Singularity: Star Carrier: Book Three (18 page)

“But what was left behind—their ghost, if you will—continues to govern the galaxy.”

Chapter Eleven

29 June 2405

Trevor Gray

TRGA

1759 hours, TFT

T
he maw opened around him, and Gray fell into darkness.

He was aware, through briefing downloads, of the old theories about Tipler machines—high-mass cylinders rotating at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light that could open pathways through space or even through time. He was also aware of speculation about so-called wormholes, allowing near-instantaneous travel between widely separated points . . . or even between separate universes.

What it all came down to, however, was, so far as Gray was concerned, his own appalling ignorance. He didn’t know where—or
when
—he was falling, didn’t know if the theoretical arguments about Tipler cylinders needing to be infinitely long were true, didn’t even know if this
was
a Tipler machine since he was going
through
rather than past it, didn’t know much of
anything
save that he was falling through strangeness.

Twenty seconds passed, according to his own internal timekeeping software, before he realized something extraordinary. He was traveling at some five hundred kilometers per second, now, according to the blue-shift of lidar beams bounced off the tunnel walls ahead of him. In twenty seconds he’d traveled ten thousand kilometers . . . and yet the TRGA artifact was only twelve kilometers long.

And in fact he was continuing to accelerate, in the grip of a monstrous acceleration funneled through the core of the rotating cylinder. Clearly he could no longer be inside the cylinder proper. Space itself had taken on exceedingly strange dimensions, abandoning the sane laws of physics for something wholly other. As with a gravitic drive, he felt no acceleration . . . but in seconds more he was approaching the speed of light, had plunged hundreds of thousands of kilometers into the cylinder, and was beginning to wonder if, just possibly, the thing
was
in fact infinite in length.

“What we are experiencing,” his AI intoned with a maddening calm, “is consistent with Lorentzian wormhole theory.”

“Those are supposed to be unstable,” Gray said. His heart was pounding, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. He dredged up theory downloaded long ago, as much to keep the fear at bay as anything else. “They collapse as soon as they open.”

“The cylinder’s extreme rate of rotation might be holding it open through centrifugal force.”

“Do you know that? Or are you guessing?”

“At this point,” his AI told him, “there is only room for speculation.”

And still he fell. The encircling walls were faintly luminous—whether from internal heat or radiation or something else entirely, he couldn’t tell. And the light appeared to be growing brighter. . . .

Emergence
.

CIC

TC/USNA CVS
America

Inbound, Texaghu Resch System

1801 hours, TFT

“By ‘ghost,’ ” Koenig said carefully, “might you mean uploaded personalities?”

Gru’mulkisch stepped from the sunken tub, streaming black liquid. “ ‘Uploaded personalities’ is what, please?”

Koenig considered bringing in a link to
America
’s technological library, but there would be so much information under that heading, much of it speculative, that it would take too long to distill a concise answer for the two Agletsch.

“It’s a theoretical technology for us,” he said instead. “The idea is that human personalities—including their memories, their sense of being, their consciousness—all could be digitally mapped and stored in a computer with a deep-enough operational matrix. You would have, in effect, human consciousness within a machine.”

Dra’ethde stepped out of the bath, and the surrounding Agletsch city faded away, replaced by the interior of the aliens’ quarters. One bulkhead looked out into emptiness, black night strewn with wide-spaced stars. The tub, Koenig noticed, had also vanished.

“This would not be a true transfer, however,” Dra’ethde said. “The personality would be copied into the machine, not actually transferred, yes-no?”

“We’ve debated that issue for a long time,” Koenig admitted. “I agree with you. The original would remain behind, and only a copy would be uploaded electronically. From the copy’s point of view, however, with its memories intact and accessible, it would appear to have been an actual transfer.”

“And does your species in fact possess such technology?” Gru’mulkisch asked.

Koenig thought carefully before answering. He still did not trust Agletsch motives, and he most certainly did not trust the Sh’daar Seeds they carried, near-microscopic nodes of a widely distributed computer communications network. What he was describing fell under the heading of the GRIN technologies proscribed by the Sh’daar—specifically information systems, though both robotics and nanotechnology came into the picture as well.

Admit too much, and he might end forever any chance Humankind had of negotiation, of striking a deal with the Sh’daar and ending this war. But it was also vital that they understand what he was asking about, if he was to get a clear answer.

“Not quite to the extent you mean,” Koenig told the Agletsch. “But I
do
have an uploaded personality here. You can ask her.”

He thoughtclicked an in-head icon, and Karyn Mendelson came on-line. Her image, appearing within the shared virtual reality of the Agletsch’s quarters, was that of a tall and attractive woman, Koenig’s age, and wearing the dress black-and-grays of a Confederation naval officer. The sleeve stripes, rank tabs, and gold decoration in a panel down the left side of her uniform tunic identified her as a rear admiral.

Koenig was startled to realize that it had been a long time—weeks, perhaps, since he’d seen her this way.

“Hello, Dra’ethde, Gru’mulkisch,” she said in Karyn’s voice. “I’ve been following your conversation. What was it you wished to know?”

“You are an uploaded personality?” Gru’mulkisch asked. Even through the filter of his translator, he sounded surprised.

“I am . . . after a fashion. I am a PA, a personal assistant, with the personality overlay of a once-living person.”

“ ‘Once living’? ”

“Karyn Mendelson was . . . a friend of mine,” Koenig told them. There was no need to go into detail. “She was killed six months ago in the Turusch attack on our Solar System. I have her image functioning as avatar on my PA.”

“A personal assistant,” Karyn told them, “is a fairly compact but sophisticated AI resident within a person’s cerebral implants. Important parts of a person’s mental processes—including some memories, learned responses, language skills, training, and so on—can be digitally stored. Normally, the PA is a close match for the person in question, close enough to respond to visual communication links or to appear within shared virtual realities and be indistinguishable from the original. Admiral Koenig, here, is quite busy. He can’t afford the time to answer all of his calls personally. His PA can appear to others as he does, can make decisions within certain broad constraints, can schedule appointments, can hold routine conversations, and can do so skillfully enough that others can never be sure if they’re dealing with the original or with an AI.”

“We’d heard of PAs, of course, during our stay on Earth,” Dra’ethde said. “We did not realize that they were this . . . convincing.”

“You are Admiral Koenig’s PA, yes-no?” Gru’mulkisch asked. “And yet you do not look like Admiral Koenig.”

“That’s because when Karyn died,” Koenig said, “I took her PA—there were copies of it on my implant systems, and in my office here on the
America
—and overlaid it on my own. I preferred to use . . . her copy.”

He didn’t add that he’d done so because of how much he missed Karyn, how much he didn’t want to let her go.

“I can appear as Karyn,” she said, and then the virtual image morphed smoothly into a duplicate of Koenig, also in Confederation full dress. “Or as Admiral Koenig.”

“Then, you have no physical reality now, yes-no?” Dra’ethde asked.

“No,” Karyn said, the male image morphing back to hers.

“But are you alive?” Gru’mulkisch asked. She appeared to be disturbed by the revelation. “Or . . . perhaps I should ask instead, do you feel alive?”

“I am aware that I am a digital construct,” Karyn told them, “and that I do not have a biological existence of my own. I wonder sometimes, however, if Admiral Koenig is aware of this.”

It was a gentle dig, but it surprised Koenig. The PA frequently had suggested to him that using the Karyn Mendelson PA software was not . . .
healthy
for him, that he might be clinging to his dead lover’s memory in an unhealthy way. And in fact, though his PA still spoke to him in Karyn’s voice, he really hadn’t summoned her visible avatar for weeks.

“Admiral Koenig believes you to be alive?”

“Admiral Koenig is comforted by my appearance,” the PA replied.

“I
do
know the difference between a person and an avatar, damn it,” Koenig added, a bit more sharply than he’d intended. This discussion was becoming highly personal, when all he’d initially wanted was a demonstration of personality uploading. He disliked being embarrassed in front of aliens, even though he knew that they would not be upset by the same things that embarrassed humans.

“You are suggesting that the Sh’daar uploaded such digital personalities into their ships and computer networks,” Gru’mulkisch said, “yes-no? That these are the ‘ghosts’ we mention, again yes-no?”

“The word
ghost
has a religious connotation for us,” Koenig replied. “I don’t know what you Agletsch think of such things, but some humans believe in a noncorporeal aspect of intelligence or personality that survives the body after death.”

“Ah,” Dra’ethde said. “You refer to the
tru’a
, the
dhuthr’a
, and the
thurah’a
. You might say ‘soul’ or ‘spirit.’ ”

“You have
three
of them?”

“Oh, yes. The
tru’a
is—”

Koenig held up a hand and shook his head. “That’s okay. You don’t need to explain.”

Having three noncorporeal aspects, he thought, wasn’t all that strange a concept. Some modern human religions, he knew, distinguished between the soul and the spirit as two distinct entities, while the ancient Egyptians, depending on how one counted, had believed in either seven or nine—the
ka
,
ba
,
akh
,
sheut
,
ib
, and others.

But discussing this sort of thing, even with a nonhuman, made Koenig uncomfortable. The White Covenant, and years of social conditioning, made anything touching on religion or the paranormal feel
wrong
.

“For humans, a ghost is supposed to be the spirit or soul of a dead person,” Koenig explained. He tended to be pretty much of a materialist himself, though he tried to keep an open mind. “But uploading the electronic pattern of someone’s personality comes pretty close to that idea, I’d say.”

“We use the word in the same way,” Gru’mulkisch said, “to represent the
dhuthr’a
left behind at death. We believe that the Sh’daar, when they die, upload their
dhuthr’a
into electronic systems—computer networks, if you will. They pilot their ships, run their manufactories, indeed they see to the efficient running of the Sh’daar’s galactic empire.”

“Great,” Koenig said. “We’re fighting against ghosts. . . .”

Open mind or not, he did not believe that what Gru’mulkisch was saying could in any way be literally true.

Trevor Gray

Beyond the TRGA

1805 hours, TFT

Gray had emerged within a star cloud.

The sky ahead was packed with them, millions of suns crowded together so closely they appeared to form a single shining white wall ahead, thinning somewhat in other directions. Gray felt a sharp pang and looked about wildly. He didn’t know where he was . . . but he did know that there was no sky like that anywhere within many thousands of light years of Earth.

Switching to view aft, he saw the TRGA cylinder—or more likely it was a different cylinder identical to the first, connected with it by wormhole or some other space-bypassing gateway. The fighter was no longer moving at near-
c
, but appeared to have lost its velocity somehow as it emerged from the tube.