by Tony Daniel
“If I’m not mistaken, it’s a—”
“I know what it is , Lebedev! What I mean to say is ‘what is that doing there?’”
They were both watching an image on a restricted back-channel feed on the merci network used exclusively by cloudships for communications. The image originated from far out on the Dark Matter Road that stretched between the solar system and the Alpha Centauri system. The signal was coming from Misha, the only daughter of Cloudship Tolstoy. She was stationed on a little-known tributary to the Road, a spit that led away from the Road, running onward for ten thousand kilometers in the general direction of the constellation Cygnus. It then turned round and round itself in the same manner as a spiral jetty in an ocean on Earth, spiraling inward like a grasping tendril on a vine. And at the center of the jetty, at the tip end of the last turn of the spiral, was the legendary secret graveyard of the cloudships of the outer system. Cloud-ship Misha was the official keeper of the cemetery now that Tolstoy had taken his thirteen sons away to war within the solar system.
Only a select few ships even knew the way to the burial ground. No one else had ever found the place.
Until now.
“Misha dear, when did you notice this?”
“About fifteen minutes ago,” the young cloudship replied. “I called Uncle Lebedev as soon as I could.”
“And we’re speaking on a completely encrypted channel now?”
“Of course, Uncle Tacitus.”
“Good work,” said Tacitus. “Quick and effective thinking, my dear. Your father will be proud of you.”
“ If he notices.”
Tension there. Tacitus could only imagine the position of the lone daughter in the midst of all those brothers.
“In his way, he will be. He adores you.”
“Look, I want to get on with my job,” Misha said, “without asking him what to do. So could you two tell me how I should handle this?”
Tacitus considered for a moment. This could be a hallucination. He could finally be losing it after all these years. It could also be a trap. But both options were absurd. His mind was as sharp as ever, and what could Amés, or anyone else, for that matter, hope to gain from a ruse in this form? Nothing. No, it was what exactly what Misha’s observation and his database was telling him.
A Jeep Wrangler, white in color. An automobile.
Flying through space over a billion miles from the planet Earth.
“I think you should go and find out if anyone is driving,” Tacitus said.
Misha did as suggested and moved toward the Jeep. But when she got within a few hundred meters, the vehicle turned and sped away from her. Fast. Faster than anything in history ever had, in fact. Half the speed of light in a vacuum. And then, at a hundred kilometers distance, it slammed on the brake, came to a seemingly inertialess stop—as easily as it had started up—and attained its impossible speed. Then the vehicle turned and faced Cloud-ship Misha once again.
Misha continued doggedly toward it, and the Jeep repeated its actions once again. But this time, it did not move at half the speed of light. Instead, it jumped. First it was in one position; then in the next instant, it was in another several kilometers away.
“By God,” Lebedev whispered. “By God, did you see that, Monty?”
“Yes,” Tacitus replied. The cloudship considered for a moment. “Misha, I suggest you hold your position. Keep an eye on that thing.”
Misha acknowledged and applied reverse thrust until she was motionless relative to the Jeep.
“Lebedev, old friend,” said Tacitus, “could you join me for a brief consultation?”
Instantly, Lebedev was on Tacitus’s sailing vessel in his virtual Mediterranean Sea. Lebedev manifested as a trim, dark-complected man, taller than average, and dressed in a conservative three-piece suit complete with cravat, from some bygone era. He accepted when Tacitus offered him a cigar. The old friends took a moment and lit up before speaking. As always, the tang of good cigar smoke on his tongue stimulated Tacitus’s thoughts.
“It appears someone has discovered faster-than-light travel,” Tacitus said.
“Good God, think of the implications,” Lebedev said. “The superluminal grail! And it’s ours.”
“I’m not so sure to whom it belongs,” Tacitus said. “If it belongs to anyone.” He exhaled a puff of smoke, then considered the beginnings of gray ash on his cigar tip. “Obviously whoever it is doesn’t want to be caught. And we’re not in a position to catch them, are we?”
“What’s to be done?”
“Well, we can either attempt to destroy them, or we can talk to them. I have a feeling we’d have trouble accomplishing the former, so let’s try talking.”
“Yes, of course,” said Lebedev. “But who could it be?”
Tacitus chuckled and took another draw on his cigar. He looked out at his shimmering Levantine horizon. “What I want to know,” the old cloudship said, “is what kind of mileage that thing gets.”
Cloudship Misha’s voice came from a nearby loudspeaker.
“Uncles, I’ve spoken to—them. The car and driver.”
“Spoken to them? How?” Tacitus asked. He hoped it was not over the merci. Such communications could be monitored from any distance. He even suspected this quantum-encrypted channel on the merci used by the cloudships for secret communication. But he was now at Pluto, and Misha was as far away from the sun as Pluto yet again, so there was no possibility of a face-to-face discussion.
“At first, by blinking lights. The vehicle used its headlights. It was a simple greeting. But that gave me an idea. I remembered that those old ground cars had some sort of electromagnetic receivers, so I looked it up. AM radio, it’s called. So I found the appropriate wavelengths. And I established a low-powered broadcast. And I made a sign.”
“A sign?”
“In Basis. Big block letters. I formed it along the outside of my left arm. About two kilometers across.”
“And what did the sign say?”
“Turn on your radio.”
“Very good, Misha.”
“And so I broadcast to 880 kilohertz on the AM band, and asked if he—or they—could hear me. The Jeep flashed its lights once, which I assume means yes. I asked them a series of questions they could answer with yes or no: How many are there? Two was the answer. That includes the vehicle. I then asked if they come from the solar system.”
“What’s the answer to that?” Lebedev asked, knocking the ash from his cigar tip as he whirled to face the loudspeaker.
“Yes,” Misha replied, “they do. I went through the Met radials, then the planets. They come from Earth, Uncles. I asked them if they were representatives of Director Amés.”
Tacitus tensed. What a display this would be for Amés—a contemptuous notification that he now possessed superluminal flight. Yet in his heart Tacitus knew Amés would opt for a more spectacular and damaging display if he had acquired that power.
“They blinked back that they were not Interlocking Directorate representatives. In fact, I established that they are fugitives from the Met,” Misha said. “At that point, I told them I had to speak to my superiors. And that’s where the matter stands, Uncles.”
“Excellent work, Misha,” Tacitus said. He turned to Lebedev. In the virtuality, Lebedev presented his features—probably unconsciously—as dark and heavily creased, utterly Slavic. Tacitus reflected that he had never appeared as such an iconic Russian in his first biological body.
“If Amés had this process fully developed, he would have used it in the recent attacks,” said Lebedev. He suddenly burst into a deep, rumbling laugh. “Of course, we will never catch those in the graveyard unless they wish to be caught.”
Tacitus nodded, considered the wood grain of his ship’s railing. “Maybe we should tell them to keep going,” he said. “To the stars. Take their chances out there. Leave the rest of us to kill one another off.”
“You can’t be serious!”
Tacitus turned and faced his ol
d friend. Together they had seen humanity take to space, transform into almost unimaginable forms. And keep the same human heart. Love, hate, ambition, greed, curiosity, complacency—it was all still there, tucked into a thousand thousand physical structures, a billion billion manifestations.
But of course, any travelers, however small and insignificant, would always carry that heart with them. If there was anything Tacitus had learned in his thousand years of life, it was this fact. There was no way to abdicate the responsibility for who you are. Each and every human was accountable for the heart the entire species would take to the stars.
Tacitus transferred his cigar back to his mouth and clapped a hand on Lebedev’s shoulder. The two turned back to the rail and faced the infinite, virtual sea. “Just a thought, old friend,” Tacitus said.
“Sir, sorry to interrupt again,” said Misha’s voice from the loudspeaker. “But I have underestimated the capabilities of the Jeep. It can also transmit. The driver has spoken to me via radio.”
“What did he say?”
“ She , uncle,” said Miranda. Misha corrected Tacitus with the force of the woman often overlooked in an existence full of boys. “She asked permission to come aboard and…‘park,’ is, I believe the word she used.”
Lebedev sighed a heavy Russian sigh. “What a war it will become,” he said in a low voice.
“Pardon?” said Misha.
Tacitus did not turn from gazing at the sea, but he spoke in a loud and clear voice. “Cloudship Misha, tell our travelers that they are very welcome, and to park wherever they want.”
Appendices
Glossary, Guide, and Time Line
Internal Download
INTRODUCTION
Hello, and welcome to your e-year 3017 internal software update! From your internal clock, we see that you’re long overdue for a new version of your personal operating system. The information we are about to download will be transferred faster than the speed of light—instantly, in fact—into your grist pellicle and from there will go into permanent storage in your memory, for recall at will [some delay possible over a 28.8-terabyte modem]. Wonder what it means?
We, the human race in all its myriad forms, will soon be entering upon a period of turmoil and transformation. An empire will rise and fall. Democracy will be put to the fire and hammered into an almost unrecognizable form. Low deeds will be perpetrated, and it will often seem that evil had the upper hand.
Heroes will emerge from the obscurity. Some will die gloriously, while others will be beaten and broken. It will be a hard time to be alive.
Yet it will be a time of incredible ingenuity and fervent creativity. New sciences will be born. Great literature will be written. People who would have ordinarily never known one another will come together to face a common foe. Necessity will abolish prejudice, and humans will become brothers and sisters—and, in some cases, lovers—with those whom they would scarcely have acknowledged as persons before.
Don’t worry. After your complete system update with “The Metaplanetary Guide, Glossary and Time Line,” you will understand everything perfectly. You will be ready for the next step on this, your journey to the e-year 3013.
Thank you very much.
[This free update brought to you by the Friends of Tod, who invite you to remember Tod’s fateful words: “When ignorance comes a-knocking, answer with the shotgun of science!”]
Appendix One
THE BASICS
Met
The Met is the system of space cables, tethers, and planetary lifts along with all the associated bolsas, sacs, armatures, and dendrites that comprise the human-inhabited space of the inner solar system. When seen from a vantage point above the planetary ecliptic near the asteroid belt, the Met shines like a spiderweb, wet with dewdrops, hanging in space between the wheeling planets. The Met is made of cables held together by a macroscopic version of the strong nuclear force. It is infused with grist. Initial construction on the Met began in 2465 C. E.
THE SCIENCE OF THE MET
By the early 2400s, nanotechnologists had united buckyball constructions with superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDS) to create a reproducible molecular chain that displayed quantum behavior on the level visible to the human eye.
The most important behavior that the nanotechnological engineers were able to produce, at least in regards to the Met, is the strong nuclear force. You can picture it as a rubber band connecting two particles. The more you stretch the rubber band, the harder it pulls the particles. When the particles are close together, the rubber band is slack. It is this property of the strong force, operating on a macro level, that gives the Met cables their ability to bend without breaking. Torque forces that would easily separate material made of mere chemical bonds cannot overcome the strong force manifested by the buckeyball SQUIDs, and the Met holds together.
In fact, there is no known force generated by the turnings of the planets that is even close to pushing the Met’s structural tolerances. If you live or travel in the Met, you are as safe as you are on the surface of a planet (which are, themselves, held together, on the level of the atomic nucleus, by the strong force of nature).
THE DEDO
The space cable that connects the planet Mercury to the planet Venus. As with the other main cables, it makes a tremendous loop around the sun—in the Dedo’s case, a loop over the solar south pole. The Dedo is traditionally a center of high culture and finance, the “rich” section of the Met.
THE VAS
The Vas is the space cable that connects the planet Venus with the planet Earth. As with the other main cables, it makes a tremendous loop around the sun—in the Vas’s case, a loop over the solar north pole. The Vas is the most heavily populated portion of the Met, and the most urban in quality. It houses the vast manufacturing complexes of the inner system. The Vas is home to the enormous “lower-middle-class” segment of the Met populace.
THE MARS - EARTH DIAPHANY
The Diaphany is the space cable that connects the planet Mars with the planet Earth. As with the other main cables, it makes a tremendous loop around the sun—in the Diaphany’s case, a loop over the solar south pole. The Mars-Earth Diaphany is the most diverse section of the Met, with a spinning bolsa for almost every culture known to humanity. It is also, in a way, the “suburbs” of the Met, with an average standard of living higher than that of the Vas, but not as opulent as that of the Dedo.
THE ALDISS
The space cable that connects the Earth to the Earth’s moon. This is the oldest section of the Met.
Nanotechnology
The manipulation of materials and processes on a nanometer level using tiny robotic machines (that is, machines controlled by programming) which are themselves made of only a few molecules. Nanotech was the big technological revolution following the biotech revolution.
Grist
Nanotechnological construct that incorporates the Josephson-Feynman graviton detector invented by Raphael Merced. This nano, disseminated throughout the Met, enables instantaneous information transfer over any distance that the nano is dispersed. Grist is also a word used to describe nanotechnological constructs in a general way, whether or not instantaneous information transfer is involved.
Grist-mil
Grist used for a military purpose. Many safeguards built into normal grist are removed in these constructs.
Merced Effect
The instantaneous transfer of information between locations set at any distance apart by the use of quantum-entangled gravitons.
Merci
The merci is the union of grist with the old virtual-reality “web” to produce an instantaneous medium of communication and entertainment. It takes its name from Raphael Merced, the cocreator of the grist and discoverer of the Merced effect. The merci is instantaneous and fully participatory (or not, if you voluntarily decide to restrict yourself—for instance, to “watch a program”). The merci is a combination of old-time television, the Internet, the theater, music,
all manner of performance, virtual-reality games and government.
Virtuality
The virtuality is virtual reality within the grist. The Met is in essence an enormous quantum computer, with instantaneous linkage through the grist. Distance is unimportant for most actions and thought. Every time is local time. The real “landscape” of the virtuality is the complex interlocking of recognition and transfer protocols, of security checks and system gates and barriers. It is a lot like being in an extremely crowded city with a bunch of skeletons and skeleton keys jostling about. In some ways the virtuality is the shadow of the physical Met and the outer system, but in other ways it is nothing like that at all.
Appendix Two
HUMANITY
Human Being
As of 3013 C. E., the first year of the war, almost all of us have at least three parts to our makeup.
ASPECT
The biological, bodily portion of a normal person.
CONVERT
The algorithmic “extra” computing and memory storage portion of a normal person.
PELLICLE
The nanotechnological grist that permeates a normal person. The pellicle mediates between aspect and convert portions of a person.
Free Convert
An artificial intelligence that exists without a biological component. Most free converts are based upon copies of the personalities of historical and/or living human beings, but some are generations removed from this first iteration. All are capable of independent reasoning and action through manipulation of the grist. What free converts can and cannot do is limited by their own programming and by the law. Before the war, there was a form of free-convert “apartheid” in the Met. This did not exist in the outer system—although prejudice did exist everywhere.
