"Like a living book?"
"Without being plugged into audio or visual devices, we would gain no new experience. We would be in a solid state, unchanging."
"But we would be alive, ready to go on living if such stimuli became available to us?"
"I think so. We would be like a seed, a frozen, living thing, ready to grow and flower again when the time was right."
Art rubbed his cheeks, thinking. "But without a solar cell, without any power...?"
Kyko looked at the floor. "Even then, caught in the structure of a crystal, protected by it, some part of our intelligence may still survive."
Art nodded slowly to himself. "You know all this shit already, don't you? Ms Kjanvik has answered all your questions. How many cloned brains did you make? What have you done to her?"
Halliday stood up, straightened his jacket. "Let me show you the lab. Let's talk to Astrid."
CHAPTER 21
Art could only shake his head in disbelief as Kyko Halliday took him to his cabin and unlocked the floor panel in his personal bathroom. They passed a neglected grav chair, still floating, but weighed down on one side by academic journals. Of course. Art's years of maintenance expertise recalled a minute detail. The screws to this floor plate had a seven pointed star head. Every other deck screw in the ship had six. He had never been able to access whatever lay beneath these panels; nothing fitted the screws. So even when Halliday was safely out of the way in his nutrient tank and he, Dawkins and Six roamed freely throughout the ship on their repair jaunts, his secret remained safe.
With a gentle hiss, a hydraulic system pumped fluid into a set of moulded triangular shapes under the panel. They eased away, out of sight, and formed the steps of a narrow spiral staircase. Another defence mechanism. Neither Dawkins or Six could get down there. Halliday slipped down the stairs, grinning.
Art paused. Nor could Halliday, when he sported his withered legs. How could he use these stairs?
He found his answer on the secret deck below. Next to the stairs attached to a charging station was another grav chair under a sheet of dusty plastic.
Halliday was waiting for him. He flicked on the lights. "Yes, an inelegant solution to a formidable problem, now resolved."
"How did you get back up?"
"Lay on the stairs. Hit the green button twice."
"Twice?"
"An inversion mode. The stairs fold up if you hit it once. If you hit it twice, it forms a raised platform on the deck above, enough for me to get in the second chair. All academic now, of course."
Strip lights picked out an array of workstations and nutrient tanks. The ceiling was low. Art was reminded of the cannon decks on ancient warships. Halliday led him to a small, irregular block of some sort of crystalline substance, mounted on a titanium alloy baseplate. Wires erupted from it in a wild confusion, connecting to analytical computers and monitors.
Art was lost. He knew cybernetics, but this was a new science entirely. The biology of the mind was eradicated, replaced by the ones and zeroes of a digital existence, and the quantum mist of all points and possibilities in between.
"Is this Ms Kjanvik?" he asked.
Kyko switched on a monitor. "Yes," he replied. "Astrid, can you hear me?
Art could picture Ms Kjanvik's face in Kyko's office; a once handsome woman reduced to a hollow, worn shell by the horrors he had subjected her to.
An artificial face appeared on a monitor. It was unmistakeably Kjanvik, perhaps an idealised version of how she might have once appeared aged around twenty. Clear, ice-blue eyes framed by a beautiful, angular face and white-blonde hair that ebbed and flowed as if underwater. "Kyko, you look tired," the avatar face said, and a look of concern creased her features.
"I work too much, Astrid," he replied, smiling sadly at her.
"Where am I?"
Art glanced to Kyko. Kyko saw the look and raised a warning hand. He spoke to Kjanvik again.
"We are on board my ship. Everyone is safe."
The face smiled. "Good. My com-cap has malfunctioned. There is nothing but static."
Kyko checked on the wiring around the block of crystal. "Where are you, Astrid?"
"The office. I have been through the accounts, filed everything away. I'm not getting any new orders. Is it a holiday?"
"Yes. You can go home if you like."
"Will it be a long holiday?"
"Yes. And I've paid you a bonus. Go home and relax, Astrid."
"Thank you, Mr Halliday. I think I will get some Hargest fish at the market on my way for dinner."
"Good night, Astrid."
"Good night, Mr Halliday."
She faded from the monitor screen. Kyko turned it off.
Art fumbled in his trouser pocket for an airette and lit it. He blew smoke out into the room. Kyko fiddled absent-mindedly with a length of cable.
"Where is she?"
Kyko looked up. "On her way to the market. She will buy some fish and then go home to cook it. Then she might watch some TV or read a book before taking a shower and going to bed."
"Is it a loop?"
"An algorithm. A similar daily structure with an infinite variety of tweaks and nuances. Many people call it a life."
"She doesn't know?"
"No."
A rage had been building in Art throughout the evening. Kyko Halliday had presented him with the details of the most horrific abuse of people in his employment, and passed it off as normal scientific experimentation. And yet the value of the research could save them all from a lonely death out here in the Deep. Death or salvation.
"The algorithm almost wrote itself once I had determined the synaptic frequency pathways," said Halliday. "There are reward centres in the brain, pleasure nodes, comfort zones, all connected by well-worn synaptic paths. These are the places we return to, time and again, in periods of stress or unhappiness. Fantasies of winning great wealth, sexual fulfilment with the woman of our dreams, pleasing memories, familiar places. That's where Astrid is now. Her pleasure garden"
"A mind removed not just from her body, but from her own brain."
"Yes."
"But she could be rigged up to a mechanical body, given vision and movement again. You said yourself the solid state mind would need only a small power source to function."
Halliday glanced to the block of quartz crystal. It needed a battery and a small interface unit. Unlike Dawkins, or Six, it had no need of blood pumps, oxygenation equipment or nutrient pellets. A robot with a solid state human mind could be built as small as a phone, completely integrated into the digital circuitry of any device. A mind chip. But what of the person left behind?
"Can she make new memories, Halliday?"
Kyko leant over Kjanvik's readout panel. "I don't know. I had to save her. This is all still experimental and there was no time left. The solid state imprinting is like making a photocopy. The entire structure of the brain is stamped into the crystal in a moment, perfect in every detail and function. But crystal is not malleable tissue like the brain. It will grow, an atom at a time over millions of years, but will thoughts grow as slowly? She will never forget a memory, but I don't know if new experiences will ever be laid down."
Art smiled to himself grimly. Horror upon horror. "Kyko Halliday, you are the new Johannes Gutenberg. You have printed the world's first mind." He clapped slowly until a soul-deep torpor caused him to stop. They had come then, at last, to the end of the human race. In this room, this ridiculous hidden room, like a child's den, the truth of their predicament had finally achieved a pin-sharp clarity. There was no more going forward, no more innovation. They were trapped aboard this vessel, lost forever, their only future a crystal, dream-state book, their thoughts slowed to the speed of geological time. Art sought out the nearest chair and sat down heavily, weary as he had never been before. Sleep. That's what he wanted to do. Just sleep. Not like Ms Kjanvik. He wanted that really deep, black sleep one only achieves through total exhaustion, that oblivion that could last an hour
or forever. The careless abandon of unconsciousness, the tingling buzz of a general anaesthetic. To sleep and lose oneself for all time, casting aside all fears and worries, all responsibilities, cares and woes. To sleep. Perchance to dream. His eyelids drooped. His breathing slowed...sleep...
CHAPTER 22
They programmed the navigational computer to turn the ship around and fly straight and true towards the coordinates of the Luhrmann Breach. They did not know whether the wormhole had survived the death of E-416 in the Delcroix Triangle, but to drift in the Drop Off, in the Deep, perhaps forever, was unthinkable. A five million year journey beckoned. A great weariness consumed all the people on board. Art called a meeting. The wine flowed. It was agreed, with all the enthusiasm of the damned, that they should all go into stasis for the flight; bodies and brains separated, dreamers dreaming. Only Dawkins, Six and Hiroto would remain operational, barring emergencies, maintaining the ship through the millennia. They were going home.
CHAPTER 23
He was in the stained stone confines of some sort of enclosure...
Water dribbled down one of the inclined walls. A tide mark of limescale in a rough 'v' formation had formed around it. Above, there were clusters of circular domes, glass-like. Water dripped from the joins between the domes, and the frames themselves, although coloured white, showed red wounds of rust where the water had seeped through.
He was lying on a bed of vegetation, something a little like straw or rushes from a riverbank. He had been here some time from the look of it. Nearby, over a grilled pit, sat small piles of his own faeces. The wall beyond was stained with urine, also probably his own.
A big metal bowl was on the floor in front of him, on a platform that looked as if it could disappear into the ground. It contained unidentifiable leaves and berries, and a big fruit out of which it appeared he had taken numerous bites. He sniffed it. It was sweet.
He looked up again at the glass roof. Beyond was only sky, but it did not correspond to any sky he knew on Imo, or from films of Earth. It had a magenta hue. The clouds bore this colouration too, but they were not clouds as he knew them. They were rounder, less diffuse, with a surface tension that held them close together, as if they were not clouds of water vapour at all.
He was naked. This was okay. The temperature was pleasantly warm, if a little humid. He felt his face. A beard had grown almost to his chest. His hair was wild and knotted.
A stone or concrete floor spread before him in a wide arc. On the far side was a square opening with horizontal bars across it, too narrow for him to squeeze through. Beyond the opening, there was a damp path that seemed to wind down in a spiral to a lower level.
He stood up and walked slowly around his enclosure. Behind him, he discovered a cave-like den that he had, apparently, been using to sleep in. It was deep with straw and imprinted with his body shape. Out in the paddock, around the other side of the den were a number of plastic-like poles arranged into a primitive climbing frame, and a sort of fleshy rope to swing on. A shadow passed over him. He looked up at the roof and saw an oval-shaped aircraft between the clouds, trailing behind a golden triangular sail. It had no wings or obvious means of propulsion. Perhaps it was a sort of dirigible?
He observed his surroundings calmly. He realised just seeing a sky and standing on what must be a planet filled him with a euphoria that surpassed all other emotions.
But there was no exit. He was a prisoner. He had been fed and watered and he felt fit. Perhaps he had been using his playground. He remembered nothing. He walked around for another hour, but saw nothing else of any interest. Eventually he grew tired, and went into his den and fell asleep in his straw bed.
The deep throb of some machinery, hidden deep beneath his paddock woke him up some hours later. The floor of his den was slowly descending. He saw a deep purple wall of gently undulating villi, like the tiny finger-like protrusions on the underside of a starfish, pass the floor of the den down between them in a series of peristaltic waves. Then he stopped on a lower level, and part of the wall pulled apart like a sphincter muscle, revealing a dark chamber behind. He got up and walked through the quivering opening.
High above, another aperture opened, revealing the sky. A breeze blew down, warm and moist, with animal smells carried on it. The smell of a zoo. The light from the sky activated blobs of material on the walls that pulsed and shifted and spilled a bluish phosphorescence into the chamber. It was like the bioluminescence of deep sea fish, but something that convulsed and changed like the skin of a cuttlefish.
He was not alone. Standing, facing the wall, head down, was Number Six, rusty and in poor repair. Tears sprang in Art's eyes. He had thought nothing of his companions, or his past. Now it began to return. He went to Six, the military-grade Halliday duosphere mounted on the rig Dawkin's had built for him on board Kyko Halliday's ship.
Art, with some effort, pulled the cyborg around on dead tracks to face him. There was moisture on the ground in this deep, conical room. The air was damp and warm. Six's mechanical parts were rusted and dirty. No doubt the electronics were similarly affected. Was Six dead? He pressed his thumb onto the fingerprint recognition pad on Six's chest and a panel flipped open. There was some power still remaining. The interface screen, green type on black, flickered into life. Black mould obscured the readout. He wiped it off with his forearm and examined the information.
The duosphere was in hibernation mode. The connection to two power modules showed single blinking lights. Nearly exhausted. But the third module showed a blank. He peered down Six to the power module housing mounted just above his rubber tracks. The third module had become disconnected. He scooped dirt out of the dangling plug and settled it back in its socket and secured the cable inside the housing. Returning to the screen, he tapped on the third module readout to activate it.
Six gave a start and jerked forward like a car in gear having its ignition key turned. Arms and head swivelled, optics slid out of housings. On his shoulder, where a plasma pistol had been mounted in his army days, the flaps opened to reveal an empty gun mount. Six's head turned a full circle, then his optical systems came to rest on Art. "Area secure. Require armament upgrade. Mobility forty percent. Require rig upgrade. Report injuries, Art."
Art hugged Six's head and kissed his metal casing. "It's good to see you, Six."
They stared at one another a moment. Six inclined his head an inch. "You have forgotten your uniform and your hair and beard growth exceed regulation length."
Art laughed and set about examining Six's rig. He noticed one of Six's arms was bent out of shape and chafing against the torso. He took hold of it. "Six, your left arm is damaged. I'm going to put my foot against your side and try and pull it back into shape. Lock your tracks."
"Tracks locked. Proceed."
It was not a military rig. The alloy shaft of Six's arm bent back into shape relatively easily. The robot spun his arm in a circle and was satisfied full mobility had returned to the limb. "Require rig upgrade to military standard U/40."
"I'm sorry, Six, I don't have the parts. Run diagnostics."
Six turned his head and stood still. An amber light flashed. "Water damage to optical telephoto module. Water damage to track linkages. Water damage to arm, neck and waist joints."
Art nodded. There was a small oil reserve in the track engine. He went back into his den through the open sphincter and sifted through the bedding looking for something to get it out with. He found a few frayed rushes with loose, fibrous ends that he could use like a crude paintbrush. Returning to Six he located and unscrewed the oil reserve cap and dipped the rush in. He painted the oil onto Six's joints as the robot manipulated his joints. Flakes of rust fell away, the scraping of his movement lessened.
"Mobility increasing," he reported. "Thank you, Art."
"You're welcome, Six. I can't do anything about your optics. I need tools to get inside. Sorry."
Then Six surprised him. "Where are we?" he asked.
"I don't know, Six. D
o you know how we got here?"
The robot looked up at the open skylight. "There was a battle. Four ships intercepted us. One ship disabled. We were boarded."
Art held Six's head in his hands. "Who? Who boarded us, Six?"
"Carbon and silica based lifeforms. No other information is available."
Art let go of Six and stepped away from him. Intelligent life. He had not considered the possibility. He knew their hibernation, even before they decided to turn back, had amounted to thousands of years; he knew their return journey could have amounted to five million years, but he had imagined only contact with future humankind as they neared the Luhrmann Breach. No intelligent life had ever been found in observations from the Solar system or the Mioumu system. They had discovered upward of a hundred thousand Earth-like planets, but never a transmission, a signal, or physical evidence, aside from the unconfirmed Ibo crash site.
"Where are the others, Six?" he asked, suddenly afraid.
"Unknown."
"Did anyone die in the battle?"
"No. The Halliday ship was immobilised after I fired on them. I hit them in engines and cockpit."
Standard military targeting. First, stop your enemy. Next, kill the pilot. Six had performed his military programming faultlessly.
"What happened next?"
"Carbon and silica based lifeforms materialised on the mezzanine deck and deactivated Dawkins and Six."
"Materialised?"
"A new word I learned. Appeared from nothing. Is it magic?"
Art recalled the old quote from writer Arthur C. Clarke. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' He shook his head. "These lifeforms are more advanced than us, Six. What did they look like?"
"Unknown. I was shut down as the transmat beam formed."
Art looked down at his naked body. All the people on board had been placed in stasis for the return flight, brains and bodies stored separately. Something had returned his brain to his body. He felt under his matted hair for stitches or scars. He found nothing. "Six, this is important. Did the lifeforms put all the crew back in their bodies?"
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