“So they’re not time-reversed humans from the distant future covering their own tracks?” Alander had heard that rumor within a day of returning to Sol System. It had the merit and pull of a satisfactory narrative, but he wasn’t convinced.
Neither was Singh. “Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. The chances of humanity surviving the near-heat death state at the other end of the universe are very slim. And even if we did make it, we’d be so unrecognizable as to be effectively alien anyway. The time scales we’re talking here are fantastic.”
“How long?”
“The current estimate puts the entropy switch to occur at five to ten times the current age of the universe.”
Such a length of time was too much to grasp, especially given that humanity had barely managed to survive just the last few weeks. That it could last not just to the end of the universe, but back again, seemed utterly impossible.
“Not that I’m dismissing the reverse time arrow scenario,” Singh went on. “In fact, I don’t think we should be ruling anything out just yet. Personally, I think there’s a real chance that one of the migrations came from another universe—perhaps even both of them. As well as the—what did the A|kak|a/riil call it? The Exclusion?”
Alander nodded. “That was their word for the Spinner ecosystem.”
“If all of the races came from different universes, you know what that means, don’t you?”
Alander frowned. “No, what?”
Singh smiled broadly. “That your theory of quantum evolution could still be right, of course. Humanity might still be the only intelligent life to have evolved in this universe.”
Alander acknowledged the gesture, even though he was no longer as convinced of the idea as his original had been.
“It would also explain the gaps in the Map Room and the Library,” said Inari, one of the many who had gathered to hear Singh’s analysis of the situation. The simulated lecture hall was a fair approximation of one from the late twentieth century, with scuffed walls and graffitied desks that strongly echoed the ones from Alander’s artificial memories. In reality, humanity’s surviving minds were huddled in a complex assembled from seventy hole ships presently in a lunasynchronous orbit above the ruins of the Moon’s Yi Base.
“If the Spinners came from another universe,” Inari went on, “albeit one slightly different from ours, then the gaps aren’t deliberate at all. They’re just evidence of those differences.”
Singh nodded. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“As much as anything does around here,” said Cleo Samson, glowering from her end of the table. She was still smarting over the loss of Sagarsee, her own colony, in the last of the Starfish attacks. “If they’re not from around here and we don’t really matter to them, then why the gifts? Why bother with us at all?”
“Well, we mattered to somebody. If not the Starfish or the Spinners themselves, then perhaps a subspecies traveling with them. We know of at least six attendant species in the Exclusion.”
“Which might have been seven, had things gone badly for us.”
“You think they didn’t go badly?” said Ali Genovese of Demeter.
“We’re still alive, aren’t we?” Singh was grim-faced but determined in his opinion. “Without the gifts, there’s no way we could have survived the Starfish.”
“Without the gifts,” said Jayme Sivio of Zemyna, “maybe we wouldn’t have had to face the Starfish in the first place.”
“That’s the trillion-dollar question, isn’t it?” said Alander. “Were the Spinners trying to give us a fighting chance against the Starfish with the gifts, or were we just being used as a diversion for the Starfish while the Spinners hid out in pi-1 Ursa Major?”
“Maybe both,” said Singh. “I know that sounds crazy, but we need to remember what we’ve been dealing with here. We have a large number of species interacting around a core of hyperintelligent beings. Whether the core is comprised of organic life-forms or Ais, or something else entirely, we’ll probably never know—and neither is it terribly important. It’s the peripherals we’re interacting with that matter—the lesser species. They might have their own priorities, within or alongside those of the Spinners. Two different groups with quite different agendas could have arrived at the same simple tactic with equally mixed results: one gave us the gifts; another instructed them to talk only to Peter; a third selected Lucia, the first human they encountered, to be the one who could inhabit the Dark Room. I see lots of possibilities but little consensus.”
“And let’s not overlook the time arrow possibility here, either,” said Inari.
“That raises a number of complex possibilities,” cautioned Singh. “If the Spinners are going forward in time and the Starfish back, then that makes both of them benefactors—in their eyes, at least. But if it’s the other way around, then they’re both destroyers.”
“Or maybe the Starfish are the Spinners,” said Sivio, “going backward to the big crunch.”
Inari let out a long, low whistle. “Now that would be seriously fucked up.”
“I agree.” Singh affected an eloquently weary expression via his conSense image. “Once we start talking about the possibility of time working in both directions, we end up with a terribly confused mess: a crack in the normal flow of things, as Lucia described it to us earlier—a kind of causal singularity. How do these things work? Shit, I have no idea, and if you’d asked me a month ago, I would’ve said it wasn’t possible on this scale. Elementary particles, yes; atoms and small molecules, possibly; but entire civilizations? No way.”
“I guess we’re limited by what we can understand,” said Alander. “I like the idea of a causal singularity, but maybe that’s just me clutching at the basest explanation. It could be something we haven’t thought of yet.”
“Or something we don’t have the capacity to think of yet,” added Samson.
“If it was a singularity,” said Sivio, “then what ended it?”
“Or indeed what started it?” said Singh. “It all depends on how you look at it.”
“Perhaps it was the mission to the Starfish itself,” said Inari. “That must’ve had some effect.”
“Delayed, though,” said Sivio. “Because the killing continued after you got back.”
“Maybe Thor finally got through,” said Genovese.
Singh shrugged heavily, tiredly. “Maybe both theories are true,” he said. “And maybe we’ll never know. But it has to be something. I can’t believe the whole thing came out of existence from nowhere.”
“From nowhere in this universe, perhaps,” said Inari.
“If it was a singularity, or if they have gone to another universe,” Alander said, “then at least we can breathe easily now. We made it out the other side.”
“Only by the skin of our teeth,” said Genovese. “Not what I’d call a conclusive victory.”
“But we made it,” he said. “That’s the main thing.”
Singh shrugged again, more wearily this time. Alander was beginning to feel a little sorry for him. The ex-pilot was in the awkward position of having to explain the inexplicable. But how could he give a satisfactory explanation for something that couldn’t be explained?
A moment of silence claimed the gathering. Alander was reminded of something Ueh once said to him when asked if what he was saying was the truth.
“I/we do not believe in truth,” the alien had said. “Since we cannot see the truth cannot be spoken.”
That was very much how Alander felt at that moment. Of all the intriguing possibilities raised by the Ambivalence, none of them seemed quite right. He doubted they would ever know for certain, and arguing about which theory was better seemed a little pointless. As the horrors of the rout of humanity slid ever so slowly into the past, the question perhaps became less important.
“There is no wrong/right,” Ueh had said. “There are only degrees of aptness.”
The thought of his lost alien friend put him in an even more melancholy mood than he
’d already been in.
“So, now what?” asked Singh. There was a challenging tone to his voice, as though he was glad for the spotlight to be shifting off him. “If we have come out the other side, then what do we do now?”
“Ah, well, there’s the rub,” said Genovese.
“I see us and the Yuhl going our separate ways for the time being,” said Sivio. “They’ve got their new home to monitor, and we’ve got ours.”
“That’s if we decide to stay here,” said Samson.
Sivio nodded. “Neither of us have huge resources, but there’s enough to keep us flexible for a while. Sol has committed to making the engrams more robust, this time with full disclosure.” He added the last with a glance at Inari, who was still annoyed at Sol’s surreptitious manipulations. “If she can do that, then I think we might have a chance. And when we’re stable, or at least know what our limits are, then we can talk about treaties and the like.”
“There’s no point thinking too far ahead,” said Inari. “With Axford out there, and the Praxis, the only thing we can be certain of is that nothing is certain.”
“Not to mention what might come along next,” said Singh. He looked at those around the virtual hall, meeting their challenging stares. The thought wasn’t one they particularly wanted to dwell upon. “There was a wake behind the Spinners. We don’t know what could be following the Starfish, out of range of the fovea.”
“So we batten down the hatches for a while,” said Cleo Samson. “Is that it? Ride out whatever comes our way next, and hope for the best?”
“What else can we do?” asked Sivio.
Alander bowed out of the discussion, already tired of it, and sick of fighting the disorientation of conSense, too. Whatever they planned, he was sure the universe would surprise them. He would leave them to it, happy to let them shoulder the responsibility, along with the guilt.
Shrugging from the illusion, he took a brief, centering walk through Lucia’s pristine corridors. The motives of the many aliens that had passed so disruptively through Surveyed Space might always remain a mystery, but he took hope from one thought. Lucia had encountered them before anyone, in pi-1 Ursa Major, and that encounter had shaped much that followed. If the Spinners had picked Peter based on her impressions of him, it wasn’t because he was flawed. She couldn’t have known that in advance, and he found that comforting.
Barely had he gone one lap around the spindle when he heard light footsteps from behind him—which was odd because, as far as he knew, he was the only embodied person aboard.
He turned and saw Frank Axford approaching him from along the corridor.
“How the—?”
“Relax, Peter,” said the ex-general, raising his hands innocently as he came to a halt several meters away. “This is only an illusion.”
Alander didn’t let himself relax. “You’ve hacked into me?”
“Do you think I’d risk coming any closer after what you did to 1313 and 1041?” He smiled. “I’m 1699.”
Alander wasn’t interested in pleasantries. “What do you want, Frank? To say good-bye?”
“Maybe just au revoir,” said Axford, smiling. “I’m not here to play games with you, Peter. I just wanted you to know that I’m only leaving now because I feel you have nothing I can use. But know that I’ll be back, should that ever change.”
“Don’t think we won’t be waiting for you.”
“I’m sure you think you’ll be ready for me,” said Axford. “But you won’t be, and deep down you know it. Face facts, Peter: you lot are completely unequipped to handle someone like me.”
Axford’s image was so realistic that Alander had to fight the urge to throw a punch at him. “Selling us short would be a mistake.”
Axford’s snort was loud and amused. “Don’t kid yourself, Peter. You used to have brains, but now you’re just brawn through and through. The Praxis made you that way. Otherwise, you’d be doing the same thing as me.”
“Running, you mean?”
“Expanding,” corrected Axford in a silky voice. “Exploring my options.”
“I’d rather consolidate what we’ve got, thanks all the same.”
“And that’s why you’ll always be a sitting target.”
Alander shook his head. “You’re beginning to sound like a broken record, Frank. Your mind is stuck in a rut, just like mine was.”
“If it is a rut, then it’s a superior one.”
“If that’s so, then why do you keep coming back? Why did you welcome us when we found you in Vega? I’ll tell you why: because you need us around to make you feel superior.” Alander took a step closer to the conSense illusion, the certainty of his diagnosis of Axford’s mental state giving him confidence to stare down the man he had killed twice already. “And I’ll wager everything we have left that you’ll burn out on your own. Ten years, maybe less, and you’ll be dead, or stagnant, and we’ll still be going strong. All we have to do is ignore you, and you’ll go away without any effort on our part.”
Axford’s lips tightened in a furious line. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Alander barked out a laugh. “If that’s so, then why are you so angry?”
Axford glared at him, and for the briefest of moments Alander thought he might be about to argue the point. But in the end, he simply vanished without another word.
“Who were you talking to?” asked Lucia, her voice filling the empty corridors.
He looked around to find a reference point and ignored the question. Lucia was nowhere to be seen. “Where have you been?”
“Down on Luna, with Sol. She wanted to talk to me about an idea she had.”
“About you and I going off to look for the others?” He nodded. “Yeah, she bounced that one off me earlier, too. She also said that she’d look at your hardwiring when we get back. Reward or bribe, I’m not sure which.”
“As long as we all get what we want, it doesn’t really matter, does it? She’ll get more of her engrams, the colony gets more hands to help out, and I get—” Lucia hesitated. “And I get me back.”
He half-smiled at the memories her comment awoke. His feelings for the original Lucia were irrelevant now, as was her betrayal of him in Sagarsee. She had done the right thing. He was learning to enjoy her company in new ways, new times.
“Except it won’t be you, will it, Lucia?”
Her laugh echoed along the corridor. “Let’s not go there again, Peter.”
With a chuckle, he turned and headed back to the Dark Room, wondering what his original would have thought if he could see where he and Lucia had ended up. His original, no doubt, would have argued that it wasn’t him at all, that the hybrid Alander was another person entirely, and that any continuity he shared with that person was purely an illusion.
But the old Alander had been wrong on plenty of points so far, and he was quite happy to let him go, at last.
“Who were you talking to back there, anyway?” Lucia asked again as he walked along.
He shook his head but didn’t stop. “Just ghosts,” he said.
–1.0
THOR
BEGINS
Somewhere, deep in the construct called “Thor” by the pinprick intelligences who had accompanied her to the discontinuity point, part of her stared out at the universe in awed wonder. She saw particles like stars streaming by; she saw space in all its foaming, multidimensional splendor; she saw time curled up in a plait that flexed and snapped like a whip. She felt a strange sensation rush through her, a sensation for which she had no word.
IT
The light of the fovea seared into her, stripping away all illusions, all hope that she could possibly comprehend the minds who had made it and who directed it according to their will. There would be no merging with that intelligence, if indeed intelligence it was. It was beyond anything she had encountered, before the Nexus and since. She was a grain of sand riding out its breakers, knowing that somewhere nearby was the promise of an incredible sea.
WHERE
An endless rush of photons bombarded her. Seeing was like trying to find a straw in a stack of needles. Blinking, bewildered, besieged by new sensations, she thought she might still be in HD92719. The sun shone brilliantly in an infinite array of colors. Its planets appeared to her down to their molecular level: every detail of their cores, atmospheres, magnetic fields, and other structures was revealed to her staggered senses. She felt gravitational interactions sweep through her body as the dance of the planets continued, not in the slightest bit disturbed by her presence.
IS
She wondered if she was hallucinating. Part of her couldn’t believe that she was still alive, in any form. She had dived into the fovea. What was she thinking? Where did she imagine that was going to get her?
HERE
But somehow, through the sensory bombardment, came the certainty that her actions had mattered. Her presence was noted, just as a single particle’s trail in a cloud chamber could make the difference between abandonment and proof of a theory. She felt giant forces turning around her, as though she was floating in the center of HD92719’s primary, staring at the planets sweeping chaotically across the starscape.
The pressure of those forces was daunting. She felt squeezed, probed, mapped, examined, and pondered. She dissolved under the combined gaze of creatures she might have called gods, had she ever believed in such things. She lost all sense of herself as the thing she had become was unraveled and stripped back to its essences.
HOME
When she returned to herself, the stars were streaming again—but this time they were stars. They were moving across her field of vision like water down a window. She wasn’t an astrophysicist, but she knew enough about the relative motions of the stars near Sol to know how they were supposed to shift. The odd thing was that they seemed to be moving backward.
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