Recursion

by Tony Ballantyne

  Herb sipped coffee without tasting it. He needed something to do to distract himself.

  “Herb, if you think the battle we’re currently engaged in looks frantic, you should see what it looks like from Machine Level.”

  Robert quickly scanned the viewing fields, his dark face half hidden in the pastel glow of the displays.

  “Still, everything looks okay at the moment. We’ve achieved a balance of sorts, so I think we’re ready to hit the planet’s surface.” He assumed a serious expression. “I’ll warn you now, we’re going to jump down there using the warp drive.”

  “What?” Herb almost spilled coffee in his lap. “What if you miscalculate? A fraction of a decimal place out and we could end up slamming into the ground! Isn’t jumping directly down to a planet incredibly dangerous?”

  Robert shrugged. “Normally I’d say yes. However, given our current circumstances, I think that a close proximity warp jump is the least of our worries.”

  Down at Machine Level:

  The entity known as Robert Johnston was far beyond what humans understood to be a personality construct. Unlike the crude copies of itself that had been sent out into the linear and pseudo parallel processing spaces of the Enemy Domain, the personality construct resident in the robot body was of a super parallel non-Turing design that human minds could not begin to comprehend. Its like was not scheduled to be seen in human space for at least another two hundred years.

  Super parallel non-Turing: in other words, Robert Johnston could think about many things at once.

  To Robert Johnston, reality was a series of interlocking layers. At the moment, for example, he could see the dissipating warp field still shimmering around the ship yet well below the threshold that would cause anomalies for anything crossing the boundary into normal space.

  Another part of him had interfaced with a minor security net on the planet which saw the universe as a three-color array of threats, friends and undecideds. That particular Robert was busily engaged in slotting the ship into the “friends” column.

  Part of Robert Johnston could even see the world through eyes similar to Herb’s.

  Using those senses, its robot body appeared to be sitting in a warm patch of sunlight cast by the ceiling viewing fields. Robert called this a human view. Such a slow view. Herb sat opposite him, anxiously looking from viewing field to viewing field with the speed of a snail in aspic.

  And then there was that other way of looking at humans…

  Robert Johnston could see Herb as a pattern of feelings and emotions that even Herb himself was not always aware of. He read the tension evident in his shoulders as a standing wave of electrical impulses, heard the fear in his chest by the rapid pattern of his heartbeat.

  He could look deeper. He saw how, as Herb gazed around at the friendly warmth of this new planet, he was for a moment taken back to that day, weeks ago, when he had boarded his spaceship to make the return journey to his converted planet. Herb was feeling a strong wave of something almost like nostalgia. Not just a wish to be home, safe, but something more: a realization that if he had his time over again, his life could be so much better.

  In the middle of the battle, Herb was having a sudden insight into what a mess he had made of his life so far; how much of a waste it had been.

  It was the emotion that Robert had been waiting to read in Herb. One that he had been leading him toward for the past eleven days.

  Directly below the ship, a river of blue-grey machines crawled along a rocky channel. A seemingly never-ending parade of shuffling, stumbling cylinders being funneled through the U-shaped valley that ran in a straight line from horizon to horizon. One aspect of Robert Johnston guided his robot body to pick up the Möbius VNM it had shown Herb earlier and then throw it out of the ship’s hatch to land in the parade of machines that crept through the valley underneath.

  While one part of his consciousness examined the structure and command systems of the machines below, another part explained to Herb, with painful slowness, the methods by which those machines would eventually terraform the planet across which they marched. On one level of reality Robert Johnston was examining the bacteria-tailoring factories that would build the soil for the planet, on another level he was explaining to Herb how the creeping machines would eventually form a circle around the planet to act as a heat pump, and on yet another level Robert Johnston was watching the Möbius machine that his robot body had just thrown from the ship. The machine righted itself and took a couple of stumbling steps forward, but was gradually dragged down by the slow, inevitable movement of the creeping machines. It reappeared for a moment, bobbed up above the backs of the machines, once, twice, and then was gone.

  The hatch slid shut.

  Herb had noticed that two of the blue-grey machines from the planet below were now sitting motionless on the hatch.

  “What are they for?” he asked.

  “They’re for later,” said Robert, oh so slowly, while at the same time he reconfigured the thickness of the ship’s bull, making the stern slightly thicker than the nose. After all, the stern was catching most of the explosions.

  He told the ship to ascend.

  Herb’s world was so slow…Robert knew what Herb was about to say before Herb did, and yet Robert still had to sit and listen to the end of each sentence. It was important. Not to do so would be unsettling for the young man.

  “Your machine didn’t work,” said Herb. The words moved at glacier speed. Robert already had the reply slotted in place, ready to play, while another part of his attention completed the analysis of the Ouroboros machines below.

  “Patience,” said Robert. “These terraformers are faster at reproduction than those on the last planet. Give it time and my Möbius machine will make enough copies of itself to be able to twist that loop around and reverse the terraforming process.”

  “Oh,” said Herb. The ship was accelerating away from the planet’s surface again, getting ready for another jump. Robert could see the thought occurring to him. He knew what Herb was going to say next.

  “Why are we stopping the terraforming of that planet? Surely terraforming is a good thing?”

  “Only if you’re a human. Not everyone in the galaxy is,” replied Robert. “Jump in ten seconds…”

  And then most of the ship’s propulsion system vanished.

  In an instant all of Robert Johnston’s attention was directed to trying to keep the ship aloft.

  There wasn’t enough of the propulsion system left to do that.

  The ship was falling back toward the planet: impact in 13.2081177 seconds.

  The ship’s self-repair systems came on line. They were fast, but not fast enough. Impact would still occur, now in 26.1187722 seconds. Robert Johnston added some of the nanotechs he carried in his own robot body to the ship. The reinforcements were enough to help the repair system complete its immediate task. The ship’s fall was halted: impact in (indefinite) seconds.

  Now Robert split his awareness in two. Part of it continued to oversee the repairs; a larger part was directed to discovering what had happened.

  He ran through the ship’s internal monitoring records and replayed the last three milliseconds before the propulsion system had vanished.

  There was the answer. The ship had fallen victim to a stealth attack. Somehow the local security net had got a set of nanotechs onto the hull. That should have been impossible, given the defense routines Robert had set up, but even more incredible was the fact that the nanotechs had managed to do so without being noticed. They had worked their way into the propulsion system, making themselves into exact copies of existing parts. When they had converted enough of the system, they just…dissolved.

  Robert Johnston was puzzled. They had dissolved too soon. If they had waited longer they could have left him with no propulsion system at all. Why so soon?

  A second replay of the ship’s memory and he saw it. A routine internal scan had been initiated ten picoseconds before the attack. The enemy n
anotechs must have feared detection; they acted too soon rather than be wiped out. Thankfully.

  The threat had been identified.

  All this took just under two seconds. Robert Johnston now felt it safe to split his consciousness further so as to interface with other layers of reality.

  To Herb, it was as if the attack was still underway. Robert could see him as he was thrown out of the sofa, his left knee banging on the wooden floor. Robert could read the pain in Herb’s body as his left hand was twisted the wrong way and almost broke.

  Robert Johnston was still funneling materials toward the propulsion system. There wasn’t enough mass in the propulsion chamber, so he sought it from elsewhere on the ship. Herb’s bedroom was quickly cannibalized.

  The propulsion systems now operated at four percent efficiency.

  Back in the slow world, Herb was thrown to the left, tumbling across the floor, hot coffee splashing over him as he went. A white vase fell to the floor, shattering next to his head. Meanwhile, the robot body was picking itself up off the floor, its face slack and utterly expressionless. The ship continued to shake and jerk around, but the movement was diminishing. Herb sat up slowly, favoring his right hand. As he stared at his left, Robert could see wave after wave of sickening pain sweeping through the human, centering on his knee. The robot body came and put an arm around Herb, helped him to his feet.

  “Are you okay?” asked Robert. He helped Herb to limp across to his sofa and sat him down.

  “I think so. My hand…No. It can wait. What happened?”

  Robert began to explain.

  All the while another part of Robert was examining the options of what to do next.

  He had been too cocky, he had underestimated the capabilities of the local AI. He could not afford to make that mistake again.

  Now he would have to take time out from the attack to replenish the ship’s resources. He calculated that it would take about four minutes. He estimated the Enemy’s ships would be here in five. So, just enough time to drop back to the planet’s surface and then get out again.

  Much too confident. He would not make that mistake again.

  Then another part of his awareness picked up the flickering of a warp transition. One, two, three Enemy ships inserting themselves into normal space. They had got here far too quickly. Another mistake.

  He would have to jump again right now….

  He looked at the warp field, began to coax it into shimmering life…

  He was simultaneously observing Herb. Robert could read the fear that coursed through the man’s body at his announcement of the jump. Herb’s mouth was dry, his pulse rate increasing, his stomach pulsing, and yet his body’s functioning was still within acceptable parameters. Herb would experience far worse before this was over.

  Something foreign still lurked on the ship.

  Another jump. They reinserted into normal space and the lounge lit up with the brilliant white glare of an explosion. This time all of the viewing fields darkened. Herb felt as if the ship was skimming sideways, riding a wave, dancing and surfing toward a beach. He could feel the busy rumble of something like water beneath them.

  “We’re riding the explosion,” said Robert, “just inside the wave front. They won’t be able to scan inside here. At least I hope not. No nanotechs could survive out there in that maelstrom, so we can assume we’re not going to be boarded again…. We’re going to jump again in a moment.”

  Robert’s face slackened, just for a fraction of a second, and then: “The top ninety percent of the hull has ablated. At least it didn’t breach…”

  The ship rocked again as they began the transition back into warp. Herb was flung from his seat, across the room. He tripped on Robert’s sofa, catching his left knee again as he landed. He screamed with pain…

  …The ship reinserted itself into normal space.

  “It’s okay, Herb,” called Robert. “It’s okay.” He was looking at him with genuine concern.

  “I’m okay,” Herb mumbled. “I just banged my knee.”

  Robert nodded. “I’ve taken us into the space between the stars again. We need to give the ship time to repair itself.”

  Herb was light-headed from the pain. He was finding it difficult to concentrate.

  “I hope so. They’ll never find us here, surely?”

  Robert offered Herb a little pink tablet. The way he was moving seemed odd; Herb seemed to be befuddled.

  “Swallow this,” Robert murmured. “It’s an MTPH variant. It will help you to separate the pain into different parts, make it easier to deal with.”

  Herb took the pill and swallowed it. “Couldn’t I just have a painkiller?” he asked.

  “You’d learn nothing that way, Herb. Pain and adversity help us to grow.” He grinned a little. “Well, they help humans grow, anyway. Look, Herb, the ship has lost a lot of mass, so when repairs are complete, the hull is going to be stretched very thin. The Enemy ships will be jumping incrementally out from our last position in a shell formation, scanning as they go. They’ll reach this point in about four minutes, I’d guess. We have to be gone from here by then.”

  The pill hit Herb’s stomach and the pain seemed to recede: it was still there, but it was as if another person was experiencing it.

  “Whoa,” he said, “that’s pretty good stuff. Hey, why don’t we just jump back inside the ring of spaceships?”

  “We will if we have to, but I’d rather not. We’ve got to keep heading toward the center of the Enemy Domain. The Enemy will eventually figure that’s what we’re doing, and then it will direct its search ships to better effect. This battle is still just getting up to speed.”

  “Getting up to speed. Right.”

  Herb looked around the inside of the ship. The kitchen cupboards had burst open; pots and pans spilled across the floor, washing across a tide of broken glass and crockery. A white vase lay smashed on the blond wood. There was a rip in one of the white sofas. Robert himself looked odd.

  The viewing fields imposed a sense of order on the shambles of the room, their regular shapes showing stars shining against a dark background. Red indicator bars showed they were still picking up speed. How fast did they have to get?

  Robert looked the worse for wear: his suit was disheveled, his shirt had come untucked, his tie was twisted so that the knot was lost under his starched collar. His jacket was badly ripped near the shoulder. That’s when Herb finally noticed what was odd about Robert.

  “What happened to your arm?” he asked. “Where’s it gone?”

  Robert’s right arm lay on the white sofa he had been occupying earlier. He sat down next to it and picked it up with his left hand. Herb caught a flash of silver at the severed end as Robert turned it to push it into his shoulder joint. He twisted it a couple of times.

  “The repair mechanisms won’t engage,” he said softly. “I had to deplete myself of nanotechs and send them to aid in the repair of this ship. They’re building up numbers again, ready to effect the repair within me, but resources are low. Other priorities are currently higher, and what use are arms when fighting this type of war? Better that my brain remains intact.”

  He smiled gently at Herb. He was no longer the personality who had spent the past few days constantly goading Herb: now he seemed like an amiable old man, a wise father figure. The rules of their relationship were changing.

  “How are you, Herb?” he asked.

  Herb sat carefully on the sofa opposite. He felt a lot better now. His mind was sharper. The pain was still there, but he could put it in perspective, look at it in a wider context. A lot of things seemed clearer under the influence of the pink pill. Herb considered his actions over the past few days, then over the past few years. He suddenly felt incredibly embarrassed. He had thought himself so clever, so special. He had been a fool.

  Robert was gazing at him from the seat opposite, his expression one of quiet observation. He knows what I’m thinking. He knows that I’ve seen the truth. And he wants me to know.
He’s a robot. He chooses the expression he wants to wear.

  “You’re…you know what I’m thinking, don’t you?”

  “To a degree,” said Robert.

  “You led me to this point, didn’t you? This is not just about the Enemy Domain; it’s about me, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That sounded really arrogant of me, but it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why me? What makes me so special?”

  “Nothing. The EA cares for all, Herb. It’s in its very bones, you might say.”

  Robert paused for a moment, thinking. At least, he paused to give that impression. Then he continued, “Besides, I’m more closely connected with your family than you might imagine, Herb. I have been practically since the beginning.”

  Herb said nothing. He wondered what Robert meant. He knew that Robert would explain if he wanted him to know.

  Robert sighed deeply. “You know, Herb, you’ve lived a lonely life. That was your choice. The EA would have done a lot better for you if only you had let it.”

  Herb said nothing. Now even his embarrassment was dissolving: he felt strangely liberated. It was the drug. It was helping him to stand apart from himself, not just from the pain, but from the person he had allowed himself to become.

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Herb.

  “There’s nothing to say.” Robert picked up his right arm and twisted it round so he could see the watch. “One minute before the Enemy ships arrive, I guess. We’ll jump in a moment. Stay ahead of them, keep them guessing.”

  He gazed at Herb with a sympathetic expression. “We’re getting there, Herb. We’re over halfway.”

  “Good.”

  “I won’t lie, though. The next bit will be the hardest part. Are you ready for this?”

  Herb licked his lips. Much to his surprise, he was.

  “I am,” he said.