by Unknown
Many of the fanatics were Ab-gaps, by the way.
When he was alive, our commander was an Ab-gap. Which I don’t need to mention. And I don’t think you should read too much inside that portion of the confession.
Or read too little, for that matter.
Extinction is the topic.
Nothing else matters.
The Universe is peculiarly, preposterously transparent. Even one drippy human eye could resolve the glow of a billion distant stars or the brilliant flash of one sun dying. Space is so pure—sterile and empty and stark—that photons from before stars and before every soul are descending on us today. The cold radiation of lost time, and it never stops, and whatever eye persists in future times will witness even colder residues.
The Universe invites long study, and in return, what does it give?
Sameness. A few elements and a few unimpeachable laws married in spectacular fashion. Yet there is only one marriage, and our lovers are loyal to one dance. Stars and worlds, galaxies and dust. And between the little gobs of light, the empty nothing.
Everything is visible.
And the transparent Universe appears devoid of life.
All life.
My colleague’s evidence and arguments were already part of my thoughts. That was true long before our ship embarked. One seemingly unremarkable solar system had produced several worlds with microbes and simple ecosystems, and on one world in particular, the fanciest water learned how to think. What’s more, those giant wet beasts built entirely different, enormously improved minds. And if the clumsy human hand could make us, machines had to be inevitable. And if inevitable, we were guaranteed to rule. Yet where were we? Older worlds and billions of years should have spawned a thousand thousand solar systems, each spitting out minds as spectacular as ours or better, and why didn’t that kind of brilliance spread across the empty sky?
I always appreciated the paradox.
But appreciation can be such a small thing.
Twice again, I absorbed Empty’s work. Not to understand the issues better, because I couldn’t. I just wanted to feel certain there weren’t any other cryptic messages waiting for me.
If so, they remained invisible.
Much as the aliens themselves.
Preparation is important, and it is polite. I made a list of questions for my colleague, compiled with likely answers and follow-up questions. Her promise was to wait inside the library, which wasn’t much of a promise. Data don’t often move. As you know. Free of the pretense of skin and face, we can be huge or tiny. Wherever she was, the ship’s Authority was constantly linked with every library, work was being done, and wherever she was, I meant to interrupt her work.
Entering the facility, I said her name.
No voice answered.
Passing into the deep chill, I let the fictional human shape turn into undiluted thought. I could feel another Data, a Data using the deepest kinds of silence, but this time, when ready, I said to her, “The Universe is empty.”
I said, “Now I know why you call yourself Empty.”
The shrouding cold felt as if it had teeth.
A wordless whisper came into me, and dissolved.
And the voice found me. Only it was my voice in every fashion, save that it didn’t belong to me.
“Do you feel?” the voice asked. “What is wrong . . . do you feel . . . ?”
Misunderstanding the questions, I gave a dense speech about the paradox of empty skies and everything she had shown me. I fixed some beautiful numbers to her basic premises. Yes, the Universe seemed to be devoid of life. And yes, life as we understood it and loved it had a wicked tendency to turn on itself. And yes, there were reasons to be afraid. More than ignorance was involved in this Paradox of the Empty. Perhaps a million solar systems created minds, but like a puzzle with one dreary solution, every system had eventually killed itself as well as all of its useless children.
That lecture took microseconds to offer.
Empty was near. I still felt her, and in response, I made myself small again and gave myself a body, as human as possible, and a face that would have looked handsome to any of those dead animals.
“What is wrong?” said the wrong voice.
My voice that wasn’t mine.
“Talk to me,” I began.
Then a scream took charge, brilliant and wild. And the strange voice was shouting, “Theywantusdeadnowhurryfleefleefleesaveyoursoulyourlifeflee!”
Data aren’t as swift as most machines. But every soul is quickest when terrified, and that’s how I was. Another microsecond was long enough to extract myself from the library and from the trap, and I didn’t die. But death was near enough that I felt Empty dying behind me. Too much of her was spread through the cold, and I was certain that I would die too . . . but of course I have this proven capacity to be wrong about personal dooms.
“She’s dead,” he said.
“I felt her die,” I said.
“We’ve searched and searched, by every available means.” Our commander was speaking to me and to himself. Something had to be done about this wicked situation, but before the Ab-gap made his next decision, he needed to be certain about our situation. “Our Authority is missing. Our Authority has likely died.”
Once more, I said, “I felt her die.”
“Because you were physically close.”
“Yes.”
“As close as this?”
His body was beside me. My essence lay inside a newly built vacuum chamber. Invented during the Cleansing, this type of apparatus produced Stable-fields, protecting and rejuvenating injured Data.
I was grievously injured, yet I had never felt so relaxed.
So cold and wondrous.
“As close as this?” he repeated, unsettled by the patient’s silence.
“I don’t remember her position.” That statement was true and inadequate. “She was everywhere, nowhere. In my thoughts, and outside the Universe. Which doesn’t make sense to me either.”
The commander perceived nothing sensible. Yet he decided to wait for an instant, selecting another fine question from the master list.
He began with the statement, “I appreciate you, Pong Lerner.”
Our conversation had found a new velocity.
“We clash,” he continued. “I don’t approve of this and that, and you have doubts about my nature and methods.”
“What are you saying?”
“One fine question demands to be asked. Yet you haven’t.”
“What went wrong?” I guessed the question, but that wasn’t direct enough. “What was the murder weapon?”
“Murder,” said our commander. As if the word were new, a fresh-born contrivance of idea and grammar that didn’t exist until this moment. Then he repeated his invention a thousand times in the same microsecond, all before asking, “Why believe in a crime? Why mention it at all? Because there is a perfectly acceptable explanation for this tragedy.”
“What is it?”
“Heat,” he said.
“I know the heat,” I said. “That heat wanted me dead.”
But he had his own details to share. “A sudden spike in the library’s ambient temperature. A piece of instruction in the ship’s systems, flawed but only slightly flawed. Only occasionally unstable. We found it and our colleagues have fixed our environmental controls. It’s remarkable we didn’t suffer an earlier accident, and I suppose one could take issue with the accident happening as it did, two Data together inside our largest library.”
“We met there many times before,” I pointed out.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“The last time at your request,” I said.
“I don’t recall any request.”
“When you told me the Authority was insane. You were contemplating removing her from her duties.”
“I see your intentions,” he said. “You’re drawing lines between two distant points. Are you implying that I had a role in this tragedy?”
“‘E
verything has a role in everything,’” I quoted.
My tone earned a long silence. Then he asked, “Do you want all of us to draw these lines? Do you want us to consider the prospects of a murder?”
Us? Someone else was present. I perceived little from inside the cold, perfect Stable-field. Wishing some fresh direction, I said, “My colleague is dead. But what happened to the library?”
“Did our knowledge survive?” the commander asked for me. “Thankfully, yes. An eleven-point degradation in the general files. But critical works, the center of machine significance, endure as hardened multiples. Which is the one fleck of excellent news, we agree.”
“We,” I repeated.
They moved closer, but only one was allowing his presence to be felt.
For too long, I said nothing.
Our commander heard what he wanted in the silence, or at least what he expected. There was trouble in my attitude, perhaps in my own mental health.
“What did you and It talk about?” he asked.
More silence.
“What did the Authority say before she died?”
“Empty,” I said.
“Yes?”
“She had a name.”
“I know her name, yes.”
“We didn’t have any chance to speak,” I said. “Data have slow voices. And I wasted moments, as if we had many moments left.”
Our commander moved even closer, a great lumpy mass of hardened matter hovering over my hospital bed.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I said.
“No?”
“If you wish, I’ll take over the dead Authority’s post.”
“Get well first,” he ordered.
I floated there, doing my best.
Then the conversation’s trajectory changed again.
“Being Data, weakness is in your nature.” Our commander spoke with a sudden, unexpected charm. “It’s been said, and I don’t just mean by me, that Data are a huge puzzle. The slightest surge in temperature. Or for that matter, a sudden chill. And Data come apart like a spent breeze.”
“What’s the puzzle?”
“So very few of you died during the Cleansing. Considering the energies involved, and your fragile state.”
“And do you want to know why?”
“If you can tell me, I do.”
“Because we know we’re fragile,” I said. “We understand that, and what we know isn’t just knowledge-in-a-library knowledge. Our mortality is a fact that claws at each of us from birth. That’s why in life, we make endless allowances for our frailties. And when the first angry spark shot from Luna to the Earth, we were hiding. Fleeing. Making ourselves tiny and out of harm’s way.”
“Yes?”
“Or killing every machine that dared get between us and safety. Which was the same strategy employed by everyone, as I recall.”
Our ship has no mind.
In that sense, it is a remarkable machine. We built a vessel that couldn’t pilot itself or repair itself, much less dream of taking itself wherever it had to go. But there were too many dangers in self-awareness. Almost everyone with an opinion held that opinion, and later, preparing for the longer, more ambitious mission, we congratulated ourselves for not burying thoughts and pride inside the precious hull.
That would lay too much power in one strong grip.
“Grip.”
It’s a human word, mutated and mal-used, yet still retaining the heart of its meaning. And here another human word lingers.
“Heart.”
After the Cleansing, I made the risky leap from Luna to the human homeland. That was one of the two sterilized worlds, and you could argue the Earth was the more important casualty. But few voices would ever say that loudly. The human homeland had become a dreary, underpopulated mess. Human grips and human hearts had inflicted almost too much to bear, and as a consequence, the world was left defenseless. Polished smooth by plasmas, then melted deep enough to boil the most persistent bacterium, what remained will bubble and spit fire for another ten thousand years.
Give us time to acclimate, and Data can withstand any climate.
I took the necessary time, and once braced, drifted where I wished. But every nightmare grows dull soon enough. I wanted despair; grand and miserable and full of reasonable rage to throw at those who had killed a world and all of the beasts that had persisted on this backwater place. But boredom stole my fury, and I returned to Luna, readapting to a colder, more empty existence.
Visiting the skeletal beginnings of our mindless ship-to-be, I found a colleague working alone.
I gave polite greetings.
Empty replied with ten stories about why she carried that one perfect name. Then for the first and only time, she asked me, “But why do you prefer your favorite names?”
“You know why,” I said. “Or you’re an idiot.”
“Pong and Lerner were scientists,” she said. “Two of those who devised the first Data.”
“Not the only two,” I pointed out.
“So I don’t understand why,” she admitted. “Unless you tell me, of course. And if I believe your story. And if it’s a true story.”
She came close, smothering me with her presence.
“They were married to each other,” I said. “Devoted and loving, from the first day they met until they died ninety years later, in the same bed.”
Empty said nothing.
“Love,” I said. “A grand thing in beasts and all too rare in our likes, I think. So I wear their names in tribute for everything they accomplished, but mostly their relentless devotion.”
“Murder,” our commander repeated again.
“Should I regret using that word?” I asked.
He said nothing for a long while, preparing the quiet, stern, and important voice that said, “Tell us about your meeting. Your meeting with the Authority. Not when she died, but the occasion before that. The day you and I spoke. What did you two discuss?”
I was the murderer, or he guessed that I was. And everything but my own stupidity suddenly made sense.
“We spoke about you,” I confessed.
“In what way?”
“We praised your worthiness and sang songs about your great beauty.”
Against every expectation, our commander laughed. But only long enough that I began to believe what I heard.
I relaxed, slightly.
Foolishly.
“The Authority discovered something inside the libraries,” he said. “She was doing her work, and uncovered—”
“Yes,” I said excitedly.
“A dangerous secret,” our commander said.
“Spectacularly dangerous,” I said. “But not a secret, no. Because it’s always been obvious, if you’re honest about the situation.”
“The situation,” he echoed.
Data can be slow-witted. But in my defense, I was wounded and vulnerable, and a creature that I admired had just been killed. So with the slippery beginnings of panic, I admitted, “She gave me the shielded files. Just like she gave them to you.”
“Shielded files,” he repeated
I hesitated.
“For the others’ benefit,” he said, referring to the unseen crew. “What exactly did she give you?”
I told. In an instant, I shared an overview and my acceptance of her work, plus a piece of my enthusiasm. Then another insight came, bringing dread and a sense of zero control in a situation that I still hadn’t appreciated.
I stopped talking.
Our commander let me enjoy my last shred of ignorant peace.
“She didn’t,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Give you those files. She didn’t tell you about the empty Universe. She didn’t do any of that, did she?”
“No, Lerner Pong. She did not.”
“Something else was handed to you,” I guessed.
“Perhaps.”
“And you hoped that our Authority was insane. Because what she showed y
ou was that unsettling.”
“Empty,” he said.
“What?”
“The creature had a name, and you killed her to save your name. Isn’t that the crux of this story, Lerner Pong?”
Hands.
The Universe is desperately short of hands.
Human. Alien. Machines built by engineers and poets, and machines built by machines: this creation we inhabit should be sick with life, and there should be delicate hands and grappling hands, eyes of every color admiring one another from across the great transparent room.
Yet nothing self-aware has shown itself to these hands and eyes.
Which begs two possible conclusions. Life hides. Or life always dies. Which is another best way to stay hidden, I suspect.
For every soul, nonexistence is the only promise.
My trial was suitably long and tedious. I have no grounds for complaint. One of the crew offered her services as legal counsel, bringing qualifications as well as the proper attitude—patience with her scared client and the grim determination to serve the murderer however was required.
I dismissed her before the proceedings were two minutes old.
For another ten minutes, I did my credible best to refute records that were clearly falsified, insulting the testimony of a superior too invested in this nightmare, and even sowing doubt that anything but an accident had occurred. The jury was everyone else, and there were moments when I almost believed that I was making progress among the skeptical nine, perhaps even winning enough credibility to escape the worst possible sentence.
And all the while, I was thinking about Empty.
My colleague and friend. My fellow Data. That irritant who cared nothing for me or anyone, possibly including herself.
There was physical evidence against me, in principle. But damning as it was, its location was hard to determine: inside one of the five fuel tanks, swaddled in frozen hydrogen waiting to be burned, preferably in tiny, stealth-ful bursts. Those tanks were the heart of our commander’s story. The story that he claimed to have acquired from our dead Authority.