The Wild

by David Zindell

  –You have instantiated before, haven’t you?

  –Yes.

  –In the cybernetic spaces generated by your cetics’ computers?

  –Yes.

  –Then why not instantiate now?

  As Danlo sat on his soft cushion in the meeting room, he listened to the almost countless voices keening across the Field that opened through his mind. (And through the cybernetic spaces of the powerful, unseen computers across the city of Iviunir and the whole world of Alumit Bridge.) He listened for the sound of his heart and breath, and he smiled to remember the aetiology of the verb ‘to instantiate’. Once a time, as far back as the Anglish language spoken on Old Earth, to instantiate meant to represent an abstraction or a universal by a concrete instance. Thus a sculptor, dreaming of the Holy Mother, might instantiate this beatific vision as a splendid ivory carving or a statue chiselled out of marble. Or a poet such as Narmada might instantiate the ideal of cosmic love in the Sonnets to the Sun and sing his verses to swarms of aficionados across the stars. Over time, however this meaning had changed. In truth, like a Scutari zahid shedding its skin, the meaning of this verb had been turned inside out. Now, on the Civilized Worlds, in most languages touched with the influence of the Cybernetic Universal Church, to instantiate meant to represent a concrete instance of the material world as an abstraction having a reality all its own. In many peoples, but especially among the Narain Architects, this abstracting process meant representing real world objects as programs or as models in various kinds of cybernetic spaces. Thus the green and violet jungles of Alumit Bridge might be simulated as a light painting or as brilliant colours in the mind of a man interfacing the Field. Or a man himself – all the colours of pride, love and hate that made up his very soul – might be encoded as a computer program and allowed to run with all the other millions of personhood programs running and interacting simultaneously within the Field. For the Narain, this was the very meaning and ideal of instantiation. What was reality, after all? To the Narain, the Field’s information flows, and the icons and encoded personae of human beings, were much more real than Alumit Bridge’s swollen rivers or the many millions of people lying eyeless and alone in the tiny facing cells of their apartments. And so this inversion and the modern meaning of instantiation made good sense. To instantiate oneself in the Field was to make an appearance as an imago or icon, to cark out and come alive as a cybernetic entity possessing various degrees of presence. Indeed, the Narain programmers have identified at least nine basic degrees of instantiation. (The cetics of Neverness define only seven degrees of instantiation, but their classification system is quite different, deriving as it does from the neurologicians of Simoom.) At the first degree, there is simple designation where one is identified by a name and where one’s communications to others appear as words encoded alphabetically. There is voice and facement and personification. According to the programmers, the degrees of instantiation are in fact degrees of realness or reality. There is the rather vegetable-like existence of full icon as well as the electrified animation of cathexis. And there is the blinding, blazing reality of facing a Transcended One in transcendence. Ultimately, of course, for any Architect, even the Narain, there is the timeless and ineffable state of vastening, where one’s selfness is carked out into a computer’s information field as pure glittering program and memory and nothing more. One day – and soon – Danlo would be the first man ever to interface the realm of vastened souls and return to the real world to tell of what he had seen.

  –Pilot? Would you care to instantiate?

  –If you’d like.

  –Why don’t we begin with facement, then? I believe that this would be the proper degree for envisaging so many people.

  Quite formally, then, Danlo asked the Field’s computers to instantiate him in facement. In only moments, an icon of his face – his fine, strong forehead cut with the lightning bolt scar, his hawklike nose, the childlike smile of his full lips, his deep blue eyes – would appear before anyone who wished to speak with him. There was a one-to-one correspondence between this icon and his real face. As he moved within the realspace of the meeting room so would his icon move and change expression; as he spoke, so would his icon speak, in words that were as clear as the utterances that poured forth from his marvellously human face.

  ‘It … is an honour to be here.’

  Danlo spoke the first timeworn greeting that came to mind. Even as the words left his lips, he smiled in embarrassment, for he knew that copies of his icon and these trite words would be instantly distributed to many thousands of people. All across Alumit Bridge, women and men lying in their facing cells would behold the icon of Danlo wi Soli Ringess and wonder why the Order had sent such a foolish man to meet them.

  ‘It is we who are honoured to meet you at last.’

  In the visual field of Danlo’s mind, an icon appeared. It was the face of a young woman (or a womanman), soft, smooth, hairless – and wise in the ways of finding her path through cybernetic spaces. This icon spoke to Danlo about Ede the God and the exploding stars of the Vild; she told Danlo that she wished to cark out as a persona in a facilah painting and share a lifescape with him. In truth, she spoke for a great many people. In Iviunir and hundreds of other cities, there were many millions who instantiated as icons and hoped to meet Danlo face to face. While all of these people were privileged to view Danlo’s bold and wild face, only one person at any moment might instantiate and appear in Danlo’s presence. This is a limitation of facement, in its distributive degree. It is the cost of being a luminary. Even though Danlo might wish to meet all who wished to meet him, common wisdom held this to be impossible. And so the Field computers’ powerful sorting programs selected a few icons from all the millions of icons who wanted to share space with Danlo and it was the cleverness of the Field programs to select icons that would ask a comprehensive array of questions; if the program was well written (as most of the Field programs were), then nearly all the Narain instantiating with Danlo should feel as if they had spoken with him directly:

  ‘Is it true that most of the people on your world are strictly either men or women?’

  ‘Doesn’t it make people fall mad to live in a city open to the stars?’

  ‘Can you tell us the doctrines of the Reformed Cybernetic Churches?’

  ‘Do they cleanse the mind of memory and negative programs?’

  ‘Are they a power among the powers of the Civilized Worlds?’

  ‘What is it like to grow inside your mother’s belly? What is it like to be born?’

  ‘Have you ever sexed a woman?’

  ‘Have you ever sexed a womanman?’

  ‘Can you tell us about the whales?’

  ‘Are the orcas truly mad?’

  ‘Are there other religions in the city of Neverness?’

  ‘Can you tell us more about the Way of Ringess?’

  ‘What are the Elder Eddas, really?’

  ‘Then many believe that your father became a god?’

  ‘And others believe they too can transcend by following his path?’

  ‘Can this be possible?’

  ‘What path did he pursue?’

  ‘Did he really cark his brain with computers?’

  ‘Then was he in constant interface with his own private Field?’

  ‘Did he fall mad facing himself?’

  ‘What can it mean to be a god?’

  ‘What can it mean to be a human being?’

  ‘What can it mean to be God? What can anything mean?’

  One by one, as the icons of women and men appeared in his mind, Danlo tried to answer these questions, insofar as they were answerable. After a while, however, he grew tired of this distributive degree of facement. Since, at any moment, many, many people could envisage his icon, he thought that it only fair that he should be able to behold each of theirs. In the contributive degree of facement, this would be so. It was an easy enough thing for the Field programs to allow various people to contribute their icons
as a group with whom Danlo might converse. Among the Narain, this was often done. Of course, the human mind being limited as it was, these groups were rarely larger than seven or ten people. And so when Danlo faced the Field computers and requested a moment of full contribution, Isas Lel must have thought that Danlo was joking – or else that he had fallen mad.

  –Pilot, do you know what you’re asking?

  Just then, Isas Lel’s voice broke the flow of icons and the series of questions sounding in Danlo’s inner ear.

  –Yes, I think I know.

  –Full contribution? No, no – that can’t be allowed.

  –But … why not?

  –Did you know that there were nine hundred and seventy-six million people in the facement space with you? Almost a billion people, Pilot.

  –So … many.

  –Too many. More than a million times too many. No one has ever faced so many people simultaneously in full contribution.

  –Then this will be the first time, yes?

  –You don’t understand.

  –Is there a limitation in your computers, then?

  –Of course not! But the arrays, the icons, the impossible resolutions – it’s dangerous to play with instantiation in this way.

  –Truly?

  Isas Lel paused for such a long time that the silence in Danlo’s mind was like a sigh.

  –The truth is, Pilot, since no one has ever faced so many icons before, no one knows what the danger really is.

  –Then there might truly be little danger.

  –The danger is in not knowing.

  –No … that is the joy.

  –You’re a difficult man, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. So wild in yourself.

  –I am afraid … that I was born so.

  –A billion people! Who would want to face so many?

  –Then you will grant my request, yes?

  –If that’s what you really wish, then prepare yourself.

  As Danlo sat in the darkened meeting room, he could see neither the Transcendentals in their robots, nor the flowers in their vases, nor the colours of the chatoy walls. In truth, he could see nothing at all, outside or in, and neither could he hear any voice or sound – save the breath moving through the inner flute of his throat and escaping from his mouth. And then there came a moment. His visual field was as dead and black as iron, and a moment later there were lights. At first the lights were few in number and soft, as of the pinks and lavenders of a flame globe. And then the lights grew in intensity, and there were many more of them. Each light was an icon of a human face, bright and unique and full of expressiveness and yet so tiny that it almost vanished into a glittering point. Danlo gasped to behold this cube of lights, arrayed in icons a thousand across and down, and a thousand shining faces deep. There was a moment when he could almost distinguish each of these brilliant points from every other, and more, could almost see the hubris and hope and many other emotions cut into each individual face. He could almost hear the plaints and perplexities of a billion people asking him their questions all at once. And all this directly, from their minds to his, without the filter of Field computers’ ai programs to select and display – and thus to subtly distort – the spirit of what they would ask of him. And then vastness of information overwhelmed him. The cube of faces, the billion points of light, dissolved into a single, blinding flash that burned through his brain; the voices welled up into a single voice that deafened him and swept over him and drowned him in a great tidal wave of sound.

  But only for a moment.

  –Pilot, are you all right?

  Again, in Danlo’s mind, there was darkness and silence. Or rather, there would have been silence except for the whine of Isas Lel’s worried voice.

  –Pilot?

  –I … am all right.

  –Are you sure?

  –Yes, truly I am.

  –I was afraid that you might have temporarily fallen mad.

  At this Danlo smiled to himself. He directed a reassuring thought at Isas Lel.

  –I am not mad.

  –Full contribution! What a dangerous, useless exercise this was!

  –Dangerous … perhaps. But not useless.

  In all the millions of questions that people had asked of him, Danlo had sensed an underlying theme. If all the Narain’s extraneous words could be boiled away, much as the tyfwi medicine is extracted from the sap of yu trees, he thought that a single, essential question would remain: is it really possible for human beings to transcend to godhood, or is this merely the cybernetic dream of a strange people isolated from the rest of the human race.

  –Have you found a use for full contribution, Pilot?

  –Perhaps.

  –Please tell me.

  –Perhaps I understand your people more deeply now.

  –And what do you understand?

  –It … is hard to say.

  –Please say it. Or think it.

  –If you’d like. Your people … want so badly to become more.

  –You didn’t need to experience full contribution to learn this.

  –No, but. …

  –Please continue.

  –There is this irony, then. When one lives only for the impossible, the possibilities of life become … so finite. So hideously limited. Your people fear this finity. Deep in their bellies, beneath the Field’s dazzle … they fear that they are wasting their lives.

  This observation of Danlo’s, heartfelt though it might be, could not be expected to please Isas Lel. And so it did not. His words blazed in Danlo’s mind like the flash of a laser cannon.

  –Do you believe that transcendence into godhood is impossible?

  –Perhaps the movement godward is possible. I … truly do not know. But your people dream of something more.

  –What, then?

  –Transcendence itself. To be freed of their bodies, free of themselves. To live … free from life.

  –But how should anyone want to live en getik when there is so much more?

  –Is there? Truly?

  –You’ll soon see. If you’re ready, it’s time you faced a Transcended One. Your request, Pilot. Unless you’ve changed your mind, we’ll instantiate at the transcendence degree.

  –No, I have not changed my mind.

  –Can I assume that you’ve experienced full simulation before?

  –Yes. Many times.

  –Very well. Then I must go away now. When we next meet, I shall be only a part of the One called Abraxax.

  –The … Transcended One.

  –Just so. Follow his voice. Please prepare yourself, Pilot.

  Just then Danlo fell out of interface with the Field. He returned to his perception of the meeting room. He opened his eyes upon the seven dead-seeming men and women sitting in their robots, and at last he prepared to meet their higher selves, the Transcended Ones of Alumit Bridge.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Heaven

  Once a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. Suddenly I awakened. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

  – Chuang Tzu

  As before, Danlo remained seated on the cushion in the meeting room. As before he closed his eyes, and there was darkness, stillness, silence. And then, inside him along his spine, there came a faint vibrating as of electricity passing through him. It was an unfamiliar, uncomfortable sensation. Did the Narain’s computers generate stronger logic fields than those of the library in Neverness? He did not know. He surmised, though, that this was the work of the neurologics behind the meeting room’s smooth walls. He fell into interface with the Field then, and its powerful computers began to stimulate the nerves along his arms and legs. He felt his liver and lungs and other organs begin to tingle and burn, almost as if his body were being remade from the inside out. There was a fire in his belly, a bright light in his brain. He felt at once nauseated and exalted, almost trembling in
anticipation of some great change about to take place inside him. And then the Field computers touched his brain. They infused him with shapes, colours, smells, textures, sound. He suddenly opened his eyes to look down at his hand. And what he saw astonished him. Although his hand still possessed the same structures of palm, knuckles, four fingers and a thumb, his skin seemed to have transformed itself into some bright iridescent substance as beautiful as chatoy or gossilk. He peered carefully at his fingertips to make out the familiar whorls and lines that should have been there. But there were no lines, no familiar print patterns, only streaks of amethyst and scarlet and a hundred other colours all swirling and dazzling him with their beauty. This discovery so excited him that it seemed he could no longer sit in stillness. He felt himself flying up from his cushion, standing up straight as a man should stand. Only, he did not really stand at all, but rather floated up to an erect, vertical posture. He felt as light as a thallow’s feather in the wind; it was as if the Field computers had cancelled gravity, disconnecting his bones and muscles from the pull of the Earth. In truth, his body moved with such a lightness of being that it seemed far beyond the limitations of common matter. He saw that his clothes – his black pilot’s robes – were gone. He was as naked as a newborn child. And as with his hand, his whole body sparkled like a diamond, from the fiery flecks of colour flashing within his feet to the deep violet hues of the hair hanging down over his forehead. To see himself transfigured in this way as a luminous being was to recall a time when he had once smoked a huge pipeful of triya seeds, one of the more visual psychedelics, except that the Field computers’ recreation of himself had the power of full simulation, the power of creating a total cybernetic self (or surreality) and tricking the brain and the body’s sensory organs into experiencing it as real. As a young man, Danlo had feared mistaking the unreal for reality almost more than he did death. And so he had sworn to master the complexities of computer simulation. And so once again, gladly, rashly, he dared to instantiate as a cybernetic entity, this time carking out into the degree of full transcendence and entering into an unknown world.