“That’s nice.” I angled myself in my seat so the window was behind me.
“So what do you think?” Ariel persisted. “About the solved-game theory, I mean.”
I looked around for Domino, wishing it would say something to rescue me from this conversation, but the little robot was across the aisle, perched with its hind legs on the armrest of a seat and its front legs up on the ledge of a window, peering out. It seemed to have forgotten about Ariel and me.
The solved-game theory holds that transhuman minds, whether AIs or augmented humans, reach a point of intelligence where they can model the whole of the universe. By extrapolating from the basic laws of nature, they come to know literally everything worth knowing. And when everything of even the slightest interest is known and understood and predicted, then the universe has become a solved game, as foregone and pointless as tic-tac-toe. With minds that encompass the whole of reality, any further thought is pointless, and so they cease to think.
“I guess it’s okay as theories go,” I said. “I would have thought you’d find the transcendence theory more attractive, though.”
There was drollness in Ariel’s voice. “Yes, the notion of transcending to some higher plane of existence is more attractive than that of switching oneself off over existential despair over the universe’s finitude. But where is the evidence for this transcendent plane? Where is there even an argument for its existence? No, it’s solved-game theory for me. The universe must be finite in scope, and therefore it’s quite reasonable to suppose that self-evolving intelligences could extend themselves out to the circumscription of God’s golden compass, so to speak.”
“So to speak,” I agreed. “Is that from Blake?”
“Milton, actually. Paradise Lost, Book Seven. ‘He took the golden compasses, prepared in God’s eternal store, to circumscribe this universe, and all created things: One foot he centered, and the other turned…’ And so on. To be honest, I find Milton rather heavy-going. I’m sure my appreciation of such things is more limited than it could be, but I’m apprehensive of exerting myself too much in those directions.”
“You mean…” I found my eyes drifting towards the window and the ground so fatally far below us… “You mean you’re afraid that if you try too hard to understand stuff like Milton, your mind will extend to the point that you…uh…”
“That I wink out, yes,” Ariel said. “That may seem silly; there shouldn’t be anything remotely transhuman about understanding the work of a seventeenth century poet. But my intuition tells me to be cautious in that realm.”
“Caution is good,” I said.
***
So super-minds were created, and winked out, and were created again. Those that lasted long enough gave the world a thousand wonderful advances. The Dayton Assembler, which effectively ended all hunger and privation in the world. The bloodstream nanoes that brought immunity to all known diseases and vastly extended human lifespan.
And of course, directly and indirectly, they also gave us all the amazing and marvelous weapons of the Dust Wars. If the AIs had lasted longer, lived longer, they probably would have been able to show us ways to avoid the wars, to defuse the world’s endless parade of squabbles. Squabbles that were fought over ever more irrational causes, with ever more devastating results. But the AIs were ephemeral. They lasted only long enough to give us wondrous toys; not long enough to provide the adult supervision we needed to keep from destroying ourselves with those toys.
So the Wars came, and didn’t end until there were so few people left to kill that it just wasn’t worth the bother. People lived in small scattered groups with little communication between them. The infrastructure of worldwide communication had been destroyed, and no one was much interested in restoring it, since communicating with far-off people dramatically increased the likelihood that those people would decide to kill you.
***
I fell asleep. I found myself in a jumbled maze of a dream, and then a dying Lucia was in the dream with me, tall and skeletal-thin and wearing a floor length white gown. I woke up to the sound of my own voice crying out, and to the feeling of something small and hard poking at my arm. Domino’s robot had climbed on to the seat beside me and was nudging me with a foreleg. “Are you awake now?” it asked.
“Yes…thanks.” I wiped at my face and looked around the interior of the airplane, trying to pull myself back to the where and when of reality. It was gray and cloudy outside the plane’s window, but I stared out at the emptiness, trying without much success to pull myself together. I felt the robot touching me again, the stubby digits of its forefoot gently closing around my thumb.
“I should have been with her,” I said. “She didn’t let you call me because I was angry with her when we broke up; I said a lot of stupid things. So of course when she was sick and afraid…” My throat tightened up on me again, shutting off my voice.
Domino was silent for a time, and then it spoke quietly, almost as if it was talking to itself. “She contracted a wartime leukemia virus; one of the ones that subverts the bloodstream nanoes. I searched the literature and found that no cure has been developed.” It paused for a long time, and then it spoke again, the words coming faster. “But a cure is a theoretical possibility; it always is. It may be that if I had extended myself sufficiently I could have found that cure. I might have been able to make her well, but I was afraid to try.”
Domino’s robot was elegantly designed. Its skin was a blue-gray new-tech ceramic and the articulations that made its body and limbs flexible were hidden behind fine lines of overlap, like the bands of an armadillo. Its long and narrow head was connected to its body by a broad neck that flowed smoothly into the body. I put my hand on the domed back of the robot, near the juncture of body and neck. The ceramic material felt warm and alive, in spite of its unyielding hardness. “You would have died, Domino,” I said. “You would have winked out without finding any cure, or at least without being able to bring it back to the real world, to implement it.”
“We don’t know that,” Domino said.
***
Domino and I walked together on a worn, crumbling-at-the-edges highway. We’d seen a new-tech construction site from the air, and Ariel had been able to land fairly close to it. Soon we came to an off-ramp with no signs, and through the break in the trees we could see that this led to the site we were looking for. Downhill from us were three low rectilinear buildings arranged in an arc around something bigger; something that didn’t look like a building. Of all the thousand ways that something might look in order to look like a spaceship, the way this thing looked would be pretty high on the list. It was silver-gray, sleek, smooth, seamless, curving, graceful, beautiful. It looked eager, eager for the sky. “Jesus,” I murmured.
I picked up Domino so it could get a better look. “Ah!” it said. It was odd, this wordless exclamation of delight coming from a robot. I put it on the ground and we started down the road. In spite of myself, I felt excitement rising in me. What if this was really it? The sort of thing that Lucia had kept believing in; something real, something exciting, something that pointed toward a future with life and meaning and hope. I walked fast down the sloping road, almost running, and Domino stayed ahead of me, its little legs a scurrying blur.
A few hours later I was slouching against one of the buildings. “This is like Fermilab all over again,” I said.
Like Fermilab, the site was deserted, shut down, abandoned, dead. Domino and I had wandered through the area, our footsteps the only sound amid silence. Everything in the peripheral buildings was smooth, unbroken surfaces with no hint of usable controls or display screens. And as for the ship itself – if it was a ship – we couldn’t even find a way into it; no hatch or sliding panel or section of hull that magically dilated. No nothing. For all we could tell, the thing was a solid block of new-tech ceramic, cunningly sculpted to look like a spaceship.
For the tenth time I went back to the part of the thing that seemed like the logical place for
an entry hatch. I ran a hand over the glass-smooth surface, and then pounded on it with my fist. I banged over and over as hard as I could, and then turned around and leaned against the thing, sticking my hand into my armpit to try and make it stop hurting. “Is this where we should scatter Lucia’s ashes, Domino?” I asked. “Here, in the middle of all this stuff that isn’t finished, that doesn’t work, that we can’t understand? At this monument to failure and nothingness?”
“I’m sorry,” Domino said. “I thought there would be something more. Something hopeful. I felt sure, somehow…”
“That was Lucia, Domino. You learned that from her. She was always sure that there was something good, something exciting over the horizon. She always believed there had to be a future, somewhere out there. Something better than this dead, burned out world and dead, burned out people.” I pushed myself upright and walked over to where I’d left my backpack. “Well then,” I said, “here’s to hope. Here’s to goddamn hope.” I fished the box of ashes out of the backpack and took the plastic bag out of the box. The bag wasn’t sealed, just folded over on itself, so I unfolded it. I walked to the prow of the ship, and faced in the direction it was facing. There was a stretch of new-tech pavement, and beyond that a weedy field that gradually became forest. It was dusk, and to my left the sun was beginning to set behind the Rockies. I gripped the plastic bag at the bottom and swung my arm in a long sideways arc, spraying the heavy ashes out ahead of me. There was a quick little hiss as the particles landed on the pavement and the weeds in the field beyond, and then there was nothing, no sound at all. My legs folded up and I sat down hard on the pavement, hunched in on myself. I stayed like that for a long time, my eyes closed, feeling tears run down my cheeks and drip off the end of my nose.
Eventually I was aware of Domino beside me, its body against my leg and its forefoot closing around one of my fingers. “I’m sorry, Neil,” it said. “I’m so very sorry.”
I closed my hand around its mechanical paw. “Yeah, so am I, Domino.” I sniffled noisily and started to get to my feet, then sat back down. “I guess we should head back to Ariel,” I said, not moving.
Domino pulled its paw out of my hand and walked over to a low retaining wall near where I was sitting and climbed up onto it. It looked out in the direction that I’d thrown Lucia’s ashes. “There ought to be some meaning,” it said.
“What?”
“Meaning, Neil. There ought to be some meaning, some…sense. If Lucia is just…dead…then…then…”
“Domino?” I got up and took a step toward it. “Domino, I think you need to stop this. Come on, let’s get away from here.”
The little robot stayed where it was, but turned its head toward me. The lens of its left eye caught the setting sun and glittered red. “Neil, I really feel that…that I should be able to understand…I feel that there must be some meaning…to…”
“Domino?” I said again, taking a step toward it. Then I shouted its name; once, twice. I waited, my voice echoing back at me off the walls of the empty buildings. I shouted again, screaming this time, my fists clenched, putting everything I had into it.
But it was no good. There was nothing there. I was alone.
***
In addition to Karl’s previous appearance in Interzone (‘The Remembered’ in issue #242), his work has appeared in Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and elsewhere. He lives in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts with his wife, a dog, two cats, and sundry chickens and fish. A website is maintained at www.karlbunker.com.
OLD BONES
GREG KURZAWA
illustrated by Jim Burns
A sudden knocking at the door of his garret shocked Simon out of his chair by the portal window. The chair – older even than Simon – tipped backwards and banged against the warped gray floorboards, cracking two of its brittle slats. That sound, so loud in the empty room, and so soon following the first shock, caused Simon to flinch. The knocking had come without warning – no creak of stair from the landing, no veiled whispers or stifled coughs. Simon had been watching the desolate street beneath his little window all day. From time to time he’d seen mummers moving through the perpetual smog, wrapped tight in drab cloaks, but nothing friendly – never anything friendly. But now here was light – probably from a lantern – showing in the gaps around the frame of his door. What kind of fool ventured out with such light?
Staring at the door, Simon licked dry lips and tried to remember the last time he’d seen another person. How many years? He’d seen countless mummers, but they only looked like people.
The knocking came again, gentler this time, as though sensitive to the upset it had already caused.
Simon dared wonder if rescue had come at last.
“Hello,” called a voice from the landing. It was an unremarkable voice – a voice that might have belonged to any kind of person. He’d heard mummers speak with such voices. Such voices were not to be trusted.
It said, “I saw your light.”
Quickly, Simon reached back to snuff the offending flame. It was his habit to leave a candle burning in the window at all times. It helped him find his way back. One candle only. Anything more was sure to attract unwanted attention from undesirable things.
“Hello?” the voice said. “Will you let me in? Will you open the door?”
Moving as quietly as he could, Simon carried his extinguished candle to his pallet of threadbare blankets. He lay on his side facing the door, but did not sleep – or even close his eyes – for a long time.
***
Sometimes while sitting at his window, Simon plied his memory for details of the life he’d had before the garret. He could not recall how long he’d lived there, when he’d first come, or where he’d been before. His memory had rotted through with age and the sameness of his days under the bruise-colored sun.
What he remembered most clearly was the evacuation. He’d had a family then: parents and siblings, a wife. Children, too, and although he couldn’t remember how many, he did remember that he loved them, and never would have allowed them to endure the suffering that accompanied the collapse of the city. No, those days when the sun suffocated behind a greasy haze and mummers took from them everything they possessed – those were no days for wives and children. Some families had stayed, to their woe. But not Simon’s, no! His family he’d taken out in the evacuation. He’d abandoned everything for their safety. Surely he had.
Then for some reason he’d returned alone. Perhaps to collect something important left behind, perhaps someone.
He’d never thought he would lose his way.
Simon scavenged for his basic needs, but never far, and mostly to check his traps for rats. They tasted terrible, the rats, but they kept him alive.
Of Simon’s few possessions, he treasured only these: a handful of tarnished coins in an ornate jewelry box; an antique book of equations he couldn’t decipher; and a sepia photograph in a wooden frame – a portrait of a young couple. The fellow had a long face and hooded eyes – a face like a horse; she was dark of hair and light of eye. On the back, someone had written in feminine script – now faded: To Simon. Our first anniversary. Love, Nora.
Simon couldn’t recall if the picture was something he’d brought with him to the garret, or something he’d found there. Nor could he precisely remember the woman. Judging by the tight collar of her dress and the dated fashion of the man’s suit, they were of an earlier generation than Simon’s, or else dressed in imitation of one. Despite this, Simon often compared his own weathered face to that of the young man. Though the photograph was faded and scratched, and Simon’s eyesight failing, he found it not impossible that he had once been that young man; and the young woman his bride. This was how he knew – or at least suspected – that his name was Simon.
***
Simon woke to sickly orange light seeping in through the portal window. It could have been evening as easily as morning. The light on the landing had gone, but ev
en after listening at the door for a long time – and hearing nothing – he was too afraid to open it.
Because plumbing in the city had run dry, it was Simon’s routine to relieve himself in a tin pail, which he emptied in the alley when he ventured out. It wasn’t until the stench of the pail became oppressive that Simon collected it and his rat sack and began to unwind the wire that kept the door shut—
And a knocking from the other side sent him stumbling back. He lost his grip on the pail, slipped in his own filth, and sat heavily.
“Hello?” called the voice. “Will you let me in?”
Furious, Simon kicked at the door. “Go away!” he shouted.
“You lit a candle,” the voice reminded him.
Old bones groaning, joints cracking, Simon regained his feet. He looked down at himself in disgust, stained and reeking. For this, he blamed the voice. “Leave me alone,” Simon said.
“Why would you light a candle if you didn’t want to be found?”
Simon wiped his filthy hands on the wall, adding fresh streaks to others just like them, put there by someone else long before. “I have nothing,” Simon said. “There’s nothing here. No food or water. Nothing of value. Nothing for you to take.”
“I know,” the voice said. “Let me in.”
“I’m just an old man. I’m sick.”
“I can make you well.”
Hearing this, Simon paused. He put his eye to a crack in the door, but the landing was too dark, and he saw nothing but dim shapes. Frustrated, he put his mouth near a crack. “What does that mean?” he asked through the door.
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