05. Children of Flux and Anchor (45 page)

Wizards. The earliest attempt. A way to integrate human and machine with the machine in charge, and one that didn't work.

"We thought a million million times faster than you, and we believed faster was automatically superior. We believed we had purged ourselves of all human instincts, human emotions. We believed we were gods. We set out to find other gods, or perhaps the primary God. We had good reason to believe such a being existed. We observed, as you can not, that every single thing of matter has a string. Every one, no matter how small or insignificant, throughout the entire universe. Don't look for it. It took us to have a means to see them at all. Still, that which endured, from rock to cosmic dust, was stringed. That which died, or was converted to energy, had at that moment an activity, a readout which traveled out on the string at that moment. All that was had been preserved, somewhere, by someone. Yet energy, pure energy, had no strings unless it permanently interacted with matter. Our physical selves had strings; we do not. In our arrogance, we wished to follow those strings."

Strings. . . . A universe of strings and readouts. . . . The soul. . . .

"The Flux universe turned out to be not a universe at all, but rather a comparatively thin coating over the entire outer surface of our own universe. It is not passive. It is not inert.

"It is a grid."

A grid. . . . The entire universe. . . . All that is and all contained within it. . . . But what could be outside a universe?

"We could ride the Flux, but we could not pass through. There is another universe there, another something, but it is beyond physical law and logic as we know it. We could not comprehend it. We could not speak to it. We could not make it recognize that we existed. We can never know what is there, what created this universe, maintains this grid, and to what end. You might, someday. All of you. Your files will be read out. Who knows where you will find yourselves one day, and under what conditions? Heaven? Hell? A laboratory slide? Who can know?
That
is our eternal torment. We know there is something else, and we can never know what it is. We are doomed to wander the universe until it ends and the final readout takes place. Then we will die. It is a hundred billion years in the future. It is no concern of yours. We, however, must live that full span at a million million times the processing speed of your brains. If it is remote to you, it is an eternity to us."

They want sympathy? They abandoned us. They let it all happen. They let World become a stagnant and evil place. . . .

"We are
all
the children of Flux and Anchor, but you are the inheritors. Unwittingly, we created a new race, a different race, a race that is the sum of its forefathers, yet is so accustomed to dynamics that it takes them for granted. Form, allegiances, all may be changed with a wave and a wish. Mountains here one day, there the next.

"We have traveled far and seen much, although we have explored but a tiny fraction of what there is to see. We have seen many other races, none of them human in any real way, yet they all had something in common: They all arose from some mixture of primordial slime on some given world, and survived, then dominated it because they evolved the means and the attitudes for doing so. They are all fiercely aggressive. You have seen one of them, the
Samish.
They were totally alien, yet—be honest—did you not find them disturbingly familiar?"

Matson riding out from the old Anchor Gates. . . . "That was almost us, you know.
...
"

"Some, but a select few, also developed some or all of the so-called virtues. Love, self-sacrifice, nobility, high standards of morality and ethics, mercy, compassion. These are rare. Few races, even though they think and build and reach for the stars, ever differentiate between love and lust, for example, and most consider kindness, compassion, and mercy as weaknesses to be eliminated where found—if they understand the concepts at all. A lot of humans pay lip service to those values, but few practice them or think any different. We, however, made a startling discovery. The higher a race's quotient of those attributes, the longer its survival and growth. Both sides are at war, and the aggressive side usually wins. Extermination may be a long time in coming in the physical sense, but they are soul-dead."

This is beginning to sound like a sermon. . . .

"We looked at everything up and down the human string-line. Do not fear the
Samish
return. They are still very much around and as bad as ever, but they long ago abandoned this region after destroying what they could. The odds are quite slim that they will look this way again. You are now in their backwater, far in the rear and forgotten. Do not expect a reunion with Mother Earth. It is a burned-out rock, not lifeless but devoid of all human, indeed all sentient, life."

They believe in mixing the good and bad news in strong doses. . . .

"There is another surviving human colony, but we urge you, if you find your way out there by yourselves, not to run to them. Let them be. They will welcome you at first, but then they will fear you, and finally they will hate you. Your powers, our very existence, was due to a complex but subtle error in the Kagan Master Operating System. It was a "bug," as it were. The other colony used a pirated variation of the system on machines operating much like ours, but less sophisticated. They are all Anchor. They do not access the grid. If you can determine, through your own efforts, how to reach them, you will be able to carry your programs with you and devise more along the way. To them, you will be more godlike than human. You will have to enslave or destroy them. They are not well-off, but they will survive. They should follow their own path. You can not give them this power. You can only dilute it."

Another good and bad, this time in one thing. Other humans, another civilization out there, but closed to us.
Then we're not human anymore. Some of us.

The computers seemed to anticipate the thought.

"Don't think, as we did, that your power has made you something you are not. You are the product of human culture. So are we. Don't reject it, as we did. Learn from it. You have lived for thousands of years with two types of humans on this world. There is no reason the universe can't have two types, either. And that is the crux of the matter."

Here it comes. . . .

"After all those centuries of stagnancy, we arrive when there is a period of incredible change. Because Flux is dynamic, and because repression only speeds up the dynamic when it is lifted, your knowledge is doubling every ten years, not merely in rediscovering the old but in discovering the new. Although we erased the programs, before we left, that told you how to reach other stars, this rediscovery is inevitable. Also inevitable is that one day someone, somewhere, will discover a way around the blocks on the master computers. There are a hundred ways. If it is the brutal part of your nature that discovers this, your race, and probably the other as well, is doomed. The dynamic will be towards the norm for sentient races, which is more towards the
Samish
position—and far worse."

New Eden, or a hundred others. . . .

"We returned, perhaps in shame, our figurative heads bowed, with some childlike idea that perhaps we could reassume our old positions, take up the old partnership, this time on a much better basis. Of course, we can not. The entire network can not contain us, any more than you could be contained in a protozoan. And even if we could, should we? Could we resist, any more than one of your 'Fluxlords,' in remaking you in our own image? Even the
Samish
got that way from the best of motives. We are, at our core, logical creatures with human imperfections. We know the answer. Out of love, we will leave. But we are loath to leave such things to random chance. We know which side almost always wins. Blame it on evolution, if you know what that is. If you don't, you will. You are the masters of your own evolution now.

"Because the just may win many battles, but only the last battle counts, we find we can tip the odds, but just a bit. Those of you gathered here all participated together in a great undertaking. Together you beat the
Samish,
and that was impressive, but that is not what we are talking about. You are twenty-eight of the thirty-two surviving Overriders and Guards of that battle. The Soul Riders and Guardians, as you call them, selected you from that pool. All of you here have one astonishing, unprecedented, illogical thing in common. You had this whole world, and everything and everyone in it, in your power. You were the gods who could do
anything.
No more ultimate power is possible here than what you had.
And all twenty-eight of you voted to give it up, and forced the others to do so as well.
Such a thing is beyond being human. It goes against everything that got you to this point."

So that's who they all were, Spirit thought, wonderingly. Around this Gate were people she had shared intimate thoughts with, had decided battle strategy with, had determined the future of World with, yet these were anonymous people, blank faces, unknown names for the most part. They shared the most incredible bond there could ever be, and yet most had never met.

"Because of this one action, we can not leave without doing something, however small, to load the dice a bit, to tip the odds away from what is the normal dynamic. We will die, in ignorance, but perhaps with this one thing we will have created something great, something unique, something that will both awe and confound those who run our grids. Someone will control those computers. Whoever does so will be able to block anyone else from ever doing so. We can think of no better way to tip the odds, no better way to load the dice of the future, than to give the keys to those who refused to take them."

Spirit, and many of the others, were taken aback by this. The fact is, after seeing the
Samish
and having the computers themselves show what humans would become if full access remained, there really hadn't been any choice. She never had thought of it as being at all unusual.

"Each of you has the key within the Soul Rider's song. The Soul Rider will remain so long as you wish, and will open the way at any time. You may keep it, or you may give it up. The Soul Rider will go to whomever you select. By its own choice in selecting you, it accomplished something extraordinary, something great. Fifty-six people who gave up being gods because they had more concern for their race and their civilization than they did for personal power and gain. They chose well. If you die, they will try and find another like you, if they can. You may choose to open your section, or not, or be together. This need not change a thing. But no program can bind you if you do not wish it, and nothing is immutable. It can not be taken from you; it can only be given away. Yet no one else may enter while you hold the key. No one. We can think of none more qualified to hold it than ones who do not desire it and refused it once.

"We will be going now. The universe is vast, and at least we can see a lot of it. Perhaps we will drop back sometime to see how you are doing, and talk to your heirs—if they are worth talking to. Farewell. You are on your own now, as you should be."

The klaxons sounded. The woman's voice announced, "Outgoing, outbound! Change all flags. Clear and stand by."

In a few minutes, with the same routine as the ancient ships had gone through, the thing was gone, leaving the twenty-eight of them and their Soul Riders standing there, staring at emptiness.

It was a curious reunion out in the void; curious because it was unwanted, and because none of them were particularly overjoyed with what they had just had thrust upon them, but it was an interesting one all the same. There were introductions—some names that had been known would never be forgotten—and a few shocks. The biggest was when a short, very chubby girl, who looked no more than seventeen or eighteen with a dark complexion and long, thick black hair, introduced herself as Suzl.

"You're not Suzl," Spirit countered. "Not the one
I
know."

"Well, I am. Do I know you?"

"Spirit. Spirit—Ryan."

"Holy shit! And you think
I
don't look right! Haven't you figured it out yet? When they reassembled us, or whatever they did, it was without any spells of any kind. Me, I look just like I did when they kicked me out of Anchor Logh. You—I think you look like you
would've
looked when Coydt grabbed you if your mom hadn't screwed around with your genes. You look a lot taller, except you're a head taller than she is and you got tits. I guess Matson's side was good for
something
!"

"Suzl—is that
really
you?"

"You bet it is. Kind of ugly-cute, aren't I? Now you see why I kept my Fluxgirl body so long."

"You look fine to me!"

Their powers were back, and Spirit made a mirror and looked at herself. It was something of a shock in that Suzl was right. She looked a
lot
like Cass in the face, although she was almost as tall as Sondra and had more of a figure than her mother. She was not ugly, nor pretty, but really pretty
average.
She had never in her life looked average before.

The twenty-eight held a conference to decide just what to do. A big, grizzled, dark-skinned man with a wide nose, big, brown eyes, and woolly hair who said his name was Achmed finally chaired it because he had the voice, presence, and will to do so. He'd been a Guardian for a quadrant down at Gate Six.

"I'm not going to mince words," he told them. "Whether we like it or not, we have to make a major decision all over again. A bunch of them. The first question is, Does anyone here want to open his or her control room again, right now?"

There were a lot of looks, but nobody spoke.

"All right, then. We keep them closed. I will go further than that. If I hear no objections, if anyone
does
open theirs, the rest of us will shut him or her down. Any comments?"