The Unraveling
Page 34
“Well, I’m ready to blast off when you are.”
Shria pulled away and looked at Fift, eyes crinkling. “You’re making fun of me.”
“No,” Fift said. “No, I like it. Our own little hollowed-out rock, all alone in the night, hurtling between the stars.”
“Yes,” Shria said, resting vir chin back on Fift’s head. Vir voice was soft, a little drowsy. “Like that.”
They slid down on the soft couch-floor, and Fift crawled behind Shria and gathered vem into zir arms, encircling vem. Ze slid zir thighs under vir buttocks. Ze snuggled against vir back, and ve nestled back against zir.
In the corridor, zir Fathers shuffled quickly around Father Squell, who was leaning up against the wall. Grobbard, Ellix, Thrimon, Frill, and Smistria jogged down the stairs towards the supper room.
Squell looked down at vir hands. Vir eyes were still a little red from when ze’d cried at Fift’s arrival. Ve glanced up, briefly, and frowned.
Fift slowed down as ze passed, and Squell began walking, so that they were walking side by side.
Fift could feel the muscles of Shria’s back relaxing, one by one. Vir breathing slowed.
“Dobroc’s started training Vails in the Long Conversation,” Fift said to Squell. Ve blanched.
“Including Shria,” ze said. Ze wasn’t sure why ze said it. Was ze trying to provoke Squell into a storm of outrage? Ze felt an angry restlessness moving inside zir, even as zir other body relaxed, nose in Shria’s hair, smelling vem, drifting into the safest sleep.
They were engaged in something so important, so entrancing . . . I used to listen at the crack of the wall when they had their lessons . . .
Squell walked in silence for the length of the corridor, and down the stairs. Then, at the door to the supper room, ve smiled, shyly.
“Well, cubblehedge,” ve said, “Ages pass.”
END DOCUMENT
TRANSMISSION
BEGIN MESSAGE TEXT
Dearest Siob,
Perhaps there’s something perverse in my urge to write to you.
I don’t succumb to it often. The last time was about eight hundred local years ago. I suppose, if you’ve found this letter, you’ll have found that one too—they should be archived at all the same cache-points. If you’re still alive, and still functioning, and still coherent, and still interested, and still mobile enough to find a cache-point, and it’s still operating . . .
I hold out hope. These signals should penetrate a good chunk of sky, perhaps two hundred light years across. I think you’re in there somewhere.
So much of what I am, Siob, I am in resonance with you.
I’m writing you from the place you last saw me, 239.48 seconds ago in my inertial frame of reference. Yes, from that same little world. I know: it’s not like me to have stuck around so long. Twenty thousand local years! But after so much wandering, I wanted to arrive, Siob. I wanted a home.
Whoever designed this place did an admirable job. The ecoforming is a marvel of sobriety and restraint. The people here are ancient stock, paleohuman with no frills, fragile and short-lived—a choice which has worked out admirably. They’ve trundled along here, age after age, while . . . well, I hardly need to tell you what has become of more robust and ambitious designs, like you and me.
I’m enclosing a story from this world, a tale I recently came across. It’s a true story, more or less . . . everyone here is enmeshed in a thick skein of data, and the local parasentiences can do quite a good job of weaving a biography out of the analysis of electronic excreta. Someone took that and turned it into a linear textual narrative . . . and while I’m sure there are some embellishments and errors, I expect it’s reasonably accurate.
I don’t know why I picked this one. I do appear in it myself, briefly, and that’s amusing; but that’s not why. No, I think that it reminded me of us, so long ago when we were young. You were as headstrong and forthright as Shria, I think, and perhaps I was as stubborn and unpredictable as Fift.
Or so I tell myself. But we have existed so long, you and I, accumulating so many layers of memory and interpretation . . . what do I know, really, of who we once were? All I have left is myth.
And surely you’ve now drifted even farther. What might you have become, Siob, in all these centuries since we last met?
Even if I found you again, would you know me? Could we still decipher each other?
Well . . . here’s a story, anyway. A gift for you. A lure. A pattern-seed from which to grow a bridge between our minds. It is a tale of children, so I’ve translated it into the language you and I spoke as children, back in our creche in the Margin, long before any of these worlds were made.
A lure, yes. I would lure you here, Siob, my strange and ancient friend. No matter what you have become.
Be alive, Siob. You have to be alive.
No one here will ever understand me as you could.
Be alive, and find me. Find me soon.
Your friend,
Thavé
END MESSAGE TEXT
BEGIN DOCUMENT ATTACHMENTS
Attachment Listing
Planetary Location and Characteristics
Dramatis Personae
Brief Glossary of Planetary Institutions
Life Cycle
The Ages
PLANETARY LOCATION AND CHARACTERISTICS
For general readers of this document, if any: Due to security concerns and in the tradition of the Seventh Convocation of Long-Lived Mobile Entities on Fostering Civilizational Resilience, the standard galactic location of this planet has not been specified.
(For Siob: I trust that you remember where it is.)
There is, strikingly, no active endonym for the planet itself. Its inhabitants refer to it only as “the world,” or, in the vocational slang of workers in the asteroid belt and outer satellites, “downside.”1
The inhabitants are of engineered paleohuman stock, part of a human-origins restoration effort (~150 kya2), which was repurposed for generation-ship travel (~80 kya). Local human settlement occurred ~50 kya.
At present, the entire surface of the planet is silvomorphic infrastructure—largely forests and wildlands, with no permanent inhabitants. Instead, it is used by different groups (classes of school children, hunting and paleolithic-life enthusiasts, etc.) for recreational purposes, no more than a million bodies at any one time. In addition to biodiversity and environmental stability benefits, this design ensures that in the event of a rapid and lethal total civilizational collapse (e.g., total failure of all automated infrastructure in the interior), an appropriately sized remnant of survivors with relevant skills would be physically positioned on the surface, where they would form a basis for eventual rebound.3
Beneath the surface, various nations are situated in large excavations in the planet’s crust. Generally speaking, habitations are positioned in the cooler region closer to the surface, while, towards the planet’s mantle, production regions powered by geothermal differentials ensure light (via glowtubes), oxygen exchange and airflow, nutrient synthesis, etc. A given excavation functions as an almost completely sealed ecosystem, with near-total recycling of organics and energy in the nutrient flow. This flow is highly optimized, to the extent that any interruption or sequestering of resources from the flow could have serious consequences. The inhabitants have internalized the risks of hoarding, squandering, and flow blockage to the point that many of their everyday insults revolve around these taboos.
Population Statistics of referenced locations
Total population of the planet: 1 trillion
The surface: no permanent population
The Pole: pop. 2.5 million
Nation of Fullbelly: pop. 200 billion
Habitation of Foo: pop. 1 million
Neighborhood of Slow-as-Molasses: pop. 50,000
Habitation of Stiffwaddle: pop. 300,000
Habitation of Temereen: pop. 125,000 (later Windswept Sheltering, pop. 20,000)
Habitation of Wallaco
mp: pop. 10 million
Neighborhood of Tentative Scoop: pop. 230,000
Neighborhood of Izist: pop. 650,000
1 I have actively encouraged this inward-looking tendency, also expressed in disinterest in interstellar travel, pursuant to separation protocols of the Gardenist school.
2 kya = thousands of years ago, measured in the planet’s inertial frame of reference
3 Note that overreliance on the polysomatic network poses a danger to this worst-case recovery plan, since body-separation trauma exacerbated by grief might incapacitate many survivors beyond the recovery point. This is one of the things I have been worrying about lately.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Inhabitants of the Nation of Fullbelly at the time of the Unraveling
Iraxis and Spin-Nupolo Cohorts
Fift Brulio Iraxis (3-bodied Staid, 16 years old, apprentice banker-historian)
Pip Mirtumil Iraxis, Mother (3-bodied Staid, 317, banker-historian)
Nupolo Imsmi Iraxis, Father (2-bodied Vail, 640, military poet)
Arevio Reflori Iraxis, Father (3-bodied Vail, 520)
Squell Urizus Iraxis, Father (4-bodied Vail, 360, asteroid worker)
Smistria Ishteni Iraxis, Father (2-bodied Vail, 320, adjudication reactant)
Frill Evementis Iraxis, Father (4-bodied Vail, 295)
Thurm Takalsit Iraxis, Father (3-bodied Vail, 263, agronomist)
Miskisk Orovoia Iraxis, Father (3-bodied Vail, 240)
Grobbard Erevulios Iraxis, Father (4-bodied Staid, 230, education topology mediator)
Chalia Rigorosa Spin-Nupolo (3-bodied Vail, three months old)
Mulis Ovs Spin-Nupolo, Mother (5-bodied Vail, 432)
Ellix Verenthis Spin-Nupolo, Father (2-bodied Staid, 560, Peaceable), Nupolo Imsmi Iraxis’s youngersibling
Thrimon Urtis Spin-Nupolo, Father (4-bodied Staid, 320)
Egathelie Turum Spin-Nupolo, Father (3-bodied Vail, 308), later, Mother of Lumlu Mageria
(18 other parents)
Fnax Cohort
Shria Qualia Fnax (3-bodied Vail, 16, apprentice genital designer)
Tusha Ivetris Fnax, Shria’s eldersibling (2-bodied Vail, 24)
Sangh Tenrik Fnax, Shria’s Mother (2-bodied Vail, 307)
Polidar Ziz Fnax, Father (5-bodied Staid, 245)
(Tusha’s Mother and 14 other parents)
Um Cohort
Dobroc Pengasius Um (3-bodied Staid, 17, Long Conversation prodigy)
(five Staid eldersiblings, two Vail eldersiblings)
(eighty parents)
Other Children of Foo
Umlish Mnemu Mnathis (4-bodied Staid, 17), accompanied Fift and Shria on the field trip to the surface
(other children on the field trip: Puson, Kimi, Perjes, Tomlest)
Vvonda Tenak Peridity-Chandrus (3-bodied Vail, 20), Shria’s friend
Mmondi Tenak Peridity-Chandrus, vir Mother (3-bodied Vail, 177, liberal Kumruist officiant)
Buturney “Bluey” Snatz Gassal (3-bodied Vail, 22), Shria’s friend
Stogma Arax Eptori (2-bodied Vail, 15), Shria’s friend
Ruich Milva Snedic (3-bodied Vail, 8, student; later: storyteller)
Other Inhabitants of Fullbelly
Pom Politigus (6-bodied Staid, 385, body-design emporium proprietor), Shria’s employer
Panaximandra Shebol (1-bodied Vail, 935, ex-soldier and demagogue)
Hrotrun Videx Spilteritrine (3-bodied Vail, 135, Far Historical index designer), follower of Panaximandra
Predoria Ithigast (2-bodied Vail, 233, industrial reactant), follower of Panaximandra
Meroc Ipithia (4-bodied Staid, 145, apprentice splage coordinator)
Morinti Bob [later Elarus] (3-bodied Staid, 125), team-tag enthusiast
Emim Potching (3-bodied Staid, 75), team-tag enthusiast
Bojum Holkitz (4-bodied Vail, 110), team-tag enthusiast
Honti Pikipo (2-bodied Vail, 45), team-tag enthusiast
Midwives
Miolasia Frin (4-bodied Vail, 506)
Umlum Canalepsis (4-bodied Staid, 469)
Rysthia Aresti (5-bodied Vail, 831)
Elo Fesis (3-bodied Staid, 620)
Others
Thavé (12-bodied Staid, ~500,000, planetary survival consultant), your humble correspondent
BRIEF GLOSSARY OF PLANETARY INSTITUTIONS
adjudicator: professional responsible for the resolving of interpersonal and social conflicts. Prior to the Unraveling, adjudication was successful in almost all cases.
agent: a Far Technological automated entity, resident in the feed, tasked with specific functions such as maintenance of the nutrient flow, or advising a particular human.1
anonybody: an anonymized teleoperated body, superficially integrated with the polysomatic network for temporary use.
Ascensionist: one of the planet’s religions, emotive, lyrical, and focused on the apotheotic transcendence of practitioners.
banker-historian: a professional responsible for emotional accounting, formalizing the story of a person or institution’s emotional states so as to optimally influence their ratings.
consensus: the aggregation of ratings and global opinion, synthesized by Far Technological agents, which allocates most rights to resources, goods and services, feed access privileges, and social status. In addition to global consensus, decisions within a family or enterprise are often made via a consensus moderation framework.
feed: the global information network, integrated directly into inhabitants’ neural experience.
feedgardener: professional who, in concert with agents, monitors, maintains, and shapes the feed.
Groon: one of the planet’s religions, focused on a theurgic entity, Groon, whom devotees are encouraged to scorn and blame, and whose mourning and remorse are redemptive.
Idyll: a facility for those undergoing ontological collapse, allowing a greater degree of behavioral freedom than would be possible in the wider world without damaging ratings, and providing emotional support from professional specialists (who are often themselves undergoing ontological collapse).
Long Conversation: composed over millennia and consisting of tens of millions of stanzas, the Long Conversation is both the collected repository of staidish wisdom and the ritualized communal act of reciting, referencing, juxtaposing, commenting upon, and extending that repository. The degree to which Vail knowledge of and involvement in this project is taboo has varied over the centuries. The project itself predates the formalization of Staids as a “gender,” and is core to Staid identity and practice.
lookup: a component of the feed; the global identity registry which establishes each inhabitant as having a unique identity, advertises that identity to others, and enables access to resources via consensus.
Kumruist: one of the planet’s religions, focused on a semi-mythical prophet and theurgic entity—Kumru, whose sufferings devotees identify with—and sacralizing biological life.
Midwives: an order of specialists, equally divided between Vails and Staids, who have the traditional responsibility for gendering babies. They have, by skillful manipulation of consensus, parlayed this limited formal authority into a much broader authority over who can reproduce and, by extension, which families are permitted to exist.
Near vs. Far History: strictly speaking, Near History is since the settlement and terraforming of the planet, while Far History is the nebulous time before, but in practice Near History means that portion of history which is comprehensible without massive cultural disorientation.
Near vs. Far Technology: though the planet is heir to—and reliant on—hundreds of thousands of years of human development, most of the cultural context of that ancient technology is lost to its current inhabitants. Thus, from habitation architecture to social nuance agents to the nutrient flow, everyday life is enmeshed in Far Technological systems which no one alive fully understands, and which sometimes behave in unpredictable ways. Near Technology, by contrast, is developed and understood locally: while more
modest in scope, it has the advantage of predictability.
ontological collapse: also called “unraveling.” Characterized by extreme variance in emotion and behavior, as different parts of the self decohere and come into open conflict. There is a cultural tension around unraveling, which is considered both a healthy self-maintenance practice and simultaneously (especially for Staids) a somewhat embarrassing loss of control.
Peaceable: a professional tasked with mediating emergent conflicts and maintaining order who is authorized to use nonlethal coercive force. Peaceables are always Staids trained in emotional self-regulation. Their neural states are published and they are not permitted to act in anger, fear, or callous detachment.
polysomatic network: the deep portion of the feed which allows intracellular-level physical states to be synchronized between the multiple bodies of a single person. Bodies are flash-cloned from universal stem cells, usually in infancy, and permeated with networked nanometric replication systems to ensure a phenomenologically smooth experience of singular self.