The Water Bear

by Groucho Jones

“Yes, like they’ll conquer this dwarf galaxy. After that, we expect, the Milky Way.”

  “You’re sure they’ll beat you?”

  “Oh yes. They’re far in advance of any technology we have.”

  “Why fight them?”

  “We don’t fight them. We fight who they send. Those insects were yesterday’s opponents. Tomorrow’s will be different.”

  “What... they force you to fight other species? In set piece battles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Inside a virtuality?”

  “Of sorts. We call it the Badoop synthesis. It has some of the quality of reality. A local collapse of the wavefunction. We’re not sure of the physics.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that you’re fighting against their other opponents?”

  “Of course, but what can we do about it?”

  “What a total mindfuck.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  Totoro shrugged. “We have no choice.”

  This intrasystem journey wasn’t Macro’s first experience with sybaritic luxury. As a representative of the bank, he was forced to endure all kinds of pleasures. It didn’t set well with him. He knew it was an irrational prejudice, but he couldn’t help but associate luxury with theft. In his experience, people living a high life invariably took it from people with nothing.

  They may not mean to, but they do.

  He knew that luxury was relative. The people of Praxis lived luxuriously by comparison with people in the Smear, and by and large they’d taken nothing.

  But their society had.

  And this society was exceedingly wealthy.

  Face it, he thought; you’re a monk, with a monk’s predilections.

  Totoro lied outrageously to a succession of women. Macro asked him why, with real curiosity.

  “They love you. Why pretend?”

  “It’s a game here,” Totoro explained.

  “You lie to each other?”

  “A game of polite society.”

  “To fool them?”

  “No, they have to see you’re pretending.”

  “Then what’s the point of it?”

  “To please them.”

  “Well, you’re not a convincing liar.”

  “Thank you. Does it hinder me?”

  “Clearly not.”

  “The key to love is gentleness, my friend. The world is full of men who hurt women, because they’re physically stronger. You may get some sex, but it’s like eating the skin of an orange. I want the orange.”

  “Gaming them is seductive?”

  “No, paying them the compliment of complicity is seductive. It’s like making bad jokes, in such a way that people can’t help but laugh.”

  “I don’t understand. Do you mean your gameplay is ironic?”

  “No, I mean it’s pleasurable. My friend, you’re too literal-minded.”

  Macro thought about that. “Anyone who thinks women are weak should meet your sister. Or Brin Lot. Or Ophelia Box.”

  “Are they formidable?”

  “They’re utterly magnificent.”

  “You ever met a Badoop?”

  They were rollicking drunk, in their cups, on grubs steeped in the liquor of an hallucinogenic cactus. Macro could probably modulate his drunkenness with his wetware, if he wanted to. He knew Totoro had no such escape ramp.

  “Once,” said Totoro, focusing. “I think mebbe I did once.”

  He was regarding a caterpillar, as though it could be a military opponent.

  “Whassalike?”

  “Ooh.”

  They couldn’t stop laughing. One of the fine things about being drunk on stimulants, Macro decided, was hearing yourself spouting nonsense.

  “Seriously,” said Totoro, straightening himself. He made a straight face. “Show you,” he said.

  Macro found himself sucked back inside Totoro’s sensorium. In it he was sober.

  There was a creature. It resembled a termite, not a million chromosomes from what they were drinking. It held weapons in its appendages, an impressive array of tools, like a utility knife. Totoro had seen his companions disemboweled by their likes.

  It raised a... feeler? A pseudopod?

  It was opening itself up to being attacked. A placatory gesture. Totoro had a crossbow, made from unfinished carbon. A roughly made killing machine.

  The ventral spine of the creature was like the ripe labellum of an orchid, powdery and soft: a target.

  {Are you the one?} it asked.

  It spoke at first to Atwusk’niges. It didn’t know if Totoro or she were the primary.

  “It’s me you’re fighting,” said Totoro.

  The creature {nodded}.

  Not quite a nod. The creature was an empath. Totoro felt the nod as a morpheme, as though he had wetware.

  {Is it the one?} the creature asked.

  This {idea} was projected outwards - outside the Badoop virtuality. That was new. Totoro lowered his crossbow. In response, the creature lowered its weapons.

  {Is it the one?}

  {No.}

  The second - voice? - came from... somewhere. It had the slippery, hiccuppy quality of the Badoop sonification.

  {It’s the penultimate form.}

  {Then it will kill me.}

  {It will kill you.}

  {I choose not to die today.}

  {Then go in peace.}

  The termite creature whirled, in a cascading helix of segments, to hover over Totoro, who was also Macro. It smelt of formic acid; an unnerving proximity.

  “Please have this,” it said.

  Totoro felt an outpouring of love; totally alien, but completely familiar.

  “Go in peace,” it said, and disappeared.

  “What did that mean?” asked Macro the following morning, from deep within the misery of a hangover, one he preferred not to delete. Better to learn, he decided. “The Badoop are cockroaches?”

  “Of course not, and it was more like a termite. That creature was my last opponent, before I met you. The other voice was the Badoop.”

  “What did it mean, penultimate form?”

  “Who knows? Maybe I’m the second best at its game.”

  “Who’s the best?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Why did it let the other one off?”

  “Maybe that day’s experiment wasn’t about fighting. Maybe the creature wasn’t one of its collection.”

  “Have you ever refused to fight?”

  “I’ve tried.”

  “And?”

  Totoro shook his head.

  “You know, it sounds like a test to destruction. Like children, trapped on an island, with no choice but to murder each other.”

  “It does. I hope I don’t have to do it forever.”

  “You mean, literally forever?”

  “It has crossed my mind.”

  Leif Ean, Most Imperfect One, Egregious Bug III, the Magellanic Navigator sat on hir throne, attended by hir winged eunuchs.

  “Majesty, may I present Macro Ibquant Deathcult von Engine,” said Totoro, making a flourish.

  They were inside a crystalloid sphere. New stars floated in the heavens around them. Macro was impressed. Either it was a projection, or this sphere was in a different part of the galaxy. Realtime spacetime displacement. Hyperlight trickery. As a declaration of technological achievement, it really was something.

  “Von Engine?” said Ean. One of hir imperfections was near-sightedness. Ze squinted at Macro through bottle-thick eyeglasses.

  The throne room was a riot of color. Leif Ean was dressed in layer on layer of silky brocades, and the space around hir was strewn with flowers. Hir face was white with fragrant powder.

  “You’re Samppo’s boy?” ze asked. Hir voice was a slightly imperfect soprano, broken and with a slight tremolo.

  “I am,” said Macro. He was given a highchair, so he could sit eye-to-eye with the monarch. The lenses made hir eyes look like two moist fruits. Totoro p
ulled up a similar chair. Eunuchs hustled out of his way.

  “I can hardly believe it,” said Ean. “But I do. d Atwusk’niges here vouches for you. What brings you to Waterfall, Mr. von Engine?

  “Alois Buss brought me here.”

  “Oh, that. Yes, a nasty business.”

  Hir attendants flapped around, bringing hir papers, which ze signed without looking. It was as though the eunuchs managed the affairs of state. Macro reminded himself that appearances meant nothing. This was the pre-eminent living human.

  Ean waved the Eunuchs away, and removed hir glasses, and the impression of helplessness disappeared. Ze had the pitiless gaze of a killer.

  “Well, I do know why you’re here, von Engine. And I’m sorry for your troubles. Your father and I go back a long way, and his father before him. Totoro?”

  “Majesty?”

  “Will you begin with the facts?”

  Totoro nodded, and said, “Macro, Alois was euthanized. He didn’t die of his injuries.”

  “What?

  “You mean you killed him?”

  “On his instructions.”

  “There’s a recording,” said Ean.

  “I don’t fucking want to see it,” said Macro

  “It’s for you,” said Ean. “Buss made it for you.”

  A simulation of Alois appeared between the throne and the chairs. The eunuchs left the room. It seemed this talk was now private.

  “Macro,” it said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not telling you more, when I knew everything. By the time you see this I’ll be dead. I’m sorry for that too. It was necessary. I’ll explain.

  “The greatest threat to us all is a person called Kronus, a being of Möbius space. Your friends have gone there to oppose him. By oppose, I mean fight him.”

  Leif Ean showed no surprise; nor did Totoro. It seemed they already knew all Alois’s secrets.

  “That’s where you come in, my boy. I need you to take an army there. An army of Free Pursang, led by Totoro.

  “You won’t have heard of the Free Pursang. That’s because they don’t exist. But they will. I’m sorry, there’s no way to soften this; you can’t leave Waterfall until after the destruction of Fluxor.

  “That means your friends will die.”

  With a dizzying sense of pieces falling into place, he sprang to his feet.

  “No!” he shouted.

  He shouted for some time, until he stopped.

  “Why?” he asked, coldly.

  “Do you not get it?” asked Ean, as coldly.

  “Oh, I get it,” said Macro. “You want me to go back in time, from the future, to help them win next time around.”

  “Smart boy.”

  “I want to know why.”

  “Because the Badoop say so,” said Totoro.

  “Why do they get a say?”

  “Because all the Horu downlinks are destroyed. Only the Badoop have the technology to take us there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you remember the device you gave Kitou?”

  “The Magellanic travel device?”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Totoro, you’re talking in riddles.”

  “It wasn’t Magellanic. It was made to look that way.”

  “It was on loan from the Badoop,” said Alois.

  “Oh, fuck,” said Macro.

  “Do you remember being contacted by Kitou?” asked Alois.

  “Yes, she was punished.”

  “That was the moment of connection. You, to her, entangled, through the Badoop device. A machine of the wavefunction. It can never be broken.”

  “First we get the device,” said Totoro. “Then you can take us there.”

  “Then let’s get cracking. We’ll go now. Totoro, how many Pursang soldiers do we have?”

  “The Badoop won’t let us use it.”

  “Why?”

  “They say it’s not time.”

  “How can they stop you?”

  “No,” said Ean. “I forbid it.”

  “Why?”

  “The Badoop have their reasons.”

  “Cowards.”

  “Macro,” said Totoro.

  “Fuck you,” said Macro.

  “Please understand. This is the loss of my world I’m proposing. Everything and everyone I love.”

  “Then do something.”

  “I am.”

  “Like, what?”

  “Like, formulating a strategy.”

  The next unwelcome fact was the neutralization of Avalon. They used that word. Neutralization. They didn’t even tell him about it directly. He overheard it.

  The Egregious Bug had lost patience with Macro by then. Hir face was like granite. The Eunuchs had returned. The matters of state had been dealt with. Now they were dealing with the small matter of the loss of a world.

  “How could you do that?” he shouted. He was the bank. He was the Cult. This was an atrocity. By the powers vested in him by all the money in the world, he’d do something about it.

  He didn’t care that he sounded like a hysterical teenager. On top of everything else, this was a world he personally cared about.

  “So?” Totoro said.

  “There were millions of people.”

  “What, do you think we destroyed it?”

  “You... oh.” Macro blushed with embarrassment. “I thought...”

  Leif Ean waved hir hand, and the granite wall loosened. A minor rockslide threatened a smile. “We’re not monsters here,” ze said.

  “We put it in stasis,” said Totoro. “It’s on its way to the future.”

  “Do you want me to sit for a while?” asked interlocutor-Alois.

  “Do I have a choice?” said Macro.

  The room he’d been given to live in was suitably austere. He liked it. He sat on a bed. Interlocutor-Alois looked unhappy.

  “I’m sorry,” said Macro. “You know I don’t mean that. Of course you can stay.”

  But he did mean it. He was angry at everything. The whole world had to pay for this.

  But this was Alois. His friend. He couldn’t be blamed for his own death.

  “You’re allowed to be hurt,” said Alois.

  “But?”

  “But you have no say in this. These are the affairs of astropolitics. Civilizations setting their course. Acting in their own best interests. We do as the Navigator says. We do as the Badoop say.”

  “I’m just an extra.”

  “All of us are extras.”

  “Alois?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why were you euthanized?”

  “Because I made a mistake. I contacted the Water Bear, using the Badoop device.”

  “When? Before or after Kitou?”

  “Before.”

  “Why is that relevant?”

  “Because through it, Kronus found his way to the Real.”

  “Through you?”

  “Yes. He’s connected to me, like you are to Kitou. It’s a long story.”

  “Is it because you have the Thespian disease?”

  “I did have it. Yes.”

  “This sim you’re in now doesn’t?”

  “No, this sim is binary. The Thespian disease requires the quaternary system of animal DNA.”

  “Are all machines immune?”

  “Some are. Cyborgs are susceptible.”

  “And the disease is the Enemy’s weapon?”

  “Yes, it’s his version of the Fa:ing number. Engineered, like a virus, to spread himself throughout the cosmos.”

  “What’s it like, the disease?”

  “Like the most beautiful euphoria. Rushes and rushes of bliss. On the outside, you appear frightening. Inside, you feel wonderful.”

  “And behaviorally?”

  “Like a strange, looping form of paranoia. You think... persuasive ideas.”

  “Euphoria and paranoia. That sounds awfully like madness.”

  “It is.”

  “What’s... he like?”
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  “Kronus? A brute. And, the most wonderful person.”

  “He’s part of us, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he’s our shadow. That’s insightful.”

  “Oh, I’ve worked it out,” said Macro.

  “Well, here we are,” said Totoro.

  They were deep in the bowels of the citadel, beneath Bug’s throne room. A safe place. The last place in the Magellanic civilization that would fall in a war. Totoro was showing Macro his ride out of here.

  “I don’t like it,” said Macro.

  “It’s all you need.”

  “Why an acceleration chair?” he asked.

  “This is no ordinary stasis device,” said Totoro. “In the event you need it, it performs as a spacecraft. It can take you across space, or into the far future.”

  “What kind of event?”

  Totoro shrugged.

  To the right of the chair was a featureless sphere.

  “What’s that?” asked Macro.

  “That’s me,” said the Alois-interlocutor.

  “What d’you mean? Your body?”

  “Dear boy, you have a mind like a razor, but you missed one thing.”

  “What? That you’re the wrong Alois?”

  “Ah.”

  “I didn’t miss it. I knew the Alois who used the device couldn’t be the Alois who traveled with me from Avalon. Continuity errors are easy. I just didn’t want to start them thinking.”

  Alois nodded. He wasn’t the Alois that Macro arrived with. It was obvious. He was a sim of the Buss from the Cult.

  An Alois that Macro thought to keep safe.

  There were three Aloises that he knew of: the one he came with; the one in the Cult; and the original, on Threnody.

  “You’ve killed them all?” asked Macro, with an unhappy look on his face.

  “No, we saved the original.”

  “You kidnapped the Alois on Threnody?”

  “Not kidnapped,” said Totoro. “We offered him an alternative outcome.”

  “That’s him in there?”

  “It is.”

  “The real, biological original?”

  “Yes.”

  “No more Alois’s, looping through time?”

  “No.”

  “He’s coming with me?”

  “He is.”

  “Well, I guess that’s alright then.”

  “It’s time now,” said interlocutor-Alois.

  Of course it was time. The stasis device was set to release on a timer, and nothing in the world would prevent it.