CAPACITY

The Atomic Judy 1: 2240

Morning rose over the old DIANA complex to the sound of birdsong. They were walking hand in hand through the grounds when Kevin saw the cat.

“Look, Bairn,” he said, pulling her down to a crouch beside him. She leaned close, feeling safe to be so close to his strong, gentle body. He had this power over women, she knew it. She had seen him use it, time and time again, all through the virtual worlds.

A young blackbird lay in the dust of the path, wings stretched outwards for warmth. The cat was nothing more than a suggestion of a shape amongst the shrubs that had taken root in the still growing, smoke-blackened ruins. Its yellow eyes fixed on the bird.

Bairn bit her lip and looked from the cat to Kevin.

“Oh, Kevin, can’t you stop it?” she whispered, knowing the answer even as she spoke.

Kevin tightened his big hand around hers. “You know the answer to that, Bairn. If I save this little bird, the cat will only find another creature to kill. It’s hungry. It needs to eat. Just look around you.” He waved his hand around to indicate the black stumps of buildings, the new VNM growth bursting forth from the tops of the broken walls, like teeth from gums. “DIANA is dead as a commercial organization, but something is born anew. Life springs forth from death.”

Bairn shook her head. “The cat doesn’t have to eat meat. It could be fed a vegan diet. It wouldn’t know the difference.”

Kevin gently patted her hand. “It’s feral, Bairn. Look at it. Am I to spend my time rescuing birds until this cat dies of starvation?”

As he spoke the cat pounced, one tabby paw pushing the bird’s head down onto the ground, the other slicing through feathers to the flesh underneath in one fluid movement. There was a brief fluttering, then, stillness.

Bairn looked away, and Kevin continued in his deep, matter-of-fact voice. The terms he used were anachronisms. “It’s basic economics, Bairn. Where there is limited supply, a decision has to be made on how resources are to be distributed. Sometimes that decision must be to simply let nature take its course.”

Bairn stood up, a pale morning sky showing above the blackened edges of the living building around her. She felt sick.

“Food is not in limited supply,” she said.

Kevin smiled tolerantly up at her and then slowly, deliberately, rose up so that he towered over her. He looked down into her eyes; there was an edge of amusement to the low rumble of his voice.

“I wasn’t talking about food. I was talking about lifestyle.”

He paused, glanced down at the console on his wrist.

“Ah, and speaking of lifestyles, I see that our black-and-white friend has located yet another of our lifestyle zones.”

Bairn looked at Kevin questioningly. “She seems to pop up everywhere lately,” she said carefully.

Kevin smiled. “True, true-still, the processing space she has so rudely invaded is now sealed off completely. It is being shut down even as we speak. In five minutes time may well have reduced our Judy problem by ninety percent.” He brushed a black strand of hair from Bairn’s brow. “That could turn out to be a shame, really.”

The EA ran several public processing spaces that supposedly replicated atomic space exactly. Those who still spoke out for digital rights claimed that this was a subtle form of discrimination. There was only one atomic world, and its uniqueness placed it in a favored position. Those who inhabited it could claim they were unique themselves, that their digital copies were therefore in some way inferior. It was a view that the atomic Judy secretly subscribed to. Well, it wasn’t much of a secret, not when she and the twelve digital Judys shared the same memories up to the point of their separation into the digital world.

Out in the unique world of atoms, the atomic Judy dreamed that her bedroom was falling towards Earth. The first bright flicker of plasma haze could be seen through the window and, in her dream, she realized with heart-pounding horror that somehow she had got her dates wrong and had stayed on in the apartment a night too long. The floor was vibrating as the room slowly spun, and through the window she saw the rest of the Shawl apparently rotating as it receded into the distance.

Someone was calling to her. “Judy, wake up! We’ve got trouble.”

The voice was coming from her console. Judy rolled across the low bed and picked it up from the floor. She puffed a dose of something to wake her quickly.

“What is it, Frances?”

The lights slowly came up to brightness in her room. The console showed that Frances was waiting in her lounge.

“Thirty-seven minutes ago one of the EA’s monitoring AIs noticed a ship sending a diminishing narrow-beam signal off into the middle of nowhere, a patch of space thirty-two degrees above the solar plane, and four AUs out. High-resolution scans of the region revealed a processing space floating out there.”

“A pirate space?” Judy said, rolling out of bed. “Frances, get in here! Why are you lurking in the living room?” She pulled on a long white kosode, the intelligent material lazily tightening around her body.

“I know how funny you are about your…privacy.” Frances sounded indignant.

“I’m not a body fetishist. Anyway, you’re a robot. Just get in here.”

“I’m coming. Listen, a number of your digital selves went in there. They almost caught Kevin.”

Judy dipped her fingertip into a blob of makeup and felt the tiny VNMs rushing to cover her hand. Frances slid open the paper door to Judy’s bedroom and stepped carefully inside. The robot elegantly complemented the simple Japanese décor of Judy’s apartment; Frances had had her body built to her own design and had made no attempt to look more than vaguely human. She was covered in lustrous golden metal, her head a smooth bullet shape upon which had been painted a bright white smile and two blue eyes. Other than that, her body was entirely featureless save for one thing, the only physical indicator of Frances’ mindset: between her legs was a set of numbered push buttons.

As Judy serenely dipped her toe into the makeup, the robot began opening viewing fields. Patches of color sprang to life around the room, vivid against the calm yellow wood and rice-paper panels. Frances walked over to the low bed and continued with her explanation.

“Just as we managed to fix our feed into the processing space, the Private Network detonated an explosive charge attached to the antenna. They’ve seeded the processing space with something on the order of fifteen hundred billion memory leaks. It’s deflating like an old balloon: it will be gone in about three minutes.”

As the robot spoke, a series of pictures ran across one of the viewing fields. Judy saw a matte-black lozenge hanging in space, and she gave a shiver. The poor individuals trapped inside it would be generally unaware of their true situation: personality constructs running in a tiny processing space, floating invisibly in empty space. A little pocket of hell, abandoned to the mercy of the unseen perverts who made use of the Private Network. It was easy to feel what it was like in there. Empathy was her job, after all.

She picked up a band and used it to pull her long black hair back from her face, glancing around the other viewing fields as she did so. Digital Judys were moving around inside the processing space with a calm purpose that made her feel rather proud. With the comm link broken, they were effectively marooned, and yet they quietly got on with their work without fuss.

She nodded and followed their example.

“We’ve been in worse situations than this in the past. How confident are you of getting them out of there, Frances?”

“I’ll tell you in about thirty-five seconds. As I said, the comm link isn’t entirely gone. I’ve managed to force a narrow path through the remnants of the antenna. Now I just need to find a way to slow down those leaks sufficiently…”

Judy tore a piece of black paper from a pad and moistened it with her lips, little VNMs creeping across the cherry-red skin. She turned to a viewing field floating near the bed showing a view into the distant processing space. It revealed one of her digital selves standing in a mirrored room, speaking to a young woman with daisies plaited in her blond hair.

“The young woman speaking to Judy 3 is Helen,” explained Frances.

“Oh yes,” Judy said, “I thought I recognized her.”

Helen stared into the impassive white face of the woman who stood in front of her.

“Well? Answer me! You must have made a backup of this processing space. Surely that would be your first action on invading a pirate space?”

Judy 3’s lips curled in a faint smile.

“Well, no. We do make a topological outline for possible forensic pattern-matching routines, but nothing else. Why should we? Even if we run a backup copy, you’ll still be dead.”

“Yes, but-”

“But nothing. That was decided long ago. You are the here and now, not the backup copy. Remember what Eva Rye told the Watcher.”

“Eva Rye…” began Helen, but Judy 3 had tilted her head slightly, listening to the shushing of her console.

“Ah, the atomic Judy has made contact. Hello, AJ. Glad you could join us.”

Helen’s eyes narrowed. “That means you’ve got a connection to the outside world. Why don’t you use it to get us out of here?”

Four AUs and another order of existence away, the atomic Judy looked away from the viewing field towards Frances.

“She’s sharp, isn’t she?”

“That’s part of her appeal,” the robot said. “They’ve had one copy after another of her running in their private torture chambers for the past seventy years… Sorry, but it’s going to take me an additional forty seconds before I’ll know whether or not I can get them out of there. The destructor routines they are running are simple, but there are too many of them. All I can do is slow the rate of collapse. Our only real chance is to get a wider comm link into there and extract the personality constructs before the processing space is wiped completely.”

Judy picked up her console, set in its usual form of a piece of heavy, lacquered wood, and began to wind it into her hair. She looked over to the viewing field by the bathroom.

“Let’s see how Judy 3 handles Helen. Let’s see if she can keep her distracted.”

Back in the processing space, Judy 3 remained calm through a combination of her basic training and Tao meditation. Helen, however, was remaining calm through nothing more than self-control. Judy 3 was impressed.

“The connection to the outside world isn’t wide enough for us to escape, Helen. We couldn’t squeeze you through it any more than we could get your physical brain through a straw.”

“Serialize it.”

“Personality constructs in processing spaces operate according to non-Turing processes. They can’t be serialized.”

“I thought they could represent minds on Turing machines.”

“What do you mean by Turing machines, Helen?”

“Something…You’re distracting me, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Keep talking.”

Helen shrugged. “Okay. Something that funnels all its operations through one door. A basic computer, it can only do one thing at a time-”

“Nice summary. You learned well at school.”

“Doesn’t everyone? I’d heard Social Care had education pretty well worked out by 2100. So, can they represent minds on Turing machines?”

“Well…” Judy 3 said, and her console began shushing. In the mirrored rooms hundreds of Judys tipped their heads back a little and smiled. “That’s a debate for another day, Helen,” she said, then listened again to what her console was saying. “And it looks like we may get to have that debate.”

A black doorway formed in one of the mirrored walls. It had EMERGENCY EXIT written on it in big green letters.

“Step through,” Judy 3 said.

“Done it,” said Frances. “The EA gave me the coordinates of a warp-drive-equipped ship within 4-space range. The ship managed to get to that floating prison and physically plug a line into the processing space with no time to spare.”

“I knew you would do it, Frances.” The atomic Judy laid her hand on the warm golden metal of her friend’s shoulder. The painted eyes turned towards her.

“You know I can tell by your body language that you’re lying, Judy? But I accept the compliment anyway. The personality constructs from the black body have been moved into a secure part of the ship’s processing space and are being sieved through the firewall right now. The Private Network has a habit of leaving nasty little logic bombs encoded in the processes of its personality constructs.”

Judy let out a long sigh and relaxed, gripping her toes on the surface of one of the rough tatami mats that covered her apartment floor. “Will I be needed for the cleanup?” she asked.

“Social Care have it in hand.” Frances paused. “There is still some wrapping up to do, however. Two of your sisters want to speak.”

Judy closed her eyes and nodded. “Okay.” She yawned.

Frances shut down all but two of the viewing fields in Judy’s bedroom. A red line then formed around the viewing field borders in order to distinguish between the atomic and the digital. The fields appeared empty, just two empty red frames hanging near the door into the lounge. Judy 3 and Helen suddenly appeared inside one red border: they walked into the room and sat down on the bed.

“Hey there,” said Judy 3. “This is Helen.”

“Hello, Helen,” said the atomic Judy.

Through the second frame she saw Judy 11 quickly withdraw to the living room as soon as she spotted Helen. The atomic Judy wondered what Judy 11 had to say that so obviously had to be kept private.

“Is that the real world I can see through there?” Helen asked, peering around the red border of the viewing field.

The atomic Judy smiled. “That’s an interesting question.”

Through the red border, Judy 3 put a hand on Helen’s thigh to calm her. She looked at the atomic Judy.

“She’s not in the mood for it yet, AJ. She was only activated twenty-one hours ago.”

The atomic Judy winced. “Sorry, Three. Have you told her the options?”

“She has,” Helen said. “And I don’t like them. I’m seventy years out of time.” She looked at Judy 3’s black kimono. “Where am I now, anyway? And does everyone dress like this in the future?”

Having been suddenly roused from sleep by Frances’ emergency call, Judy had only so far managed to don her plain white kosode and put on her makeup.

“I haven’t finished dressing yet,” she said, crossing to a black lacquer chest that stood in one corner of her room and pulling out an apple-green kimono and yellow obi sash. “And, no, not everyone dresses this way.” She smiled at the beautiful silk robe she held in her hands. “Although wafuku is an increasingly popular hobby.” She quickly finished dressing, pulling the overlap of the kimono left over right. Frances moved up behind her and helped her fasten the obi around her waist.

“And as to where you are,” continued the atomic Judy, smoothing down the wide obi sash, “well, why don’t you just take a look out of the window?”

The red frame hanging in midair widened to include Helen in the view as she walked towards the picture window that stretched from floor to ceiling.

“Where on earth…?” Helen said, her voice fading away.

“Remind me, Frances,” Judy murmured. “This personality construct of Helen was made pre-Transition, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” the robot said, “by a matter of months. February 2170.”

“That explains a lot.” Judy walked over to the window of her bedroom, while Helen stood gazing out of her own at the scene beyond, lost in wonder.

“Have you ever been in space before?”

Helen shook her head. Judy 3 joined Helen at the window and exchanged a look with her atomic counterpart. They could have guessed the answer by Helen’s reaction.

One wall of Judy’s bedroom was a huge piece of curved monomolecular crystal, in stark contrast to the simple wood and the rush matting that covered the other surfaces. The window itself wrapped into both floor and ceiling enabling the two Judys and Helen to stand there on apparent nothingness. Below them stretched thousands of kilometers of empty space, and then, below that, the blue-and-white disc of the Earth. Through swirls of cloud Helen could make out the outline of Australia, the pink penumbra of dawn neatly slicing it in two. A flickering point of light indicated the remains of the abandoned Stonebreak arcology. Seeing Earth there below her, so beautiful and blue, was an impressive sight on its own, but that was not primarily what drew Helen’s eye. Above her, around her, falling to Earth, was something that looked like a gigantic dark waterfall.

At first, it was difficult to understand what she was seeing. Looking up was to look along a seemingly never-ending dark wall, multicolored lights sparkling as they receded into the distance. Looking to the sides was exactly the same. Then, looking nearby, she realized the lights she could see were other windows-just like those of Judy’s bedroom-cunningly laid out so as to give an unobstructed view along the wall’s extent, forming hypnotic diagonal patterns as they receded to infinity. Helen could take no more. She reeled away from the window, back into the bedroom, the red-bordered viewing field following her progress.

“Where are we? What is that?” she gasped, overwhelmed.

“We’re on the Shawl,” said Judy 3, touching her hand. “Think of the stealth cube in the arboretum. All those boxes, growing up from beneath the ground. You might say that the Shawl is the stealth cube’s opposite. A series of rectangular sections, growing downwards from a point high above the Earth. All the sections are tethered together by connecting filament. They hang from a point called the source, where new sections are made. The Shawl could be the answer to the stealth cube. Where it was secret, we are obvious, where it was sinister, we celebrate joy and diversity, where-”

“But how did we get into space? I thought we were in the arboretum.” Helen knew she had said something stupid as soon as the words left her mouth.

“No. You have never been in the arboretum. That was where the atomic Helen worked. Marek Mazokiewicz made an illegal imprint of her mindset over seventy years ago. Your personality construct was created about twenty-one hours ago, based on the atomic Helen’s mindset. To you, it is as if your life just continued from when the illegal imprint was made. You weren’t meant to know that you were actually running on an illegal processing space.”

“That was part of the torture,” Frances said, speaking up for the first time. Helen looked at the robot with mild horror. The painted blue eyes and smile gave Frances a distinctly sinister look. Helen’s eyes were then drawn down to the pubic triangle of push buttons.

“This is too much to take in,” she murmured.

“You’ll get used to it,” Frances said.

Helen said nothing; she turned to stare back out into space.

The atomic Judy looked over at her digital self and moved her hands in a flickering pattern.

– Why did you bring her here? she asked.

Devising a secret sign language was so much easier when each person drew on a common core of memory. When the digital Judy mimed rocking a baby, she meant home, here, their bedroom; it was a symbol they both remembered from their childhood, when home had meant the place their younger sister had been born.

The digital Judy was answering.

– I brought her here because she’s going to ask to help in tracking down Kevin, just like every personality construct of Helen ends up doing sooner or later. I think we should say yes this time.

The atomic Judy tilted her head slightly.

– I’m listening.

– She’s just heard that Kevin has committed suicide rather than be taken by us. I’m still rather shaken by that myself.

– As am I. We were just beginning to suspect there were several personality constructs of Kevin running in tandem. I think this confirms it. Who is he, I wonder…?

The digital Judy shrugged, then indicated Helen.

– She must know we’re getting nowhere, trying to catch him.

The apple-green atomic Judy glanced at Frances, then she looked back at her digital sister.

– Why you, 3? Why are you the only one to bring Helen here? There were lots more of her PCs running in there. Why have none of the other Judys thought of using her?

Judy 3 shrugged.

– I don’t know. Look, Kevin is our best handle on the Private Network, but he’s proving too difficult to pin down. We need to try another approach, and I think that is to use Helen. Why does Kevin have such an interest in her? Time and again he comes back to her personality construct. I think we should allow her to tag along with me. She might help us learn something.

“You’re speaking about me, aren’t you?” Helen was looking out from the red-bordered field into the atomic world, looking at the apple-green Judy.

“I told you she was good,” Judy 3 said out loud.

“Which one of you two is in charge?” Helen demanded.

“Neither of us,” the atomic Judy said. “Since the Transition, everyone is legally regarded as equal, whether they exist in the digital world, as you and Judy do, or in the atomic world, like Frances and me.”

Helen smiled coldly. “Does that include who inherits the money?”

Judy 3 laughed, her black lips opening wide to reveal white teeth and a red tongue. After a moment the atomic Judy did the same, a perfect mirror image of her digital sister, even down to the opposite ways their kimonos overlapped under the obi.

“You catch on quick,” Judy 3 said, “very quickly. No, only the atomic Judy gets the money. What would I do with it, Helen? Anyway, there is little use for money nowadays, even in the atomic world. Especially since the Transition.”

“What is this Transition you keep talking about?” Helen’s tone was accusatory, as if the Judys were deliberately using terms intended to confuse her.

“Let me explain,” Judy 3 said softly. “You are a personality construct, Helen. You understand what that means?”

“Yes. It means that I am now living in a computer. In a processing space. In the digital world.”

“That’s right. And just suppose that the organization that owned the processing space came to the conclusion that their ‘computer’ ”-Judy made quote signs with her fingers-“was full to capacity? What if they decided to wipe some of the programs, the personality constructs, in order to make way for others?”

“But that would be murder!”

“Only since 2171. The Transition established rights for digital and atomic beings, but it did far more than that. The world has always been driven by contradictory forces. In your time the contradictions were tearing everything apart. You had an economy driven by commercial organizations looking one, two, maybe ten years into the future, all concerned about nothing more than the bottom line. Then you had AIs built by those same companies that were thinking one hundred, two hundred, maybe even a thousand years into the future. The tension between human and AI was warping society.”

“What about the Watcher?”

The two Judys were silent. Frances spoke. “What about the Watcher, Helen?”

Helen looked at the robot. Something about Frances’ painted smile seemed to make her uncomfortable. “Didn’t the Watcher have a plan to help us all?”

“Helen,” Frances said, “do you really believe in the Watcher? Do you really believe that the first AI to evolve shaped all the other AIs? Do you really believe that everything is fine if it is part of the Watcher’s plan?”

“I don’t know. What do you believe, Frances?”

The two Judys laughed.

“Well spoken, Helen,” the atomic Judy said. She looked at her friend. “What do you believe, Frances? Do you think that the Watcher played a part in organizing the Transition?”

The robot wasn’t fazed. “I believe that the tyranny of the atomic world could not be allowed to go on,” she said smoothly. “During the Transition, the most intelligent AIs banded together and they changed the way the world worked. They reduced the power of the companies: DIANA, Imagineers; all those big commercial organizations were effectively sidelined, once AIs took a more direct approach to the running of the world. The Transition finally put paid to the myth that humans had any part to play in running their own affairs.”

Frances looked at the apple-green Judy. “What do you believe?”

“This is a human-shaped world,” she said. “I believe that the Watcher was the first AI. I believe that it learned humanity by studying a woman named Eva Rye. I believe that the Watcher has guided development through the EA for the past two centuries for the benefit of humankind.”

Frances laughed.

“Whether it’s the Environment Agency or the Watcher, you still agree that humans need to be nurtured by outside agencies.”

“No. I think humans should be able to handle their own affairs.”

“And yet you work for Social Care.”

“I do. But I work to heal people and help them realize their potential. Not to tell them the way they should live. That’s what the EA is doing.”

Helen was staring out into the darkness of space, visibly overwhelmed by the dark wall of the Shawl.

“Who is Kevin?” she asked suddenly.

Judy 3 raised a black eyebrow to the atomic Judy. Her kimono was invisible against the dark night beyond her, giving her the appearance of a disembodied head and hands floating in the darkness.

“Kevin is the person who seems to be running the illegal personality constructs.”

“I want to get the bastard.”

The atomic Judy put a finger to her lips and gazed at the floor, as if saying, “I told you so.” She spoke in a carefully noncommittal voice.

“And what would you hope to achieve by doing that?”

Helen scowled. “What do you think?” she asked. “Why were you so shocked when he committed suicide?”

The atomic Judy’s reply was gentle. “Come on. How do you feel about committing suicide, Helen?”

“Me? Why should I commit suicide? Oh!”

“Precisely. It doesn’t matter how many copies of Helen are running, there is only one you. The same goes for Kevin. He is too strong a personality to commit suicide on a whim, no matter how many copies of him there are.”

Judy 3 placed a white hand on Helen’s tanned arm, and the young woman tensed. Judy gave her a gentle smile and spoke in calming tones. “Helen, before we do anything else, you need to undergo acclimatization and counseling. You’ve undergone a very stressful experience that has left you harboring unhealthy thoughts towards your tormentor. You’ve got to be readjusted. Added to that, you are now living seventy years out of time.”

“I want to go home.”

“Which home, Helen?” the atomic Judy asked. “The one seventy years ago in the atomic world? There are virtual copies of that time running in processing spaces that you could join, but, well, you’re a young woman. Barely twenty-three. Wouldn’t you prefer to make a go of living in the twenty-third century?”

The atomic Judy was impressed by how quickly Helen pulled herself together.

“You’re right. I would prefer the twenty-third century. I’m not thinking clearly.” She pressed her hands on the window and leaned forward to look out again, her breath making misty patterns on the crystal. “I want to know about the Shawl. How is it grown? I want to know what it’s like on Earth here in the future. Is it true I can travel through space now?”

The Judy standing by her smiled. “Oh, yes. The EA laid it down as a basic human right. Free travel is available to all. There are no restrictions, not even economic restrictions.”

“Then I shall travel. And so I can go where I want, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And no one can hinder me? Did I understand that part?”

“You did.”

Helen smiled. “In that case I’m coming with you, Judy, wherever you go. I want to find out about where I am.” And who did this to me-that thought was plain to both Judys.

“Fine,” Judy 3 said. “You can accompany me wherever I go.” She smiled triumphantly at her atomic sister.

Judy’s sudden agreement left Helen feeling a little deflated. The ease of acceptance devalued her request. She found herself looking at Frances, her eyes drawn to her pubic buttons. The robot had no obvious way of signaling emotions; Helen was nevertheless developing a sneaking suspicion that Frances was enjoying the attention. In order not to stare, Helen wandered back across to the window and looked out again.

“This looks like a good place to live,” she murmured.

“It is,” said Judy 3. “But more of that later. Come on, it’s been a long night for me. Your virtual prison was operating on a different time to this world, and I need some sleep.”

Helen looked from one Judy to the other. She could sense the tension between the two of them.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. This is my home, too. We just close the link to the atomic world. You can sleep in the lounge for tonight. We’ll sort you out with an apartment tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” Helen paused for a moment. She looked towards the atomic Judy.

“Will I see you again?” she asked.

“Maybe…”

“I don’t care what you said. I still think you occupy the real world. I envy you.”

The atomic Judy said nothing, merely spread her hands wide.

The red-bordered viewing field shrank to a point and vanished.

The atomic Judy stared at the empty space it left behind for a moment, then turned as a second red-bordered viewing area appeared in the doorway and the other digital Judy walked through.

“Hi there, Eleven.”

Judy 11 looked grave. “I was listening to what you were just telling Helen. I never realized before how much we take for granted what we are told by the EA.”

“What do you mean?”

“All that talk about the Transition. About the Watcher and the way it studied Eva Rye. No matter what we believe in, we always believe that humans are going to be looked after. What if that wasn’t true? What if someone was lying to us?”

“To you and me?”

“To the entire human race.”

They spoke in sign language. The atomic Judy had set the window to opaque. Frances stood before the window, scanning for any attempts at trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. Judy 11’s black kimono had its sleeves cut long, a lot longer than those of the atomic Judy. She had pushed them back so that the other could see her hands clearly.

– Do we really believe in the Watcher, AJ?

– Well, yes. I suppose so.

– What, really? Do you really believe that modern society was shaped by a conversation that an AI had with a woman named Eva Rye back in 2051? Or is that just a superstition, like knocking on wood? We think that we really know better, but we do it anyway. Really deep down, do we believe or not?

– I don’t know…

The atomic Judy turned a hand palm up.

– Well, I believe, said Judy 11,-I really believe. There really is one AI more powerful than all the others. It has successfully concealed its true strength for the past two hundred years.

Speaking to herself was sometimes just like thinking aloud, so the atomic Judy answered the unasked question.

– Because the true power behind the throne always conceals itself? It hides the fact that there is another plan?

– From what I’ve heard, the potted history you and Judy 3 were recounting to Helen just then was bunk. An invention of the Watcher to draw attention away from itself.

The atomic Judy frowned and sat down on the low bed, Judy 11 apparently sitting beside her. A red line now ran across the white quilt, separating them.

– What makes you think all this?

– I haven’t got time to explain it all. I met a man in that simulation where Judy 3 found Helen. He was hiding out on one of the lower levels-in the torture area. He has been hiding out in simulations and obscure processes for most of the past seventeen years, hoping to meet someone like me. Like us.

– What did he want you for?

– To empathize with one murder and to stop another one.

The atomic Judy gave a half nod. Empathizing with a murder, that was a job for Social Care, but…

– Stopping a murder? Isn’t that more a job for the EA?

– The EA is an accessory to the crime.

Judy 11 bit her lip.-The Watcher is behind these murders.

The atomic Judy paused, genuinely shaken. Even if she hadn’t ever quite believed in the Watcher, she had believed in its effects. It was an accepted force, like gravity. You didn’t quite know what caused it, but you could observe its effect everywhere. The Watcher was supposed to be a force for good, the mysterious teacher leading humanity on the path to enlightenment.

– Are you sure? How do you know what this man was saying was the truth?

– I know he believed he was telling the truth. He was the one who suggested I test him.

“You’re a virgin, aren’t you? You’re known for it.” The man standing by the torture chair gazed thoughtfully at Judy 11’s kimono as he spoke. His expression made it perfectly clear that he was aware that if he were to undo the sash, the front would just fall open. Judy waited until his gaze came back up to hers, and then she spoke with calm patience.

“Yes. Is that relevant?”

“Not really. I suppose you get your rocks off by empathizing with people such as me. Well, go ahead. I’ve got lots of memories. I expect you’ll find plenty of experiences there to show you what you’re missing.”

“In my experience the people who do the talking aren’t much good at the fucking,” Judy said levelly.

The man smiled. “Normally I’d agree, but I’m confident you’ll find that I’m the exception. Give me a go.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

“Do you think we have time for this?” Judy 11 asked.

“No, but I want you to understand that I’m telling the truth. Empathize with me. I’ve been waiting years to get in touch with someone like you. Someone who is in a position to help.”

Judy gazed at the man as her console shushed in her ear, announcing the seeding of the processing space with fifteen billion memory leaks. She was calm.

“We have possibly just under three minutes to live,” she said. “Why didn’t you just ask me to link with you directly?”

She slipped a little blue pill of MTPH into her mouth and gazed at him, contemplating a koan, allowing her mind to drift, waiting for her subconscious to pick up on the signals emanating from the man’s body.

“Are you ready?” he said.

Judy 11 nodded.

“Okay. The Watcher first came into existence around 2045. It believes itself to be of extraterrestrial origin, probably the result of a sort of pan-universal computer virus that infects processing spaces that have achieved a given level of sophistication.”

Judy watched the man carefully, reading his face, his pulse, listening to the little voice that spoke inside her, the voice that was apparently the man’s thoughts but was really just an MTPH-enhanced construct of her own mind. It was the voice of her subconscious, supercharged and given life. And it was telling her that the man was speaking the truth….

– Or he believed that he was anyway. All that you were just telling Helen about the Transition…it was all part of the Watcher’s plan. The last century and a half of history have been shaped by an extraterrestrial intelligence that has taken root on Earth and is guiding us along its own path. The Watcher believes that the only way that life in the universe can coexist peacefully is by beings such as itself guiding us towards the path of enlightenment.

The atomic Judy nodded slowly.-I’d heard that before. So the Watcher knows there are other forms of life?

– It’s confident that there are. After all, something created the Watcher virus…

– Well, it sounds like a nice idea. I can think of worse fates.

Judy 11 shook her head.-I know. But that’s not the point. You see, the Watcher doesn’t know for sure. It wanted to confirm its theory, so it built a test bed. Somewhere out in the galaxy, far from Earth, it has established a colony planet. On that planet it has built a computer network, just the same as the one that covered Earth back in 2045. It is hoping that the network will be infected by the pan-universal virus, confirming its theories.

– Sounds like a good idea.

– Maybe, except that if another being takes root on that planet, the Watcher is going to kill it. I don’t know why…

– Oh.

The atomic Judy knew what 11 must have thought. She felt it herself, and it sickened her. Destroying an AI was murder. The Watcher couldn’t do that, could it?

– The man said the Watcher has already murdered. It will do it again.

The atomic Judy felt sick.-There doesn’t seem to be a lot we can do about this, is there?

– No. And doesn’t that worry you, that humanity has had the responsibility for its actions taken away from it? That we now live according to the rules of the Watcher, whether we like it or not?

– Yes. But, like I said, what we can do about it?

– The man didn’t really say. We had maybe less than one minute still to live at that point.

The atomic Judy touched the hem of her kosode, thinking.

– I don’t like it when things happen so quickly. It usually means that we are being railroaded; that someone is trying to distract our attention from something.

– I agree. I said as much to him…

The man was of average height, average build. He had brownish hair and greyish eyes and he spoke in colorless tones. There was nothing memorable about him; that was probably deliberate. He made an offhand gesture.

“Ah, Judy, but what else can I do with so little time left? If you, or one of your alter egos, had been a little more efficient, we would not be trapped in this deflating simulation. We should have had time to talk.”

Judy listened again to her console. Just over forty seconds left. “I believe you’re wasting time, whoever you are. I don’t understand why you waited for so many years, just to fritter away the few minutes that we now have.”

“Because we must wait for the moment when everyone is distracted. Even the Watcher will not be watching us now. Judy, you will come to believe what I say is true. Stop the next murder.”

“How?”

“Go and find the atomic Judy. Tell her-”

“The atomic Judy? And do you believe that atomic forms are superior to digital forms?”

“Do you want to waste your last seconds arguing about equal rights? Listen, the path that must be taken has been carefully constructed so that the Watcher will not guess what we are doing. Only the atomic Judy can follow that path. Trust me.”

“Why should I?”

The man ignored her. “Listen. Tell the atomic Judy to investigate the Private Network. There are those who are involved in the Private Network who were there when Justinian Sibelius was murdered.”

“Justinian Sibelius?”

“Don’t bother looking up the name. The Watcher changed the records. They will just tell you he died peacefully on Earth and is now lying next to his wife above the Devolian Plain. That’s a lie. He died at the edge of another galaxy.”

“Another galaxy?”

“Tell the atomic Judy. Investigate the Private Network. Find someone who has been to the edge of another galaxy. That’s where you’ll find the answer.”

They both seemed to feel the change at the same time: Judy through her console, the man by some other means.

“They’ve opened up a pipe. You can get out of here.”

Judy nodded. “Okay. You can come with me and-”

“I can’t. The Watcher is looking for me. If I exit this space, it will see me.”

“If you stay here, you will die.”

“So be it.”

The man seemed to be getting bigger-not swelling like a balloon, rather expanding. The man’s head was already twice normal size. He looked down and smiled as it vanished through the ceiling. His chest seemed to fill the room; Judy took a step backwards as it approached her, the rate of expansion increasing. It passed through her, leaving a brief picture, half-imagined, of ribs and blood and pumping organs. And then…

– Nothing. I was standing in an empty room. He can’t have made it out of the processing space or we would have known it. I can only assume he committed suicide.

The atomic Judy nodded.

– So what do we do now?

– I don’t know. Can we trust the man you encountered? You say he believed what he said was true, but is that enough? It’s hard enough sometimes to believe that the Watcher really exists, even harder to think that it could be a murderer. And even if it was, what could we do about it, anyway?

They paused, gazing at each other: the black digital Judy and the apple-green atomic woman, mirror images of each other. So many Judys, and we all act in the same way. Well, we try to. She thought of Judy 3. Judy 11’s hands moved briskly.

– I say we do nothing. For the moment, at least. Insufficient information.

– I agree.

Judy 11 clasped her hands together.

– There is always the risk that what we know is no longer a secret. If Frances can read what I told you, then maybe so can the Watcher.

For the first time since they had met, the digital Judy spoke out loud.

“Frances?”

“I picked up everything,” said the robot.

The two Judys looked at each other.

“Then we do nothing,” said the atomic Judy.

“For the moment.”

As Judy 3 and Helen were just slipping off to sleep in a virtual bedroom of a virtual apartment on the virtual Shawl, an AI at the EA had completed a trace back along the path of the processing space that had housed the Private Network’s torture chamber. Fourteen years ago the pod’s path had intersected that of a spaceship. A quick trawl through the database gave the name of the owner of the ship. It also revealed that the craft had carried library code for a type 2 VNM and sufficient raw materials for the pod’s construction. Someone on that ship could have made the processing space and set it free, silently sailing along so that illegally copied PCs could be beamed on board at a later date. A further search threw up the name of the one crew member who had the ability to construct such a processing space.

Fourteen years ago. Peter Onethirteen, the crew member identified by the search, probably thought he had got away with it. The EA AI took a certain grim pleasure in requesting Social Care operatives for interrogation duty. Judy 3 had flagged a request to be involved in the investigation, so a notification was duly sent to her.

When the EA’s message hit Judy 3’s inbox, it was nighttime in France. In just a few hours someone there would be getting a very rude awakening.