Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

"So there I was—the only survivor," Sellars told them.

  "An embarrassing secret kept under military house arrest for decades. Because of my bizarre communications capabilities I was not allowed to use the net, but I managed to trick my captors, upgrading myself until I could easily access the world's telecommunication infrastructure without them even guessing.

  "But even with all the world's data resources at my fingertips, I grew bored. As bored men will do, I sought diversion. I have always liked to grow things. So . . . I grew things.

  "Because my original purpose was to be the focal point of a multibillion dollar starship, and because I was so completely filled and transfigured by micromachinery, I had been given a complement of internal antiviral programs that were, for the time, the absolute state of the art. No computer viruses were to be allowed to destroy my very expensive functions, since in space I would be far beyond repair or replacement. I was given the newest and most effective sort of self-ordering antibodies—coded creations that could adapt and grow within my information system. But as time moved on in the real world, the net's own viruses became just as adaptable, which prompted programmers to create a whole new evolutionary round of antivirals.

  "It fascinated me. Like most prisoners, I had nothing but time, so I began to experiment. I had little internal storage to speak of—that is the one way I have never been able to upgrade myself suitably—so to contain my experiments I had to find and use large-scale storage sites I could reach through the net—unused memory belonging to governments, corporations, educational institutions.

  "This was dangerous foolishness, of course. I realize now how bitter and disaffected I must have been. The original antivirals from my own system were considerably more powerful than even what was in use in the mainstream net twenty years later. Put into direct competition with advanced viruses, they quickly became something even more exceptional, which provoked the viruses in turn into new adaptation. And as indicated by the very fact that I had reached these locations of unused memory through the world's communication system, if something went wrong with my protective arrangement, my . . . creations . . . could find their way off, out into the world grid.

  "When I was only in the initial generations, this would not have been so much of a problem. Things as complex and dangerous were already all over the net. But as I refined my experiments—my games, as I carelessly thought of them—I forced up the cycle time, so that thousands of generations were breeding every week. The things I had created fought, experimented, changed, and replicated, all within my artificial information-world. Evolution shoved them forward in paradigmatic leaps. The adaptations were sometimes quite startling.

  "One day, some ten years ago now, I found that several strategic approaches—different creatures, in a sense, but all sprung from the same shared root—had developed a symbiotic relationship, become a kind of super-creature. This is one of the things that happened on the long road to animal life in the real world—we have arrangements in our own cell structure that were once completely separate organisms. I began to realize what I was risking. I had created the beginnings of something that might conceivably become another true life-form—perhaps even a rival life-form. Information-based, as opposed to the organic life which has been the standard here on Earth, but life nevertheless. My games were clearly no longer just an amusement."

  "You made . . . life?" Renie asked.

  Sellars shrugged. "At the time, it was highly debatable. There are some who think that anything that is not organic cannot by definition be alive. But what I had created . . . or to be accurate, what evolution in information space had created . . . fulfilled all the other criteria.

  "It is possible that what I should have done then was to destroy these nascent life-forms. I had many sleepless nights, and have had many since, wondering about my choice to keep them. You will perhaps think a little better of me when you remember that the military had taken my health and my freedom away from me. I had already been a captive for something like forty years. All I had were these . . . creations of mine. They were my entertainment, my fixation—but also my posterity. I thought that if I could get them to a point where I could prove what I believed was happening, I could reveal it to the world. The government and the military would find it very difficult simply to discredit or kill someone whose experiments were being examined by scientists all over the globe.

  "So I did not destroy them. Instead I searched for a more secure place to keep them, to allow them to continue their evolution where they would have almost no chance of escaping into the world information matrix. After a long search, I discovered a huge amount of unused memory in a shielded, private system—a staggeringly large system.

  "It was, of course, the Grail network, although I knew nothing of that at the time. Through a variety of complicated ruses I obtained a clearance into the unfinished system, created a hidden subsystem that would siphon off memory and juggle the figures to hide that fact, and moved my experiment there—an electronic Ararat on which my ark could find safe harbor, if you'll excuse a rather ripe metaphor."

  "You used the Grail Brotherhood's network to store your electronic life-forms?" Nandi from the Circle asked. He seemed more bewildered than angry. "How could you have done anything so mad?"

  "What do you expect from someone who thought he could play God?" said Bonnie Mae Simpkins in disgust.

  "I have given the only justification I can," Sellars said. "And I admit it is a poor one. I had no idea of what the Grail Brotherhood was or what it intended, of course—the network was not labeled "For Evil Purposes Only." And I was not entirely sane in those days. But what happened next did much to sober me.

  "Because of course, when I next looked in on the progress of the experiment, I found my evolutionary hothouse empty. The creatures, if I can give that name to things without bodies, things which existed only as representative numbers in a complex mathematical model, had vanished. In fact they had been adopted, but I had no way of knowing that at the time.

  "In a panic, I reconfigured my Garden, my network of information-sifting gear, to monitor for any sign that the evolving creatures had escaped into the world grid. At the same time I began to study the people who owned the immense facilities from which I had purloined the small corner in which the data-creatures had been hidden, from which they had escaped . . . or been removed. From that point on, the story I told you back in Bolivar Atasco's world is the truth. I found out what the Grail Brotherhood was doing, or at least began to suspect. I saw that the secrecy and remoteness of their network was meant not to protect industrial secrets, but to hide something far larger and more bizarre. Slowly, I was drawn from the search for my own lost experiment into a genuine horror at the activities of the Grail Brotherhood—always linked to my own worry of what such ruthless people might do, even by accident, with my experimental creations. You know the rest of the tale. To a large extent, you are the rest of the tale."

  "And so you've brought us here to gloat?" Nandi said,. He turned and jabbed a hand at the banks of glowing, cell-spaces in the rock walls. "Because clearly these are creations. I can guess what happened. The Other found them and kept them. It nurtured them, as it nurtured the almost-children it had made for itself." He shook his head in disgust. His voice softened, but there was a hardness in it that made Renie even more uncomfortable. "It does not matter that a horrible thing behaved that way because it was itself tortured. We can understand, but not excuse—'Love the sinner but hate the sin,' I believe my Christian comrades say. And even if this abomination around us was created out of something like love—although that, I think, does not describe your part in this, Sellars—that does not make it right. These . . . creatures . . . are the thing we in the Circle felt, the great wrongness. I understand that now. You want us to wonder and applaud, but I tell you instead that they must be destroyed."

  To Renie's surprise, Sellars did not argue. "Your viewpoint deserves to be heard," he said. "That is why you are here. We have a terrible choice—no
, you have a terrible choice, all of you. But not me. I have forfeited my right to decide."

  "What are you talking about?" demanded Bonnie Mae Simpkins. "Forfeited? Decide what?"

  "Just what Mr, Paradivash was speaking of," Sellars said with a sort of restrained courtesy. "He was correct. The Other found them, took them, nurtured them here within his own secret recesses. And now the Other's children have reached what he believed—or at least sensed—was a final evolutionary fitness. So desperate was he that they should live that I think he hung on in terrible agony and fear much longer than he would have wished.

  "But in return for his help preserving this place, and thus preserving all of your lives, I promised the Other I would do my best to help his information-children survive his death." Nandi began to say something, but Sellars held up his hand. "I did not promise to protect them after that."

  "Sophistry," Nandi scoffed.

  Sellars shook his head. "Listen to me, please. This is important. The Other intended his children to have total freedom. At the moment they are contained in this internal system environment like eggs in a nest, but once they are born out into the network I think there will be no containment. They will inevitably find their way out into the larger net. They will live in it like fish in the ocean. Will they be hostile to us? I doubt it. Indifferent? Quite possibly, even likely. Since their needs will be noncorporeal, they will probably live in a sort of symbiotic relationship with us—no, not with us so much as with our technology, because that will be the medium in which they live." Sellars cleared his throat. He seemed embarrassed, even awkward.

  He looks like his dog messed in our garden, Renie thought. When what he's really saying is, "Oops, I may just have set the human race up for extinction."

  "But I must be honest, must point out all the possibilities," Sellars continued as if he had heard her unspoken fears. "Indifference or even symbiosis does not guarantee cosurvival. It could be they will grow far beyond us. It could be that whether they care about us or not, the day will come, as it has for many other species on this planet who shared our environment, when there is no longer room for both."

  "Slow down," said T4b. "This blows up my head, me. Sayin' that these Christmas lights are alive? Gonna take over the planet? Six 'em, clear. Gotta six 'em."

  "That seems to be the other alternative," Sellars admitted. "We have only minutes to make a decision. Or you do. As I said, I have brought this to be through my own foolishness and selfishness. I do not have the right to vote on their fate."

  "Vote?" said Nandi. "What is there to vote on? You admit these things are a threat to all human life. They are a picture-perfect example of the results of human arrogance—of what happens when men try to take on the powers and privileges of God. Look at the Grail Brotherhood! They did the same thing and they reaped death as their reward. Yet you say we should vote on this matter, as though it were some . . . village dispute."

  "Seen up close, democracy is a dreadful thing," quoted Florimel sourly. "Who said that? Oh, yes, Jongleur. Before he was exploded into free-floating molecules."

  "This is not an argument about the worth of democracy," Nandi protested. "This is an argument about applying schoolbook civics to the fate of the Earth!"

  "No, the fate of humanity," said Martine quietly. "They are not the same thing at all." Renie doubted if anyone else heard her.

  "I realize it is not an easy question," Sellars began. "That is why. . . ."

  "I feel them!" Nemesis began pacing up and down beside one wall of lights. Renie thought he looked like a caricature of an expectant father—a stunningly peculiar expectant father, at that. Why the hell is that thing so excited? she wondered, even as she felt her skin tightening with anxiety. The lights did seem to have changed, as though some low-level pulse now made their glow less steady. What's his interest in this whole thing?

  Before she could ask about this small but unexplained detail, another figure suddenly appeared from out of nowhere at the center of the gathering.

  "I am so sorry I could wait no longer," Hideki Kunohara said to Sellars. Renie was not the only one to gasp in surprise, Kunohara wore a formal black kimono and a slightly loopy smile. "I was listening in on your discussion, trying to be patient until my turn came, but I feared I might miss this spectacular event."

  "But . . . you're dead!" a shocked Florimel pointed out. "Your house collapsed."

  "They are not the same thing at all," Kunohara said cheerfully, and winked at Martine. "And the loss of my house served your purpose, did it not? You and your friends made your escape, didn't you? So perhaps something more like gratitude is in order." He paused, then made a swift little bow to Florimel. "Forgive me. I do not mean to be insulting. I am pleased to see you survived. It is just that time is short." He turned to survey the rows of lights, his expression exalted, almost feverish. "Wonderful! Any biologist in the world would trade ten years of his or her life to be present for this!" He paused, suddenly angry. "Take a vote about whether to let it happen or not? Madness." He looked critically at Sellars. "Would you really agree to such a stupid exercise?"

  Sellars gave a disconsolate shrug. "I see no other way. No one person has the right to decide such a thing, and we do not have time for a more measured approach."

  Kunohara made a disgusted noise. "So a committee of weary, uninformed amateurs should decide the fate of an entirely new form of life?"

  "Just a minute," said Orlando. "If we're really going to vote on this, who gets to vote? Just the grown-ups?"

  "We will certainly consider you and Sam part of the group," Sellars said quickly. "You have proved yourselves beyond doubt."

  "Wanna vote!" screamed several of the Wicked Tribe. "Vote! We vote go home, no more talk talk talk!"

  "You little ones get down right now," snapped Mrs. Simpkins. "Don't think I can't catch you!"

  "And these are our only choices?" Renie turned to !Xabbu, who was silent but clearly troubled by all he had heard. "Is that what we're supposed to decide?" She wanted to hear what his unique perspective made of all this. "Right this second we have to choose between . . . killing them and letting them go? Between something like genocide and the risk that our own species will be wiped out?"

  "There are no such decisions," !Xabbu said slowly. "This I know—those are the boxes that people make so that they will not be frightened by complicated choices. The world has many paths."

  "That might be true if we had more time." Sellars was beginning to sound weary again, and more than a little frustrated. "Please! We do not know how long until they . . ."

  "Stop!" The startlingly loud voice echoed through the cavern even after everyone had fallen silent—the not-quite-human voice of Nemesis. "I . . . we . . . I do not understand all your words." The thing in Ricardo Klement's body still could not make the face express emotion, but Renie thought there was something increasingly human in its voice. "I do not understand, but I can sense that you are upset and fearful about those who are coming. About the next."

  "The next what?" Sam whispered loudly to Orlando.

  "You must hear . . . they must talk. Then some understanding will be. Perhaps." Nemesis was reaching for words. Renie found it chilling, but in some weird way, exciting as well. It really did want to communicate. It was only a piece of code, albeit a complicated one, but it seemed to be doing something for which it could not have been programmed,

  So it's not just the creatures that Sellars and the Other made, Renie thought. The lines between people and not-people are definitely going to get more blurry, no matter what. Like T4b, she felt like her brain was about to blow up. Jesus Mercy, does that mean we're going to have to consider every piece of accounting gear and office equipment a citizen?

  "We cannot talk to them." Sellars sounded sad, but angry, too. "They are information life. The very idea is pointless—even if they were able to speak words we could hear, they would be beyond our understanding, as we are beyond theirs. They are more different from us than we are from plants."


  "No." Nemesis lifted a hand in a strange, unreadable gesture, then pointed at the helpless blue thing cradled in its other arm. "We heard these processes from . . . from far away. We split ourselves."

  "Who is we?" Sellars demanded.

  Kunohara was smiling broadly, "This is fascinating!"

  "I . . . I am Nemesis—but I am not all of Nemesis. I was created as a tracking procedure, but I could not perform my original function. The network was too large and diverse, and the anomaly in this place, this secured portion of the operating system, was too strong. I was . . . we were . . . very confused. So I . . . we . . . split into three subversions so that we might cope with the network's unexpected complexity and still have a chance of completing our original task."

  The thing sounded quite natural now, Renie thought. She'd had mathematics lecturers who sounded less human.

  "I am only one part of the original," it said. "I am Nemesis Two." It lifted the Blue Baby, which made a strange, mewling sound. "Here is a . . . representation of Nemesis One, which was . . . made nonfunctional by a logic problem. I was able to protect myself against that problem, and my function was not disrupted as I pursued my own investigations. I found Nemesis One here, broken and discarded within the operating system code.

  "But there is also another part of me . . . of us. . . ." The blank Klement stare looked from face to face, but the eye contact only emphasized how inhuman it still was. "Nemesis Three pierced the anomaly and found these processes," it explained, "—the growing of these next ones. It has been with them for many cycles. Now we will all be together. We will speak. We will speak together."

  "What is this supposed to mean to us?" Sellars sounded worried, even fearful, which made Renie's pulse beat faster—how much time did they have? "Yes, you can speak to us," Sellars said, "but you are human-created code. These . . . creatures . . . are not even remotely human."

  Nemesis nodded awkwardly. "Yes, we will speak together."

  "Together. . . ?" Sellars asked, puzzled, but even as he spoke the lights in the walls began to flicker. Renie had to raise her hands before her eyes to keep from being sickened by the eerie strobing effect.