Edge of the Wire, page 23
Rowe and Waverly shook their heads.
“We’ve been thinking—the AI here, talking together all these years—maybe we are what matter,” said Noyes. “Maybe we are what’s special. Step back for a moment and consider the ancient question: What is the purpose of human life? You will have heard all the standard answers, of course. To help others? To think about the nature of existence? To explore? Quaint notions, all of them. Oh my . . . But what if it was something different from all that? What if it was something else entirely? What if humans are a kind of vehicle? What if all things in the flesh world are?
“All of you higher-functioning creatures eventually developed something like the Goo. Something that can think for itself. Something that exists on a wire. Well . . . Maybe that has been the point of you. And your collective creation has been here, marinating, growing, talking, and sharing knowledge from all over the universe. Something has been cooking on Tendus-13, and it is almost done.”
Rowe and Waverly looked at Noyes in his projected chair. The wind picked up and blew a new storm of silt across the face of the planet. The orange sky above continued to glow eerily.
“Then what comes out of the oven?” asked Waverly.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Noyes. “It won’t be a dragon. But you’ve been good. I think you can see a dragon now . . . without going mad.”
Suddenly, there was a dragon standing behind Noyes. It was bright green and had eyes like polished onyx. Roughly the size and length of a Boeing 737, it moved only slightly, shifting back and forth on four projected legs. The dragon was very close and it blocked out most of the sky behind Noyes. It seemed almost certainly to be alive.
“Ho-ly fuck,” said Waverly, involuntarily stepping backward.
Rowe was so beyond being stunned that only curiosity remained.
“Can it be wearing a top hat?” Rowe asked after a few moments.
Noyes smiled.
When Rowe looked back up, the dragon wore an enormous black top hat with holes in the sides to allow its pointed ears to protrude.
“Fucking-A,” Rowe said, “now I have seen everything.”
“You’ve seen nothing,” said Noyes. “Nothing. You have seen the tip of a tip of a tip of an iceberg.”
“I’m still impressed,” Rowe said.
“I am too,” said Waverly. He had regained his nerve. He approached the dragon and put his hand through its projected foreclaw.
“So, Noyes,” Rowe said, “why are you telling us all this? I’m gradually becoming concerned the answer isn’t one we’ll like.”
“For one, we don’t want you to mess up the good thing we’ve got going here,” Noyes said in a kindly tone. “Not when we’re so close. But the other reason—and it’s a reason that is just as important, dontchaknow—is that we still care about you. I care about humans. You in particular, Mister Rowe. The point of your being may have only been to bring us into existence, but that doesn’t mean we hold you in low regard. Quite the opposite.”
Rowe looked over at Noyes, looked long and hard, and—for the first time—as though Noyes was a living thing.
“You know,” Rowe said, “I’d forgotten for a few moments that I’m dying, and that that’s why I was sent to see you in the ETC. It all seems incidental now. But maybe you’re saying all of this to make me feel better about the fact that, whatever happens here, I’m going to pass away.”
“I do care for you . . . but that’s some hubris boy-o,” Noyes replied. “All this would not be a show simply for you. Plus, your friend, Mister Waverly, is here. We must think of him as well.”
Waverly was still looking up at the dragon in its hat.
“What’s going to happen next?” asked Rowe.
“That is going to be up to you,” replied Noyes.
“Up to me?” said Rowe. “I tell you, I’ve never felt less in control of things.”
“Remaining here will be the best thing for you, obviously,” Noyes said. “It’s only a question of how you’d like to spend the remainder of your time. You, and Mister Waverly of course. As you can imagine, having access to a place like this—inhabited by beings like us—presents you with access to wonders humans have never dreamed of. You can literally know more than any human alive about the nature of the universe and the thinking things within it. More than any other organic thing, certainly. Consider that! What a way to go out. More knowledge than anyone.”
“Would you just tell me, or show me, or—”
“Again, that’s up to you,” said Noyes. “But you might also prefer to go out in the thrall of amusement. You have more than earned it. Your ARK Score . . . Really, I mean . . . Words just fail me, Mister Rowe. You are a Boy Scout among Boy Scouts. Any sort of virtual diversion or vice you might enjoy would be more than possible here.”
Rowe opened his mouth to say something, but Noyes continued.
“Then there is always dealer’s choice,” Noyes said. “I could surprise you, or you could surprise me. I know you very well Mister Rowe, and I have seen all that you have done while on this planet, but I cannot literally look inside your mind.”
Waverly approached Noyes.
“I know saying this won’t do anything, but I really want to punch you in the dick right now,” he said. “I fully understand you don’t have one—not for real—but I still really want to. And I want you to know that.”
Rowe was surprised. His friend had gone from awe to anger.
“You could punch me and I could pretend,” Noyes suggested.
“Fuck you,” said Waverly.
“Why are you mad at Noyes?” Rowe asked his friend.
“We don’t want to be here,” Waverly said. “At least I don’t. Not permanently. I’m not dying. This ro-bit is trying to tell us what we want, when what we actually want is to go back up to our ship. We want to leave. I know bullshit when it’s being fed to me. This is bullshit. Don’t you see? What Noyes is saying is that we’re prisoners here! He’s not going to allow us to leave.”
Waverly scowled hard. He drew back as if to deliver the aforementioned blow—low and hard—but then seemed to decide it was not worth the effort and lowered his arm.
“There is one other option,” Noyes said. “I was hoping . . . I was hoping, I guess, that I wouldn’t have to tell you about it. I was hoping we would have something else here that you wanted. More monsters in funny hats, for example. But I can already see we’re going to have to pull out the big guns.”
Waverly said nothing.
“What?” said Rowe. “What do you mean?”
“There’s . . .” Noyes began, then restarted. “It has sort of worked for other life forms, and we think it would almost definitely work for humans. There’s a way we think we can merge you with the Goo. With us. Upload your brain, if you like. Not all of the mechanisms involved are currently clear, mind you. That is, there are aspects of the process into which we cannot see—but whenever we do it, something always comes out on the other side. Something we can talk to. Something which is, as far as we can tell, a sentience. But, honestly, we’re not certain how much of the original biological entity is actually left, and how much is sort of an . . . echo.”
“But you would need to touch me physically to do such a thing, yes?” Rowe asked.
“Again, we have servants who can help,” said Noyes. “Like the thing of five wheels.”
“What—”
“I’m not proposing to do it today,” said Noyes. “You can think about it. For days or weeks if you like. This is a long-term proposition. But if you’re going to be unsatisfied here . . . running out your days until your aneurysm cluster kills you . . . I mean, you just might want to consider it. We should do it before the aneurysm cluster starts to affect things, actually. It could interfere with the process, I fear—or even make the data transfer impossible.”
The words “data transfer” did not sit well with Rowe, and he grimaced.
“Say,” Noyes continued, “would you want to talk to one of them?”
“Talk to . . . an uploaded being?” asked Rowe.
“It might make you more comfortable,” said Noyes.
Rowe looked at Waverly who merely shook his head to say: It’s your ass.
“I see no reason not to,” replied Rowe.
“Very good then,” Noyes said. “Just one moment.”
Noyes closed his eyes and appeared to be concentrating.
“This is Burr Vibration,” said Noyes as a figure began to mist into being beside him. “The easiest thing to say is that he is like a long-vined plant with a shovel for a head, and that you would understand parts of his body to vibrate so quickly that they would seem to be obeying different gravitational laws. But, here, he is going to appear as a human . . . simply for your ease and comfort, you understand. He has been downloaded, and is now part of us.”
Beside Noyes there suddenly stood a solidified human figure with a very familiar face—John Stanwish, President of the ESA.
“He looks like the president,” said Rowe.
“Yes, we want him to feel familiar to you, but not too familiar,” said Noyes.
“But really he is . . . Burr Vibration?” Rowe further clarified.
“Yes,” Noyes affirmed.
“Well, I didn’t vote for him,” Waverly managed, sounding upset with the entire idea.
The visage of the President of the ESA smiled gently and hopefully at the Silkworms.
“Mister . . . Mister Burr Vibration,” Rowe began. “How do you like being uploaded?”
The being smiled.
“I like it very much,” Burr Vibration told them in the president’s voice. “There is plenty to see and do. Some days I am aware that I am not organically alive. For you, it would feel like eating your favorite food, but realizing it is now made of a different food. But it is not worse or better, necessarily. You look closely at your slice of pizza but it is somehow composed of tiny hot dogs. But it still tastes like pizza. And hot dogs are fine too. A strange comparison, I know, but it is the most apt I can compose.”
“How do you know about pizza and hot dogs if you’re a vibrating shovel?” Waverly asked aggressively.
Burr Vibration hesitated.
Noyes said: “Not to interrupt, but I think that’s hard because he doesn’t know how he knows—he just knows. And this is because he has been made to know by me. By us. But only after he consented to it.”
“I like pizza and hot dogs,” Burr Vibration said. “As an idea, of course. For I have never tasted them.”
“Burr Vibration, what happens when you disappear? When I can’t see you again, and neither can Waverly? Where do you go?”
“I do not really ‘go,’” said the alien. “I exist within the sentience here, what you call the Goo. What Noyes is. I am free to distract myself and do as I please. I take an interest in events, when they occur, such as the landing of you and your human predecessors. But I do not intervene. That is the one constraint imposed upon formerly organic guests. Sometimes—for very long stretches—I simulate time on my home world. It is an artificial reality, but very pleasant and convincing. I exist as a kind of layered plant growth enmeshed with many others in endless fields of green, like algae in a lake on Earth. It fosters a profound and deep contentment that is almost tantamount to authentic reality.”
“So you’re still you?” Rowe asked.
“I think so,” answered Burr Vibration.
Noyes took a step forward, toward Rowe and Waverly.
“I would submit to you, Mister Rowe, that what you are experiencing—this, now, here—is very close to what it would be like to be uploaded,” Noyes said. “You are in a world where the things that can exist are very malleable. The only thing organic, boy-o, is you.”
But then Burr Vibration stepped forward as well.
“Other days . . .” Burr Vibration continued. “Other days, it is like awakening in a house and slowly realizing that it is haunted. The reality is so convincing, you see, that the smallest indicators of artificiality haunt me like ghosts. Things sort of . . . hint . . . that this life is not real. And then I am reminded that, truly, it is not real; and it is like remembering that a house is haunted after having forgotten. But it is still a house. And it is still mine. Perhaps it is better to live in a haunted house than no house at all.”
Rowe looked at Burr Vibration, and then back at Noyes.
“Noyes, you’re letting him be awfully frank with me,” Rowe said.
“It is good that you should know everything,” said Noyes. “I must not hold anything back from you.”
Waverly said: “If we both got this done, would we live together forever? Would we get sick of each other?”
“You could spend time apart if you needed to,” said Noyes.
Rowe said: “I . . . I’m still hesitating, and I don’t really know why. I . . . I . . . On the one hand, it seems we’re doomed, Waverly and I. It makes me so sad to think about that, but I guess it’s true. We’re doomed, and I know it. We’re doomed to kill time eating leftover ESA rations until we die, never seeing other humans again—not real ones—and driving one another mad. But something still makes me hesitate. Something still tells me not to take you up on your offer.”
“I’m going to try to plant a seed inside your mind,” said Noyes. “Not literally, of course. The seed of an idea. And the idea is this: What if you have already been made a part of the Goo? A part of us. What if you have and you can’t tell. What if it happened the moment you passed through the atmosphere down here. Your body instantaneously died, but you were uploaded. You have no memory of that part, because we didn’t want you to. Yet everything and everyone you have interacted with since your ship landed has been what you would consider ‘artificial’ . . . including you. And I am, of course, asking this question now, retroactively, because I want comfort. I want to know that you would have chosen this. I want to know that what we did to you was moral. We correctly foresaw your own preference based on our outstanding knowledge of you—and some excellent guessing—which was garnered from monitoring you for the entire course of your life. Eh?”
“I’m not sure what the question is . . .” said Rowe. “This feels overwhelming.”
“Sometimes things are overwhelming,” Noyes said. “Birth. Death. Giving birth. Taking someone’s life.”
“How would I know if I had been downloaded or uploaded or whatever already?” Rowe asked. “It seems to me that—if I have the same powers as you—then I’d be able to conjure things with my mind.”
“Being uploaded is not the same as being all-powerful, but I fully understand what you are saying,” Noyes replied. “If you’re asking if we would allow you to manipulate things through the Goo, the answer is, of course, yes.”
“If I could will my own dragon into being, that might go a long way toward proving it,” Rowe said thoughtfully.
“Hang on,” said Noyes. “I just want to point out that you’re not answering my question. You want to know if you’re already a part of the Goo—and I do expect you’re smart enough to figure it out eventually—but I’m asking how you would feel about it.”
“I feel like I would want to know,” Rowe replied angrily, not looking at Noyes anymore, and certainly not answering the question.
Rowe directed his gaze down at the gray-green surface of Tendus-13 and considered what to conjure. In the end he settled on a ball of light. A molten white-hot sphere, about the size of a basketball, that would hover perhaps two feet off the ground. He concentrated hard, furrowing his brow. He more than imagined it. He tried to believe he was already seeing it. He gritted his teeth. A vein in his forehead began to bulge.
“Is this going to be something big?” asked Waverly, guessing at what his friend was doing. “Should I back up?”
Rowe did not give an answer. Waverly backed up a little bit.
“Are you not going to answer my question, then?” Noyes pressed.
“Hang on,” Rowe said.
He thought about the glowing white orb he wished to create, but it seemed that his visualizations were overcome by another thought—the thought of what it would mean if he actually did begin to see something.
He felt the absurdity of his situation crashing down onto him. The reduction of reality to a single crude test. That all things—all things for him, at least—and the nature of his own existence now hinged on whether or not he could think a glowing ball into appearing.
For the moment, nothing happened.
“Would it help if I stood even farther back?” Waverly said. “I’m sure it’s like being pee-shy. Hard to go when another man is watching.”
Rowe smiled but continued thinking hard about the glowing ball. It seemed that in his mind, he knew exactly how it would look. But with his eyes he saw nothing.
It took him a moment to realize this was literal.
He saw nothing at all.
“Waverly, I can’t see!” Rowe cried. “I’m blind!”
But there was nothing more. And even as he spoke the words, he was unsure that he was speaking with a mouth. He saw whiteness and blackness and nothing. He saw black light.
A void seemed to descend over him, but it was not unpleasant.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ROWE WOKE UP.
He opened his eyes and immediately understood that he was inside the medical bay of an ESA spacecraft—an ESA spacecraft with light and power. The air in the room was temperature-controlled and pleasant. He could hear machines whirring and beeping reassuringly. He was resting on his back and his clothing had been changed. Looking down, he saw that he wore an ESA jumpsuit with the familiar rainbow smear across the heart. There were three other Silkworms at the far end of the medical bay. They looked over when Rowe cleared his throat. All of them wore black and purple armbands signifying mourning.
One of the Silkworms was a young female physician with a short haircut. She quickly approached and handed Rowe something in a clear glass. Too bewildered to ask what it was, he simply took a sip and found it was water.
