Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “I see,” Elyria said, after a long moment. “But what exactly do the spells do?”

  “They heal them,” Joshua said, again. Honestly! No one on Darius would have asked such a stupid question. “What else would they do?”

  “I think I misspoke,” Elyria said, after a moment. “Do you use the same spell on broken arms as you do on... diseases?”

  “Of course,” Joshua said.

  “That’s interesting,” Elyria said. “You do know that they’re actually two very different conditions? Do you even know what causes disease?”

  Joshua shook his head. There were a handful of travelling doctors who had their own theories, but none of them had ever seemed very clever to him. How could there be tiny monsters in the air that carried diseases from person to person? The very idea seemed absurd.

  “That suggests that you’re not actually telling the spell what to do, or at least not very precisely,” Elyria said. “You just want the magic to heal them and it does.”

  She frowned. “Do you ever have problems healing people?”

  “Old age cannot be held back for long,” Joshua said. “Everything else can be healed.”

  Elyria smiled as she nodded to one of the chairs. “Sit down in the chair,” she said, as she took the other one. “This may take a while, but it shouldn’t really hurt.”

  “We’ve decided not to use any invasive procedures,” one of the other men said. It meant nothing to Joshua. “We don’t know how well they’d work in this environment.”

  “Good,” Elyria said. She reached over and gave Joshua’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Just relax and let them work.”

  Joshua glanced up nervously as a strange helmet-like device was placed on his head, sending a weird tingle through his body, and then forced himself to relax. Master Faye had tested him extensively in the first few weeks of apprenticeship and that had been thoroughly unpleasant. He had endured that and he could endure this; besides, the rewards of working with the Confederation promised to be huge. If they could rejuvenate Master Faye, who knew what else they could do?

  One of the floating spheres hovered next to his arm and extended a thin needle. Joshua winced as it reached his skin, but there was no pain. A moment later, it withdrew, leaving him unsure what – if anything – it had done. The other sphere floated around his head before coming to a halt in front of his face. It was impossible to escape the feeling that it was looking at him through its featureless white exterior. The helmet on his head twitched twice and then pulled back, leaving Joshua feeling oddly relieved. It was not a pleasant experience at all.

  One of the humans winked at him as he held another device up in front of Joshua’s face, before moving it down to his chest. “Don’t worry,” he said, reassuringly. “This may be boring, but it isn’t really dangerous.”

  Joshua nodded, trying to fight down the terror that was starting to bubble at the back of his mind. The whole environment was so strange, so different, from anything he’d seen before that it was maddeningly disconcerting. He watched a glowing square of light appear out of nowhere – again, without a single trace of magic – displaying images that made absolutely no sense to him. The final image was a strange twisting pattern of light that was difficult to look at, but the researchers seemed to take it calmly. They seemed to be adapting to magic better than he was adapting to technology.

  “You really should stop eating sweets,” one of the researchers said, finally. “Your teeth are not in very good shape, I’m afraid.”

  “I know,” Joshua said. His mother had given him the same lecture, more than once, but he wasn’t really able to resist the sweets that Master Faye offered. Besides, he needed them to help power his magic. “I don’t suppose that you can heal them?”

  “They could be rebuilt, if necessary,” the researcher said. “But if you just kept eating sweets, they would decay again.”

  Joshua snorted. Once, Master Faye had handled a case of a man who couldn’t stop himself from drinking. When sober, he was a wonderful husband and father; when drunk, he was a monster who beat his wife and children. Eventually, Master Faye had placed a compulsion on him to prevent him from drinking. It had worked, but the man had killed himself several months later. Joshua’s master had concluded that the magic hadn’t been able to do anything for whatever had driven the man to drink in the first place.

  “I just need to go into the next room,” Elyria said, as she stood up. She looked rather nervous, for no apparent reason. Joshua had seen apprentices with similar expressions after they’d displeased their masters. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Joshua nodded, sourly, and watched her go.

  “Your physical condition seems to be relatively healthy, for your environment,” one of the researchers said, finally. “Lots of bumps and scrapes that haven’t quite healed properly, some scarring from disease... other than that, you’re healthy enough. Quite a strong libido, which isn’t too surprising in a man your age. Do you have a young lady back home?”

  “I’m not supposed to have a girlfriend, or a wife,” Joshua admitted. Magic compensated for most of its cost, but he would always be tempted to do more than just visit whores from time to time. “But I keep wanting one.”

  “At your age, I’m not surprised,” the researcher said. “You’re very fertile, surprisingly so, very definitely capable of impregnating young women. And you’re strong... that’s interesting.”

  He frowned. “Tell me something,” he said. “Do you try to use magic to enhance yourself?”

  “Sometimes,” Joshua said, reluctantly. Master Faye had taught him the spells, but warned him to use them sparingly. “I used to be a skinny lad and the older lads picked on me.”

  “Typical,” the researcher said. “Looking at this, I think you overdid it a little. And that you didn’t really know what you were doing.”

  Joshua flushed. “I was younger then,” he insisted. “I know more magic now.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” the researcher said, dryly. “Right now, I’d suggest asking the boss to give you a rejuvenation treatment too. You’ve placed one hell of a lot of strain on your heart.”

  He changed the subject before a shocked Joshua could demand to know what he was talking about. “I want you to do a very basic spell, right now,” he added. “Do anything you like, as long as it is visible.”

  “All right,” Joshua said. “Anything at all?”

  The researcher nodded. It crossed Joshua’s mind that he could turn the researcher into a small hopping thing, before he decided that would probably annoy Elyria. And he liked her more than he wanted to admit, even if she was impossibly old. Carefully, he chanted the words of a simple spell under his breath and a ball of light appeared in his palm. A second set of words and the ball of light drifted up into the air, casting an eerie gleam over the entire room. The researcher stared and then pointed a strange metal tool at the ball of light.

  “Curious,” he said, finally. “Very curious indeed.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  “They made you talk,” Jorlem observed. “How did they make you talk?”

  “Magic,” Elyria said, sourly. The feeling of being utterly vulnerable had bothered her more than she wanted to admit, but it would all have to go in her voice. “Did they... did they do anything else to me?”

  “Nothing that we can detect,” the AIs said. “Our sensors are rather limited down here, but we believe that there will be no lasting effects. Brain scans revealed that you were subjected to something comparable to a very mild brain-stamping. Quite how it worked on your enhanced mind, however, remains a mystery.”

  “Magic,” Elyria said. Jorlem shot her a sharp glance, but she pushed on regardless. “I’m serious. They don’t really know what they’re doing; they just make demands on the magic and it does it for them. There was no need to program a brain-probe to stamp anything into my mind; they just did it.”

  “Which suggests some form of intelligence behind the magi
c,” the AIs said. “Maybe something comparable to the RIs that operate virtual realities for the uploaded.” There was a pause. “We do not believe that they gave you any additional... programming.”

  Elyria winced. Any level of technology could be abused – and the Confederation’s technology opened up all sorts of possibilities for sociopaths who wanted to prey on their fellow citizens. The worst nightmare was subversion implants, devices that turned people into puppets operated by their masters, or reprogramming them into becoming monsters. It was something that her implants should have countered, but her augmentation didn’t work right on Darius. And if they had been able to compel her to be truthful, they might have planted other suggestions inside her mind.

  “But you can’t be sure,” she said, reluctantly. And she couldn’t be sure either. Joshua was a nice lad, with a growing crush on her that she found somewhat embarrassing, but Master Faye was a devious despot. Why not try to plant a command in her mind? “What do you suggest we do?”

  “I will be assuming command of the operation on the ground,” Jorlem said. “The AIs have proposed a direct scan of your mind when you return to orbit. It would allow us to be sure that you were not under outside interference.”

  “Except you couldn’t be sure, because of the magic,” Elyria said, bitterly. “A full scan might reveal nothing.”

  “We know,” the AIs said. “We do not see any other choice.”

  There was a long pause. “We have been scanning Joshua ever since he entered the shuttle,” they added, changing the subject. “There are a number of oddities in his body, particularly a very faint tendency to disrupt advanced technology. Nanotech simply refuses to work inside his body, for example, and focused scans return thoroughly abnormal results. We have been forced to rely on less advanced technology.”

  Jorlem scowled. “Is he disrupting technology in purpose?”

  “We do not believe so,” the AIs said. “The level of disruption seems to coincide with his moods, which have swung backwards and forwards ever since he entered the shuttle. That is not surprising – he is almost certainly suffering from a variant of culture shock – but the link with the disruptions is alarming. The effect might damage a shuttle if we attempted to take him to orbit.

  “Physically, his body is rather strange,” they continued. “He is strong and healthy in appearance, but his heart is under some considerable strain and there are a multitude of other minor problems. A human who exercised regularly would build up the muscle and the supporting structures; Joshua appears to have only concentrated on his muscles. In many ways, he looks like a child who has managed to reprogram his supporting nanites to redesign his body.”

  Elyria winced. As fashions changed, the Confederation’s citizens redesigned their bodies to match. Something that would be mildly eccentric in an adult could be very dangerous for a child; everyone was told horror stories about the girl who had tried to improve her breasts, or the boy who’d tried to give himself a much larger penis. The medical nanites were supposed to prevent it, but there was ample incentive to try to hack into them and reprogram the list of authorised changes.

  The AIs displayed a hologram in front of her. “We would be very surprised if he lived past forty without a major heart attack,” they said. “His heart is simply incapable of coping with the strain placed on it. By his own admission, he has been using magic to improve his body. We believe that he has been enhancing his muscles without either the knowledge or the awareness to improve the rest of his body to match. This would be consistent with the observed level of medical knowledge among the rest of the population. They know about broken bones, but not about stress placed on one’s heart. Nor, for that matter, do they understand germs and their role in spreading diseases. A single contaminated source of water could lay waste to an entire town.

  “Another oddity lies in his reproductive system. Put bluntly, he is producing sperm at a terrific rate, with a consequent effect on his hormones. It has not been difficult, studying the footage recorded by the snoops, to confirm that he has a strong interest in girls. He stares at them more than the average young lad born on Darius. Given his position, it is something of a mystery why he doesn’t get sexual contact...”

  “He said that Master Faye forbade him to make permanent relationships,” Elyria said. “Do you think he tried to improve his genitals?”

  “We do not believe so,” the AIs said. “All of his other ‘improvements’ have been far from subtle. We would be expecting him to produce a much longer penis rather than an increase in sperm production. Indeed, we don’t think they know that much about their reproductive organs. Many primitive human societies correctly identified some issues – such as the link between periods and pregnancy – but shrouded it in taboo that prevented proper analysis. This improvement was done by someone who knew a great deal more about the human body.”

  “Master Faye?” Jorlem asked. He hesitated. “But if he was the one who banned permanent relationships, why would he want to make sexual contact inevitable?”

  “Unknown,” the AIs said. “Perhaps he wishes the young man to impregnate as many women as possible, rather than merely forming a link with a single female. However, given his position, he would have little problem lining up females for Joshua to impregnate. It will remain a mystery until we receive more information.

  “We have scanned his genetic code through taking DNA samples and have analysed it thoroughly,” they continued. “There is very faint evidence of limited DNA hackwork done in the very distant past, which confirms that they probably left Earth during the later years of the First Expansion Era. They certainly don’t have the biomods that became standard at the same time as the First Interstellar War, even on worlds that intended to escape from technology. It is highly unlikely that they left Earth any later than 3000AD.”

  Jorlem leaned forward. “Is there something... alien in his genetic code?”

  “We have not been able to locate anything inhuman in his DNA,” the AIs said. “There are trace elements of items common to Darius, but those would be fairly prevalent all over the planet. However, when he works magic, there is a very definite shift in his brain patterns. We are unable to study this more closely without the risk of causing considerable harm.”

  Elyria nodded. If a brain-probe failed halfway through the procedure, it would certainly cause brain damage, if not outright death. And Joshua wasn’t backed up at all.

  “So we have a mystery,” the AIs concluded. “As far as we can tell, there is little difference between Joshua and the rest of the population, yet only a relative handful of them can work magic. Why are some singled out for power?”

  “Perhaps we should just ask him,” Elyria said. “He did say that Master Faye detected his first brushes with magic and offered him training.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question of what makes him special,” the AIs said. “What separates him from the rest of the common herd?”

  Jorlem frowned. “I assume that you have run comparisons?”

  “We will be taking DNA samples from nearby humans,” the AIs said. There was no need to bring them to the shuttle. A tiny drone, disguised as an insect, could perform the DNA extraction without being noticed. “Once we compare them, we should be able to identify any major change... maybe they’re lacking something instead of Joshua having something additional.”

  “You mean like the Thule serfs,” Jorlem said. “But if that was the case, why do magicians appear at random?”

  “Unknown,” the AIs said. “The force behind magic may be selecting random people and gifting them with power. Or there may be something else going on.”

  Elyria held up a hand. “What have you been able to learn from his magic?”

  “More puzzles,” the AIs said. “He generates a ball of light – nothing but light. It doesn’t even seem to be a different temperature to the rest of the compartment. He generates fireballs – there is a definite rise in temperature, but the fire doesn’t burn his hands. He produces i
llusions – they appear to be nothing more than holograms. He produces objects... actually we believe that he sucks energy out of thin air to produce them.”

  Elyria frowned. “You mean he doesn’t actually produce something for nothing?”

  “We think that his magic works on the same basis as a fabricator,” the AIs said. “It would be easy for us to duplicate some of his magic, it’s just less energy-intensive to suck up raw matter and transform it into more useful materials. There is no need to rearrange matter at a quantum level to produce almost anything that he might want. He could just do it at a molecular level.”

  They paused, significantly. “However, given an unlimited power supply, there is no reason why he needs matter to serve as the building blocks of his items,” they added. “It is possible that his magic actually taps hyperspace, like a core tap.”

  Jorlem blanched. “If that were true,” he said, “they’d have blown themselves up long ago.”

  Elyria couldn’t disagree. Core taps were dangerous, even to the Confederation, and each one had three RIs charged with overseeing it. If the tap destabilised, enough energy would leak into normal space to shatter a planet – or a planetoid. The Peacekeepers had never lost a planetoid in combat, but they’d lost two after incidents with their core taps. If it wasn’t for the fact that Peacekeeper starships needed an independent energy supply, they would have hidden the core taps elsewhere and used QCC links to transfer the power to the starships, wherever they were. She honestly couldn’t see how a mere human mind, even one that had been heavily enhanced, could handle a core tap.

  “They may have something else doing it for them,” the AIs offered. “They do not appear to have any understanding of molecules at all, yet they have no problems rearranging matter at the molecular level. We could only do that through sharing information on the precise structure of what we wanted to produce, or designing it ourselves, but they lack the ability to do either.”

  “That would tie in with their medical spells,” Elyria offered. “They just issue generalist instructions and something else handles the specifics.”