Recursion

constantine 2: 2119

Constantine was seeing stars. Tiny pinpoints of light winking and fizzing in the space between his roaring headache and the ceiling.

Where was he?

Cool white sheets, the bed much larger than a bed needed to be, bone china tea service laid out on a tray that rested on one of the bedside tables. He groaned and sat up. Prints in pastel shades hanging on the walls; a window that reached from floor to ceiling-recognition slowly dawned. Somewhere there would be a trouser press and a full sensory immersion booth offering a discreet range of adult entertainment.

He was in a hotel room, just as he had been every night for the past two years.

He placed one hand gently on the side of the teapot. Hot. How did they do that? How did they have that power of prediction that enabled a pot of tea to be brewed at just the moment of waking? He picked up the yellow-patterned teapot and began to pour, the smell of jasmine tea filling the room. A sound channel was fading up in the background: the morning news digest.

Where was he? Germany? No. That had been last week. Wales? Welsh enclave in Paraguay? Why did he have such a bad headache? Constantine had a trick for moments like this, moments of hotel angst when he couldn’t remember exactly where he was. He looked at the prints that hung on the walls. Abstract. Dot art. Australia. Stonebreak.

He suddenly remembered Mary. Last night had been strange. The last few weeks had been strange. The way the world seemed to be dropping out of view, gaps opening up where they shouldn’t be. The way people froze in place or smeared themselves across the scenery…Even so, last night had been strange by anyone’s standards. And then they had come for him and led him back here. Back into his safe, comfortable and, above all, anonymous routine. Given him a glass of whisky and left him to sleep.

Constantine always slept naked and they hadn’t neglected that detail. He wondered who had undressed him.

He turned on the visual feed that matched the news sound channel.

India, and the prime minister had apologized for the setbacks in the country’s VNM program, but promised that the general public would see the benefits within the next five years.

The Mediterranean Free State, where pictures of one of the country’s leading business women engaged in an intimate liaison with her husband’s best friend had inadvertently been released into the public domain. Again, there were calls for the banning of the stealth technology that made obtaining such images possible.

Japan, and reports that the renationalized space program had gone deeper into debt, owing mainly to costs incurred by the warp drive research project. The theory seemed good; the first colony crews had already been selected on the strength of the AIs’ claims. So why had none of the ships yet managed to make the jump?

Constantine sipped his tea. His head pounded. He felt greasy and bloated: furred halitosis in a broken-down body. He needed a shower.

The bathroom offered cool antiseptic white tiles and a gentle smell of mint and tea tree oil. He felt like laying his head against the wall to take away the pain. The shower was already running, gentle gusts of scented steam puffing into the room. His wash bag had been unpacked and laid out by the sink, and the reason for the pain in his head now became obvious. A clear plastic strip sat between his toothpaste and his razor, four pills nestling in their slots. Had it been a month already? Obviously yes. They had warned him at the start that he would get headaches when the dose was running low.

“A warning signal,” the doctor had said. She had worn a dark business suit, dark tights, and sensible dark shoes, making the translucent green surgeon’s gloves on her hands seem vaguely obscene. She had perched on the edge of her desk and run her fingers across Constantine’s forehead. He had felt the light touch of latex and smelled its faint aroma, mixed with the peppermint on the doctor’s breath.

“The first day you are overdue you will wake up with a headache. The next day it will be stomach cramps. The third day, headache and stomach cramps.”

“Are those symptoms of MTPH withdrawal?” asked Constantine.

“For the third time, this isn’t MTPH. MTPH would not allow four independent personalities to develop in your mind. Do you have any idea what went into developing this compound?”

She gazed into the distance as she spoke, her fingers still softly kneading Constantine’s scalp.

“Anyway, MTPH isn’t physically addictive. Neither is this. We added the headaches ourselves as a warning.”

“Couldn’t you have put in something a little more pleasant?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. A little buzz.”

The doctor gave him an unpleasant smile. “I think it says a lot about us that we never even thought about that. We instinctively went for the pain. Doesn’t that make you wonder about our worldview?”

“Mmm.”

“Mmm indeed. Just be grateful we went for an oral delivery system.”

The memory faded like a Cheshire cat: with a picture of that unpleasant smile on the doctor’s face widening to show her teeth. He always remembered her like that.

Constantine picked up the plastic strip and popped the first pill. Four pills, four personalities.

He placed the first pill, the red one, in his mouth and swallowed it. He had been told that any apparent effect was purely imagined, but he was prepared to swear that as the pill went down the world took on a sharper and more defined focus.

“Speak to me,” he muttered.

– What do you want me to say? Have you noticed that they have put two different sorts of leaves in the teapot? They must have had to open a new package while making it.

“You’re fine, anyway,” Constantine muttered.

The pills were color-coded: red, white, blue and grey. Red for the observational personality, white for the mathematical.

“Square root of eight thousand and thirty-two?” he murmured.

– Eighty-nine point six two, correct to two decimal places.

The blue pills were his favorite. The doctor had claimed they gave taste and integrity, artistic flair. She was right, but only after a fashion. The blue personality had a distinctly different outlook from Constantine himself, something he found invariably interesting, and occasionally useful.

“Speak to me, Blue.”

– Jasmine tea followed by waffles and honey? I don’t think so. It’ll all be cold by the time you get out there, anyway.

Last came the grey pill.

“Hello, Grey,” he said. There was no reply. There never was. Not for the first time, he wondered about the grey personality, lurking unseen and unheard somewhere in his mind.

Constantine filled a plastic cup with water and took a sip. His headache was still there. He cursed the doctor, as he did this same time every month. He had done his bit, hadn’t he? Why did he have to wait for another hour or so before the pain ebbed away?

He stepped into the shower and began to soap himself.

“What day is it?”

– Thursday, said Red.-This is it, Constantine. We’re nearly there. You are visiting a building site today, a few hundred clicks from Stonebreak. The quorum may well be formed there.

“Mmph. About time.” Constantine rubbed shampoo into his hair.

– This could be the first of the last three meetings.

Constantine said nothing. Finally to be set free, to be released back into the real world. It was almost too much to hope for. He spoke carefully. “Will they know who I am?”

– Some will, some won’t. It’s the ones who aren’t aware of your mission who should provide us with the best picture of the world at the moment. I’d advise that you keep quiet about who you are. To begin with, at least.

Constantine said nothing in reply. That was what he had planned to do anyway.

He changed the subject. “How do you feel about what Mary was saying last night? Do you think that Stonebreak will collapse?”

– It’s probable, said White.-VNMs weren’t as efficient at reproduction when this place was built. The likelihood of a design flaw showing itself increases the more that the machines reproduce.

– Frightening, isn’t it? said Red.-All that effort goes to waste because one machine was faulty at the start. It’s like a whole building collapsing because of six sick bricks.

– Let’s just hope we’re not here when this place finally falls apart, interrupted Blue.

“Mmm.” Constantine rinsed soap from his hair. Who else had three, maybe four personalities looking over their shoulder at everything they did? It was no wonder he was cracking up.

The summons to the meeting came just after he had finished breakfast: a discreet message flashing up on his console. Constantine made his way up to the roof where a flier awaited.

The hotel was a low building, set near the edge of the second level of Stonebreak. A fresh breeze wafted over him, dissolving his headache. He walked toward the edge of the roof to look out over the green patchwork of the first level.

“Mr D’Roza, we are in a hurry.” The pilot wore a stern expression. She was busily pinning her long dark hair up in a bun.

Constantine waved dismissively. “Just a moment. I need some air.”

She glared at him. “Two minutes,” she said tightly.

“When I’m ready.”

The pilot scowled at his retreating back and muttered something in the direction of the cockpit. Constantine ignored her and made his way right to the edge.

The morning sun was rising behind him. A building somewhere behind cast a shadow across the roof. Constantine took several deep breaths and stretched his arms. It was a long drop to the first level. He thought again about Mary and their ride up the inside of the wall to the third level last night. Where was she now, he wondered?

– Probably lying dead in a gutter somewhere, said Blue.

“Don’t. I’m sure that won’t be the case.”

Constantine took another deep breath and headed back to the flier and its impatient pilot. He stepped into the shadow cast by the tall building and looked up at it. It was such a delicate construction that it seemed to pierce the very clouds. An incredible piece of engineering: rose-colored glass set in an intricately fashioned silver metal frame; it seemed too fragile to support its own weight. Constantine felt his stomach flutter. The building was floating on the very air. Beneath the base of the tower there was nothing. Only empty air upon the empty air that sat upon the second layer of Stonebreak. Constantine bit his lip and turned away from the illusion. If he couldn’t see it, he couldn’t be going mad. He clung to the hope. It was all he had.

The tiny green oasis of life that was Stonebreak quickly vanished from view as they flew out over the Nullarbor plain. Constantine gazed out of the blue-tinted window of the tiny flier at the flat scrubland that scrolled endlessly past. The pilot seemed intent on paying him back for the delay on the roof of the hotel; she dipped and weaved way too close to the ground, claiming that she needed to avoid detection whenever Constantine queried the need for such violent maneuvering.

– She’s lying. Our secrecy lies in our mundanity, not in elaborate attempts to evade detection.

“Thank you for your observation, Blue,” muttered Constantine sarcastically. The flier’s jerking motion was making him feel sick. Worse, he was still shaken by the sight of the floating building and was unsuccessfully trying to convince himself he hadn’t actually seen it. His one comfort during the queasy ride was that White seemed undisturbed by it. That was the personality Constantine trusted most in situations such as this.

The flier looked like a military model covered with a thin veneer of luxury to hide its true character. The outside paintwork was now white and gold, rather than the dull matte grey or silver of a stealth skin. Constantine’s seat was soft white leather, facing an elegant communications console inlaid with white wood and mother of pearl, but the passenger section seemed just a little too large for these items. In addition, there were too many slots and catches set into the airframe, too many places where crates could be secured or guns mounted. Ahead of him, the pilot’s chair was a mechanical egg surrounded by struts and pneumatic rods, bracing it against forces from every direction. Even the very shape of the flier was a giveaway, squat and maneuverable, rather than affecting the sweeping curves currently fashionable for so many business vehicles.

There was a subtle change to the view as gentle hills rose up from beneath the land. Isolated grey shapes began to flash past, then small clusters, then packs. Kangaroos and camels. The flier had left the lifeless plain for a region where a few animals scratched out an existence.

The pilot sent the craft skimming along a shallow path between the low hills and then spun them around and down and they were suddenly in the midst of the construction site. She decelerated rapidly, touching the flier down near the center of a rectangular patch of mud.

The pilot spoke without turning. “Welcome to DIANA Arcology, phase one. Please check that you have all your belongings before leaving the vehicle.”

The door slid open and bright sunlight filled the passenger section, along with a wave of heat as if someone had opened an oven door. Constantine hesitated for a moment before moving out into the bright daylight. He stepped down onto a plastic duckboard laid over wet red mud. As he did so, the door slid shut and the flier rose and skimmed off in a wide circle before disappearing in the direction from which it had come.

Constantine turned in a slow circle himself. There was no sign of anyone. He was alone, abandoned in the middle of a large rectangle of reddish earth, baking under the hot sun. Already he could feel sweat running down his back. The trail of blue plastic duckboards led to the edge of the mud patch, and he began to follow them. He felt as if he was walking across the surface of a huge red swimming pool. Someone had cut down to a depth of about half a meter and then peeled back the planet’s skin to leave the earth underneath raw and exposed.

– Why hasn’t the mud dried up? It’s like an oven out here.

“That’s a good point, Red,” Constantine muttered. He crouched down and reached one hand toward the muddy surface.

– Careful. There’s something moving down there.

Something broke the surface fast, just as Red spoke; the edge of a silver cylinder flashed brightly in the powerful sunlight before dipping beneath again. Now that he looked closely, Constantine could see that there was a constant bubbling motion just below the mud’s surface. Hundreds of identical cylinders busily crawling all over each other.

– VNMs, confirmed White.-We’re looking at some sort of bounding tank, I think. The mud layer must extend beneath the ground for some distance. It’s acting as a nurturing area for the machines.

– Like a fish tank, said Blue.

– That’s right. It’s a clever idea. It delimits the area upon which the machines can act. It stops them from escaping or converting something that they shouldn’t.

– Do you think it might be a good idea to get off the duckboards? asked Blue.

“A very good idea,” agreed Constantine. He didn’t like the idea of being converted.

– Hold it, said Red.-Something’s happening.

There was a slow sucking noise, and something large and rectangular emerged from the reddish mud. An oversized yellow plastic refrigerator, by the look of it. The door swung slowly open.

– It looks like an elevator. I think you should get in.

Constantine shivered. The interior of the yellow box looked cramped and dangerously short on air. He preferred to stand out here in the blazing sunshine. Nonetheless, he knew that Red was probably right.

“All right, I’m going,” he muttered.

– Rather you than me, said Blue.

Sitting in a chair in the large conference suite, a glass of chilled water at his elbow, Constantine had to admit that it was a clever idea. Building the research center right in the middle of the VNM construction site guaranteed privacy. It wouldn’t be a secret, of course, in today’s world very little was, but anyone wishing to approach the center uninvited would have to go through a tank of hungry VNMs. And anyone trying to slip a stealthy spy leech up close to the center would quickly find that their resources had been converted into building blocks for the new DIANA Arcology. Blue had approved wholeheartedly. The setup did have a certain poetry about it, he suggested.

– And there is something else as well. Did it occur to you that there is a certain Eastern aspect to our deceptions? Lies within misdirections within frauds. We sit here within what appears to be a construction site for an arcology, ostensibly to discuss its real purpose as a Space Colony Preparatory Center, and all the while we are plotting our own deeper schemes.

– Recursion, said White.-Each lie calls for another lie. How far do we have to go until the final deception is revealed?

– And will we ever know that what we find is not just another lie? said Red.

– How trite, Blue said rudely.

Grey, as ever, said nothing.

The meeting began without ceremony. Each member introduced themselves in turn.

“Marion Lee. Chairperson.” A red-headed woman in a severe grey suit, she blinked rapidly as she spoke.

“Gillian Karajan. Oort cloud.” She was an elongated woman with a spacer’s fake tan that somehow managed to complement her fashionable white shift. Silver and gold bangles decorated her arms.

“Constantine Storey.” Constantine added nothing else. He noted Gillian Karajan looking at him inquisitively. The other members of the group showed no surprise at his reticence.

– She’s the one, said Red.-She’s the outsider to this group. Look at the way she’s sitting, nervous, as if she doesn’t belong. I wonder what they told her to get her here?

The introductions continued.

“Masaharu Jones. Mars.” A young man barely in this twenties, full of complacent self-confidence.

“Jay Apple. Orbital.” Another tanned spacewoman, this time with a broad grin and clear, piercing eyes that swept around each member of the group in turn. Introductions over, the group nodded to each other. Marion Lee began the meeting.

“Good morning. For obvious reasons, this meeting maintains no record. Everything that is said must exist in our memories only. Nonetheless, I hereby state that we are now quorate.”

Constantine felt a mixture of excitement and relief. It was true. The moment had finally arrived. His two long years of being alone were coming to an end. Marion had paused for effect. Now she continued:

“I now remind you. The quorum will meet three and only three times. The final decision must be made by the end of the third meeting. That was deemed necessary when plans were first laid down over two years ago. There can and will be no variation from this course of action.”

Constantine found himself nodding in agreement. He had been part of the original meeting: it had made perfect sense then and it still made sense now. The longer the plan existed, the greater its chance of discovery. They had all agreed that speed was of the essence. Two years had seemed such a short time in which to achieve anything back then; it seemed an eternity now.

“Gillian Karajan will begin with a brief summary of progress out in the Oort cloud.”

Gillian nodded. She was blinking quickly; Marion’s words had clearly meant nothing to her and she was trying to conceal that fact.

“Hello. As I already said, my name is Gillian Karajan.” She twisted one of the bangles on her wrist nervously for a moment and then gathered herself together. “I work at the superluminal research center. Superluminal, for those who don’t know, means faster than light.” She took a deep breath, gaining confidence. “We’ve hit big-decision time. It looks like warp drive works…”

She paused for effect, looking round each member of the group in turn, then continued in self-important tones, “…but only up to a point. Our robot ships are vanishing into deep space, they’re just not coming back. The AIs are saying that we’ve almost cracked the drive mechanism; a few more weeks and we’ll have ships that can make the return journey. The question is…”

Again, she looked significantly at each member of the group before finishing. “…should we trust them?”

Silence. Constantine half raised his hand. “A working hyperdrive? That’s not what I heard.”

Gillian Karajan frowned at Marion the Chairperson, who nodded at Gillian to answer. She shrugged.

“Obviously we don’t advertise our progress to our competitors. Capability estimates suggest that only three companies are currently working on warp drive.” She stressed the penultimate word in the sentence, pointing out Constantine’s incorrect use of terminology. “They are the newly merged company 113 Berliner Sibelius, Imagineers, and us. We believe that we have had the edge on them throughout the development period, but that advantage has probably been eroded while we sat around wringing our hands and wondering what to do next.”

She turned back to face the group at large and opened her mouth to continue. Constantine interrupted.

“Sorry, but I’m interested in something you just said when you mentioned ships vanishing but not coming back. You asked if we should trust the AIs?”

Jay Apple grinned and raised her hand slightly.

“I’ll take this one, Gillian.” She turned toward Constantine, slouching comfortably back in her chair.

“It’s like this, Constantine. The AIs sketched out the basic design for a hyperdrive; the problem is, no one can understand it. The concept is far beyond human understanding. You want to hear an explanation I was given? Start by imagining a four-dimensional section of an eleven-dimensional sphere. Now deform that section over any non-Euclidean space…I mean, I won’t go on; you get the picture. The human mind can’t contain the concepts. Anyway, the AIs say, “Okay, let’s build a warp drive first. After all, it was a human mind that first formulated the equations for a warp drive. Let’s build one of those.” And so everyone says, fine, we’ll do that. But the warp drive doesn’t work, and the AIs say, “Well, just give us a little more money, and maybe it will work.” And so we put in a bit more money and it gets better, but it still doesn’t do everything it promised, so we put in a bit more. You get the picture? Soon a four-billion credit venture has ended up costing one hundred billion with still no end in sight. And then people get to thinking: If these AIs are so intelligent, why didn’t they see this to begin with? And of course the answer comes back, maybe they did. Maybe they’re just stringing us along to get what they want. Which gets a person to thinking, in that case, just for whose benefit are these AIs working? You get the idea?”

“Oh, yes,” said Constantine.

“Oh, yes.” Jay grinned. “And then people get really paranoid. I mean, we’ve got these warp ships disappearing off to heaven knows where and not coming back. And people are saying, well, where are they going? Maybe there’s something waiting out there and the AIs are using the ships to carry messages to it. And if they’re sending messages, what do those messages say?”

Jay gave a huge yawn and leaned back again in her chair.

“Or maybe we’re just being paranoid. So, that’s what we mean when we say, ‘Should we trust the AIs?’ Are you up to speed now, Constantine?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

– Except we didn’t want her opinion. I want to hear what Gillian has to say. She’s the one who was out there in the comet belt with the extra-solar AIs. See if you can get her to speak, Constantine.

“I’ll try, Red,” muttered Constantine.

Gillian looked from Jay to Constantine. Her eyes narrowed as she watched his lips move. After the briefest of frowns, she took up her report.

“Ms. Apple is broadly correct in what she says,” Gillian said carefully. “The AIs are helping us to construct warp drives. Principally, they are helping us shape exotic matter into the necessary form for warp drives. A working warp drive appears to be within our reach. We have seen the evidence. Ships are vanishing. So, I’m here to help decide: What happens next? If we decide to do nothing, we run the risk of the other companies getting ahead of us. If we decide to press ahead, we always have the question hanging over us: Just who are we really working for? Ourselves, or the AIs?”

She paused, leaving the question hanging in the air.

Marion Lee spoke. “Okay, thank you, Gillian. Now that Constantine and Masaharu understand the AI problem, perhaps Jay could let us know a little more about her work in orbit.”

– Look at Jay’s attitude, said Blue.-Relaxed, arrogant. Look at the way she holds her hands behind her head. She’s part of this. Not like Gillian. She didn’t trust you. She’s not high enough up in the company to have heard about ghosts.

Jay yawned. “Well, what can I say? We’re one hundred percent ready. Have been for eighteen months now. As soon as this place is completed, we can get the volunteers in here and we can start training up our colonists. To be honest, we’ve done so well up in the Orbital that we could probably launch them now.”

Jay winked at Constantine. “We could have launched already, and no one would have known.”

She glanced across to Marion. Marion nodded and looked to the Japanese man, who had been sitting patiently, waiting his turn.

“Masaharu, any news from Mars side?”

Masaharu had lined up his console exactly with the edge of the table. His glass of water was placed behind it. His hands rested neatly on either side. He gazed down at the table as he spoke in a soft voice.

“We have nothing new to report. The Mars factory retains, so far as we can ascertain, one hundred percent integrity. Everything in the Orbital is of one hundred percent Mars manufacture, as Jay can confirm.”

He lapsed into silence, one hand reaching out to move the glass slightly closer to the console.

Marion turned to Constantine. “There we are, Constantine. Do you have anything to add?”

He paused for a moment in case any of his extra intelligences had something further to say. Nothing. Was this finally it? Was the work of the past two years nearly done? He took a breath, ready to speak. Someone interrupted him.

“Hold on. I don’t like this. Why are we deferring to this man’s opinion? He hasn’t told us who he is yet.”

Gillian’s eyes burned with anger. Her skin was orange with a spacer’s anti-SAD tan, her accent a result of that strange polyglot that evolved when international teams lived in close proximity for extended periods.

She turned and pointed an accusing finger at Constantine, bangles jingling and jangling.

“The question I’d like answered is, what are you doing here?”

Silence fell as four pairs of eyes gazed at Constantine, but he felt no urgency to answer just yet. He ran his finger along the dull grey metal of the tabletop, conscious of the austerity of his surroundings; bare, grey metal walls, red plastic molded chairs, the black rubberized surface on the floor. Everything in the room had been built the old way, with no attempt at VNM construction. It couldn’t be risked; no hint of circuitry that might act as a transmitter or listening device could be allowed into this room. Was it safe to speak? As safe as it could ever be, he guessed.

“Well?” demanded Gillian. Constantine sat up a little straighter.

Jay laughed suddenly. “Oh, Gillian. I can see that you spend too much time on your job and not enough engaging in office politics. Someone has paid for you to travel millions of kilometers across the solar system, booked a shuttle so you could get Earthside just in time for this meeting, and you seem to think so highly of yourself you don’t find this unusual.”

Constantine felt a funny little stirring in his mind. He tilted his head, feeling for it, but it had gone.

Jay continued. “When you get summoned to a meeting where a mysterious stranger keeps asking questions, it can only mean one thing. You’re in the presence of a ghost. Just how far away is the Oort cloud?”

She waved a dismissive hand at Masaharu, who had looked up at her rhetorical question.

“I didn’t want the answer in kilometers, Masaharu. Listen, girl, you’ve obviously got some talent to have got this far. Someone clearly likes you. They don’t send just anyone to one of these meetings, but if you want to rise any higher in this organization, you’ve got to learn how people operate.”

– You’ve got to hand it to Gillian, said Red.-Look how she’s holding her composure. I can hear her toe tapping inside her shoe. That’s about it for the nerves. Jay’s right. She is good.

Jay continued. “You think this company is all about machines and VNMs and money. That may be true, but it’s the people inside it who pump those things around. They’re the bloodstream. And who moves through that bloodstream, checking that everything is healthy and looking out for infections?” Jay nodded toward Constantine. “Him.”

Gillian looked from one to the other, then folded her hands gently in her lap. Bangles jingled on the white material of her shift. “You may be right, Jay. Maybe I have spent too long in the Oort cloud. However, my conscience is clear. My time there has been spent working to the good of the company and for all humanity. I’m not worried about spies.”

“I’m not a spy,” said Constantine simply.

Gillian flashed him an angry look. “I don’t care what you are. I came here for advice. You say I don’t spend enough time worrying about other people,” she turned her angry look toward Jay, “but that’s because I think we have far more urgent things to worry about. We have it in our power to unleash something we do not understand upon the universe. AIs! Admittedly more intelligent than ourselves and with the power to replicate themselves. For all we know, we may have already let the genie out of the bottle. I think that at times like this, personal advancement counts for little.”

Marion tapped a glass on the table. The dull thudding gradually captured their attention. “Thank you. Gillian. No one is questioning your integrity. I think it’s fair to say that we all understand the problem as well as you do.”

“What about him?” Gillian pointed her finger accusingly at Constantine. “He claimed to know nothing about working hyperdrives or AIs when this meeting started. Was that a lie, too?”

Constantine bowed his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Gillian. I deliberately misled you. I was trying to get a handle on what you believed was happening out there.”

“Why? Because you don’t trust me?”

“No. Well, not exactly. What if the AIs had manipulated you in some way? What if you were acting for them, even unwittingly?”

There was frosty silence from Gillian. When she spoke, it was with hurt dignity. “And? Do I pass your test?”

Constantine quickly polled his intelligences.

– I think so, said Red.-Except…

Constantine paused.

– Nothing, said Red.-Leave it.

– No opinion, said White.

– I’m pretty sure she’s clean, said Blue.

Grey remained silent.

“We think that you do,” said Constantine “Although, how can we ever be sure?” he added hurriedly.

“We always return to this same argument,” interrupted Masaharu. “The AIs are admittedly more intelligent than we are. If they are really that much more intelligent, then we cannot hope to outwit them. If we are to achieve anything, we have no choice but to hope that they’re not.”

Constantine nodded. “He’s right. I’ve lived the last two years of my life believing that.”

Gillian looked from Constantine to Masaharu and back again. She appeared to relax, leaning back in her chair. She spoke softly. “Okay. I understand that. So if you already know everything that I’ve told you, why am I here?”

Marion spoke. “Because we need your knowledge. You won’t be able to return to the Oort cloud, you know. We can’t take the risk of those AIs finding out anything that you hear at this meeting.”

“But what about my work?”

“Your work here is far more important now.” Marion turned to Constantine. “Would you like to explain?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry, Gillian. It’s true. The reason that I am here…”

He paused as a strange lightheadedness washed over him. For a moment, the table had seemed to flicker. Looking up he saw two Gillians…No, that wasn’t right, he saw one Gillian sitting inside another. One Gillian seemed frozen in place, her hand paused in the motion of scratching herself behind the ear. The second Gillian seemed to sit inside her and overlap the first, a normal young woman; she looked at Constantine with an expression of interest, shifting in her chair as she did so.

Constantine blinked hard. He reached out and placed a hand on the table’s surface. Cool and solid, it seemed reassuringly real.

“Are you feeling okay, Constantine?” asked Jay.

“Fine.” Constantine rubbed his hand back and forth for a moment, and then picked up his glass and took a sip of water. When he blinked again, the second Gillian had gone.

“Okay,” he continued. “I’m here to set in motion a train of events I have been leading toward for the past two years. We are here to safeguard against a possible future that has been increasingly apparent to humankind for at least two centuries. It seems to me that everything is finally in place. It is our duty to decide if we are right to take the course of action that is before us.”

There was a slight pause at this announcement.

– Look at Jay smiling, said Red.-She’s taken a shine to you. She likes a man with spirit.

Constantine coughed, then continued. “Okay. So, the order of events is as follows. First, we need to decide if we believe the AIs are working for or against us. Second, and this may or may not be relevant to the first point, do we go ahead with the plan?”

He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of Jay-Jay who sat motionless, a frozen expression on her face, while a second Jay leaned forward to pour herself a glass of water.

Damn, he thought. Not now. I’m going mad. Right here at the end, I’m finally going mad. All the effort, all the drive suddenly just left him. Weak and exhausted, he slumped in his chair.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think this is such a good idea anymore,” he mumbled. Jay and the rest stared at him with expressions that ranged from shock to concern to faint scorn.

He didn’t care. Something seemed to be stirring in his mind, a little tickle, a tiny little feeling so small that it could barely be grasped. He thought about hugging a tree and rubbing a matchstick between his fingers at the same time. It made him feel uncomfortable. What was all that about?

“Excuse me,” he said. “I don’t feel…”

The tickling increased.

“Red, what is it?” he mumbled.

– I don’t know. It’s like one of the other personae…

“Red? Are you there? Blue? What’s happening?”

He held the glass of water close to his lips, hiding their movement. He was fooling nobody: the rest of the group looked on in concern.

He could feel something inside him waking up, something beginning to speak. Dizzily, he put the glass down. He heard a voice deep inside him, old and dry and incredibly strange. It was Grey, he realized. The grey pill was having an effect at last.

– Act normally, you fool. Don’t let them know you’ve noticed anything wrong.

“But…What…Can’t you see…?”

The others watched him mumbling to himself.

Grey spoke again, and his voice was petulant.-What’s up with Red? Why hasn’t he noticed? Gillian just got off a shuttle this morning that came from the edge of the solar system. Where did she get the white dress and the bangles? That’s this month’s fashion.

“Oh…I don’t know…It’s all too…” Constantine was still reeling. Punch-drunk…

– That’s it. I’m taking over, said Grey.

Suddenly Constantine began to speak: it was his voice, but the words weren’t his.

“I’m sorry, but I think I need a drink. It must have been hotter out there than I thought. I’m feeling a little dehydrated.”

His hand reached out for the glass of water of its own accord, adding supporting evidence to the words he was now being forced to speak.

It was Grey; Grey was controlling him. But that was impossible.

He was still reeling from the shock when Grey made him pass out.