The Last Human

by Zack Jordan

  “What an ugly ship,” murmurs Sarya.

  [Tell me about it.]

  “How are you doing this, by the way?”

  [I made friends with the tug behind us. She’s letting me borrow her sensors.]

  “We’re cuttin’ her close!” breaks in Ol’ Ernie. “About ten seconds from our slot and a smidgen and a half from overheatin’, but remember: this is Ol’ Ernie we’re talking about! That said: hold onto y’all’s respective squishables!”

  With a sustained low frequency that rattles Sarya’s teeth and brings tears to her eyes, the ship’s gravs slam to full. Eleven keeps the view steady as Riptide departs the gleaming cloud of starships. It is tumbling end over end, and Sarya’s stomach begins to feel yanks in several different directions as Riptide’s gravs make a noble attempt to apply the exact same acceleration to every particle of the ship.

  “Something’s wrong,” she says in a tight voice, pointing with an unsteady finger. “No way should we be spinning.”

  Ol’ Ernie, meanwhile, is making a sound that Eleven’s holo assures her is [laughter]. “See this, Fuzzy?” he shouts. “Trick is to keep the exposure even, bring you to a nice even tan. Better’n one side minty clean and one side slag, wouldn’t y’all agree?” The laughter ascends into near-maniacal territory. “Ol’ Ernie ain’t piloted a damn Foundation in decades!” he shouts. “It’s like two tugboats welded crosswise!”

  Sarya’s eyes move from the tumbling ship to a minute black dot in the exact center of the sun. She stares at it with mounting anxiety as it expands like a cancer, swallowing the star from the inside. In just a few bone-shaking minutes, its unbelievable fury is reduced to a ring of flame, punctuated with solar prominences that thread their way through space like rivers of fire. On all sides she is surrounded with the otherworldly glow of thousands of maxed gravs as Ol’ Ernie’s brethren bring their respective charges home. Below her, innumerable icons mark where more ships whip past in the opposite direction. None but Riptide, she notes, are tumbling.

  They are in the shadow cone of the tunnel now, in its very throat. Sarya has no way of judging its size, just as she would have no hope of numbering the massive fleet of ships racing into its mouth. They are near one edge, and she can see millions or maybe billions of gleams twinkling in an arc so vast it looks nearly straight. Those are the buoys, the city-sized drones responsible for keeping the tunnel open and this system on the Network. Their massive circle of lights marks the boundary, where realspace ends and subspace begins. Sarya feels herself pressing backward, as if a few centimeters’ space could save her from the tunnel. Suddenly she is a little more understanding of Eleven’s concern. It’s not black in there, it’s…indescribable. It horrifies her, it hurts her brain to even look at it, but she cannot look away.

  This is it, the thing that has surrounded her for as long as she can remember. This is where civilization comes from. This is the Network, the unmeasurable web of information that weaves through the galaxy. This is the half-billion-year-old birthright that every Citizen species swears to uphold, that every candidate species aspires to join. This gigantic rupture in spacetime is where the laws of nature break down, where the speed of light is a joke, where all ships, all data, all everything is packed together and hurled into nothingness—to emerge from one of the billions of identical tunnels stippled across the unimaginable volume of the galaxy. This colossal structure is a minuscule piece of what, quite literally, ties galactic society together. In a matter of seconds Riptide will touch the edge, and it will be vaporized, translated instantly into an unmeasurable quantity of—

  Nothing.

  And without realizing what she is doing Sarya opens her mouth to scream.

  “Y’all ever tried nonexistence?” shouts a voice. It breaks into laughter. “Keep them eyes open! This is the best part!”

  And Sarya exits subspace the same way she entered: mouth open, lungs inflated. The scream, when it comes, emerges as no more than a startled squeak.

  [Now you get it], says Eleven.

  “Yeah,” says Sarya softly, staring wide-eyed through the suit’s transparent walls. She is breathing hard, and she can feel her heart pounding in her chest. “I get it.”

  Except she doesn’t. Her mind struggles, trying to make sense of what her eyes are seeing. At first it looks like Riptide is afloat in a gauzy white mist. It moves around the ship in patterns so slow they are almost still, in swirls, in slow-motion whorls. And then with a start, she feels her perspective expand. This isn’t a fog just outside the ship, this is a field of particles more massive than her mind can grasp. In every direction dance innumerable points of light in every conceivable color, so many that they blend together into a haze of white light.

  “Lydies, gentlexirs, fuzzies, creepy androids, legal and sub-legal intelligences, so on and so forth,” crows Ol’ Ernie. “Allow me to introduce y’all to the family.”

  “They’re ships,” she whispers. “Every single point of light is a ship.”

  [Not ships], says Eleven. [My holo system doesn’t have that kind of resolution. Some of these points represent a million ships.]

  A million ships per point. “How many—” Sarya begins, but her voice fails her. “How—”

  [Exactly.]

  It’s mind-blowing. It’s beyond anything Sarya has ever imagined. And yet, after a few moments of slack-jawed observation, she realizes that it’s also strangely familiar. “We’re backstage,” she breathes.

  [Pardon?]

  Sarya can’t take her eyes off the lights outside. Trillions of them, moving in such purposeful patterns, never with the slightest chance of a misstep or collision. “On Watertower,” she says—quietly, as if she could disturb this vast choreography with nothing more than her voice. “That’s how I thought of it, as backstage. You could get between any two places on the station if you went sort of…behind the scenes. There were so many intelligences back there, making things work. They moved exactly like this. Together, like one…thing. Thousands of them, all connected together, like this gigantic mind or something.”

  [Thousands], says Eleven with a derisive rumble. [This is trillions. And that’s not even counting the Blackstar itself.]

  The Blackstar itself. The thing she came here for. She peers out into the haze, searching. You would think it would be bigger than a point, though. It’s a whole station. It has to be many times the size of Watertower, but with trillions of points to choose from—

  “Now y’all’s tiny l’il minds prolly won’t believe this,” says Ol’ Ernie, “but y’all are closer to a star now than you were on the other side. The only star in this l’il pocket o’ spacetime, believe it or not. Think of it like a transit station, if that helps y’all’s puny intellects.”

  But Sarya sees no stars at all, only the field of shifting twisting lights. “Wait,” she says. “So if we’re right next to a star—”

  [Then why can’t you see it?]

  “Right. I mean, the sun was huge. This should be…” She searches for the word. “Huger. Right?”

  [Spoken like a true high-tier.]

  Sarya takes a breath for a retort, but again Eleven’s display interrupts. A simple diagram begins to draw itself over the drifting multitude of lights outside. Markers appear, then labels. Circular highlights trace the entrances to hundreds of subspace tunnels like the one they just came through. The openings are arranged as if on the inner surface of a sphere, though Sarya could not begin to imagine how large that sphere must be. In the center, another line begins to form—no, it’s another circle, it’s just too large to see the whole thing. It’s another sphere, an inner sphere dead ahead, so large that Sarya has to crane her neck in all directions to see the whole thing. From its surface, she can pick out faint lines of activity, stronger lines of light that lead out from this massive glowing thing to the hundreds of subspace tunnels.

  “That’s a star
?” she asks. “I thought a Blackstar was a station.”

  [It’s both], says Eleven.

  Something has suddenly clicked in Sarya’s mind. “You’re not saying they built a station—”

  [Around a star.]

  “What?”

  The suit rumbles. [It’s just the Network], it says.

  Sarya doesn’t even attempt to argue. In her mind, a sudden realization has taken hold. “What’s the…population of that thing?” she asks.

  Eleven hums. [Three hundred ten trillion], it says after a moment. [And this is just a little one, out on the edge of the Network.]

  “Three hundred ten—”

  [You think that’s something, you should see one of the big ones], continues Eleven, oblivious to her distress. Against the lights, its diagram expands into still more lines and symbols. [There are stations that connect Blackstars together like Blackstars connect individual solar systems. See that tunnel up there, the biggest one? That tunnel connects this Blackstar—and all its solar systems—to the Network. There are things on the other side of that tunnel that make our little Blackstar look like an asteroid, but you have to be higher tier to visit them. Maybe to even understand them.] The suit rumbles. [Even higher-tier than you.]

  The jab passes through Sarya without effect, because she cannot process it. Three hundred ten trillion. Three hundred ten—

  And now Ol’ Ernie is speaking again, but his harsh voice has faded to a buzz. He is probably giving them a schedule or telling them what to expect. Sarya hears the rhythm of the words, but they pass through her mind without leaving an impression. She stares into the diaphanous glow surrounding Riptide, into a sphere many times larger than a sun. Somewhere in there, among three hundred ten trillion intelligences, is the one she’s looking for.

  Maybe.

  [Nervous?] asks Eleven, one of its straps squeezing her shoulder. [Don’t worry. I’ll come with you. If Sandy lets me, I mean.]

  But Sarya cannot answer. Three hundred ten trillion. No, she’s not nervous.

  She’s hopeless.

  The following is greatly abridged from the original Network article, in accordance with your tier.

  NETWORK FOCUS: BEHOLD THE BLACKSTARS

  Given the utter reliability, ubiquity, and ease of use of the galaxy’s only legal faster-than-light system, it’s easy to forget that the Network hasn’t always existed. In fact, it’s only been about five hundred million years since the first Blackstar came online. In the short time since then, the Network has grown from that single station to a gigantic superstructure built upon over a million Blackstars—all connected through subspace!

  Isn’t that something?

  Don’t worry if you can’t picture it; no one under tier four can. But Citizen members of all tiers have wondered, at one time or another: where, exactly, do Blackstars come from?

  HOW TO BUILD A MINOR BLACKSTAR (IN FIVE EASY STEPS)

  Step one: Find a suitable solar system. You’ll need a small- to medium-sized star—perhaps a million and a half kilometers in diameter—with a planetary system at least a tenth of a percent of its mass.

  Step two: Rearrange all the matter in the solar system to form a shell around the star. The idea is to capture one hundred percent of your star’s output.*1 You’re going to need it for step four!

  Step three: Pull the entire structure into an isolated pocket of spacetime.*2 Don’t forget the space around it! You’ll need room to park a few trillion vehicles. A diameter of a hundred fifty million kilometers should do the trick.

  Step four: Now that your star is in a bubble of reality suspended in subspace, it’s time for the most important part: opening your primary subspace tunnel!*3 Without this single tunnel leading to one of the gigantic root stations that form the backbone of the Network, all you’ll have is a really big space station.

  Step five: Using the energy from your star and the high-bandwidth connection to the Network, you can now open as many tunnels to nearby Citizen star systems as you want!

  And you’re done! Sound difficult? For a mind like yours, it would be impossible. But for the higher-tier minds responsible for Network logistics, it’s no problem at all! Every day, somewhere in the galaxy, huge numbers of Network subspace tunnels open for business. Through each one will travel an unimaginable amount of traffic—both physical and informational. And as the only sanctioned method of faster-than-light (FTL) travel, the Network is the only possible way to get what you care about to where it ought to be.

  Just remember: the shortest distance between Point A and Point B…is through a Blackstar.

  AivvTech

  Improving Reality for a Better Tomorrow…Today

  *1 Your Blackstar will eventually release much of this output again as lower-spectrum radiation, but you would not believe what you can accomplish with it in the meantime!

  *2 This is a safety measure from an earlier age of the galaxy. For safety reasons, the only way to approach a Blackstar is via Network.

  *3 As this is a process that will take centuries, it’s good to get started earlier than later.

  [They’ve left the ship], says Sandy’s helper intelligence.

  Sandy does not move from her rigid position on her bunk. She allows the message to go to her backlog, to add itself to the bottom of a large and unacknowledged stack. There are two messages from the idiot pilot intelligence in there, telling her that docking with the Blackstar was imminent and completed, respectively. There are fifteen from the Strongarm, all variants on parental concern. There are three door notifications that went unanswered—all the Strongarm, stopping by to see if she wanted to go aboard the Blackstar. And then there is one more, the oldest. [You will be the death of me], says the message, with a playful affection attached.

  It was the last message Hood ever sent her.

  Sandy sighs, though she doesn’t know quite why. Hood is dead, there is no need to ever think about him again—and yet here she is, staring at his faceplate and actually reminiscing. Hood, pitiless agent of order. Hood, who measured each action by his rigid set of ethics—and the credit it was worth. Hood, who showed Sandy that her suspicions were correct: the Network is not the perfect theoretical structure she learned about in the safe confines of the academy. The Network tends toward order, said her instructors. The Network is full of holes, said Hood. The Network must form its order from disorderly members, he explained, and out here in the border systems it needs help. Where its influence is weakest, its most discontent Citizen members gather. These are the disorderly, the intelligences who chafe against its rule but do not have the courage—or the stupidity—to face the darkness of interstellar space. These are the violent, the daring. These are the irritants that inflame the edges of the Network.

  And mercenaries like Hood are the balm.

  Sandy can’t take her eyes away from the four holes staring back at her. Of all the intelligences who have crossed her path in her seven long years, this one was the most intriguing. She knew Hood before she knew Mer the Strongarm, and she knew the Strongarm for a year before the Strongarm ever laid eyes on her. Both of them were part of her plan, two tools drawn from a pool of possibilities as wide as the galaxy. Mer had no credit, no resources; he was nothing but a messy bundle of instincts and muscle. Hood, though…Hood was different.

  It took Sandy a year to destroy him.

  It was a year of careful planning, of choreographing reality itself, and always with a single goal before her. It began the moment she was named Second Student; that was the night she began searching for tools to use for her escape plan. It took her a full day to find him—one Citizen member among billions in a bustling system sixty lightyears away. By the next day she had learned everything there was to know about him. And within a year, she had reduced his three ships, ten employees, and healthy credit account to almost nothing.

  From his point of view, it was sure
ly maddening. Other outfits seduced his employees. One of his ships was lost in a bizarre accident, and he was forced to sell another to pay a debt that came unexpectedly due. Tips led him on wild chases, informants disappeared after he paid them, and even his own helper intelligence seemed to forget appointments and lose contacts. Hood never knew it, but each of these unfortunate events was a step toward the greater mind who had called him. He was being prepared. By the time he arrived at the Strongarm’s tiny waystation at the end of a devastating year, he had nothing more than his ship, the metal on his back, and desperation for his fortune to change.

  Duty. That was the key to Hood’s mind. He was rigid in his views, absolutely inflexible in his sense of order. It took a year of bad luck to ripen him. That year had warped his titanium sense of ethics, just enough. To save himself, to continue in his duty, Hood was prepared to consider things he had never considered before.

  Like kidnapping a tier three Thinker.

  He didn’t think of it as kidnapping, of course. Even desperation could not drive Hood to that. It was just a very long, very lucrative detour back to Sandy’s academy. It was his duty to keep Sandy aboard for a while, thought Hood. She assisted and amplified him, which enabled him to perform further duties, which was surely a Good Thing. This was how Hood became Sandy’s savior and protector, and Mer the Strongarm ended up in suspended animation in one of the cabins of Hood’s ship.

  It wasn’t easy, but each time Sandy sensed the bounty hunter pondering her return to the academy, she would manage to find another wrong that needed righting. Each time, she amazed him. She sifted the Network in ways he never would have dreamed of. She cross-referenced, she combined innocent pieces of data into undeniable evidence of problems. She turned up leads in ways that seemed, to Hood, absolutely miraculous. She became indispensable. And every time they finished a job together, Hood’s credit account grew.