by Alex Lamb
He reached out and in one gulp sucked down all the knowledge about the Dantes and its mission that Palla had brought with them to the ark. Now that he had thousands of threads working in parallel, that job wasn’t hard. Then he swallowed everything the ark’s computer system contained. He integrated every bit of alien science available and correlated it with every speck of data the Dantes team had collected throughout their mission.
In doing so, he noticed a flicker in the Subtle ark’s warp-shell. The enclosure that held them wasn’t as perfect as Clath had assumed. He just had to compensate for the temporal effects of the shaped gravity funnel. Will peered out through the ark’s cameras and noticed for the first time that they were hanging in orbit around a Photurian colony. From the yellow-grey blur of the rapidly spinning world below, he guessed New Panama. During their brief struggle inside, the Photes must have spent weeks transporting them here.
The ark had been surrounded by a toroidal science station. Shuttles and drones whizzed about it at a ludicrously accelerated pace. At these speeds, it was impossible to tell if the station was a solid ring or merely an open lattice moving too fast to see.
His mental consensus considered the escape options and snapped to rapid agreement. Mark and Rachel’s best hope lay in Will distracting the enemy while they fled in the ark. If he could deal with their Phote problem, the others stood a chance. The thought pleased him. The new Will smiled and prepared to flex his god-powers.
19.6: NADA
Nada cracked the alien database using their boser design as a translation key and thousands of sisters working in parallel for several days. After she finished, she paused to reflect as she floated in her vesicle above New Panama.
There was no crew to align or worry about. She could feel them all in the back of her mind, flickering and whispering like a river of ghosts. There was no dissent from the world below. She still had to coax millions of partially lost units out of Fatigue, but that project was on track, with a partial reversal of symptoms anticipated within weeks. There weren’t even any humans to chase. She had them cornered in their stupid little ship. She was winning. Yet she felt nothing but anxiety.
The Yunus was still playing out his ridiculous siege, wasting lives by the million and sapping what remained of the Utopia’s strength. If he actually succeeded, matters would get even worse. He’d be that much harder for her to absorb into her new architecture with millions of fresh Saved at his back. She desperately needed to close his operation down.
Meanwhile, in the other direction, Ekkert’s grip on the homeworld would surely be weakening. She no longer doubted that outcome. The desperate compromise she’d made to reconcile herself with Monet’s command system would be beyond a unit like him. He lacked the necessary ambition. But the team she’d left him with understood how to make the new boser weapons. An outside risk remained that the Will-clones would obtain the technology and use it to defend themselves or, worse still, come after her. Their desire to expand into new territory had been self-evident.
Two wars to fight in opposite directions and one half-dead planet from which to build her new arsenal. What was she supposed to do? Previously, under such circumstances she would have invited Leng to provide input. But now there was no Leng – just a copy of her inhabiting his skin.
She still had the benefit of his reasoning abilities, she reminded herself. The sensation of loss was not real. Yet in the quiet of her vesicle, her mood churned and darkened. Across the face of the world below, her sisters scowled along with her.
‘Leng,’ she said, and invited that sister instance into her vesicle anyway.
‘My physical presence is no longer necessary for the discussion of strategy,’ said Leng as he entered.
She noticed that his face had changed. It looked more like her own.
‘You have altered yourself,’ she remarked.
Of course he had. His memories were available should she choose to examine them. But then there wouldn’t have been any reason to talk to him.
‘Yes,’ said Leng. ‘To make it more like my own.’
‘Reverse the modifications,’ she told him. ‘Your prior features were comforting, if unsightly.’
‘I will not,’ said Leng. ‘I find them distracting. I will edit myself to resemble you, as I expect will all sisters.’
Nada felt a stab of discomfort. Leng winced in sympathy as his linked mind inherited the feeling.
‘Why have you not become a disembodied instance?’ said Leng. ‘That is how Monet chose to operate his Meta.’
‘I do not wish to,’ she told him. ‘I will remain physical like a queen in a hive.’
Nada flinched again as discomfort from Leng washed back into her.
‘We need to determine a new social-interaction policy,’ she noted. ‘This is unsettling.’
‘Agreed,’ said Leng. ‘What do you require?’
‘Action is needed. Outline your reasoning for next steps.’
‘We will use Zilch’s body to create a secondary meta-instance,’ said Leng. ‘He will depart as soon as possible taking with him the Infinite Order, a carrier and enough raw materials to improve his vessel before reaching the Yunus. You will remain here and conduct further research until such time as you can muster a second fleet to secure our hold on the homeworld. New Panama’s defensive node will suffice for the production of new ships.’
It was a surprisingly unrewarding exchange. She could feel his answers before he spoke them.
‘Why Zilch?’ she said, even as the answer slid into her head.
‘Because his performance was poor,’ said Leng. ‘Little is lost in removing his personal specificity from our collective.’
‘Agreed. And why confront the Yunus first?’
‘Because he does not have the boser weapon. Thus, our military might is assured. However, the homeworld fleet will benefit from extra time researching the alien technology.’
‘True,’ said Nada.
Soon she would be able to construct false matter, as well as any number of other useful tools. The knowledge revealed by the database had already been put to good use. Leng’s team had developed a device for probing the surface of the alien ship’s unusual warp-envelope. Within a week, he expected to be able to crack it open.
‘This is a good plan,’ she told him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is yours.’
He smiled, and Nada felt the confidence behind it. What she had lost in company she had gained in efficiency. In a way, her current state was closer to the orderly hive-mind from which she’d been carved.
‘You are feeling more centred now,’ said Leng.
‘Yes,’ said Nada.
‘Then we have helped ourselves,’ he said and departed.
On reflection, she decided, the new Leng was better than the old one. In fact, everyone would be better when they were her. It was interesting that when given the chance to become truly uniform, Monet had diversified himself instead. How human that was. How sick. There was something magical about homogeneity. It felt so clean and tidy. Perhaps it was because her personality was still fundamentally Photurian that she was able to appreciate it.
The silence felt more peaceful now. Nada contented herself with anticipating the tasks left to come. While her carrier was en route to Galatea, she would build the arsenal necessary to unify her kind and provide her with millions of new bodies. The Yunus’s wasteful efforts would be irrelevant. She would consume him and all his flawed ideals. In doing so, she’d complete the holy task that he’d unwittingly assigned to her. She knew then that she’d also reformat Zilch’s body to her preferred design. That way, when the Yunus fell before her, it would be her face he saw, not Zilch’s. Why should such trivialities matter? Because the Yunus needed to see his mistake and know who he’d betrayed before she husked him out and turned him into something much better. And she was looking forward to that.
19.7: IRA
As soon as the gravity let up, Ira sprang to his feet. Of all of them, his body was
best adjusted to heavy gees. He quickly checked the others, taking stock. Mark lay unconscious. The rest looked bruised but alive and Ann was still okay, thank Gal. He groaned in relief.
But as he stared at her, he knew from the look in her eyes that he’d fucked up. He’d pushed too hard for this option. He’d brought them all down to the lake because of her – not because it was a great idea. In doing so, he’d put Will in harm’s way and then lost him, leaving them just minutes of charge in the gravity machine before it ran flat and dumped them into the hands of their enemies.
Tears pressed the corners of his eyes. He’d finally found a woman whose autonomy he could respect, and then he’d tried to shield her anyway. In doing so, he’d condemned her along with everyone else. How stupid was he? He closed his eyes and wished he had just a little access left to his former numbness. Apparently, it had deserted him. He was stuck in the moment, fully engaged, alive and choked with regret.
‘I’m sorry,’ he told her.
‘I forgive you,’ she replied quietly. ‘It took both of us to get here.’
He watched her assess him – fiercely, disapprovingly and with complete acceptance. He started, rather brokenly, to smile.
‘I—’ she began.
Will’s voice over the shared channel startled them back to the moment.
‘Ira, come in,’ he said. ‘I’m okay. Balance is working for me now. And I have new info: I’m leaving. As soon as I’m out between the shells, you need to start the ship’s engines. This ship is surrounded by an orbital station, heavily armed. The only way to release it from Phote hands is to do something dramatic. I’m sending you instructions on how to do that.’
Ira frowned, unconvinced. Will’s mortal enemy was now just helping? How did that work? Which clone was he listening to?
Clath struggled upright and quickly checked over the data Will sent.
‘This is crazy,’ she said. ‘These are just conventional engine instructions. Firing fusion torches inside the warp-shell is insane. We saw that option in the first five minutes aboard and discarded it. Where’s the thrust supposed to go? It’s more likely to rip the ship apart than help.’
Ann stood. ‘That’s hardly relevant,’ she said. ‘We’ve been handed a solution and we’re taking it.’
‘Agreed,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m going to trust my husband.’
‘Sure,’ said Judj. ‘But which husband are you trusting?’
‘All of them.’
‘Ditto,’ said Palla. ‘Your glorious SAO concurs. And by the way, I recommend that nobody touch me.’
Ann swivelled to peer at her. ‘It looks like we have another biohazard problem.’
Silence oozed between them.
‘Yes, but also a data point,’ said Palla. ‘I touched Mark and I’m still human – I ramped my augs to the max before we came down here and I’m not dead yet. You should also know that he’s out because he launched that last puzzle. I solved it for him.’
Ira’s heart sank. More trouble?
‘In Gal’s name, why?’ he said.
‘Because we’re clutching at straws,’ said Palla.
‘She’s right,’ said Rachel. ‘We’re avoiding risks and it’s killing us.’
‘I thought you were trusting Will,’ Ira remarked. ‘He said not to run the damned thing.’
‘Right now I’m trusting everyone except the fucking Photes,’ she said. ‘We need all the help we can get.’
Ann smiled at that. She strode over to where Mark lay. Ira tensed inside but had guessed this was coming. She faced him before she did it.
‘It’s a symbol,’ she told him, reading the pain and confusion on his face, ‘so that they know we’ve picked a side, however temporarily.’
She knelt down and pressed a hand against Mark’s mouth, then touched it to her own.
‘Now three of us are off limits,’ she said. When she got up, she slightly overdid it and bounced into the air. ‘The gravity is failing,’ she added. ‘The machine is running down.’
‘Are you ready?’ Will’s voice boomed over the channel.
‘Not yet,’ said Ira.
‘Then hurry up! You have two minutes!’
Ira readied the robot porters for Mark and the three of them raced back up the twenty-plus storeys to the passageway levels. The gravity kept draining away as the machine’s core slowed. By the end, they were propelling off the walls and barely using their feet at all.
‘Time’s up!’ said Will. ‘Fire the engines now or I’ll do it for you.’
‘On it,’ said Clath. She powered up the ship’s fusion torches even as they were ricocheting along the passage to the bridge.
A curious, muted roar rumbled through the hull. Ira slammed into a wall as the gravity changed again. It wasn’t acceleration he felt, but a wild, uncertain slurping, as if the entire ship was being tossed about on some kind of amusement-park ride.
‘More!’ Will signalled. ‘We need full thrust!’
The slurping redoubled. Ira careened into the bridge and clung to the stem of one of the wine-glass structures. Everything in the room slid about like chairs on the deck of a storm-tossed ship.
‘Dropping outer-shell warp,’ Clath shouted. ‘In three, two, one …’
The warp field died. The envelope popped, giving them one final, unsettling shove. Ira checked the external cameras. If they’d been in orbit a moment ago, they weren’t now. They were racing towards a planet that was unmistakably New Panama, surrounded by a rapidly expanding shell of ionised debris.
The sudden change of setting made their predicament jarringly real. Less than half an hour ago, he’d been in the Snakepit System, over a dozen light-years distant. It was as if someone had spliced an entire episode out of his life. On the other hand, they were free.
‘Will used our contained spatial distortion as a weapon,’ Clath said in awe. ‘I think we just detonated humanity’s first reference-frame bomb.’
Ira laughed like a maniac at the surreal victory until he noticed the proximity warnings flashing at the corner of his vision. Their escape had given them enormous delta-vee in a very unhelpful direction. They were on an arc that would intersect the planet’s atmosphere in less than two hours. Ships the size of the ark did not do well when exposed to planetary gravity wells. They had a tendency to plummet.
Ira’s laughter died in his throat. Why couldn’t the universe have done them a favour and pointed them away from the gravity well instead?
‘This is not good,’ said Judj. ‘I hate planetary landings.’
Ann scowled at the data. ‘I don’t think a landing is on the cards,’ she said.
20: FISSION
20.1: NADA
A couple of days after her mission to Galatea departed, Nada visited one of her inaugural military projects on the surface of New Panama: her first ever false-matter forge. She felt extremely proud, foreign sensation though that was. She was so pleased, in fact, that she let her science-specialised sister-unit explain how it had all come together. They toured the edge of the facility in a bubble-rover. The science-sister, who had inherited the name Fojelig, pointed at a large, boxy structure sticking out of the ochre desert.
‘This is where we create a flat lithium scaffold and cool it until it becomes superconducting,’ she said. ‘Then the power station over there provides the charge we run across it.’
‘Acknowledged,’ said Nada.
‘We inject a cold-ignition plasma and create an ember-warp envelope across the scaffold, using an existing piece of false matter as a vacuum-ember.’
Nada examined her sister’s face. Fojelig had been making steady modifications to the body of a tall, thin male unit but had not yet completed them to her satisfaction.
‘A warp-envelope?’ she said. ‘Here on the surface?’ It sounded like a dangerous proposition.
‘The risks are lower than expected,’ said Fojelig. ‘The chamber is shielded and the plasma for the ignition field is easy to make. Compensating for the local gravity field requir
es attention, but other than that, the process is straightforward.’
‘I see,’ said Nada.
‘As the vacuum state propagates through the ignition plasma, the lithium matrix becomes unstable. The local geometry alters, forcing the lithium to undergo a form of constrained fusion. The result is a false-vacuum state at remarkably high energy. That interior energy supports the otherwise untenable vacuum state. The result is a sheet of material comprising a confined, two-dimensional universe of finite size embedded within our own. Only when the constraining energy threshold of the false vacuum is overcome does the system collapse.’
‘Remarkable,’ said Nada. Fojelig, a copy of herself, somehow managed to be even less interesting than Leng. ‘While the details are irrelevant to me, I acknowledge your mastery of them. Be pleased.’
‘I am,’ said Fojelig.
The last few days had been a journey of discovery for Nada. First came the strangeness of watching part of herself leave the solar system while the rest of her stayed behind. And then there was the curious business of self-socialisation.
It transpired that without the automatic jolts of bliss provided by the Photurian Protocol, sisters required some other way to feel rewarded when they completed a task. They often attempted to broadcast their achievements. At first, Nada had found this irrelevant dialogue annoying. However, she had discovered that budgeting for social recognition improved collective efficiency at trivial cost. Humans called this being nice. It was one of the small, curious ways in which the new order had rekindled facets of her old condition. She tried not to let it get out of hand.
‘Is the project a complete success, then?’ she asked.
