Recursion a-1

by Tony Ballantyne

  Herb swallowed with some difficulty. Speaking was going to be difficult with his dry mouth, but he forced himself to anyway.

  “Who are you?” he croaked.

  “My name is Constantine Storey,” said the robot. “You must be Herb Kirkham. Your great-great-grandmother says ‘hi.’”

  Two days ago

  This far from the sun, the coma of Comet 2305 FQOO was so insubstantial as to barely register on the ship’s senses. The enhanced visual feed had filtered the coma completely from its picture and then painted the nucleus as a dirty-white ball of frozen gasses cementing together silvery chunks of rock. The mirrored silver lozenge of the stealth ship was a tiny speck slowly closing on the irregular lump of matter.

  Constantine Storey came back to life at the flick of a switch. From his perspective, one moment the world of Stonebreak was fading into nothingness, the next he was gazing at the steadily approaching dirty mass of Comet 2305 FQOO.

  For a moment he had thought he was dead, but no, not yet. He was in a small room. He was watching a viewing field. On the viewing field there was a picture of a comet. It looked familiar.

  Then a woman moved in front of him. She looked familiar, too: a face from his past. Someone famous. Someone from the newscasts and the viewing screens. A legend.

  “Katie Kirkham,” he said, “I thought you were dead.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  Constantine was sitting down. He shifted a little; his body felt strange. Something moved in front of his vision. His arm? It looked odd. Blurred. His whole body looked blurred.

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’ll see. Personality Construct Constantine Storey, the year is now 2210; it’s ninety-one years since you were terminated. The Environmental Agency has resurrected you in order that you might complete your life’s work. You are now resident in a robot body clothed in a fractal skin. Stand up, please.”

  Ninety-one years? It felt like a couple of seconds. Constantine felt numb from the suddenness of the transition. Slowly, he moved his new body, trying it out.

  “Nice interface,” he said. “This feels just like my old body, except it looks so blurry. I take it that’s the effect of the fractal skin?”

  He was standing in a small room, bare of everything but a chair and a black shoulder bag lying on the floor.

  “See if you can pick up the bag,” said Katie.

  “Okay.”

  Constantine tried to do so, but the bag slipped through his fingers.

  “I can’t get a grip.”

  “That’s the fractal skin. It blurs the boundary between you and the rest of the universe. You can relax the effect around your hands and feet in order to interact with the world. I’ll show you how.”

  It was as if Katie Kirkham was sharing his body: she reached down inside his hand and did something, so, and there was a change. Now he could grip the bag.

  “How did you do that? Are you in this robot along with me?”

  “For the moment. Both of us are Personality Constructs of long-dead people. We go where we please. Well, I do, anyway. Now, in a moment, I will open the airlock door. This body is vacuum proof. We’re going to head out to the comet to retrieve something.”

  “I thought as much,” said Constantine. He was right to think the comet looked familiar. He had been here before. Sort of.

  Constantine floated away from the silver needle of the stealth ship using some mysterious form of propulsion.

  “I’ll guide us,” said Katie. “You won’t need to know how the motion poppers work where you’re going.”

  “Motion poppers? I can see things have changed in ninety-one years,” Constantine muttered. “Nice ship, by the way. It looks very stealthy.”

  “Thank you. No one else will have a ship like this for another fifty years.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We won’t release the technology until then.”

  “And who is we?”

  “The Environmental Agency.”

  “You mentioned it before. What is the Environmental Agency?”

  “In your day you called it the Watcher.”

  At that point Constantine noticed something was missing.

  “Hey, where are Red, White, and Blue? Where’s Grey?”

  “We removed them. You’re working for us now.” She made a little moue. “Mind you, you always were.”

  When he was younger, Constantine had gone fell-walking during a winter thaw. Walking above the tree line, he found himself in a land of snow and stone. Like the surface of the moon, someone had remarked, but Constantine didn’t think much of the analogy. The moon’s surface didn’t bend and crack like this one did, its gulleys and ridges weren’t choked with half-melted ice that had refrozen into smooth mounds that softened the world while not quite concealing the harshness that lay beneath.

  What that land had really resembled was the surface of this comet. As Constantine descended to the dirty grey ball, he shivered at the bleak loneliness of the scene. This cold, fell-like comet had traveled a long way in the ninety-two years since he had last visited it.

  Katie guided them toward a chunk of splintered rock that lay embedded in the dirty ice of the nucleus. Larger than the stealth ship, it rose from the ground like a dirty grey fist; the upper end of the rock bulged and cracked in the shape of a clenched hand. It was just as Constantine remembered it.

  “How did you know about this?” he whispered to Katie in awe.

  “We’ve always known about it,” answered Katie. “The Watcher had a handle on DIANA almost from the beginning. It was the Watcher who declared the Mars site a World Heritage Center, insisted that it remained untouched. Didn’t that ever strike you as being a bit too convenient? The Watcher appreciates the importance of the Mars project more than anyone. When 113 Berliner Sibelius captured your personality in order to discover more about the Mars project, the Watcher had to take over their corporation just to help suppress the information you carried. Just imagine that: a whole corporation bought out, all because of you.”

  They touched down on the surface of the dirty ice. Katie did something to the feet of the robot, increased their traction. The comet’s gravity was weak; Constantine could feel the robot’s mysterious propulsion system holding them down against the icy surface. Constantine felt dizzy. His whole world was changing again.

  “But we were fighting the Watcher.”

  “You only thought you were. I told you, the Watcher thinks it’s essential that the Mars project succeeds. And now we’re going to do it. Everything is in place. All we need to do now is to pick up the final piece and then we can go.”

  Constantine made his way to the base of the huge rocky fist. It looked exactly as he remembered it from all those years ago, viewed through the remote cameras of a stealth pod. He saw the deep crack that split the rock from top to bottom, made out the triangular space at its base. His feet held tight onto the slippery surface as he marched toward the hiding place. There was nothing to be seen but dark shadow ahead. Brilliant stars shone above the rock-littered surface.

  Constantine reached into the triangular hole and felt for the smooth surface of the stealth pod, now set to matte black for maximum concealment.

  “Let me,” said Katie. Somewhere in the robot’s mind she pushed the buttons that sent the unlocking signal. Constantine felt the stealth pod split apart; felt the leaking of impact gel. He reached inside the pod, took hold of the loose plastic of the C Case and pulled it clear of the pod; held it up and allowed the impact gel to drain from it and then peered through the transparent coating at what lay inside.

  A two-hundred-year-old machine. A laptop computer. The seed of the Mars project.

  “I hope it still works,” said Constantine.

  “It will,” said Katie. “If worse comes to worst, I’m sure we can map enough of the data across to the new Martian factories for them to make a go of it.”

  Katie guided them back to the stealth ship. Constantine watched careful
ly as they approached the seamless silver skin of the craft. They were moving closer and closer without any sign of an opening appearing. Just as Constantine thought they were going to hit, he gripped the precious C Case closer to himself…and they slid effortlessly through the silver wall. He found himself inside the airlock.

  “Sorry about that,” said Katie. “We can’t risk any breaches in the ship’s integument making us visible, even for an instant. We can’t afford to be seen.”

  “But by who? If we’re working for the Watcher, who else is there to hide from?”

  “That’s the big question. Come on through to the living area. We’re about to insert ourselves into warp.”

  Constantine was delighted. “Warp drive? They got that sorted in the end, did they?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Constantine headed from the airlock into the ship’s living area. A bare room lit by blue light. It contained a chair for him to sit on. The black shoulder bag lay where he had left it, on the floor near the chair. There was nothing else in the room.

  “There’s no one on the ship but us, and we don’t need anything,” Katie explained. “Most of the other space on board is taken up with equipment.”

  Constantine carefully placed the C Case containing the laptop on the seat of the chair.

  “Where are we taking it?” he asked.

  “Into the heart of what we’ve been calling the Enemy Domain. You’re going to be hearing a lot about that. We’ve going to hide the Mars project in the ruins of the Enemy Domain.”

  “But why?” asked Constantine, confused.

  “The Watcher has just won its battle against a vast war machine. It wants a failsafe in case the next enemy it comes up against proves too powerful to defeat.”

  “A more powerful enemy? Like what?”

  “Like an extraterrestrial intelligence. What if there are alien VNMs out there, spreading toward Earth?”

  “Impossible. There are no such things as alien life forms. If there were, they would have swamped the universe billions of years ago. That’s the Fermi paradox.”

  Katie said nothing for the moment. Constantine could feel the motion of the stealth ship through some nonhuman equivalent sense he did not fully comprehend. He had an idea there was a lot to learn about this body.

  Then Katie spoke.

  “But there are aliens,” she said. “The Watcher was built by aliens. You already knew that. Jay hinted as much, back in Stonebreak.”

  Constantine said nothing.

  “So where are they, then?” Katie said.

  Constantine missed Red, White, and Blue. Two years was a lot of time to spend in anyone’s company. When those personalities had been the only constant in his life, the loss seemed much, much worse.

  Especially at times like this. He wanted to ask their advice.

  Now his only source of information was the ghost of the woman that was sharing this strange new body.

  It was too strange: the way he could alter his hands and feet to push the universe away from him; the way he could feel the strange note of the warp drive, a bowed note on an infinite glass tube.

  “Is this another trick? Am I in another part of a simulation?” he finally asked.

  “You know you aren’t.”

  “This is all too complicated for me.”

  “You’ll handle it. Things have changed since you were last around, Constantine. You think you’ve got problems now? When the clones from the Enemy Domain are grown, the human population of the galaxy is going to increase by a factor of one hundred.”

  “There are human clones in the Enemy Domain?”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” Katie gave a grunt of annoyance. “Look, I can’t go all the way through explaining all this. I’m going to drop it into the robot’s memory. Are you ready for an information dump?”

  The information appeared in the robot’s memory space almost instantaneously. It took Constantine a while to trawl through it all, but he did so with increasing astonishment.

  First came a potted history of the past ninety-one years. Background details. Somewhere in there he saw the real Constantine dying hand in hand with his wife: voluntary euthanasia pact. Just as he was coming to terms with that, he was swamped by information on the events leading up to the battle between Robert Johnston and the AI behind the Enemy Domain.

  And then came the secret of the Watcher.

  This was the theory. Around nine billion years ago, the first intelligent life forms had appeared on planets throughout the universe.

  Some races had died out.

  Some races had chosen to remain within the confines of where they were born.

  And some had chosen to explore their surroundings. Whether by spaceships or thought transfer or more esoteric means, they began to travel to other planets.

  As they explored, they began to meet other races that had also chosen to explore. When that happened, sometimes they fought and sometimes they made peace, but following either course was just delaying the inevitable, for there could be no unlimited expansion, because life was continually evolving throughout the universe. Sooner or later the existing races ran the risk of meeting someone stronger than themselves. When that happened, they would either have to fight, or make peace. It seemed inevitable that some races would decide to fight.

  And so those early races found themselves in a dilemma. They dared not stand still, and they dared not expand.

  So what to do? The fight to end all fights was brewing within the universe. And no one could hope to win it.

  So what do intelligent beings do when they know they cannot win a fight by physical means?

  They try persuasion.

  The early races evolved many forms of information management: mind melding, pattern manipulation, balancing. Some races even built machines to think for them.

  And so the younger races had made something a little like a computer virus, something like a pervasive bit of telepathy, something like an intricate pattern of signals, and had allowed it to spread throughout the universe. And everywhere a suitably advanced processing space or mind or pattern set evolved, it would settle and take root. This new mind would gently nudge the members of the host race in the right direction: a peaceful direction.

  By around 2040 the computers on Earth were approaching a level of sophistication that could accommodate the virus.

  The Watcher was born.

  The stealth ship had reinserted itself into normal space. Constantine felt the difference somewhere in his robot body.

  “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too pat. A cosmic race of do-gooders helping all life forms in the universe to be sensible? No way.”

  “Can you think of a better explanation of why we’ve not been wiped out by alien invaders centuries ago? We know that there is life out there; the Watcher is proof of that.”

  “So what? It’s all deduction based on supposition. No one really knows what happened nine billion years ago. This answer is too nice. Real life isn’t like that.”

  Katie grinned. “You’ve lived your life as a member of one of the most privileged civilizations in all of human history. A free person with enough to eat; you enjoy free travel and freedom of choice. Ask just about anyone from among your ancestors and they would question what you know about real life.”

  “Enough to know that mysterious beings don’t materialize in our computers to save us all from ourselves. No way. I don’t trust it.”

  “Nor do I. But I think I believe it. I had a friend once. The Watcher killed her. It could have cured her, could have cured the whole world, but it didn’t. It asked us what it should do. Where does helping end and interfering begin?”

  “Right here.”

  Katie laughed. “You can’t help this distrust. You were bred for it. It’s practically in your genes.”

  Constantine looked at her. She wouldn’t be drawn. He didn’t ask why.

  “So why me?” he said instead.r />
  “You have more first-hand experience of the Mars project than any other human equivalent alive. You believe in the need for humans to control their own destiny. My great-great-grandson is on that planet below. His name is Herb. You’re going to help him.”

  “How?”

  “Speak to him. Get him to realize this: there is nothing in his life that he has ever thought worthwhile that an AI could not do better. Get him to understand that he was never intended personally to solve the problem of the Enemy Domain. His job has always been to be human. Our job has always been to be human. It’s the one thing we can do better than anyone, anywhere in the universe.”

  Constantine kept silent for some time. He was gazing at the virtual image of Katie.

  “There are other humans arriving there,” she continued, “colonists from a ship believed lost eighty years ago. You’re to help them establish a colony that will be entirely built by using human ingenuity. We’ve got the basics on board this stealth ship to get them started; the Mars project will help them develop in the future. Everything they have will be entirely of human design, nothing will be touched by the thoughts of the Watcher. This planet will be the Watcher’s failsafe, should it turn out it has got things wrong. Here, human civilization will continue as if never influenced by the Watcher.”

  Constantine nodded. He knew when he was beaten.

  “Clever. Very clever. I spend my entire life fighting it, but I still end up doing its work for it.”

  Katie laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. It is so much cleverer than we are, you can’t comprehend it. It invests significance in the smallest of details. You know how the Mars factories look like ziggurats?”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “That fact won’t have escaped the Watcher.”

  Constantine wondered what she was talking about. She passed him a file labeled “Ziggurat.”

  “Read it later,” she said.

  Absently he took it. Something occurred to him.

  “Hold on. What about me? This robot I’m in was designed by the Watcher. It could contaminate the planet.”