The Kimota Anthology (44 page)

He stepped through the door. As he closed it Jason rushed over and flung himself at the handle. The handle instantly turned red-hot, singeing his flesh. Screaming in pain Jason leapt back and blew on his hands. He expected to see livid burns on his palms but the skin was unmarred. Staring at his hands in amazement he realised that the pain had vanished. He turned to tackle the door again but that too had gone. 

He started screaming at the top of his voice. He knew the Elders of the Universe had to be watching, they would want to see who had won the contest.

“Let me go, you bastards! You can’t keep me here! It’s not fair! You’ve got to let me go!”

There was no answer.

Slowly Jason calmed down. There was no getting away from it, he was trapped here.

He looked round at all the games that filled the room. At least he wouldn’t get bored for awhile. He sat down at the computer and loaded a game.

[Originally published in Kimota 12, Spring 2000

NOVIE’S ARK

by David O’Neill

Novie knew it was time to retire when they were stopped by customs.  They were old hands at the run, perhaps getting a little careless, but this was the first time they had had anything but a cursory once over. A particularly worrying consideration given the security sweep had occurred way before they even docked.

Once the security avatar had vanished and Novie was alone on the bridge of her ship, the “Forest”, the ship reversed the mind-wipe, implanted memories were cleared and Novie's own reinstated. She dropped back into her chair swearing loudly, in good old-fashioned audio.

“Fuck.  Why the hell did they do that?”  She rubbed her temple, her head felt distinctly fuzzy.  The Consensus took a dim view of pilots and ship’s who were willing to muck around with their own minds like that.

“It could have been a random check…” the ship suggested.

“It’s a bit of a coincidence though, isn’t it,” she said.  “I mean, how many times have we done this run and had nothing more than a sweep on docking?  That was the full works…” She looked thoughtfully out the window at the featureless space beyond.

“It did seem excessive,” the ship agreed.  Novie nodded then straightened herself.

“We’ve got to get out of this, it’s getting too dangerous.”

“But what about the cash, it pays well…” the ship countered.  She shrugged.

“Well enough for the pair of us to lose our wings?”  All Novie had ever wanted to do was fly – being grounded with nothing but the memories of being a pilot would be enough to end it all.

“Fair point,” it replied.  She closed her eyes and listened to the distant clusters of voices, feeling the glowing bundles of humanity close by; Jupiter system, a whirling collection of small points, ditto Saturn, Mars and the asteroids brighter, but shining like a nova in the distance the collective mind of Earth space.  Real home.  Much brighter and much more real for being close to and not the other end of a quantum communications fissure.

“I’m going to spend a few hours in the Consensus, I’ll make the calls and resign.  Take us home…”

Novie settled back into the chair, feeling her body drift away, linking into the human Consensus.  Her last few trips were well out of normal space and well away from transmitters with anything like the bandwidth necessary for full immersion.  Most people were driven mad by the isolation, being trapped in their own heads with virtually no one to talk to.

It was this more than anything else which was killing space travel.

Novie didn’t mind it, but had to admit it was comforting to swirl effortlessly through space joining the ever-present hum.  An entrance lobby materialised around her and she opened her account, entering her personal workspace. The room resembled an office from sometime in the industrial revolution.  She had always liked the retro-look, and even knowing the room was full of anachronisms, she still loved it.  

Outside the window, horse drawn carriages mingled with stuffily dressed Victorian businessmen.  She sat at the red leather topped desk and checked her info-stacks.  They were overflowing with notes and reminders from old friends. She detached a portion of her personality to check over them, whilst she made a couple of calls of her own.

Her employers were always hard to reach – neither of her contacts existed inside the Consensus, relying instead on mail protocols almost as old as Information space itself.  She told them when she would arrive and that she wanted to see them and left the ball firmly in their court.  She tried her family next, but seemingly there was a glitch in the communications lines and she couldn’t find them.  There was no listing of any deaths or accidents, so they had to be around somewhere.  She worried for a moment, but decided that she would be home in a day and could let them know of the fault then – she left a standard mail message.  She was tempted to upload the latest news fax but decided it would be more fun to find out through asking around.  She’d been away for months; another few hours wouldn’t matter.

She re-integrated the mail sorter and found there were no particularly important messages, except a recent one from her family saying they were looking forward to her return and that the lines might be down when she returned, and not to worry. Well, that at least explained that, she thought.

Finally, she loaded her buddy list and skimmed the lists of her friends.  She smiled - Vance was in port. Cancelling all the remaining procedures she dumped herself straight to his location.

He was in a bar off the main news service spaces.  She appeared in a displacement terminal in the adjoining hall, obviously she could have just appeared in the bar, but that, of course, was the ultimate in bad manners - or at least it had been before she left.  Customs changed fast in here, but it was better to be safe than sorry.  The bar was decked out in the manner of a late twentieth / early twenty-first century bar lounge, America.  Booths and tables cluttered the interior, Vance himself sitting on a stool at the high chrome topped bar. She approached, tapping him on the shoulder.

“Buy a girl a drink sailor?”  He jumped, his eyes focusing slowly – he’d obviously been having a Share, it was something Novie herself had never had the knack for – it was strange giving yourself into a group mind and sharing everything – besides she had too many secrets.  He snapped back into the bar and his face split into a huge grin, he’d grown a beard, but still looked roughly the same - not that it meant a thing in here, of course.  He leapt down from his stool, picked her up and whirled her small body around.

“Novie!”  He kissed her enthusiastically.  She pulled away, grimacing.

“Ugh, Vance what is that on your face,” she chided, part seriously, part playfully.  He put her down, he stood at least a half metre taller, and stroked the beard.

“You don’t like it?” he said eventually, sounding almost like a little boy, crestfallen.  She put her hands on her hips looking up at him.

“I hate beards, you know that…” she winked.

“Oh, well, in that case,” he clicked his fingers and the beard morphed back into his face, vanishing.  “Better?”

“Yes,” she laughed.  “I have a thing for clean shaven men…” she reached up on tiptoe to run her hand down the side of his face.

“And I for Asian women…” he waggled his eyebrows suggestively, causing her to collapse into a helpless fit of giggles.  He tapped the end of her nose playfully and turned to the bar ordering more drinks.  

“So?” he asked when they had calmed down enough to talk.  “What have you been up to, I haven’t seen you and that ancient ship of yours for ages…” She had a sub-protocol loaded for awkward questions which overrode her natural features ensuring she didn’t give anything away sub-consciously.

“Nothing much, I’ve been out of the link for a while, delivering survey kits, almost too far for anything but old fashioned two-dee images.”  She took a sip of her drink, carefully maintaining her detachment.  He shrugged.

“I didn’t think we were still doing any surveys,” he said quietly, looking distant for a moment.  Novie felt a twinge of uncertainty but knew she was safe – the survey cover story was carefully constructed by her employers and would hold true.

“Towards the Galactic core, and there’s a station sending probes out to the Magalenic clouds…” Vance looked unimpressed. Strange she found herself thinking, he used be interested in this sort of thing.

“I don’t know why they bother,” he said distantly.

“You know,” she said cheerfully, trying to move the conversation onwards.  “New worlds, that sort of thing, for when the colonisation effort starts again…”

Vance rolled his eyes saying nothing. It was an awkward moment, then he smiled dazzlingly and cracked another of his ever-present stock of jokes and they carried on in a lighter vein. Eventually, after a few hours of gentle non-specific chit-chat, they were holding each other, kissing passionately and deciding that the obvious next stage was to consummate their reunion with some good old fashioned sex, or at least as old-fashioned as cyberspace allowed.

Vance created a room for them, the walls appeared seemingly ten metres or so away, and then rose from the floor upwards.  Any furniture or avatars closer than that were eye-wrenchingly removed as the partition moved upwards.  The room remained white for an instant before turning into Vance’s apartment on O’Neill 19, out at the L3 point.  Novie cast a critical eye around.

“Don’t you ever redecorate?”  She crossed to the window; the apartment was set a little way up the slope of the end cap with a view the length of the entire habitat.  Three stunning terraformed panels illuminated by opposing windows greeted her. Vance came up behind her.

“Does it matter?” he asked, she turned and they kissed tenderly.

A minute later they were on the bed, struggling to take off their clothes – they could, of course, have willed them away in an instant, but that would have taken away a lot of the fun.  They tussled and rolled for a while, exploring each other and getting used to themselves again, before Vance finally entered her.  She gasped, it had been a long time, and sharing this with a real human partner other than the ship or a blue-sim was incredible.  She lay back, her mind reeling, the feeling of closeness unbearably intense as they…

She locked her eyes onto his.

He was Sharing.

“What the fuck?” she demanded.  The first traces of her orgasm washed away as she shut down the pathways in her head.  Vance gave a guilty shudder, falling to one side as she struggled out from under him.  “How dare you!”  She pulled herself into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest, flicking her hair out of her face in a single motion.

“Sorry?” Vance said quietly, looking pained.

“You were SHARING us!” she said.  Vance looked confused.

“Of course, everyone shares…” he trailed off, frowning slightly.

“Not without permission!” Novie told him indignantly.  “How many?”

“A few hundreds, maybe a million…” Novie reeled, he’d been sharing with hundreds of thousands…  Before she had left it had been considered impractical and unpleasant to share with more than a few tens of others.  She knew the move towards a group mind was accelerating, but even so…

“You were sharing us with that many, and you didn’t even think to ask!”  Vance struggled up to a kneeling position looking hurt.

“We didn’t think you’d mind – we thought you’d have understood about the Unity… it’s coming, soon…” Novie stared in disgust, he’d said we, not I.  It was once considered to be akin to mental illness, losing yourself in the group.  But something had changed.  She looked at him with concern for a moment, then sent an instruction back to her office for a NewsBot to dump a potted version of the past few month's advances into her mind.

The necessary information arrived an instant later; it was almost as if ice had been placed the length of her spine.  The Singularity was coming…

She got up, struggling to find her clothing, and instead resorted to dumping them onto her body.  Vance was getting to his feet.

“I’m sorry, don’t be like this…” he walked towards her, entirely naked but with that same slightly lost look on his face.  He was still doing it.

“You’re still with them,” she said, anger welling up inside her, she somehow felt soiled by the process.  Illogical really, for she had often argued the case for the Unity with Neanderthals herself – a Neanderthal being a derogatory term for those who refused to take part in the mind enhancement of the Consensus.

“Of course, everyone always does – you know how important this is… I thought you wouldn’t mind.  Come back to us…” he held out his hand.  Novie muttered a slight curse she had once heard her grandfather use and swung her fist up in a punch – she slightly altered the specifications on the room and her fist; the blow picked up the larger man hurling him across the bed.  He tumbled over it, appearing a moment later, rubbing his chin.

“That hurt!” he said.

“Good!”

She logged out, straight back to the bridge of the Forest.

She opened her eyes, addressing the ship.

“Have you read the news?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” it told her.  “I’ve changed our flight plan.  I thought we ought to get in as quickly as possible…”

“Good,” she called up a window in her mind, reviewing the details of the news reports on the Unity.  Not only was the singularity coming, but also the exodus of people to the refugee world of Haven had been deemed a threat by the Consensus; a threat to be met with deadly force.

“Good job we’ve retired,” the ship remarked.  

The Earthring looked its usual spectacular self as they approached - a glittering band of diamond filling Earth’s equatorial orbit.  It was only when they fell inside the orbit of the moon and started to resolve details, that it became apparent the ring was decaying.  At least half the docking points had been dismantled or were dismantling themselves as they closed in.  Spires and platforms vanished as they watched, as the whole huge structure seemed to be stripping itself back to its barest components.

“It’s being dismantled,” the ship remarked.

“Well, where we’re going I suppose we won’t need ships – just brains…” The autonomous docking systems guided them into a cradle on the upper surface of the ring, thirty six thousand kilometres over the pacific ocean.

“Be careful, I’ll get us ready in case we have to leave in a hurry,” the ship said as she hurried through the spartan corridors to the docking port.  An adapter had already been mated and was waiting open for her.

“I will, I need to get to my family…” she touched the wall of her ship affectionately.  Not sure if she would ever see it again.

“Get going…”

She moved into the transverse corridor, usually a bustling thoroughfare a quarter of a million kilometres long, today it seemed deserted, shops and galleries closed and silent.  The whole process seemed to be accelerating. There was a public square a hundred kilometres away where she had arranged to meet with her employers, briefly, and she caught a tram.  Sliding along the frictionless track, in an empty compartment she realised how far from the norm she herself had drifted.  She still wanted to be a part of the Unity process whatever that turned out to be, but also she was terrified at the changes in everything around her.