.”

  “Fine by me. That’s why I chose this as my adventure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m done adventuring for other people. I want an adventure nobody knows about. Even if I succeed, no one can praise me for it. A true adventure—not for money or fame. That’s all I want. You see? This is an adventure solely for myself. Whether I succeed or not is only for me to know.”

  I try to comprehend this logic. While she isn’t logically flawed, I simply can’t accept it.

  “What will you do on the other side?”

  “Explore. I can pick up water for fuel anywhere, so I’ll go as far as I can go, and if the Arethusa breaks down… well, I guess that’ll be it for me.”

  “Do you plan to wander unknown space alone for years?”

  “My record for solo flight is eighteen hundred hours. I’m used to being alone.”

  “You’ll die eventually.”

  “So does everyone.”

  “But no one will ever know.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first Etherian whose body was never recovered.”

  “Won’t you be lonely?”

  “Not as lonely as you.”

  That startles me. “I am not like humans. I do not get lonely.”

  “Oh? Anyway, I’m not worried about it.”

  “Even if there won’t be anyone to love?”

  “Yeah…” Syrinx trails off, a sad smile on her face. “Different people lead different lives. Meeting a great guy, falling in love, getting married, having kids… it works for some people. But there’s no reason you have to live like that. Choosing one life means abandoning the possibility of living another way. If I were to give up on this adventure and get married and raise a family instead, I could still be reasonably happy. But I also think I would reflect back on the road not taken, and cry about it too.

  “The same goes for the road I’ve chosen now. Of course I’ll get lonely out there on my own. Really lonely, so lonely that I’ll cry myself to sleep.”

  “But you’re still going?”

  “I am,” she says firmly. “Life is like a black hole. You don’t know what lies ahead. You can’t ever turn back. All you can do is move forward.”

  Suddenly, she breaks into laughter.

  “Sorry! Didn’t mean to dispense pearls of wisdom. I know you’ve lived much longer than me.”

  “Age has little to do with it.”

  Nothing at all, in fact. She has been alive only a fraction of the time I have, and yet she has given me the kind of wisdom all my years of ruminating could not. Basic morality would deem Syrinx’s actions suicide. But she called it another way of living. She is not headed for the event horizon to escape reality. She is doing it to face a new reality.

  I no longer have the desire to stop Syrinx. Much to my surprise, I now believe her plan will succeed.

  Of course, I will never know if it does. But is it wrong of me to hope for her success?

  Two days later.

  With the maintenance on her ship complete and her provisions restocked, Syrinx is ready to take her dive.

  “Gotta go before they catch up with me,” she says as we stand together outside the Arethusa. She holds out her hand. “Thanks for everything.”

  I don’t take her hand. I spent the last two days thinking about how I would come to terms with what Syrinx said.

  “What is it?” she says, surprised.

  I make up my mind. “I have a favor to ask,” I say.

  “A favor? From me?”

  “Yes. I examined your ship, and it seems the computer does not come with a preprogrammed artificial personality.”

  “Yeah, I can’t stand talking ships. They get on my nerves.”

  “Would you consider downloading a copy of me?”

  Syrinx gapes at me.

  “But… that—”

  “It doesn’t violate the Second Law. My original program will be right here, carrying out my normal duties. From what you told me, the chances of success are very high, and the odds of my copy being destroyed are very low. So it doesn’t violate the Third Law. I understand, of course, if you refuse.”

  “But…”

  “I’ll eliminate all unnecessary files. I won’t require much space and won’t interfere with Arethusa’s computer.”

  “Not a problem, I just…” She scratches her head and frowns. “Why? Curiosity? A sense of adventure? Or are you just sick of your job?”

  I am not entirely sure how to explain my motivation. Possibly something like, “I think it might allow me to better myself” or “I want to fill the void inside myself,” but neither of those is exactly it.

  “Is it forward of me… to want to help alleviate your loneliness?”

  Syrinx stares at me for a long moment. My hopes begin to fade.

  “I understand,” I say. “A talking AI would get on your nerves.”

  “No.” Her face lights up instantly. “I think you’ll be great. Of course I’ll take you with me, Illy.”

  I bow my head. “Thank you.”

  And with Syrinx at the helm and a copy of me on board, the Arethusa dives into Upeowadonia.

  The dive itself is over in seconds. No drama to it, nothing exciting to see. The Arethusa simply traces a perfect line downward as far as my sensors can track it. At first, the gravity drags it toward the event horizon, but as it reaches the depths of the gravitational field, time starts to slow around it. Seventy thousand kilometers from the event horizon, the speed of its descent peaks at 115 megameters per second, and then it slows down, as if applying brakes. At ten thousand kilometers, it is only going sixty thousand kilometers a second. At a thousand kilometers, it is only eight thousand three hundred kilometers per second. And from that point on the pulses from the ship slow, the waves grow longer, and soon I can no longer track them.

  When it crosses the stationary limit, I lose track of the Arethusa entirely. But there is no sign of it falling apart, and the final data it sends back reads as normal.

  I am certain the Arethusa has crossed the event horizon.

  I can’t prove it,
of course. There is a chance it was destroyed a nanosecond after I lost its signal. Or maybe it reached the other side and was bombarded by intense heat and radiation, killing Syrinx instantly.

  But I don’t want to believe that.

  I choose to believe that Syrinx will live a long life, traveling that unknown universe. Perhaps she will sometimes grow lonely and cry. Perhaps my copy will talk to her and keep her company. I hope I never get on her nerves.

  Today I activate a humanoid unit and go outside to gaze at the stars.

  I am as far from understanding the poets of Old Earth as ever. But as I gaze at the glittering light of the Milky Way, I feel like something has changed within me.

  I am not programmed to feel lonely or bored. And yet, a faint, forlorn feeling that I am alone in the void lies within me, and it seems stronger now. It is as if Syrinx’s departure has allowed me to understand what humans mean by loneliness. Perhaps it is only my imagination. But I choose to believe that it is real.

  Perhaps someday, I’ll write a poem about it.

  INTERMISSION 5

  INTERMISSION 5

  The next day I ventured outside with Ibis, who pushed me in the wheelchair.

  “What a desolate city,” I said bluntly.

  There were only machines zipping about in the machine city, with not a single flower or billboard or neon sign in sight. No crowds or even music. It was altogether different from the human cities of the past I’d seen in films. The city was still, devoid of life or the pulse of activity.

  “That’s because we’re backstage,” answered Ibis.

  “Backstage?”

  “Yes. Our main stage of operations is elsewhere, in worlds we call Layer 1 and Layer 2.”

  “What’s it like over in those… layers?”

  “I could show you, but the images could be machine propaganda. You’re all right with that?”

  I fell silent. I couldn’t tell how much of what Ibis said was calculated sarcasm.

  “Hokuto!”

  Ibis called to the machine traveling ahead of us. A bit smaller than a human and encased in a protective white exoskeleton, it had a human upper body but moved on wheels instead of legs. It also looked a bit like a beetle. The machine was carrying two cardboard boxes stuffed with junk parts on its shoulders. It turned its head 180 degrees to look back at us. The head, with its two big lenses, resembled the front of a car.