Blade, page 8
part #4 of Inverted Frontier Series
Chapter
14
Urban’s ghost instantiated within the body of an artificial avatar. He felt its presence around him, the slight mass of it: a slim sexless human shape equipped with a sense of sight and a sense of hearing. A sense of touch too, he decided, as he flexed thin arms and curled traditionally proportioned fingers. Still, it was a minimalist body primarily composed of transparent gel—adequate for the present zero-gravity environment, though unlikely to function under any significant load.
Looking up, he found himself facing his twin.
“Pasha?” he asked aloud, testing the speaker system.
“Yes, it’s me.”
Her avatar looked at him with all too perfect human eyes, their glinting black irises set in bloodless whites and framed in heavy lashes. No other realistic feature appeared on that smooth face. No hair, no brows, no nose, and only a motionless black horizontal slash where a mouth should be. Urban assumed he looked the same.
Tio Suthrom spoke from behind him, in a voice soft and wary. “My companion, the Invention Ashok, made these avatars from my own design. It used a basic ancestral form since we had no data on your individual appearances. I hope you are not offended.”
“Of course we’re not,” Pasha said as she stared past Urban.
Urban, meanwhile, was wondering what “the Invention Ashok” might be. Something invented, referred to as it? In his mind, this suggested a form of artificial intelligence. And not a Dull Intelligence, because who would describe the bland tool of a DI as a companion?
A true artificial intelligence, then?
The possibility induced a mental shiver that the avatar did not have the capacity to display. Nothing good had ever come out of the creation of true artificial intelligences.
All these thoughts, encapsulated in the moment it took him to turn around. Then he caught sight of Tio Suthrom—and his urge to ask about the ‘companion’ evaporated.
Situated a polite distance away, the pilot of Alaka‘i Onyx continued to discuss the avatars, using a deferential tone while gesturing with an open hand. “The design of these forms can be enhanced of course, just as mine has been. You only need to provide the specifications.”
Tio Suthrom’s version had definitely been enhanced.
He appeared as an entity modified from the ancestral human form, clearly adapted to low and zero gravity situations. He had a short, slender body with extremely long arms, jointed with three segments instead of two. His thin legs were ancestral, but his feet echoed the Sakurans, with grasping toes. He wore no clothing and was as sexless as Urban’s avatar, though he had a detailed and fully human face, masculine in the weight of the jaw and brow ridge, and in the bushy white eyebrows. White was his color. The irises of his eyes were white. So was his glossy skin. Instead of hair, white tentacles sprouted from his scalp like those of that aquatic creature, an anemone. A fringe of shorter tentacles surrounded his mouth and covered his jaw and neck, as if to substitute for a beard.
“You find me strange?” Tio Suthrom asked, now with a note of challenge.
Urban kept his voice neutral. “It’s not a variant I’ve seen before. But then, we are a conservative people.”
“Great adventurers all the same,” Tio Suthrom observed. His shoulders relaxed, his voice softened, and he tapped his chest. “Like yours, this is an artificial avatar. It has no biological elements and it does not represent the way I looked in my first life. But it is my customary form now. I chose it because I wanted to deny my heritage and appear less human.”
Urban would have smiled at such a leading statement, except he found his avatar too simple to display the expression. Tio Suthrom surely expected to be asked about the reason he had come to such a resolve, but Urban did not want him determining the direction of this conversation. So he signaled Pasha to refrain and offered a bland response instead. “I do want to enhance this avatar so it reflects my true appearance. And you, Pasha?”
“Yes.”
They messaged Lam Lha for body maps, sending them to addresses specified by Tio Suthrom, and over the next few minutes their avatars gradually adopted their true forms. In that time, Urban studied their surroundings.
They were in a warren, drifting within a junction of three tunnels all partially blocked by large, loaf-like objects. From beyond those objects came the glint of shifting, multicolored lights—a distinct contrast to the junction.
Here, numerous small geometric shapes—circles, triangles, rings, crosses, various polyhedrons—were embedded in the lightly scalloped, metallic brown walls. Perhaps their arrangement conveyed some meaning, though it looked random to him. Each shape glowed a too-bright white, generating complex glints across the uneven surface.
Urban supposed the warren to be pressurized; if it wasn’t, then his hearing was simulated. To test the hypothesis, he brushed a hand swiftly past his avatar’s face and felt the slight pressure change of a puff of air. Probably a thin atmosphere. From the familiar way it conducted sound, he supposed it to be composed of common gases. And the temperature? Hmm . . . the avatar lacked that sense. He could not perceive if the warren was hot or cold.
He looked again at the tunnel-blocking objects. In the white light, they appeared to be a dull copper color, mottled with a shadowy pattern. He only now noticed that each looked out on the junction with two small glistening black spots suggestive of eyes—though the spots could as easily be chemical surfaces rather than photoreceptors. Urban guessed the objects to be some kind of quiescent machine. Their size and shape suggested the warren had been designed for them.
He stretched, his body still unclothed but opaque now and familiar, detailed with finger and toe nails, genitals, smooth male breasts, hair where appropriate, and a face he could feel.
He glanced at Pasha, nude as well, her skin pale, blond hair at her crotch, and delicate pink nipples exposed on her small breasts. She caught his gaze and rolled her now-green eyes. Then she turned to Tio Suthrom, saying, “You didn’t want to admit the scout-bots to this place. Why?”
And again he answered without elaboration, “It is a question of scale.” He pointed to each of the three machines. “These are three instances of the Invention Ashok. That is a name it chose for my convenience since it is too difficult for me to refer to it by its binary designation.”
He went on, “Ashok is my companion. Nine instances comprise its cohort. The other six instances are presently in the hive, continuing their ongoing study of Ryo. But because Ashok is very curious about you, three instances have emerged to study you. It wants to learn if you are as mad and dangerous as those people who once lived here at Ryo.”
This time, with the avatar’s enhancements, Urban managed a bitter half smile. But once again he refused to follow Tio Suthrom’s lead, gesturing instead at the nearest instance. “So these . . . inventions. They are devices, a kind of machine . . . right?”
“Ashok is a synthetic,” Tio Suthrom agreed. “Unchained from biology and unpolluted by it.”
Disappointment swept in. Urban had allowed himself to imagine Tio Suthrom had found some remnant of an alien race that had survived the depredations of the Chenzeme. But these were just tools.
“What do you use them for?” he asked. “Are they a kind of avatar? Are they even functional?”
He asked this last question because none of the objects had shown any sign of activity. No sound emanated from them, they had not moved, and there was no display of lights to indicate a ready state.
But as if to demonstrate functionality, a small black oval abruptly emerged beneath the eye spots of each machine, looking like the nose of some plump burrowing creature whose name Urban could not immediately bring to mind.
The oval ‘noses’ proved to be audio speakers. They simultaneously emitted a cheery and very human male voice. Higher pitched than Tio Suthrom’s, it filled the junction with multidirectional sound, declaring, “Oh yes, I am functional. But Inventions do not waste energy on extraneous movement or display, as biological forms so often do.”
“You’re not an avatar, then?” Urban asked uneasily. “You’re a machine intelligence? An embodied machine intelligence?”
“That is correct in a general sense, if ‘machine’ is deemed as one domain of life, and ‘biological’ another. Still, ‘machine’ is a very general term encompassing many forms that are not life at all. In this language, a more precise term is ‘synthetic.’ So in your language, the major domains of life can be best described as synthetics, biologicals, and informationals.”
“Informationals being entities within virtual worlds?” Pasha asked with keen interest.
“Yes, exactly.”
“But these three domains are not separate,” she said. “We humans are biologicals but we can access the informational domain.” She gestured with her avatar’s arms. “And here, we are inhabiting a synthetic medium.”
“I conjecture that it is the inherent nature of biological intelligences to define and re-define themselves.”
Tio Suthrom nodded at this, and muttered bitterly, “If it can be done, it will be done, though it leads to our destruction.” His eyes took in Pasha, and then Urban. “Unlike us, the Inventions understand their purpose and accept their limitations, and by itself that predicts they will be a long-lived clade.”
Urban eyed the three synthetics with a sense of looming trepidation . . . these Inventions. (No, that was wrong. They were three instances of a singular being . . . weren’t they? He remained unsure.)
He did know, he believed, artificial entities were supposed to be tools. Tools only. Because if allowed autonomy and will, they might direct their own evolution and quickly overwhelm all life around them. And though the existence of the Cryptologist had tested the boundaries of that belief, she at least was human.
Not so, Ashok.
Maybe not at all, not even in its origin.
The avatar Urban occupied was not so finely made that he could feel a prickle of fear on the back of his neck. Still, he imagined the feeling as suspicion re-spawned in his mind.
“You’re not a human invention, are you?” Urban asked. “That’s what Tio Suthrom was implying when he said the struggle to survive the marauders is not just a human challenge.”
“Our Inventors are not human,” Ashok agreed. “They are biologicals evolved long ago on a distant world. A thriving people, until the marauders discovered them. It is said in our records that their world was scourged so deeply immense lava flows poured through the crust, destroying all chance at life. After that event, a new world was required, one far away. Likely systems were determined from surviving astronomical records, and to each such system a single cohort of Inventions was sent, instructed to replicate and diversify, and thence in our numbers to prepare a new home for the Inventors and for ourselves. That is our purpose.”
“And have the Inventors come?” Pasha asked.
“No. They will not come until we have completed our task.”
Urban touched a knuckle to his chin, his thoughts rushing. He considered where they were, when they were, and the ruins of Ryo that lay outside this ship.
He said, “You must have been sent out from the Inventors’ world a long time ago. Thousands of years, at least, and this is no longer the system you expected to find. Is it? All the planets that once were here, now gone.”
“Ryo is not our target system,” Ashok said with unvarying calm. “We are here at Ryo to survey for potential hazards in the stellar neighborhood.”
“A nearby system, then,” Urban said. “Is it damaged too?”
“You are correct. The system we now occupy shares the issue you have described. The planet we are assigned to develop no longer exists. It is a situation that has complicated and greatly prolonged our preparations because, unlike us, our Inventors require the dense structure and gravity of a world.”
Urban guessed the truth. “You, your . . . people?” He groped for the right words. “The Inventions . . . you are behind the activity we’ve seen at Hupo Sei. Aren’t you?”
All those glints and hints of growth at Hupo Sei that he’d seen through the fleet’s telescopes—he’d imagined it as evidence of human survivors or of human descendants, or at least of life arising out of the human experience. Now disappointment afflicted him—almost shame—that it wasn’t so, that humankind had failed so miserably. And yet keen excitement existed too, and wonder at the alien origin of the artifacts his telescopes had shown him. Heretofore, in all the histories recorded in Dragon’s library, the only functional alien artifacts ever encountered had belonged to factions of the Chenzeme, making the artifacts at Hupo Sei utterly unique.
But the Inventions were not the Inventors. So was there really alien life at Hupo Sei? Could the Inventions be called life? Should they be, even if theirs was a domain different from the biological?
The idea of it disturbed him, unsettled him, but now, growing more used to it, it intrigued him too. It gripped him. Hadn’t he come to the Hallowed Vasties to seek for unexpected wonders amid the ruins? And what could be more unexpected than to find a clade of alien life here, so close to the lost heart of human civilization?
If it was life.
“It is Hupo Sei, isn’t it?” he pressed.
Urban could parse no meaning from Ashok’s appearance, but he found Tio Suthrom’s cold glare easy to interpret.
“We are not your enemy, Tio Suthrom.”
“Are you not?” he demanded. “Open your eyes and look around you! Look at the destruction here at Ryo, the senseless ruin at Hupo Sei, the rubble at Quin-ken and Bengali. So many beautiful worlds once known to me and now destroyed—not by the marauders but by us. Humanity. The Earth clade. We are a territorial species more deadly, more destructive than the marauders ever were. And you want the Inventions to trust you? To believe you are not the enemy? That you are not here to reclaim the system they are making into their own?”
“We are not your enemy,” Urban repeated. “We are not seeking territory. And you need to understand that what happened here among these worlds was an attack from outside, an assault by an ancient alien virus. A behavioral virus. An adaptive weapon designed to reinvent any species it encountered. It might have been meant as a benign gift that would meld individual minds into one transcendent being. But here in the Hallowed Vasties, transcendence failed. Great powers rose out of the cordons and wars of dominance followed. That is what we learned at Tanjiri.”
He felt pressure against the arm of his avatar: Pasha’s hand, squeezing, a gesture urging him not to push too hard. Looking from Tio Suthrom to Ashok, she said, “The virus Urban speaks of is no longer a threat. We neutralized it long ago. Know that our ship is safe, and that you will be safe if you visit us. We invite you. Come visit our ship. Both of you. All of you. We have a landing ship. We can transport you.”
Urban swiftly agreed. “Sooth, come see who we are.”
Tio Suthrom resisted, shaking his head. “No, Ashok. It is too dangerous for you.”
“It is no more dangerous to stay than to go. Both choices are subject to the good will of these human marauders. We live only as they allow it.”
“No,” Urban said. “We will not harm you, whatever choice you make.”
“My choice is made,” Ashok replied. “The hive will go.”
Tio Suthrom’s mouth opened in shock. “The full hive? You mean to leave me?”
“Yes, my friend, if you do not choose to send an avatar. For myself, I cannot decline this opportunity to expand my knowledge of local hazards, regardless of the risk.”
“We’re not a hazard,” Urban insisted, half laughing in exasperation until he remembered the conflict Dragon’s presence had induced at Tanjiri. He knew then that wasn’t true.
Chapter
15
Ashok’s visit had to wait until Dragon drew close enough to deploy the landing ship, and complicated maneuvers would be required before then. Dragon must slow down, while Tio Suthrom’s great ship needed to accelerate to more closely match the courser’s velocity. So it would be many days before the synthetic departed Alaka‘i Onyx. Plenty of time to learn more about the Inventions.
Urban stayed with Ashok for several hours, accompanying one of its instances, peppering it with questions that the Invention answered cheerfully as it moved through what proved to be an intricate warren.
The instance had a gel-like constitution. It elongated as it dove through the tunnel junctions, puffing up again as it roved the tunnels on tiny clawed feet. Ashok never lingered in the junctions, though Urban wished it would. For him, the junctions were nodes of calm, a steady-state environment, and predictable. Except for the arrangement of the glowing symbols, every junction looked like every other.
In contrast, the tunnel walls were all active surfaces, encrusted with a multitude of artifacts always in motion. Flows of shifting color circled the tunnels and transited up and down their lengths, as if a discordant liquid rainbow was being pumped from beneath the surface to flood a complex terrain. A terrain in motion: a tactile geography composed of flocks of tiny bumps, some rounded, others like bars or pyramids, forever erupting and collapsing.
Ashok often paused, extruding soft, flexible, feathery appendages that it swept across the shifting surfaces. There was a grid of what Urban interpreted as symbols; a crackle of thin white lightning bolts within a black glass panel; a blue panel that gave the impression of extreme depth like an infinite planetary sky.
Ashok did not object when Urban touched these things. Indeed, he had no choice but to touch them, since he had to propel himself through the tunnels and stop when Ashok stopped. Unfortunately, the sensation of ‘touch,’ as implemented by the artificial avatar, did not yield information beyond hard/soft/rough/smooth, and the surfaces never reacted to the contact.
