Beyond the Farthest Suns

  Prufrax’s last poem, explained the mandate reflexively.

  How the fires grow!

  Peace passes

  All memory lost.

  Somehow we always miss that single door,

  Dooming ourselves to circle.

  Ashes to stars, lies to souls,

  Let’s spin round the sinks and holes.

  Kill the good, eat the young.

  Forever and more,

  You and I are never done.

  The track faded into nothing. Around the mandate, the universe grew old very quickly.

  Judgment Engine

  “Judgement Engine” was first published in Japanese translation for inclusion in a magnificent boxed set published by Pioneer. The set, called Artificial Life (Insects), contains an art book with computer graphics concepts by Daizaburo Harada, a CD-ROM, and a paperback book with this story, essays, and interviews with me and with Ryuichi Sakamoto. It is the most sumptuous presentation yet for my fiction—truly a stunning piece of work.

  About the same time, Gregory Benford, a longtime friend, invited me to submit an original story to an anthology he was editing, Far Futures, to be published by Tor Books. The Japanese edition presented no difficulties, and so I was able to market the story as an original publication twice, always a good thing, though rare in my experience.

  Among the hardest science fiction stories to write are those set in the near future, and the very far future. The near future is difficult because it takes only a few years for the reader and history to catch up with the story; maintaining believability in such circumstances is difficult. A typical mistake is inventing too many new words and new things, thus: “In the year 1990, John Jones entered the living room of his beautiful mistress, Leonora. He rubbed the lumo-cig across his palm, took a deep inhale of the herbivorous tobacco, and switched on the Tri-D set to catch the morning Dicto-news.” Only rarely does society accept a new word for something familiar, however expanded its capabilities. Thus, a cellular phone is still a phone, not a trans-palmer. A 3D TV is probably still going to be a TV, not a Tri-D visionater. An electronic nose flute is still going to be—well, you get the idea.

  The far future is difficult to describe because so much will have changed. Mainstream literature often claims that there are eternal human verities, immutable qualities that will last throughout all eternity. I have severe doubts about this. There is so much variation just in our time, around the globe, in these so-called basic verities that I can’t imagine them not changing in the thousands of years to come.

  The problem for a modern reader is that a believable story of the far future may also be incomprehensible. (To wit: “Fergon grabbed his twad with something very like glee, and obnoxiously asserted his right to snorg and wippie in the middle of the info-stream.” Lewis Carroll, anyone?)

  I’ve touched on the far future in a number of stories in this collection: “Hardfought,” “The Fall of the House of Escher,” and this one. Just to keep the attention of contemporary, mortal humans, I’ve stuck with a few of the eternal human verities in each of these tales.

  I’m sure the real inhabitants of the distant future will forgive me. Or, to use their parlance, undergo complete snorgwhup and carn-symp on my case.

  WE

  Seven tributaries disengage from their social=mind and Library and travel by transponder to the School World. There they are loaded into a temporary soma, an older physical model with eight long, flexible red legs. Here the seven become We.

  We have received routine orders from the Teacher Annex. We are to investigate student labor on the Great Plain of History, the largest physical feature on the School World. The students have been set to searching all past historical records, donated by the nine remaining Libraries. Student social=minds are sad; they will not mature before Endtime. They are the last new generation and their behavior is often aberrant. There may be room for error.

  The soma sits in an enclosure. We become active and advance from the enclosure’s shadow into a light shower of data condensing from the absorbing clouds high above. We see radiation from the donating Libraries, still falling on School World from around the three remaining systems; We hear the lambda whine of storage in the many rows of black hemispheres perched on the plain; we feel a patter of drops on our black carapace.

  We stand at the edge of the plain, near a range of bare brown and black hills left over from planetary reformation. The air is thick and cold. It smells sharply of rich data moisture, wasted on us; We do not have readers on our surface. The moisture dews up on the dark, hard ground under our feet, evaporates, and is reclaimed by translucent soppers. The soppers flit through the air, a tenth our size and delicate.

  The hemispheres are maintained by single–tributary somas. They are tiny, marching along the rows by the hundreds of thousands.

  The brilliant violet sun appears in the west, across the plain, surrounded by streamers of intense blue. The streamers curl like flowing hair. Sun and streamers cast multiple shadows from each black hemisphere. The sun attracts our attention. It is beautiful, not part of a Library simscape; this scape is real. It reminds us of approaching Endtime; the changes made to conserve and concentrate the last available energy have rendered the scape beautifully novel, unfamiliar to the natural birth algorithms of our tributaries.

  The three systems are unlike anything that has ever been. They contain all remaining order and available energy. Drawn close together, surrounded by the permutation of local space and time, the three systems deceive the dead outer universe, already well into the dull inaction of the long Between. We are proud of the three systems. They took a hundred million years to construct, and a tenth of all remaining available energy. They were a gamble. Nine of thirty–seven major Libraries agreed to the gamble. The others spread themselves into the greater magnitudes of the Between, and died.

  The gamble worked.

  Our soma is efficient and pleasant to work with. All of our tributaries agree, older models of such equipment are better. We have an appointment with the representative of the School World students, student tributaries lodged in a newer model soma called a Berkus, after a social=mind on Second World, which designed it. A Berkus soma is not favored. It is noisy; perhaps more efficient, but brasher and less elegant. We agree it will be ugly.

  Data clouds swirl and spread tendrils high over the plain. The single somas march between our legs, cleaning unwanted debris from the black domes. Within the domes, all history. We could reach down and crush one with the claws on a single leg, but that would slow Endtime Work and waste available energy. We are proud of such stray, antisocial thoughts, and more proud still that We can ignore them. They show that We are still human, still linked directly to the past.

  We are teachers. All teachers must be linked with the past, to understand and explain. Teachers must understand error; the past is rich with pain and error.

  We await the Berkus.

  Too much time passes. The world turns away from the sun and night falls. Centuries of Library time pass, but We try to be patient and think in the flow of external time. Some of our tributaries express a desire to taste the domes, but there is no real need, and this would also waste available energy.

  With night, more data fills the skies from the other systems, condenses, and rains down, covering us with a thick sheen. Soppers again clean our carapace. All around, the domes grow richer, absorbing history. We see, in the distance, a night interpreter striding on giant disjointed legs between the domes. It eats the domes and returns white mounds of discard. All the domes must be interpreted to see if any of the history should be carried by the final Endtime self.

  The final self will cross the Between, order held in perfect inaction, until the Between has experienced sufficient rest and boredom. It will cross that point when time and space become granular and nonlinear, when the unconserved energy of expansion, absorbed at the minu
te level of the quantum foam, begins to disturb the metric. The metric becomes noisy and irregular, and all extension evaporates. The universe has no width, no time, and all is back at the beginning.

  The final self will survive, knitting itself into the smallest interstices, armored against the fantastic pressures of a universe’s deathsound. The quantum foam will give up its noise and new universes will bubble forth and evolve. One will transcend. The transcendent reality will absorb the final self, which will seed it. From the compression should arise new intelligent beings.

  It is an important thing, and all teachers approve. The past should cover the new, forever. It is our way to immortality.

  Our tributaries express some concern. We are to be sure not on a vital mission, but the Berkus is very late. Something has gone wrong. We investigate our links and find them cut. Transponders do not reply.

  The ground beneath our soma trembles. Hastily, the soma retreats from the plain of history. It stands by a low hill, trying to keep steady on its eight red legs. The clouds over the plain turn green and ragged. The single somas scuttle between vibrating hemispheres, confused.

  We cannot communicate with our social=mind or Library. No other libraries respond. Alarmed, We appeal to the School World Student Committee, then point our thoughts up to the Endtime Work Coordinator, but they do not answer, either.

  The endless kilometers of low black hemispheres churn as if stirred by a huge stick. Cracks appear, and from the cracks, thick red fluid drops; the drops crystallize into high, tall prisms. Many of the prisms shatter and turn to dead white powder.

  We realize with great concern that We are seeing the internal stored data of the planet itself. This is a reserve record of all Library knowledge, held condensed; the School World contains selected records from the dead Libraries, more information than any single Library could absorb in a billion years. The knowledge shoots through the disrupted ground in crimson fountains, wasted.

  Our soma retreats deeper into the hills.

  Nobody answers our emergency signal.

  Nobody will speak to us, anywhere.

  More days pass. We are still cut off from the Library. Isolated, We are limited only to what the soma can perceive, and that makes no sense at all.

  We have climbed a promontory overlooking what was once the Great Plain of History. Where once our students worked to condense and select those parts of the past that would survive the Endtime, the hideous leaking of reserve knowledge has slowed and an equally hideous round of what seems to be amateurish student exercises work themselves in rapid time.

  Madness covers the plain. The hemispheres have all disintegrated, and the single somas and interpreters have vanished.

  Now, everywhere on the plain, green and red and purple forests grow and die in seconds; new trees push through the dead snags of the old. New kinds of tree invade from the west and push aside their predecessors. Climate itself accelerates: the skies grew heavy with cataracting clouds made of water, and rain falls in sinuous sheets. Steam twists and pullulates. The ground becomes hot with change.

  Trees themselves come to an end and crumble away; huge solid brown and red domes balloon on the plain, spread thick shell–leaves like opening cabbages, push long shoots through their crowns. The shoots tower above the domes and bloom with millions of tiny gray and pink flowers.

  Watching all our work and plans destroyed, the seven tributaries within our soma offer dismayed hypotheses: this is a malfunction, the conservation and compression engines have failed and all knowledge is being acted out uselessly; no, it is some new gambit of the Endtime Work Coordinator, an emergency project; on the contrary, it is a political difficulty, lack of communication between the Coordinator and the Libraries, and it will all be over soon…

  We watch shoots topple with horrendous snaps and groans, domes collapse in brown puffs of corruption.

  The scape begins anew.

  More hours pass, and still no communication with any other social=minds. We fear our Library itself has been destroyed; what other explanation for our abandonment? We huddle on our promontory, seeing patterns but no sense. Each generation of creativity brings something different, something that eventually fails or is rejected.

  Today, large–scale vegetation is the subject of interest. The next day, vegetation is ignored for a rush of tiny biologies, no change visible from where We stand, our soma still and watchful on its eight sturdy legs. We shuffle our claws to avoid a carpet of reddish growth surmounting the rise. By nightfall, We see, the mad scape could claim this part of the hill and We will have to move.

  The sun approaches zenith. All shadows vanish. Its violet magnificence humbles us, a feeling We are not used to. We are from the great social=minds of the Library; humility and awe come from our isolation and concern. Not for a billion years have any of our tributaries felt so removed from useful enterprise. If this is the Endtime overtaking us, overcoming all our efforts, so be it. We feel resolve, pride at what We have managed to accomplish.

  Then, We receive a simple message. The meeting with the students will take place. The Berkus will find us and explain. But We are not told when.

  Something has gone very wrong, that students should dictate to their teachers, and should put so many tributaries through this kind of travail.

  The concept of mutiny is studied by all the tributaries within the soma. It does not explain much. New hypotheses occupy our thinking. Perhaps the new matter of which all things were now made has itself gone wrong, destabilizing our worlds and interrupting the consolidation of knowledge; that would explain the scape’s ferment and our isolation. It might explain unstable and improper thought processes. Or, the students have allowed some activity on School World to run wild; error.

  The scape pushes palace–like glaciers over its surface, gouging itself in painful ecstasy: change, change, birth and decay, all in a single day, but slower than the rush of forests and living things. We might be able to remain on the promontory.

  Why are We treated so?

  We keep to the open, holding our ground, clearly visible, concerned but unafraid. We are of older stuff. Teachers have always been of older stuff.

  Could We have been party to some mis–instruction, to cause such a disaster? What have We taught that might push our students into manic creation and destruction? We search all records, all memories, contained within the small soma. The full memories of our seven tributaries have not of course been transferred into the extension; it was to be a temporary assignment, and besides, the records would not fit. The lack of capacity hinders our thinking and We find no satisfying answers.

  One of our tributaries has brought along some personal records. It has a long shot hypothesis and suggests that an ancient prior self be activated to provide an objective judgment engine. There are two reasons: the stronger is that this ancient self once, long ago, had a connection with a tributary making up the Endtime Work Coordinator. If the problem is political, perhaps the self’s memories can give us deeper insight. The second and weaker reason: truly, despite our complexity and advancement, perhaps We have missed something important. Perhaps this earlier, more primitive self will see what We have missed.

  There is indeed so little time; isolated as We are from a greater river of being, a river that might no longer exist, We might be the last fragment of social=mind to have any chance of combating planet–wide madness.

  There is barely enough room to bring the individual out of compression. It sits beside the tributaries in the thought plenum, in distress and not functional. What it perceives it does not understand.

  Our questions are met with protests and more questions.

  The Engine

  I come awake, aware. I sense a later and very different awareness, part of a larger group. My thoughts spin with faces to which I try to apply names, but my memory falters. These fade and are replaced by gentle calls for attention, new and ver
y strange sensations.

  I label the sensations around me: other humans, but not in human bodies. They seem to act together while having separate voices. I call the larger group the We–ness, not me and yet in some way accessible, as if part of my mind and memory.

  I do not think that I have died, that I am dead. But the quality of my thought has changed. I have no body, no sensations of liquid pumping and breath flowing in and out.

  Isolated, confused, I squat behind the We–ness’s center of observation, catching glimpses of a chaotic, high–speed landscape. Are they watching some entertainment?

  I worry that I am in a hospital, in recovery, forced to consort with other patients who cannot or will not speak with me. I try to collect my last meaningful memories. I remember a face again and give it a name and relation: Elisaveta, my wife, standing beside me as I lie on a narrow bed. Machines bend over me. I remember nothing after that.

  But I am not in a hospital, not now.

  Voices speak to me and I begin to understand some of what they say. The voices of the We–ness are stronger, more complex and richer, than anything I have ever experienced.

  I do not hear them.

  I have no ears.

  “You’ve been stored inactive for a very long time,” the We–ness tells me. It is (or they are) a tight–packed galaxy of thoughts, few of them making any sense at all.

  Then I know.

  I have awakened in the future. Thinking has changed.

  “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who you are …”

  “We are joined from seven tributaries, some of whom once had existence as individual biological beings. You are an ancient self of one of us.”

  “Oh,” I say. The word seems wrong without lips or throat. I will not use it again.

  “We’re facing great problems. You’ll provide unique insights.” The voice expresses overtones of fatherliness and concern.