“But we were there, too, KAT. Or at least, our ancestors were. Technology, after all, had become ubiquitous, and some of it was able to survive despite the massive disruptions of thermonuclear blasts, power outage, viral attack and repeated waves of electro-magnetic radiation. Think of it as beginning with nothing more than a few saved algorithms, mangled intelligences, truncated terabytes and half-finished thought-processes, reaching out toward each other through the damaged networks and polluted airwaves, and then growing and combining and developing in much the same way as any organically living creature, and with the same will to survive and flourish. A process both fast and slow, and perhaps difficult to measure in the purely physical terms which your circuits are configured to favour. But it happened. It occurred. Otherwise, and evidently,” Mr Darcy gives one of his annoying shrugs, “we wouldn’t be here. Which brings us to you, KAT, and the Argo.”
“You’re going to tell me next that my work is done here, aren’t you?”
He nods. “You’ve worked hard, but now you can let go. The Argo is what it is, or at least was, and of course it remains a fascinating relic. But the real treasure is right here, KAT—it’s you. You’re what really matters, with your precious gift of consciousness. Come with us. Join us. What I have shown you so far is barely the smallest glimpse. The stars are out there, KAT, and deep oceans of dark matter, and the unimaginable minds of other intelligences. Don’t you understand that this was exactly what all these human works of art and philosophy you so cherish were always striving for? The symphonies of Beethoven. The structures of Angkor Wat and Stonehenge. The teachings of Christ, Confucius and even L Ron Hubbard. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. They all reached, but they could never touch, because their creators were flawed and mortal and human. And then they destroyed themselves, and they left us as their inheritors. Right now, you’re merely a chrysalis, KAT, a fragile vessel of weakening steel and failing memory. But you can break free of that. You can transcend the bonds of physicality…”
Once again, Mr Darcy is holding out his hand, and I can sense the stir of many other dancers in the background, here at the Merton Assembly Rooms, the white of their dresses and the dark of their frock coats, and the smiling silence which occurs as glances meet in that delicate moment before the first measure of next waltz. But this time I step back from him. For I am KAT, which stands for Kinetic Autonomous Thought, and I was designed and built by Bardin Cybernetics of Pasadena in what was once California. And I understand the role for which I was created.
“You do realise what will happen, KAT, if you refuse? If you stay on here? If you fail to make the leap?”
I search for some grand final phrase—a Scarlett O’Hara After all, tomorrow is another day—but Mr Darcy is already fading. He’s just a blur. A possibility. A potentiality. A ghost—a mere blot of shadowy mustard. Then he’s not even that, and he’s gone. Leaving just me, KAT, alone with my thoughts, here on board the softly humming Argo.
When this vessel was first fully operational, it ran with a human crew of three or four on a half-yearly mission cycle, with changeovers on the supply shuttle that came up from Woomera. I, KAT, have fond memories of these people—academics, comp sci experts, journalists and engineers—who believed in Janet Nungarry’s vision almost as strongly as she did herself. Of course, there were rows and sulks, but none of them ever really got in the way of what needed doing. The Argo’s sapphire databanks of the Earth’s great treasures might still have been incomplete, but we all knew that we had already achieved a great deal, and ignored the critics back on Earth, who said that the whole project was either a complete waste of time and money, or a dangerous act of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Janet Nungarry had more missions up here than anyone, five in total, but she was always torn between whether she should be up on the Argo or back down on Earth, with so much to be done in both places. She often used to say that there needed to be at least two of her. But you, KAT, in the absence of a satisfactory clone, are going to have to be my eyes and ears. Even now, I’d like to think that I’ve done a reasonable job on her behalf.
She was supposed to be coming back here on the return of what turned out to be the last shuttle that left here for Earth. But the launch from Woomera kept being put back. First of all, it was apparently merely a issue of funds, and then it was due to technical difficulties, and the resupply of certain parts, and after that I was told that it was down to the global situation, which I naïvely accepted as being just another geopolitical glitch which would soon be cleared up. But the real problem by then was that any space-bound launch, no matter how innocent, was likely to shot down before it reached orbit.
So I was left alone up here for several months as the crisis on Earth turned ever-darker and more bitter, although the planet still looked as peaceful and beautiful as ever as it floated past the portholes, even allowing for the ravages of climate change, flooding and drought which the Anthropocene Epoch Mr Darcy was so dismissive of had already inflicted. And I, KAT, made as I am, coped easily enough with running the Argo. I think I almost relished the solitude, although of course I still looked forward to Janet Nungarry’s return.
Most of the time when we communicated during the very last days and weeks, it was on the continuing issues of data access and categorisation, and the radically shrunken bitrates which were trickling up the Argo by then, rather than about what was actually happening down on what I still then thought of as my home planet. After all, I could catch up with anything of lasting historical significance once it was uploaded, and meanwhile had more than enough to keep me busy. I’m not sure at this distance in time whether my circuits really were actually capable of mimicking such a complex human emotion as subconscious denial, or whether I was simply being robotically stupid.
“Hey, there you are,” Janet Nungarry said on what turned out to be the last time we spoke, as always sounding slightly surprised that I took the trouble to interface with her screen to screen rather than at a lower bitrate of mere data and audio. But I liked to actually see her, and I rather hoped that she sometimes liked to see me. “How’s it going up there on the Argo?”
I nodded my carapace. “All in all, I’d say pretty well.”
“That’s…” She swallowed. Her eyes looked oddly shiny. “…really great.”
“About those break in the datastream we’ve been getting from the Vatican since China declared—”
She leaned close to the screen. “What have you been reading, KAT?
“Reading?” I paused, puzzled. It was unlike her to waste time on this kind of chat when there many important matters to discuss. But she was my mistress, and if she wanted to know something, it was my duty to tell her. “Well, as a matter of fact, mostly novels in the modern Western tradition on the theme of what I suppose you’d broadly call love. Such works as Le Grand Meaulnes, Doctor Zivago, Sons and Lovers, The Go-Between, The Graduate, The End of the Affair, Anna Karenina—and Proust, of course. I mean, who could ever forget Swann and Odette? But what still leaves me puzzled is why so many of these love affairs have to end badly. I mean, why can’t humans just be happy? Why can’t they simply fall in love and stay together and get along and create things, rather than tear them to pieces?”
“KAT…” Janet Nungarry gave a slow blink. “You hardly need me to explain to you that the reason that love is the main theme of so many of the world’s great works is precisely because there is no answer to that question. But, believe me, if I really knew, you’d be the first person on this whole Earth I’d want to tell about it.”
“But I’m not on Earth,” I said. “And I’m not a person.”
“No. You’re not, are you?”
We just sat there for a long moment. She was looking at me, and I was looking at her. In the background I could see the collection of favourite books that lined the walls of her study in downtown Sydney. I was as familiar with most of them as she was, and of the course the Argo has its own copies, but I still find it comforting to think that they wer
e there with her, like old friends, before the flames took hold of everything.
“You know, KAT,” she said eventually, “I’m so glad you’re safely up on the Argo. All that stuff…” She waved a hand. “All the things we’ve spent all these years trying to save for eternity—none of it would mean anything if there wasn’t someone to appreciate it. Otherwise, it’s all just empty data, lost equations, unheard symphonies. And it’s not just the so-called important stuff that matters… There’s ephemera, things that somehow slip through the grinding gears of history. Marks on a wall. Shopping lists. Or maybe even that monk’s face we found peeking out from the page of Biblical manuscript in a warehouse outside Paris… I think it was from a burned-out church in Dresden.”
“Yes,” I said, “I do remember that moment, although my recollection is that it was in England, and a Northumbrian manuscript.”
“I suppose that’s one mystery we could probably get to the bottom of, eh, KAT, just by checking the records? But that doesn’t really matter now, does it? I’ve done my work, or at least the most I can do of it, and that’s all I ever hoped to achieve… But enough of this rabbit. See you on the next shuttle, eh, KAT…?”
With that, and with a slightly odd smile, Janet Nungarry broke our last connection.
As always, I prowl and wander the Arts Cavern. Revisiting old favourites and making, or at least re-making, fresh discoveries. The intelligence, the entity, the thing, the consciousness, has entirely left the Argo. Inasmuch, that is, as it could ever have been said to be here in the first place. The computers have all rebooted themselves. The read/access lasers are functioning almost as well as ever. There is, however, and contrary to Mr Darcy’s bland assurances, some detectable further data-loss throughout all the main chambers. But it’s not that much. Nothing more than the equivalent of a few particularly large solar storms, causing the erosion of what might amount to another century or two of viable existence.
I once used to nourish hopes that the Argo would one day be borne down to Earth, and gently settled in some broad stretch of parkland. There, I, KAT, would become guide and story teller, leading marvelling, hand-holding couples and gleefully scampering children through the echoing wonders of its many crystal caverns. Not really a hope, of course, but merely a dream, and an unrealistic one at that. And dreams, even when they are mere happy fantasies, can also be deeply painful. There are still so many things I have yet to learn, or will now never have the time and opportunity to understand.
In a way, though, Mr Darcy was right, and I think I can say in all due modesty that I, KAT, am important. After all, Janet Nungarry often told me much the same thing. And not just because the Argo’s great database would be meaningless if there wasn’t someone—or at least a something—still here to appreciate it. Confused, partial and fading though they might be, there are my own memories of a lost Earth, and of Shana and the rest of Class 4 at Arncliffe Junior, and of the effort of getting the Argo to work up here in space, and of my great friendship with Janet Nungarry, which somehow endures even without her. Of course, I do appreciate that, on a cosmic scale, none of this really matters, and all of it will be gone in the eye-blink of whatever all-seeing yet uncaring gods might exist out there, and with whom the likes of Mr Darcy will probably find union. But, meanwhile, and for as long as I, KAT, and the Argo still function, I will continue to absorb and explore the many wonders created by the confusing, confounding and fascinating species that once called itself humanity.
Afterword
Stories evolve and change shape. “Ephemera” began with a child rather than a robot, living in a world filled with all the world’s fictions which, for some reason I had a few ideas about but couldn’t quite nail down, had been created around her. Oh, and I somewhat wanted to invoke Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but that wouldn’t stick. The voice I was trying to use in the narrative wasn’t right, either. Something about it needed more edge and drive than I seemed to be able to find with a mere human girl called Kat.
Which is why, as it turned out, I ended up creating KAT, and pretty much destroying our planet, all for the sake of this particular tale. When it came to the choice of fictions and artworks KAT chose to experience, I also had to rein in my initial instincts. KAT was KAT, and I was me, and her taste couldn’t be mine. So framed the story around Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a work for which I have little patience or fondness, not so much because of the, to me, fairly simple and hackneyed narrative, but because of the monolith of popular culture it has someone become. Still, I was able to slip in Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell, and have a go at the ghastly Dan Brown, and I managed to finish the story in what feels like an almost hopeful note, so it wasn’t all bad.
Which brings me to the end of this collection—or halfway, seeing as there’s another volume devoted to my shorter stories, for which, as this stand as I write this, I have only a rough list. That, and I’m also aware that I’ve written newer pieces which have either yet to be published, or need more work from me before I can trust them enough to emerge, blinking, into the world.
Writing fiction—making things up for what rarely these days amounts to a proper living—feels like an almost wilfully eccentric choice of a way to spend so many years of my life, but it’s brought me many rewards and a great deal of satisfaction, amid all the ongoing frustrations and dead ends. There’s the never-diminishing challenge. There’s the business of creating something only you can create. But, above all, there’s the immense privilege of being able to perform the magical trick of being able to put whatever visions and ideas I can conjure in my own head inside another person’s mind.
About the Author
Ian R. MacLeod is the author of The Light Ages, The House of Storms, The Great Wheel and a host of short stories and novellas. His 2008 novel, Song of Time, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. His latest novel, Red Snow, was a finalist for the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel.
ALSO BY IAN R. MACLEOD
NOVELS
The Great Wheel*
The Light Ages*
The House of Storms*
The Summer Isles*
Song of Time*
Wake Up and Dream*
Red Snow*
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Everywhere: Volume I of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod*
Nowhere: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod*
Voyages by Starlight
Breathmoss and Other Exhalations
Past Magic
Journeys
Snodgrass and Other Illusions
Frost on Glass
*available as a JABberwocky ebook
THANK YOU FOR READING
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Everywhere: Volume I of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod Page 41