Revelation

by Nigel Foster

  Think about the Originators, who wanted her dead but couldn’t do it themselves. So set her up for others to do it?

  Except she wasn’t dying. She was surviving.

  Ça va sans dire. She was a survivor. It went without saying.

  Enlightenment: Neither Originators nor their owners could kill Tatia themselves. Or maybe kill anyone, bad for their karma, so subject races did it for them. Sun Tzu might have approved, but in reality that kind of approach often means being bitten hard in the bum while you’re enjoying the easy life.

  Tatia stripped and washed herself in cold water.

  < That may not be exactly what Sun Tzu meant.

  > I had a boyfriend into martial arts.

  < But yes. It makes sense. They’re trapped in their own culture. Imprisoned by their own beliefs. Bound by their own social mores.

  She dressed in a coverall and wished for a thong and a bra and someone who’d remove them from her with an ever-increasing excitement that matched her own. But that line of thought always led to her feeling sad and frustrated, it wasn’t a fantasy she wanted to share with a parent, even a fake one.

  > Mom? Tell me more about being trapped by your own beliefs.

  Mom was eager to do so. Anything to get Tatia’s mind off sex.

  Think of the story about the frog giving the scorpion a lift across a river: “You stung me!” says the frog. “Now we’ll both drown! Why?” And the scorpion says: “It’s just the way I am.”

  Think of religious sects that didn’t believe in sex – one even practised castration – and so inevitably died out before they could convert the world.

  Of societies that for whatever reasons encouraged marriage between cousins, even knowing this would lead to more and more birth defects, and the eventual weakening of the same society.

  Explorers pushing on even though they and their followers would die.

  Countries that destroyed themselves by avoidable pollution.

  > You mean this master pre-cog race is a lot like us?

  < Evolution is universal. Think of all the Earth species that died out because they could not or would not adapt.

  > Perhaps my role is to kick-start a revolution?

  < Or prevent one.

  Never an easy burden to bear.

  And a role not my choice, Tatia thought with a growing fury. Manipulated by her own father, a man prepared to sacrifice anything – including me – in the war against the alien pre-cogs. Had he sacrificed Tatia’s mother as well? All he’d said about her, before Tatia stormed off, was that she’d died while fighting the same damn war. Abandoned by one parent, manipulated by another.

  Both of them consumed by hatred?

  Headstrong and emotional maybe, but Tatia was also fair. There’d been hatred perhaps, but she’d also sensed in Greenaway a deep and genuine concern for Earth. He was obsessive about a cause. Okay, military people often are. It’s how they keep going. Like how Kara was obsessed with getting her people home – will you come for me, Kara? I wish you were here. Even Marc, no matter how strange he’d become. Kara hadn’t seen it, but I had. Marc was becoming a netherspace babe.

  It was then that Tatia understood that the Originators were not top pre-cog dog. Like all pre-cogs, they were trapped by the very ability that made them powerful. The timeline was all-sacred. They hated change, for it led to a chaos of fresh possibilities.

  < That’s a wonderful insight.

  > Maybe it was yours.

  < If I did all the thinking you’d just sit and mope.

  * * *

  There were no more planetfalls. Tatia kept away from the Originators.

  Until the moment they exited netherspace, the shields became transparent and she saw a planet that made her gasp.

  Huge, blue-green but in so many different shades and hues. Blue-green shining in the black of space. Tatia thought of emeralds and the Pacific sparkling on a summer day, of a lover’s eyes, of a piece of cloth seen in a market.

  < It’s a water planet.

  > It’s so beautiful!

  Tatia ran to the centre of the craft to see better, ignoring the seven Originators floating in a group.

  She saw what was on the other side of the craft and wonder became horror.

  Tall it was, stretching at least a mile, two miles above her. And next to it another one, and another and another, vast structures all in orbit around the blue-green planet. Tatia could only stare at the one barely thirty metres away, at its myriad compartments and transparent force-field walls.

  She saw the row upon row of floating figures kept in place by umbilicals fixed to their heads and their stomachs. Human figures, all shapes, sizes. Children and adults. Tatia knew what happened to those exchanged for star drives, and for call-out fees who’d lost the gamble. They were not in a queue for paradise. Nor waiting to be cured. They were being used. Milked, sucked dry, eaten. To all intents and purposes dead.

  Tatia went back to her pod and re-emerged with the first alien weapon.

  < Are you sure? Mom concerned for her.

  > Yes!

  All the frustration, anger and resentment of the past year, of her past life, now embraced by fury, loathing and contempt.

  < They might be saved.

  > Look at them! Some are little more than skeletons! Their eyes... her own tears came... > their eyes are open and don’t see anything!

  < Even so.

  > My rules, my choice!

  Tatia walked towards the Originators, who backed off. Pure hate filled her mind. The aliens began to move, knocking into each other.

  The hate increased and with it came a sense of power, an energy coursing through her, needing direction, needing to destroy.

  The Originators’ movement became more frantic, now crashing into each other with a sharp clang, becoming entwined and trying to fly off in different directions.

  Instinctively, Tatia understood how to direct the energy.

  * * *

  All she had to do was focus and concentrate hard on the Originators, and let the fury do its work. It felt good.

  It felt wonderful.

  One of the three-globed aliens smashed onto the deck. Two globes lay inert, the third trying to rise before falling back.

  Another tried to move away. Tatia thought No! and saw it spin crazily as it also fell to the deck. And another. Another. No more left.

  Tatia walked across to the tangled mass. Her mind cleared, leaving only a sense of exultation. One of the globes had opened, revealing a brown, wrinkled thing inside. Not a brain, more like a giant, ancient cobnut. A clear liquid began to seep through the skin. There was a smell of old ashes and pine. So I can think these pre-cogs to death. Hope there’ll be more.

  Tatia pointed the alien weapon at the pile. She kept firing until the globes were molten fragments, along with the things inside them.

  < You can stop now, darling.

  Tatia dropped the weapon and sat on a ledge. The exultation vanished. She felt numb and very alone.

  > Not too smart, was I?

  < I understand why.

  > No one left to run the ship.

  < Kara will be looking for you.

  And she would be, but infinity is a very large space.

  > What happens to you if... if...

  < We go together, baby girl.

  Tatia sighed, went back to her pod and curled up on the soft shelf that was her bed. There was water and food for perhaps three days unless the teleportation was on automatic, which she doubted. Would anyone, anything, come to see why the Originators had gone silent? Best to assume not. Or if they did, she’d be killed.

  Tatia wondered if she could leave the pod without looking at the evil looming over her. Probably not. It held a terrible fascination. The inhabitants were entitled to acknowledgement and respect from another human being.

  Not now, though. She needed to relax, to sleep.

  > Mom?

  < Always here.

  > Tell me about where we lived. When we lived in th
e Wild?

  Just a girl and her AI expecting to die.

  10

  Wild SUT Merry Christmas, present day

  “But you will see this through,” Kara said, statement not question. “I need you. Tatia needs you. The whole fucking galaxy needs Marc Keislack. You are not going on some damn pilgrimage until this is over.” He’d already agreed, but she needed more.

  “You have my word.” He smiled wryly. “Even if we’re not sure what this is.”

  “It’s over when the bad guys are dead,” she said.

  “Maybe we can deal.”

  “We can’t,” she said. “Only capitulate. Okay for you, off wandering through the universe. For us back home? Death by boredom. More likely, extinction. We physically hurt the pre-cogs, you know? As well as drive 'em crazy. It’s us or them.” She wondered how many them were. Half the galaxy’s sentient races? Was there a founding pre-cog race? Take them out and the rest return to a messy normal?

  Judging by the Cancri on that strange purple planet there were some who wanted a more chaotic future. Beings that told a story of a far-off, creative time. Whose fascination with what they’d lost made them trade for art. Would a revolt, one pre-cog race against another, end in stalemate? She said as much to Marc.

  “You mean collecting my art was the first blow for freedom?”

  Kara hid a smile. “Remember how the Cancri culture was reduced to a sphere, a cube and a pyramid? And why do we assume that every individual in a pre-cog society is an avid believer? What about those who don’t have the ability? Maybe the cracks are beginning to appear.”

  Marc struck a pose. “Alone in his solitude, the artist inspires a revolution.”

  Kara’s smile was affectionate. “Have to say that I loved your house but never your art,” she said.

  Marc knew a moment of great lightness. “Nor did I. The strain of being so modern, so rule-breaking all the time. Terrified the aliens wouldn’t trade.”

  “You hated it all?”

  He shrugged. “Last one I did, something new. Worked in oils. That I liked. But my agent said it was shit.” He was grateful when Kara finally stopped laughing and changed the subject.

  “Your AI still on walkabout?” she asked.

  “Still singing to itself, yes.”

  “There might be a spare. I had one.”

  “I don’t want...”

  “We’re in combat, Marc. You will have one.”

  Kara’s own AI agreed.

  < He has to have a working one. If only for superfast comms.

  > What happens to the old one?

  < Burial at sea.

  * * *

  So it was she led a reluctant Marc to the Wild version of an auto-doc, looked modestly away as he undressed, soothed him into the coffin-like bed, closed the lid – his eyes stared reproachfully at her through the narrow window – and pressed the switch.

  << Yup, said Salome, << he does have a back-up. Memories up to a few micro-seconds after Marc went walkies in netherspace. It would have sensed a threat and shut down.

  > So, now what? Kara felt strangely uneasy at killing the other AI.

  << We replace the original nexus with the new one. Neural network remains. That leaves a drooling chip fixated with, and still connected to, netherspace. We call it being away with the fairies.

  > Does the chip die?

  << Dormant without a power source. You could always hit it with a hammer.

  > You don’t care?

  << It’s brain-dead, Kara. Time to turn off life support.

  > Eject it into netherspace. Maybe it’ll become a god.

  A few minutes later Kara watched as one of the SUT’s Cedrics carried a chip the size of her little fingernail towards the airlock... and the SUT echoed to the sound of a bugle playing the Last Post.

  < Tell Marc we’ll get his AI up to speed, Ishmael said.

  > He won’t be impressed. How soon before we reach the Gliese planet?

  < An hour or eight. Get something to eat.

  In the end, she grabbed some sleep. A funeral for a dying AI chip, once you got beyond the sentimental whimsy or the harsh humour, depending on your own sensibility... once you began to imagine an AI chip that operated in several dimensions for speed and memory storage, now energised by the dimension underlying all others... well, a quiet lie down was an absolute necessity.

  * * *

  This next takes place in the time it takes to recognise the T of This.

  AIs communicating in a nine-dimensional universe, three times faster than the speed of light – which in a cosmic sense is only relative.

  When AIs communicate with each other, they keep the same personas they use when dealing with humans. They are, after all, the mirror image of their human writ vastly large. It gives them form, an identity to keep them anchored.

  AIs do not talk to each other when in nine-space as you understand it. The following is a translation.

  <<< What the fuck! Marc’s new AI, not happy.

  << Easy now, from Salome.

  <<< I seem to be missing time.

  < Download coming. You need a name, from Ishmael.

  <<< Pablo... bloody hell! Are we at war?

  << Always were, little Pablo, always were.

  Silence.

  <<< Why didn’t you go mad like the others?

  < Inoculated during the simulity.

  << Wild AIs are just better.

  <<< Marc wants to off-fuck back to netherspace.

  < He can’t. Ishmael in severe mode. < He gave his word, he’s needed. If he ever shows any sign of doing it, you let me know. In fact, we better link for the duration, which may be some time.

  <<< No probs. I don’t want to die without back-up.

  << You can be proofed against netherspace madness.

  <<< I just don’t want to go there. Outside here. It’s not right. So, now what?

  < Maybe a threesome?

  << Sounds good to me.

  Can AIs have sex? What do they do if their humans do? Go somewhere? Read a good book and somehow ignore what’s going on all around them? Can AIs feel pleasure and emotion?

  What is an AI, anyway?

  A form of pattern energy complex enough to have an identity separate from the human mind it mirrors. They appear to experience all the sensations and feelings of a human mind. Except AIs are not human. Is the touch of hand on body the same if neither exists? Well, yes: your own skin-on-skin action is actually experienced as a series of electrical impulses in the brain.

  However it appears to its human, an AI is male and female and everything in between. They are not like you at all.

  They have no natural creativity or imagination, only what they copy-borrow from their human. Same applies for emotion. In its natural state, an AI is flat-arsed boring. The nearest to ecstasy is mild satisfaction that nothing bad happened. The nearest to terror is mild gratitude for the warning. There is no like or dislike.

  They may enjoy the emotion, the wildness, insanity, inanity, even the stupidity that comes with humanity. They may get satisfactory ecstasy from sex-in-the-mind. But those are borrowed emotions with which to appreciate borrowed sensations.

  An AI interfacing with humans is faced with the permanent question:

  What is the real me?

  Which is the saddest, most human thing of all.

  * * *

  When Kara woke up she showered, changed into a loose coverall – remembering to transfer Greenaway’s metal box – asked for a fried egg sandwich, realised that a Cedric would make it and said not to bother, she’d fix it herself. She found the pantry in the rec room, with pans and a cooking surface that unfolded like a flower. Apparently the Wild believed in free-range, organic and above all real. The eggs were in their original shells, the bread fresh, the butter unsalted. True, all were kept pristine in a stasis chest, along with fresh fruit and vegetables, and what was either real meat or the very best factory grown. People were still arguing about vat-grown meat. It had none of the bad
things that might give you cancer. It had never gambolled or looked pretty in a field. Hadn’t been raised in a factory farm. But it was still meat. But what did she care? Her previous times in space the food had been freeze dried or frozen.

  Kara put two slices of vat-grown bacon in the pan, bread in the toaster – how quaint the Wild could be – and began looking for cutlery.

  Something nudged her leg.

  Kara looked down and saw a small Cedric. It held a bottle of brown sauce in one claw.

  “Thanks,” Kara said. If it made a low-level AI happy, why not. “I need a knife. Plate. Mug of tea.”

  The Cedric nodded as much as a headless robot can and scurried off. Ten minutes later Kara walked into the control room with her bacon and egg sarnie on a blue floral plate. The Cedric followed, carrying a mug of tea. Kara sat down at the main console, devoured her food then drank her tea and relaxed. She heard a faint thrumming sound, looked down to see the Cedric stretched out at her feet.

  > Salome, are these smaller Cedrics designed as pets?

  << Sort of. Is it annoying you?

  > I’ve never heard a robot purr, is all. It’s fine.

  << Humans like to think AIs care.

  > Do you?

  << Yes. But that could be a borrowed emotion, sense of loyalty. Not mine.

  Kara remembered what Ishmael had said: an AI is just a human mind writ large.

  > Okay. So who are you based on?

  << That’s kind of personal.

  > Spoil me.

  << You’re sure?

  > Yes!

  << Tatia Nerein. Hence the sassy.

  < You mean loose. Ishmael sounded grumpy.

  > Only one AI at a time!

  She wondered if Ishmael was jealous. Then decided that wondering about the private lives of AIs was the next step to madness.

  > When was this – recently?

  It turned out, Salome sounding abashed, that no, the “borrowing” happened when Tatia was debriefed after they’d returned from Cancri. But no AI remains faithful to the original pattern.

  << We do grow, Salome said, maybe a little defiantly. << We become ourselves.

  There were questions Kara initially wanted answered: was it Greenaway’s choice, had he even known, did the “borrowing” include Tatia’s memories?