Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “Peter, please listen—” she started, but this time he didn’t hesitate; he hit the switch.

  It wasn’t as he’d imagined it. It took no more than a second to wipe everything that had been Cleo Samson from the Tipler’s main banks: the primary pattern laid down by her original, along with all the memories she had added to it over the last century of the mission. He felt her absence the moment she was gone. The ship was silent and empty around him; ConSense was a vacuum containing nothing but his thoughts and his regret. He couldn’t cry in conSense; he didn’t have a body in the sense that Hatzis and the others did. But the last thing he remembered for a long, long while was grief.

  1.2.7

  “Peter, can you hear me?”

  For the second time that day, he rose from oblivion into confusion. This time, though, he had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He felt like he was caught in a dream—a nightmare in which sight was swapped with sound, where taste became touch, and the world had turned inside out. He was lost—

  “Is it you, Peter? It took us longer than we thought to find you, but I think it’s you.”

  The familiar voice paused for a moment. He didn’t know where it was coming from, but it sounded like Caryl Hatzis.

  “If it is you and you can hear me, don’t bother trying to respond. Just do exactly as I say.”

  Even if he’d wanted to respond, he had no idea how to go about it.

  “You have to break the connection, Peter,” she went on. “You know how to do that. It’s easy. You have a ripcord like we all do. All you have to do is use it. Once you’re out, we can talk properly.”

  He frowned into the void. A ripcord? At first he didn’t know what she was talking about. Ripcords were used as a last resort to crash a conflicting environment, such as the ctrl-alt-del command his father had used on his old PC. But what had that to do with him? He wasn’t even able to enter subversive environments anymore. If he did, all he had to do was...

  The memory surfaced with surprising ease from somewhere in the dark and long untouched recesses of his mind. The command had always been there, of course; he simply hadn’t needed it for a long, long time. In fact, he hadn’t used his ripcord since his breakdown upon arriving in Upsilon Aquarius, almost ten years earlier. Nevertheless, it was there now, clear in his mind, as it always would be should he ever need it.

  Hatzis was repeating her instructions to him, but this time he was ignoring her, focusing instead on his ripcord command.

  “Tabula rasa.”

  He spoke the words loud and clear into the void, knowing that the Tipler’s AIs would recognize it.

  Suddenly he was hanging in shadow between the hole ship cockpit and the Tipler, one hand still clutching the manual access port. He groaned slightly and eased his grip. His throat hurt from where the droid had attacked him earlier. How much earlier, he couldn’t tell. How long had he actually been out?

  The voice of the Tipler interrupted his thoughts: “Do you wish to end this session?”

  “Huh?” he croaked. “Oh, yes. Yes, I do. Arachne, can you bring the cockpit around here?”

  He didn’t know if the ship’s AI could hear him, but he figured it was worth a try. Relief flooded through him as the AI’s voice replied:

  “I am receiving transmissions from—”

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “But they can wait. Just get the cockpit over to me, all right?”

  He relaxed somewhat as the open mouth of the cockpit swung into view, then kicked himself toward it as soon as it was stationary. Inside, he collapsed with a grunt. Too weak to stand, he crawled the rest of the way into the cockpit, heaving himself onto the couch.

  “Will you be requiring medical assistance?” the AI asked.

  “No, I’m all right. The suit’s looking after me just fine. Just put those calls from the Tipler on speaker.”

  “Peter?” came the voice of Jayme Sivio. “Can you hear me, Peter? Please respond if you are receiving this transmission.”

  “Give me an open channel.” A moment later, Sivio’s face appeared in the screen before him.

  “Peter?”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Jayme. How long was I out?”

  “A couple of hours.” There was no hiding the relief on Sivio’s face. “We came up to speed not knowing a thing about what had happened, but when we worked it out, we found you embedded in the systems. You weren’t responding, and we couldn’t hail the hole ship. We were worried that...” He stopped, smiled. “Well, we were just worried, that’s all. Caryl wouldn’t give up on you.”

  “Cleo...” He was unable to finish the sentence.

  Sivio’s smile faded. “We know,” he said. “You don’t need to tell us about that right now, though.”

  Alander leaned back into the seat, rubbing his forehead. His skin was dry, almost brittle. Or was that the Immortality Suit? He couldn’t tell. The last thing he remembered was erasing Samson from the Tipler’s banks. Beyond that, he drew a complete blank. He must have had the presence of mind, though, to bring the others back up before blanking out completely. Had he not, the Tipler might have remained empty but for his mind-locked engram for eternity.

  Maybe the idea of oblivion had been preferable a couple of hours ago. Had that been what he’d wanted? He certainly hadn’t tried to extricate himself from his predicament. Adrift in conSense, instead of pulling the ripcord as Hatzis had finally instructed him to do, he had simply let himself sink deeper and deeper, losing himself to the emptiness. After what he’d done to Samson, that might have seemed an easy solution to his guilt. But it wasn’t a foolproof one. If he’d really wanted to die, the erase command would have been the only certain way. He must have known that Hatzis would not simply leave him to oblivion indefinitely, despite what must have been a temptation to do just that.

  It seemed she cared what happened to him, after all. And so did he. For himself, though, not for anyone else.

  “Arachne, take me back to the Dock,” he said. “And Jayme, give me a moment. I need to rest.”

  “Understood, Peter.”

  A new face appeared on the screen before the line died, though.

  “Good work, Peter,” said Hatzis. Her tone was cautious but respectful. “And thanks.”

  He shrugged but couldn’t be bothered saying anything in response. He didn’t have the energy or inclination to score any points off her, so he just let his head fall back onto the couch, rubbing absently at his aching throat.

  I’m sorry, Cleo, he thought suddenly.

  “Is there anything you need?”

  “No.” Then, after a moment’s consideration, he said, “Actually, there is something you could do. I want you to call that meeting. Talk to the crew; give them the choice. I want a decision within twenty-four hours.”

  “A decision?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.” He took a deep breath and held it for a moment. When he let it go, it came out in a rush. “I want to go to Earth, and I want to go soon, before something else like this happens.”

  “Peter, I—”

  “Can you at least put it to them?” He kept his voice firm and even.

  She was silent for a while, but in the end she didn’t argue. “All right, Peter,” she said. “I’ll do it—for me, if not for any real reason. The sooner we get back home, the sooner I can start tearing strips off those fuckers who sent us here.”

  The virulence in her voice surprised him, but it did make sense. It must have been galling to have had her command ripped away so casually. He would have felt the same way, he was sure.

  “Thanks, Caryl. I appreciate it.”

  She nodded. Then the line went dead, and he was alone.

  * * *

  The decision surprised them all. Samson’s attempted sabotage, seemed to have galvanized feelings more than anything else in recent days. Those who had originally argued for more time were now arguing that time was of the essence—that, as Peter had implied, the longer they waited, the greater the chances
were that some other incident could occur and threaten everything.

  And then there were the gifts themselves.

  “When the Spinners first came here,” said Peter, “we were apprehensive. We didn’t know what they wanted with us. Some might argue that we still don’t, and therefore we should still be wary of them... and to a point, I’d have to agree. We don’t know if the Spinners have a hidden agenda, but it does seem unlikely when you consider what has been given to us. So I think we should be careful not to let our fears and suspicions continue to cloud our judgments. Regardless of what their intentions are, it seems that we can at least rest easy in terms of the actual technology.”

  “Why?” asked Jene Avery, one of the few who remained skeptical.

  “Well, because I’m alive, for starters,” he said. “And because we’re here now, talking as we are.”

  He looked around at the faces of the people he had trained with. They had come to him, this time, patching into his version of reality—the Hub—rather than insisting that he join theirs. The thirty people stared back at him with expressions he knew well. Even though he hadn’t been a proper part of the crew, he still knew them. They had entrained together. Christ, along with the other engrams on missions elsewhere, they were probably the closest thing to family he had.

  “For one thing, the Gifts could have refused to help,” he said. “They could have denied me the use of the hole ship, or the on-board AI could have refused such a close maneuver.” When he thought of the jump from the gas giant to the Tipler—a distance of over a billion kilometers with a margin for error of barely meters—he shuddered. “The Immortality Suit itself could have killed me at any time. But it didn’t. The gifts came through when we needed them most.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” said Sivio. “They were just the tools. It was you who used them effectively.”

  The praise both warmed and irritated him at the same time; he couldn’t tell if Sivio meant it or if he was just saying it to make up for his earlier doubts.

  “My point is,” he continued, “that they’re reliable tools. We can believe what the Gifts say in that respect. It looks like they’re not going to lie to us in a way that will cause us immediate harm.”

  “Maybe that’s just what they want us to think,” persisted Avery.

  “Maybe,” Alander concurred. “And maybe we could argue like this forever. But at some point we have to make a decision. Do you really want to wait another two hundred years for a reply from Earth? A reply that might never even come?”

  Avery backed down at that. No one wanted to wait that long. No matter what had happened on Earth, no matter why communications had ceased so abruptly, the people back home deserved to know what the survey team in Upsilon Aquarius had found. There was no question about that. The only disagreements occurred over the timing, and Hatzis, as she had intimated to Alander in the hole ship, was keen for a swift resolution.

  It came a short time later when the vote was finally taken again. This time the majority was satisfied that the risks had been minimized, if not completely nullified, and Alander was given the go-ahead to leave at his earliest convenience. There were still a few dissenting voices, but generally it was agreed that, as soon as enough information had been compiled on the gifts by their respective specialists and compressed into mobile Solid-State Data Storage, Alander would take the hole ship to Earth and hand the matter over to whatever authority remained there. If any semblance of UNESSPRO still existed, the Spinners and all their gifts would become their responsibility. However, if he found only savagery—or worse, nothing at all—then he was to return to Adrasteia with the data still on the SSDS units. From there, they would decide what course of action to take next.

  But ultimately, the timing of when he actually departed was being left up to him. With Samson now gone, there was nothing to hold him back. Except perhaps one nagging uncertainty.

  * * *

  He took his leave of the meeting and went back to Spindle Seven, the home of the Gifts. He stood before the gray structures that comprised their central processors, staring with renewed awe at the mighty machines responsible for building the ring. There was something both breathtaking and intimidating about the strange and silent edifices surrounding him, something he found terribly unsettling. He remained there for a long while, unable to bring himself to ask the question that was foremost in his thoughts, almost fearing the answer they would give.

  “A vote was taken,” he said eventually. “I’ll be taking the hole ship back to Earth.”

  “We can see how you would deem that to be the most prudent action,” the Gifts said in return, “given the circumstances.”

  “Yeah, well not everyone is convinced.” He shrugged. “What it means is that this might be my last chance to speak to you in person. Unless, of course, we could fit you into the hole ship.”

  “That is not possible,” they said.

  “Not even a fragment?”

  “Our place is here, Peter, in the spindles.”

  He nodded. “Among the gifts.”

  “We are the gifts, Peter.”

  He smiled at their pedantry. Their tone was so human and natural that it was hard to remember that their origins—and nature—were purely alien.

  “While I’m away, I don’t suppose you’ll communicate with anyone else.”

  “We will communicate only through you.”

  He shook his head, frustrated. “But why?” he said, finally releasing the question. “Why me?”

  “What do you mean, Peter?”

  “I mean you’ve made your point about restricting our development. I can understand the importance of us not learning too much too quickly. I can appreciate that. But what I don’t see is why someone else can’t continue the investigations while I’m gone. We’re all limited in our own ways; we’re all flawed. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “You were the one chosen,” they replied without hesitation.

  “That’s what I don’t understand!” he said, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “You’ve never told me why I was chosen.”

  “We have explained to you that we do not have the answer you seek. Our builders chose you because you best suited their needs. What their criteria was for choosing you, however, we do not know. We recognized you only when the scan we made of you matched the data our builders gave us.”

  “But you must have an idea,” he said. “You must.”

  “It would be possible to speculate, as indeed you already have, based on the information available to you. But we would rather cease all communication than create or perpetuate a misunderstanding.”

  He stared at the monolithic Gifts, incensed by their stubbornness. That this was exactly the kind of response he had been anticipating didn’t make it any less frustrating.

  “Okay,” he said with some resignation. “Maybe I’ll understand things better when I return.”

  “You should not concern yourself with here, Peter,” said the Gifts.

  He frowned deeply now. “Why not?”

  “The Spinners are best served by you returning to Earth,” they said.

  “And why is that? Just what is their purpose? What is it they stand to gain by giving us all of these things?”

  “We have told you why the gifts were given. Beyond that we are not permitted to say.”

  “But you do know, don’t you?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation before they answered. “Yes.”

  Although he pressed them, they would reveal nothing more to him. The Spinners wanted him to return to Earth, so in voting to do it, the survey mission had unwittingly played into their hands. But to do what? Was it simply to spread the knowledge that they had been given? Did they wish nothing more than for all life-forms to ultimately be at a level similar to each other, thereby attaining some form of harmony within the galaxy or something? Or was their intention more malicious? Whatever it was, there was only one way to find out, and that was to take the hole ship, as planned, b
ack to Earth.

  “You know,” he said after a while. “I don’t think I trust these Spinners of yours.”

  There was no response from the Gifts, so he turned and made to leave, saying casually over his shoulder: “I guess I’ll speak to you on my return.”

  Then he strode away toward the exit.

  It was only when he was about to step through the doorway that he heard the alien artifacts say: “Good-bye, Peter Alander.”

  2.1

  SWIMMING WITH ICEBERGS

  2160.8.27 Standard Mission Time

  23 July, 2163 U.T.

  2.1.1

  Caryl Hatzis was studying an ethane plume on Titan at the time of the Discord. She was also riding a comet out to the Oort cloud and joining in on the volunteer effort to sculpt an upturned human face on the Cydonia region on Mars. Part of her was still watching the slow sunrise on Mercury, while yet another part was working as a supervisor on the Shell Proper, ensuring the Edge accreted properly. A quick stocktaking of her various povs would have revealed as many as fifty, ranging anywhere from a single human equivalent to four or five, scattered across the solar system and beyond. Where she was at any given time depended purely on her mood.

  That year had seen her in a relatively stable state of mind. Although regarded as a conservative—as well as something of a reactionary—by the Vincula, she had finally embraced some of the new architecture spreading through the Frame. With so much consciousness design still haphazard or idiosyncratic, it was often hard to tell what was genuine progress and what a fad, but she never ignored the former when she found it. Her latest upgrade allowed her to ride the crest of information from her various part-selves across the system, smeared in a fluctuating “present” from the first data packet to the last, but she was still able to focus at will on a single moment in any one of those part-selves. Thus she suffered less from the occasional fragmentation arising from the fact that one pair of eyes was a hundred light-hours distant from the rest, while at the same time having none of the vagueness that some of her less cautious colleagues still displayed: she could still take the time to marvel at the feathery fringe of a plume, if she so desired.