Existence

  The reason for that fracas lay on the same table, shimmering with light energy that it had absorbed earlier, from sunshine. An ovoid shape, almost half a meter from tip to tip, opalescent and mesmerizing. Clearly, Bin should have been more cautious—far more cautious—making queries about this thing on the Mesh.

  The penguin-shaped robot took a step toward Bin.

  “Those who sent the snake-creature are just as eager as my owners are, to acquire the worldstone. I assure you they’ll be less considerate than I have been, if we are still here when they send reinforcements. And my consideration has limits.”

  Though a poor man, with meager education, Bin had enough sense to recognize a veiled threat. Still, he felt reluctant to go charging off with his family, into a fading afternoon, with this entity … leaving behind, possibly forever, the little shorestead home that he and Mei Ling had built by hand, on the ruins of a seaside mansion.

  “You said that the … worldstone … picks only one person to speak to.” He gestured at the elongated egg. Now that his hands weren’t in contact, it no longer depicted the clear image of a demon … or space alien. (There was a difference?) Still, the lopsided orb remained transfixing. Swirling shapes, like storm-driven clouds, seemed to roil beneath its scarred and pitted surface, shining by their own light—as if the object were a lens into another world.

  “Wouldn’t your rivals have to talk to it through me?” he finished. “Just as you must?”

  One rule of commerce, that even a poor man understood—you can get a better deal when more than one customer is bidding.

  “Perhaps, Peng Xiang Bin,” the bird-thing replied, shifting its weight in what seemed a gesture of impatience. “On the other hand, you should not overestimate your value, or underestimate the ferocity of my adversaries. This is not a market situation, but akin to ruthless war.

  “Furthermore, while very little is known about these worldstones, it is unlikely that you are indispensable. Legends suggest that it will simply pick another human counterpart—if the current one dies.”

  Mei Ling gasped, seizing Bin’s left arm in a tight grip, fingernails and all. But still, his mind raced. It will say whatever it must, in order to get my cooperation. But appearances may be deceiving. The snake could have been sent by the same people, and the fight staged, in order to frighten us. That might explain why both machines showed up at about the same time.

  Bin knew he had few advantages. Possibly, the robot had sensors to read his pulse, blood pressure, iris dilation, skin flush response … and lots of other things that a more educated person might know about. Every suspicion or lie probably played out across his face—and Bin had never been a good gambler, even bluffing against humans.

  “I … will need—”

  “Payment is in order,” the penguinoid immediately conceded. “We’ll start with a bonus of ten times your current yearly income, just for coming along, followed by a salary of one thousand New Hong Kong Dollars per month. And more is possible with good results. Perhaps much more.”

  It was a princely boon, but Bin frowned, and the machine seemed to read his thoughts.

  “I can tell, you are more concerned about other things, like whether you can trust us.”

  Bin nodded—a tense jerk. The penguin gave a semblance of a shrug.

  “As you might guess, the amount of payment I just offered is trivial to my owners, so I would have no reason to lie. But you must decide. Right now.” Again, with that faint tone of threat. Still, Bin hesitated.

  “I will pack some things for the baby,” Mei Ling announced, with resolution in her voice. “We can leave all the rest. Everything.”

  But the penguinoid stopped her. “I regret, wife and child cannot come. It is too dangerous. There are no accommodations and they will slow us down.” As Bin started to protest, it raised one stubby wing. “But you will not leave them to starve. I will provide part of your bonus now, in a form they can use.”

  Bin blinked, staring as the machine settled down into a squat, closing its eyes and straining, almost as if it were …

  With an audible grunt, it stepped back, revealing a small pellet on the tabletop. “You’ll find the funds readily accessible at any city kiosk. As I said, the amount, though large for you, is too small for my owners to care about cheating from you.”

  “That is not what worries me,” Mei Ling said, though she snatched up the pellet. While her voice was husky with fear, holding Xiao-En squirming against her chest, she wore a cold, pragmatic expression. “Your masters may find it inconvenient to leave witnesses. If you get the stone—how much better if no one else knows? After … Xiang Bin departs with you … I may not live out the hour.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, Bin realized, grimly. His jaw clenched. He took a step toward the table.

  “Open your tutor-tablet,” the bird-thing snapped, no longer courteous. “Quickly! And speak your names aloud.”

  Bin hurried to activate the little Mesh device, made for preschoolers, but the only access unit they could afford. Their link was at the minimal, FreePublic level—still, when he spoke the words, a new posting erupted from the little screen. It showed his face … and Mei Ling’s … and the worldstone … plus a few dozen characters outlining an agreement.

  “Now, your wife knows no more than is already published—which is little enough. Our rivals can extract nothing else, so we have no reason to silence her. Nor will anyone else. Does that reassure?” When they nodded, the machine hurried on.

  “Good. Only, by providing this reassurance, I have made our time predicament worse. Over the course of the next few minutes and hours, many new forces will notice and start to converge. So choose, Peng Xiang Bin. This instant! If you will not bring the stone, I will explode in twenty seconds, to prevent others from getting it. Agree, or flee! Sixteen … fifteen … fourteen…”

  “I’ll go!”

  Bin grabbed up a heavy sack and rolled the gleaming ovoid inside. The worldstone brightened, briefly, at his touch, then seemed to give up and go dark, as he stuffed in some padding and slung the bag over a shoulder. The penguinoid was already at the flap of the little tent-shelter. Bin turned …

  … as Mei Ling held up their son—the one thing they both cared about, more than each other. “Thrive,” he said, with his hand upon the boy’s head.

  “Survive, husband,” she commanded in turn. A moist glisten in her eye both surprised and warmed him, more than any words. Bin accepted the obligation with a hurried bow, then ducked under the flap, following the robot into the setting sun.

  Halfway down the grand staircase, on the landing that Bin had turned into an indoor dock, the penguin split its belly open, revealing a small cavity and a slim, metal object within.

  “Take it.”

  He recognized a miniature breathing device—a mouthpiece with a tiny, insulated capsule of highly compressed air. It even had a pair of dangling gel-eyepieces. Quang Lu, the smuggler, possessed a bulkier model. Bin snatched it out of the fissure, which closed quickly, as the robot waddled to the edge, overlooking the greasy water of the Huangpu Estuary.

  “Now, make speed!”

  It dived in, then paused to swivel and regard Bin with beady, now luminescent eyes, watching the human’s every move.

  Peng Xiang Bin took a brief, backward glance, wondering if he would ever return. He slipped in the mouthpiece and pushed the gels over his eyes. Then took the biggest plunge of his life.

  SCHADENFREUDE

  If and when our civilization expires, we may not even agree on the cause of death. Autopsies of empires are often inconclusive. Consider Alexander Demandt, a German historian who in the 1980s collected 210 different theories for the fall of the Roman Empire, including attacks by nomads, food poisoning, decline of Aenean character, loss of gold, vanity, mercantilism, a steepening class divide, ecological degradation, and even the notion that civilizations just get tired after a while.

  Some were opposites, like too much Christian piety versus too little. Or too m
uch tolerance of internal deviance versus the lack of it. Other reasons may have added together, piling like fatal straws on a camel’s back.

  Now it’s your turn! Unlike those elitist compilers, over at the Pandora Foundation, our open-source doomsday system invites you, the public, to participate in evaluating how it’s all going to end.

  Using World Model 2040 as a shared starting condition, we’ve seed-slotted a thousand general doom scenarios. Groups are already forming to team-reify them. So join one, bringing your biases and special skills. Or else, start your own doomsday story, no matter how crackpot! Is Earth running out of phlogiston? Will mole people rise out of the ground, bent on revenge? Later, we’ll let quantum comparators rank every story according to probabilities.

  But for now, it’s time for old-fashioned, unmatched human imagination. So have fun! Make your best case. Convince us all that your chosen Failure Mode is the one that will bring us all down!

  —from SlateZine’s “Choose Your Own Apocalypse” joshsimgame, August 2046

  26.

  COOPERATION

  That first day passed, and then a tense night that he spent clutching a sleeping dolphin by moonlight, while clouds of phosphorescent plankton drifted by.

  I hear that cetaceans sleep with just half their brains at a time. Jeez, how useful would that be?

  Fortunately, the same selective-permeability technology that enabled his helmet to draw oxygen from the sea also provided a trickle of freshwater, filling a small reservoir near his cheek. I’ve got to buy stock in this company, he thought, making a checklist for when he was picked up tomorrow.

  Only pickup did not happen—no helicopters or rescue zeps, no speedy trimarans bearing the Darktide Services logo, or even a fishing boat. The next morning and afternoon passed pretty much the same as the first, without catching sight of land. The world always felt so crowded, he thought. Now it seemed endless and unexplored.

  Funny. I would have expected Lacey to fill the sky with searchers, by now. And not just his mother. Despite a reputation as a thrill-seeking playboy, Hacker had some genuine friends, a brother who would join the search, and some loyal staff. Every bit of electronics in this suit must be fried. And I must have come down way, way off course.

  * * *

  The long day that followed seemed to pass quite slowly in the company of his new friends, who alternately carried and guided him in some unknown direction.

  The helmet came stocked with one small protein stick. When that was gone, Hacker added hunger to his list of complaints. But at least he wouldn’t die of thirst. As fast as his suit could filter freshwater from the surrounding sea, Hacker guzzled it down, flushing out his system and occasionally releasing fertilizer for drifting plankton to feed upon.

  Gradually, his thoughts began to clear.

  Was I really about to head back into the reef? I must have been delirious. Maybe had a concussion. These flipper guys saved me from myself, I guess.

  Of course, Hacker had seen dolphins—especially the bottlenose type—on countless nature shows and be-theres. He even once played tag with a pair, during a diving trip near Tonga. Perhaps for that reason, he soon began noticing some strange traits shared by this group.

  For example, these animals took turns making complex sounds, while glancing at each other or pointing with their beaks … almost as if they were holding a back-and-forth conversation. And he could swear they were gesturing toward him. Perhaps even sharing amused comments at his expense.

  Of course it must be an illusion—probably his concussion still acting up, plus a familiar excess of imagination. Everyone knew that scientists had finally determined the intelligence of Tursiops truncatus dolphins, after a century of exaggerations and wishful thinking. They were, indeed, very bright animals—about chimpanzee equivalent, with some basic linguistic cleverness—and they were true masters of underwater sound. But it had also been proved, at long last, that they possessed no true speech of their own. Not even matching the abilities of a human two-year-old.

  And yet, after watching a mother dolphin and her infant chase a big octopus into its stony lair, Hacker sensed with his jaw implant as the two certainly seemed to converse. The baby’s quizzical squeaks alternated with slow repetitions from the parent. Hacker felt sure a particular syncopated popping meant “octopus.”

  Occasionally, one of the creatures would point its bulbous brow toward Hacker, and suddenly the implant in his jaw pulse-clicked like mad, making his teeth rattle. In fact, it almost sounded like the code that space-divers like him used to communicate with their capsules, after getting their eardrums clamped for flight. For lack of anything else to do, Hacker concentrated on those vibrations in his jaw. Our regular hearing isn’t meant for this world, he realized. All it does is make things murky.

  It was all very interesting, and of course this would make a great tale, after he was rescued. But as some sharpness returned to his brain, Hacker wondered.

  Am I getting any closer to shore?

  And don’t these creatures ever get hungry?

  He got his answer about an hour later.

  Out of the east, there arrived a big dolphin who appeared to be snarled in a terrible tangle of some kind. At first, Hacker thought it might be a mat of seaweed. Then he recognized a fishing net—a ropy mesh that wound around the whole back section of its body, down to the flukes. The sight provoked an unusual sentiment in Hacker—pity, combined with guilt over what human negligence had done to the poor animal.

  He slid his emergency knife from its sheath and moved toward the victim, aiming to cut it free. But another dolphin intervened, swimming in front of Hacker to block him.

  “Hey, calm down. I’m just trying to help!” he complained …

  … then stared as other members of the group approached the snared one and grabbed the net along its trailing edge. Backpedaling with careful kicks of their flukes, they pulled away as the “victim” rolled round and round. The net unwrapped smoothly, neatly, without any snarls, till about twenty meters stretched almost straight and the big dolphin swam free, apparently unharmed.

  Other members of the pod swarmed in, grabbing edges of the net with their jaws, holding it open. Then, Hacker saw some of the younger members of the pod dash away. He watched in awe while they circled in a wide arc, beyond a school of fish that had been grazing peacefully above a bank of coral in the distance. The young cetaceans began darting toward the silvery throng—apparently a breed of mullet—causing the multitude to pulse and throb, moving en masse away from its tormentors.

  Beaters! Hacker recognized the hunting technique. They’re driving the whole school toward the net! But how did they ever—

  He watched, awed, as the entire clan of dolphins moved with a kind of teamwork that only came from experience, some of them chasing fish, while others manipulated the harvesting tool, till about a quarter of the school wriggled and writhed within its folds. At which point, they let the survivors swim away.

  It was time to take a breather, literally, as bottlenose figures took turns darting for the surface. Then, one by one, each member of the pod approached the netted swarm and expertly inserted a narrow beak between strands of netting, in order to snare a tasty meal. This went on a while, taking turns breathing, eating, holding the net …

  … until satiation set in, and play took a higher priority. One trio of youngsters began tossing a poor fish back and forth between them. Another pair nosed through the silty bottom, harassing a ray. Meanwhile, elders of the pod tidied up by carefully stretching the net, then rolling it back around the original volunteer, who thereupon sped off to the east, apparently unhampered by his burden.

  Well I’m a blue-nose gopher, Hacker mused.

  A number of dead or dying mullet still floated around. Hacker was only gradually recovering from his sense of astonishment, when one of his rescuers approached with a fish clutched in its jaws. It made offering motions …

  Hacker remembered his own hunger. It ought to taste like sushi, he tho
ught, realizing just how far he was from the ancestral-human world of cooking flames …

  … and that brought on, unbidden, a sudden thought of his mother. Especially one time that Lacey had tried to explain her passionate interest in seeking other life worlds out there in space, spending half a billion dollars of her own money on the search. “One theory holds that most Gaia-type planets out there ought to have even more surface area covered by ocean than Earth’s seventy percent, which could mean that creatures like brainy whales or squid are far more common than us hands-and-fire types. Which could help explain a lot.”

  Hacker hadn’t paid close attention, at the time. That was her obsession, after all, not his. Still, he regretted not spending the time to listen and understand. Anyway, poor Lacey was probably worried sick, by now.

  Focusing on the moment—and his hunger—he swam closer to the dolphin, reaching for the offered meal.

  Only it yanked the fish back at the last moment, repeating a staccato beat of sound. Hacker quashed a resurgence of frustration and anger, even though it was hard.

  “Try to stop, when you’re in danger of overreacting,” his one-time therapist used to urge, before he fired her. “Always consider a possibility—that there may be a reason for what’s happening. Something other than villainy.”

  His implant repeated the rhythm, as the dolphin brought its jaw forward again, offering the juicy prize once more.

  It’s trying to teach me, he realized.

  “Is that the pulse code for fish?” he asked, knowing the helmet would project his voice, but never expecting the creature to grasp spoken English.

  To his amazement, the dolphin shook its head.