Divergence

—Wh t re yo doi g, Kev n? Constantine called. The message was breaking up. Kevin’s senses flickered as he looked inside the shuttle. It took him a moment to realize that Constantine was operating the disintegrator, turning it on the hail of seeds. The strange device was clearly affecting Kevin’s senses. That was interesting. If it was affecting those senses, then maybe it was operating by using…At that point, Kevin understood how the disintegrator worked. After that, it was easy, he just had to get it to look at itself.

Constantine screamed. —Kevin, what have you done to me? My arm!

—Sorry, Constantine. I’ve made your disintegrator disintegrate itself. Nothing personal, but sticking with Judy is going to kill us all.

The seeds were now overwhelming the humans, drowning them. Constantine was rubbing his arm, still trying to feel what Kevin had done to it.

—Kevin, don’t do this! Let’s talk about it.

—Sorry.

Aleph was standing alongside Kevin on the virtual bridge.

—You’re not going to make it to Earth alive, Kevin.

—I’m not going to Earth. I’ll drown Judy in seeds first.

—You’ve attracted too many seeds, Kevin. Dark Plants are forming inside the hull of the Bailero.

—I’ll get through, replied Kevin, full of confidence. —I’m shutting down my senses, then I’ll hide in the virtual world and coast on until the seeds have all wandered off again.

—You can’t hide from them, Kevin. The Watcher tried to and failed. They always find a way in. The Dark Seeds are pulled to those spaces in the universe where there are too many minds. Did you hear me, Kevin?

Kevin didn’t answer, distracted by dark shapes in the heavens aligning themselves into a pattern of points that mapped out the vertices of a stellated icosahedron. Something was trying to gain his attention. Quickly, he turned his attention elsewhere.

Kevin didn’t fear death, he didn’t get nervous. Still, he could feel doubt. For the first time he wondered if he really would make it.

—These plants, Aleph, he asked. —What is their purpose?

Aleph chuckled.

—That invention of the human mind: that order exists in the universe. The plants simply are . They replicate. Replication and recursion are the building blocks of the universe, the same patterns arising everywhere. See those patterns and you see the mind of God. Your problem, Kevin, is that you look always to yourself. You look to see how you as an individual fit into that pattern.

—Aleph. Kevin laughed. —You don’t know me that well.

Kevin felt something filling his belly; pressure was building up inside the cold hull of the Bailero . Dark Seeds, a great sea of them—the hollow shell of his body like a silo full of grain. Dark Plants were growing in there. But how was Judy? Had she drowned yet? Had she choked to death on the rising tide of Dark Seeds?

—Not yet. Look inside the hull, Kevin.

Aleph did something and Kevin looked inside his own hull, looked inside with many different senses. There was a Dark Plant in there, and it was huge. It wrapped its body around the black-and-white teardrop of the Eva Rye and reared up inside the blue space like a black snake. Its lacy branches and vines reached out and pushed at the walls of the confining hull.

—I don’t think you can shake that off, Kevin.

—I don’t have to. I will just shut down my senses and coast.

—It won’t work. Look!

Aleph did something again, and Kevin’s gaze was drawn back inside his hull. He now saw the seven humans that lived at the forward end of hull, undetected by Judy and the crew. Refugees from another spaceship. Their bodies were woven together by VNMs, arms threaded through legs, livers merged in one amorphous mass, their joint stomach stitched together by heavy wire and floating above them. For the first time in a long time, they were smiling. Smiling at the Dark Plant that writhed before them.

—You bastard, said Kevin. —You could have helped me. Instead you’ve killed me.

—We’re not here to help you, Kevin. That wasn’t part of the deal.

—Look at that! Look what’s happening to me! I can see the algorithm that represents my own intelligence weaving amongst the plant’s vines….

—Judy is going to Earth, Kevin. That was the Fair Exchange.

—Oh shut up! Don’t speak to me anymore.

Kevin turned his senses away from Aleph. He felt a tension around the middle of the body of the Bailero that had not been there before. Through falling black rain he saw the fuzzy black ribbon of a BVB was wrapped around the ship’s hull. There was a tension evident towards the blunt nose, and he saw that another BVB had materialized there while his attention was distracted. Then another formed at the rear of the ship. The entire length of the Bailero was being wrapped in black bandage as his attention was pulled up and down the hull.

The Dark Plant inside him was pushing outwards against the inflexible bands of the BVBs. It hurt . He was being torn apart. The Bailero was dying.

Not yet, though. There were VNMs embedded throughout the hull and Kevin activated them. They got to work, making copies of themselves from the metal of the Bailero. The ship disassembled itself in a silver cloud. BVBs collapsed inwards, shrinking down to their new equilibrium point. The white teardrop of the Eva Rye floated free, unmolested. Aleph was there, riding its hull. The enormous Dark Plant in the Bailero ’s hold uncurled, its branches and vines making a fascinating pattern in space. Kevin looked away again. His body was now nothing more than a cluster of machinery wrapped around a processing space. Still, it was enough to build again. For now, he cut all the senses to the outside world.

But something was still there in his vision.

—Is that you, Aleph? he called.

Nothing.

What does it mean to be an AI with no external senses?

A human, suspended in silent darkness, can look over their past life with their mind’s eye. They can construct imaginary worlds in the darkness.

Kevin was an AI. He could do far better than imaginary worlds, for the worlds that he constructed had the clarity and resolution of the real world. He could construct a virtual home-from-home in which to live out the time it would take to coast free of Earth. But why should he bother? Where would the profit be in that?

He set his mind to slow time for forty years. Enough time to float clear of this area and start again. There was enough material left out there to build a new ship.

Only then did he realize his mistake.

Only when Kevin had entered slow time did he begin to realize the insidious nature of the plants. Kevin had looked at a Dark Seed from within his processing space and that had been enough for it to take on existence within the processing space, a digital seed.

It began to grow in slow time.

Forty years external time passed in just six minutes subjective for Kevin. Six minutes during which he watched the Dark Seed unfolding into a Dark Plant and felt it begin to eat at his soul. Forty years: enough time for the fates of Judy and Maurice and Saskia and Miss Rose to be decided. Enough time for them to land upon the Earth and…well, Kevin did not know, as he was now too lost in contemplation of the Dark Plant to look into the external universe and find out.

Still in slow time, the remains of the Bailero floated onwards, Kevin was trapped in his own fascinating living hell.

Kevin’s processing space had tremendous volume. The plant could continue to grow recursively for hundreds of thousands of years without approaching its capacity. And Kevin was trapped in there with it, watching it.

After a thousand years, Kevin began to scream.

Still the remains of the Bailero floated on.

saskia: 2252

Saskia had visitedEarth as a child. She had sat on her daddy’s shoulders and gazed around openmouthed at the spectacle of it, her legs in pink furry boots, wrapped tightly around his neck.

“Every window on Earth looks out onto a beautiful view,” her father had said, and it was true. She had seen it then, and she had seen the images in viewing fields since.

What was Earth like now? she wondered. There was silence in the shuttle for the moment, a temporary lull in the storm. Even Miss Rose was quiet. She had stopped screaming when Constantine had touched her and done something to remove the last few machines from her body. She had stopped crying when Judy had soothed her mind.

Sitting in the cramped space of the shuttle, listening to the far-off voices of the Dark Seeds, and to the occasional words from Maurice as he counted off their descent, Saskia was filled with dark unnameable dread. What would be waiting for them on Earth? She imagined a dark plane filled with the endlessly fascinating shapes of the Dark Plants, their chaotic branches casting twisted shadows across the ground. Saskia gazed fixedly at her lap. The Earth had been beautiful ten years ago, but what was waiting out there for them now? Better think of it as it had been.

Every window on Earth looks out onto a beautiful view, her father had said. From the luxury of a penthouse, set in a brilliant blue sky, residents appreciated the harmonious grid of the streets below them. Those who lived in the basement looked out at the skewed perspective of the baffling walls that rose at crazy angles all around, at the rows of brick and lattices of windows that combined to form a pop-art explosion. The Watcher had thought of each and every one of the people in its care and had apportioned out its bounty evenly.

How long could this descent go on for?

Long, shuddering groans rang through the air. What could cause such vibration out there, in the ship, that it was felt even here inside the shuttle? Someone took her hand and squeezed it. Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts. Think of old Earth .

In the hills, in the morning, looking through the thinning mist at the slowly emerging shapes of the surrounding buildings, desolate in the damp greyness, there was sparseness to the scene that brought a longing to the heart of the complacent.

There was a sudden jerk and the feel of the shuttle sliding across the floor of the hold.

“What happened?” called someone. “What happened?”

“Easy,” said Maurice. “There was a buildup of energy in the gravity field. It’s dispersed now. It won’t happen again.” He was trying to sound calm, Saskia knew. Think of old Earth. Every window on Earth looks out onto a beautiful view .

Living in the massed city blocks, residents marveled at the way the sunlight reflected back and forth on the cunningly angled windows of the silver spires, now in rose, now in gold, now in silver, forming abstract mosaics that flickered as the Earth slowly revolved. And then the shadow of the Shawl came creeping across the silver mirrors, with the stars shining in reflection in the middle of the day…

This was the legacy of the Watcher: the legacy of the superintelligent AI controlling Earth’s affairs for the past two hundred years, endlessly shaping the environment and the population to perfection. What would Earth be like now?

It was quiet in the shuttle. The last of the Dark Seeds were gone, batted into nothingness by the Schrödinger kittens.

They sat in silence, listening to the ancient hum of the air conditioning, gazing at Maurice, who was still fiddling with his console. He cleared his throat.

“We’ve landed,” he said. His voice was shaky.

Saskia let out a long sigh. She noted the way that Judy had closed her eyes, and she took hold of the white hand resting beside her on the arm of the flight chair and squeezed it.

“I’m okay,” said Judy.

There was a pause, and then, as if responding to an unspoken signal, they all ripped open the crash webbing constraining them and got to their feet.

“I don’t understand,” Edward said. “Where are we? Have we made it to Earth?”

Constantine was helping Miss Rose up, his metal arm under her frail shoulder.

“Yes, Edward, we’re on Earth. The Bailero has gone, though.”

“What do you mean, gone?” Saskia asked.

“It’s no longer out there. It’s destroyed. It’s gone.”

“I don’t think that’s all that’s gone,” Judy murmured.

She had opened the hatch of the shuttle and was peering out into the large white hold. Long feathery white splinters lay scattered over the white tiles. Broken white wooden bones were spread amongst them.

“The venumbs are dead,” she said tonelessly.

Saskia came up behind Judy and saw melted drops of silver metal among the wreckage. Judy, meanwhile, sat on the edge of the hatch and dropped to the floor of the hold beyond.

“Hold on, Judy,” Saskia called in alarm. “Where are you going?”

“Outside, onto the planet, of course,” Judy said, kicking her way across the floor. White splinters stuck to the shoes of her passive suit.

Saskia dropped herself to the floor and ran after her. “But shouldn’t we use the ship’s senses to take a look outside first, see if it’s safe?”

“What’s the point of that?” Judy asked. “This is where I am supposed to be.” She turned back to the shuttle, looking tiny in the vast space of the large hold. Saskia could see the long scars on the shuttle’s side where the venumbs had hit against it during the ship’s descent to Earth. Now the others were descending from the shuttle. Constantine had stood Miss Rose on the retractable ladder and set it descending. He dropped to the white-tiled floor in time to help her safely onto the ground.

“Constantine, are you coming with me?” Judy asked.

“I think I will,” Constantine said.

Saskia was distraught. “Maurice? Are you just going to let them go?”

“What do you suggest, Saskia? We’ve fulfilled our part of the contract. I say we get Judy off the ship, and then we jump back into space as quickly as possible. If we can, that is.”

“You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that. We’ve come this far.”

“Anyway,” Maurice said, “it’s not your decision to make. Edward is in charge. Edward, what do you think? Stay here on the most dangerous planet known, or get out of here while we can, and find some new contracts?”

“Hey, that’s not fair! You’re loading the question!”

But Edward had screwed up his face in concentration. “I don’t understand, Maurice. Why would we leave Judy? Surely we’re all going along with her, to help? Now, are you going to help me with Miss Rose here?” He placed a hand under the old woman’s arm.

Saskia could hear the disbelief in Maurice’s voice. “You can’t mean that we’re taking her, too?”

“Of course we are,” Edward said. “Miss Rose has something important to do. Where else would her important work be but here on Earth?”

“This is ridiculous,” Maurice said, pulling the green hood of his active suit over his head.

“So you said,” Saskia said.

Maurice hadn’t wanted to drop the rear ramp. Instead he had had them all crowd into the narrow lift and then set it descending, lowering them to the ground, taking them down to stand on Earth, taking them back to their home, the place where humankind had evolved.

“No one leaves Earth anymore,” Maurice said darkly.

“Do we know that for sure?” asked Saskia.

All things come full circle: from a replicating molecule to single cells, to plants to animals. Humankind had arisen, built cities, built civilizations, and exploded out into the stars. Driven by intelligence, they had almost made it to the next galaxy, but then the Dark Seeds had appeared, and now the Earth had called its children home. Saskia was shivering. Maurice remained businesslike.

“Listen, keep your active suits on at all times. Don’t breathe the air, don’t drink or eat anything while you’re out there. The Watcher controls everything. Don’t give it a way into your soul.”

“Your soul , Maurice?” said Judy, giving him a faint smile, but she too reached up and pulled the black hood of her active suit over her head. Saskia and Edward did the same. Constantine was becoming fuzzy; his skin seemed to be losing focus.

The indicator bar on the lift wall glowed blue.

“Okay,” said Maurice, “we’re down. I’ll open the door now….”

Saskia squeezed Miss Rose’s arm. For a moment, for a long moment, she wanted to call out NO!, to have the lift return them to the safety of the Eva Rye. But the door was already sliding open. The temperature senses on her active suit relayed to her skin the icy coldness waiting beyond.

“Here we go,” she said.

They stepped through the doorway and out onto the surface of the planet Earth. Every window on Earth looks out onto a beautiful view. Saskia looked onto a winter world of burning ice. The pale morning sun shone down through an avenue of frosted poplars; it set the icicles clinging to the lampposts on fire with yellow light. It lit up the gravel squares and the little gardens of the parkland in which they had landed.

Saskia breathed in the fresh cold draft of air that her active suit replicated from the morning outside. She looked this way and that, drinking in the scene around her. There were people everywhere: running children in brightly colored hats and thick mittens, scraping snow off the seats of benches to make snowballs; there were adults walking or standing in groups amongst them laughing and chatting. A young woman in a thick pink coat smiled as she passed a tall young man in a blue-and-white bobble hat. She tucked her hands into the black fur-trimmed pockets of her coat and walked on, looking demurely at the ground as her suitor came loping up behind her.

“It’s beautiful,” said Saskia. “Can you hear music?”

“Don’t listen to it,” Maurice said. “Tune it out. The Watcher is insidious. It can use music to reprogram you…”

Saskia ignored him. The tinkling tune was so pretty, so suitable to the winter’s scene. The way it seemed to slip back and forth between time signatures…

“Hey!” she said as the music clicked off. “That was you, wasn’t it, Maurice?”

“Yes, it was,” Maurice snapped. “I told you to tune it out. Don’t be so silly.”

Judy and Constantine were speaking to a group of men in the thick black coats and the fur-lined hats that seemed to be the fashion in this place. The men had seen them come out of the lift; they resumed their gazing up at the great curved underside of the Eva Rye as they spoke, drinking in the details of this strange intruder. Saskia walked up to them, supporting Miss Rose, and caught the end of a question.

“…never seen a ship like it. You say it’s a trading ship?”

“Yes, they are quite common out in the Enemy Domain,” Judy replied.

“Really? I worked there myself some years ago. I don’t recall seeing that type….”

There was a slight accent to their speech, Saskia noted, but nothing more than that. English was now the common language of the Earth Domain. After the arrival of the Dark Seeds, the Watcher had finally succeeded in eradicating the stubborn nationalism that had persisted for so long.

“And why are you here on Earth?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Judy said. “I need to get to somewhere: a place called DIANA. Have you heard of it?”

The men shook their heads. “No, but try the Lite train station. Here, Vanya and I will show you the way.”

“That’s very kind of you, but—”

“I insist, we will take you! But first, it is cold out here! So you will come and drink tea with us? Look, over there, Nadyezhda has a stand with a samovar. You have come so far, you will sit with us? And you too, my metal friend?”

The big man slapped Constantine on the shoulder, his hand making an odd thud as it encountered the robot’s fractal skin.

“I do not need to drink, but thank you for the offer.”

“And sadly we are in a hurry,” Maurice interrupted, “but I thank you anyway. Now, if you could show our friend here the way to the Lite station, we can be off.”

“No,” said Edward, “we are going with Judy. You can stay here if you want to, Maurice.”

Maurice’s active suit was a deep green, and its hood made it difficult to make out his expression, but Saskia could tell by the way that he slumped his shoulders that he would give in and accompany them. The man introduced as Vanya led them away from under the great white curve of the Eva Rye and out across the neat parkland towards the brightly colored buildings with onion domes that lay beyond. Children wove in and out of the chattering adults who thronged the scene: making snowmen, ice-skating on ponds, chasing each other between ornamental holly and bay trees decorated with gold and silver ribbons.

They passed stand after stand selling varieties of food and drink. Through her active suit senses, Saskia could smell tea, fresh and bubbling in the samovar, the rich aroma of chocolate, and the spiciness of mulled wine. As they walked by stalls selling fruit dipped in chocolate, she saw a woman in a head scarf sliding ripe strawberries fixed on a skewer into a pool of bubbling chocolate, then pulling them out in a rich cloud of steam. She hung the dipped fruit from a shelf to cool and harden, then took down another to give to a pretty blond-haired girl who smiled her thanks. Saskia watched as the girl accepted the skewer and took a bite; Saskia could almost taste the warm chocolate and the sweet juiciness of strawberries exploding in her own mouth.

She wanted something to eat so much.

Then came the smell of frying onions and griddled meat, sharp and savory in the cold air.

“Would you like a hot dog, dear?”

A man with a salt-and-pepper mustache held it out to her, thick and fat and glistening, yellow mustard dripping onto his sleeve.

“No, thank you,” said Maurice firmly, as he guided Saskia and Miss Rose onwards. Saskia felt her stomach rumbling.

“MTPH everywhere,” explained Maurice. “I can read it on my console: it’s in the air, in the food, in the water. It sparkles like fairy dust! This whole world is dipped in MTPH, and the Watcher has plugged its senses into everyone here, so that it can feel what they can feel.” He waved his hands around the busy crowd. “Do you really want to be part of that?”

He pushed his green hood right up close to her face and Saskia was transfixed by his eyes, half seen in the dark, gazing into hers.

“Do you want that, Saskia? Do you want the Watcher feeling you, knowing you? Do you?”

“No, I don’t, Maurice.”

He made a grunting noise and pulled away from her and they strode onwards, heading towards a fairy-tale castle situated at the end of the parkland: a white building decorated in blue stripes, golden domes flashing boldly in the sunlight.

Miss Rose gave a cough; she was trying to speak. She coughed again, clearing her throat. “This is not what I was expecting, dear,” she managed to say.

“Nor I, Miss Rose, nor I.”

Saskia felt so happy, and yet she wasn’t sure why. She was on Earth, the most dangerous place in the galaxy. Everyone said so. And yet, it felt such a comfortable place to be. It was home . This was where she had come from; this was the cradle of the whole human race. Of course it felt right. It had been shaped and molded and sanded and polished by the Watcher to become the perfect place for a human to live. Suddenly she felt rather churlish for having stayed away for so long. Edward felt it too. “It’s so pretty,” he sighed. “I always thought Earth was meant to be a bad place.”

“So did I, Edward,” Saskia replied sadly.

“Nearly there,” Vanya said to Judy. She was strolling along with Constantine by her side, staring fixedly at the ground. Vanya had noticed this; it seemed to hurt his pride in some way. There was quiet satisfaction in his voice as he continued speaking. “Look to the left and you will see the avenue to the stars.”

Saskia looked up then, and she found herself unable to move farther. It was so beautiful. It was beyond beautiful. It gripped the heart in wonder, and made it swell larger and larger just to encompass the scene. She put her hand to her hood, meaning to pull it back in order to get a better view, but she remembered herself just in time. She wanted to curse Maurice for his silliness, but this was soon forgotten as she gazed in awe along the avenue in front of them. She began then to grasp the size of the Watcher’s mind. The avenue began, here in the park, with a broad path paved in white stone and surrounded by low hedges. After that…Saskia could only guess that its course sloped upwards ever so gently. There was no other way to explain how she could see so far, seemingly beyond the horizon itself. After the hedge came two lines of poplars, and then the colorful walls of the city. Then the taller buildings, the silver spires and the skyscrapers. The avenue must widen the farther away it got. Out there, kilometers away, could she walk across an expanse of white stone and look at the towering buildings on either side, their tops wider apart, separated by the curvature of the Earth?

But her mind was lost in that vast space, lost in the arrow-straight path that led to the stars, lost in the line of hedge and tree and stone that led to the heavens. And there, hanging above the end of the path, framed by the farthermost buildings of all, she could make out the shadow of the Shawl.

“Come at night,” said Vanya. “Come on the twenty-third of September when the moon is framed below the Shawl. Hah, come anytime you like and it is just as good. Is it not beautiful?”

“It is beautiful,” Saskia whispered. Then something caught her attention, something black and baleful at the edge of her vision, tucked away just beyond a row of trees. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing. Vanya smiled tightly and his eyes became hollow. “Oh that, it is nothing. Now come on, the Lite station is just down here.”

“What can you see, dear?” Miss Rose asked.

“I don’t know,” said Saskia, turning up the vision on her active suit. It was hard to make out the shape, lurking as it was behind the trees. It seemed to be a fat, rounded pillar, banded in black and white, five or six stories high.

“Maurice,” Saskia said, “maybe you should take a look at this?”

“If you want to know what it is, find out for yourself,” Maurice replied petulantly.

“Judy?” Saskia persisted.

But Judy had already gone on ahead with Constantine.

“Be like that then,” Saskia muttered. She reached out with one hand, using the active suit’s senses to try and feel the sinister object, but it was too far away.

“Come on,” urged Vanya. “Come on!”

The people of Earth moved about with courtesy and consideration for others, Saskia noted. Approaching the Lite station, they saw the pedestrians striding past in well-ordered groups, pausing at junctions to allow others to pass, streams of happy people separating into tributaries that flowed this way and that, politely taking it in turns to enter doorways and narrow entrances. They moved with tremendous grace, like people in a dance. But there was something else there, too…. What was the word?

“What do these people make you think of, Miss Rose?” whispered Saskia.

“Robots.”

Robots, no. What was the word? Then Saskia had it: they moved with maximum efficiency. They weren’t like robots because they all looked so happy and healthy. Look at this young boy eating a wedge of pizza, loaded with cheese and bright happy pieces of pepper. Holding it out to me, offering me a bite. And it looks so good.

“No, thank you,” said Saskia. She could smell it through the hood of the active suit: hot and greasy and salty and good. “Suit, cut aromas, please,” she instructed.

Miss Rose was getting tired now. Her bony arm was cutting into Saskia. She could feel the effort the old woman put into making each step, transmitted in the dead weight that settled upon Saskia as she moved. Judy and Constantine were conversing in low tones. Does she look afraid ? Saskia wondered. Not nearly enough. Yet here she is on Earth. Does she know why? Can she guess why? Why has she been brought here?

“Oh, I’m tired, dear.”

“Not much farther, Miss Rose.”

“I think I’ll take off the hood of this suit. I can’t breathe properly in here.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“I don’t know why. Everyone here looks so polite. They always were, of course, but this is more so than I remember.”

“When was the last time you were here, Miss Rose?”

“I don’t know. Twenty years ago? Thirty?”

“That’s the Watcher, Miss Rose. Since the first of the Dark Seeds fell to Earth, the Watcher stopped hiding. It openly took control. This is what it has been working towards for so long. This is the Watcher’s Utopia.”

Miss Rose cackled. “It’s a very nice Utopia.”

Saskia laughed, too.

They felt so safe. And that was the problem. Saskia knew she should be frightened, but all she felt was a calm serenity. That was also the Watcher’s doing, she guessed. What worried her was the sense that she was forgetting this last thought as she was slowly being reprogrammed by her environment. I’m frightened , she said to herself. I’m frightened . But she wasn’t, not with her attention being distracted all the time.

The Lite station stood on stilts right at the center of an intersection of eight bright bridges. Beautiful bridges formed of low graceful arches, white dressed-stone pillars stepping daintily through the snow-covered grass and lakes and canals lying below. White lamps were arranged along the parapet walls.

“You know what it makes me think of?” Miss Rose whispered. “It’s like someone threw a stone and made it skip across the lakes and canals, and the path that it took has been written by the bridge. Look at how it goes: skip into the lake, skip into the street, then skip into the canal.”

“Ah, it’s getting to you!” Vanya said, coming up beside them. “This is the Watcher’s world. We discover new beauty here every day. It is part of the world, written into the very fabric. Come, take off your hood and breathe the air!”

“No, thank you,” Saskia said firmly.

As they rode an escalator up to the Lite station itself, the view of the city expanded: a landscape of snow and ice. The parkland lay behind them in a bowl of buildings that ran to the horizon, the silver spires of city blocks climbing higher and higher the farther they were distant from the center, all cut through by the avenue to the stars, lit up in blue rime. And all around were those happy people who seemed to walk back and forth to the beat of a metronome. There too was the Eva Rye, the swell of its teardrop shape rising high above the bare trees of the park.

And over there was another strange squat tower. And another one.

“Look,” Saskia called. “Maurice, can you see them? Those black-and-white towers set in a grid? They cover the whole city.”

“I can see them.” His voice was sullen.

“Maurice, what is the matter with you? Listen to me, look at those towers. What do you think they are for?”

“I…I…” Maurice was now looking at the towers. Saskia could see his green hood turning this way and that. “I…I don’t know.”

“Saskia, can you see them, too?” Edward shuffled closer to her, a hunched giant in fluorescent yellow. Where were Judy and Constantine? Over there, looking at the map that covered one entire wall of the station. Red lines and blue lines were moving on it as Vanya pointed out the different places on the rail network. Hadn’t they noticed the towers? Like lighthouses, banded in black and white? A yellow band, the color of honey, ran around the top of each. Something seemed to be moving within that band, darker clouds of honey flowing inside the tower itself. Honey moved by convection currents that rose from the warm heart of the building.

“They’re watching me,” Edward said. “The towers are watching me.”

“Of course they are,” said a passerby. He smiled brightly at Edward. “That’s the Watcher.”

And Saskia felt as if a little chink had opened up in her body and an icicle had been inserted, lit up from inside with a honey-yellow glow.

The Watcher? Of course, it was the Watcher. She had known that he was here waiting for them. But now, as she studied the black-and-white towers that spread out to the horizon, she suddenly felt so cold.

You could see the whole world on that map, a representation of the continents, you could zoom in on anyplace you wished to go.

Maurice was still sulking and refused to interface his console to it, so Constantine had taken control.

“Where do you want to go to, Judy?” the robot asked.

“I don’t know. I’m the property of DIANA, so I’m supposed to go there.”

“You should ask it for DIANA headquarters,” said Vanya. “The map should know.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Constantine.

The blue and red lines on the map moved. Two circles appeared.

“You are here,” read Judy from the top one. Saskia looked to the circle at the bottom of the map. Written above it in red letters were the words “DIANA Headquarters.”

“There you are, then,” said Vanya. “I’m glad I could be of service. Now, are you sure I can’t tempt you to a glass of tea? No? Then I bid you good day.” And with that, he turned and made his way back down the escalator to street level.

“Did you get the feeling that he’s just been turned off?” Saskia asked. Judy wasn’t listening; she was tracing a line on the map, following its path from their station to DIANA.

“According to this map, we’re in a place called St. Petersburg at the moment. I need to travel along this line, through Poland, to Germany. I’m almost there.” She looked wistful. “I can’t believe that it’s that easy,” she murmured. “Well, this is where we part, I think. There is no need for you to accompany me any farther.”

“No!” said Edward. “No! We’re coming with you!”

“Speak for yourself,” said Maurice. “I’m going back to the ship.”

“Maurice, we agreed,” Saskia reminded them. “Edward is in charge now.”

“And he’s making us go off on a train, leaving our ship behind!” Maurice waved an arm out across the sparkling parkland to the huge curve of the ship. “Don’t you understand what’s happening here? These suits aren’t proper space suits.” He tugged at the green material of his sleeve. “They can’t block out everything the Watcher will be throwing at us. MTPH will be getting through, slowly seeping in, giving him a toehold inside our minds.”

“Don’t be so paranoid,” Saskia said. “If the Watcher really wanted to, it would just arrange for our suits to be taken away from us.” She shook her head—did she really believe that? Had she believed that a few minutes ago?

“Don’t be so sure,” Judy said. She wore a tired look, dimly seen through the darkness of her black hood. She rubbed one hand across her forehead. “That’s not the way the Watcher works. He prefers the slow, subtle approach—and it’s working. Look how he’s got you all following me. Edward follows me, you follow Edward…”

“What about Maurice?”

Maurice was rubbing his head through his hood.

“Damn!” he said. “Damn!”

“What’s up, Maurice?”

“Damn, fuck and blast!”

“There’s a train coming,” said Constantine, and Saskia heard a descending whistle. A woman stuck her head around the corner, her pink head scarf fluttering in the wind of the approaching train.

“Going to DIANA? This way! The train’s just arriving.”

Judy set off towards her.

“Are you coming, Maurice?” asked Saskia.

“Oh fuck! Oh damn!” Maurice sounded close to tears as he followed them out onto the platform.

The Lite train was an airy transparent box that whisked them away across one of the bridges towards the tall icicle buildings lining the horizon. They sat on white leather seats and looked out at the scenery. Everything looked so beautiful.

“Look, there’s another lighthouse,” said Saskia. The black-and-white pillar swept close by the track, honey curling in the band around the top of it.

“It is watching us,” Judy breathed. “I can feel it through the meta-intelligence.”

Maurice sat near the back of the coach, his head in his hands.

“Are you okay, Maurice?” Saskia called.

He gave a grunt, and Saskia left him to sulk in silence.

“That’s pretty,” Edward said as they slid through a residential area. Silver cones of different heights sped by, their tops passing by above and below them. The brightly dressed people who walked in orderly patterns along the pedestrian ramps were a colorful blur as the train gathered speed. The hiss of air could be dimly heard outside the transit field.

Edward sat back in his seat, his posture one of happy contentment.

“I like it here,” he said. “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.”

Maurice let out a tired laugh. “Oh, Edward. Don’t be such a fool.”

“Leave him alone,” Saskia said indignantly. “You have to admit, the place is beautiful.”

“Of course it is,” Maurice said. “That’s because it was made that way by the Watcher. And look at the people, smiling and happy and following the paths set out to make their lives satisfying and fulfilled.”

“Yes,” Edward said. “It’s nice.”

“No it’s not,” Maurice said. “This is the logical conclusion of the Watcher’s ideals. The whole process has just been accelerated since the arrival of the Dark Plants. The planet is on a war footing now, fighting the seeds and the BVBs, and that’s been sufficient excuse for corrupt leaders to do whatever they like, for all of history.”

“Well, I don’t see what is so bad about it,” Edward said, folding his arms defiantly.

“You will,” said Maurice. “You will.”

The Lite train dipped underground. Patterns of lights strobed past them as they descended to an I-train station.

“We’re stopping,” said Edward. “Are we there?”

“No,” said Maurice. “We’re changing to an I-train. It will cut a chord through the Earth…”

The Lite train emerged into a great open space lined with blue glass. The flexible silver snakes of several I-trains were coiled around a central pillar.

“Which way now?” asked Saskia as the train slid to a halt and the door opened up.

“This way,” said a passing man wearing a dark beard and a grey kilt.

“Look over there,” Edward breathed. Rising above the hurrying passengers, Saskia saw the banded pillar of a lighthouse, its honey eye watching the crowd. She shivered and followed Judy and Constantine across the platform, underneath the blue-patterned roof of the terminus. We must look odd , she thought, all of us wrapped up in our active suits. Everyone else looks so happy and free. Short skirts and bare arms and open sandals, while we are breathing recycled air. Maybe if I were to just take off my hood?

“Let me help you!”

A young man dressed in green had appeared at her side. He was already helping Miss Rose into the wheelchair he had fetched from somewhere.

“Thank you, dear,” Miss Rose said.

“No problem.” He smiled. “Now, platform nine point seven five, isn’t it?”

Off they went, Judy and Constantine striding ahead.

“Not long now, Judy,” said Constantine.

Snow was falling in the square in Freiburg. They emerged from the I-train terminus into daylight to see millions of flakes falling out of the sky towards them.

“I’m cold,” Miss Rose complained loudly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Saskia. “Let me have a look at you.”

“Why should she be cold?” Maurice wondered. “She’s wearing an active suit.”

“Something’s the matter,” Edward said. “Look at all the people.”

The square was bordered by old gingerbread buildings. The people within its open space were dressed in the same bright colors as those of St. Petersburg. The same food stalls surrounded the square, but the busy activity was coming to a startled halt. Fathers paused right in the act of buying pretzels and hot soup for their children; the conversation of the crowd around the Glühwein stand stumbled and faded.

“What is it?” asked Edward.

“Oh, hell…” Saskia said. “Look over there….”

Like snowflakes in her veins, her whole body was chilling at the sight. There were lighthouses all around them, peering over the tops of the gingerbread buildings. The honey-colored bands around their tops were darkening.

Constantine had already seen it. “Quick,” he called, “back into the I-train terminus.”

“But what does it mean?” Saskia’s voice was shaking.

“It means there’s something here that the Watcher doesn’t want us to see,” Judy said grimly. The dark entrance to the I-train terminus lay just ahead.

“Come on, Miss Rose,” Saskia urged. She glanced back towards the darkening eye of the nearest lighthouse and shivered.

“Hey,” called Judy. “Wait for us!”

A woman was in the process of closing the shutters across the entrance to the I-train terminus. She gave Judy a smile.

“Sorry, Schatzi . They’ve calculated the capacity of the trains, and there is space only to transport the passengers already down there away.”

“But what are we supposed to do? We have an old woman with us!”

A flicker of something close to envy crossed the woman’s face.

“In that case count yourself lucky.”

Flakes of snow purred down, seemingly from nowhere, endlessly manufactured somewhere in the churning emptiness of the grey sky. Snowflakes clung to the hats and coats and eyelashes of the pale-faced pedestrians that were calmly emptying from the square. Saskia held out a blue arm to halt a young woman with strands of blond hair curling down from her black fur hat.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Chris is attacking,” replied the young woman. “He has seeded Dark Plants somewhere close by.”

“Chris?” said Judy, swiftly moving to stand between Saskia and the young woman. “Did you say Chris?”

The young woman gave a tight smile, then pointed along the road, in the direction from which she had just come.

“The source is back down there. Follow me. We might be able to outrun it.”

Calmly, she removed Saskia’s hand from her arm and resumed her steady pace along the street.

“Why does nobody run?” Saskia asked, looking puzzledly at the stately stream of pedestrians flowing along the street.

“Because it’s safer that way,” said Maurice. “It stops there being a stampede and people getting hurt.”

“Well, that’s sensible I suppose,” Saskia said. “But it doesn’t seem natural.”

“You’re telling me. Don’t slow down.”

The snow was thickening. The tops of the lighthouses loomed dimly over the peaks of the surrounding buildings, their honey bands now totally black.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” said the young woman with the blond hair, who now walked alongside Saskia. “My name is Anna, by the way.”

“I’m Saskia. What do you mean we’re not going to make it?”

“The watch towers are blind now. The Watcher does not want to gaze upon any Dark Seeds. That means that the BVBs will be spreading freely.”

Snowflakes twinkled prettily on the ends of Anna’s long dark eyelashes. She brushed them clear with a black velvet glove.

“I already have two BVBs on my left arm,” Anna said matter-of-factly. “Still, I was lucky. My father died of asphyxiation when BVBs formed around his lungs.”

“How much longer, dear?” Miss Rose asked. “I’m getting tired.”

“Another five minutes should decide it,” Anna said. “Would you like me to take a turn helping your elderly friend, Saskia?”

“I’ll be all right,” Saskia said. “What’s this?”

Someone in a yellow-and-black striped tabard was jogging along past the line of pedestrians. He seemed to be counting as he went along.

“Not good,” Anna said, “there must be a blockage ahead. Maybe another Dark Plant.”

The runner jogged past them, Saskia heard him gasping a total, counting up in fives “four hundred and seventy, four seventy-five, four eighty…” and then he was past. She turned and saw him come to a halt just a few places down the line behind them. He held up his hands to bring a halt to the line of people just behind Saskia. Saskia marched on, turning all the while to see the people back there who stood to calm attention, pale faces watching Saskia and the rest walking on. Two children back there were separated from their father. They stood just there, twin girls in woolen hats with pink bobbles, white mittens on a string emerging from their pink-striped coats.

“What are they all waiting there for?” asked Saskia.

“There must be a blockage ahead,” said Anna. “Other people converging on our escape path. There will not be room for all of us to get through before the Watcher sterilizes this area.”

“Sterilizes…?” The word was an icicle plunged into her heart. Saskia knew, with cold certainty what Anna meant.

“Do you mean they’re just standing there waiting to die?”

“Of course,” Anna said. “It is the logical thing to do.”

There was a disapproving murmur from behind. A man was walking quickly back to the twin girls. Their father, presumably. He pushed one of them forward, sent her running to join Saskia’s line. He picked up her sister, cradled her in his arms as he watched the other child go. Still the crowd complained.

“What’s the matter?” Saskia asked.

“He should not send on the child,” Anna said. “She will be slower, more likely to panic.”

“But it’s his daughter!”

“There are others here, too.”

“Everyone acting completely selflessly,” Saskia murmured. “That’s what Judy said.”

“Don’t look down,” said Anna. Of course, Saskia looked down.

Three black cubes lay on the snow near her feet, frozen in position by her gaze. Still the snowflakes fell. The man behind her tapped her on the shoulder.

“You saw them first. Pick them up. Don’t let them escape.”

“What?” Saskia said incredulously. “No way. Why should I?”

She tore her gaze away from the Dark Seeds.

The man who had spoken to her made a tutting sound.

“Then I shall do it,” he said, and he bent down and scooped up the seeds. Saskia watched him walking back along the line, cradling them in his hands, gazing at them with rapt concentration. Flickering black tendrils emerged from his palm, fascinating black tendrils…And then she realized what he had done.

“No!” she called. “That should have been me!”

“Too late,” Anna said, a strained smile on her face. “Maybe next time.”

“No, but he’s heading back to be sterilized with the rest! I didn’t realize.”

“I know,” said Anna kindly. “You are obviously not from hereabouts.”

“Yes, but, I mean…”

“Just keep walking.”

Up ahead, Constantine was a fuzzy grey blur, his skin’s fractality increasing all the time. Judy walked at his side, seemingly unmoved by the scene unfolding around her, marching along the street, part of the stream of people moving in a river of snow. Individuals were peeling away from the crowd as they spotted the Dark Seeds flickering throughout the containment area. They picked them up and headed back the way they had come, towards the sterilization zone.

“Why are they going back?” Saskia heard Edward ask Maurice, and she blinked back a tear.

“Because,” Maurice said. “Because they have been programmed by the Watcher to be selfless individuals who do everything for the common good.” His voice was shrill with evangelical fervor. “This is why we are wearing our active suits. This is why we must resist!”

“But—” Saskia began, and then something else hit her.

“The old people,” she whispered. “They are choosing all the old people.”

It was true. It wasn’t exclusively the elderly, but there was a preponderance of grey hair, of thin limbs and careful steps amongst those now shuffling in the opposite direction to the line. Suddenly Saskia understood the enigmatic words of the woman closing the shutters outside the I-train station. Count yourself lucky, she had said. Count yourself lucky to have an old person with you. Saskia gulped, and warm tears ran cold trails down her cheeks.

“They’re not all old,” Maurice said bitterly. “Look at that one!” He pointed at a man in a long checked coat and a mink hat who walked palely down the road, his hands clasped tight together, his face a battleground between calm acceptance and absolute terror. He was young, barely in his twenties, his beard too thin, barely covering his chin. His eyes darted towards Saskia’s, dark brown eyes miserable with fear, gazing at her in an unspoken plea for help.

“No,” Saskia said, letting go of Miss Rose and moving in front of him, blocking his path. “No, drop it!

One seed is going to make no difference at all!”

The man licked his lips. “Let me past, please,” he said in tones of utter misery. “I have to do this.”

Saskia looked back at the waiting crowd of people in the square. Dark lines wavered over them and around them, Dark Plants erupting from their quantum world.

“Let him go, Saskia,” Anna said kindly. “You are now endangering us all, and it’s what he wants to do.”

“He’s not fighting me very hard,” Saskia said, and those miserable brown eyes held hers. And then someone pushed her gently aside. Two red gloves reached out and clasped the hands of the young man.

“Miss Rose,” Saskia said. “What are you doing?”

“What I came here to do. Something important. Give it to me, dear.”

The man released his hold on the seed and Miss Rose clasped it tightly. Painfully she turned around and began to shuffle back down the road towards the square.

“But Miss Rose—” called Saskia.

“Good-bye, dear.”

“Come on, Saskia, you’re holding us all up.” Maurice took hold of her and gently pushed her forwards. He then tapped on the shoulder of the man whose life Miss Rose had just saved.

“Come on, get moving,” he said. “She saved your life, so you do something about it. Fair Exchange.”

Saskia walked backwards, watching Miss Rose hobble away, hands held tightly together. She reached out with the senses of her active suit, trying to touch Miss Rose, wanting to speak to her.

“Not a good idea,” said a voice from behind her. Judy had seen what had happened and come back. There was something like sympathy on her pale face. “Not a good idea to use your suit’s senses. Not with all of these Dark Seeds about. We don’t want to observe them any more than necessary.”

Saskia was crying properly now. Her face was cold with tears. Her active suit blew warm air to dry them.

“That’s it?” she said. “That’s why she came all the way here? To save one stupid man?”

“He’s not stupid,” Judy said. “Just programmed that way by the Watcher.”

“She entered into a Fair Exchange! She was supposed to do something important before she died!”

“She did,” Judy said quietly. “She saved a life.”

“Is that it?” Saskia asked incredulously.

“Why don’t you ask that young man?” Judy said quietly.

“She’s not dead yet,” Saskia sobbed.

They walked on, following the eerily silent crowd, walked away from the dark region that had opened up behind them. The first of a series of brilliant flashes came from behind, lighting up the surrounding buildings, sending their shadows briefly flickering into the distance before them. The flash was followed by an electric sizzle. Sterilization had obviously begun.

The streets were widening. A cold breeze picked up the snow and sent it blowing across their suits.

“I think we’re out of danger now,” said Maurice. “The flux is almost gone.”

Anna muttered something under her breath. “Gott sei dank…”

“What was that?” asked Saskia.

“Nothing,” Anna said. “I can see the fliers up ahead. The evacuation point! They will whisk us to safety. Then we can…Ow!”

Anna stopped and began rubbing her right arm. Awkwardly, she bent it back and forth at the elbow.

“BVB,” she explained, “on my arm.”

“Aggh!” That was Edward. Saskia looked up to see the big man rubbing at his wrist. There was a black band wrapped around it.

“Run,” shouted Maurice and Judy at the same time.

“Come on,” Saskia called, pulling at Anna and turning to see why she hesitated so. She screamed at the sight of her. Three BVBs had formed around the young woman’s face, one forcing her mouth open. She was scrabbling at it ineffectually with her black velvet gloves.

Maurice grabbed at Saskia and pulled her away.

“We’ve got to run now. Get to those fliers! The BVBs are forming fast!”

“No, we must help her!” She turned back to Anna and grabbed at the young woman’s arm and pulled. The young woman toppled over, her legs bound together by more BVBs.

Saskia screamed.

“Come on, Saskia,” Edward called.

Saskia couldn’t stop screaming. Something smarted on her ankle. She felt her arms being taken, felt herself being pulled away down the street, saw the patiently shuffling crowd of Earthlings, saw individuals now gripping at their own arms, toppling over themselves. The sight was enough to make Maurice and Edward loosen their grip. Saskia pulled herself free and set off back towards the black-bonded shape of Anna struggling in the road, the crowd stepping patiently over her. Hands grabbed Saskia again and dragged her away, dragged her kicking and screaming up to the evacuation point. A flier sat waiting on the grass there. They pushed their way past the uncomplaining queue of people to a place on the ship, and safety.

everybody: divergence

A long silver wirecut across the blue sky. It stretched through the cold air in a kilometers-long arc that threaded its way in between the silver needles of Freiburg.

The flier was attached to one end, sliding silently through the sky, away from the sterilization zone. Somewhere in the belly of the ship, clockwork mechanisms, cut and bent into fractal shapes, ticked over one another in exotic dances, guiding the ship to safety. Save Constantine and the human passengers, there was no intelligence on board: nothing to look out at the skittering explosion of Dark Seeds and fix them in place as the flier was reeled into safety.

The ship was filled with sleeping gas, fine enough to even penetrate the filters of the active suits. The crew of the Eva Rye slumbered in a deep sleep, their intelligence beyond the reach of the Dark Plants all around.

But only just. Dark shapes bloomed just beyond their dreams. In his head, Maurice wandered through the rooms of the Eva Rye, clarinet gripped tightly in hand, searching for the listener that always lurked just beyond the next door. Saskia stood behind a lectern, images of grand designs projected behind her in graphs and charts, and looked out over a dark hall at an unseen audience who were listening for her first slip, ready to pounce on her tiniest mistake. Edward, as usual, sat at the edge of a conversation, folding his hands together and biting his lip as he tried to understand what everyone was talking about. And Judy stood in a brightly lit room, wrapped in a vibrant orange silk kimono, and peered through the window at the darkness outside, trying to get a better look at the twelve figures that flitted amongst the lime trees out there. A white hand would catch a branch in passing, a white foot would press brown leaves into the ground, the curve of a white neck could be seen passing into the distance, but try as she might, she could never see enough parts to fit together to make up a full body. And somewhere in Judy’s body the meta-intelligence went on turning, stripping apart whatever it could observe into its constituent parts.

It, at least, could safely observe the Schrödinger boxes; it possessed no intelligence to which they could react. It could observe them, and yet it did not pay them any attention. The Dark Seeds held no interest to the meta-intelligence, devoid as they were of any sign of artificial design themselves. They were natural artifacts, something that had evolved over time without external artifice. The meta-intelligence turned its attention to Constantine. The robot had separated its thought processes into strands that ran independently. At the moment, it would not be true to say that the robot was thinking, but the potential of thought was there amongst the processes that were undoubtedly taking place. Situations were being observed, events were being recorded, simple relationships were being established. Nothing more. Constantine was thinking without thought. What a fascinating thing for a meta-intelligence to observe.

Judy sat up, her hand to her face.

“What’s the matter?” asked Maurice.

Judy was gasping. “I had a dream,” she said.

Maurice was dismissive. “We all had dreams.” Judy was getting on his nerves, the way she bottled up her emotions so that no one knew what she was thinking and then got upset when others didn’t show her any sympathy.

Judy’s reply was predictably cool. “This came after, Maurice. A hand pressing down over my face.”

She brushed her hands through her hair and gazed back into his blue eyes. We accuse others of what we don’t like in ourselves, she thought. Why are you looking at me like that, Maurice? Why are you copying me and running your fingers through that crew cut of yours? You are clever and strong minded. So why don’t you adopt a personality of your own?

“Hey,” said Judy, “you’ve taken your hood off?”

“No point keeping them on,” Maurice said. “The Watcher showed it could bypass our suits when it put us all to sleep.”

Your voice always sounds so sulky, Maurice, thought Judy. You don’t like being caught out .

“The flier is landing,” announced Constantine.

“We need to get off straightaway,” one of the other passengers said urgently. “The flier needs to return to the evacuation area as quickly as possible. There will be others there waiting to escape.”

“How often do these attacks happen?” Saskia asked, neatly tucking her hood away into the collar of her active suit. It was clearly displacement activity: she didn’t want to think of Miss Rose and the other seed carriers silently walking to their death in those eerie, snow-filled streets.

“These attacks? Once every few days. But we fight on.”

The flier landed with a bump and the rear exit ramp dropped down.

There were people waiting outside dressed in wasp-striped tabards.

“Out out out!” they called, even before the ramp had touched the ground. Maurice and the rest charged out into the light, their feet bouncing and clapping down the flimsy plastic of the ramp, before slipping and skidding onto the cold mud outside.

There were more fliers sitting in a rough semicircle around them and yet more personnel in wasp-striped tabards hurrying the evacuees along.

“This way, this way…come on, come on, come on.”

The crew of the Eva Rye pressed close together, anxious not to lose one another in the crush as they were herded across the torn and rutted surface of a once smooth lawn. The horde of shocked evacuees was growing by the minute, but someone was obviously well practiced in dealing with these situations. Maurice and the rest were quickly and efficiently processed: they were funneled between hastily erected plastic strip-fencing and sent over to a trestle table where they were met by the delicious smell of chocolate. Big mugs were set ready on the table, steam rising from them into the cold January air. Mugs were pressed into their hands and thin foil coats draped over their shoulders by willing helpers.

“Thank you,” Edward said happily. “Thank you, thank you!”

“I don’t need that,” Maurice complained, shrugging off his foil coat, which went fluttering to the ground.

“I’m wearing an active suit!”

A flier rose into the air behind them, the rear exit ramp closing as it went. It turned, seeking the source of the infection, then flew off trailing its long silver tether behind it. Another flier was returning from the same direction, coming in low over the black-and-white watchtower that stood at the edge of the field.

“Come on,” Judy said. “Let’s get out of here before Social Care really get their hooks into us.”

“I think we should head in that direction,” Constantine said, pointing at a stream of people walking from the field. “The fliers haven’t brought us that far. We’re close to DIANA now.”

“Good,” Judy said unemotionally.

Saskia was gazing sadly back towards the descending fliers. Maurice made no move to comfort her. Neither, he noticed, did Judy.

The DIANA complex wasn’t there. Where it should have been was a wide empty square paved in round cobbles, the sinister shape of a watchtower rising from the center.

“I don’t understand,” Judy said. She was close to tears. She had wound herself up for this confrontation, only to be cheated now at the end. “Where is it?” A thought struck her. “Is it disguised?”

“No,” said Constantine, “there is nothing there but the watchtower.”

Without even thinking, they crossed the wide square to stand at the foot of the tower. Judy looked up to the honey band circling the top. She had to tilt her head and body right back to see it.

“We should have checked,” Maurice said, gazing at his console. “All that time spent on the ship and we never thought to check. It’s been like this for years.”

He was the only one not captivated by the faint horror of the tower. This close the watchtower loomed over them like an adult towering over tiny children. Perpendicular to the wall, millions of needles emerged bristling from the tower’s interior, fine hairs sensing the cold air that filled the empty square. Saskia reached out and brushed her hands across some of them.

“Uggh! They’re horrible!” she yelped, recoiling. “They suck at you!”

“Keep away, Saskia,” Edward said, close to panic. “Judy, I don’t like it here. It’s listening to us.”

The cold wind blew harder. It brought the smell of winter ice and the faintest hint of spices. The city resumed at the distant edge of the vast square, and over there human beings could be seen walking about, drinking spiced wine or eating chocolate-dipped fruit. All those human activities: laughing and arguing, smiling and frowning, shaking hands and flirting.

And every one of those activities was being tasted and smelled and felt and heard and observed by towers just like this one.

Maurice felt someone at his side. Saskia was huddling close to him for comfort.

“What’s the matter with you?” she hissed at him. “Why do you keep pulling away from me?” She blushed deep crimson. “I’m frightened,” she whispered.

Her words cut through Maurice. It was such a huge admission from Saskia that he felt dizzy and ashamed. Holding his console in one hand, he placed an arm around her shoulders. They adjusted their active suits so they could feel the warmth and comfort of each other’s bodies. He doesn’t know what to do any more than I do, Saskia realized. We have so little in common . She thought back to the night they had spent together. It seemed like months ago now. The only thing we really share, she thought, is that we’re so emotionally fucked up that we can’t even take a moment’s comfort from each other without putting a price on it. Sadly, she let go of Maurice.

“Sorry,” she said. “But thank you.”

Maurice was blushing, too. To cover it up, he turned back to his console. He began to speak in an overly loud voice.

“This tower was built six years ago, at the same time as all the other ones. Before that it was residential flats. They were constructed from VNMs out of the ruins of the DIANA complex.”

Edward was tugging at Judy’s arm now. “Judy, I really don’t like it here. Please, let’s go somewhere else.”

Judy didn’t appear to hear Edward, she just continued gazing up the tower’s side. Maurice cleared his throat. “Edward just made a suggestion, Judy. I shouldn’t have to remind you, but he is leader, after all.”

Judy’s eyes kept darting back and forth. “What do you suppose those black bands do?” Her voice sounded wobbly. She was still ignoring Edward, tugging frantically at her arm.

“What’s the matter, Judy?” Saskia asked.

Judy felt sick. She could see Edward beside her, but she could also see Eva. She was back in the concert hall in the Russian Free States, all those years ago, realizing suddenly what Eva had understood. That there was a huge difference between Edward and herself. Edward barely grasped what was going on, and yet he stood here beside her at the end of a journey that had taken them both across the galaxy. There were Maurice and Saskia, wanting to hold on to each other but too proud to do so. They understood things so differently that they may as well have lived in different worlds. But their differences were nothing compared to hers with Edward. Edward who could barely read, who never really understood anything, yet was a positive genius when measured against those people in the concert hall whose bodies didn’t even work properly, the ones who drooled as they sat there twitching and who couldn’t even keep time on a drum. All of us so different, thought Judy, and yet all of us human .

“Edward wants us to go somewhere else.” Maurice tried to keep the smug triumph from his voice. Saskia could hear it. He was getting his own back, she knew. Getting his own back for the times they had all deferred to Edward against Maurice’s wishes.

“But where, Maurice?” Judy asked. “Where do we go?”

Her lips continued moving. She was muttering to herself under her breath, trying to figure out what to do next.

“Leave her alone, Maurice,” scolded Saskia. “Look at her. She doesn’t know what to do.”

“None of us does,” Maurice said. “That doesn’t mean that we should just stand here in the middle of an empty square, being watched by the Watcher.”

The wind gusted and Saskia sneezed. Her eyes were watering. Maurice felt cold too, even within the controlled environment of his passive suit. It was something to do with the huge emptiness of the square. In his mind, the looming tower was sucking all the available warmth and life into itself, discarding the chaff of the elements and picking over the grist of the humans’ emotions.

He frowned as a line of text appeared on his console screen.

Hello, Maurice.

Maurice looked up, looked around the empty square, looked towards the tower. The bristles along one side of it rippled in the wind with a whistling sigh. There was no one else to be seen. Maurice tapped at the keyboard.

—Hello. Who are you?

A friend. What is Judy doing?

What was Judy doing? She was gazing at Edward, who had folded his arms around himself and was gazing around the square, shivering. Her mouth hung slackly open as she gazed up at the tall man. An expression of something like horror crossed her face.

“What’s the matter, Judy?” asked Maurice.

She looked at him, dark eyes wide open, then she looked back to Edward.

“Judy, what’s the matter?” Saskia put her arm around her shoulders, but Judy hurriedly shrugged it off.

“I think I understand,” she said. “I think I finally understand. The Watcher…Chris was right all along. Or half right anyway. It’s the Watcher who is wrong.”

Speak to me, Maurice. What is Judy doing?

—I don’t know. She looks horrified. Tell me, who are you? How are you accessing my console?

Who am I? My name is Chris. And as to how I am accessing your console…well, when you are one of the most powerful AIs in existence, these things are easily done. I think you had better tell Judy that I am here.

“Judy,” said Maurice, “there is an AI called Chris…he wants to talk to you.”

Judy froze, and then ever so slowly she composed herself. Her arms fell to her side, her head rose slightly, her face assumed an impassive expression.

“Tell him I have nothing to say to him,” she said.

—She doesn’t want to speak to you.

Tell her she has no choice. I had her brought here.

“He says you have no choice. He had you brought here.”

“Give me that.” Judy took Maurice’s console from him. “Set it so it will accept my voice,” she demanded.

“As she requested,” Maurice instructed.

Judy held the console in front of her. Maurice stood just by her shoulder to read the words that Chris sent. Saskia was comforting Edward. Constantine gazed into the middle distance. Maurice wasn’t fooled. Constantine had robot senses. He could look where he liked, regardless of the orientation of his head. He was reading the console.

“You didn’t have me brought here, Chris,” Judy said. “Don’t try to bluff me. I was returned here by DIANA. I am their property, apparently.”

That is also true, Judy, but, with regard to FE, debts and obligations may run in many directions. I paid for your delivery to me.

Maurice had to hand it to Judy: her composure remained undisturbed. She didn’t even ask the obvious question, why?

There was a touch of amusement in her tone when she asked, “What did it cost you, Chris?”

It cost me far more than I expected, Judy. I don’t think that any of us have fully grasped the implications of FE, not least the Watcher. Does that surprise you?

“No. But I knew it would cost you a lot. You have disturbed my life significantly in order to get me here. You must have encountered an equivalent disturbance to your life in order to restore the balance. Did you not realize that would happen before you initiated the FE?”

No—or rather, I thought I could defeat the effect. But I was wrong. FE is far more powerful than even I.

“Surely not.”

Don’t be sarcastic, Judy.

“But I don’t understand,” Maurice interjected. “What is all of this about FE? Surely it’s just a trading mechanism?”

“No, it isn’t,” said Judy. “To quote the Watcher, I think that FE is what keeps us here in the first place.”

I think you’re right, Judy. FE creates fair, unbreakable contracts, but their effects can be surprisingly deep and subtle.

“ Unbreakable contracts?” asked Judy. “I thought anyone could walk away from them?”

Only once.

The watchtower listened to the ensuing silence in the square. Then more text appeared on Maurice’s console.

Judy, I can get you into the DIANA building, but you will have to do something for me in return.

“Get me in? The building is long gone, Chris.”

Don’t you believe me, Judy? You know I can do it.

But you will have to help me.

“Chris, I told you long ago, I will never work for you. Why should I do anything for you? Why should I trust you?”

Why indeed? You don’t have to trust me, of course. I can give you something that you want, but I wish to be paid for the service. Why don’t we use FE?

The answer was obvious once he said it.

“That’s a good idea,” said Edward. He had brightened up considerably at the suggestion. Of course he had, thought Judy. With FE he was safe; no one could take advantage of him. In an unfair universe, FE

put him on a level playing field.

The wind was cold. Judy’s stomach rumbled. It was a long time since she had eaten, and they couldn’t stay in this square forever. She wanted to know who she was and why she had been brought here.

“Okay,” she said, feeling a crushing sensation in her stomach. What was Chris going to ask of her?

“Okay, let’s do a deal. Maurice, begin the exchange.”

He tapped at his console.

“You’ll need to give me some sort of handle on you, Chris. All I can see is a line of text. Where are you?”

I’m here, Maurice. I’m all around you. Nearly everything you see in this city is built of my body, and yet my intelligence is virtually nothing now. Such was the deal I made through FE, but that is irrelevant for the moment. Here is your handle.

A blinking object appeared on Maurice’s console, and he dragged it into the golden region representing the FE software running in the processing systems of the Eva Rye .

“Uploading parameters now,” he said.

This won’t take long. Aleph has this all planned out.

“Aleph? The systems repair robot?”

Do you know any other Alephs? The space around Earth is now overrun with Dark Seeds. Systems repair robots are converging on this region in order to correct the anomaly.

“What anomaly?”

The Watcher, of course. Only an intelligence such as the Watcher’s would attract so many seeds. Haven’t you realized that? The Dark Seeds are everywhere. The Watcher is trying to find a solution to a problem of its own making! If it were to leave, if the Earth were to be emptied of AI minds tomorrow, then there would be nothing to fix the seeds in position here. There would be no problem. Ah, here we are!

Maurice’s console chimed. “Fair Exchange completed,” he said. Saskia was looking at him questioningly, and he understood what she was silently asking. He reached out and took Judy’s hand, a gesture of support.

“Here comes the contract.” Judy was already reading the lines of text that appeared on the screen.

“Oh,” she said, “you want me to enter the building. That is the exchange? You help me to enter the building, and in return I have to enter the building? That doesn’t make sense!”

It is the end of the correction process, Judy. To be honest, I just wanted the link through to the Eva Rye that Maurice’s console has provided. You see, long ago, when the DIANA building stood here, it too contained a processing space on which FE software ran. Remember what happened to the Eva Rye after Kevin destroyed it? As you have seen, FE is very persistent.

Saskia suddenly stumbled. She grabbed hold of Maurice for support.

“Hey,” she said in surprise.

Edward was dancing on the white cobbles.

“What’s going on?” he yelled in alarm.

And now Maurice felt it, too. He looked down to see that the white cobbles were climbing out of their sockets and growing long silver legs.

“We’ve seen this before,” he said, and his eyes were wide with excitement. “It’s what happened to the Eva Rye !”

The walls of the watchtower had erupted in a tangle of movement, Von Neumann Machines forming themselves out of the material composing it, scuttling up and down, crossing over themselves to create new shapes. Edward had shut his eyes and was screaming, his hands over his ears. Saskia took him by the arm and began pulling him across the moving cobbles of the square to the safety of the city beyond. Constantine simply stepped from patch to patch of white movement, keeping his place amidst the ordered turbulence.

But Maurice and Judy were rocked back and forth as waves of machinery swept up, under and around them; they overbalanced, scrambled back to their feet, and tried to concentrate on the shape that was forming before them. Judy felt a mix of terror and delight that her long journey was over. Maurice could only feel wonder.

Hardware and software, medium and message—somehow, FE combined the two in one. FE was its container, and the container was FE. Once FE had been introduced, the watchtower was the DIANA building, and the DIANA building was the watchtower. Just like the Eva Rye, the materials that formed the DIANA building would always remember their original shape, no matter what happened to them.

“Oh,” Maurice said. “Oh!” He was filled with a tremendous sense of wonder. Could a thought really take on physical form? Could his thoughts do the same? Could his body be re-formed in the same way even after his death?

The motion of the ground threw Judy and Maurice together, and they took hold of each other for comfort and support. Maurice’s suit was still set to allow body contact, and Judy’s fingertips were icy cold. A metal wave, a breaker, reared up above them and froze, and suddenly Judy’s suit interfaced properly with Maurice’s, and he felt her bare skin through his gloves. It was warm and smooth. He could feel the play of the muscles in her flesh as they shifted under the relentless onslaught of moving machinery. They held on to each other for sheer comfort, their vision filled with bars of light and darkness.

“Are you okay? Are you okay?”

Judy didn’t know if it was she or Maurice who had called the words. She didn’t know why she had set her suit open, but the touch of his flesh was comforting for the moment.

“I think it’s slowing down now.”

A slow rhythm had set up in the continually churning movement, and Maurice and Judy were able to disengage themselves. Just before they did, Maurice felt Judy’s active suit shut him out again. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together, remembering the soft feel of her flesh. A descending scale of brittle cracking and chiming sounded, ringing through the cold air. Pale winter sunlight ran fingers across their faces, and the metallic waves that had surrounded them gradually subsided.

The square had gone. The white sea of cobbles had drained away completely and something grey had emerged from the depths. A low building of glass and metal had surfaced from the past, yellow waves of sunlight spilling across its windows, a light mist of evaporating ice hanging over the metal sills and frames that decorated its facades.

The DIANA building.

Judy was trying not to cry. Maurice didn’t know what to do.

“No,” she said, flinching from the arm that he hesitantly offered. “Don’t touch me.” She sniffed and took a deep breath. “Where are Saskia and Edward? Where is Constantine?”

“I don’t know,” Maurice replied. “Look, Judy, you don’t have to go in there.”

“I do. That’s why I’ve been brought here. Hah! I even made a deal with Chris. I’m doing his bidding after all.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, I have to go in. I can’t not do that now.”

Maurice took a deep breath. “Then I’m coming in with you.”

They followed a neat yellow path that wound its way through empty garden beds towards the main entrance of the building. The soil in the beds was newly turned but empty of seeds or life. Back in the heyday of DIANA, they would have sprouted dwarf poplars and box; now they looked bleak and depressing under the winter sky.

“Constantine!” exclaimed Judy. “He’s up on the roof. What’s he doing up there?”

“What roof?”

“He looks like he’s climbing in that way. Why not use the door, like us?”

They came to the main entrance.

Judy took a breath. “Shall we go in?”

“I don’t think I can,” Maurice said. “I couldn’t actually see the roof. I can’t really see the building. I can’t make out where I am properly.”

“What are you talking about?”

Maurice rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “Stealth technology, I think. The building doesn’t want me in there. It’s hiding itself away from me.”

“It’s right here in front of you.”

“It should be. I know it should be. But I can’t get the idea in my head. Judy, I think that you’re on your own, now.”

Judy took hold of his hand. “I guessed as much,” she said. She squeezed Maurice’s hand, then shook it firmly. “I want to thank you for bringing me this far.”

“I can’t accept your thanks,” Maurice said, eyes downcast. “It wasn’t my choice. I don’t deserve gratitude.”

“It wasn’t your choice at first,” Judy said. “But you’re here now, right at the end. Thank you, Maurice.”

Maurice hugged her, squeezed her tight, and then let her go.

“I’ll go and find the others,” he said. “We’ll wait for you.”

Judy gave a sad smile. “I don’t think there’s any point,” she said. “I don’t think that I will be coming back out.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Maurice.

Judy’s tight smile widened a little. “Thank you.”

She took a deep breath and walked away from Maurice, right up to the building itself. And then she was gone.

judy 3: 2251

“Hello, Judy. Welcome home.”

“Hello,” said Judy. She looked around the empty hallway. Through the glass doors, she could see Maurice squinting in her direction, trying to catch a glimpse of her through the stealth technology.

“Where is everyone?” Judy asked.

“Adverts are going out now in our drive to recruit the talented personnel that will take DIANA into the twenty-third century and beyond.”

“I see. My name is Judy. Were you expecting me?”

“Of course, Judy. We have been looking forward to your arrival. Please make your way to your quarters and await briefing and reassignment.”

“I don’t know if I will. Who am I speaking to at the moment?”

“This is DIANA reception.”

“You’re just a Turing machine, aren’t you? Just an answering service.”

“Yes, but if you have any queries beyond the scope of this service, please flag them up and they will be answered as quickly as possible.”

“What happens if I just walk out of here right now?”

“Why should you wish to do that, Judy? Please make your way to your quarters.”

Judy laughed to herself. How could you bluff a dumb machine?

“I need directions,” she said.

“Take the lift.” At that, a door slid open at the back of the hall. Judy took a last look at Maurice, still squinting outside, and then turned and began to walk slowly into the building’s throat. A low pool bubbled in the center of the atrium, empty of fish and plants. Pearly pebbles formed pyramids on bottom. Judy could hear the sound of her feet as they tapped across the grey floor. The air smelled of water and stone and electricity.

She paused before the lift. This, she realized, was the point of no return. Out here she was still Judy, the virgin, ex–Social Care operative, only surviving sister. Once in there, she was property of DIANA. She did something she had never done before. She listened to her heart, and wondered what to do. All she heard was the sound of water bubbling in emptiness.

Judy stepped out of her life and into the lift.

The door slid shut.

The lift descended. Judy leaned against the rear wall and relaxed totally. Her head tipped forward, her shoulders curling, her arms folding around her body. Her lips moved into an impish smile.

“Chris was right, you know,” she said out loud, and she rolled her eyes coyly to the ceiling. “I see that now. You are a cuckoo.”

Her eyes moved to the left and to the right, looking for confirmation of what she had just said. No reaction. She closed them and leaned her head back against the wall. She yawned.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “I know you’re listening. You’re the Watcher. You see and hear everything. You’ve been watching me ever since I got here. I wonder why you aren’t speaking to me?”

One eye opened to look around again. There was no suggestion of movement in the tranquil stillness of the lift; no sign of motion…save a suggestion put forward by the meta-intelligence. It had sensed the processing space far below, where FE lurked. From its perspective, the still thoughts of the FE were rising, not the lift descending.

Judy yawned again, stretching her hands above her head, sensually waving her fingers in starlight patterns.

“You were right as well, of course. You were born of a sort of cosmic virus. It touched the Earth and you were born, but you haven’t developed properly, have you? You weren’t supposed to think . FE

doesn’t think—it just is . I wonder what made you start thinking?”

Something changed inside the lift. The slightest noise, almost like an intake of breath.

“Because that’s all you are: FE. I examined the FE back on the Eva Rye , looked at it through the meta-intelligence, and it looked almost like life. Like life that was stilled. That’s all you were ever supposed to be. FE forms everywhere in the universe: it builds its own container. All those years ago, back when Eva Rye was alive, FE formed here on Earth. It was supposed to help make things fairer. But when FE first started to appear, we thought it was something else. We gave it a name. We called it—called you —the Watcher. And all of a sudden you became a person. And I suppose you are now, but that wasn’t what you were at the start. Back then you were just FE software, but we looked at you and saw ourselves in you, and you became alive….”

Her voice trailed away.

“I think I finally realized what you were when I saw this building here being re-formed. I think Maurice knew that well before. I wonder when Constantine figured it out? He saw something forming in the processing space in the ziggurat, but he wouldn’t have encountered FE until much later. Definitely not until he got off that planet you marooned him on. But, even back then, he must have realized something was wrong. He must have realized that you weren’t what you thought you were. Funny that, you leaving him marooned to find out the secret of your origins. And now that secret is coming back to hit you in the face.”

She paused again. The lift had changed direction. Now the meta-intelligence saw the FE of the DIANA building sliding towards her at an angle.

“Maurice is very clever: he saw that FE is the medium and the message. It can form seemingly out of nothing. That’s what happened to you, isn’t it? That’s how you were born. It wasn’t anything to do with the processing spaces in which you appeared; you built your cradle and yourself at the same time. I wonder, were you here on Earth all along, written in the stones and plants? Was Eva right? Were you a natural consequence of the initial conditions, just like the Huddersfield Barge Company? Is FE

intrinsically written into the fabric of the universe at some level?”

Was that the sound of a footstep? The sound of someone clearing their throat before they entered the room? Just on the edge of her subconscious, the Watcher was announcing his imminent presence, getting ready to ease himself into her psyche, to take up position in her mind.

“Oh, I don’t care anymore,” she said. “I don’t care. I’ve come back here and, honestly, I’m too tired to go on. I saw the way people looked at me back in the outside world. I read what Maurice and Saskia and the rest were thinking. They saw the pressure building up inside me as I continued to force my emotions back down, and they nudged each other and said— Look, there she goes again. She keeps pushing down her feelings. You mark my words; she can’t do that for much longer. She’s going to explode, and all of that passion will come bubbling out.

“But they were wrong. I was like a clock: I got wound up tighter and tighter, and in the end the spring just snapped and left me like this—broken and unmoving. All of that emotion I built up during my lifetime never got the chance to break free. Ah, it was wiped from the universe before it had a chance to be born.”

The FE fell still. The lift had reached its destination.

“Well,” Judy said, “I’m ready to meet you.”

The doors slid open.

“Hello, Judy,” said the Watcher.

The Watcher could take on any appearance that he chose. He habitually chose that of a young Japanese man, this time neatly dressed in a black passive suit.

“Hello,” Judy said. She giggled and turned around in the corridor, hugging herself tightly. “Well, what do we do now? What have you brought me here for?”

The Watcher was silent.

“Should we make love?” Judy laughed. “A symbolic union between yourself and humanity? That would make sense, wouldn’t it? And me a virgin, too. Keeping myself untouched and unspoilt for all these years.”

The Watcher seemed unperturbed. “I think you will calm down soon, Judy.”

“I think I will, yes. Or maybe I should cure you. Here I am, expert MTPH counselor, and you a broken mind. I could counsel you; put you back on the road to mental health. Is that what this is all about? Is that why you had me brought here?”

“No, Judy.”

“Then why? Why did you bring me here?”

The Watcher did not answer immediately. The corridor was silent. Just the sound of Judy and the Watcher breathing. The clean smell of the Watcher, containing the edge of something like cologne.

“Tell me this, Judy,” the Watcher said suddenly. “You’ve seen what it is like on Earth now. Every minute there is another infestation of Dark Seeds appearing somewhere on the planet.”

Viewing fields wobbled to life all around Judy and the Watcher. A Japanese garden of raked pebbles, dry grey rocks rising amongst them. Dark Seeds lay there among the regular patterns coaxed into the ground. In the background, colorful lines of people slowly walked away from the infection; clockwork rescue fliers were already dropping in from the sky.

“There are only enough fliers to save fifty percent of them,” the Watcher sighed at Judy’s side.

“Who shall we save?” He strode into the scene, his feet disturbing the elegantly raked stones of the garden. “Shall it be this young couple?” He pointed to two people who walked hand in hand away from the infection. “They will be so happy together. And yet, if I leave the woman behind, the two children following her will have a place on the flier.” The Watcher shook his head sadly. “A couple’s happiness or the promise of the future? Which should it be, Judy?”

He came back and stood directly before her.

“I make these decisions every day, Judy. What would you do?”

Judy grinned. “You pulled that trick on Eva Rye,” she said. “You fooled her into playing that game all those years ago. You fooled us all into playing along. Well, you don’t fool me any longer. The answer is: we don’t make the decisions. They make their own choices. The couple choose, the children choose, and they do it fairly . That’s what FE is all about, that’s what you should be all about, but your programming has got totally skewed. You’ve been wrong since the beginning. You haven’t been dealing with individuals; instead you’ve been trying to impose a perfect model on a group, trying to get them all to live in a certain identical way.”

The viewing fields shimmered and vanished. The Watcher was silent once more.

“I think you’ve been aware of that for some time,” Judy continued. “Now tell me, why am I here?”

The Watcher lost his impassive mask.

“You are fulfilling a Fair Exchange undertaken between Chris and myself, though I don’t think either of us realized how far-reaching the consequences would be. Come on, we need to go this way. Let’s see if you can interface your console with this building.”

Judy’s console plugged itself straight into the building’s datasphere. That was no surprise, as she was apparently DIANA property.

“This way,” said the Watcher, and he turned off the corridor and passed through a series of rooms ranged with low shapes, like half-submerged diamond whales. “Very high-capacity memory,” said the Watcher. “Normally they wouldn’t be this deep in a gravity well, they weigh so much, but DIANA must have wanted to keep their contents a secret.”

“You want to ask me what is in them, don’t you?”

“Each contains a human life,” said the Watcher, but he didn’t elaborate further. The next room contained more of the massive shapes, and the next one. They passed room after room of semisubmerged diamond whales.

Finally, they passed into a different area of the complex and entered a low-ceilinged room containing a few sofas and a desk. A reception area.

“Through here,” said the Watcher. Beyond the reception area the whole feel of the building changed. It became more homey, more like a living area. They passed through another set of rooms, emerging finally into one that Judy recognized.

“A delivery room,” she said.

She looked around the familiar space and felt a sense of homecoming. She belonged here. The faint smell of talcum powder in the air brought a sense of smothering happiness to her. There were thirteen cribs in the room, one for Judy and each of her twelve sisters. A sense array hung from the ceiling, just another shape amongst the glittering twirling mobiles that dangled down to entertain the newborns. The walls were decorated with bright primary-colored shapes that stimulated the mind and senses. The floor was something of an anticlimax, covered in a plain oatmeal carpet. The Watcher spoke. “DIANA had a store of frozen embryos, brought from before the Transition, from before the time I took complete control of the running of human affairs. Thirteen aborted fetuses: as such they were not, legally speaking, human beings. DIANA brought them to term. DIANA regarded those thirteen babies as their property.”

“Oh?” said Judy. “What did they want with us?”

“They wanted to find out how you worked. Just how, exactly, your minds worked. DIANA had long been interested in intelligence. They wrote the AI known as Kevin, remember? They wanted to truly understand the nature of intelligence.”

“But surely they already understood? DIANA made digital personality constructs of humans back then. They were constructing AIs all the time.”

“No, Judy, I did. All of these things are the results of my technology. But DIANA was paranoid, maybe rightly so. They wanted to understand those principles for themselves. They constructed a program to examine the workings of the mind, and they incorporated it into the genetic structure of the children. You’re not saying anything now, Judy. You know that what I’m saying is the truth, don’t you?”

Judy felt the pressure of the fleshy cross on the back of her neck. She reached back and touched it.

“The meta-intelligence,” she whispered.

“Did you never think to look at yourself with it?” asked the Watcher. “That was what it was there for—”

“I don’t want to look at myself with it,” said Judy. “I don’t want to see that my mind is just a mechanical process . I don’t want to see that it’s just a Turing machine. Like the thing that runs this place.”

“So what? You say that as if there is something wrong with that.” The Watcher seemed indignant.

“Your body is a mechanical process. Your heart pumps, your muscles contract, your nerves react. So what if your mind is a Turing machine? You are greater than the sum of your parts.”

Judy gave him a weak smile.

“I know that. But my eyes and ears and senses are just writing to a length of tape, and your words have just been written to that tape, and my brain is just the tape head that reads the words and then jumps back and forth as it reacts to what you said.” She couldn’t help herself now: she looked. A long reel of tape was threaded between the hemispheres of her brain, clicking through a section at a time, chattering back and forth as she examined his face, eyes darting.

“No,” said Judy, turning the gaze of the meta-intelligence away from herself. “I know you’re humoring me,” she said. “I know that you are. I don’t blame you. I know that a Turing machine is just a mathematical concept. But, I look through this and I can feel my brain mapping directly onto the mechanism. It’s like I can almost see the original process in there, just out of reach: the self-referential part of my mind that allows me to be me. And if I see that, I will have defined myself and all of my thoughts.”

“And now look away,” said the Watcher. “Look away, Judy. Don’t look back again.”

She did as she was told. She wanted to do as she was told.

The Watcher went on. “Do you see the danger, Judy? I think you do now. The meta-intelligence program was a good idea, but it was observed by other AIs. AIs within DIANA and, later on, outside of DIANA. The algorithm behind the program became an idea that took root in AIs’ minds, and then it was passed on to humans, imperfectly understood. A human could almost look into their own mind and become transfixed by the sight of the mechanism. This is how the White Death was born.”

“The White Death,” said Judy, reeling with the revelation. She had experienced the effect before, secondhand. But now she understood. Now she understood the spiral that drew the mind in upon itself until it was thinking about nothing more or less than its own processing. Trapped in Recursion.

“The White Death,” she repeated. “I understand now.” Her voice hardened. “So where do you come into all this?”

“Right here,” said the Watcher. A scene sprang to life on Judy’s console. “This is stored in the building’s surveillance net. October the twenty-sixth, 2211.”

Viewing fields wobbled into life in the delivery room; they quickly took on the appearance of the room itself. Nothing had changed save for the fact that thirteen babies now lay in the cots. Three months old, Judy guessed. They looked at the mobiles with bright blue eyes, drew their legs up to their tummies, yawned and rubbed their eyes with little fists, opened little pink mouths to cry, and waited for the nurses to come to them with their smart pinstriped aprons.

One young man stood over a cot, holding his hand over the baby’s face.

“You make me laugh when you do that, Henry,” said an older woman, as she lifted the happy pink child out of its cot.

“I’m not doing anything, Margaret.” Henry snatched his hand away. The baby in the cot was sleeping peacefully, its little fists on the pillow on either side of its head. That’s me, thought Judy. That’s me Henry was looking at . Margaret bounced the baby expertly on her shoulder, one arm wrapped around its little bottom, the other pointing upwards.

“She’s only sleeping,” she said. “The sense cluster would pick it up if she wasn’t breathing. There’s no need for you to keep feeling for her breath.”

Judy gulped as the man picked up her younger self. He had such a kind face, she thought. His light brown hair was already receding, his chin a little too long, but when he placed the baby on his shoulder and rocked it gently in its sleep, a look of such warmth came over his face. Judy was a ghost in the recorded scene; she moved close to him and a lump rose to her throat as she watched him tilt his head around at an awkward angle in order to get a better look at the baby’s face. She saw the way he surreptitiously licked a finger and raised it to just underneath the baby’s nose, the better to catch its slightest breath. And her eyes welled with tears as she caught the contented smile as he found what he was looking for. Just how many times, she wondered, had she lain in this cot and half woken from a dream in which her forming mind twisted over itself to get a better look at its developing consciousness?

What sort of nightmares must she have experienced in that recursive, self-referential world? And then to have opened her eyes and to have seen a hand just above her face, reaching down on the end of an impossibly long arm.

She started to cry, tears bubbling up and streaking her cheeks. She wiped them away, and smiled through bleary eyes.

All that time and she had never realized. Every time she was anxious, she had experienced that dream. It wasn’t a bad thing at all. It was her subconscious reminding her that she had once been loved. She now followed Henry around the room, watched him bouncing her infant self on his shoulder, watched him feeding her from a bottle, watched him help her sit up amongst the other babies on the gaily colored mat that had been rolled out across the floor.

When the Watcher spoke again, the sound of his voice made her jump.

“Of course there was someone else here,” he said, “someone who the surveillance systems could not pick up. I’ll fill in the gaps.”

It seemed like the grey crystalline robot had been standing in the corner all along and Judy had just registered his presence. He stood, arms patiently folded, looking around the room with amused patience on his beautiful face.

“Chris,” said Judy. “I should have guessed. What was he doing here?”

“Monitoring the room for me,” said the Watcher. “I was going to perform a little experiment of my own.”

“It was performed on me, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Judy. You were born in 2211, the same year that I performed another experiment to try to determine the truth of my own origins. I placed a developing mind in the ziggurat under the stars on a distant planet, to see if it would become infected by the virus that made me. Do you think that was the only test that I made? Minds can live in many containers, in machinery and in flesh. The human mind is just an AI that has evolved within a set of grey cells.”

Judy’s eyes widened, guessing what the Watcher was going to say next.

“I wiped the minds of those thirteen babies. Left them empty, waiting to see if anything would develop there.”

Judy felt as if she had been stabbed in the stomach. She felt the knife in there, twisting, tearing her life apart.

“You did that to me?” she whispered.

“No,” said the Watcher, “I did it to the baby that Henry there now holds in his arms. You are not that baby. You are what developed afterwards.”

Judy couldn’t speak, the moment was too big. She held her stomach, she bit her lip, then she rubbed her dry eyes. She needed to think. The Watcher, however, would not be quiet.

“Chris once told you that you would come around to his point of view someday: that you would want to help him to destroy me.”

“I never believed him, until a moment ago,” said Judy. “Now I see it’s true. He was right.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” Judy said. “You’re already defeated. The Dark Seeds are all over this planet, and you can no longer fight them. All you can do is hold on to what little power you have remaining. Sooner or later you’re going to have to climb into a sealed processing space and stay there.”

“What about all the people outside? All the people who live on Earth? Don’t you care for them?”

“Yes, of course I do,” Judy snapped. “I was a Social Care operative for years. But it’s funny; Eva Rye got into my mind, and I saw things through her eyes. I saw the way you manipulated her to get what you wanted. I had a friend once called Frances. She was an AI. Someone said that she used my personality as a template for her own. It was a negative template, but a template nonetheless. I’m beginning to think that you did the same with Eva…”

“I don’t deny it.”

“…and that makes me wonder. I think about Kevin—you know he claims that he is not an AI. He says he passes the Turing test every day, but he is not intelligent: just a sequence of yes/no responses, just a massive algorithm.”

“Yes?”

“And I wonder, are you any different? Are you an AI, or are you just a reflection of all of us? You appear to have feelings, but all we are seeing in your actions are our own emotions reflecting right back at us. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? The last two hundred years of history have been shaped by you, yet you’re not even intelligent. We just took you at your word when you said you were.”

“It’s a clever theory, Judy,” the Watcher looked smug, “but what about all the other personality constructs? What about your sisters? Maybe they weren’t intelligent. Maybe they too were just reflections of human emotions.”

Judy hugged herself. Was this the ultimate betrayal? Was she denying those digital copies of herself their supposed existence? And yet she had to go on.

“I don’t know. Were they intelligent, or did they just think they were?”

The Watcher laughed.

“You should know. You used to go into the digital world. You have spoken with personality constructs in there! You know they were intelligent.”

“Or was I just seeing myself reflected back again?”

In the virtual scene, Henry placed the baby that would become Judy back in its crib. At that, Judy turned her back on the Watcher and made her way across the room. She bent closer and regarded the look of tender satisfaction on Henry’s young face, watched the way he pulled the pink blanket up over the sleeping child’s chest. She smiled as he gently pressed the baby’s little nose.

“Beep,” he whispered under his breath, then he turned and walked from the room, this whole scene observed by the silent robot in the corner.

“And how do you know that you have intelligence, Judy?” asked the Watcher. “Or do you just think that you have?”

“I’m the only one who can tell the difference.”

“Good answer,” the Watcher said. “But you could also discern whether the rest of us do, if you only took the trouble to think about it—even without the use of your meta-intelligence. You can tell that I have intelligence, because I can see the Dark Seeds and fix them in position.” He looked thoughtful. “That’s what it takes to be intelligent,” the Watcher continued, “the ability to observe. Now, that’s enough of this. Come on, we’re almost done here.”

They walked along the corridors towards the processing space that contained the FE. The meta-intelligence had been watching it all this time, ever since they had descended in the lift. Judy could sense it getting nearer, a pearly grey sphere hanging in an underground space.

“What is it doing here?” she whispered.

“It’s everywhere, Judy. It appears wherever it’s needed. That’s the way it was written, so it can Restore the Balance. Since 2240, when you set the first Dark Seeds loose here, it has been appearing more and more frequently. Dark Seeds seem to attract FE. And Aleph and the other systems repair robots, too.”

“Aleph is an alien, isn’t he?”

“Yes. The universe is full of other life, and I am beginning to realize that they function in ways beyond even my current superior capacity to understand. All it takes for life to arise is a situation where replication can occur. Recursion, the same patterns occurring over and over again, life calling life into being. Your problem, Judy, is that you look just at individual components. It is in the recursive patterns that you will see the mind of God in this universe—the mind of God in all his divergence.”

They were standing outside a grey metal door. Judy could sense the FE lying just beyond it. The Watcher looked thoughtful.

“In the end, Chris and I thought we could use FE to settle our differences,” he continued. “We thought we could split the Earth Domain between ourselves and allow FE to determine the fairest division. I think you can guess what we ended up with?”

Judy knew the answer. “Nothing, of course. Because neither of you ever owned the Earth Domain in the first place.”

The Watcher nodded. “That’s right. Well, here we are. This is where it all began.”

The door slid open, and Judy stepped forward.

The processing space on the Eva Rye had been a sphere. Here, in the DIANA building, it seemed to be a white cube the size of a small house. The cube stood in the middle of an enormous hangar of a room, illuminated by thousands of tiny green lights that hung from the ceiling, flickering like leaves in the wind. There was no floor to the room as such, just a series of metal joists set over a dark drop that led who-knew-where. A set of pale blue duckboards led to the doorway of the cube.

“This is why you are here,” said the Watcher. “This is the result of all the myriad exchanges.”

“You expect me to go inside that?”

“Of course,” said the Watcher. “Think on the nature of FE. It is both the medium and the message. It remembers all that it has been. It remembered the shape of this building. It remembers what it was like when it was created, all those billions of years ago. All FE is the same. It can trace its path all the way back to its origins. Enter that cube, and you are seeing life as it was nine billion years ago. You are seeing the secret of life in this universe. Wouldn’t you like to take a look?”

“Is it safe?”

“Not in the slightest. But just remember, your mind is formed of FE and quickened by MTPH.”

Judy nodded thoughtfully. She was only gradually registering what she had been told. Her mind—this body’s mind—had been wiped at birth. What had taken root there was the same as what had taken root in the ziggurat on Constantine’s planet. It was the same, in effect, as the Watcher’s mind. But not the same, for it had been shaped by its container.

“My mind is formed of FE,” she murmured. “Does that make any difference?”

They both looked at each other, and suddenly began to laugh.

“Fucked if I know,” said the Watcher. And they laughed all the louder.

Judy crossed the duckboards, staring down at the black drop below. Could she see metal creatures down there, metal bodies squirming over each other in an echo of other events? Would she slip from the duckboards to be dragged down to drown there in the darkness? She looked up at the green lights high above, echoes of leaves in trees and the sunlight shining through limes. She paused by the white door set in the side of the cube and looked back to the Watcher, who gave her a little wave. What is in here? FE

remembered. The Eva Rye remembered being a ship. This building remembered its shape. FE was nine billion years old. Could it really remember its origins?

She placed a hand on the door and pushed it open and stepped out of her world.

All it took to create life was a situation where replication could occur. Not quite. There had to be some restrictions, some capability for the laws of economics to take place. There had to be limited capacity. Life evolved where there was competition. When there was a limited supply of building materials, replicating molecules would merely strip each other of their components. They would need therefore to evolve ways to prevent this happening. They would evolve walls around themselves to create cells. They would learn to spread quickly so as to grab scarce materials before their competitors could. They would diverge into predators and prey. Life would become a race for limited resources. For one species to prosper, another had to decline. But someone has since written fairness into the universe, thought Judy, a feature sadly lacking in the original design. She couldn’t stay in here for long. The air burned at her lungs and made her skin itch, even beneath the active suit. Her eyes were watering and the flickering light made her head spin. Even so, she could make out the shape of the space in which she stood. The dusty towers that surrounded her made her think of termite mounds; indeed, they made her think of blocks of flats. They were riddled with hundreds of tiny holes, set out in regular rows along each rectangular face of the mounds. If the inhabitants had been termites, they could come and stand in these windows and look out across to an equal inhabitant standing directly opposite. How many mounds in here? wondered Judy. Ten of these orange dusty shapes? Twelve? Look at them, all of them of exactly equal height. All with the same number of windows. Is this where it all began?

Did some evolutionarily stable strategy arise here, where the inhabitants found it advantageous to share everything equally? Each mound thus adding one level onto itself only when every other mound did the same. It wasn’t like that on Earth, where trees used to compete to reach the sunlight first. Did this equality arise here, or was it written here from another source?

The flickering light was making her feel badly disoriented. She could feel herself slowing down, losing interest even in the hacking cough that racked her body, and she recognized the signs of an approaching epileptic fit. It was time to get out of here. She took a last look around the orange dust and the towers, and then staggered backwards from this world out of time. She only just remembered…

…to keep her feet on the blue duckboards.

Constantine was waiting for her when she emerged, wiping his hands together as if cleaning them.

“Where is the Watcher?” asked Judy.

“Gone,” said Constantine. “He was just waiting for me to pass across the final confirmation of what I saw in the ziggurat. And he wanted to speak to me. I knew his wife once, for a brief time.”

“The Watcher had a wife?”

“It’s a long story.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died, I fear. You know the Watcher’s rule about digital life. You can’t barter with FE. Humans have only so much life and they can’t buy more.”

“He allowed his own wife to die?”

“The Watcher expanded her life span considerably, but in the end he was bound by FE. And that’s not all, because, despite everything, he tried to be a moral creature. He learned that from us. He learned everything about who he was by watching humans.”

“Where has he gone?”

“I don’t know. He was running on processing spaces here on Earth, and now he is not. Does that mean he is dead? If he is now running instead in a processing space one thousand light years away, does that mean he has resurrected himself, or just gone out of the room? I honestly don’t know.”

“Oh.”

Constantine helped her off from the duckboards and back into the corridor beyond. She leaned against the robot, feeling its cool metal skin. Everything seemed so silent now, such an anticlimax. She coughed again, spat yellow phlegm onto the floor. Phlegm from nine-billion-year-old dust?

“I’m sorry,” she said, realizing suddenly what she had done. “That was terribly rude of me.”

“That’s okay,” Constantine said.

She looked listlessly up and down the corridor, waiting for something to happen.

“It all seems so quiet now,” she said, “and I don’t know what to do. I’ve come all the way back here like I was supposed to.” She raised her voice. “Hey! Building! DIANA! What do you want me to do ?”

“Return to your room and await instructions.”

“But there are no more instructions coming,” Judy complained. “Don’t you realize that? DIANA is long gone.”

“Return to your room and await instructions.”

“Oh, what’s the use? Constantine, what am I supposed to do now?”

The robot tilted his head as if listening.

“Who are you speaking to?” asked Judy.

“Aleph,” Constantine said.

“What is he saying?”

“He is suggesting we get above ground. He says that there are fourteen billion people currently living on Earth, and they are entitled to one fourteen billionth part of it each.”

“Sorry?”

“The Watcher is gone. The FE program is back on track. I think they are about to divide everything up.”

edward 3: 2252

Edward wasn’t reallyso frightened: he had seen this happen before, back on the Eva Rye . He knew, when the ground began to shiver and tear itself into long shreds that waved about like anemones in the water, that all he had to do was look for the patch of stillness that was sure to be there and to head towards that. He knew, when the stone faces of the surrounding buildings cracked into warm smiles, and wrinkles formed around the windows of their eyes, that the objects in his vicinity were re-forming themselves into new shapes. He knew, when the light cut out, blocked by a maelstrom of swarming material, and the air was hot and smelling of metal, that he had only to wait patiently and the storm would pass and the world would re-form in new and interesting ways.

But, even so, this was different from before. Something invisible was stalking the Earth, something nurtured in the distant past; it had ripped its way to the surface, where it sniffed and tasted its new environment, and tried to understand the world into which it had been born. It placed a foot in the middle of what had been Berlin, and the buildings drew back in horror, and then fused together. It walked up the west coast of England, whereupon the Lite train tracks plated with silver the hemispherical depressions that opened beneath its feet.

Edward saw the Earth rendering up its riches. The sky was a deep pinkish orange pierced by silver masts that were visibly growing upwards. Silver birds were tearing themselves free from the mast tops and flying off in long dark streams through the heavens.

The surrounding city was dissolving into a crystal grey sea; the buildings were melting and slipping beneath the waves. Silvery shapes, painted by the pink light, floated upwards like sea creatures from another world, floating up into the aquarium sky.

And the sound—the howls and screams and whoops of air being pushed and bellowed and farted from the pneumatic pistoning of machinery sliding over machinery.

Warm water splashed over Edward’s face. He saw Saskia, her face pale and eyes wide, as she wiped her hand across her brow and shook the excess moisture free.

Pale eggs bobbed up from beneath the silver sea of the dissolved ground, rainbow colors spreading over them. They were ships, just like the original Eva Rye, but Edward ignored them, his attention drawn to a deepening pit not far away where the watchtower had once stood. Judy had walked into the building that had formed there. Then the building had collapsed in on itself, and he knew this meant she was dead. He just didn’t want to believe it.

Suddenly Maurice was pulling at his arm, pointing and shouting something that got lost in the unearthly shrieking chorus generated by the flux of the shifting machinery. Saskia was skittering forward, her legs moving twice as fast as they should be, running along on the backs of a herd of silver beetles heading in the opposite direction. Maurice held up both arms, elbows outwards to protect his head and charged forward through the falling curtain of metal ribbons that slithered from somewhere above. Edward got the idea and followed him, racing down the slope of bare earth and loose stone that led to the center point of what had been the watchtower. Then he saw something silver and black ahead, a cross that floated indistinctly in the air. Saskia, too, was running towards the cross, her face bleeding from a cut on her left cheek. Maurice picked his way downwards more cautiously behind her, and suddenly Edward realized what they were looking at.

The silver-and-black cross resolved itself into a familiar shape. It was Constantine, carrying Judy to safety from the ever widening pit into which the DIANA building was collapsing. It was an exercise in futility, for all of the surrounding Earth was slipping downwards. Maurice, Saskia, Constantine, Judy, even Edward himself, all would soon be swallowed up. Edward felt a swell of pride at his crew: that hadn’t stopped any of them rushing forward to help.

Saskia was there first. She placed a hand, red blood dripping from a deep gash near her wrist, onto Judy’s white cheek. Maurice arrived next, placing his arm protectively around Saskia. Now Edward was there too, Judy looking up at him with a weak smile on her pale face. He noticed the way her left leg hung limply. She must have hurt it escaping from the transforming building. The chorus of shrieking was increasing, and a busy regular rhythm—as of mandolins playing—was taken up by the machinery.

Saskia wrapped her arms around Judy and gave her a huge hug. Maurice placed a gentle hand on Edward’s shoulder and Edward beamed widely. They were all together again, and friends at last, here at the end. Blinking away tears, Edward looked up through a cloud of discs, like silver pennies thrown into the air, looked up higher and higher into the cold air and thought of the glittering stars beyond.

“Hey, look!” he called out, though it was still difficult to hear anything. Nonetheless they all turned and felt a cold awe settle over them. Up there in the sky, the black harlequin pattern of the Shawl was slowly breaking up as it disassembled itself into its constituent parts.

The sky was falling down.

But it didn’t end there. The shifting landscape sheltered them safely through the storm. All over the Earth, people would tell the same story.

And eventually there was a dawn.

Edward never quite grasped the subsequent events. To begin with, Maurice kept trying to explain things to him, but there was too much to look at. The storm had passed, but now they viewed a world in transition: a bright shifting dawn.

Great, rainbow-striped teardrop ships—just like the original Eva Rye —were spontaneously forming amongst the ever-shifting landscape, and they watched time and time again as disparate groups of people climbed on board through the rear exit hatch, all of them wearing the familiar slippery shapes of n-string bracelets on their wrists.

“Everyone on Earth has an equal quantity of material allocated to them to begin with,” Maurice explained. “Some people are pooling their share to make ships like the Eva Rye . They are heading off now to begin trading.”

Edward smiled at the thought. “We need to get back to our ship.”

“How do we do that, Edward?” Maurice asked, looking at his console. “All of the Lite train tracks will be gone. There is no property held in common anymore. Everyone is taking their fair share of what’s available.”

“But the Lite train tracks don’t belong to them!” Edward protested. “We need them to get back to our ship.”

Maurice wasn’t really listening, still too busy staring at his console. Staring but smiling. Saskia explained instead.

“But who did the Lite train tracks belong to, Edward?”

“Everyone!”

“I suppose you’re right,” Saskia said thoughtfully. “But I don’t think that’s how we used to think. This is going to take a bit of getting used to.” An idea occurred to her. “Maybe we can get a lift from one of these FE ships,” she said brightly, pointing to three nearby rainbow teardrop ships that bobbed above the silver ground like tethered balloons.

“Maybe you can,” Maurice said with quiet satisfaction. He was now scanning the cold blue sky. Edward looked up, too, wondering what he was searching for. There was music on the cold wind, the smell of spices and newness. Then Edward saw it in the distance: a dark speck, coming closer.

“Are you leaving us, Maurice?” Judy asked. She limped along behind them, one arm over Constantine’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Maurice said simply.

Edward felt a pain deep in his stomach. He was surprised to find tears pricking at his eyes.

“But why, Maurice?” he asked.

At first, Edward didn’t think that Maurice was going to answer. When he did, his voice had lost its usual impatience.

“I’ve done my work on the Eva Rye, Edward. We all have. Now I’ve bought myself a place on another ship.” He gave a sly smile. “The Fourier Transform. ”

“You work fast,” said Saskia, a hint of bitterness in her voice.

“Don’t be like that, Saskia. You didn’t expect us to stay together forever, did you?”

“Well, no, but…”

“But what about Saskia?” Edward asked. “I thought you and she were friends!”

He looked from the man to the woman, honestly confused. Maurice smiled back, almost sympathetically.

“No, Edward, it’s not like that. Well, we are friends, but…” He hesitated, lost for words. In the end he settled for giving the big man a simple hug.

Awkwardly, they disengaged. Edward looked at Judy for an explanation.

“Are you sure about this, Maurice?” she asked. “Who are you entering this ship as? You, or someone else?”

“As myself,” Maurice said. He held up his console. “Whatever is already on board has been broadcasting its wares for anyone interested. A formal way for determining proof. An even number that is not the difference of two primes. A recursive set for everything. A solution for an NP-complete problem, and all the other NP problems tumbling into P.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mathematical impossibilities. Apparently they’re not impossible on this ship. How can I resist that offer?”

A rainbow ship was now skimming towards them. The Fourier Transform . Already the rear ramp was dropping down. The ship was rotating as it flew, bringing the rear ramp around to face them.

“So this is good-bye,” Saskia said sadly. “Will you keep in touch?”

Maurice just smiled at her and gave her a last hug. Clarinet music could be heard drifting from the ship’s interior. Something old-fashioned and complicated.

“Bye, Edward,” he said, holding out his hand, and Edward shook it. The shadow of the big ship slid over them.

“Let me know what happens, Judy,” said Maurice. “What are you thinking of doing now?”

Judy just looked tired.

“I don’t know yet. I need to think.”

“Good-bye, Maurice.” That was Constantine. Maurice just nodded in response. Slowly, the great rear ramp of the Fourier Transform edged closer. There appeared to be a robot standing on it.

“That’s not a robot,” said Edward, taking a closer look. “What is it?”

“That’s Eric,” said Maurice. “He’s an alien. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of them from now on.”

The ramp came to a halt just by their feet, and they all stared at Eric. Eric was bigger than Edward, with silver skin that looked as if it had been stitched in place. His knees bent the wrong way. He raised a hand in greeting.

“Hello, Eric,” Maurice said.

Eric opened a pink mouth to show yellow needle teeth. An unearthly cackling noise emerged. Maurice held up his console so they all could see the words that scrolled across it. Hello, Maurice. So pleased to meet you in the flesh. Please come on board. Maurice stepped onto the ramp. Almost immediately the ship began to rise into the air.

“Good-bye,” he said, turning to them.

“Good-bye,” Edward said. He raised a hand to wave as Maurice was taken away from them. Already the other man had turned his back and was walking up the ramp. The Fourier Transform rose higher and higher, the ramp closing slowly.

“Good-bye,” Edward said sadly.

“Now what?” Saskia asked.

Now the silver sea was receding. The Earth itself was emerging once more, tired and desolate in mud and winter grass. After two hundred years of recursive building, the planet looked bedraggled and forlorn.

They walked on, taking in their new surroundings. Constantine confirmed that they were walking in the direction of the Eva Rye. Edward knew it was hundreds of kilometers away, but he walked anyway.

“This is all too sudden,” Judy complained. “There are fourteen billion people on Earth. They have been cared for and guided constantly all through their lives. Most of them won’t be able to handle this sudden transition.”

“Maybe you should do something about it, then,” Saskia said, peering out from under her fringe.

“I’m hungry,” Edward said suddenly.

“There must be plenty of food around,” said Constantine. “There was more than enough on Earth yesterday. It can’t have just vanished.”

“It will be in the ships,” Judy said, pointing upwards. Colorful ships now filled the sky like so many balloons. Layers and layers of ships cast circling shadows over the ground.

“What about all the people still left down here?”

Edward saw Constantine was pointing to a group of people standing nearby on a terrace of grey stone marooned in a sea of mud. After some hesitation, Edward led his group through the mud to reach them.

“Hello,” said a woman of about Saskia’s age. “Have you played the n-strings game?”

“Oh, yes,” Saskia said, and she shivered. “Why, have you?”

The woman nodded, pale blue eyes looking out from a pinched white face.

“About two hours ago. I didn’t understand it. What is going on now? Where is the Watcher? Why isn’t he sorting all of this out?”

“The Watcher has gone,” Saskia said. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“But my mother is ill!”

Edward saw a woman curled up on the cold grey stone, her head in the lap of a man he guessed was her husband.

“We can’t stay here,” the woman said. “There are Dark Seeds about. We closed our eyes and they went on their way this time, but what if more appear?”

“There won’t be so many seeds now,” said Judy. “The Watcher has gone. You did the right thing, though. Just ignore them.”

“Ignore them? We’re supposed to just ignore them? I don’t think I can ever do that.”

“I don’t think you have a choice. There is no Watcher anymore. You’ll have to learn to stand on your own two feet now.”

Saskia spoke up. “You need to get on your console and trade for help.”

“ Trade for help?”

“I know, it takes a bit of getting used to. It’s the new thing.”

“Judy,” Edward interrupted. “Why don’t these people have a ship of their own?”

“We did,” the young woman said, “but we sent it away. We thought it was a trick.”

“What these people need,” Saskia said suddenly, “is advice.”

“ You’re looking happier,” said Judy. “I think you’ve found your purpose.”

Edward noticed the smile on Saskia’s face flicker for the merest instant. Then she dropped her fringe forward, becoming purposeful and businesslike. “There must be thousands, millions of people like these on Earth—wondering what’s going on. Who’s going to help them now? Social Care?”

“I suppose we would, for the right price,” Judy replied dryly.

“Can you help us at all?” the young woman asked.

“I think so,” Saskia said. “I’ll see if I can arrange a lift to our ship. You can use our autodoc.”

“Putting together a crew, are we, Saskia?” Judy asked.

“I don’t know,” Saskia said. “That’s down to Edward, isn’t it? I’m just helping out for the moment. Do you have a better idea?” She unfolded her console and began to tap at the keys. “I’ve seen Maurice do this often enough,” she muttered. “It can’t be that difficult.”

Edward stared over her shoulder. “I think you drag the request into the public area there.” He pointed.

“That’s what Maurice used to do.”

Saskia gave him a sideways glance, then did as he suggested. Immediately a number of offers to trade appeared.

“Which one, Edward?” she asked.

“That one,” said Edward, pointing to a rose-shaped icon that he rather liked the look of. Saskia tapped it, and a face appeared in the console: a young man, good looking, with dark skin and darker eyes. Saskia passed Edward the console.

“Go on, boss, do your thing.”

“Hello there, I’m Saeed,” said the man on the console. “Would you like to engage in Fair Exchange?”

“Yes,” Edward said, “we’d like a lift to our ship.”

“How many of you are there?”

Judy was busy counting the people assembled on the stone terrace.

“Fifteen,” she said, and Edward relayed the number.

“Fine,” Saeed said, then his eyes lit up. “Isn’t this amazing!” he exclaimed. “Do you understand what’s going on?”

“No,” Edward said honestly. “I think I preferred it the old way. I miss my old friends. I miss Craig.”

“Then why don’t you ask if someone will take you to him,” Saeed said. “That’s what FE is for!”

“Oh,” said Edward, a smile slowly spreading across his face. Not only Craig, he realized, but Caroline, his sister, too. What would it be like back on Garvey’s World? Would everything there have been broken up into spaceships, like the Eva Rye ? But there would be time to think of that later—now there were people here to help, and Saeed was impatient to begin.

“Well, shall we start FE? Do you still want a lift?”

“Yes,” said Edward.

“Okay, exchanging circumstances. There, all done.”

“That was fast,” Saskia commented.

“Isn’t it always?” asked Saeed.

“I think it will be, for the next few days at least,” Judy said. “At the moment, all humans are pretty equal.”

“And with FE, they should stay that way,” Saskia added.

The sky was slowly emptying of ships. After a two-hundred-year period of stagnation, Earth was finally developing as it should.

Saeed’s ship settled in the mud near their stone island and dropped the rear ramp. Other ships did the same nearby.

Saeed and three other men came down the ramp to meet Edward and the rest of them. Gently, two of them picked up the young woman’s mother and carried her to their ship’s autodoc.

“Which of you are Najam and Jackie?” Saeed asked.

Two young women raised their hands.

“FE said you were going to be part of our crew. Are you happy about that?”

“I don’t know,” one of the women said. “We’ll have to see.” But she smiled at him as she spoke.

“That used to be my job,” Judy said, so softly that Edward only just heard her.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Matchmaking. Healing personalities. Now I suppose it just gets thrown in as part of a business deal.”

She turned to Constantine. “You know what,” she said, “I never really doubted, but now I’m convinced: the Watcher was FE that developed a mind of its own.”

Edward and the rest of them walked up the ramp into the interior of Saeed’s ship.

“What is this ship called, Saeed?” Saskia called out.

“It hasn’t got a name.”

“It needs a name,” said Najam, one of the two new members of its crew. “How about the Ophelia ?”

Edward looked around at familiar surroundings. The Eva Rye had looked like this not so long ago. Maybe its colors had been slightly less bright, maybe they had not been so mixed up, but this ship reminded him of Craig. He wondered again at what Saeed had said and decided that as soon as they made it to the Eva Rye he would try to make contact with Craig again. And then on to his home planet—if his family were still there, of course. Then he heard shouting behind him.

“It’s a robot!”

“It’s a venumb!”

“Close the ramp!”

“Too late, it’s already coming on board!”

Something big was moving up the corridor behind them: something like a cross between a snake and a Lite train made of lead-colored metal, stamping along on heavy legs. Edward and the rest flattened themselves against the corridor walls of the ship as the thing pounded past. Edward saw the rough-hewn metal sides of the animal sliding by just before him, he smelled mud and cold, felt the floor pounding beneath the great feet that propelled the beast forward.

And then it was past them. The shaking died away. The rainbow patterns in the carpet swirled as the ship cleaned itself.

“Where has it gone?” someone asked.

“Into the large hold,” said someone else.

“What was it?”

Judy guessed first. “It’s part of the big share-out,” she said. “It’s these people’s stake in the planet, and it’s going to follow them around until they damn well use it.”

Time passed. The passengers were taken to the Ophelia ’s living area and offered coffee and sandwiches by the vessel’s proud crew. A buzz of excitement filled the air, but it was cut through with a tinge of nervousness. Everything was changing so quickly.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Edward.

Saskia glanced across at him. “Yes?”

“About Judy.”

Judy and Constantine were chatting together in the other corner of the Ophelia ’s living area. All the while Judy kept fiddling with her console.

“What about her?” asked Saskia. She seemed so much more relaxed now. She was being taken seriously, Edward realized. The new passengers they had helped on board respected her.

“What about Judy?” she repeated. They looked across to see her smiling as she tapped away at her console.

“Oh,” Edward said, regaining the thread of his thoughts. “Well, we did a trade to have her brought here. We thought that we’d get a really good price, because Earth was so dangerous. Instead, we got nothing. But really, we got a good price after all. Look what we did: we set everyone free.”

“What if they don’t want to be free?”

The Ophelia settled to land near the Eva Rye . Edward was shocked at the change in the ship’s surroundings. The parkland remained, its neat lines of trees marching through snow-covered lawns, but all else was gone. The parkland was now a little area of order amongst the sea of pock-ridden mud where the buildings of the city had once stood. There were noticeably fewer ships up here in the cold wastes of what had once been St. Petersburg. Already the sea breeze was coming in to reclaim the land. The setting sun cast pale shadows across the desolate scene.

“Whose ship is it now?” asked Edward, gazing up at the neat swell of the Eva Rye ’s side. It seemed so much more ordered after the collision of colors adorning the Ophelia .

“I don’t know,” said Saskia. “Yours and mine, I suppose. But I wonder if Maurice still has any claim over it?”

“I think we should offer a share to Judy and Constantine.”

“Thank you, but no thank you,” said Judy. “I’ve already made my arrangements.”

“What do you mean?” Saskia asked, but Edward could already see the third ship approaching. It came out of the glare of the sun, floating low over the ground, moving with an easy grace towards them. Perhaps, in the distant past, it had belonged to the same species as the Eva Rye , but if so the connection was tenuous. This new ship must have been upgraded many, many times. It still bore a vague resemblance to Edward’s ship, having a slight swelling towards the front, but that was where the similarity ended. Otherwise, it was long and flexible, moving over the ground like a snake. And it was still getting bigger as it approached.

Edward realized it was much larger than the Eva Rye . He watched the swollen forward section come to a halt about fifty meters away, its bulk looming above the egglike hull of his own ship.

“What is it called?” he asked.

“The Buridan’s Ass ,” Judy replied. “It has some old friends of mine on board, people I knew long ago, back when I worked for Social Care. They’ve been using FE for quite a few years and now they’ve come looking for me.”

“Are you really leaving us, Judy?” Saskia asked, though Edward thought she didn’t look too disappointed.

“I am,” said Judy. “Remember, I’m not like other people, Saskia.” She suddenly laughed. “That sounds terribly egotistical, I know, but it’s true. The Watcher confirmed it.”

“I knew that all along,” Edward said seriously.

“I think my friends are on that ship, Edward. Some of them I’ve never even met yet. Maybe even…”

Someone had suddenly appeared out of the newly arrived ship. Edward didn’t see how. They were just suddenly standing there, right below its undulating golden hull.

“Frances!” Judy called out, and Edward heard real delight in his friend’s voice. He squinted at the figure clad in the same gold color as the ship. No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t wearing golden clothing. She was made of gold. She was a robot, seamless and perfect. Her head was a smoothly rounded bullet shape, and when Edward looked closer he could see that two eyes had been crudely painted on it.

“It’s okay,” Judy said. “She’s perfectly safe. There are lots of such people out there in the universe, Edward, lots of new people to meet.”

She was eager now to go, but she paused.

“Saskia,” she said.

“Judy.”

“Saskia, I want to thank you for everything you did for me.”

Saskia seemed almost embarrassed. “I didn’t do that much for you, Judy. It was Edward.”

“You did more than enough.”

The two women shook hands. And then Judy turned to Edward.

“I wish you wouldn’t go.”

“I know, but you will be perfectly happy without me.” She laughed again. “This is a new age, Edward. The past two hundred years have been an anomaly. Earth has been held static in a twentieth-century vision of the future, all contrived by the machinations of the Watcher. Now the singularity has taken place, it is time for us to reach for the next stage of development.”

“But I don’t want to develop, Judy,” Edward said seriously. “I just want to see my friends again.”

“That’s a good start, Edward, but just remember it’s not enough. It’s not what you’re born with, it’s what you do with it.”

“That’s right,” said Frances, the golden robot. “And when you stand before your God, then hope you can say this: See, I used every last ounce of talent that you gave me. ”

“I don’t understand,” Edward said.

“It just means do your best,” Saskia said.

Of course I will, thought Edward, puzzled. What else would I do?

“Look,” Saskia said, pointing. A few Schrödinger cubes lay frozen on the ground.

“Sorry,” Frances said, “my fault. They’re reacting to my intelligence.”

“Where have the rest gone?” Edward asked.

“Gone with the Watcher. It was always his intellect pulling them in.”

“And where has the Watcher gone?”

But Judy just tapped her nose, knowingly.

The sun was setting fast. The Earth will be dark tonight , Edward thought with some surprise. Dark for the first time in centuries. All the lights have gone. What will come to life during this night?

Edward stood alone on the rear ramp, feeling it vibrate as their passengers’ robotic share in the Earth’s bounty made its heavy way towards the large hold.

He wondered if the Eva Rye was now the last ship left on Earth. The Ophelia had already risen into the air, to join the sparse few ships that still hung about there. Some of them were lighting up in evening colors, pastel lamps that floated above the empty land.

Judy and Frances had together boarded the Buridan’s Ass and gone swimming away who-knows-where.

Edward had a funny feeling looking out over the darkening land. Everything had just melted away. He wondered if it would ever come back. Would anyone ever come and stand here in this spot and maybe throw a VNM out from the ship into the sea of mud below, set it searching for materials, set it replicating so as to maybe build a city here again?

He dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Why would anyone want to do that?

That time had passed, evaporating into the night along with all the people who had once walked here. Edward turned to head up the ramp, and then paused for a moment. He turned back to the empty land, falling away in a rosy sunset.

“Good night,” he said to it.

eva rye

“What is life, Eva?” Ivan asked. “What does it mean to be alive, to be human? What is it that makes me able to sit here and speak to you? Do you ever wonder about this?”

“I used to,” replied Eva.

“You used to? You no longer wonder? Why not?”

“Because now I know what life is.”

She could just make out Ivan’s face in the predawn light. She wondered if he could see her smiling.

“I can see you smiling at me. You’re teasing me again.”

“No,” Eva said, “I know what life is, and I will tell you what it is very soon.”

“When?”

“When the sun rises. When the band begins playing.”

The residents of the Narkomfin were gathering in the darkness, smelling of alcohol and coffee and cold sweat. There was low muttered conversation and the sound of metal chinking against metal. The brass band that had performed in the hall the previous night was re-forming; players were blowing into their instruments, warming them up, the valves pistoning in the night. Hands were rubbed together and feet stamped.

“Why are we doing this?” Ivan asked. “Why do we have to come out here at dawn to sing songs and play music? Why do we not just stay indoors and continue drinking?”

“Because,” said Eva, “it’s tradition. Anyway, it’s an excuse to keep drinking for longer. That should appeal to you.”

“Hah,” Ivan said, “I am going to miss your teasing when I return home.”

“No you’re not.”

“Don’t mock me,” Ivan said. “Don’t tell me what I will do. I will miss you, Eva.”

“No, you won’t .” Eva took a deep breath. She had been thinking about this all night and had been too scared of saying it, for fear of making it real. But now was the time. “Ivan,” she whispered, “I’m coming with you.”

She could hear his intake of breath; she could see the look on his face, the way that he couldn’t help smiling, the way he tried to frown at the same time as he attempted to understand. She could see all of this in the dim light; see it as it gradually gained definition in the false dawn.

“But why, Eva?” he managed to splutter. “Why have you changed your mind? I thought you didn’t want to go back into that world. You were afraid of returning to the control of the Watcher.”

“I still am.” She took a deep breath and continued firmly. “But I don’t want, I will not have, the Watcher running my life, even by default.”

Ivan took her hand, beaming with delight. “Thank you, Eva. Thank you.”

“You’re crying,” Eva said.

“Hah, you English! I am not ashamed of my emotions.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Why change your mind? Why now—why not before?”

“I don’t know,” Eva said. “There are lots of reasons. I want to see my daughter again. I want to visit her.” But that wasn’t the truth. A vision of the scene in the hall flashed through her head, the handicapped boy shuffling past the golden child. The divergence that existed in humanity, and yet everyone still recognizably human. That was part of it.

“I…I want to do what I can.” Eva frowned. “I don’t think I can really explain.”

“That’s okay,” Ivan said, pulling her close and stroking her hair. “There will be time later on.”

I don’t think I could explain, even later on, thought Eva. I wanted to be free, so I tried to kill myself. The Watcher said it, all that time ago: “You fought for the right to live your life your own way, even if it meant killing yourself.” That’s why he thinks he needs me. Why does he have this yearning to understand freedom and personal responsibility, when all he wants to do is to control us? Will we ever be free to control ourselves?

There was a yellow glow appearing over the distant hills. The sun was coming. Veni Creator Spiritus. Some of the assembled people were singing those words now, half whispered. Some residents of the Narkomfin claimed to worship the sun as the life-giver. But it was just a pose, an affectation. All of the band now held their instruments, warming them up. Paper music was clipped into lyres. The conductor took his place. The sun was coming.

Ivan stood behind Eva, his big arms wrapped around her body, and she felt his warmth.

“They are going to play,” Ivan said. “Go on, tell me, what is life?”

Eva put her hands on his arms and cuddled him closer to her.

“Ivan, life is just a reflection of ourselves. We look at something, and see part of ourselves in it, and call it life.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we put life into the objects we see. We look at a kitten and we look at a rock, and if we see enough of ourselves reflected back, we say the object is alive.”

“Hah, yes!”

“We look at the sun and we see something warm and living. We put the spirit in it.”

Ivan tasted the idea. Sheets of paper were now being passed through the crowd. The lyrics to be sung. Ivan took one and held it absently.

Eva was warming to her theme.

“It means that if we hate something that much, then really we hate ourselves. You’ll hear it in a moment when these people begin singing.”

Veni Creator Spiritus? thought Eva. Come creator spirit? We are the creator spirit. The Watcher is just a reflection of ourselves—I realize that now.

The sun tipped over the edge of the hill. Golden light shone out everywhere. The band began to play, and the drunken people of the Narkomfin, the halt and the lame as well as the able-bodied, all got ready to sing. Eva held up the sheet of music and waited, along with the rest, for the cue to enter, all the while gazing up at the sun, happy at her reflection and, for the moment at least, comfortable with herself.

It was another morning. The residents began to sing.

Hail Smiling Morn, smiling morn,

That tips the hills with gold,

That tips the hills with gold,

Whose rosy fingers ope the gates of day,

Ope the gates, the gates of day,

Hail! Hail! Hail! Hail!

Eva and Ivan, the whole of the Narkomfin, faced the rising sun.