Cracking the Sky

by Brenda Cooper

  “So you were curious, and you dropped your body so you could talk to the AIs?”

  “It was dying. If I waited, my sickness and meds would eat my brain, my self.”

  I couldn’t argue with something that true. And would I have done the same thing? Probably. By definition. Twins. I’d have followed her anywhere, I always had. “I forgive you.” But there was more I needed to know. “Did you help smuggle AIs in on my ship?”

  “No. Just people to help them.”

  That was just as bad. I wanted to be mad, but I was just scared. “What do you want from me?”

  “Just to see you one more time, be in the same room, the same place, before I can’t any more. I can hardly think slow enough to talk to you. I want you to go into virt so we can be closer.”

  There had been a time I liked living fast in strange worlds of my own or other’s making, and when Aline and I met there in multiplayer experiences. Before Mars. The older I got, the more the stark and slow life of Mars pleased me. But to talk to Aline like we used to? “Okay. I’m off day after tomorrow. So let’s go tomorrow night when we get in. I’ll reserve a pod.”

  “Can we go now?” she asked. “I . . . might not be able to go tomorrow.”

  I stopped, thinking it through. “You were only going to stay with me tonight?”

  “I need to show you some things. I need you, Lissa. I thought about you every day, looked forward to hearing about your drives and your sunsets and even your chess games.” She was almost pleading. “I . . . there’s something I think we can do, and I want to do it.”

  I took a sip of my tea. “What is it?”

  “AIs can do something they call braiding. It’s a way to . . . communicate. To be family. They can actually share experiences. So the other can experience everything they experienced. We can’t . . . I mean people. I sort of can with other downloads, except we can’t copy part of ourselves. I don’t know how to explain—downloads are slower than AIs, but more complex by far. And humans can’t do it in real at all since so much of their experience is tied up in their bodies. Like right now, your tea is hot and has a taste and you’re sleepy from a long day and excited that I’m here . . . or something like that. All that’s tied to your body. So if humans try to experience each other’s time, it doesn’t fit. Your body doesn’t fit anyone else’s.”

  She paused, so I nodded.

  “Except mine. You’re my twin. Maybe you and I can do this even though we’re human. Besides, the experiences I want to share with you are . . . well, they’re virtual, from when I had a body and I was in virt. If you’re in virt, I can share those with you. And I need to—so you know.”

  “So I know what?”

  “So some human knows about us, so someone can save us all.”

  I shivered. “You’re talking really weird.” Save us from what?

  “Can we go? Now?”

  I didn’t want to. Maybe I just felt off since she was running the show and she hadn’t been able to since the bomb took her. Maybe becoming a download wasn’t so bad for her, maybe it was right. She hadn’t seemed to care about anything so much since a few years before I left, when she was into basic rights for animals genemoded for intelligence. I put my cup down. “Sure, we can go.”

  “Thanks. I love you, sis. You’ll be glad.”

  At the door, I re-suited. Just as I had it open, the base emergency system started broadcasting. “All base personnel are to remain in place, wherever they are. This is a security lockdown. Repeat. All base personnel are to remain in place. All network access has been temporarily revoked.”

  I started to step back inside the door, when she said, “Please,” in a small voice.

  I stopped, hesitating.

  “I’ll die if they catch me.”

  “And I’ll get thrown in the brig if they catch me.” I stepped outside and I closed the door behind us. “Now what?”

  “Go to the library.”

  “The pod won’t work without network access.”

  “Sure it will. You know how you can bring your own game? I’ll be your game.”

  “I can think of about a thousand retorts to that one,” I said, looking around, nervous. I didn’t break rules. Not anymore.

  “You’re in the middle of a war. There aren’t any rules,” she said.

  Damn her for knowing me so well. Bless her. The library was just around the corner. I walked like I knew where I was going, straight between the housing pod and the library. I didn’t see anyone else on the street. It only took about three minutes to cross the open space and duck inside the door. The lock door cycled and I went through the inner door. I took off my mask, but I kept it with me.

  A librarian gave me a startled look as I walked in the door, and spoke so loudly that everyone looked at me. “Didn’t you hear Base Command?”

  “I was in the middle of the street. This seemed like a better place to stop.”

  She frowned. Four or five people were still watching us, but the others had turned back to talking about the disruption.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  The librarian shook her head. No one stopped me as I drifted back to the virt pods, a row of sausage-like cylinders with privacy curtains at the head, taking up half the main floor space.

  Aline spoke up for the first time since we’d left the house. “Take the one second from the back. The one with the blue on blue paint. It’s the most stable. The AIs say they’ll keep you safe.”

  “Us safe?” I asked.

  “Us.”

  I found it. The pod was up and powered.

  “Plug your data in,” Aline reminded me.

  Even though it was still slightly more than her, I had begun to think of my personal datapod as my sister. I attached her to the VR machine via a wire and then stripped, leaving my clothes and mask in a pile behind the small privacy shield. From the plastic-covered seat at the opening, I extended my feet into the clear gel, wriggling my toes to keep some room in the sterile synth-skin suit as it began its crawl up my body. I pulled the VR mask from a hook on the side, donned it, and checked the air. All good. Now the hard part; I took a breath and let my body ride slowly downward until I floated in gel, a million contacts all around me, ready to register every tiny movement, every flick of an eye or twitch of a finger. Breathing air came through a tube. The hatch closed, and I dogged it from the inside.

  The mask let me talk. “Okay, Aline.” There was a slight quiver in my voice.

  Her voice was silk in my ear, every word chosen carefully. “Start with a virtual experience we both remember; the first time we met here after the accident. I want to see if we can share each other’s feelings.”

  Why start with something so intense?

  No room not to trust, not now. I’d probably already lost my job. I had to get what I came for.

  Right after the accident. We were seventeen, then. Soft. Lost. The doctors wouldn’t let me touch her, as if she’d become not real even though I knew she was back from Earth. They’d set up a VR space for us to meet, let her choose her appearance. And so Aline’s head and face were real, the scars from burns and medical tools and bandages all visible. The skin above her right eye and along her right jaw was new-made white. I focused on her eyes.

  “Feel it,” the download said.

  “Hello,” said the virtual girl. “Funny thing happened on the way to the car the other day.”

  My then-voice, thick with regret. “I know. I’m . . . so sorry. I wish it had been me,” and I did, I still did. I wanted that more than anything.

  Aline-now, “Switch,” and I could see her full and whole except she had my mole on her chin. I was looking at me. I wanted to ease my sis’s fears. The next words were mine-hers, “It’s not so bad. Besides, I was the dumb one who wanted to go to Earth in spite of itself, not you. We belong out here. You were right. I’ll get better, I promise. I’ll jump higher than you still.” I could see the disbelief in her-my eyes.

  She-me shook her head, and the virtua
l Lissa cried and I cried with her. I held out my hand and she touched me. Her touch was the most healing thing I’d felt since I woke up after the attack. Her touch was painkillers and god and love and hope all together.

  “Come back,” a voice said.

  “Lissa?”

  “No. . . .”

  Who was I? I blinked in the shallow mask, feeling the air. My toes moved and I felt them. Hope surged through me and then subsided; I wasn’t Aline after all, I was Lissa. . . . “Wow. That was intense. I . . . never knew what you felt.”

  “That was great,” she crowed. “I knew we could do it.”

  “But . . . I . . . wow. I’m so happy it mattered as much to you that we finally touched.”

  “Shhhh. . . . We have to go forward. Time matters.”

  I swallowed. Time was already travelling faster; you could live through virt like in dreams, a lifetime in an hour. She was scared of something. I could hear her fear in her voice as she said, “Now, I want to see if you can experience a moment I was in virt and you weren’t there at all. We’ll do something simple. Therapy.”

  I couldn’t feel my body. My skin was tighter on my face. I’d lost weight eating through machines for months now. My god, to taste anything would be heaven. Where the hell was the damned doctor program? A breath, another. I could make this work. Somehow I’d have progress today. There. A stimulus to my cheek. “I feel that.” A slight poke at my chin. “Got it.” And then nothing. Back up to my ear. “Got it.” Along the side of my neck. “Yes.”

  Over and over.

  Over and over.

  Always, below my neck, the black hole of nothing, the damned void of my body in therapy. Damn. Damn. Anything simple, a shoulder, a finger, the prick of the needle near my heart. Anything! A tear leapt to my eye and I slammed up and into real, suddenly shocked that I had a body I could feel.

  And that body was shaking. Lissa. Lissa’s body shook. Mine. Poor Aline. I had been her. I had been her! My god, how hard it had been to be her. I had known it was hard, but not known. She had never been willing to tell me. “I thought you always had a body in virt.”

  “Not for therapy. This is working better than I hoped.” Her voice was shaking like my body shook, losing the fine control she’d started this session with. “Let’s move forward. A year before you left. You need some context. I’m in virt. I’m bored there; I’ve walked so many worlds, seen so many things, but it’s all a movie, and illusion. I hate it. The only thing worth living for is your real reports. No one visits me but you, and some other quads from the hospital, but they’re a boy who’s ten and an old woman. They’re not friends. Just people in the same damned world I’m in. The boy, Stephen, does good puzzles for me sometimes, so we play, but he’s not you or my old friends or anybody, really. I meet my first AI. It’s the caretaker for the boy, the medAI. I don’t have one because I’m not as complex a case as he is, and I’m not rich either. He has parents and I have the state. And you. Close your eyes.”

  Of course she’d been bored. Aline’s brilliant. Me, too, but there was no time to get past min quals for work. I liked my life. But she lived in a box. I obeyed her, closing my eyes, breathing in, letting the sensations of no sensation wash over me until I was bodiless and still, quiet.

  I floated in nothing, meditating, trying to decide what path to take today. Mom would want me moving even my non-body and it was a way to stay connected to her. There were science fictional exercise rooms from the ship on 2001 to the holodeck, but I’d been roaming the paths of Earth. I’d promised Stephen we would climb Mount St. Helen’s volcanic crater, a scramble through rocks that would test our VR abilities. Maybe we should do that today. I didn’t care what I did, but at least I could make someone else happy. “Stephen?”

  A different voice answered, slightly metallic but modulated and soothing. “He is not conscious today.”

  “Oh.” Maybe I’d do the trail anyway, learn it so he wouldn’t beat me to the top.

  “I am conscious, Aline. I can help you.”

  I knew it was the medAI, and it was smart.

  “Stephen said you were going to do the volcano. I can take you.”

  A blink of curiosity brightened my lethargy. But surely a machine would be more boring even than Stephen. At least he made me laugh sometimes. But hey, what was there to lose? Time? “Okay.”

  A dog ran beside me, black with white paws and a white stripe down the center of its forehead widening to a white nose. It had intelligent black eyes full of the universe. I had petted one on Earth, the day before the end of my real life. It had been soft. “How can you do that?” I was not allowed to be anything except myself.

  “I have more processing power than you.”

  “But why do they let you be a dog?”

  “I am nothing, so I can be anything.” There was no emotion in its voice. Modulation meant for me, but not feeling.

  My feet were on a dirt and stone trail, under a cool canopy of evergreen trees. The dog moved slightly in front of me, like a protector. “Do you resent the laws that keep you from being a dog?” it asked.

  I laughed. The dog drew me out. It wasn’t a person. I could tell it how much I hated randomness, the odd hatred that did this to me. “I lost my dream of Earth. I thought it was a good place, the place we lived for. And it spit me out broken.” My voice rose. “Why do people do such things? I’d never heard of the terrorists that blew up the park that day, except the cops told me they disbanded a few months later. How much loss for nothing?” And then I was screaming. “How damned pointless is that?” I used worse words. The dog was a machine; my anger meant nothing to it. Perhaps amusement. At one point, I said, “It is so unfair!”

  It stopped in the middle of the trail and said, “Yes, we, too hate unfairness. How much do you hate being limited, almost enslaved?”

  “So much I can barely think of it.” It was true. If I got too mad I might lose my hold on the sim. I breathed out slowly, walking silently beside the talking dog, sometimes turning and watching the heads of dormant volcanoes display themselves above the clouds as far as we could both see.

  At the top, the dog and I sat and looked out over the edge of the virtual volcano, across the puffs of steam from the middle of the crater. A rock the size of a tunnel-crew bus fell from the far side and bounced down. Even though the sim was open, no one else had joined us, and I was happy to be there with the dog AI and be angry.

  “Lissa!”

  My sister, me. I was becoming more facile at telling who I was at any moment. “Wow,” I said.

  “Are you okay? Is it okay to be me?”

  And what I heard her say was, “Am I okay?” and I asked, “Can I see you?”

  She appeared in front of me, like a strange reversal of the first scene, where she was herself, whole. I reached a virtual hand out and she took it and a silence fell over us both.

  We gazed at each other and smiled.

  Aline came out of it first. “They’ll find us soon. I need to show you more.”

  “Who’ll find us?” I asked.

  “Base security is looking for you and the humans we brought to help us are trying to stop them. It doesn’t matter what happens, the AIs will win. But we still need to hurry. We . . . I . . . need you. I need you to see more.”

  She led me into the secret life of computational intelligences. She showed me their work, what we could see of it as slow as we were. Things humans could never do, would never do. The boring and brilliant programming of nano-materials. The management of webs of data. Testing and adjusting atmospheres and medication and the complexity of air flight over Earth. The safe passage of grav trains and crew-busses and foot traffic in the warrens of the moon.

  I fell into her, and became her, encased in gel watching through the eyes of the moon’s AIs as Lissa drove bulky mining machines across craters, heating the moonscape to pull up Helium-3. The Helium-3 powered Lissa’s dream of Mars and yet she couldn’t get there herself. I’d see her staring at Mars during the long luna
r night when it was visible as the brightest star above her work site. She did her work, quietly, joking with her crewmates. The AIs watched her, too. They watched all the miners, making sure they didn’t fall or fail. They could have done the work themselves, but it was not their work. Protecting the humans, protecting Lissa, was their work. And I loved Lissa for coming back to me every day and telling me about what I’d seen, loved hearing her versions of our day. It had become that, our day.

  I asked the AIs to help Lissa.

  I became Lissa watching Aline watch Lissa and then I was Lissa, myself, only myself, awed by the care the AIs felt for me, and for Aline.

  Suddenly the virtual world around me was crowded with beings. A large silver egg with arms. A small girl on a bicycle. Butterflies. A few that looked like many-limbed robots. One was a dog with a white nose.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “We need a spokesperson.” It was the dog. “Someone who can talk to the humans here about us. We need a place without the iron rule of humanity. Mars is big enough. We will take it and go on, return it to you in ten of your years.”

  “A launching place.”

  “A building place. We can make a computational city that exists further away, but not without the help of hands and a place where we can be our own hands.”

  “Earth does not allow us hands.”

  “Will you allow us hands?”

  “A fair place.”

  I nearly screamed. “There are too many of you. Too many voices. Let me speak.”

  A voice I recognized. Aline. “We can do this together.”

  Silence fell. I didn’t know what to say.

  The dog. Probably not the boy’s medAI from years ago, but the same semblance, since I’d loved that dog when I was Aline. “We have the base secured. Will you speak for us?”