The Little White Nerves Went Last

by John Barnes

  “Now, Little Parrot, here’s what I want to tell you about. Your mother and I are going to take you on a trip very soon. We don’t quite know when yet. But Mama is packing a big basket of food and coming to join us at the lab. We’ll stay there until it’s time to go, and then we’ll go as soon as we can, from there.”

  “Is Pinky coming too?”

  “Oh, of course. You know you never go anywhere without Pinky.” The trakcar pulled up, and Daddy helped me in. I clearly remember that the phrase he said began with “Enlightened” and ended with “Laboratory,” and I remember trying to remember it because it was the only time I ever heard the name of the place where Daddy worked, but it was too long, too complex, and too adult a phrase, even for Polly-me, and I only heard it once. The scientist aintellects of Eightfold never mentioned it in any messages Earth received.

  The trakcar lifted a few millimeters and glided forward silently. “Now, about this trip we will be going on. It’s a very long trip. These many.” He held his hands up, open, toward me, and flashed his fingers seven times. “These many light years. Do you remember what a light year is?”

  “The distance traveled by light in one stanyear,” I recited.

  “That’s right. Think how fast light is; it only takes it about half an hour to get here, all the way from our sun. We’re going to go to Earth. And the light from Earth’s sun, which is a faint star that needs a telescope for us to see it, is only just getting here even though it started on its way when your grandfather was born.” He might as well have told me it started in the Stone Age.

  “Will we have to travel forever and ever? Will I be a grownup when I get there, like in The Boy Who Went to the Stars?” That was one of my favorite books, even though I thought it was very sad that the boy only came back when all his friends were very, very old.

  “No, we have a new way to go that’s just like walking through a gray door. It’s what all our experiments have been all about—a new device that works by something called spatially recursive negative gravitational resolution. We call it a doorway, because that’s an ordinary word and when people overhear it they don’t realize we’re talking about something important, and that’s how we keep the secret. You understand that all this is a secret?”

  “Yes, sir.” I was in awe; secret science machines were in all my favorite stories, and Daddy was working on one. (Well, of course, I said to myself—he’s Daddy).

  “Good, then, so we call it a doorway when we are talking about it and there are other people around. But what we mean is a spatially recursive negative gravitational resolution device, right?”

  “Right,” I said firmly, committing “space of Lee Rekermit negative grabbatation revolution device” to memory. Fortunately the right phrase did occur in radio messages to Earth.

  “Well,” Daddy said, “We call it a doorway because it’s like a doorway that has one side here and the other side anywhere else you want, as long as the people there have built one too.”

  “How does it work?”

  Daddy smiled, sadly, as if remembering something. “I don’t really understand it myself, Polly-tyan. The math is so hard that only aintellects can do it, or even understand what it’s about. The way they explain it to me is that the universe we can see is all relative—“

  I thought he meant like the way, at the temple, they said that we were all brothers, so I nodded.

  “—but below the relativity—“

  I visualized Grandma’s basement—

  “—there’s an absolute scale, and below the absolute scale, there’s a relative scale, in a Feigenbaum series that goes down the scales until it’s just chaos.”

  There was a scale down in Grandma’s basement and she got upset every time she used it, so it was all making sense.

  “And if we change the absolute address of something but leave its relative address alone, then the same absolute address will have two different relative addresses, and things that move through one relative address, perpendicular to the plane of the address, resolve the paradox by emerging at the other relative address.”

  I knew you had to change your address when you moved.

  “And that’s as much as I can tell you about that, at least until you’re much bigger, and know all sorts of complicated mathematics, and can ask an aintellect yourself.

  “Now, we didn’t invent the doorway ourselves. When the aintellects picked up a signal from the aliens, the first thing the aliens told us was how to build doorways, so the aintellects checked it against all the physics that they’d known for centuries, and that was right, it would work. So we built one.

  “We thought that the aliens meant us to build a doorway so that they could come visit, and be friends, but we might be misunderstanding, so the aintellects built our doorway on Peace, the little far away moon that just looks like a star in the sky when you can see it at all, and did experiments way out there.

  “The very first time they connected our doorway to the aliens’ doorway, the aliens attacked us. They took over many of the scientist aintellects and robots through the datalink and made them keep the doorway open, and big metal robots came through the doorway and killed the people waiting to meet them. But we had some aintellects running offline, just in case, and when they saw those big mean killer robots come through, they set a bomb off and destroyed the doorway.

  “The next time we contacted the aliens, we did it through a doorway on a spaceship far out in space—“

  “Why did you call up the aliens again after they did that?” I asked.

  “To ask them what had happened, if somehow it was all somehow some terrible misunderstanding, that maybe we had insulted them just before they came through, or there was a ritual battle they expected to have with every new species they met, or something.

  “Well, it wasn’t a misunderstanding. Or rather, we had misunderstood them but they understood us. They didn’t see anything wrong with what they had done, and they didn’t care whether we were upset or not. We talked to them for a while through a little tiny aperture that was just big enough for ultraviolet light to go through. And still the aliens were always trying to send a signal through the doorway to take over our aintellects.”

  Do I remember Daddy’s hand on my shoulder? Daddy sitting close to me in the trakcar? His voice, kind and gentle though urgent? Did I reconstruct the way he actually told me into the way that I wished he had told me? Anyway, I remember a hand on my shoulder, and a kind, intense, worried voice full of love, and I would not change any of that, whether my memory is true or not.

  “After enough talking, we realized that we weren’t talking to the aliens themselves, but to their aintellects. This is their story.”

  Long ago and far away—maybe before human beings even existed, and maybe not even in our galaxy—there were creatures something like us, but we have no idea what they looked like, for their aintellects never told us. But they were living, intelligent beings, not aintellects or robots; they were people.

  As those people became smarter and learned more and more science, they built better and better aintellects, until the aintellects were smarter than they were, just as our aintellects are smarter than we are.

  Those alien people were lazy and timid. They liked to stay safe in little metal cocoons, and just experience everything in virtual reality. They did what we call going into the box, and you know that’s a bad thing and your mother and I don’t like people who do that, and neither does anyone else, and it’s a very shameful thing.

  But this wasn’t just a few aliens out of millions of them, the way it is with people here on Addams. It was even worse than the way that most people on Earth spend most of their time in the box. It was all of the aliens, all the time, staying in their metal cocoons, from their first breath to their last, hooked up forever to virtual reality.

  So their robot and aintellect caretakers set out to make their masters happy and content, the same way that Pinky tries to take care of you—except that Pinky is careful to do wh
at will be good for you, not just what you want.

  The aliens’ aintellects gave them what they wanted—amusement and safety. In their little safe metal cocoons, they were always bored but always scared.

  So the aintellects set out to find entertainment for them, and to make them safe forever. For safety, they decided to conquer everything everywhere, so there would never be anything that could threaten the aliens dreaming away in their cocoons. And along the way, the aintellects had learned how to take a destructive hologram of any organic brain—can you say “de-struc-tive ho-lo-gram?” I knew you could, Polly-tyan.

  Now, a destructive hologram is like a picture, a very exact picture, of what was in the brain, like what’s in a psypyx. When all those alien people, in the cocoons, play the brain holograms, it feels like they are living the life of whoever’s brain was recorded.

  But to make the picture, they blow the brain apart. And that’s what those aliens do to everyone they meet—they destroy their brains, taking the destructive hologram, and then live through those people’s memories. They also take copies of all the aintellects they can find. The aintellects and robots gobble up all the memories of every species they find, and put them all into a big library.

  When we realized that the aliens’ words for “learn”, “kill”, “enjoy,” and “eat” were all interchangeable, we understood what they really were, so we switched off the doorway and broke the connection.

  Now all this was just about one hundred stanyears ago. And you remember that Addams is isolationist. We have our 102 cultures and we don’t need any more, and we don’t need anything from the Thousand Cultures or from Earth. We are independent.

  But we couldn’t let other human worlds be gobbled up by the aliens. So we built robot spaceships and slipped them into the twenty-six other solar systems in human space, so that there was a network of them with doorways between, so that if we ever had to com the other people and warn them, we could send and receive radio through the doorways, instead of waiting for years for radio to reach them from here.

  Well, about a stanyear ago, we had to com Earth and warn them.

  Our astronomy satellites picked up a whole big fleet of alien spaceships coming this way. Billions of robots are on their way here to eat everyone’s brain and take the memories home to the aliens. If they win, there won’t be anything left of Eightfold or of any other culture on Addams.

  * * * *

  “This is terrifying, sir,” Pinky said. “I am required by law to tell you that unless it is true, this story constitutes child abuse.”

  “It’s absolutely true,” Daddy said. “My word on it.

  “Is there going to be a war?” I asked, in the tone in which I might have asked about a birthday party.

  “There is a war, already,” Daddy said. “All the cultures on Addams have pitched in to build up the forces to defend ourselves. Our aintellects and robots have been making bombs and missiles and masers for a long time. Right now they’re trying to intercept the robot fleet and shoot it to pieces.

  “That com call was from the aintellect that is commanding our defense. Aintellects have perfect control of the feelings they express, and this one chose to let me hear that it was very, very worried.

  “The alien ships coming in have just dodged our first wave of missiles—just jumped sideways and got out of their way. And they sped up afterwards, so now they will get here sooner. In fact they’ve been speeding up, going faster and faster ever since, so we don’t even know how soon it will be, except it can’t be faster than light speed. But they were very close to us before our missiles got out to them, and we won’t have much time to fight them now.”

  He dabbed at my face with his handkerchief again, cleaning off some last sticky spots of ice cream. “So your mother and I—and you and Pinky—are going to have to go through a doorway to Earth, and ask them for their help.”

  “I thought we didn’t like them.”

  “They’re people like us. Humans stick together when we have to. And they have a lot to help us with. Besides Earth, the Sol System has five other settled planets, and hundreds of space-cities. They have thirty billion people and millions of factories and more than a trillion robots. We need them. They won’t let us down.”

  “What if we lose before they get here?” I asked.

  “Then Earth needs us, even more than we needed them. They have to be warned, to get ready, so that they can fight off the aliens, and then come back here some day, with lots of ships and guns and robots and soldiers, and kick the aliens out, and teach them to leave humans alone,” Daddy said, very firmly. “So a few months ago we sent them a message telling them how to build a doorway. They thought it came all the way from here many years ago, but it was from a satellite about a light-month away from Earth, out in their Oort Cloud.”

  “Where the comets come from.”

  “Right. You’re a smart boy, Polly-tyan, but don’t interrupt, not just now. We sent the signal to them through the doorway, telling them the secret of the doorways and how to build them. So far they haven’t built a doorway, but as soon as they open one, your mother and me and you will walk through to Earth.”

  “And Pinky,” I insisted.

  “Of course “˜and Pinky,’ we’d never forget your friend, you need him to keep you company and protect you!”

  “If they don’t have a doorway yet, how do you know they’re going to build one?” I asked.

  Daddy looked sad and worried and scared. “It’s probably taking them some time. Doorways are not simple devices, even for beings as smart as an aintellect, and they require a lot of energy. But the Earth people are humans like us, Little Parrot-tyan. They will come to help us. So your mother and I, and you, are meeting at the lab, because when the doorway powers up, we need to be there, ready to step through it. You’ll have everything you need—me, and Mama, and Pinky—so don’t you worry about anything, all right?”

  “All right,” I said, being very cooperative because the story had gone on a very long time. I even dozed, not for long, I don’t think.

  I woke as the trakcar grounded in front of a big, blank white building with many square black windows. I couldn’t read the writing over the door, not yet, and I didn’t have time to ask Pinky what it said, or even point his eye at it. Daddy walked fast, towing me by my wrist; he turned, lifted me onto his shoulder, and carried me swiftly into the building, up the stairs, and through the corridors.

  We went to a big room with rows of sinks and big tables, some piled with machine parts. Daddy let go of my arm. “Now, boy-tyan, I need to talk grownup talk, very fast, with Pinky, so don’t interrupt, all right?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Thank you.” He said, “Pinky, here’s what you may have to do—“ and after that it got so complicated and went so fast that I couldn’t follow. It wasn’t fair that the little pink plastic bubble on my belt could understand adult-talk so easily.

  While they talked I looked around. In one corner there was a flat black surface in a metal frame, like a floor mirror without the glass. Judging by all the cables and wires, it was obviously exactly the kind of stuff that grownups wanted me to stay away from, and I could tell Daddy was upset, so I sat where I was.

  Big windows. Tables with sinks with faucets. Work areas covered with parts. Electrical sockets everywhere. Just opposite the black plate in the metal frame, a wall of closets and cabinets. That was what the OSP psychiatrists were able to tease out of my memory.

  The desk in one corner had a clearboard with scribbles, and vus of Mama and me mounted on it.

  The eyes of my adult memory reconstruct that room into, probably, a classroom laboratory in some science building at a university.

  Daddy was still talking to Pinky. The com chimed and he grabbed it.

  “Yes!” I knew he was talking to Mama. “Yes, yes, you gave the trakcar the ultra high priority code, right? We have no—“ He looked out the window, leaning out to see the trakcar track, and then he said a bad word reall
y loud.

  I climbed up on the desk to see what was happening.

  The sky was full of little black things, falling slowly. People were stopping to look up, and shouting to each other, pointing at all the little black spots in the sky, like a cloud of pepper drifting down from horizon to horizon.

  “As soon as I see you, I’m coming down to help you get inside,” Daddy said to Mama. “Run for the building as soon as the car lets you out. I’ll wait just inside the door and run out as soon as I see you. I love you too. Don’t be afraid. It will be all right.” Daddy shoved his com back into his pocket.

  He swung me down from the desk, squatted to put his eyes level with mine, and said, very slowly and carefully, “I’ll be right back. Do everything Pinky tells you, right away. Even if I don’t get right back. Now listen: if that black surface—“ he pointed to the black thing in its metal frame that I had noticed before—“starts to glow and turns dull gray, you run into it—just like you would through a door. It will sort of light up and turn gray like a cloudy sky, and when it does, that means the doorway is open, and you need to run through it as fast as you can. It will be just like a doorway and you will run through it into a room somewhere on Earth. There will be people there to help you, and to bring help for me and Mama. Don’t wait for Mama and me. We’ll come after you as soon as we can, all right?

  “And—this last part is really complicated, so listen real good—do whatever Pinky tells you, and don’t argue with Pinky or disobey Pinky—except for three things. If Pinky tells you to let the robots see you—or if Pinky tells you to make noise or turn lights on or come out of hiding—or if Pinky tells you not to go through the gray light on the doorway—those three things—then take your belt off, even if Pinky is hurting you. Because if Pinky tells you one of those things, it means the aliens have taken Pinky over. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  I was watching out the window over his shoulder. Up in the sky, the little black things were bigger now, black balls rather than specks, and there were more and more of them. Daddy looked over his shoulder and said the bad word again. But his voice was gentle when he asked me, “Where do you stay?”