Worldmakers

by Gardner Dozois

  I grew a refrigerator-sized rectangle and designated it as the power source, something that glowed and hummed. I covered its exposed surfaces with outlets. In this early state of development, things I stuck together stayed together, and that was good enough for me. That’s how real reality works too, at the micro level.

  This “house” was the seed from which I’d grow a motherboard, complete with a processor identical to the computer in which we all lived. I’d program my virtual computer with the same software that ran in the real one.

  Then I’d operate the damned thing, and learn its tricks. I’d search memory dumps to find where souls might be kept—souls who thought they were floating free. In truth they had storage addresses like everything else.

  I’d cheat, and use those addresses to send backdoor messages to ten thousand madmen and madwomen. Doing so, without playing their labyrinth games, would prove to them that they weren’t alone.

  I wasn’t alone either. The Suppressionist purge continued. I heard the unmuffled engine of a two-seat roadster and looked out my longhouse’s big south window. Comrade Kazumi whizzed by, cutting tire-marks in the featureless green. She made a second loop and then stopped. “Your doors aren’t big enough.”

  “Reduce your scale by half,” I suggested. “And for heaven’s sake, tune your engine.”

  Comrade Kazumi shrank to bumper-car size. She drove her roadster-body into my kitchen. Her voice came out of the vehicle’s radio. “You really blew it. The Suppressionists are in complete control. They use your name as a brand to taint others. What is it between you and Midori? You’ve given her everything, and now your political corpse to dance on. What made you do it? Some male-female thing?”

  The suggestion made me laugh. “I was male a thousand years ago. I don’t remember how it felt. It’s all words, and I keep the words safe. I’ll never forget them, but I can’t conjure the colors or the emotions.”

  “The Suppressionists are ever so keen to have bodies again,” Kazumi said. “Their long-ago lives must have been good ones. Maybe that’s the difference between them and us. We were victims. We’re victims now. It’s a reversion to type.”

  I could have asked Comrade Kazumi about her life on Earth, and told her my early history. That’s what she wanted. I offered something close to that ultimate intimacy. “I was shy in the long past,” I said. “I was shy among strangers. Very quiet until I learned to know people. Of course, after decades in space I befriended so many people among our dead that I didn’t have to be shy anymore. So no one remembers that about me. But after years of solo work on Blue World, my shyness returned. It made me clumsy. I was abrupt with Lady Midori, and preachy.”

  “She’s preachy enough on her own,” Kazumi said.

  “That made it worse,” I agreed.

  “Is this an apology?”

  “Are others being exiled here?” I asked back. “Should I grovel now? Or wait and make it a mass event?”

  Kazumi laughed. “I think you’re very clever. You’re cleverly doing something right now that I don’t understand. Do you want help?”

  “Yes, I want you to spawn cubes and run them out in linear patterns. Here’s a map.” I stepped around the counter and held it before her headlights.

  “This looks like a memory chip. Like one of those logic circuits.”

  “It’ll take lots of long-distance driving to measure these circuits and lay them out,” I told her. “We’re building a computer inside virtual reality, to emulate the real one in orbit around Blue World.”

  “Ah.” Comrade Kazumi formed a thought bubble over her head. In the bubble she was female and wore a long golden dress. The kitchen was the same, and her mental Yoshi was identical with myself. She embraced me, gave me a kiss—and turned ameboid to swallow my body inside herself. A double-bulk Kazumi burped and winked. “Oops. Sometimes I can’t restrain myself.”

  The bubble disappeared. The thought transaction was a way of saying she liked me, and also goodbye. It was a pause between events. In real life, people sleep and eat and run quick errands, and we’ve found the need to imitate these framing moments. But we’re efficient about it. Now it was over, and Comrade Kazumi gunned out the door. She hadn’t even asked why I wanted to build a virtual computer.

  When he arrived, Comrade Basho was angrier than Kazumi, and more inquisitive. I explained my purposes. He grunted and stomped off in his sumo body, setting up camp to intercept the next series of exiles. Together they debated, and voted to help me build my computer.

  “I’m told our semi-loyal opposition has a new leader,” Basho said as they filed into my kitchen. “Comrade Haga is pliant. Perhaps he’ll be effective. He’ll soften the Suppressionists. They may back down and let us return from exile. Let’s do nothing to aggravate Lady Midori or Lord Hideyaki.”

  “No secret plots? I assure you I’m being honest,” I said. “Honesty has been my downfall, but in this case I hope it will see us through a hard time. All we want is to reach a few insane souls, a first step to bringing them back to reality. Statistics may favor us. One or two percent may want to abandon their madness. We’ll be their saviors. That’s twenty souls right there. Another twenty—another hundred, maybe—will respond to dialogue.”

  Basho shrugged. “A harvest of souls. The Suppressionists won’t like it if we seed this harvest with opposition ideas.”

  I laughed. “Perhaps they’ll punish us. They’ll exile us back to reality!”

  “No, really—”

  “We’ll be ourselves, Basho. Otherwise we’re prisoners twice over. Why are you afraid? You’ve always been courageous before.”

  Comrade Basho moved closer. He lowered his voice. “Geosync computer has to operate these next three centuries, until Blue World is ready for colonization. After that? Many functions can be transferred down to the sixty-four regional depots. The Suppressionists will take vat bodies, and live on the surface. Then what? What’s the easiest way of dealing with us? Why, it’s obvious! Turn off the computer! They hate it. They hate virtuality, and they don’t trust us at all. It’s not like murder. We’ll be fully backed up, so there’s no guilt involved.”

  He shuddered back. “We have to get free, out to reality, or we’ll sleep in orbit forever.”

  I was amazed. “Three hundred years, Basho! In our mortal lives back on Old Earth, if we were told of a doom three hundred years away, we’d have counted it an unbelievable blessing to last that long! Many things can happen in three centuries. Many things must happen. People’s concepts evolve.”

  “I’m with you,” Basho said, holding out his hands against the flood of my words. “I’m with you. Let’s try to reach the insane. Everyone will call that a good thing. Let’s agree on that. If we have other issues, we’ll talk them out later.”

  Basho and his companions got to work. New exiles arrived. In time there came to be forty of us. Before we reached that maximum, I called the gang together. “We need the best leader among us, as spokesperson to the Suppressionists if they come to check on us. Not me. I think that’s obvious. My enemies call me Yoshi the Trickster. It’s possible they believe their own lies.”

  “To them we’re all villains,” Basho grunted.

  Comrade Haga agreed. He was our most recent arrival. “I may be the worst. All my compromises and soft words—they say I’m duplicitous and subtle. You, Comrade Yoshi! At least you were frank. You argued openly.”

  “Open argument was easy before Lady Midori made it a sin,” I said. “Excluding you and me, who would be a good candidate?”

  We chose Comrade Atsuko. She was a creative virtualist, always flaunting weird bodies and costumes, but her new responsibilities forced her to a minimal policy. We strove to look as we’d looked back on Earth, males male and females female, and we wore black unisex cassocks. If Comrade Kazumi couldn’t abide being anything but a roadster—and she couldn’t—then she should spend minimum time at headquarters. If Basho insisted on being sumo-sized, at least he should keep his acres of skin covered up.
And so forth.

  Atsuko issued press releases. A few Suppressionists read them. Perhaps they wished we hadn’t organized ourselves around a new mission, but how could they object to our hopes to reach the insane?

  They could have designated one of themselves to come keep an eye on us, but no Suppressionist was willing to take on that job full-time. Once or twice they sent visitors. Years passed. By visit number three, our virtual computer was almost ready.

  I’d changed, not much, but a little. During these six years of imprisonment it became important to me that people should be described in their outward aspects, as we describe people in real life, with real bodies. After all, we held to the same features consistently, in accordance with Comrade Atsuko’s rules.

  Basho’s pug nose fit well with his concept as a hearty peasant male, bluff and impatient with nonsense. He’d grown a spade beard to complement his sumo-wrestler’s ponytail.

  Haga’s beaky, half-American features made him an internationalist. He was a bridge-builder who embodied genetic bridges within himself.

  Atsuko’s plucked eyebrows and bleached skin betrayed small vanities, precise and controlled.

  I chose to look as I had before my immune system started to give out more than a thousand years ago; a narrow-boned male, tall and gangly, with large hands. Less the heroic worker I’d idealized before being exiled, and more the unheroic clerk.

  When she showed up, Lady Midori wore a cassock like the rest of us, only green instead of black. She exhibited herself as a matronly woman with bad teeth, and walked energetically up to the long house, rolling her bulky hips. “This isn’t correct Suppressionism,” she told Atsuko within my hearing. “You show discipline, keeping to one shape only, but you cloud the line that separates you from reality. You use computer effects too well to imitate the real world.”

  “There is actually more discipline in our slavish imitation, than if we adopted floating face-icons,” Atsuko amplified, with a cheerful nod. “But we’re not foolish about it. I know how to use the Blend function to achieve cellulite, but with my legs covered, I don’t bother.”

  “I’ve come to make proposals,” Lady Midori said. “I see Comrade Yoshi over there, starting to program this fake computer. All this was your idea in the first place, eh, Yoshi?”

  I nodded curtly. This was the woman who had betrayed me. For six years she had made computer virtuality into a political dumping ground. Seeing her, I felt my hatred grow warm. What was she up to now?

  She shook her head in reproof. “Have you taken an oath of silence?” she asked me.

  “Comrade Atsuko is our spokesperson.”

  “But I like talking to you. Let me try something, and see how you react. We need more soil on Blue World. We need robots at work, grinding rock and rubble. It’s a boring thankless job, but you’d be working in reality. I could parole the lot of you for a ten-year stint.”

  “I take it there’s a price to pay,” I said.

  Midori smiled. “Lord Hideyaki is nervous about this computer. What else could be done with it? What is it you’re not telling us?”

  “There is nothing else,” I said. “You’ve let us be. You’ve let us build the thing without much obvious oversight, and I suppose that means one of us is your spy. Do spies always tell the truth? This one is lying if he says I’ve got a secret plan.”

  “Still, that’s the offer. I propose a vote among your group. You may work out in reality for ten years, but only if this whole construct is erased. Let the majority decide.”

  Lady Midori stood aside during our ensuing debate, but not so far that she didn’t learn how deeply her offer divided us. Basho was desperate to escape virtuality. Kazumi was desperate to finish our work and contact the insane. We couldn’t have it both ways. The majority voted with Basho.

  Kazumi and I refused parole. “We’ll get started rebuilding the computer,” I said stubbornly. “Much will be done when you all come back.”

  “What if they make another offer?” Comrade Haga asked. He’d voted against Midori’s offer, but now that we’d lost, he preferred to break rocks down on Blue World. He persisted. “What if ten years from now, they demand another sacrifice as the price for ten more years?”

  “How many times can my heart break?” I said. “I don’t know. Over and over, I guess. Over and over.” That moment I made a silent resolution not to be Midori’s victim. Kazumi and I would get the job done this next decade. We’d finish our damned computer, impossible though it seemed.

  3121

  Our comrades winked away in groups of two and three. Soon Kazumi and I were left to our own purposes, standing on flat green below flat blue. We set to work at once, to shape our computer by hand—a project forty souls had not quite achieved in six years. We were just two. After a second six years it became obvious we could never meet our ten-year deadline. In truth it had been obvious from the beginning, but I’d been driven by blind emotions.

  I grew less blind. My morale collapsed. Comrade Kazumi found me sitting in my second longhouse’s kitchen, staring hopelessly without focus. She drove close and parked beside me. After a while she spoke. “What we’ve done so far is accurate, right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Point-for-point accurate. Suppose we weren’t the first to conceive this project. Suppose some lost soul—not purposefully lost, or maybe she recovered her sanity—suppose a soul like that has used her ample time to finish the job and rescue others.”

  “Rescuing them to her lost place? What kind of rescue is that?” I scoffed.

  Kazumi projected a thought-bubble. She spoke out of it, a woman in a yellow dress. “At least they’d be together. They’d be a society, relearning the lost arts of living with each other. We could find them and reconnect them with Ready State Zero. They’d be here next time Midori came. What a thing to throw at her! What a triumph!”

  Kazumi proposed a systematic match. She invoked the Compare function, taking a small signature piece of our fractionally built computer, and running it against every non-preempted RAMstack address from zero-zero-zero, and then against every device address starting with the highly improbable A, and ending—without success—with device Q.

  The job took half a year. We both sank into depression. After a time I roused myself. “It’s a question of scale. How far can we downsize our signature device, and retain all its features?”

  We shrank it to twenty-two percent, the absolute minimum, and ran another months-long Compare. Still no match, but this time Comrade Kazumi was not discouraged. “If our target’s done the job it was made for and it’s not in current use, it’ll be zipped for storage. Let’s use the Zip utility on our signature device, and try again.”

  The third time we found a matching address on device E. Our own stomping grounds!

  Kazumi morphed from her roadster-shape and became a yellow-clad woman to give me a hug. “We could copy our target,” she whispered, oozing happily all around me. “Now we’ve got it in our sights. We could copy everything that looks like zipped computer-emulation code!”

  I agreed, trying to wiggle out of her sticky embrace. “That’s what we have to do, to send messages. Just because a few souls may have found each other, doesn’t mean their control-point addresses have moved. The rules are still the same. Only it’s likely now we’ll find a society out there in crazy-country. Not just hermits.”

  Kazumi’s face grew ecstatic. She expanded in all directions and her belly closed around me. I popped free to another part of the kitchen. “We’ve got work to do.”

  She sighed and shrank, but the smile returned to her face, and she nodded in cheerful agreement. Over the next several shifts we copied the target pseudo-computer, and ran Unzip to make it functional. It came already programmed. I composed a message and mailed it out to forty thousand addresses. Strictly speaking, only a fraction would be receptive at any single moment. The rest were paged out to make things easier on an overburdened system—the more elaborate and demanding their scenarios, the
more chance they were on a back burner. Still, I was hoping for ten thousand contacts. Kazumi hung back nervously. “What will we hear? How many responses?”

  We waited. She reverted to motor-car and buzzed laps around my longhouse. I busied myself building a swimming pool.

  Time passed. How many responses? The answer was, just one. “You know what this means?” I theorized, fighting disappointment. “They’ve delegated a spokesperson. We’ll visit him or her and it’ll be a sort of embassy scenario.”

  Kazumi made a doubtful noise. “That’s our best hope.”

  “You think it could mean something else? There’s only one soul out there willing to talk to us?”

  “There may have been—consolidations.”

  “Something forced?” I asked. “A dictatorship? Lacking a body, how can any soul enslave another? No, but I take your warning. This may not necessarily be the happy glorious moment we worked for, you and me twice over.”

  We invoked Transit. The message gave us a destination. In a moment of time we could never measure subjectively, we were elsewhere—in a room as vast as an aircraft hangar, girdered overhead by thin metal beams on x, y, and z coordinates.

  The hangar was empty. A few worktables by the nearer wall were cluttered with things; a carpet shears, a box of instant noodle soup mix, and so forth. Given the proportions of this place, they scarcely counted. “Not much of an embassy,” I whispered.

  Kazumi leaned close, still a woman in yellow. “Consolidation can mean, I eat you. Suicide souls sometimes let others eat their memories. It’s a way of keeping at least that much alive.”

  “Have you done this?”

  “Twice,” she admitted. “It was—wonderful. I felt like some oceanic soulmother, moving in and adding color and life and value. I see in myself a monstrous desire for more. Not wanting to wait for my victim’s suicide. A soul-eater might build a computer and send out invitations. All the more promising souls, the ones not lost in solipsism, they’d come and the monster would eat them.”