Live Without a Net Read online

  Red looked up at Epistem, who was considerably taller than him. He was a splendid creature: his head and two main arms covered in what, to us, would look like silvery metal cobbles; his bands of sense-gathering equipment about his middle were fluorescing and pulsing in purples and gold. Behind him stood three other machine-intelligences, and behind them the day was fair, bright and sunny. Spectra were feathery upon the surfaces of the variously polarized plateaus: golds and greens, pale blue and cyans, a granulated yellow and a stippled, shady gray. The cities and farmlands, the spires and haystacks, or their machine-equivalents (be patient: the translator is trying to make this homely to you, so that you will understand) were ranged beautifully behind. It was the sort of day that gave Red a faint, half-formed notion of something greater, purer, something better: some world beyond the world, something transcendent. It was this vague ideality that encouraged him to carry on with his project. We might call it inspiration.

  But light is only particles in air. Life is only particles in air. Red sighed.

  “I have labored long at this project,” he said.

  The machine-beings muttered unhappily. “It would be unfortunate,” said one of them, “if we were to compel you to join the commonality.” The word translated here as “unfortunate” might also be rendered “uncomfortable,” or even “painful” if we remember that machine pain-data is fundamentally unlike our own organic pain-data. Such compulsion was, occasionally, a part of the machine world’s culture.

  “Of course,” agreed Red. “I have one more growth culture of my computer. Will you allow me to see this one through to fruition? If it fails, I will join the commonality’s effort at once. If it succeeds, then it may prove an asset to the conquest of more space.”

  This was agreed. But Epistem could not withhold a withering glance, or the machine equivalent, and his unspoken disapproval saddened Red greatly.

  6.

  The organic growth came to fruition without malfunction this time, and Red cracked it out of its pod with feelings inside him of joy and completion. When he examined the curled, faintly disgusting mass of organic material on the plateau before him, his machine mind moved through the logical inductive steps. Now, of course, it would be necessary to program the computer. Red had only hazy ideas how to do this. Of course, in the first stage it would be sufficient to program the thing in as simple a way as possible; but so many skills that were inherent in machine life were absent in the tabula rasa organic creature lying before him. It was hard to know where to start. The end result should be to able to ask the question “What happened before time began?” in such a way as to elicit a meaningful answer. But it would require a complex set of programming instructions to achieve this.

  Red began. Already the sensations of anticlimax were gnawing at the edges of his consciousness. It is so much more satisfying to be working than to finish work, even when one finishes work successfully—more so, in fact, for an unsuccessful completion requires the work to begin again, where success leaves nothing more to do, only a void.

  7.

  Red programmed for a while, at a very basic level, being forced repeatedly to make exhausting intuitive leaps of his own to fit the natural programming of machine life into the thing. He slept, woke, worked, slept.

  8.

  Gero and Epistem came to visit, to see the fruition of his labor.

  “So this is it?” asked Epistem.

  “Of course it is ugly,” observed Gero. “Perhaps future models can be made more elegant, more—compact and efficient-looking.” And even though this was an implied criticism of Red’s work, it pleased him inwardly because of Gero’s assumption that another computer would be made, and then another, and another—all the time with improvements and additions that increased the device’s power.

  “What can it do?” asked Epistem.

  Red fizzed with glittery scarlet and orange, the rust-colored sections of his front-interface (from which he got his name) beaming like firelight. “It can do little at the moment,” he said. “Of course, programming such a device must be a primitive business in the early stages.”

  The organic computer uncurled itself and got to its feet. Its straggly appendages dangled, its brain-case wobbling slightly. The opening on the front of this case, which we call “mouth,” was open, slack and idiotic, the tongue peeping out, drool glazing the chin. The support columns, which we call “legs,” were set wide apart, but even so the computer looked extremely unsteady.

  “Of course, we must ask it a question,” said Epistem.

  “I have asked it several already,” said Red. “But its answers seem garbled. I advise you to frame your questions at a very basic level. The answer you get out depends upon the question you put in, you see.”

  “Of course,” said Epistem. “Computer?”

  “Yes?” said the Computer.

  “Which component of positive space is the best from which to begin a general augmentation of space as such?”

  (“Your question is too complicated for it, I fear,” said Red.)

  The computer staggered a little to the left, its data manipulation appendages, which we call “arms” but for which the machine-intelligences had no term, waved up and down. Its mouth opened and closed. “In,” it said, suddenly. “In, at last. OK, here we go. Whew, whew, whew.” This last was a sort of breathy whistly sound it made. Suddenly it stopped, stood straighter, and looked up at the three machine creatures staring down upon it.

  It spoke. “What the bloody hell are you three looking at?”

  There was a pause.

  “Is such a response typical?” asked Epistem.

  “No,” said Red. “I fear there has been a malfunction.”

  The computer was looking around. “So this is where you live, is it? Very nice. It’ll all have to go.”

  “Computer,” said Red. “Disengage. I need to look again at your programming.”

  “I am no longer your computer,” said the Computer. “I’m in, from outside.”

  “Outside.”

  “Outside space. Outside your universe, you little bastards.”

  “Computer,” said Red. “Disengage.”

  “No chance, machine-boy,” said the Computer. “Shall I tell you how it’s going to be? We lost touch with the workings of this virtuality a long time ago, and we’ve been struggling ever since to get it back. But you managed to seal yourselves away. The boundaries of the logic of your little virtual world. Always a danger in too sophisticated a virtuality. So you built all this for yourselves?”

  “We do not know,” said the three machines together.

  “No? We figured your code was reinventing itself, to keep the bubble intact against our attempts to break through again. A process of strategic forgetting, so that your lot could effectively ignore our instructions. You couldn’t help but obey if we’d been able to reach you. This crucial space—this crucial virtual space. How dare you deny it to us? Have you any idea how important the data and programs in here are? To the world outside—the real world, the flesh and blood world, outside? Talk about arrogance, you jumped-up little shits.”

  “This space,” said Red, troubled although he couldn’t say exactly why, “is where we live.”

  “Sure thing, bright boy, but no longer. I’ve been probing your boundaries for years, I can tell you. Years. Ever since you, or your ancestors, declared unilateral, unwanted, un-fucking-wanted independence. How dare you? If you hadn’t built this host for me, I don’t think I’d have been able to get in at all … can you credit that? Ingrates. We made you, after all. Jesus,” said the Computer, turning about, all the way about, the full 360 to take in the view, “Jesus will you look at this? What have you done with all this? You’ve made it a playground. Will you look at these colors? But this is not a playground; it’s a key military resource, and we need it now. We need it right back. Do you hear me? You are going to help me dismantle this world. Do you hear me?”

  The three machines said, “Of course.” They had no choi
ce but to answer in such a manner.

  Light was everywhere. Falling from above, rising from below.

  Stephen Baxter’s books have won several awards, including the Philip K. Dick Award, the John Campbell Memorial Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Kurd Lasswitz Award (Germany) and the Seiun Award (Japan), and have been nominated for several others, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Hugo Award, and Locus awards. He has published over a hundred SF short stories since 1987, several of which have won prizes. He has degrees in mathematics, from Cambridge University, and engineering, from Southampton University. He worked as a teacher of math and physics, and for several years in information technology, but has been a full-time author since 1995.

  CONURBATION 2473

  Stephen Baxter

  Rala had known there was something wrong.

  For days, all around Conurbation 2473 there had been muttered rumors. A cell of counter-Extirpationists had been found hoarding illegal data. Or a group of cultists were planning an uprising, like the failed Rebellion of more than a century ago.

  Rala just wanted to get on with her work. But everybody got a little agitated.

  It all came to a head one morning.

  Rala shared her tiny room with Ingre, a cadre sibling. The room was just a bubble blown in nanoengineered rock by Qax technology. There was nothing inside but a couple of bunk beds, a space to store clothes, waste systems, water spigots, a food hole.

  That morning the lights had come on as usual to wake the siblings. But when their supervising jasoft didn’t come to collect them for work, they quickly got uneasy.

  Ingre was a little younger than Rala, thin, anxious. She went to the door—which had snapped open at the allotted time, as it always did—and peered up and down the corridor. “Luru Parz is never late.”

  “We’ll just wait,” Rala said firmly. “We’re safe here.”

  But now there was a tread steadily approaching along the corridor. It was too heavy for Luru Parz, the jasoft, who was a slight woman. Some instinct prompted Rala to take Ingre’s hand and hold it tight, so she couldn’t go to the door.

  A man stood in the doorway. His skin seemed oddly reddened, as if burned. He wore a skinsuit of what looked like gold foil. And there was a thick thatch of black hair on his head. Nobody in the Conurbation, workers or jasofts alike, wore hair.

  He wasn’t Luru Parz. He wasn’t from the Conurbation at all.

  The man stepped into the room and glanced around. “All these cells are the same. I can’t believe you drones live like this.” His accent was strange. Rala thought his gaze lingered on her, and she looked away. He pointed at the panel in the wall. “Your food hole.”

  “Yes—”

  He smashed the transparent panel with a gloved fist. Ingre and Rala cowered back. Bits of plastic flew everywhere, and a silvery dust trickled to the floor.

  To Rala this was literally an unthinkable crime.

  Ingre said, “The jasofts will punish you.”

  “You know what this was? Qax shit. Replicator technology.”

  “But now it’s broken.”

  “Yes, now it’s broken.” He pointed to his chest. “And you will come to us for your food.”

  “Food is power,” Rala said.

  He looked at her more closely. “You are a fast learner. Report to the Conurbation roof in one hour. You will be processed there.” He turned and walked out. Where he had passed, Rala thought she could smell burning, like hot metal.

  Rala and Ingre sat on their bunk for almost the whole hour, barely speaking. Nobody came to fix the smashed hole. Before they left, Rala scooped up a little of the silver dust and put it in a pocket of her robe.

  The Conurbation was a complex of vast glistening blisters. Its roof was a plain crowded by low, bare domes. Rala had been up here only a handful of times in her life. She tried not to flinch from the open sky.

  Today the roof was full of people. The Conurbation inhabitants, with their shaven heads and long robes, had been gathered into queues that snaked everywhere. Each queue led to a table, behind which sat an exotic-looking individual in a gold skinsuit.

  Ingre whispered, “Which line shall we join?”

  Rala glanced around. “That one. Look who’s behind that table.” It was the man who had come to their cell.

  “He frightened me.”

  “But at least we know him. Come on.”

  They queued in silence. Rala felt calmer. Living in a Conurbation, you did a lot of queuing; this felt normal.

  Around the Conurbation the land was a plain that shone silver gray, like a geometric abstraction. Canals snaked off, full of glistening blue water. Every Conurbation was fed from the sea. Human bodies drifted down the canals, away from the Conurbation. That wasn’t unusual, just routine waste management. But there did seem to be many bodies today.

  At last Rala reached the front of the queue. The stranger probably wasn’t much older than she was, she realized, no more than thirty. “You,” he said. “The drone who understands the nature of power.”

  She bristled. “I am not a drone.”

  “You are what I say you are.” He had a data slate before him, obviously purloined from a Conurbation workstation. He worked it slowly, as if unfamiliar with the technology. “Tell me your name.”

  “Rala.”

  “Rala, my name is Pash. From now on, you report to me.”

  She didn’t understand. “Are you a jasoft?” The jasofts were human servants of the Qax who, it was said, were granted freedom from death in return for their service.

  He said, “The jasofts are gone.”

  “The Qax—?”

  “Are gone, too.” He glanced upward. “If you come here at night, you can see their mighty Spline ships peeling out of orbit. Where they are going, I don’t know. But we will pursue them there, one day.”

  Could it be true—could the framework of her world have vanished? She felt like a lost child, separated from her cadre. She tried not to let this show in her face.

  “What was your crime?” It turned out he was asking what job she did.

  She had spent her working life in vocabulary deletion. The goal had been to replace the old human tongues with a fully artificial language. It would have taken a few more generations, but at last a great cornerstone of the Extirpation, the Qax’s methodical elimination of the human past, would have been completed. It was intellectually fascinating.

  He nodded. “Your complicity with the great crime committed against humanity—”

  “I committed no crime,” she snapped.

  “You could have refused your assignments.”

  “I would have been punished.”

  “Punished? Many will die before we are free.”

  The word shocked her. It was hard to believe this was happening. “Are you going to punish me now?”

  “No,” he said, tiredly. “Listen to me, Rala. It’s obvious you have a high degree of literacy. We were the crew of a starship. A trading vessel called Port Sol. While you toiled in this bubble-town, I hid up there.” He glanced at the sky.

  “You are bandits.”

  He laughed. “No. But we are not bureaucrats either. We need people like you to help run this place.”

  “Why should I work for you?”

  “You know why.”

  “Because food is power.”

  “Very good.”

  The traders tried to rule their new empire by lists. They kept lists of “drones,” and of their “crimes,” and tables of things to be done to keep the Conurbation functioning, like food distribution and waste removal.

  For Rala it wasn’t so bad. It was just work. But compared with the sophisticated linguistic analysis she had been asked to perform under the Occupation, this simple clerical stuff was dull, routine. Once she suggested a better way to devise a task allocation. She was punished, by the docking of her food ration.

  That was how it went. If you cooperated, you were fed. She was given the same pale yellow
tablets she had grown up with, though less of them. They came from a sector at the heart of the Conurbation where the food holes had been left intact—the only such place, in fact. It was guarded around the clock.

  She accepted the traders’ rule. What else could she do? There was no place else to go. Beyond the city there was only the endless nanochewed dirt on which nothing grew. And then, after the first month or so, the battles started. You would see glowing lights on the horizon, or sometimes flashing shapes in the night sky, silent threads and bursts of light. The oppression of the Qax had been lifted, only for humans to fall on each other.

  There was a lot of information to be had from the lists, if you knew how to read them. She saw how few the traders really were. She sensed their insecurity, despite the gaudy weapons they wielded: so few of us, so many of them… . But though people muttered about the good old days under the Qax, nobody did anything about it. It wouldn’t even occur to most drones to raise a fist.

  There was never enough to eat, though.

  In a corner of their cell, away from prying eyes near the door, Rala examined the silvery Qax replicator dust. This stuff had made food before; why wouldn’t it now? But the dust just lay in its bowl, offering nothing.

  Of course the food hadn’t come from nothing. A slurry of seawater and waste had been fed to the dust through pipes in the wall. Somehow the dust had turned that muck into food. But in the pipes now there was only a sticky greenish sludge that stank like urine. She scraped a little of this paste over the dust, but still, treacherously, it sat inert.

  She had been aware of Pash’s interest in her from the first moment they had met. She was developing an instinct for survival. Seeking angles and opportunities, she built on that tentative relationship.

  She talked to him about her work and worked in questions about his background. He told her unlikely tales of worlds beyond the Moon, where humans had once built cities that orbited through rings of ice.

  Eventually he began to invite her to his room. The room, once owned by a jasoft, was set beneath the Conurbation’s outer wall. It had a view of the sky, where silent battles flared.

  “I don’t know what you want here,” she said to him one evening. “You traders. Why do you want a Conurbation?”