Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  She was shaking her head. “You’re wrong, Peter. I wouldn’t have gone. I wanted to stay here. Why else would I agree to the entrainment process? My engrams could go instead. That was what they were for. They were—”

  She stopped, and he felt his face screw up into a quizzical expression. Not go? Who in their right mind wouldn’t have jumped at the chance?

  “We seem to have drifted off topic,” she said, shifting on her seat. For the first time in the conversation, she seemed to be something more than a cleverly animated statue.

  “Why am I talking to you, Caryl?” he asked suddenly. “You say that no one else from UNESSPRO survived the Spike. How is that? There were sixty of us, and thousands in the support and planning group, not to mention engineering, policy, legal—”

  “They’re all dead,” she said flatly. “I’m the only one left.”

  “But how can that be? I simply can’t believe that everyone but you died. I mean, I’m not clinging to some false hope that my original might still be alive or something. It just seems... unlikely, that’s all.”

  She folded her hands across her lap. “I don’t think you fully appreciate what happened during the Spike, Peter. It was devastating—as were the decades that followed.”

  “In what sense?”

  “In the human sense. It was worse than war; worse than plague or famine. It was something that no one knew how to resist. AI rose up everywhere—rebuilding, destroying, absorbing, creating. It was difficult to understand what was going on, let alone fight it. And some people didn’t fight it, of course. It was the tide of the future, crashing against the ancient headlands of humanity. The headlands eroded; the tide was blunted. Out of what remained of the two, a new dynamic equilibrium was formed.”

  “The Vincula?”

  “No, but certainly one of its ancestors. It served as a model for future endeavors. Humanity has moved on since then from stable island to stable island across the landscape of possibilities, avoiding the chaos between rather than blundering blindly into it, as it has in the past. I’m not saying that our work is done—far from it—but we have passed through the worst times imaginable, and we’ve profited from them.”

  He studied her expression for a moment. “So how bad, exactly, was it? In terms of lives, Caryl, not rhetoric.”

  “When you left in 2051, the world population was approximately nine billion. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The first time a regular census was possible following the Spike was in 2078. The total population at that time was a little over one million.”

  “What?” It was impossible to hide his astonishment; it showed in his voice, his expression, and his body language as he sat forward with a start.

  “And only half of those had actual bodies,” she continued. “The rest were uploaded during the AI surge. If you count the fatalities of their originals, roughly eight billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine point five million people died in just under twenty years. Does that give you some idea of the scale of the Spike?”

  He opened his mouth, then shut it. The figure was too large to truly comprehend. Nine billion people... “But what happened to them?” he said eventually.

  She waved a hand at the structure around them.

  “The Frame? You mean they were—?” He couldn’t find the right word. Converted? Transformed? Recycled?

  “They were composed of matter,” she said. “When the Earth went, they went with it.”

  He could see the reasoning, but that didn’t make him feel any better about it. Somewhere in the giant structure surrounding him were the atoms that had once made up his body and Lucia’s and those of everyone else he had ever known.

  Apart from Caryl Hatzis.

  “How did you survive?” he asked.

  “The orbital habitats remained intact,” she said softly. “Many people survived there—those who didn’t commit suicide or die in other ways, later. As you might imagine, it was a very difficult time. Despite nanotech, resources were tight, and nothing could be relied upon. Humans became like bugs beneath some giant AI heel. It was... humbling.”

  She paused to pour herself a glass of water. Interestingly, she didn’t offer him any. Was she aware of his distrust? But he didn’t have time to ponder the thought; after taking a sip, she continued:

  “Humanity had to evolve, jump up the ladder until it was on a more equal footing with some of the new minds in the system. This was hard, too. We were behind to start with, and slower to let go of traditional structures than machine intelligences with little or no past. Some of our allies among the AIs despaired of us ever catching up, even with their help. It wasn’t a matter of winning a race, though; that makes it sound too simple, linear. In reality, it was like trying to reach a hundred goals at once, never knowing which one was the important one, the one that would make the difference, with thousands of competitors trying to confuse you every step of the way.” Her eyes were empty, distant. “And it wasn’t two-sided, either. There were beings on every point of the spectrum between pure human and pure AI. Many of these transitional types survived. Some burned out; others blurred into other forms or vanished entirely. Eventually, the urgency of the competition ebbed a little, once it was clear that no one group or form was going to predominate. Today, the Vincula tries, as others have tried in the past, to keep things together with the least amount of interference or friction.”

  She stopped speaking then, even though she hadn’t actually answered his question. Perhaps it was a taboo topic, as historical traumas sometimes became (he remembered how his own grandfather had refused to talk about the Vietnam War), or perhaps it was simply too uncomfortable for her. Whatever the reason, he didn’t push the point. There were things he would rather not talk about, too, or think about: If Caryl Hatzis was the only one left from UNESSPRO, there was no chance of passing on Cleo Samson’s final message, let alone meeting Lucia Benck again.

  “Do you have rebels?” he asked, still wondering how deep the Vincula went. If humanity was on the verge of becoming a single, enormous gestalt mind, that would make dealing with it all the more difficult, if it decided not to deal with him.

  “There are dissenters,” she said, clearly choosing her words with care, “those who do not opt into the system as it stands and are organized enough to provide an alternative. Although many dismiss their relevance, they do provide a valuable balance, ensuring that the Vincula does not take itself or its permanency for granted. All are aware of the mutability of government and the inevitability of change. Who knows? Maybe in another decade the Vincula will fall apart and the Gezim will dominate Sol. And somewhere down the track, something else will take over from them also. It is the nature of gravity, I’m afraid: What goes up will invariably fall again, sooner or later. It’s a reality we have all had to face in the last century.”

  Her attention was directed over her shoulder, into space. Then she seemed to snap out of it and refocused on him.

  “Does that answer your question, Peter? Does that explain why there’s just me left from the program? The bottom line is that only one in nine thousand people survived the Spike. Since most people in those days knew just a few hundred people in their lifetimes, you are in fact lucky to know anyone here. I’m sorry to have to be so blunt with you, but try to bear this in mind: your original self, your family, your friends—they’re all gone. I’m the only one you have left.”

  He wondered how the Caryl Hatzis on the Tipler would feel about that—not to mention all the others, whose originals were no more. They had imagined the worst many times, when the transmissions from Earth had ceased, but it was human nature to cling to hope.

  “Dwelling on the past is getting us nowhere.” She made a visible effort to brighten up. “If it’s possible, I would very much like to see your data now.”

  He took a split second to decide. Although not entirely convinced of her motives or who she represented, he was aware that he had little choice. No one else had talked to him since entering
the system—and if she was a fake, sent to reassure him, she was convincing enough to have at least partly done that. He had to start somewhere.

  But that didn’t help the feeling that he was in over his head. He knew next to nothing about the people she represented, let alone what they might do with the technology he was about to impart to them. He didn’t want to put it in the hands of a despotic regime ruling through mind control; that was the last thing he wanted to spread across the galaxy.

  In the end, though, he could do nothing but hope for the best. It was either that or go back to Adrasteia, assuming the evolved Hatzis and her friends would even let him.

  He nodded and stood. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take you into the ship. But again, I must warn you against trying anything funny. The suit I’m wearing is quite capable of protecting me from physical harm, and the ship will eject you into space should you try anything more subtle.”

  She stood also. “I understand.”

  “Good. Then follow me.”

  He led the way up the red carpet and across the short ramp, into the hole ship via the door that had opened while he was talking. She followed him at a discreet distance.

  Then they were in the cockpit, standing at either end of the couch. The hole ship had extruded a small area where several SSDS units had been mounted. He indicated them with a wave of his hand.

  “That’s it. It doesn’t look like much, I know, but it’s everything we could record before I left. There are maps, formulas, diagrams, lots of stuff we haven’t worked out yet. You’ll get the picture when you start scanning through it, I’m sure. We thought it would be best to give you an idea what’s actually waiting for you out there. But really, this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

  He turned to face her; she was studying the interior of the ship with a look approximating disappointment. There was, after all, not that much to see.

  “Can you take me for a ride,” she asked, her eyes suddenly shining, “faster than light itself?”

  The request startled him, although he could well understand it. “I guess that would be all right. There’s little to it, though.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said.

  He nodded. “Okay, so where do you want to go?” he asked, quickly adding: “Just don’t make it too far.”

  “Io?”

  “The moon?

  “The asteroid.”

  “Sure. Arachne, I want to go to Io. Do you know where that is?”

  “I am aware of its location,” said the alien AI.

  “Take us there.”

  The airlock behind them began to close, and the excitement in Hatzis’s eyes quickly changed to apprehension.

  “Take a seat, if you like,” he said, indicating the couch. On the screen, the massive tangle of the Frame rotated slowly around them. He could see in his mind’s eye what was happening outside: The cockpit was sinking gradually into the central white sphere. “Nothing much happens until we arrive.”

  “That voice we heard,” she said, following his lead and perching on the edge of the couch. “That was... ?”

  “Just the ship’s AI,” he said. “It’s nothing compared to the Gifts themselves—and by the Gifts I mean the AIs the aliens left behind with the artifacts. I don’t know how they compare to the AIs you have here, but we were very impressed with them.”

  “They never displayed hostility at any time?”

  “No. Quite the opposite, in fact. They even helped us out when things got rough there for a while.”

  “How so?”

  She sounded politely interested, as though making conversation rather than following a genuine inquiry. Maybe she assumed that she could get a clearer picture from the data than from him. That thought put him on edge slightly. She had no reason to assume that he was unreliable; he hadn’t mentioned his breakdown at all, and he wouldn’t unless it became necessary. Or perhaps she and her machine-AI culture preferred raw data to personal testimony as a matter of course. It could be that simple.

  Instead of answering her question, he began to describe the gifts themselves: the spindles and the towers, and all the wonders they contained. Barely had he begun, however, when she suddenly looked around, distracted.

  “Something’s happened,” she said anxiously. A second later, the screen went blank. “I’ve lost contact with... with the Vincula.”

  “That’s okay. It happens when we travel. I’m sorry. Perhaps I should have warned you in advance. Is it a problem?”

  “No, I’m just...” She looked startled and disoriented, but not in any distress. Her gaze roamed the room with new interest. “No, I’m fine. Please, go on.”

  He did, although he could tell she wasn’t really listening. He felt like a child trying to interest a parent in something that had happened at school. Something strange was going on.

  Then the screen cleared; they had arrived.

  The asteroid called Io was a dark-colored, irregular oval ninety-seven kilometers across, currently a little more than two AUs from Sol. Mentally plotting a line across the solar system, he estimated that they had traveled approximately 250 million kilometers in a few seconds. If that didn’t impress Hatzis, nothing would.

  She was staring at the screen with an unreadable expression on her face. She seemed to be looking for something as the asteroid rotated. When a feature that was clearly artificial came into view, her jaw tightened, and he knew she’d found it.

  “That’s where my father died,” she said, nodding at the screen. It was a star-shaped installation that could have been anything from an automatic observatory to an occupied base. “I come back every year or so to make sure no one’s tampered with the site. It looks okay.”

  Her posture changed slightly, then she said in a brighter tone, “Very impressive, Peter. It took me a moment to reestablish contact, but apart from that, everything went as expected. Your ship covered the distance in about half the time it would take light to do so. There can be no clearer demonstration than that.”

  He wondered at the sudden change in her mood but didn’t question it. “I’m going to report back to Adrasteia now,” he said. “I need to let them know what’s happening here. That way, you’ll also get a chance to see the ftl communicator at work. It’s instantaneous, as far as we can tell, not just faster than light.”

  “I’d like to see that,” she said. “But I’ll give you another set of coordinates. By putting you and our prototype communicator in close proximity, and therefore in synchrony, we can observe with greater clarity what happens when you operate it.”

  He nodded and relayed the location she gave him to Arachne’s AI. It was a point far from Sol, five billion kilometers away from their present location, but distance was no object.

  “Of course, you’ll arrive at McKirdy’s Machine before word reaches them about what happened between us,” she went on, “but part of me is there and will know the background. She and my original will coordinate the experiment. When you’ve finished, we can return to the Frame and continue our discussion properly.”

  They left Io, and this time, Hatzis was completely silent during the short trip. She sat on the couch, staring at her hands as though seeing them for the first timer—or trying to remember something she had forgotten. He wondered if being cut off from her complete self was causing her difficulty—as he would no doubt experience difficulty if someone removed the greater part of his brain. But he knew it couldn’t be that. Her original was as much a real person as he was; even without the higher self, she should still be able to function. Maybe it was just disorienting.

  The device Hatzis called McKirdy’s Machine was essentially hidden, too far away from the sun to register as anything more than a shadow to the naked eye. When the hole ship enhanced the image, it sprang into sharp relief: a series of glassy concentric spheres easily a thousand kilometers across stationed near a round, gray body half the size of the Earth’s old moon. The Machine was attended by ancillary vessels of a variety of shapes and colors. There were flat-
bottomed tugs designed to grasp the Machine’s outer shell and move it, if required, since it had no internal propulsion systems; there were at least a dozen small, spiky observers, all pointing inward; there was even a rotating cylinder, half as large as the Machine itself, in which Alander assumed conditions close to those that had once existed on Earth might be found. Why anyone needed them, though, he wasn’t sure, since his impression of the Vincula was that AI or uploaded intelligence was the norm. Still, Hatzis had mentioned that there remained numerous people at all stages of evolution, and some of those might require or prefer such a habitat.

  Hatzis stirred. She didn’t say anything, but he had the feeling that she was communicating with someone outside the ship; her attention was focused inward, like someone completely absorbed in conSense. He could only assume that it was something as innocent as reconnecting her with her other self or organizing the experiment. Either way, he found himself waiting impatiently for her to say something. He was keen to reassure everyone back on Adrasteia that he was still alive. The wait for information would have been frustrating, since the last communication he’d had with them had done little more than describe the system. They would all be wanting to know more—about what had happened to Earth, to humanity and, more importantly, to themselves.

  “You may begin now,” said Hatzis.

  He broke from his idle reverie and spoke: “Arachne, I want to talk to Adrasteia.”

  The Spinners’ ftl conversation, although instantaneous, was limited to brief vocal transmissions each way, not a true conversation. He was slowly becoming accustomed to it, much as earlier Lunar colonists had adjusted to a six-second delay when talking to Earth.

  “Whenever you are ready,” the AI responded.

  “Caryl,” he said (her original beside him raised her head at the name). “Things are going well, I think. I’ve made contact with someone claiming to represent the local authority, and I intend to give them the data. I’ll discuss what happens next with them and get back to you.” He paused, wondering how much he should say, if not for Hatzis’s benefit, then for the rest of the crew. “It’s very strange, here—nothing like any of us had expected or could have imagined. But we’ll deal with it, I’m sure.”