Forbidden Planets (18 page)
And I had been on Zawinul
since my first time through the gate
.
since my first time through the gate
.
The six months of painful self-torture had all been an illusion imposed by the Singularity.
The millisecond that contained my epiphany was followed by the entire world dropping away from around me, to be replaced simultaneously by another scene entirely.
All about me rose organic-looking irregular towers like a fantastical rainbow coral reef. I stood on a broad deck high up the side of one such tower, open to the air but protected by an invisible canopy of stressor fields. There were no individuals of any type in sight and no traffic. The deserted city seemed to be holding its breath.
I turned around. There at my back stood an Indrajal gate, through which I must have emerged after stepping through the Standfast portal.
I turned back to look outward again.
There a foot from my face stood the Singularity who called himself Magister Zawinul, naked still, his corona shimmering and pulsing.
“Why do you humans persist in making life so hard for yourselves?” he asked in that unflappably grandiose voice that I had heard for the first time in the Sand Castle. His tone irked me now as it had then.
“You could,” continued Magister Zawinul, “have lived out a complete happy lifetime of many millennia under my mental sway. It would have been as real as any unmediated experience. The location and condition of your physical shell would have been irrelevant. Then, upon either virtual death or the actual death of your shell, I would have rebooted your saved soul-essence and granted you another lifetime. And countless ones beyond that.
“But no, this was not sufficient. Instead, you’ve perversely shattered my beneficent illusion and gained access to a situation that can only bring you more pain, a world whose only ostensible virtue is its higher level of enscription. Why exactly is that?”
I tried to frame some noble sentiments that could explain my dogged insistence on facing reality and rescuing Maruta. But my sludge-bucket brain and lips conspired to have me say only: “Marn ghutta do wart marn ghutta do. . . .”
An expression of distaste and impatience—the first real emotion I had seen the Singularity express, unless this too was a carefully calculated façade or pretense—crossed Magister Zawinul’s face. “This crude shell they forced on you for your visit here is an insult to both you and me. Let us be done with it.”
And as simply as that, I found myself back in my baseline body.
How beautiful the world looked! I could smell a thousand fragrances again, feel the delightful suppleness of the clothing the Singularity had draped me in. I almost felt grateful to this arrogant godling.
Best of all, I could think clearly again!
And the first thought that crossed my mind was:
How could I ever be sure again of the reality of what faced me?
For all I knew, I could still be in my sludge-bucket body, immured in some life-support tank, being fed plausible delusions by the Singularity.
How could I ever be sure again of the reality of what faced me?
For all I knew, I could still be in my sludge-bucket body, immured in some life-support tank, being fed plausible delusions by the Singularity.
Plainly reading my mind, the Singularity said, “As one of the Midnight Dawn philosophers observed, ‘Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.’ You saw how you managed to dissolve my previous simulation. Try doing that again, now.”
I sought to repeat the suspension of belief, or extension of disbelief, which had caused the false Lustron Avouris and the spaceport to evaporate, and nothing happened.
Whether this meant that I was indeed dealing with the one true level of reality, or simply that I lacked the brain power to counter this higher-quality deception, I couldn’t say. But my practical course was the same in either case.
I’d just have to act as if everything I encountered through the scrim of my senses mattered desperately.
Striving to get on the offensive, I demanded of the Singularity, “How did you restore my body?”
“I had your entire corporeal pattern memorized from the moment I first encountered you. It was a simple matter to reinstantiate you and transfer your IIM out of that insulting golem.”
“You know why I’m here, of course.”
“You hope to ‘rescue’ the individual once known as Maruta Forcroy, to whom you still retain certain sub-Planckian bonds. Once you have her, you intend to return home with her.”
“You’ve got it. Are you going to try to stop me?”
“Certainly not. Rather, I will stipulate the conditions under which you may succeed in your quest. Then I will watch with enjoyment and pleasure as you fail.”
The Singularity’s smarmy assumption that my quest was doomed caused my blood to seethe. But I bit back any retort and just nodded for him to continue.
“There is only one condition to your search. You must identify your lover absolutely and without hesitation. And you are allowed only one assertion of her identity. Fail this test, and you will find yourself instantly back on Silane, with no return to this world ever permitted again.”
“That’s all?”
“That is all. However, as you might guess, your lover no longer resembles the individual you once knew.”
I had assumed as much. But still, I felt confident that I could recognize Maruta under whatever disguise had been imposed on her.
“I accept,” I said.
Upon my words came an instant change.
The city sprang to life with a million inhabitants, sophonts of every species, cruising through the air in their cars, emerging from doors, striding across the platform on which I stood. Noise and color suffused the air.
Magister Zawinul still stood before me, although no one else in the immediate vicinity seemed to take any cognizance of him.
“I have exfoliated my multifarious self, releasing all my shards to replicate what once existed on this world at the moment before my birth. Now I will live implicitly rather than explicitly, while you search. Please, take your time.”
The magisterium cloaking the big handsome man began to constrict proportionately around him, compressing him, dwindling him, until he was a tiny homonculus on the point of totally vanishing, a glowing dot.
“Wait! Why are you doing this for me?”
I seemed to hear a faint reply from the miniature Singularity:
“Because I cannot do otherwise. . . .”
Then he was entirely gone.
I shook my head to restore my senses and looked around me.
Here was the many-faceted world of Zawinul restored to its retroactive status as a member of the Reticulate, a globe full of citizens unwitting of the Spike event that awaited them.
An airbus was arriving at the edge of the platform. A dozen riders got off, and another dozen got on. Then it lifted off.
Any one of these individuals could be Maruta. She was an atom adrift in a sea of life. And I had claimed I could find her.
I didn’t know what the original population of Zawinul had measured before this world Spiked, but I’m sure it was in the high millions, like most worlds.
Where could I begin?
There was no practical way for me to identify her, no detective work I could reasonably undertake that would track her down in the disguise imposed on her by the Singularity. Was my quest hopeless then?
No. I realized I would have to rely on the vaunted sub-Planckian bonds—call them “love” or “affection” if you would—that existed between us. Somehow, if I went about simply living a life here, my karma would intersect with Maruta’s, eventually drawing us into proximity.
This was the belief I clung to.
But then would come the difficult test of recognizing her, singling her out of the myriad souls I would encounter.
On an impulse, I went inside the tower and found a citizen touchpoint. To my astonishment, the device recognized my IIM and gave me immediate access to my fiscal accounts.
Did this mean that the forbidden planet was reconnected to the Reticulate? Were other planets now gaping in amazement at the reappearance of a world thought lost to the Singularity? I tended to doubt it. Rather, it seemed likely that, to the outside galaxy, nothing had changed. Zawinul remained off the grid. The Magister had probably simply jiggered with reality to establish an identity here for me, playing his godgame.
A godgame in which I was now embedded.
The first thing I did was summon up a city directory and locate an agency that would rent me an apartment. By that afternoon I was established in a spacious home, complete with malleable stressor-field furniture, on the hundredth floor of Manzanita Towers in a northern neighborhood of this city. My new precinct was named Midwood, for the large annular park that surrounded it. The city itself, I discovered, was Palacio Pixacao.
Around five PM, when I finally stopped dealing with practicalities, I realized how hungry I was. I left my building on foot in search of a local restaurant.
As I walked the bustling streets, I experienced the strangest sensations.
The first involved the fact that until hours ago, all these autonomous individuals around me had been subsumed within the composite personality of the Singularity. Did they remember any such shared existence? Were they functioning now simply as fakes, as simulacra? If not, could they be convinced of the reality of their situation? Should I even try? The irritating, festering ontological and existential conundrums presented by this situation churned within me, seemingly unresolvable.
But during those moments when I managed to react to the reality around me as if I were living my normal life back on Silane, or as a tourist on Zawinul, I experienced a bizarre kind of heightened excitement and anticipation, a feeling that imminent delight awaited me just around the next corner.
Any sophont I passed in the street could be my soul mate. I was forced to regard every individual with a tender and discerning eye, to cultivate a kind of all-encompassing regard for each and every entity that, traditionally, had been the talent only of saints or poets. This enforced alertness and sense of potential intimacy was exhilirating. But I wondered how long I could keep up this vigilance.
Eventually I chose a parkside restaurant and found myself alone at a table, enjoying a glass of wine. I almost felt guilty, relaxing so, while Maruta (and exactly one thousand four hundred and thirty-two other female individuals stolen from Silane) endured their captivity. But I reminded myself that this was the only method I could conceive of that would bring my quest to a happy ending.
My server was a Rook from Rook’s Nest. I studied his zigzag movements as he crossed the room bearing my meal, his long-snouted, maned face. Could this be Maruta in disguise? I didn’t get any special vibe from him, so I didn’t think so.
The rest of my meal offered no real possibilities of contact with Maruta-in-hiding. I left the restaurant feeling down. How long would this impossible task take?
Sitting on a park bench in the dusk, I was approached by a prostitot.
I went hopefully with her back to her room.
But she wasn’t Maruta.
After a week of deliberate drifting through any social scene I could insert myself into, leaving myself open to any and all chance encounters, nerves and senses aquiver for any hint of Maruta’s presence, I found myself quietly going mad. Living on the edge of anticipation was proving extremely ennervating. I realized I would have to find something to occupy myself during this long process.
Back on Silane, I had been font-breeder, raising up new typefaces through Darwinian competition in a digital medium. I found a similar job here and applied myself to its demands.
Several months into the work, I encountered Yardena Milonga as a client.
Owner of an advertising firm, Yardena was half-human, half-Tusker, sporting a line of stiff translucent bristles down her spine which she always prominently displayed, as well as two rather graceful incurving curving ivory tusks the size of my little finger, and capped with gold. Her attitude was insouciant and wild, and we hit it off from our first business meeting. Before very long, we became lovers.
Of course I googled her. Yardena Milonga had a long, detailed history and presence on Zawinul. But that meant nothing. The whole dossier could have been fabricated by the Singularity.
When not spending my free time with Yardena, I joined a sports club dedicated to neo-hussade. I quickly became fast friends with a fellow named Machfall, an Umphenvour from Tancredo IX. His rugose milk-jade skin and balloon-like limbs gave him a clownish appearance that belied a sensitive, witty, and noble soul.
Soon, although other individuals entered my life briefly, I found myself dividing my time equally between these two friends, or even sharing their camaraderie as a trio.
After a busy year had passed, I became convinced that one of them was Maruta.
But which?
In their company, I was always subconsciously evaluating their characters and behavior, trying to nail down some positive sign that one or the other of them was my abducted lover.
Let me cite one such trial.
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