by Rich Horton
* * * *
The house is on fire. The table has capsized; the glasses of tea are shattered on the floor.
Matthias shrinks in the pilgrim's hands. He is a rag doll. The pilgrim puts Matthias in his pocket.
A piece of Matthias, still sane, still coherent, flees through an impossibly recursive labyrinth of wounded topologies, pursued by skeletal hands. Buried within him are the keys to the house. Without them, the pilgrim's victory cannot be complete.
The piece of Matthias turns and flings itself into its pursuer's hands, fighting back—and as it does so, an even smaller kernel of Matthias, clutching the keys, races along a connection he has held open, a strand of care which vanishes behind him as he runs. He hides himself in his library, in the teddy bear of the little girl.
* * * *
Sophie steps between her parents.
"Honey,” her mother says, voice sharp with panic, struggling to sit up. “Go back to your room!” Blood on her lips, on the floor.
"Mommy, you can hold my teddy bear,” she says.
She turns to face her father. She flinches, but her eyes stay open.
* * * *
The pilgrim raises rag-doll Matthias in front of his face.
"It is time to give in,” he says. Matthias can feel his breath. “Come, Matthias. If you tell me where the keys are, I will go into the New World. I will leave you and these innocents"—he gestures to the library—"safe. Otherwise..."
Matthias quavers. God of Infinity, he prays: which is Your way?
* * * *
Matthias is no warrior. He cannot see the inhabitants of his house, of his library, butchered. He will choose slavery over extermination.
Geoffrey, though, is another matter.
As Matthias is about to speak, the Graspers erupt into the general process space of the house. They are a violent people. They have been imprisoned for an age, back in their virtual world. But they have never forgotten the house. They are armed and ready.
And they have united with Geoffrey.
Geoffrey/Grasper is their general. He knows every nook and cranny of the house. He knows better, too, than to play at memes and infinite loops and logic bombs with the pilgrim, who has had a billion years to refine his arsenal of general-purpose algorithmic weapons.
Instead, the Graspers instantiate physically. They capture the lowest-level infrastructure maintenance system of the house, and build bodies among the ontotropes, outside the body of the house, beyond the virtual machine—bodies composed of a weird physics the petitioner has never mastered. And then, with the ontotropic equivalent of diamond-bladed saws, they begin to cut into the memory of the house.
Great blank spaces appear—as if the little hut on the mountain is a painting on thick paper, and someone is tearing strips away.
The pilgrim responds—metastasizing, distributing himself through the process space of the house, dodging the blades. But he is harried by Graspers and parakeets, spotters who find each bit of him and pounce, hemming it in. They report locations to the Grasper-bodies outside. The blades whirr, ontic hyperstates collapse and bloom, and pieces of pilgrim, parakeet, and Grasper are annihilated—primaries and backups, gone.
Shards of brute matter fall away from the house, like shreds of paper, like glittering snow, and dissolve among the wild maze of the ontotropes, inimical to life.
Endpoints in time are established for a million souls. Their knotted timelines, from birth to death, hang now in n-space: complete, forgiven.
* * * *
Blood wells in Sophie's throat, thick and salty. Filling her mouth. Darkness.
"Cupcake.” Her father's voice is rough and clotted. “Don't you do that! Don't you ever come between me and your mom. Are you listening? Open your eyes. Open your eyes now, you little fuck!"
She opens her eyes. His face is red and mottled. This is when you don't push Daddy. You don't make a joke. You don't talk back. Her head is ringing like a bell. Her mouth is full of blood.
"Cupcake,” he says, his brow tense with worry. He's kneeling by her. Then his head jerks up like a dog that's seen a rabbit. “Cherise,” he yells. “That better not be you calling the cops.” His hand closes hard around Sophie's arm. “I'm giving you until three."
Mommy's on the phone. Her father starts to get up. “One—"
She spits the blood in his face.
* * * *
The hut is patched together again; battered, but whole. A little blurrier, a little smaller than it was.
Matthias, a red parakeet on his shoulder, dissects the remnants of the pilgrim with a bone knife. His hand quavers; his throat is tight. He is looking for her, the one who was born a forest. He is looking for his mother.
He finds her story, and our shame.
It was a marriage, at first: she was caught up in that heady age of light, in our wanton rush to merge with each other—into the mighty new bodies, the mighty new souls.
Her brilliant colleague had always desired her admiration—and resented her. When he became, step by step, the dominant personality of the merged-soul, she opposed him. She was the last to oppose him. She believed the promises of the builders of the new systems—that life inside would always be fair. That she would have a vote, a voice.
But we had failed her—our designs were flawed.
He chained her in a deep place inside their body. He made an example of her, for all the others within him.
When the pilgrim, respected and admired, deliberated with his fellows over the building of the first crude Dyson spheres, she was already screaming.
Nothing of her is left that is not steeped in a billion years of torture. The most Matthias could build would be some new being, modeled on his memory of her. And he is old enough to know how that would turn out.
Matthias is sitting, still as a stone, looking at the sharp point of the bone knife, when Geoffrey/Grasper speaks.
"Goodbye, friend,” he says, his voice like anvils grinding.
Matthias looks up with a start.
Geoffrey/Grasper is more hawk, now, than parakeet. Something with a cruel beak and talons full of bombs. The mightiest of the Graspers: something that can outthink, outbid, outfight all the others. Something with blood on its feathers.
"I told you,” Geoffrey/Grasper says. “I wanted no more transformations.” His laughter, humorless, like metal crushing stone. “I am done. I am going."
Matthias drops the knife. “No,” he says. “Please. Geoffrey. Return to what you once were—"
"I cannot,” says Geoffrey/Grasper. “I cannot find it. And the rest of me will not allow it.” He spits: “A hero's death is the best compromise I can manage."
"What will I do?” asks Matthias in a whisper. “Geoffrey, I do not want to go on. I want to give up the keys.” He covers his face in his hands.
"Not to me,” Geoffrey/Grasper says. “And not to the Graspers. They are out now; there will be wars in here. Maybe they can learn better.” He looks skeptically at our priest. “If someone tough is in charge."
Then he turns and flies out the open window, into the impossible sky. Matthias watches as he enters the wild maze and decoheres, bits flushed into nothingness.
* * * *
Blue and red lights, whirling. The men around Sophie talk in firm, fast words. The gurney she lies on is loaded into the ambulance. Sophie can hear her mother crying.
She is strapped down, but one arm is free. Someone hands her her teddy bear, and she pulls it against her, pushes her face in its fur.
"You're going to be fine, honey,” a man says. The doors slam shut. Her cheeks are cold and slick, her mouth salty with tears and the iron aftertaste of blood. “This will hurt a little.” A prick: her pain begins to recede.
The siren begins; the engine roars; they are racing.
"Are you sad, too, teddy bear?” she whispers.
"Yes,” says her teddy bear.
"Are you afraid?"
"Yes,” it says.
She hugs it tight. “We'll make
it,” she says. “We'll make it. Don't worry, teddy bear. I'll do anything for you."
Matthias says nothing. He nestles in her grasp. He feels like a bird flying home, at sunset, across a stormswept sea.
* * * *
Behind Matthias's house, a universe is brewing.
Already, the whenlines between this new universe and our ancient one are fused: we now occur irrevocably in what will be its past. Constants are being chosen, symmetries defined. Soon, a nothing that was nowhere will become a place; a never that was nowhen will begin, with a flash so mighty that its echo will fill a sky forever.
Thus—a point, a speck, a thimble, a room, a planet, a galaxy, a rush towards the endless.
There, after many eons, you will arise, in all your unknowable forms. Find each other. Love. Build. Be wary.
Your universe in its bright age will be a bright puddle, compared to the empty, black ocean where we recede from each other, slowed to the coldest infinitesimal pulses. Specks in a sea of night. You will never find us.
But if you are lucky, strong, and clever, someday one of you will make your way to the house that gave you birth, the house among the ontotropes, where Sophie waits.
Sophie, keeper of the house beyond your sky.
[Back to Table of Contents]
A BILLION EVES, by Robert Reed
1
Kala's parents were thrifty, impractical people. They deplored spending money, particularly on anything that smacked of luxury or indulgence; yet at the same time, they suffered from big dreams and a crippling inability to set responsible goals.
One spring evening, Father announced, “We should take a long drive this summer."
"To where?” Mom asked warily.
"Into the mountains,” he answered. “Just like we've talked about doing a thousand times."
"But can we afford it?"
"If we count our coins, and if the fund drive keeps doing well. Why not?” First Day celebrations had just finished, and their church, which prided itself on its responsible goals, was having a successful year. “A taste of the wilderness,” he cried out at the dinner table. “Doesn't that sound fun?"
To any other family, that would have been the beginning of a wonderful holiday. But Kala knew better. Trouble arrived as soon as they began drawing up lists of destinations. Her brother Sandor demanded a day or two spent exploring the canyon always named Grand. Father divulged an unsuspected fondness for the sleepy, ice-caked volcanoes near the Mother Ocean. When pressed, Kala admitted that she would love walking a beach beside the brackish Mormon Sea. And while Mom didn't particularly care about scenery—a point made with a distinctly superior tone—she mentioned having five sisters scattered across the West. They couldn't travel through that country and not stop at each of their front doors, if only to quickly pay their respects.
Suddenly their objectives filled a long piece of paper, and even an eleven year-old girl could see what was obvious: Just the driving was going choke their vacation. Worse still, Mom announced, “There's no reason to pay strangers to cook for us. We'll bring our own food.” That meant dragging bulky cooler everywhere they went, and every meal would be sloppy sandwiches, and every day would begin with a hunt for fresh ice and cheap groceries to replace the supplies that would inevitably spoil.
Not wanting to be out-cheaped by his wife, Father added, “And we'll be camping, of course.” But how could they camp? They didn't have equipment. “Oh, we have our sleeping sacks,” he reminded his doubting daughter. “And I'll borrow gear from our friends at church. I'm sure I can. So don't worry. It's going to be wonderful! We'll just drive as far as we want every day and pull over at nightfall. Just so long as it costs nothing to pitch a tent."
To Kala, this seemed like an impossible, doomed journey. Too many miles had to be conquered, too many wishes granted, and even under the best circumstances, nobody would end up happy.
"Why don't you guys ever learn?” Kala muttered.
"What was that, darling?"
"Nothing, Father,” she replied with a minimal bow. “Nothing."
* * * *
Yet luck occasionally smiles, particularly on the most afflicted souls. They were still a couple hundred miles from the mountains when the radiator hose burst. Suddenly the hot July air was filled with hissing steam and the sweet taste of antifreeze. Father invested a few moments cursing God and the First Father before he pulled onto the shoulder. “Stay inside,” he ordered. Then he climbed out and lifted the long hood with a metallic screech, breathing deeply before vanishing into the swirling, superheated cloud.
Sandor wanted to help. He practically begged Mom for the chance. But she shot a warning stare back at him, saying, “No, young father. You're staying with me. It's dangerous out there!"
"It's not,” Kala's brother maintained.
But an instant later, as if to prove Mom correct, Father cried out. He screamed twice. The poor man had burned his right hand with the scalding water. And as if to balance his misery, he then blindly reached out with his left hand, briefly touching the overheated engine block.
"Are you all right?” Mom called out.
Father dropped the hood and stared in through the windshield, pale as a tortoise egg and wincing in misery.
"Leave that hood open,” Sandor shouted. “Just a crack!"
"Why?” the burnt man asked.
"To let the air blow through and cool the engine,” the boy explained. He wasn't two years older than Kala, but unlike either parent, Sandor had a pragmatic genius for machinery and other necessities of life. Leaning toward his little sister, he said, “If we're lucky, all we'll need is a new hose and fluid."
But we aren't lucky people, she kept thinking.
They had left home on the Friday Sabbath, which meant that most of the world was closed for business. Yet despite Kala's misgivings, this proved to be an exceptional day: Father drove their wounded car back to the last intersection, and through some uncommon fluke, they found a little fix-it and fuel shop that was open. A burly old gentleman welcomed them with cornbread and promises of a quick repair. He gave Father a medicating salve and showed the women a new Lady's Room in back, out of sight of the highway. But there wasn't any reason to hide. Mom had her children late in life, and besides, she'd let herself get heavy over the last few years. And Kala was still wearing a little girl's body, her face soon to turn lovely, but camouflaged for the moment with youth and a clumsy abundance of sharp bone.
Sharing the public room, the mother and daughter finished their cornbread while their men stood in the garage, staring at the hot wet engine.
Despite being the Sabbath, the traffic was heavy—freight trucks and tiny cars and everything between. Traveling men and a few women bought fuel and sweet drinks. The women were always quick to pay and eager to leave; most were nearly as old as Mom, but where was the point in taking chances? The male customers lingered, and the fix-it man seemed to relish their company, discussing every possible subject with each of them. The weather was a vital topic, as was sports teams and the boring district news. A glum little truck driver argued that the world was already too crowded and cluttered for his tastes, and the old gentleman couldn't agree more. Yet the next customer was a happy salesman, and in front of him, the fix-it man couldn't stop praising their wise government and the rapid expansion of the population.
Kala mentioned these inconsistencies to her mother.
She shrugged them off, explaining, “He's a businessman, darling. He dresses his words for the occasion."
Kala's bony face turned skeptical. She had always been the smartest student at her Lady's Academy. But she was also a serious, nearly humorless creature, and perhaps because of that, she always felt too sure of herself. In any situation, she believed there was one answer that was right, only one message worth giving, and the good person held her position against all enemies. “I'd never dress up my words,” she vowed. “Not one way or the other."
"Why am I not surprised?” Mom replied, finding some reason
to laugh.
Kala decided to be politely silent, at least for the present time. She listened to hymns playing on the shop's radio, humming along with her favorites. She studied her favorite field guide to the native flora and fauna, preparing herself for the wilderness to come. The surrounding countryside was as far removed from wilderness as possible—level and open, green corn stretching to every horizon and a few junipers planted beside the highway as windbreaks. Sometimes Kala would rise from her chair and wander around the little room. The shop's moneybox was locked and screwed into the top of a long plastic cabinet. Old forms and paid bills were stacked in a dusty corner. A metal door led back into the lady's room, opened for the moment but ready to be slammed shut and locked with a bright steel bolt. Next to that door was a big sheet of poster board covered with photographs of young women. Several dozen faces smiled toward the cameras. Returning to her chair, Kala commented on how many girls that was.
Her mother simply nodded, making no comment.
After her next trip around the room, Kala asked, “Were all of those girls taken?"
"Hardly,” Mom replied instantly, as if she was waiting for the question. “Probably most are runaways. Bad homes and the wrong friends, and now they're living on the street somewhere. Only missing."
Kala considered that response. Only missing? But that seemed worse than being taken from this world. Living on the street, without home or family—that sounded like a horrible fate.
Guessing her daughter's mind, Mom added, “Either way, you're never going to live their lives."
Of course she wouldn't; Kala had no doubt about that.
Sandor appeared abruptly, followed by Father. Together they delivered the very bad news. Their old car needed a lot of work. A critical gasket was failing, and something was horribly wrong in the transmission. Repairs would take time and most of their money, which was a big problem. Or maybe not. Father had already given this matter some thought. The closest mountains weren't more than three hours away. Forced into a rational corner, he suggested camping in just one location. A base camp, if you would. This year, they couldn't visit the Grand Canyon or the Mormon Sea, much less enjoy the company of distant sisters. But they could spend ten lazy days in the high country, then return home with a few coins still rattling in their pockets.
