The Transmigration of Souls (23 page)

The thing we think may be the Space-Time Juggernaut, the thing that ate the Colonials, once by one. Waiting. Waiting at just the place where last it feasted. Waiting. Perhaps for us.

Fools, she thought.

Looking for the Jug.

o0o

You get used to living in a book, Ling told himself. Get used to living in a dream. Question is, which book? And whose dream? I never had enough time to read or dream. Not after I got to be an adult, a student, a scientist-engineer, manager... not after I put my nose to the grindstone, nose so quickly ground away.

All those simple, simple dreams. We go to the Moon, you see. Open the old American Moonbases, take up where they left off. Maybe something up there that made what happened in America... happen. But most likely not. Vinge’s
cusp
you see. America turned the corner on tomorrow and simply accelerated out of sight. We can follow them. We can, if only...

Cusp. Prophetic word.

Long walk cross country, across dark red landscape under a nutmeg-seasoned pumpkin sky. Silver clouds at night, wanderers delight? But it was a clear sky now, a sky filled with what he supposed must be stars. Stars fallen out of a book as well, a book by Bonestell, maybe, or from some atlas of sky photos, deep sky false-colored from long exposure times. Neptune high in the sky now, like a midnight blue balloon, dark eye of a fresh storm looking down on them all.

I remember when I was a child, thinking how wonderful it was that the planets, the real planets, had turned out to contain such stark, incredible beauty. I wondered how the people of the 1960s and ‘70s and ‘80s felt, seeing them all for the first time. Now I know.

The long walk up through the mountains as night fell: walking away from the little valley where the ship had crashed, the cruiser
Vanator
, Jensen called it. In what language? Certainly not
clangclangclang
. Walking away from a valley of death, red ants killed, or pinned to the ground, green ants squirming on top of them. Hollow echoes fading behind them, echoes of explosions, much fainter echoes that must have been green-ant war whoops, red ant screams.

Maybe, somewhere in there, green-ant cries of passion? Green ants fulfilled, red ants raped. Same old story, from a hundred thousand books, a hundred billion lives.

And this sleek, trim, leather-clad Passiphaë Laing, walking by his side, talking to him, while Subaïda Rahman followed and listened and frowned. Something going on here that I don’t understand? Probably. Rueful smile in the darkness, smile full of memory. I never understood any of them. Not something I could grapple with, grip with an engineer’s mind.

Where is this place?

Laing exchanging bemused glances with Rhino Jensen of the ridiculous cognomen. Well. Saying it almost like that old actor. A sigh. Quick staccato back and forth with the man in a language that was almost English but not English, almost comprehensible but not. Trying to decide where this is? Don’t they
know
?

And she said:
Technically
speaking, this is the desert planet
Arrasûn
, located in the unclaimed space between the Terran Empire and its chief ally the Bimus Ascendancy, on the outskirts of what’s left of the old Parahuan Imperium, about 2400 parsecs from Sol. The nearest human colony is Tano’s Planet.

So what does that mean? And why
technically
?

Well. A little grin. That’s just what it says in the script, of course. There really is no such place as Arrasûn.

Long silence. Ling walking, Rahman still listening. The others walking some little distance away, Inbar talking with Jensen, Alireza just walking, staring at red ants. For a moment, Ling had imagined he could see the shadow of Ahmad Zeq.

He said, Script? What script?

Laing laughing, shaking her head. Somebody’s going to have a hard time explaining
this
one. Asses will be on the carpet. Boy.

What are you talking about?

Look, I don’t know what program you folks are from, but this is the software substrate for
Crimson Desert
. There’s been a pretty good malph, somewhere on up the line.

I don’t understand.

There’d been a troubled look in her eyes, a long deep shadow reaching away into her soul. You don’t
know
? It was plain she could see he didn’t, her upset deepening swiftly. So they programmed you all the way through? Boy, that’s not
fair
.

Life’s not fair.

This isn’t life.

Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where is this place and what’s
Crimson Desert
? And now, a stark fear of what he was about to find out.

Laing said, If there was somebody to complain to about this, I’d sure as shit complain. But there isn’t, as usual. She looked away, took a slow breath, looked back at him, face full of obvious sympathy.
Crimson Desert
is an interactive story background in the Ohanaic Pseudouniverse. We’re all AI modules assigned to act out various roles within the flexscript.

Silence. Then Rahman gabbling in Arabic, all walking stopped, the other Arabs turning, staring, astonished, Inbar’s eyes large with interest, Alireza’s large with unmistakable fear. Fear and disbelief.

Ling said, “I almost guessed that. Almost guessed it.”

o0o

Omry Inbar awoke to red-orange sunrise, and thought, A videonet drama. I’m inside a videonet drama. In just a minute, the director will shout Cut! and we’ll all break for lunch... No. Not quite. Just a dream. He sat up on one elbow, feeling cold and stiff, joints almost creaking after lying out on the hard ground all night, looking around. Sunrise. Brilliant sun a squashed, streaky pink disk, quite oblate, on the far horizon, out over the desert, Neptune pale blue, almost washed away by the morning light. No sign of smoke anywhere. People and red ants lying strewn on the ground around the dead fire, some of them stirring, some not.

Jensen huddled against the little red ant he’d squirmed with the night before. What
is
he doing to that thing? Ling’s voice then, in a hushed whisper. Passiphaë Laing’s throaty, sexually-charged chuckle. What do you think?

But... but...
why
?

Well. She’s his wife.

Oh.

I forget you all don’t know the story. Jensen’s a Sector Explorer for the Ohanaic Fleet. He crashed here about twenty years ago; went native.

Um. I see. And you?

I’m an investigative reporter for GalactoLight News.

Ah. Dr. Livingston, I presume?

Quite. I always liked Henry Stanley. Not to mention Spencer Tracy. She laughed, a merry sound, a likable sound.

Inbar sat up, sat cross-legged on the ground, rubbing his hands together, wriggling stiff fingers and wishing for a good, hearty cup of the very best Ethiopian coffee. Caffeine to jump start my soul, sugar to power the transformation.

So here we are inside the programming track for
Crimson Desert
, the most popular, longest running interactive hypernet saga accessible by the citizens of the Terran Empire of 3954 A.D., somewhere in something she calls the Ohanaic Pseudouniverse. Why
pseudo
-, I wonder? I have a feeling I’m not going to like it when I find out.

Inbar stood, stretching, listening to the gristle of his neck and spine and shoulder joints crackle, wishing now for a hot bathtub, a professional massage. Hell, why not simply wish for a warm bed with satin sheets and my own private, paid-for whore?

Everyone was stiff, stretching, murmuring complaints, Ling, oldest, perhaps the worst, Laing reaching down to help him to his feet, help him brush the red soil from his coverall. Even the ants were stiff, rolling around on their little globe-shaped hips, bending and straightening thin, angular arms and legs, hard plastic faces expressionless. But their eyes. You can see something in their eyes. Just a hint.

Everyone was stiff but Jensen, who’d slept more or less naked on the bare ground, Jensen bounding to his feet, yawning, laughing, bright-eyed and bushy... well. Not quite bushy-
tailed
, exactly. Jensen slapping his little red wife on her red plastic bottom with a flat, hard sound, like a man’s hand striking a block of wood. A hollow block, at that, little red woman murmuring
tingytingting
like a little bell, as if in protest.

And then another voice, not one of theirs, loud, harsh, with that oh-so-flat and unBritish accent: “Well. Caught you at last.” Flat voice echoing round the low crags surrounding their campsite. On the cliff above stood five... people? Four of them people at any rate. A short, rather unkempt young man. A slim, handsome Asian couple, man and woman, man in military uniform, woman looking like a video star...

Quite at home here, I suppose, mused Inbar, unsurprised, at himself, at them. A thing. Thing of some kind. Not a person. Not really. Person-shaped, but thin, spindly, black, something over three meters tall, with huge, featureless, glowing white eyes. Not glowing. Reflecting the morning light like mirrors.

And the American soldier woman, she of the flowing golden hair, she of the bizarre,
alien
silver eyes. Alien? The word’s taken on new meaning, deeper meaning. How familiar, how
comfortable
she looks just now. Something from home.

Up on the cliff, the Asian-looking man said, “Jensen and Laing? I wondered if we’d run into you two in here.”
In
here.

Alireza stepped forward, just one step, a half-step perhaps, and called out, “Sergeant-Major Kincaid, is it? Come on down. You and your friend can... explain things to us.”

“If she knows, herself,” Inbar heard Ling mutter.

“If there’s anything to know,” said Rahman aloud, voice quite cold.

Kincaid laughed and stepped off the cliff, landing like an acrobat in front of them. “There is,” she said.

o0o

Alireza sat then and ate his breakfast, hot, sharp flower-scented orange tea sipped between little spoonfuls of some crunchy grain cereal that had quickly soaked up a splash of tart, lime-green milk, and wondered for the thousandth time, if he really understood. Wondered, and listened to the talk, mostly between little soldier Genda, strapping newswoman Laing, and this metallic American Amazon, Kincaid.

Do I
finally
understand this word
Multiverse
? Maybe. Most likely not. Easy to understand its comic book implications, of course. You make a decision, yes or no, the universe splits and two of you go their separate ways, one yes, one no.

But it isn’t as simple as that, nothing ever is, especially with physics. It was demonstrated almost two hundred years ago, with all those crazy slit experiments, that a particle plainly follows all possible paths, until someone
looks
and nails down true history.

What about
us
? Whose looking? Who collapses
our
wave function?

A good Muslim knows. No need for some godless Anthropic Principle.

Always gave me a headache to think about these things, back at university. Never understood why an aerospace engineer in training should have to study these things, even in brief. Give me good, honest, faithful machines. Always the same, no matter what. Unless they’re broken. In which case you fix them.

Now listen to them talk.

How in
Hell
could we be inside a story? Look at Ling. Chinaman
gleeful
at what he’s hearing.

Listen to Kincaid’s questions now. She understands the Multiverse well. Understands how, if something is possible, then, somewhere, sometime, in some history or another, it
is
. But, still,
Crimson Desert
? A story is just a story, you see. Sure, there can be a history in which there exists a story called
Crimson Desert
, which includes a meeting between... us. But. The characters in a book are just characters. They are not conscious entities. They don’t experience the story themselves.

A story, you see, is just a story.

Then, that other being... do I understand correctly? Is this woman Amaterasu a robot, built for men’s pleasure, no more than some complex masturbation toy?

Amaterasu interjecting, very quietly, No, Mother. A book is, I think, a Chinese Room.

Ah, now there’s a notion. A locked room. Inside, a man who speaks only Spanish. With him, an elaborate library containing all the rules for translating between English and Chinese. A slip of paper is passed under the door, bearing a message in Chinese. The Spanish man goes diligently to work. In due course, a slip of paper is passed back under the door, bearing the English translation. To the man inside, there is no message, only the following of rules, directing mechanical tasks. To the people outside?
Something
has understood the message.

Does the room itself then, speak Chinese and English? Certainly, the Spanish worker inside does not. His presence is irrelevant and could be taken by an insensate machine. All those Hard AI arguments of centuries past, arguing that the Chinese Room is indeed imbued with sentience and must, in some sense, be aware.

Even I know it isn’t so.

The intelligence of a Chinese Room lies with the mind that laid down the rules for parsing the message. An information processing machine is nothing more than an extension of the intelligence that programmed it. At best, the fossilized intelligence of its creator.

Kincaid staring hard-eyed, dismayed at the robot.

Then the soft sound of Ling, swallowing gently, eyes troubled.

Oh. I see. The fossilized intelligence of its Creator.

You follow a line of cause and effect, backward through time. The reader reads. The writer writes. The writer came from somewhere. Somewhen. Each step in the chain no more than one more insensate link, back to some First Cause. And there you find the intelligence that imbued all the rest.

Of course
we can be inside a story now. What’s the difference between once sort of Creation and another? A matter of degree, not kind. Very funny, really. Look at how uncomfortable this notion makes the empiricists among us.