by Paul Lucas
Louis and the Llexans' most skilled surviving medic had rushed up to me as I fell. Strangely, I still felt no pain, and could even watch with a small modicum of fascination as the stumps of my replica's arm oh-so-slowly began to dissolve like melting ice, their raw organic materials being disassembled to build an army of invading nanites.
Louis was trying to speak to me, but I could barely hear him, as if he was shouting to me across a great chasm. I felt very feverish, my limbs aching, a dull pain I could not identify behind my eyes. Louis cast a healing spell on me, and the pain subsided, but only somewhat.
Spirits, I did not want to think about what was happening inside me.
But I had to, if I was to fight it. It was obvious the Others were trying to gain control of the crystal through my body. Something indefinable I possessed they could not replicate in my clone.
The crystal! Maybe it could tell me what was going on.
What's happening? I thought at the crystal in my tool-fingers, clenched tight even after the attack by my duplicate.
Specify.
Inside me. The nanites...
Non-standardized nanotech automatons are attempting to enter your system and implant themselves along your neural and circulatory pathways. The mainstream Matrix nanites already within your system have been directed to attempt a passive defense by repairing and rebuilding the tissues the alien automatons have disassembled. The nanites not dedicated to this task are attempting to disassemble the invaders.
Stop them!
I cannot direct the non-approved automatons to stop their actions. However, I can direct the Matrix nanites within you to more forcefully counter their intrusion.
Do it!
Acknowledged. However the violent activity of both groups of nanotech machinery are now generating potentially damaging amounts of heat within your system.
That did not sound good. How bad is the heat going to get?
Your major bodily systems will begin to fail within two minutes, approximate. Your bodily fluids within the zones of conflict will reach the boiling point within fourteen minutes, approximate.
I thought frantically through my feverish haze. So the Others were going to kill me as they had my family. But better this than whatever they had planned for me with their nano machines controlling my body. My spirit will at least fly free to join Lerner and Sunset.
Unless...
If the Matrix nanites win, I asked the crystal, could they repair me afterward?
Estimates of their casualties are at ninety-five percent, plus or minus two point five percent, approximate. They will be too few in number to accomplish such a reconstruction before your tissue damage and putrefaction degrades the information both in your central nervous system and your cellular DNA.
The pain started to spike, sharply. Thousands of needles drilling into my skin and beyond as armies of nanites tore through muscle and viscera to fight each other. In a way it was fortunate that both factions of microscopic machines were trying to keep me alive so they had to avoid the most vital areas. My heart still beat, my lungs still drew breath, my brain was still as lucid as the mounting fever allowed me. But it was only a matter of time before they too became a victim of the warring robots within me and the heat they generated.
Louis, very far away in a seemingly different world, shouted above me as the ship shuddered from unknown impacts.
Adrenaline surged. The Llexans needed me, needed the crystal to shut off the spaceport from the surface. And more, I did not want to give the Others this victory. They had already taken too much from me.
An idea sparked. A last gambit. If I was wrong...
Crystal! I near-shouted in my mind at it. You're an interface device for Builder artifacts! Is that not what the Nanotech Matrix is? Can you give me access to the Matrix itself? Let me command the nanites directly without spells?
Scanning for final code, it told me. I fought down anger. What code? I did not have any...
Code confirmed. Access granted.
I blinked, and the world fell away from me.
What I saw next made me realize that the most crucial battle to be fought today would not involve spaceships or plasma guns or even billions of microscopic machines.
The ultimate battle would be fought by me, within my own mind, for the fate of a world.
SIXTY-SEVEN
Formatting, came a voice from everywhere.
I was floating in a universe of light and color. Surrounded by a rainbow turned inside out and crammed with thousands of sparkling pinpoints like the nighttime Shards. But unlike the real Shards, these moved quickly and purposefully, merging and dividing and sailing in every direction all at once.
"What is this?" I called. "Where am I?"
You are in auxiliary storage bay 20, said the everywhere-voice, in the space excursion vehicle in docking bay 11735.
"But what's all this around me? The colors and the lights?"
Upgrading. Stand by. A ball of soft, yellowish light appeared before me, slightly larger than my torso. Its light was strangely warm, almost friendly, like the sun on a warm day. "I apologize, miss," came a reassuring male voice from it. "The interface needed to upgrade several levels to full sentience to better accommodate your questions and needs. To answer your query, this is the comprehensive matrix interface program level omega-ten, minimal metaphoric interface."
"This is the Nanotech Matrix, then? I am inside it?"
"No, miss, you're accessing a program that gives you the impression of being inside it. Its important to remember that. Many people have lost themselves in the metaphor, at times."
"I do not have time for this!" I snapped. "My body, it is--"
The ball of light pulsed brightly, cutting off my words. "Yes, we're aware that you're under attack by Weird automatons. Since being upgraded to full sentience I have taken the liberty of accelerating the thought processes in your mind, using the nanites within your system to produce stimulants to boost the neural activity tenfold and using other nanomachines to carry nerve impulse for you between major portions of your mind. You are in effect experiencing the passage of time at greatly accelerated rate, nearly thirty to one."
"But my body is being destroyed."
"Yes."
"Can you stop that?"
"No. I am only an aspect of this interface program."
"Well, than you direct the nanites in my body to do what I want?"
"I am only here to act as a guide, miss. You have to command the nanites yourself. That is the purpose of this program, to allow a user to use the Nanotech Matrix directly without an intermediary program."
"But how do I command them directly?"
"Interface with them."
"But how? Just tell me! I do not have the time for these games!"
"I am aware that even at your accelerated mental rate your time to effectively act is limited. But you must understand that interfacing with the Nanotech Matrix directly is not something one can do recklessly or in haste. The consequences could be too devastating."
"I do not understand."
"The Nanotech Matrix is not just the microscopic machines in your body miss. It is billions of quadrillions of nanites spread over the remains of the Eden sphere acting in concert as an integrated whole. When you interface directly with any part of it, even the small population of nanites within your body, you potentially interface with all the parts that are connected to it."
"But that would mean all of it."
"Yes."
"Spirits." It made sense now. No wonder the Others wanted the crystal so badly.
It would have given them the world. Complete control of the Nanotech Matrix on all the Shards.
"Do you understand the potential dangers, then? All parts of your mind are interconnected, just like the Matrix. Your subconscious will be just as active as your conscious mind while you direct the Nanotech Matrix."
My throat was suddenly dry. My metaphoric throat, I reminded myself. The Nanotech Matrix was in every person
, in every single object in every part of the Shards. If this program did what it said it did, every one of those people could be endangered by a single stray thought as I interfaced.
"Are there any limits?"
"You will not be allowed to permanently affect any maintenance system or to cause any kind of large scale environmental damage."
"What's considered large scale?"
"Continent level and up."
No. I could not do this. One foul up, and millions could die.
But if I did not act, if I did not help the Llexans, the Cephalopods would send their ships to the surface and kill untold thousands. The civilization my people came from would be slaves forever. And I would die.
Lives teetered between the sunlight and the abyss, no matter what I chose to do.
"Spirits help me," I said quietly. "Lerner, husband, if you are truly with me, help me now."
No answer. Even spirits could not answer me here. "Here" existed nowhere except in my own mind. I was truly alone. I turned toward the glowing ball next to me. "All right. Showme how to interface."
* * *
Interfacing turned out to be surprising easy. "Just dive into the colors and lights, and become them," the globe of light said. At once the world's simplest and most difficult feat.
I moved toward the lights, finding that I could move in this odd realm of the metaphor simply by willing it. Very similarly to flying, so much so that I spread my wings instinctively to maneuver.
I swooped into a rainbow cascade of lights, completely surrounded by nodes of brilliance swirling around me. Easy enough.
"But now what?" I asked my guide, assuming it could still hear me. "How do I become the lights?"
"I cannot tell you, miss."
"But I do not know how--"
"Miss, you must understand that this is all just an imaginary abstraction of the Nanotech Matrix. Anything you visualize in your mind will manifest here as one data image or another. I can provide you with a wide variety of images and visual interpretations of the process others have used, but you are the one who must make the mental leap of comprehension required. The metaphor for becoming must ultimately be provided by you."
I nodded. If I understood correctly, I had to imagine myself becoming the lights, and I simply would, somehow. Anything I imagined would become real, here. But how would I know when I really connected to the Nanotech Matrix?
"You'll know, Miss," my guide said. "Remember, the processes of your mind are monitored directly by the program. Your thoughts are open, here."
I blinked at that new datum, thinking hard. Of course the whole situation was absurd. I was just a girl from small community of hunters and gatherers, who barely understood how to make pottery and metal tools. And here I was trying to operate the most sophisticated machinery ever created?
But of course I had been doing that for many years, had I not? The Nanotech Matrix is what drove spirit-callings and spells. Perhaps this was simply another sort of spell. A collection of mental images and concepts I had to order in my mind to achieve success.
So, like before any spell, I cleared my mind, calmed myself, felt my breathing and heartbeat slow. I closed my eyes, felt the soft shiver of relaxation cascade through my muscles, and when I opened them again I was ready.
I started by imagining myself as a light. My skin and fur began to glow until it matched the hue and intensity of the colors around me. I became a light, but I had not become the lights around me.
How do I become something I am not?
I called to the lights to come to me, and they began to float toward my position, first by the dozens and then by the hundreds, then thousands. They quickly hovered close over all of my fur and skin,, but did not touch just yet. I shiver in dread. I realized that my subconsciousness was at work here, but still I balked, recalling the bug-nightmare I had experienced when I first learned of the nature of the Nanotech Matrix years ago. The lights stopped their swirling.
No, I told myself. I cannot turn back now. I breathed deeply, once, twice, then allowed the lights to swarm me until they covered me completely. My vision fuzzed, completely covered over with blinking rainbow sprites.
My pulse thundered in my ears. I knew what was coming next, knew that in order to accomplish this I must surrender myself in a way I never have before, not even to my husband, not even in the way I surrendered when I pulled the trigger on the gun pointed at my heart that day I fought my son. This was a complete surrender, on not only of body or mind, but of identity, of self.
I closed my eyes and allowed the rainbow sparkles to fill my body, to eat away at my metaphoric flesh, to replace everything I was in every way. And then, with a final beating of my wings, I summoned the wind that scattered them--and me--into a thousand thousand shards once more, spreading throughout the multicolored void.
My mind fragmented away until no coherent thought was possible.
* * *
I became aware again quickly, so much so that I realized I was not simply waking up. The different Matrix nodes containing my consciousness were now networking together, throwing a complex webbing of data among themselves, to reconstruct my identity.
I also realized I was not me, but an AI analog of my organic mind copied whole onto the Nanotech Matrix. Nanites by the millions networked together to download the impulses between my synapses into the mainstream Matrix that permeated the Shards.
The experience is difficult to describe with words and linear sentences. I was everywhere, as the programs that controlled the Nanotech Matrix was stored in the trillions upon trillions of nanites everywhere in the Shards, all networked together. I was now a part of that. I sensed depths of consciousness available to that computer system that no human-like creature could ever fathom, and yet was held in reserve by the system for purely utilitarian purposes. Consciousness, and all its permutations and levels, to the Nanotech Matrix were simply subroutines. The Matrix was at once far more, and far less, than a human mind.
It sounds like a contradiction to mortal minds, but to the Matrix it simply what was.
I was still connected to my organic mind, but only as a general on foreign soil is connected to his commander in chief an ocean away. I was existing at a rate of speed far above even my accelerated organic brain tissue. At best, my organic self functioned as a general strategist, and as a means to constantly refresh this Gossamyr-analog, to make sure I remained "authentic" enough to the person who originally accessed the Override program.
But even at this greatly accelerated rate, I was going to cut things very close. I had a lot to learn before I could even begin to think of saving all I held dear.
SIXTY-EIGHT
Reality is subjective, eh? Has anyone ever told it that?
--anonymous skeptic
* * *
I watched Louis hold me from a hundred different perspectives in the large makeshift bridge, shouting at me as a dozen anxious Myotan soldiers looked on. "Gossamyr! Can you hear me? Gossamyr!"
I was able to see him from everywhere a concentration of nanites existed, which in that chamber meant the Myotans and all their various pieces of equipment. A part of me was amazed that I could process so many different images at once. Another part of me wondered why I was amazed when such an ability was obvious to a Matrix-borne intelligence like myself.
I realized the source of Louis' distress: I had stopped breathing, and, in fact, my throat had begun to dissolve revealing muscles and tendons glistening redly.
Even at the greatly accelerated rate my thoughts now ran, time was quickly running out. Time now for my hastily-contrived gambits.
I activated the nanites in Louis' hearing center in his brain. From his perspective, it had been little over a minutes since my double was destroyed and I slumped to the ground. "Louis! Can you hear me?"
"Gossamyr?" he said aloud.
"Yes and no. Listen closely, I do not have much time."
He heard my voice, but my mouth was definitely not moving. He looked about,
confused.
"Louis we have no time for this. Listen."
"Gossamyr, how--?"
"Listen, Dark Spirits take you! I have accessed the Nanotech Matrix through the crystal. I am speaking to you through the nanites already in your head."
His eyes popped wide. "Through the crystal? You mean, without spells?"
"Yes, but we do not have much time. If my physical body dies, if my brain ceases its function, the crystal's Interface program will terminate the program and my control over it. We have to try and save me."
He looked grim. "But your body..."
I took another quick diagnostic and understood what he meant. The Weird nanites were winning. They recklessly disassembled my bodily tissues, living or not, to replicate themselves and press the attack. The mainstream nanites, striving to preserve as much as they could, could only cannibalize themselves or their fallen enemies to replicate. The rate of attrition was horrible. Beside my neck most of my shoulders were eaten through, and my left arm had already fallen off, held on with only my leathery wing membrane.
"I know," I told Louis. "As I am sure you have guessed, I am being attacked at the nanotech level. But I have redirected the nanites within me to fall back and to protect just my brain and vital organs at the expense of the rest of my body at this point, to buy us some time."
"But you will still die!"
"Maybe not. The rest of me can be rebuilt as long as my mind remains intact. But what I need right now, more than anything else, is reinforcements. That's where you and the others come in."
"I don't understand."
"Listen closely." I spoke to all of them quickly in their minds, making it clear how quickly they had to act. Professional soldiers in a desperate situation, they leapt to obey my orders, no matter how bizarre some found it.
In a way, what happened next was the single most disgusting experience of my life. Yet it was absolutely necessary, and, if I do say so myself, tactically brilliant.
