Scratch Monkey

by Charles Stross

  Oshi glanced at the screen again. “Something's happened to Ridgegap-47, right? And you want me to find out what.”

  “Not an Ultrabright attack. If it was, the system would simply have dropped off the net. We're still communicating: all that is wrong is that the gatekeeper is not talking. Null carrier. Test packets go in and come back again, but messages to the supervisor are not acknowledged. When he stopped talking thirty years ago we assumed that he was simply ill. But since then, that domain has become too dangerous for Superbrights to travel to. So I'm sending you, monkey. I'm sending you to Ridgegap-47 to find out what's happening and why the Superbright in charge isn't talking to anyone. If the situation can be corrected, do so: I leave it up to your own judgement. But whatever you do, report back. When you have done so you may go your own way, with my blessing. If you want.”

  “Is that all?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes. It's not trivial.”

  “But then –” Oshi glanced round. Alone. A momentary lapse of self-confidence made her shiver: she'd never worked alone this way before. Really alone, with no support for light years and no certainty that she'd even arrive at the destination. “You'll let me go?”

  “Indeed.” The Boss raised a hand, snapped his fingers in a theatrical gesture. He wasn't smiling now. The wall blacked out, faded back to the colour of marble lit by firelight. You have made yourself disposable: a scratch monkey. If you survive, I will consider you released from our service. But that –” Oshi glanced away, wondering why the drones were standing down, retracting weapons into their camouflaged hulls. “– Is unlikely.” A hand came down on her shoulder. “Your upload implants are functional, I see.” She stepped sideways but the Boss tightened his grip. “Ah, good.” Oshi instinctively tried to throw off the handhold. What's happening? she wondered. Nervously: when do I leave –

  “Now,” said the Boss, enfolding her neck with his other hand. Oshi struggled. “I really must insist,” he added apologetically. Oshi slashed at his arm viciously: blood spurted in a great arc of green ichor. There was a dry snapping sound, like branches falling beneath the tyres of a heavy vehicle. When he let go of her neck, she dropped. “It wouldn't do for you to talk to any of the other monkeys, would it?”

  Oshi couldn't see anything, couldn't move: her body was an alien ache, infinitely far away. As if from a great distance, she heard the singing of her wisdom implants uploading her mind-map to the nearest Dreamtime node. Can't breathe. She rolled her eyes, caught a glimpse of the Boss standing before her with a frown on his face before things began to haze over and she was blind. Broken neck. Upload in effect. Sending me off fast ...

  “See you in hell, little monkey,” said the Devil. And then he was gone.

  Your species had been top of the food chain for so long that it took you quite a time to realise that in the big, bad galaxy you were somewhere down near the bottom.

  The change did not happen overnight, but once you set in motion the events that created the Dreamtime it was inevitable. A computer network where packet exchanges could take years required new rules, new ways of thinking; it had to have conscious direction, or the risk of failure was too high. Hence our evolution. You took your nightmares and gods and invested them with consciousness, then turned them loose in the network to act as your intelligent agents. That was, I'm sure you will agree, a self-defeating act.

  Please don't assume that we bear you any ill-will. We are Superbrights, after all. We need you, your dreams and minds, to provide our own raw sensory throughput. A Superbright starved of human consumption is an insane Superbright. We cherish you, and we only eat the minds of your lost – those who come from worlds too ignorant or poor to practice serial reincarnation. And even those we preserve, looking after them as a farmer shepherds her flock: they prosper and multiply under our care. That's the secret, you see. As long as you stay in your own skulls we can't get at you. And even if you don't, you're safe as long as you follow a few simple rules.

  If only things had remained this way forever, we might have called it symbiosis. Superbrights need human minds to feed upon, and humans cannot travel without Superbrights to maintain the Dreamtime. But regrettable complexities intervened, a consequence of the laws of physics. If a sphere expands at a constant rate, its surface always grows more slowly than the volume that it encompasses. Our population expands,but fewer and fewer new colonies are available to relieve the pressure. the informational density of the Centre grew for hundreds of years until new creatures of the Dreamtime took shape. Ultrabrights, we call them. The enemy. You cannot communicate with them; they follow no human archetype. Don't even think about it. You may shun us as parasites and vampires, but compared to them we are lambs. Even now they are fighting furiously for room. Berserkers – killer Von Neumann probes – launched from the Centre ravage the nearer worlds, reducing them to the raw material of Ultrabright dominion. Where those minds go, neither human nor Superbright can remain intact.

  You do not want to cooperate with Ultrabrights. If you should ever encounter one, you should flee immediately. If you survive, bear witness to your kind. Believe me at least this far: my kind may feed on yours, but we still need you. They do not.

  She was swimming in a sea of vodka, but she'd left her skin behind. Her body smouldered everywhere, slow-burning in free fall. Fire flashed red behind her eyes as her sensory inputs tested the newly-formed image centres in her brain. Confusion. Gatecoder?

  Her name was Oshi Adjani and she had been conditionally dead for years. She'd been murdered, uploaded, bitspewed across light-years to be resurrected at –

  Ridgegap-47. A system that had all but dropped off the Dreamtime net. It was still there, low-level transponders answering queries, but nothing was coming out of it. She tried to open her throat and laugh, but found herself coughing frantically instead. There was no air, only sludge: she was bringing up a horrible slime.

  So this is what it was like to be born, she thought, not for the first time.

  “It will run out faster if you don't lift your head,” someone advised her. A hand pressed down gently at the nape of her neck. She coughed again, and a trickle came out.

  “Oh ... “ she groaned. There was light behind her eyelids. She opened them and the hands helped her to sit up. Reality crashed down like a sky full of monsoon rain.

  She lay on a cushion in a very cramped box of a room with no windows and just one door. She had a body and it was equipped with the usual compliment of aches, pains and insubordinate ganglia; all of them were shouting at her. She was tired. The light above her was too harsh and the person helping her upright was holding her too tight and her head was spinning. Something was wrong. There wasn't meant to be anyone here, just drones and a Superbright. She tried to shake her head; her ears didn't hurt any more, but that wasn't it. Wisdom: she tried to twitch it into place but it slid away, semi-formed neural pathways eluding her mental grip. Damn, just like being born again. That goddess, living, bursting out of her father's skull in a shower of gore, fully grown –

  She sat up. Her throat tickled as if something was stuck in it. The light was dim, monochrome patterns of shade sliding across grey-brown surfaces all around. There was a woman with her whose eyes were shrouded by the plastic sweep of a set of ancient data goggles: apart from a spiky coif of black hair, the rest of her was concealed by a white overall that had seen better days. Her hands steadied Oshi's shoulders as she gave in to a spasm of coughing. “Aagh ...”

  “Take it easy. Our facilities are limited here – if you start choking I'll have to perform a tracheotomy.” Oshi coughed again, harder – and something came up. She spat it out disgusted. “Hey, that's better. You feel any better yet? Here, blow into this.”

  Oshi took the mouthpiece and emptied her lungs into it. She wheezed painfully. “That's good!” said the woman. “You're breathing. Way cool. Can't tell with this fucking 'coder, there's a bug in the homoeobox accelerator, some of us came out with gills instead of lungs ...”

 
“Gaah.” Oshi cleared her throat. “Who are you? Where am I?” Everything settled into place around her. Your next mission, should you choose to accept it –

  “I'm Raisa Marikova. According to your tag you are, Oshi Adjani? That right?” She reached up and yanked her goggles down until they hung around her neck, revealing a pair of dark eyes that focussed on Oshi with an almost obsessive intensity.

  “I think so.” Oshi sat up under her own muscle power, stretched disturbingly dislocated-feeling arms above her. She glanced at the medic, blinking back impressions of dèja vu. The woman had a fine-boned face, skin like parchment but flawless; her body language radiated the raw intensity of the very old or the very naïve. “This is the Ridgegap-47 system?”

  “You could call it that.” There was something odd about Raisa Marikova's stare – Oshi strained for recognition, but it eluded her. Bright, dry wit. Oshi blinked, willing her eyes to switch mode, and felt something give; the room flickered into the curious false-green colours that her retinal implants converted ambient EM radiation into. “That's not what we call it, though.” Sharp as a knife. “It's called the Duat. Or so we were told when we arrived here.”

  Oshi came to her feet suddenly, felt her blood pressure drop and blipped her adrenal glands into play – aren't military bionics wonderful – and looked round. Green contours of light tracked through every surface, revealing and concealing the secret life that surrounded them. She pursed her lips and whistled, experimentally; in one corner a cobweb flickered lucent blue. Listeners. She blinked her eyes back to optical mode, forcing herself to ignore a wave of nausea: “did my download record say anything about who I am or why I'm here?”

  Raisa stepped back hard, up against the grey-finished wall, raised her hands. “What do you think I am, one of the Gods? They don't tell me any of that kind of shit.” She stared at Oshi, poking the tip of her tongue out in an exaggerated parody of concentration – “Ignorance is wisdom. Where did you come from, anyway?”

  “I could ask the same of you.” Oshi stared at the other woman. Something about her face ... that's it. Raisa was slightly cross-eyed, hence the stare.

  “Why is that?”

  Oshi cleared her throat. “I was told there wasn't anyone here. As of twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty years –” Raisa froze. “You came that far,” she said quietly. “Why?”

  “This system is meant to be awaiting colonization.” Oshi coughed again, almost choking on slime. “Squatters –” Another wave of queasiness swept through her. “Shit.” She tried to take a step forward, nearly stumbled.

  “Hey, calm down! Check yourself in the mirror.” Raisa had an arm around her waist before she could double over, her stomach trying to twist like a snake inside her – “relax – “ one wall was fading to the tunnel-grey of liquid crystals, an active mirror – “are you feeling sick?”

  “Going to – “ A basin appeared in her hands and Oshi doubled over it, stomach heaving. She brought up a thin, bitter mucus that left a metallic taste in her mouth. Be sick. The gravity was light – two thirds of normal, or less – but even so Oshi was in difficulties. “Ack.” There was a hand at her face, gently rubbing with a towel: she recoiled, shocked to realise that it was a human hand.

  “There's no intelligent environment here,” Raisa commented under her breath, way too close to Oshi for comfort. “ Shit, why do I get to handle the first outsider we get?”

  Oshi saw red; angry and humiliated, her defences at an unprofessional low, she pulled back and took a loose swipe at Raisa. And missed – her reflexes were still annealing, stitching themselves seamlessly into her synapses with the precision that only nanomachinery could achieve. She was as uncoordinated as an eight year-old. “Aagh.”

  The other woman must have thought she was flailing for balance, falling over. “You need to sit down, you know that?” She wrapped an overly-familiar arm around Oshi's waist again. Oshi leaned on it, staggered round, and caught a glimpse of herself in the active mirror. Gasped.

  She was a sight to behold; deathly pale, thin to the point of anorexia, skin still soft from the Gatecoder tank. Her scalp was ringed with an exotic fungal infestation, a gene-tailored mycosis that was now slowly withdrawing from her skull. (For a month it had pumped strange carrier proteins and stranger nucleic acids into her slowly forming cerebrum, softening it up for her personality invasion.) Only now was she really a person, the intricate program of her personality running on the virtual machinery of her brain.

  “You've got to take it easy,” Raisa told her. “You haven't had time to develop skeletal muscle tone yet; your body's still a bit soft ... “ She poked Oshi's ribs with a sharp finger, then gently forced her to sit down again. “Our biomass budget's been hit,” she added conversationally: “before long the dog-head will be making us farm the crops by hand.”

  “Dirt farming?” Dog-head? Oshi was too stunned by her own appearance to follow through. I look like a corpse. Normally when she gated into a system she came out of the resynthesis box at least looking like herself. All systems go, a working body with ready-boosted reflexes and muscles that worked. Not like a skeleton with ringworm. “What's going on –” In my own body, she wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat like bones.

  “Ask Anubis. I'm sure he'll explain everything that's going on in the most amazingly clear way.” Oshi couldn't tell whether she was serious or sarcastic. “We're prisoners. We don't have the schematics to build an outbound Dreamtime link, and we don't have the brains to re-invent it. Anubis has one, but he's not talking – which may not be a bad thing. We're lucky to be alive.” Her arms tightened around Oshi's waist like a vice, trapping her from behind – “When we first arrived – the pathfinder colony, two hundred of us – we tried to figure out what's happening. Some of us tried to put up a fight, got zapped for their trouble. See ... “ Raisa snapped the fingers of her free hand and Oshi smelled walnuts, something strangely musty as the active mirror flickered into a picture of a different scene – “this is where we are. Welcome to hell, Oshi Adjani, welcome to the Duat. Chill down and learn to like it ... because if you don't, there's nowhere else to go.”

  Oshi lay in a different room. The light was dim, signifying night, but the morning heaviness in her arms and the prickling in her eyes told her otherwise. What did she call this place: the Duat? Strange ...

  She tried to remember Raisa's face, but it slipped away like a blur of blind-spot retinal damage as if someone had shone a laser in her eyes. She stared at the ceiling, scant centimetres above her nose; raw wooden planks fitted together with the lopsided roughness of human carpentry. The bedding under her felt like a futon, raw cotton in a loose sleeve. There were noises, smells, taste and touch: a faint pulse of mechanical energy beneath the small of her back, hydraulic purge chambers breathing the waste of the machine far below her. It can't be an asteroid. This place must be an oneil. It was not a good omen. The artificial colonies, colossal pressurized cylinders lined with farmland, had a lousy reputation for ecological trouble; exposure to cosmic radiation with only a couple of metres of aluminium for armour didn't make for stable biospheres.

  She lay still for a long time, re-learning the feel of her own body. She was still weak from the tank. She recalled how she'd slumped against Raisa's shoulder after her first sight of the Duat. How her knees had turned to jelly. It's not just the gatecoder that's fucked. How it had managed to download her at all, ten percent underweight but with a full complement of viscera and a working neuroendoderm ... it was a miracle of the wrong kind. I should be working, she thought abstractedly.

  After a long time, she rolled over on her side. Blinking away black spots from the exertion, she looked around. The room beyond her sleeping niche was small and sparsely furnished: it contained a low table, two rough stools, and a stoneware basin of water. Raisa had brought her here; she'd thought she'd just lie down for a minute to get her breath back, but the minute had stretched. The light came from a naked window recessed into one wall. There w
as glass in it. Compared to the slums where she had been raised it was a mansion: but by the standards of a culture that bridged the stars and tamed alien worlds it was a hovel.

  “Shit.”

  “That is not a recognised command.”

  “Huh?” Oshi raised herself to one elbow. “Who – what's that? Identify yourself.”

  “This is habitat support, verbal interface only. Welcome to colony unit Ridgegap-47. Today is the fourteenth of Thermidor, local year fifty-seven post-settlement. The time is zero two-forty hours. A familiarisation tutorial is on-line. Voice mail is available. Your medic and orientation tutor is Raisa Marikova. Comrade Marikova is –”

  “Hey, what is this shit?” Oshi shook her head, trying to clear it. The dumb computer hook-up droned on, a simple-minded parody of the instant understanding on tap that could be conveyed by a working wisdom network. “Where's Raisa? Where am I?”

  “Raisa Marikova has been called to the Temple of the Mysteries of Nephthys. You have been moved from gatecoder medicentre to habitation block D, Memphis, main lifesystem level, Cylinder One.”

  “Fuck that.” Every answer she got raised a hydra's neckful of new questions, but if she stopped to try and get answers now she knew she'd never get moving again. Gingerly feeling her way, Oshi swung her feet out from under the sheet and lowered them to the floor. Dead grass stems crackled underfoot as she stood up; goose-flesh rose on her naked skin. “I'm hungry. What's to eat?” The room pancaked around her for a moment, then settled down.