IGMS Issue 15 (8 page)

"Then come with me," he said.

"So melodramatic," Levitz-Prolific said.

The heat-bleeding film along his arms registered critical levels, then failed. His arms poached, though he felt no pain. The rental body informed him his contract was voided and that he'd be responsible for all the repairs the body suffered.

"You'll kill us both," Levitz-Prolific said.

A wave pushed him against recently-solidified rock. His senses were pulverized by the heat, ash, steam, and roar of boiling water and rock, so he used his cooked hands and feet to find his way. When his hand plunged into molten rock, the flesh burned down to bone, and he contacted the sentience-seeds.

The seeds filled the lava, fed off it, merged with it, the seeds were the lava, the lava the seeds. More than enough seeds to house millions of sentiences, maybe more. All they needed were both their base codes.

Fadid transmitted his code to the sentience-seeds.

A microscopic scum sat between the cells of his body and the sentience seeds. The scum didn't block the transmission, it couldn't -- Fadid had direct contact with the sentience-seeds through the bones in his hands -- but his base code transmitted through the scummy film.

"Half of what I need," the Clairvoy girl said over a private band.

The girl had followed him to Lo'ihi. Fadid tried to log into the public camera drones observing the scene to get a better view of what she was doing, but something blocked his wireless transmissions.

"My mother named me Clairvoy for a reason," the girl said. "I make a living by seeing what's coming. You didn't really think that ridiculous purple creature was me, did you?"

Fadid tried to shout a warning to Kabime, but his comm links was blocked as well. Clairvoy had him. It was her scum that had sat between him and the sentience seeds; he'd given her his base code, and with it, she could control most of his exterior interfaces. She couldn't control his thoughts or his base personality processes, but she could play him like a puppet.

"It's working, Kabime," Clairvoy said with Fadid's voice. "The Realtor's guards won't hurt you; use this security code."

The krill in the water swarmed over him, but it didn't digest him. Instead, the krill stabilized his wounds and secreted a heat-bleeding film over his remaining flesh, while at the same time, the sentience seeds opened and drew his personality into the fertile processing core that had waited millennia for a sentience to fill it.

"What the bug is happening, Fadid?" Levitz-Prolific said from inside the rental body. With his base code, Clairvoy could control most of his functions, but not even that kind of access could block intracellular transmissions.

"The realtor's got me," Fadid said. "How could I have been so blind?"

"I've wondered for centuries who'd planted those seeds and whether anyone would come claim them," Clairvoy said. "I couldn't hack into the seeds, I couldn't destroy them either -- you built them well -- and though they didn't do anything, there they sat, an Achilles heel that could bring down all my ambitions. Then you fell for my lava-bait in the palace. I was genuinely surprised that it was you, Fadid the famous songwriter, who'd built those sentience seeds, but then it made sense. So many of your songs refer to islands, and the sea, and the woman below the waves. There had to be two of you. And here you both are."

The realtor opened a perspective window in which Kabime swam through ash and steam. When she arrived at the seam mount, she pulled her great body up onto the rock and placed one of her fins over Fadid's boiling body.

"Some kind of spy agent sits between me and the seeds," Kabime said. "I won't transmit my base code through that."

"Yes you will," Clairvoy said through Fadid. The krill that had until then preserved his failing body now began to dissolve it. The krill frothed green as it devoured Kabime too.

"Stop that," Kabime said. "I'll report you."

"You were both warned," Clairvoy said. "Your bodies will be dissolved and your sentiences put into stasis until such time as I see fit to release you, which will probably be when Lo'ihi returns to the sea in a few million years. I've already written a suicide letter with Fadid's ID stamped on it that should satisfy any investigation. Of course, you can prevent all that nastiness if you just give me what I want."

"My base code," Kabime said. "Why should I trust you? You'll destroy us both if I give it to you."

"Not destroy," she said. "Merely imprison. The two of you want to inhabit Lo'ihi, I'll give you a piece of my island. A very small piece. With your codes to unlock them, I can destroy your seeds, but I'll leave a few in the deepest part of Lo'ihi. You'll never be permitted to escape, but it's a better offer than indefinite stasis, isn't it?"

"You'll leave us in peace," Kabime said.

"Of course," Clairvoy said. "I only want to protect my investment. Now give me your code.

The turtle stopped thrasing even as its red blood leaked out into the boiling sea. Trapped as he was within his own body, Fadid still felt the sentience seeds open when Kabime transferred her base code. The sentience seeds metamorphed into true nano-mites, and they were thirsty for a sentience to inhabit them. Clairvoy allowed Fadid to pour his personality into the seeds. Kabime joined him. They were still separate, but now they could communicate directly.

"I'm so sorry," he said.

"There's still a chance," she said. "When we merge, our base code will be different. We'll have a moment or two to act before she can test all possible combinations of our new code and dominate us again."

Clairvoy deafened and muted all their extrasensory devices and communicators, but Fadid could still feel the sentience seeds dying through the intracellular link as Clairvoy ordered the seeds to destroy themselves.

"You still want to merge with me after I pulled something so stupid?"

"Why do you think I followed you?" she said. "I've always known you could be dumb -- you're an artist -- what I didn't know was whether you could actually give yourself away. When you swam up here, you showed me you could."

"How long will we have once we merge?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't even know what good it will do. In minutes, she'll destroy all the seeds."

"If only we could ignite the culture opera," Fadid said. "There are thousands of sentients waiting to be born in the opera. They'd have their own codes, Clairvoy wouldn't be able to stop them all."

"She'd hack us before we could invoke more than two or three sentients," Kabime said.

"Levitz-Prolific," Fadid said.

"What?"

"A poet, living in my rental body's balls. He already has an older version of the culture opera. He could invoke the spark, though he might not agree to it."

"Why not?"

"He's not too fond of me," Fadid said.

"Well it won't be you asking," Kabime said. "It will be someone new."

"Us."

"You plus me makes one."

"Are you ready?"

"I'm scared."

"So am I. But I'm more scared of life without you."

"Me too."

They initiated the merger. As their personalities continued to flow into the dying sentience seeds, they combined their identities, from the base code that accessed every facet of each other's system, all the way up to the memories they shared of each other.

The part of their combined personality that was still Kabime saw the culture opera for the first time. "It's beautiful," she said, and Fadid felt the words form in his mind, their mind now, and he felt her sorrow at never seeing it performed. Then the part of them that was Kabime found Levitz-Prolific, trembling in his bacterial culture deep within the rental body's reproductive tracts, and as one they laughed.

"Levitz-Prolific," Fadid/Kabime said through the intracellular link. "I was Fadid and Kabime, now I am someone new. Call me Abide. Without your help, we will all be imprisoned in this volcano for a very long time. Spark sentience in Fadid's culture opera and use our old base codes to transmit the opera into Lo'ihi. It is our only chance."

More of the sentience seeds died under Clairvoy's orders. To Abide, it seemed like their world grew dimmer as suns were plucked from the sky.

"Why should I do anything to help you?" Levitz-Prolific said. "You've made my life nothing but misery. When the krill reaches me, it will put me in stasis, and once I'm free, I can continue my poetry."

"You really think Clairvoy will let you go after everything you've seen today?" Abide said.

"All I want is a place to derive my poem-equations," Levitz-Prolific said.

"There will be a place for you in the opera, a quiet place where you can work undisturbed," Abide said. Abide sent the old base codes, and Levitz-Prolific used their base codes to access the sentience-seeds.

"What are you doing?" Clairvoy said as she continued to destroy the sentience seeds within Lo'ihi.

"You swear I'll be left alone?" Levitz-Prolific said.

"Until you're ready to reveal your poem-equations," Abide said. "I will personally ensure your privacy."

"I want a contract," he said, and Abide produced one.

Levitz-Prolific invoked the spark of sentience in the unfinished culture opera. Thousands of sentients flared to life within the seeds that still survived within Lo'ihi, each sentient with its own base code.

"The seeds aren't responding," Clairvoy said. "The island is mine. You can't do this." She managed to override some of the new sentiences that sparked to life, but she couldn't keep up. Each new sentient raised its voice in song. While Clairvoy stretched herself thin trying to capture the new minds, Abide mounted a combined attacked on the mental prison while Levitz-Prolific assaulted it from without, and together they broke free into the chaos inside Lo'ihi.

Abide laughed at the sensation of being one, whole, and free after so many years apart.

"Maybe now I can get some decent work done," Levitz-Prolific said,

Using the same control that Clairvoy had exerted, Levitz-Prolific constructed a processing-core of his own within Lo'ihi, and then dumped his personality into it. Levitz-Prolific shut down all outside communication, leaving Abide to their private corner of the crescendo.

More of their brethren joined the chorus as they were born. The virtual island that Fadid had originally designed for his opera was replaced by the physical island of Lo'ihi. As the new sentients were born, they sang the joy and sorrow of their new-found life: laments for the imaginary vanished homeland, anthems of hope for survival in this new world. But they didn't just sing to each other, they broadcast their song on every medium the sentience-seeds contained, communication pathways that had lain dormant since Fadid and Kabime had locked them. All the entities who'd gathered in air-ships, within squids and whales, or who watched from their homes through the public camera drones, listened to Lo'ihi sing as she rose from the sea.

"We invoke Schindler's Convention," the chorus sang. "We are Lo'ihi, and we demand life."

Clairvoy's wail of frustration was a minor discord in the ten-thousand-voice chorus.

Minutes later, high tide arrived, and when it did, a few centimetres of hardened a'a lava remained above the water. Lo'ihi was an island.

A few hours after sunset, a jet of molten lava tumbled through the air to land hissing on Lo'ihi's flank. Thousands of sentience-seeds swarmed within the gob of lava, and Abide shared a portion of those seeds. The spot appealed to the new personality. Though it wouldn't be for long, this was a place where the light of the sun met the wash of the waves. Abide would call it home for now, until Lo'ihi climbed higher and reached her burning song further out into the sea.

As so much of Charles Darwin's correspondence has already been published, it is a rare event to discover a previously unknown letter from him, especially one concerning his seminal work,
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
. By kind permission of the letter's owner and the esteemed editor of this magazine, I am pleased to be able to reprint the letter here, and I will restrict myself to the minimum of prefatory remarks necessary to give context to this intriguing document.