Salvation

  Zapata splashed a visual overlay, tagging the image components with identifiers. Most of the machinery clumps were industrial stations, sending rootlike tendrils boring deep into the rock, extracting minerals for the refinery level to process before distributing them in turn to the construction units that formed the upper layer. Any elements that weren’t available amid Bremble’s complex weave of ore seams were fed in through portals linked to other asteroids and the moons of Lanivet, Delta Pavonis’s solitary gas giant.

  More than half of the stations were replicating themselves, Zapata said. A fascinated Kandara watched the glittering metallic encrustations that were slowly spreading over the oddly smooth regolith like mechanical bacteria. It would take years, but eventually the entire surface would be covered, converting the huge asteroid into a giant technological bauble.

  Tags were flickering across the vast free-flying factory modules drifting around Bremble in a loose cloud, the majority constructing new habitats. The layout of the modules was predicated on the elegance of simplicity: a gantry ring eight kilometers in diameter, its plain geometric struts looking crude in comparison to the segments of enigmatically dark equipment they caged. They contained massive bonding field generators, a variant of those that produced city shields. With the refineries supplying a steady flow of vaporized material, the bonding fields squeezed the atoms back into a solid form again.

  She stared in admiration at the energetic starlight glimmering across the smooth obsidian-like outer shells of the prodigious cylinders as they extruded out of the factory rings. As with Bremble’s industrial stations, the process had an undeniable affinity with organic life.

  And out beyond the collection of factory modules, recently completed habitats gleamed like first-magnitude stars, a swarm that was slowly dissipating across the Delta Pavonis system, traveling on decade-long trajectories that would bring them to their own asteroid, where the mining/refining/manufacturing process would begin afresh. It made her picture Bremble as a dandelion head, casting its expanding cloud of seed to propagate time and again across the hostility of interplanetary distances.

  More organic equivalence.

  “Real Utopial von Neumannism,” Tyle said happily as sie sat next to her. Sie smiled contentedly at the vista. “Machines building machines, practically without any human intervention. Now that Onysko has G8Turings, they can manage so much more these days.”

  Kandara pursed her lips as she gave Bremble a more searching assessment. It was smaller than Vesta, which was Sol’s leading space industry asteroid, but she thought the systems on show here were a lot more sophisticated. They weren’t constrained by conventional economics anymore, she realized. “Is this exponential?”

  “Not yet. Give it another twenty years. The industrial stations will have engulfed Bremble, at which point they won’t bother replicating themselves. They’ll just consume the remaining rock to build habitats. After another fifty years, there’ll be nothing left, and they’ll fly to new asteroids and begin again.”

  “That seems almost…dangerous.”

  “Not at all. It’s a triumph. We really are aiming for a genuine post-scarcity economy,” Oistad said earnestly. “The systems we’re developing out here will finally make it possible. Right now, everything is macro, too interdependent. The industrial stations have a multitude of separate specialist fabricators, all of which knit together to make self-replication of the whole possible.”

  “Cells in an organism,” she murmured.

  “Right. Emilja wants to take us to the next, final stage and achieve an order of magnitude reduction in our current level of mechanical complexity. Ultimately down to a single unit that can replicate itself ad infinitum, then go on to produce specialist manufacturing systems like the ones out there building habitats. The G8Turings should finally make all that possible. Once they do, it’s the point at which Universal culture economics collapse.”

  “And you smoothly replace it with an age of enlightenment?”

  “Something like that,” Tyle said sardonically.

  “Which, if someone is wrecking your industrial production capacity and advanced research in an ideological crusade…”

  “Exactly.” Oistad gestured at the window. “What you see out there is the true beating heart of Utopialism.”

  Tyle chuckled. “Make sure Kruse doesn’t hear you say that.”

  “Oh?” Kandara was interested. “Why’s that?”

  “There are two components to Utopial society being an unqualified success,” Jessika explained. “We have the physical aspect. That’s the technology being developed here which will make absolute post-scarcity possible by providing an overabundance of material items. And then there’s the philosophy, which will allow people to live fruitful, meaningful lives within such a physically rich environment. It’s something humans are unaccustomed to.”

  “I get that,” Kandara said. “Why is Kruse upset by it?”

  “Upset is the wrong word,” Oistad said. “You see, Jaru promotes the philosophy aspect. It’s hir belief that equality and human dignity are important above all else, even the material aspects of our culture.”

  “Reasonable,” Kandara mused.

  “Kruse is quite devout in her support of Jaru.”

  “Wait. There’s a conflict inside the Utopial concept?”

  “Conflict is a very strong word. There’s a question of assigning priorities and resources. You see, Kruse and her fellow travelers think omnias are just the first stage of human transformation. That if we truly reach an overabundant supply state for our physical requirements, ordinary human personalities won’t be able to cope, and we’ll collapse into decadence within a couple of generations.”

  “The whole heaven-is-boring thesis,” Kandara ventured.

  “Yes. Which our more radical colleagues are saying can only be solved if you gene-up basic human neurology.”

  “Really? So if the people won’t fit the new perfect society, alter the people? That sounds rather fascistic.”

  Oistad nodded wryly. “And yet, without Jaru’s original notions of how to achieve equality, I wouldn’t exist. And I am so very happy with what I am.”

  “So you’re in favor of even more artificial evolution?”

  Sie shrugged and glanced over at Tyle for support. “You have to solve the technological challenges first, and create the abundance problem for real, or the whole notion dissolves into debating how many angels can dance on a pinhead. And for all the progress the von Neumann teams have made here on Onysko, we haven’t got that close to single-unit self-replication yet. Humans still have to problem-solve. Not going out there with a screwdriver,”—she pointed at the constellation of half-built habitats—“but developing and enhancing what we have already. Some of us are concerned the systems are starting to plateau, even with G8Turing involvement.”

  “All human technology is leveling out,” Kandara said. “But we’re a star-faring species now. It’s to be expected.”

  “But we can go so much further. So many problems will simply vanish if we can build a proper von Neumann unit.”

  “It never starts with jackboots and black uniforms,” Kandara said. “Just good intentions. But that’s how it always ends.”

  “We’re not going to impose our vision of how to live on others. That’s not what we are at all.”

  Kandara grinned at how earnest sie sounded. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Jessika squashing down her own amusement.

  “What vision?” Kruse asked as sie walked into the conference room, followed by two other people.

  “We’re just talking philosophy,” Kandara said. “As you do.” Then she paid attention to the woman behind Kruse. It was difficult to actually see anything with Zapata suddenly splashing so much personal data across her vision. “Emilja Jurich,” she blurted in surprise.

  Emilja was looking good for some
one 160 years old—certainly a lot better than Jaru, Kandara thought. Her hair was thick and dark, arranged in an elaborate nest around her head. Sharp cheekbones were prominent under the kind of healthy wrinkle-free skin that a twenty-five-year-old would take for granted. Light-gray eyes gave the room a swift scan, which left Kandara feeling judged, and not in a good way. The woman had an almost regal presence, allowing her to carry off her formal black-and-carmine high-collar dress of Indian silk with an easy grace.

  Kandara took a malicious guess that the telomere treatments she received were probably from an exclusive Earth clinic rather than a standard Utopial medical facility. Then again, she was a grade one, entitled to the best Akitha could provide. In her case, that was fair enough.

  Emilja Jurich’s parents had emigrated from Croatia to London back in 2027. Their daughter dutifully studied 3-D printer programming at the London Metropolitan University and was working in the distribution division of a food printing company in 2063 when Connexion opened its first portal link between New York and Los Angeles. What she did next became a classic case study for business schools across the Sol system and beyond.

  Connexion had of course produced a map app for its burgeoning hub network, but Emilja could see how basic that was—a situation that was only going to get worse for users as more portals were added. So she founded her Hubnav Company that December, and spent every spare hour developing a mInet app to guide people through Connexion’s rapidly expanding network. She started coding it when there were a grand total of 322 public quantum entanglement portal doors in the Sol system, with Connexion already announcing its ambitious plans for fifty thousand more across the continental United States. She coded it because, growing up in London, she’d always appreciated the elegant modesty of Harry Beck’s classic London Underground map, drawn with the simple truth that it didn’t matter where the stations were, nor the way the tunnels twisted between them, because Beck instinctively recognized that all you really needed to know was where the stations were in relation to each other. She coded it because she knew people were basically stupid and lazy, and their world was about to become more complicated by an order of magnitude.

  As Emilja studied the burgeoning tangle of hubs, she saw a series of interconnecting spider webs spreading across the globe. If you wanted to travel from, say, Oakham, in the heart of England, to Atlanta, Georgia, it was a theoretically simple route. Go through the Oakham hub loop into the county hub network, which links to the national hub network, and takes you to London, where there’s a link to the international hub network, which takes you to the America Arrivals Port in North Dakota (that state’s senators were impressively fast at digging into the government Fair Deal quantum entanglement infrastructure pork barrel, helped by a Washington backroom pact with Texas senators who snagged the National Commercial Goods Import Station for Houston). From there you walk into the interstates hub to get to the Georgia hub network, and finally on to the Atlanta metro network where you step out into the welcome of that sunny city’s warm, muggy air. A maximum of eight portals. Easy. Except with so many portals linking to other destinations, each central hub was a roundabout of hell, especially at local rush hours.

  And Emilja was right. People were stupid. After decades of satnavs and autodrive cars, they just wanted to be held by the hand and guided, hassle-free. They wanted an app to tell them one central hub is jammed up with frustrated people, or a portal door is down for maintenance, so they could take a longer (but quicker) route through three alternative hubs. Where to go, which way to turn as soon as they emerge from a portal door, how many steps to the next, a green halo mInet graphic flashing around it just to be certain you’ve got the right one.

  By 2078 there were twelve billion people living in the Sol system. Apart from toddlers, all of them had a copy of Emilja Jurich’s Hubnav app, much to the fury of anti-monopoly legislators. By then, of course, the app provided its user with a rundown on their destination’s weather, political status, canny bargains, top restaurants, cleanest beaches, hottest clubs, trendiest art, grooviest music events…The whole long, long list of profiled advertising, each one bringing in revenue. Emilja wasn’t quite as rich as Ainsley Zangari, but her wealth was enough to found her own habitats, Dvor and Zabok, fueled by the age-old dream of a fresh start fully independent of Earth. She was also rich and philanthropic enough to attend the First Progressive Conclave.

  Along with Jaru Niyom, she underwrote the Utopial movement.

  Kandara guessed Emilja was the leader of the Utopial’s technology development faction. She was the practical one, wrestling equipment into obedience, mirror-twinned to Jaru’s philosophic dreams. “An honor to meet you,” Kandara said.

  Emilja gave her a sly grin of acknowledgment and sat at the head of the rock-slab table. The pale, redheaded man who’d accompanied her sat on her left.

  “Callum Hepburn,” Emilja said formally. “Our von Neumann project technology strategist.”

  “She means troubleshooter,” Callum said amicably.

  “Has there been any trouble?” Kandara asked.

  “Not on the scale that hit Naima’s telomere production,” he said. “But there have been more glitches out on the Bremble stations than usual. Of course, defining ‘usual’ here is difficult in itself. All our industrial systems are under constant development as we evolve them up to the von Neumann mono-machine ideal. Some months everything goes smoothly; others we get overrun by problems. This current batch might be normal, or they might not. We’ll need to give our files and routines a thorough audit.”

  “I’d like permission to install monitor routines in Onysko’s networks, and on the Bremble industrial stations,” Tyle said.

  “If that’s what you need,” Emilja said. “Go ahead.”

  “What happens if you find evidence of tampering?” Callum asked.

  “It depends on when it occurs. If it’s historical, then we’ll pass it on to you. Hopefully, you’ll be able to assess and compensate for whatever damage there’s been. And if it’s current—” Tyle glanced over at Kandara. “We believe we can track the access point.”

  “And I’ll deal with that for you,” she said.

  Callum gave her an uneasy look. “I think rendition to Zagreus would be more appropriate.”

  “We’ve had that discussion in senior council, Callum,” Emilja said levelly. “As a result, Investigator Martinez has been hired. I believe she is even more necessary now that we know the full extent of the sabotage against us. If you’re going to attack Utopial society, this is where to do it; the severity of the other attacks may be a diversion.”

  “It’s your conscience at stake, not mine.”

  “Thank you,” she said coldly. “Investigator?”

  “Yes?”

  “If it is possible to apprehend one or more of this team, I would like you to do so.”

  “I understand.”

  “But not at risk to yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t expose myself to unnecessary risk; that has a habit of compromising my mission.”

  “Very well. But I am very curious about who is behind this. The level of planning and the commitment to damage our entire culture is one which I find profoundly disturbing. I fear it won’t be resolved simply by you eliminating the current threat.”

  “I think you’re right,” Kandara said. “Do you have any idea who might have launched this?”

  “I believe it highly unlikely to be a globalPAC or even a multistellar corporation. We’ve had our ideological disagreements with them; we still do. But this…No. They would understand that as soon as we uncovered their culpability, I would strike back.”

  “Also, generating physical conflict is not on the globalPAC agenda,” Callum said. “Quite the opposite. Zagreus rendition was their idea in the first place.” He grimaced. “I know that for a fact. They stamp down heavily against anyone who uses violence, especially politi
cal violence. And that’s what this is.”

  “How long will it take to set up your routines?” Emilja asked Tyle.

  “Hopefully within a day,” sie replied. “There are a lot of networks, especially on Bremble. But the Bureau has allocated me additional G8Turings.”

  “Very well,” Emilja said. “Keep me informed.”

  * * *

  —

  The team set up in an office on the ninth floor of the Gloweth residency, looking down the length of the habitat. Their desks had a full range of network access nodes and projectors, and there was a drink dispenser in the corner that produced a great hot chocolate. It still lacked the kind of professionalism Kandara was accustomed to, but she had to admit it was an improvement to sitting around a kitchen table. They’d also acquired additional support from Onysko’s small police force—five officers specializing in network security.

  Tyle supervised the review of Onysko’s projects, examining networked files for the kind of discrepancies they’d found before. It took fifteen hours.

  “I’ve got something,” sie told Kandara. “There’s a materials science team in one of the astro-engineering offices up here; they’re running a development project for space suits. It researches active magnetic polymers that will deflect cosmic radiation—a layer of that in a space suit will weigh a great deal less than the carbon and metal layers we’re using now.”

  “Okay, I can see that having some weapons capability,” Kandara said.

  “It looks like some of their key files were altered. We’re running a comparison with deep cached copies to see how many, but it fits the profile.”

  “What about the access point?” Kandara asked.

  Tyle’s smile was confident. “I’ve been thinking about that. There have been so few traces, and the G8Turing up here isn’t that slouchy. It was like the project networks were being accessed directly, physically—which is contrary to all the illegal file cracks I know; they’re always remote. I-heads access from as far away as possible with multiple random routing, so it takes time to trace and intercept. But up here, remote access would be risky; the G8Turing can monitor all the links back to Akitha. There are five portal doors that carry all the habitat’s digital traffic.”