Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “Exactly.”

  “And I presume you don’t have a body like mine, artificial or real?”

  “No.”

  “So you are an engram.”

  Again the slight wince. “No, Peter. I’m not an engram. That technology has been... superseded.”

  Now he understood her annoyance: being referred to as an engram in this society was clearly considered distasteful. It bothered him slightly, though, to think he had come from one environment where he was something of an outcast, to another where the situation was potentially a hundred times worse.

  But he pushed the thought aside for now.

  “I guess that makes sense,” he said. “In a century I would’ve expected no less. What about your original, though? Does she still exist anywhere?”

  “Yes. In fact she is watching this meeting with interest.”

  “Where?” That, as far as he was concerned, was the billion-dollar question.

  On the way to Sol System, he had tried not to imagine what might be waiting for him. He knew he would be surprised; no matter what he came up with. If he expected a system-spanning empire, he would find only savagery. If it was ruins he anticipated, towers of glass and steel were what he would see. There was no point speculating when the only data he had was that Earth had been silent for a century.

  But in the end, no amount of data could have prepared him for what he saw.

  The hole ship had arrived near the orbit of Jupiter, intending to survey the system with its supersensitive instruments before venturing any closer. His first thought had been one of relief: instead of stony, cold silence, there was at least some radio traffic, albeit faint. He scaled back any visions of grandiose civilizations in response to that, until the hole ship had informed him that the sources of the transmissions were extremely numerous and scattered across the system. It was as though the intense radio source that the Earth had been in his time had been dissolved throughout the system, leaving not one powerful emitter but trillions of tiny, faint ones.

  Indeed, when Arachne searched for emissions from Earth itself, it had found none. Perhaps, he had thought for a brief moment, the powers that be had succumbed to caution about broadcasting so freely across the galaxy. If, as the Gifts had suggested, there were hostile races out there, looking for victims, it would be dangerous to announce one’s presence quite so readily as Earth had once done. There had been people advocating emission restrictions even in Alander’s day; maybe they had gained the upper hand, he thought, or maybe there had been an encounter with just such an aggressive race. That would explain the lack of centralized emissions, as well as the sudden cessation of transmissions to the survey missions.

  This notion, however, was dismissed when the onboard AI announced that it had decrypted some of the faint messages flashing across the system and determined that they were, in fact, of human origin. While this was, undeniably, a relief to him, it also meant he would have to come up with an alternative explanation to account for what he discovered next.

  Earth, he realized, was not the bright emitter it had once been for the simple reason that it no longer existed. It wasn’t just quiet or in a different orbit or shielded somehow; it was completely gone. So was Venus. The Moon remained, albeit closer to the sun, and was no longer free- falling through space. It was part of a much larger structure, one that defied his imagination when the first pictures flowed in. It took him the better part of an hour to get his head around it: a structure so large the Moon was barely a pimple on its curving side.

  There seemed to be two aspects to it, neither of which were finished. The first was a network of girders and struts, ridiculously fine and yet ridiculously long, stretching like a silvery web outward with infinitely gentle curvature away from the Moon as though it had once intended to completely enclose the sun. It certainly didn’t do that, although its reach was impressive. The scaffolding covered a roughly diamond-shaped patch of space 0.75 AU from the sun and 18 million kilometers across, wider than 200 Jupiters, almost 10 percent of an AU. That gave it a surface area on each side of 270 trillion square kilometers, equivalent to over a million Earths. The hole ship’s delicate instruments estimated an average thickness of around five meters, although it seemed to vary greatly from place to place. The Moon looked like the tiny center of a massive, glittering dandelion, taking up only a minute fraction of the structure’s total size.

  The second component of the structure wasn’t as large but was, in its own way, more impressive. The scaffolding was enormous but nebulous. Again, spreading out from the Moon as though it had grown that way, was a sheet of black material that clung to the girders like canvas stretched across an old airplane’s wings. It covered a much smaller area than the scaffolding, 30 trillion square kilometers, about the same relative volume as a pupil in an eye, which is what the structure as a whole reminded Alander of.

  He guessed the material to be a solar collector of some kind, maybe even a giant solar sail. Who had built it, though, was another mystery altogether—just one of a number of questions, in fact, which troubled him. Why had the Moon been retained? Why had the construction of the girders stopped when it was in such a haphazard state? Were there even any people left alive? For all he knew, the system was populated with nothing more than disembodied engrams, echoes of a civilization long since dead.

  “We call it the Frame,” said Hatzis, her image appearing next to an engineer’s diagram of the structure. “It was most likely the first step in the construction of a Dyson sphere, or something similar. Finished, it would have used the sun as a giant fusion reactor, powering further projects on a similar scale. Earth and Venus were sacrificed to build it; Mars was to have been next, but everything came to a halt in much the same way it had started. Things were happening too rapidly; the capacity to change outstripped will or vice versa. As difficult as it may be for you to believe, Peter, the Frame as you see it was built in less than a Standard Planck year. Had it continued at the projected rate, all the planets and moons out to Saturn, apart from Mercury, would have been consumed to feed it. The solar system, as you knew it, would have been irrevocably altered.”

  “And you don’t think it has been already?” he asked, aghast at what he was being told.

  “The damage was minimized,” she went on with no hint of apology. “There was a great deal of opposition to using Earth in such a way—a position with which you clearly sympathize—and eventually it gained the upper hand. Even though Earth had gone, the rapid construction was brought to a halt and another regime established. That lasted a little longer, until it was replaced by another, and so on, until you see us as we are today. The Shell Proper, which is still currently under construction, has taken ten years to reach its current extent. The policy at the moment is one of slow, considered growth, not explosive expansion one might regret later.”

  “But they were still humans, weren’t they?” he said. He thought of all the works of art, the historical buildings, the continents... All were gone. “I can’t believe that it was humanity that did this to the Earth and not aliens.”

  “Not aliens as you might imagine them, Peter,” she said. “Although you would think them alien, to meet them.”

  He had felt a sinking feeling then. “The Spike.”

  “Yes. Humanity passed the critical point just a decade after you left. It had been using so-called genetic algorithms to design machines for decades; it had already reached the point where many of its most powerful devices operated on principles not entirely understood. AI was a lagging but accelerating field, changing by the same method and with the same growing sense of alienation. By July 8, 2062, it was possible to create artificial intelligences and to manipulate natural minds, even to combine the two into powerful hybrids never seen before. Naturally, such powerful intelligences could not be contained and did not have the same goals or agendas as those in power. There was a lot of conflict and a lot of death. Not everywhere Spiked at the same time, of course; some regions resisted, but the spread of A
I was inevitable. It bred and mutated—evolved—until it seemed likely to absorb everything. It was like a virus eating away at its host, killing everything in its search for nutrients.

  “Like a virus, though, it also outreached itself. No disease survives by killing its host. It had finished work on the Earth and was partway through absorbing Venus when it began to self-destruct. So many diverse minds could not cooperate forever, and neither could such an alliance of minds be ruled by a single overarching will. It disintegrated piecemeal, then re-formed, then broke up again, then found a new equilibrium. This went on for decades and is still going on, in a sense, although with some pretense at organization now. We have the Vincula to help maintain a dynamic balance: together instead of flying apart, yet moving rather than standing still. It is the Vincula behind the Shell Proper, for instance, using the solar wind and in-falling matter instead of whole planets. It incorporates all intelligences in this system, human or otherwise, and does its best to accommodate all visions.”

  Alander sensed a note of reluctant jingoism in Hatzis’s summary of the politics in Sol System. “So that’s who you represent, Caryl? This Vincula?”

  “I’m a free agent. But in this instance, I speak on behalf of the Vincula.”

  “Does that mean you can negotiate on its behalf?”

  “No one can ever do that. It is less a political entity as you knew them and more a mode of thinking. But I can make agreements with you on some issues. I can assure you that the Vincula means you no harm, Peter.”

  He studied her image. He had no idea what she was thinking and doubted that something like her would ever let anything slip unintentionally, anyway. Whatever she had become, she probably regarded talking face-to-face as hopelessly outdated in much the same way as he would feel about talking in Morse code.

  “So what would you say if I told you that I’ve seen something that makes everything you’ve done in the last hundred years look insignificant?”

  She smiled faintly. “I would ask you to tell me more, of course.”

  “How?” he asked. “And where?”

  “What’s wrong with this forum?”

  “It’s too open.”

  “There’s no one actually here but you and me, Peter.”

  “But who’s listening in?”

  “Everyone,” she replied frankly. “And it will be the same everywhere. The Vincula surrounds us, wherever we go, and we all see what any part of it sees.”

  Was that a slight note of dissatisfaction in her voice? he wondered.

  “I don’t believe you, Caryl. There must be a way I can talk to someone in private.”

  She hesitated. “There is,” she conceded. “If I can arrange it, perhaps you could meet my original. I will give you the coordinates for my private residence on the Frame. You could talk to her there, if you like—face-to-face, with no electronic medium. Would that make you feel more at ease?”

  At first thought, he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t actually talked face-to-face with someone before. On Earth, before the mission and surrounded by natural humans, he had been entirely discorporated, except for conSense. On Adrasteia, he had been the only one with a body. How would it feel to stand opposite someone in real life, to be able touch them? And have them touch him?

  For some reason—driven by the echoes of a biological instinct, perhaps—the more he considered this, the more reassured he felt.

  “I think I’d like that,” he said. “If you can arrange it.”

  “I’ll talk to her.” The image of Caryl Hatzis looked simultaneously relieved and unnerved. “She has a mind of her own, though, and I can’t guarantee she’ll agree.”

  “Then I guess all we can do is wait and see what she says,” he said, wondering if she was playing mind games with him, dangling carrots and then just as quickly withdrawing them. Whether her appearance was natural or artificial, he just didn’t trust her.

  No one else...

  He turned away from the uncomfortable thought, then cut the line and settled back to wait.

  2.1.4

  “Nice work,” said Laurie Jetz, flashing into the virtual space Hatzis called her porte cochere. It was a place suitable for receiving guests but not so comfortable that they might want to stay for long. Somehow she had found herself projecting an image of her old body even to herself and, needing somewhere to place it while she brought herself up to date with the conversation her pov had had with Alander, had unconsciously put herself there.

  A cool breeze riffled her hair as Jetz’s feet crunched along the gravel toward her. Birds chattered faintly in the distance, and if she stayed long enough, she knew, she would hear the barking of a small dog running between the trees of her father’s orchard.

  “Well?” she asked when he came to a halt a meter or so away from her. “Was it worth it?”

  He could barely contain his delight. “Without a doubt,” he said. “We managed to ascertain several things from your brief conversation.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, we know that he has come from Upsilon Aquarius, as evidenced by the reference to the Frank Tipler. We had originally planned to confirm his origins from his voice pattern, but thankfully, that wasn’t necessary in the end.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Theoretically, yes, but as it turned out, we weren’t able to do it with this one. You see, all the engrams were modified to enable identification at a later point. Tagged, if you like. His voice should have told us the mission he came from; but it didn’t. At first we assumed his patterns had been damaged somehow, but that turns out not to have been the case. He was simply speaking to us through an artificial body. No matter how precise it might strive to be, flesh and blood simply cannot reproduce a voice properly.”

  She didn’t react. He must have known that she had striven to preserve the art of embodied singing, arguing that perfect reproduction robbed the art of warmth and surprise. “So you don’t think there’s anything wrong with him?”

  “I didn’t say that. Many of his responses conflict with those we might have expected from the record of his personality. It may be that he was damaged but has somehow recovered.”

  “I thought engrams either worked or they didn’t,” she said. “That there’s no in between.”

  He shrugged dismissively. “Until we get him out of that ship, there’s no way we can tell. So again, thank you for giving us that opportunity.”

  “She hasn’t agreed yet,” she warned him.

  “Have you asked her?”

  “She will be apprised of the situation before long. No doubt she will reply as she sees fit.”

  “Will she agree to us riding her?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Yes, so do we.” He bit his lip thoughtfully. “Where did you have in mind to meet him?”

  “Echo Park. It’s neutral enough, I thought.”

  “And Matilda Sulich has her tentacles there, too.”

  “Which is what I meant by neutral.” She felt an anger flash through her such as she hadn’t felt for a long while. “Look, you know you can’t keep this to yourselves, Laurie. The Vincula has an obligation to its members. It can’t ignore that.”

  “You have an antiquated view of the world, Caryl. You think in terms of spies and espionage.” He shook his head, as if he was disappointed in her. “Reality is much more complex than that. There are large but delicately poised forces on the move around us at all times, and we must be careful not to disturb their interplay too much, lest we find ourselves crushed between them. Swimming with icebergs—that’s what we’re doing, Caryl. I, for one, don’t want to end up a stain on the side of something too big for me to deflect.”

  She didn’t respond to that. There wasn’t any point. People had used the “higher forces” argument to justify everything from small treacheries to gross inhumanity. Dismaying though it was to hear it from someone supposedly evolved above such conceits, she was also aware of her own lingering frailties. It wasn’t easy leaving one’s biologi
cal niche, becoming a god.

  She didn’t hide her disapproval, however, and perhaps because of that Jetz didn’t stay much longer. She agreed to continue cooperating with the Vincula in the matter of Peter Alander—assuming, of course, her original pov also agreed to cooperate. Part of her was hoping she wouldn’t. The greater part, though, wanted to know what was going on. She had been out of the loop for too long. Maybe it was time to get back in there, all of her, and see what she could do.

  * * *

  Almost an hour passed before her original confirmed that she would go ahead with the meeting. While communication between her povs—and between them and her distributed self—was not the same as with external intelligences, she did sense a certain delight in her original’s tone. The Vincula couldn’t ignore her forever. At last, they had been forced to notice her and her work.

  The business of Sel Shalhoub’s violation hadn’t been forgotten, naturally. Although overshadowed by this new development, there was still a lot of ill feeling about the data theft. Technically, it wasn’t illegal, because there were meant to be no secrets in the Vincula. But no one liked having povs attacked, especially at private functions, and Matilda Sulich’s links with the Gezim were just a little too close. Shalhoub was calling for an inquiry into the behavior of Hatzis’s original, with a view to censure her, maybe even to have her shut down. She couldn’t tell how much he knew about the Alander engram; perhaps he knew nothing at all. But she knew the Vincula wouldn’t give him his way while Jetz’s “icebergs” were lumbering around so dangerously.

  She was at the focus, however temporarily and spuriously. It was a weird feeling. As Alander agreed to the rendezvous and she began making preparations for it, she wondered how long it would last. They would probably dump her the moment her usefulness expired—once Alander proved that he was willing to talk to someone else or gave them the mysterious information he proffered so tentatively. Then she would be out. She was under no illusions as to the permanence of her new status, which was why she felt she should milk the situation for all it was worth. This was a chance for her to become an iceberg of her own.