Creation Machine (32 page)

I stare into nothing for a moment. I am imagining this simple white ovoid, hanging in space, balancing the forces of – what? White fire and blue fire and angry, dirty red fire, and planets forming and crashing.

I realize that my heart is pounding. I breathe deeply. ‘And the Fortunate have got it.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can they use it?’

He shakes his head slightly. ‘Not yet. Not on their own. It’s not the kind of thing you just use. It can’t be coerced.’

‘That’s a relief.’ Then the words sink in. ‘What do you mean, not yet?’

‘It might be tricked. Deceived. And news has leaked out. People know they’ve got it, including some clever people. It’s not a stable situation.’ He stands up. ‘You’re part of the news. You’re a witness. That’s why you were rescued and dropped into a supporting role in an obscure sim. Someone in the Fortunate wanted a record, and so did I. So I helped.’

The fog in my brain is getting worse. I put down the mouthpiece and stand up, relieved to find that I can remain upright. Walking works too, so I stroll over to those windows and look out and, inevitably, down. There’s a
lot
of down to look at. At the edge of my vision, smeared and blurred by mist, there are plains. Above them, foothills, with buildings growing out of them in rising circles. Then the angle of the windows restricts the view, but we are obviously in some sort of tower.

I stare down until I feel I have mastered the distance. Then I turn back to Theo, who is waiting with an amused expression lifting the corners of his beard. ‘So who are you, and why do you give a shit?’

The beard twists some more. ‘I deserved that. Sorry. I’ve spent a quarter of a million years making my own entertainment. I think I’ve forgotten about people.’ He walks over to join me. ‘This,’ and he gestures around at the view, ‘is a representation of a planet, a moon really, called Obel. No one’s ever heard of it.’ He looks at me enquiringly.

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ I say obediently.

‘Thank you.’ He turns back to the window and sighs. ‘Back when I had a body I was, how can I put this, involved in the construction phase – the creation – too. And when it was all done I decided to stay. I built this place, right on the edge of things.’

‘You built this tower thing?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. I built this place. All of it. The moon, the plains, everything. I made it look like a dying ecosystem, right from the beginning.’ He grins. ‘Only the most interesting people come to the end of a world, you know. I had a lot of great company. Some weird stuff, of course.’ He stares into nothing for a moment, and I have the feeling of intruding on memories. Then he seems to shake himself. ‘One of the weirder sets of inhabitants was a bunch of pretend monks, and one day they brought a prisoner.’ He looks at me sideways. ‘You met her, by a beach.’

He means the young woman with the old eyes, of course. ‘Her? You saw that?’

He tilts a hand from side to side. ‘Not so much saw. A part of me was there.’

I frown at him. ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘You said you’d been in the other sim for a long time.’

He grins. ‘I had. And on the beach, for a while. And here, too, a small part of me, keeping the fires burning.’ He looks around and sighs a little. ‘Home sweet home. Part of me has always been here. Built in, you might say. That’s what I meant when I said it
was
me.’ He breaks off and fiddles with the pipe for a moment. ‘She’s in trouble. The woman you met on the beach. Not that it’s your problem.’

‘No, it isn’t.’ I say it a little angrily, on the off-chance that helps it to be true. The anger gives me momentum. ‘So, where are we going with this?’

He looks surprised. ‘Well, first we need to dump some information back into reality. It’s what people think will be encoded on that chip, and we needn’t make their lives difficult by telling them they’re wrong. Whatever; we’ll make the news of Silthx, the Creation Machine, everything, public. It seems only fair. I don’t want to try to pick winners. Then I’m going to the Cordern, before those Fortunate maniacs do something regrettable.’ He pauses, and adds, ‘Or even if they do. Remember I said things had leaked out? Vultures are gathering. There’s a fleet, or rather several fleets, gathering around the edge of the Cordern, and they’re all tooled up and trembling to shoot. Each other, partly, but I wouldn’t like to be the Fortunate.’

‘And me?’ The anger is lasting quite well.

‘Yes, well. Your options are getting thin too.’ He collapses back into the couch. It makes a
fuff
noise. ‘I’m sorry to be so blunt – but when I go, when I leave this place, it ends. This sim, and the real bit. I’m what animates it.’ His hands sweep across nothing, palms flat. ‘Finito. Cloud of dust, puff of smoke, gone. No more moon. So you can’t stay here.’

‘So where can I go?’ The answer is beginning to come into focus, and he confirms it. ‘Well, not backwards,’ he says. ‘That sim is gone, and the bit on the beach was only temporary. Forwards, I guess.’

I put the pipe down, and reach out for the first glass that comes my way. The nearest bottle opens easily, and pouring is second nature. I drink.

When my vision has cleared I put the empty glass down hard, making the table rattle. ‘That means going with you, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it does.’ He reaches out a hand. ‘For what it’s worth, I have the best of motives.’

I look down at the hand, and then up at his face. ‘Yeah, right,’ I say.

‘No, really.’ He looks at me, and for the first time I see something vulnerable. ‘What you call the Creation Machine? It’s a friend of mine.’

‘What about me? What happens if I take your hand?’

‘To you? Whatever you want, in a way. Whatever you want badly enough.’ He looks away. ‘You can’t maintain your current state for ever. Outside the framework of a sim, you’re a bundle of code hanging together by itself. You can do it for a while, but in the end you’ll probably start to disperse. How long that takes is up to you.’

I nod. ‘So, I stay here and get obliterated. I go with you and dissolve. Can I find another sim?’

‘Yeah, if you really want. But you’ll always be a bit of a ghost. Or worse, some kind of virus.’ He looks up at me again. ‘You’re better than that.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Oh, I know you better than you know yourself.’ He should sound smug, but somehow he doesn’t. I search his face, and he sighs. ‘I know your name, for example. Shall I say it?’

I feel as though time has stopped. Ghost, he said. Well, that’s over as of now. I nod again, just once, and he says it.

I look at him for a while longer, while the memories dance in my head. The ones they gave me back after the beach, and all the others that they didn’t. They sing a song like a finger round a wet glass. As my sight starts to blur I reach out and take his hand, and reality begins to dissolve.

Fuck it. Here we go again.

Traspise Approach

FLEARE SURPRISED HERSELF
by sleeping through most of the journey. She awoke to silence, which presumably meant either that they had arrived, or that they had stopped before they arrived. She took a couple of breaths, rose cautiously from the couch and glanced around for some sort of display. She found a retro-looking flat panel suspended towards what she assumed was the front of the cabin. She looked at it, blinked, and froze.

The background, yeah, that was definitely the safe place to start. It was starscape, with a pretty blue-green-white planet roughly centred. It almost looked as if it had rings; she looked closer and realized that it was surrounded at a discreet distance by spacecraft.

She could ignore the foreground no longer. It was Muz. Not Muz as beads, or Muz as a cloud of nano-stuff, or even Muz as a shiny sphere. Just Muz the male, as she had first seen him, dressed in slightly faded mil fatigues with a crooked corporal’s badge.

No, that wasn’t right. Not quite as she had first seen him. His face was older. There were lines around his eyes that looked more like pain than laughter, and his hair was actually touched with grey. His eyes were watching her.

She stared at him for a long time. Then, when she felt able, she said: ‘Okay. What’s going on?’

‘Hi, Fleare.’ He smiled. ‘This is, and isn’t, me. It’s an interactive message.’

‘Oh really?’ She shook her head. ‘You must have got the idea that I
like
being confused. And upset. Wrong, Muz, so very wrong. This is . . . shit. Where are you? What is going on?’

‘I’m sorry.’ His smile collapsed, and he looked tired. ‘Look, I’m going to be saying that a lot. But I’ll mean it every time. I’m sort of on Traspise, in a virtual sense. I don’t exist as anything physical any more.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s easier if you let me tell it, all right?’

‘Easier for who? What is this, Muz, are you dumping me or something?’ She wanted to ball her fists, but her hands were tired and anyway this –
thing –
was beyond her attack.

‘Easier for both of us. And I’m not dumping you. I’m sort of dumping reality, I guess. Sorry.’ Muz spread his arms and smiled. ‘See? I told you. Well, first, this is happening because I did hear what Jez said.’

‘You listened in? Muz, no, whatever you are,
thing
, that was fucking private!’

‘Look, I’ll save up all the sorries, all right? But I’ve got stuff to tell you, Fleare. Will you listen? Please?’

She realized that she was grinding her teeth. She forced herself to stop, not because she cared about her teeth any more but in case the
thing
noticed. She made herself take several slow, even breaths. Then she said, ‘All right. I’ll listen. But not for long.’

‘It won’t take long. Right. First, do you remember a theme park, when you were fifteen?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah. So what?’

‘Outside, afterwards? When you threw up? Remember the guy who tried to help you?’ He shook his head. ‘The one you gave a false ident to?’

She thought back. ‘Well, I guess. But what . . . oh, wait.’ She searched her memory. ‘You? That was you?’

‘Yes.’

Her stomach churned. ‘Shit. You sleaze. Did you
stalk
me?’

‘Not really. I liked you. I felt sorry for you.’

Fleare’s heart was racing. ‘Not really? Sorry? I don’t want your apologies. You have to do better than that, because right now I feel
violated
, you understand me?’

‘I do understand. Now will you listen, or not?’

Part of her was screaming that she didn’t have to listen – that attack was better. Or yelling. Or flight. But another part of her had to know. She compressed her lips and listened.

‘Your father came looking for you. He found me instead. He seemed upset.’

‘Oh, I just bet he did. I bet the bastard thought I had really pissed on his party.’

‘He thought more than that, Fle. He was worried about you.’

‘Oh great. He was worried, you were sorry. Muz, I’m so not feeling grateful, you hear?’

‘He was worried because you were hurt and angry. Was that so wrong? He and I swapped idents, and that was it for the moment. A couple of years later I was looking for something to do. Soc O was getting going, I thought it looked like a laugh, so I joined up. A few months in your father got in touch. He said it looked like you were going to join up too, and would I look out for you?’

She felt the world spinning. ‘Whoa. Look out for me? Meaning pick me up?’ She found herself squaring up to the screen, and was too angry to stop. ‘Meaning get me drunk and seduce me? You lying, raping . . .
cunt
.’ The word didn’t seem bad enough.

‘No! It didn’t mean that. He was pissed off when he found out.’

‘He found out? Well, obviously. I should have thought of that. Did you send him videos?’ She advanced on the screen until her nose was against it. ‘You had better be glad you aren’t here. You had better never come near me again because if you do, I swear I’ll smear you out over the whole shitting
universe
.’ She raised both her hands and slammed them against the image as hard as she could. She had hoped that the screen would break, or the image would flinch, or
something
, but all that happened was her hands started hurting. She was oddly pleased. It balanced out the pain in her legs, which was getting worse.
The mods
, she thought,
or rather their fatal race towards their annihilation and mine
.
The mods I snapped at on the rebound from you
. She wanted to fling that at Muz too, as yet another thing to blame him for, but suddenly it occurred to her that even now it wasn’t really him she was angry with. He was only another pawn, just like her. She took a few backwards steps and let herself sag on to the couch. ‘Go on,’ she said wearily.

‘Yeah, he found out. I don’t know how, Fle. It wasn’t me.’ Muz shrugged. ‘By then I guess he had eyes everywhere, or at least the Heg’ did – which was pretty much the same thing, even then. I did hear from him once more, though.’ He paused, and then said slowly, ‘Just before the last attack on Soc O, he sent me a message. It just said to get you out of there.’

Fleare stared at him. ‘So you knew something was coming?’

‘Well, not knew exactly. Worked it out, I guess.’

‘And you said nothing?’ She was shaking.

‘That’s right, I said nothing. I just flew by the book.’ He ran a hand through the greying hair. ‘Afterwards, when I was in that jar? They thought I was nuts because of uploading into the AI cloud. They were wrong. I was nuts because I knew I had said nothing.’

‘And did you know that woman was going to shoot me?’ Suddenly Fleare had had enough. She turned away. ‘Don’t answer that,’ she said quietly.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t want not to believe you, okay?’

‘Shit. I’m not lying, Fle, but all right, I won’t say anything more, not about that.’

They were both silent for a moment. Then, unable to help herself, Fleare said: ‘And now? What are you doing now? Wherever you are?’

His voice had been soft, but now he suddenly sounded purposeful. ‘All the guesswork is right, Fleare. There is something potent down there. And everyone’s interested; so many people have turned up, this place has practically got its own asteroid belt made of ships. It only needs someone to fart without clearing it with the next guy, and the whole Cordern will go up. I’m going to put things right. At least, I hope so. Fleare? Don’t come any closer to Traspise than this, okay? Stuff might kick off.’