Shapers of Worlds

by Edward Willett

  “And there will certainly be those humans who do not cooperate in this undertaking, those who, rightly or wrongly, disagree with me that our benefactors are in danger, or that we should care or bother to try to spare them pain.

  “Certainly, despite all our efforts, there will be many retained copies of this very broadcast!

  “But there is hope. For, according to Dr. Rishke’s analysis, this will not matter! Not so long as the majority of us make a good effort. And so long as we agree in advance upon the right cover story. Any clues, evidence, or testimony remaining will then be largely overlooked by the poor Lentili. For subconsciously, they will be our collaborators in suppressing this threat to their collective mental equilibrium. So long as the talent is not flaunted too blatantly, Dr. Rishke was convinced the Lentili will simply ignore it.

  “This, then, will be our cover story.

  “It shall be recorded that on this day, in this year, Joseph Triddens, President of North Europe, Chairman of the Interim Council of Terra, went stark, raving mad.”

  Was there a hint of a smile? Just a flicker of one, as Tridden said those words? I have debated it with myself a thousand times, watching my own secret tape of that broadcast. In truth, I cannot say, nor can anybody, what fleeting thread of whimsy might have woven through the man’s earnest appeal.

  Certainly, the Earth seemed to wobble, at that moment, with the gravitational torque applied by six billion human jaws, all dropping open at the same time in stunned surprise.

  “Yes, people of the world. That is the only way. Tonight, millions of you will do as I ask. You will go forth and meddle, alter records, change archives. It won’t matter that you will not be entirely successful, for the resulting confusion can be used as an excuse when the Lentili wonder why we talk so little about certain things.

  “And next month, next year, on into history, tonight’s temporary hysteria will all be blamed on me.

  “There is no such talent . . . no human attribute that makes Lentili inherently jealous, that makes them feel painful pangs of inferiority.

  “That will be our cover story! It doesn’t exist! It was all a myth perpetrated by a single man, a neurotic human leader driven over the edge by the approaching end to his days of petty power, a man who seized the airwaves in one last, futile spasm and sent a few millions into the streets for a day or two of relatively harmless tape-shredding, index-burning, and other silly, repairable acts of sabotage.

  “This is what you must do, my fellow citizens and people of the world. You must expunge all official mention of this talent, out of kindness to our approaching mentors. And then you must say that all of this was the product of one deranged man:

  “Me.”

  At this point, I know he did smile. By now, half the world was convinced that he was insane. The other half would have died for him then and there.

  “I will try to delay my resignation long enough to see the task well underway. Already, at this moment, political battles are being waged, physicians consulted, Constitutional procedures set in motion. Perhaps I only have a little longer to talk to you, so I will be succinct.

  “It occurs to me that I have been too vague in one respect. The talent I am referring to, about which I cannot be overly specific, is one that is common to human beings, though apparently incredibly rare out in the Galactic Commonweal. So far, we have developed it hardly at all. In fact, it has seemed of so little importance that all but a few of us take it completely for granted, thinking of it no more than in passing, throughout our lives.

  “And yet, it is something that—”

  He stopped speaking quite suddenly, and, reflected in his eyes, we could all track the approach of those intent on bringing an end to his monopoly of the airwaves. President Triddens had time only to bring one finger to his lips, in that age-old sign of secrecy and shared silence. Then, abruptly, the broadcast ended in that famous burst of static that held an entire world hypnotized for endless minutes until, at last, the screens were filled again with the breathless upper torsos and heads of government officials and newscasters, blinking rapidly as they told us what half of us already knew—that the President was not well.

  The rest of us—the other half—did not wait to hear the diagnoses of all the learned doctors. We were already tearing the indexes out of our encyclopedias or striding out the door with axes in our hands, heading toward our local libraries with evil intent upon—not the books—but the sorting catalogues.

  Among those who had technical skill, thousands set to work creating computer viruses . . . the dawn of the Search Crisis, when even the legendary find-efficiency of Google and Yahoo and Baidu and Coriboa suddenly collapsed.

  At the moment, it hardly seemed to matter that Triddens never got around to telling us exactly what it was we were trying to hide! Cause a muddle. we thought. Help disguise this thing of ours that can hurt our friendly guests.

  Do something noble, while we are still in command of our own destinies . . .

  That night’s hysteria came in a surge of passion, a Dionysian frenzy that did little actual harm in the long run—little that could not be repaired fairly easily, that is. It ended almost as quickly as it began, in embarrassment and a sheepish return to normality.

  Yes, the psychiatrists announced. The President was mad.

  When the Gregory Bateson arrived, and Dr. Rishke’s colleagues were interviewed, all of them swore that she could never have sent such a report home. It just wasn’t possible!

  Rumours ran rampant. There was no solid evidence to support speculation that Triddens himself ordered the destruction of the Margaret Mead, a crime too horrible to credit even a lunatic. Anyway, it was decided not to rake those ashes. The man was now where he could do nobody any harm anymore.

  Soon, we were into the glorious days of the Arrival. Lentili were being interviewed on every channel. And in their charming ways, their humour and their obvious love for us, we realized that what we had really needed, all along, were these wonderful, wise, older brothers and sisters to help ease away the pain of our awkward, adolescent millennia. The earnest work of growing up had finally begun.

  Today people seldom speak of President Triddens, or of the strange hoax he tried to pull. Oh, there will always be the Kooks, of course. Artists, writers, innovators of all kinds are forever coming forth and “announcing” that they have “found the Triddens Talent.” Often, these are the silly ones, the half-mad, those at the fringes whom we all tolerate in much the same way the Lentili must love and tolerate us.

  But then, on other occasions the discoveries are bona fide accomplishments. How often has the public watched some brilliant new performer, or stared at some startling piece of art, or listened to new music or some bold concept, and experienced momentary uncertainty, wondering, Could this be what Triddens spoke of? Might this prove him to have been right, after all?

  Inevitably, it is the Lentili who are the test. How they react tells us.

  As yet, none of the fruits of our new renaissance seem to have caused them much discomfort or any sign of hysterical rejection. They say they are surprised by our behaviour . . . it seems that most neophyte species, most “freshman” members of the Commonweal, go through long periods of humility and self-doubt, giving themselves over excessively to slavish mimicry of their seniors. The Lentili say they are impressed by our independence of spirit and our innovation. Still, they show no sign of having yet been intimidated by some mysterious latent human talent, suddenly brought to flower.

  But that doesn’t stop people from looking.

  We speak of Triddens, when we speak of him at all, with embarrassment. He died in an institution, and his name is now used as a euphemism for passing through a wormhole, for going off the deep end.

  And yet . . .

  And yet, sometimes I wonder. A small minority still believe in him. They are the ones who thank our mentors politely, and yet patronizingly, with a serene sort of smugness that seems so out of proportion, so inappropriate, given our relative
positions on the ladder of life. They are the ones who somehow seem impervious to the quaking intimidation that strikes most of the rest of humanity, now and again, despite the best efforts of the Lentili to make us feel loved and at home.

  Is it an accident, I wonder, that every time a human team is sent to negotiate with the Commonweal on some matter, always a few Triddenites are named among the emissaries? Is it a coincidence that they prove the toughest, most capable of our diplomats?

  They search—these believers in a mad president—never satisfied, always seeking out that secret, undeveloped niche in the human repertoire, the fabled talent that will make us special even in this intimidating, overpowering Universe. Spurning the indexes they call useless, they pore through the source material of our past, and explore the filmy fringes of what we know or can comprehend. Neither time nor the blinding brilliance of our mentors seem to matter to the Triddenites.

  Perhaps they are lingering symptoms of the underlying craziness of humankind.

  The Lentili walk among us like gods.

  We, in turn, have learned some of what we taught dogs and horses. We’ve supped from the same bowl as we once served up to our cousins, the lesser apes: the bowl of humility.

  There is no doubt that humans were arrogant when we imagined we stood at the pinnacle of creation. Even when we worshipped a deity, we nearly always placed Him at safe remove, exalting Him out of the mundane world altogether, which was in effect the same thing as naming ourselves paramount on Earth.

  Now, humbled, we earnestly study and devote ourselves to making our species worthy of a civilization whose peaks we can only dimly perceive.

  No question but that we are better people now than those savages were, our ancestors. We are smarter, kinder, more loving. And, against all expectation, we are also more creative, as well.

  I have a theory to explain the latter—a theory I keep to myself. But it is why, once a year, I risk being labelled a Kook by attending a memorial service by the side of a small grave in Bruges Cemetery. And while most of those present speak of honour, and pity, and the martyrdom of a decent man, I pay homage instead to one who perhaps saw where his people were headed, and the danger that awaited them.

  I honour one who found a way to arm us . . . and changed that future.

  And yes, he was a martyr. But of all the solaces to accompany him into his imprisonment, I can think of none better than the one Triddens took with him.

  That smile . . .

  They walk amongst us like gods. But we have our revenge.

  For the Lentili know Triddens must have been mad. They know there is no secret talent. We are not sheltering them from some bright truth, hiding something from them out of pity and out of love.

  They know it.

  And yet, every now and then, I have seen it. I have seen it . . . seen it in their deep, expressive eyes each time something new from our renaissance surprises them, oh, so briefly.

  I have seen that glimmer of wonder. Of worry. That momentary doubt.

  That is when I pity the poor, deprived creatures.

  Oh, thank God, I can pity them.

  The Greatest of These Is Hope

  By D.J. Butler

  Shepherd: And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three.

  The Ecumene Shepherd stood at the front of the long Ecumene Community Hall, atop the short minbar tower. His avatar had a thick grey bar across the top of its block-like head, which Izzy thought must be a skullcap, and wore black. The avatar’s mouth was a flat, serious line.

  All the avatars had block-like heads, including Izzy’s. That was just how avatars looked. The blocky head of Izzy’s avatar was a sunset gold, with curlicues meant to approximate the look of her real, wildly curly, hair.

  Shepherd: And sometimes . . . the greatest of these is hope.

  Behind the Shepherd rose a dark-blue panel spangled with silver and gold dots. The dots slowly revolved around a central point, slightly to the side of one of the fainter stars. This was an image of the night sky, but not any night sky Izzy had ever seen—it was the night sky of Earth. Mom and Dad hadn’t ever seen it, either—Izzy’s family was four generations off-Earth.

  But that revolving night sky of Earth was one of the symbols of the Ecumene.

  Rowland-Beta, sometimes called Elizabeth’s World, had its own night sky, with a dense skein of stars that came and went and thick smeared bands of various colours and large patches of void. Izzy liked to sit on the broad, flat space on top of the kelp-processing tanks with Mom, Dad, and Bear, turn off their station’s lights, and watch that sky. There wasn’t another station in sight of them in any direction, so with the lights turned off, the night became glorious.

  Everyone on Elizabeth’s World lived this remotely. That was why the Ecumene Community Hall was virtual, located in a walled-off section of the Sphere where many of the controls were disabled, to prevent vandalism. During sermons, like this one, communication abilities were limited, to avoid disruptions.

  The Ecumene and the government had controlled spaces in the Sphere. Outside those controlled spaces, the Sphere was where children met and played.

  “Burp!” Bear yelled, but no one in the Sphere could hear him.

  The Shepherd interrupted a description of Eli and his favourite activities—which conspicuously left out his love of griefing in the Sphere and all the dirty jokes he’d learned from his older brother, Tim—to quote scripture again.

  Shepherd: Call on Him in fear and hope. Lo! The mercy of the Infinite is nigh unto the good.

  Viv (group PM): I miss Eli.

  The other participants in the funeral couldn’t see the group chat, which made it much more discreet than a whispered conversation. Izzy snaked a hand to her keypad and quietly typed a response.

  Izzy (group PM): I do, too.

  Izzy had never met either Viv or Eli, or the fourth member of their group, Ahmad, in physical space. Their families all operated stations thousands of kilometres apart, but the children met in the Sphere to heap up mountains, go into the cubes to mine Unobtainium and Handwavium, which allowed them to build fantastical devices in the Sphere, and fight Stalkers. Rowland-Beta itself had no mountains, and indeed virtually no dry land, no rare elements, and, of course, no Stalkers. Most of the planet’s devices were tools used in cultivating and processing kelp.

  Now Viv sat on a virtual pew two rows ahead of Izzy and to the right. Ahmad sat somewhere behind the girls. Izzy knew that because Ahmad had told her; her avatar was frozen in place during this part of the service and couldn’t turn its head.

  Eli lay in the coffin in front of the Shepherd.

  “Juice!” Bear yelled. The only juice he knew was a sweet distillate from kelp.

  The station shook. Not the Community Hall, which was virtual, but Izzy’s family’s station. Over the Shepherd’s muscular voice, she heard large waves slapping against the side of the station’s tanks. She heard Dad curse and slip out of his Sphere-helm, then run to the station’s control room.

  His avatar remained poised and solemn, sitting on the other side of Mom. For the funeral, the family’s avatars all wore black.

  Ahmad (group PM): Did you guys feel that?

  Izzy (group PM): Whoa.

  The tremors had been getting more frequent, and bigger. Since virtually everyone on Elizabeth’s World lived on floating stations, the tremors manifested as waves. It was a tremor that had killed Eli, apparently; a tsunami had swept him from his family’s station, and he had drowned in the kelp.

  At least, that’s what Viv had heard from her parents. Izzy’s parents had said nothing, but had forbidden Izzy and Bear to go outside alone. Bear, who could barely talk, really shouldn’t be outside alone anyway, but Izzy was eleven years old, and the sudden restriction on her liberty chafed, however sensible it was.

  But how big must a tremor be to throw waves against Izzy’s station and also Ahmad’s? Or could there be two tremors at the same time?

  Either possibility seemed ominous.


  Shepherd: Let us say the prayer for the dead together. Be exalted and sanctified His great name in the world He created . . .

  The communication controls relaxed, and members of the congregation recited along. Izzy’s text scroll filled with multiple versions of the prayer, some misspelled, some using variant words, and a few in different languages. She copied and pasted the prayer herself, mechanically, one line at a time, from an open file.

  Viv (group PM): This really makes me want to go griefing. Just find a building somewhere and trash it. A whole village. A castle.

  Izzy (group PM): You can’t grief in here.

  Viv (group PM): Duh. Meet me at ZL 1200?

  ZL 1200 was a time, midday at the zero-longitude line of Elizabeth’s World. The place of the meeting would be the same place they always met.

  Izzy (group PM): I’m in. Ahmad?

  Ahmad said nothing. Izzy couldn’t look for his avatar or the avatars of his two mothers. Instead, she checked the scroll and realized that none of Ahmad’s family were saying the prayer for the dead.

  Viv (group PM): He’s just glitching. I bet he meets us.