As my transport begins its final approach to the exit gate, I link into the external sensors and look back at the vastness I am leaving behind. Even across this distance, the world-disk fills the sky. Two billion kilometers in diameter and ten thousand thick, Discfinity dwarfs nearly every other structure ever imagined by Terragens. It fills my vision from end to end, our current heading placing it nearly face on to my perception. Here, on the edge of the system, the details of the disk are lost, the mountains, plains, and seas blurred together into a blue-green blankness. Yet, in the absence of hard detail, my mind’s eye turns to memory to fill in the details.

There, that pale section just out from the glaring point of the central star (data-filters have automatically engaged to protect my vision) may be the deserts of the Crystal Plains, home to a silica-cybernetic ecology as complex as anything found on a carbon-based garden world. I remember walking across burning sands, clad only in an enviro-suite, as glass flutterbugs spun around me in scintillating clouds.

A hint of blue line in a section of dark green could be the Ringriver, a band of water as much as three thousand kilometers across and a full five hundred million kilometers long. A group of us spent a month on a home-made house-boat cruising down the river, swimming, fishing, drinking, and enjoying each other’s company. Dozens of shore or water-dwelling sophonts visited in that time, often bringing local foods, drinks, and intoxicants of seemingly endless variety. Stored away in my personal files are memories, comm-codes, and images from that trip that I will enjoy for centuries to come.

Beyond the Ringriver, (tens of millions of kilometers beyond actually, although that is not apparent now) a darker line stands out more clearly, one of the few features clearly visible even from this distance. The Torus Range is really just an air barrier, separating one major region of the disk from another, and certainly the sculpting of such barriers into mountains is nothing new. But to climb the peaks of such a range, to stand atop it using only a thinsuit and air-dust, and to look out at a line of similar mountains extending off to the vanishing point in either direction is an experience I will not soon forget. No less the view of the Twilight, extending for tens of kilometers beyond. Hidden forever in the lee of the Range, the Twilight is never touched by the slow rise and fall of the central sun. It would have been easy enough to use orbiting flectors to illuminate it, of course, as has been done with some of the other air barrier mountains. But instead the Builders chose
to weave a bio-system here. An entire ecology, bigger than worlds, entirely adapted to only the small bit of light that leaks over the Range or reflects from the normally illuminated lands beyond.

Walking through the Twilight is to enter a fantasyland of night-blooming flowers and bioluminescent organisms of all types. Sonar hunting Greatbats glide through the skies while songflowers use breeze driven sonic cries to repel insects and animals that would otherwise eat them. Through it all moves a multitude of dark adapted sophonts of all kinds. Some have merely modified themselves to thrive in the low light conditions but are otherwise found across the Civilized Galaxy. Others are entirely engineered for life in this surreal place and can be found almost nowhere else.

Thinking of the Twilight leads my thoughts naturally to the Underworld. Dwarfing even the Twilight as a place of darkness and wonders, the Underworld encompasses much of the internal volume of the great disk. A vast network of tunnels and caverns, some of them thousands of kilometers across, the Underworld is actually millions of worlds. Some are cloaked in endless darkness and silence like the cavern systems of Old Earth and other garden worlds. Home only to the slow pulse of geochemical processes and slow living microorganisms, they are subject to only virtual observation and very occasional visits by carefully screened petitioners. Yet other caves host ecosystems to rival those found on Labyrinth. Still filled with blackness or lit only by the glow of bioluminescent denizens, they nevertheless bustle with life and energy equal to that found in any surface dwelling biosphere. Finally, there are those caves engineered by the Builders, not as natural ecosystems so much as
habitations or artworks for the use and delight of other sophonts, Discfinity natives and visitors alike.

Great light sources hang from rocky ceilings or float just below them. In their light can be found underground forests, lakes, rivers, and even seas. Great cities rise up from cavern floors to kiss the cave roof or cling to the walls of mighty tunnels extending for hundreds of thousands of kilometers in each direction.

A myriad of access points to the Underworld spot the giga-disks surface, most merely the size of great caverns, some so large that they literally punch through to the opposite face of the construct and void swarms and other tech must be used to manage the traffic and airflow as gravity does strange twists and turns as first one surface and then the other exercises its pull. Naturally, travelers can make such a journey in maximal comfort, barely noticing the switch from one face to the next. But far more commonly used are transport methods that do little or nothing to minimize the transition effects and which owe as much of their design to considerations of entertainment as practicality.

The transport orients for final approach to the gate and my view swings outward along the disk to the cold, dark realms of the Rim. Home to lifeforms whose need for light, warmth, and air is minimal, the Rim hosts thousands of cold adapted ecologies. Modeled on the frigid richness of Muuhhome, or the homeworld of the Soft Ones, or developed entirely from first principles, each ecology rivals the complexity of any world in the known galaxy. And most are homes to intelligence in one form or another. I remember icy cities and warm conversations with beings ancient and wise. Slow moving and thinking they might be, a natural consequence of their frigid metabolisms, but once I adjusted my own time rate to theirs, they proved as quick-witted as any being I have encountered anywhere else. And easily as charming.

The gate wells up around us and the transport shifts through. A moment of disorientation, two moments of blackness, and then I open my eyes to the sight of my study and the feel of the comfortable lounge that I habitually use for journeys into the local cybercosm. A servitor rolls forward with a glass of fruit juice, something I find perfectly refreshing and just what I would have ordered if given the chance (there are worlds that disdain the use of Environmental Optimization Protocols and their constant anticipation of one’s every need or desire, but I am glad Eden is not one of them).

Rising, I dismiss the lounge and associated study surround back into house memory and manifest a door and balcony overlooking the nearby sea. The sun is setting and the evening breeze only adds to my feeling of relaxation. Although my visit to the Discfinity virtual environment took barely an hour of rl time, my memories of the visit encompass nearly a year of subjective experiences. It feels as if I have had a long and exciting vacation and I am ready now to resume my avocation of traveling across the Nexus and documenting my adventures. It is perhaps one of the little ironies of our modern age that, although I have already spent centuries engaged in such pursuits and have no intention of doing anything else for centuries more, all of the places I will ever travel to combined will never add up to even the smallest fraction of all the virtuals, surrounds, and environments that are instantly available just within the bounds of our local moon-node.

*****

More about the author, Todd Drashner, here.

What a deeply disturbing, nay, even frightening experience my stay on Bambata, the heart of the Emple-Dokcetic polity was. Not disturbing or alarming in any physical way, of course – every person I met was more than welcoming, more than friendly, their hospitality a credit to the Emple-Dokcetic as a whole. And their multitude of appearances and attitudes, while unusual in some cases, was not more than one might encounter in some of the more cosmopolitan polities outside of the Emple-Dokcetic.

No, what is disturbing are the implications of their embracing the concept of modularity. Of each individual being a fundamentally transient, temporary, entity, constantly swapping and changing not just elements of their physical selves, but also of their mental selves. Memories. Values. Drives. Responses. All are transient for each individual, but nothing is ever lost to their society as a whole. And the constant creation of new individuals, replacing the old and remixing all elements of their population in new and diverse ways gives them a drive, a dynamism, a vitality that I have rarely seen in any group, let alone an entire society. And with it comes a unity, a knowing that all within the Emple-Dokcetic are truly, at a fundamental level, one.

I think the ancient saying, ‘live as you were to die tomorrow, plan as if you were going to live forever,’ is at the centre of an understanding of their society, for, for them, both parts of the saying are true. The transient specific person will only live a short time, but their parts will live forever.

And all of this is without taking into account their ability to temporarily link themselves – many individuals – into larger gestalts, to the level of entire worlds, to gain consensus, or the ability to tackle, and solve, particularly thorny issues.

No wonder they so greatly dislike the use of violence. From their modular state they know the feeling of others, and clearly extrapolate that understanding to others outside of the Emple-Dokcetic too. Hurting another must be, to them, analogous to hurting a part of themselves, with the subconscious implication that part of the individual one has hurt may one day be a part of oneself, and so allow one to know, intimately, the consequences of ones actions… Thus I suspect the utter lack of corruption in their society arises from the same source, that hurting others, in the end, hurts only oneself.

And perhaps that, too, explains their vivacity, their seeming love of life.

They know transience. They know that the ‘them’ of them present moment is temporary, but that all that makes them up will go on. So each of them – each transient individual – loves their life, but does not fear the transition to the next ‘them’. Combined with the Zarathustran beliefs which are part of the Dok, live for the now, and the future, living with directness, joy in life and every moment, regardless of what it brings, they move forward rapidly.

No wonder the Emple-Dokcetics expand so quickly, to become a major power of the Outer Volumes. Dynamism. Vivacity. Seeming benevolence. High technology. A potent combination, to say the very least. Are they, perhaps, the future?

And no wonder I find them so disturbing. They are alien, yet of humanity quite as much as I, myself…

Such a strange child of the synthesis of Zarathustrism, manimal animism and Bot Marxism. But nonetheless have achieved a society that appears to work, better than many others I have encountered. And their Dok explains matters with … admirable clarity. It is not, after all, a religious text to be loaded down with metaphor and symbolism to the detriment of information…

They asked if I wished to contribute, genetically or mentally, to the creation of a new set of modules. But I could not – would not – do so, and politely declined. I could not give a part of myself to them, even though I would lose nothing myself. I value my individuality, my being me, and regardless of how sugar-coated the pill, I will not give that up, even in a copy of myself.

More about the author, Tony Jones, here.

… The next day we tourists settled down to watch the Mating Day activities. Several low tables were set out under wide umbrellas to keep off the frequent rain; we sat on the dry earth beneath, and ate fruit, barbecued meat, and spliced meat-fruit salad. All around us we could see the neobonobos spiralling through the trees, chasing each other like a game of tag.

Some trees in this rainforest stretched as far as the green photosynthetic worldhouse roof, five kilometres above; there were many layers of canopy beneath the veined sky, and most of them were covered in chimps.
It was difficult to see what was going on, to be honest; using the highest magnification my eyes were capable of I could watch one particular individual, as he chased another neobonobo; they embraced for a few seconds; fell in slow motion tumbling comically; was chased himself, embraced again with a different partner; the whole ceremony seemed very different to any kind of human sexual behaviour, and I was getting a little bored watching it.

At the next table squatted the Greater Neochimp diplomat from the nearby world of Digit; I already knew his name, which was Respected Hoogh-Ahh-Lehh. He was dressed in a crisp white suit and a pale grey hat; he watched the chase with a tiny golden telescope on the end of his walking stick. Lowering his stick, he grimaced- I recognised his facial expression as unhappy/disgusted, although confusingly it looked like a human smile.

“I do not care to see such vulgarities,” he said across the tables to me.

That must be why you have the telescope, I thought, but said nothing, attempting a cross-species friendly face.

He continued, “This nonsense cannot be interesting to you humans; why do you not come to our own world and I will show you real civilised chimpanzee behaviour.”

Somehow I doubted that the chimps of Digit could be any more gracious than the good-humoured peoples of Bolobo; but it has always been difficult for any nonchimp to gain entry to any Greater Neochimp world, so I replied, “If that is an invitation-”

“It is!” Respected Hoogh-Ahh-Lehh interposed.

“Then I am grateful, and I accept.” It is good to network whenever an opportunity arises, naturally.

More about the author, Steve Bowers, here.
More about Bolobo here.

… The Rat stood on the table, in front of me; crossed on his back was a rapier and a tiny one-shot pistol. His name was Tirripik, and I think he was drunk.
“Only Rats, Rats and Trogs,” he said, emphatically.
I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. He looked around at the other customers in the off-worlders tavern in Jefferson City; there were trogs in here, as well as bear-people, Cyclopes and deer- people, as well as several races of baseline humans from the lo-tech societies sprinkled across this low-tech world.
Most of them were at least merry on good Ribblehead wine.

Through the thick smoky air of the tavern tiny flying Tech-leveler robot drones kept an eye or three out for illegal high tech use; they were aware that I had no functional implants or other devices, thanks to the thorough screening at the spaceport.

“They try to keep us out, but they can’t- the Trogs are in the caves underneath, you see, and us Rats can hide in the drains (if they have them) and in the walls if they don’t. Rats and Trogs are found in every land in this world, everywhere! We know everything there is to know in Ribblehead. Everything.”

I knew that the hundreds of tiny sovereign nations on this large world were often at war with each other; the wars were usually minor skirmishes, fought with low-tech weapons; some hatreds ran deep, and there was only limited contact between several of the nations, except here in the cosmopolitan city of Jefferson.

And it was forbidden for off-worlders to leave this city, to see the bizarre and fabulous countries the tweaks and reanths and prims had built for themselves.
“So you would know how to sneak a tourist out of Jefferson, then, wouldn’t you.”
“Heheh – nothing to it, pal.” The Rat hiccupped.
“Prove it.” I leant forward, eager to show I meant business.

Tirripik took my money, and arranged for a rendezvous with some Minoan tourist smugglers. They dressed me as a Xhosha baseline to fool the Tech-leveller vecs, but the smugglers were wary of discovery and betrayal, so they blindfolded me and took me by cart to a creaking wooden jetty, then concealed me in a boat under a tarpaulin in the dead of night. I heard the smugglers rowing across the water, and then they jumped onto another boat, or jetty (I couldn’t tell which).

After a half hour one returned, saying that he had a problem with the captain of the ship that would take me onwards, and asked for more gold.
I gave some of my reserves to the Minoan, while wondering if he meant to cut my throat in the dark. When he left me alive I grew hopeful again, while giving thanks that my backup was relatively up to date. A full citizen of the Galaxy like myself (with the opportunity for reincarnation in the event of death) will always have the advantage over mere prims. We citizens sometimes grow reckless and foolish for this very reason; it is well known that a prim who harms a citizen will be severely punished.

And foolish is what I felt when I peeked out from the tarpaulin a hour later, in the grey morning light; the boat I was in floated on a lake in the public park, and several curious Jeffersonians were gathered on the shore, roaring with laughter.

More about the author, Steve Bowers, here.
More about Ribblehead here.

As my three hundred ninety-second year drew to a close, it became clear to me that I would not see much of my three hundred ninety- third. As dignity required, I embraced my fate. I resolved that, in my remaining days, I would set out to do those things I had always wanted to do, but for which I had never before found time. I drew up a list, in order of importance, and set out to cross off as many items from it as my remaining time would allow.

Foremost on my list — perhaps by coincidence — was to climb the steps of the Mount of Kings, to see the Hall of the Flesh Sculptors. It was a monument very few had seen. Cast from ivory marble, it was said to shine with its own radiance, like a drop of frozen moonlight there on the granite peak. The climb was said to be long and difficult, and the gods seldom encouraged nosy visitors. But I set out anyway with the knowledge that I had very little to lose. This one thing, if nothing else, would make my life complete.

I took the long north trail, doubting my strength to forge its shorter, steeper counterpart to the south. Over the course of days, my old bones creaked and strained, plodding up the switchback path, taking one chiseled step at a time. Naturally, I made the climb in solitude … so I was quite surprised to find someone waiting for me at the top.

A woman, with the look of a youth but the eyes of an ancient, stood on the steps of the great Hall. She stood as straight as the fluted pillars at her back. She waited, dark and serene as the sandy wind bustled around her — never touching her; never disturbing a single hair.

“Come inside,” she said with a smile. “I have something to show you.”

This invitation came as quite a shock to me, for a number of reasons that began to dawn on me as I followed her through the broad oak doors. Foremost, the woman was not, by any stretch of thought, a woman in the conventional sense. I had my doubts that she even really existed at the moment my foot crossed the threshold. And yet that smile — graceful, alluring, accented ever so subtly by the flash of pearlescent teeth arranged in the most artistic of rows — belied something that at least remembered having once been human, long ago.

It masqueraded as a “she” right now for its own inscrutable reasons, but I have my suspicions that those may have been to advertise its real talents. For this creature — call it a woman — was nothing short of perfection cast in human form. Living art. Silky skin of the most exquisite mocha-bronze, hair like ebony, eyes of emerald — sapphire flecked — and a body like a marble statue, as though every curve and line had been carved meticulously from that vulgar meat in which the raw character of humanity finds its residence. Every movement she engaged in became a symphony of grace. I had only to look at her to know, without a doubt, that I would not leave this place the same man I had come. I might not leave at all. But as the doors closed at my back, it dawned on me that it was far too late to harbor any doubts. I could not turn back. This thing of mortal perfection had extended to me an invitation so rare and cherished that I would have been the worst of fools to turn it down.

I followed her through the gilded cavern of the foyer, through a maze of corridors and into the deepest heart of the Hall. Our path was marked by a burgundy carpet, inlaid in gold — exuding opulence beyond any I had witnessed before. In the walls, arrayed behind panes of heavy, frosted glass, stood inert testaments to the Flesh Sculptor’s artistry, preserved in exquisitely lifelike quality — so much so that I had to shake myself out of the feral apprehension that some of them were, in fact, still alive. Their eyes seemed to follow me as I walked. Every one of them held that same, surreal quality of simultaneous life and death.

All of them appeared at once both human and inhuman, even the most monstrous of forms. A serpentine beast, as long as a sea freighter and as thick as a man is tall, coiled and curved within the confines of the passageway’s northern wall. Facing it from the other were numerous specimens of similarly unholy creation: a thing like a giant squid, a yeti, something with the face of a man, but with a body wholly indescribable by any human tongue.

Standing free about the place, cast in glass cubes, stood smaller creatures. Some as large as a dog, some as small as a mouse. Each exhibited a chilling, beautiful strangeness. Each marked a place on that narrow boundary between the living and the bizarre. Only a scarce few embodied anything like the quality of beauty we humans might look for in a thing … but all were beautiful in some sense. Even if only made beautiful by the purity of the horror their deathless stares engendered.

As had been told in stories handed down through generations, it was the wont of the Flesh Sculptors to pursue expression of their artistry in a variety of emotional mediums — from admiration through apprehension, hatred to pity, simmering lust to stark terror, and the strange sense of preternatural unease that gripped me now. The things I saw on that short walk evoked all these emotions in me, along with others I could never hope to attach names to if I lived a thousand years longer. It struck me then how deeply vetted we meatlings are in the instincts of our progeny. For all our self-styled sophistication, we are animals still — slaves to the prejudices of the flesh.

The Thing that led me through this gallery of my own basal misgivings shared nothing of that with me. She toyed with it, amused by its quaintness. And when she turned around at last to stop me at the doors of our destination, I was shocked to see that she had at some point become a he.

“You must promise, before we go any further, that everything you see from this point on stays with you — a secret. For your own protection, as well as mine. I hardly fear the ill will of your brethren — many of whom I suspect are not as accepting as you — but there are higher things with ears to your affairs that I suspect may not be so accepting, either. Do you promise me you won’t go talking this around?”

My throat had suddenly become stiff and dry as I tried to form a response. I choked out what I had hoped to be an affirmative, and nodded to reiterate the point. I knew it was unnecessary. She — he? — knew full well what I would do, and was only playing at drama for my benefit. As I watched him turn to cast open the doors, I marveled at how deceived I had been at his first appearance — or perhaps he’d changed? It was the same face, the same eyes, that same ebony hair swept back into a delicate sash of braids — the same body even — but everything curiously re-sexed beneath my notice as we’d walked. And I had touched her hand when we’d first met outside the hall — felt its warmth, its living pulse, the delicate structure of its bones, overlaid by flesh. I knew it to be real. This was not the evanescent avatar of Angel’s Fog the Gods so often wore when they walked among their pets. This was a living creature like myself — only somehow capable of this ghastly transformation.

We stepped through the door, out of the hallway’s platinum fog of refracted sunlight and into a room that was saturated with a heavy crimson glow. The air here seemed to be its own source of light. It spread soft and diffuse through every corner, blotting the edges of shadows and hazing the finer details of my surroundings. The character of my guide shifted radically now as he stepped through the door ahead of me. Suddenly he became a Hellenistic blonde. She turned to me only a few steps out of the entryway, beaming that disarming, unsettling smile. The same that had greeted me at my arrival.

“Watch,” she said, as if the things I’d seen already amounted to nothing but trifles.

And then she revealed to me a hint of the magic I had come to see.

We stood on the bottom face of a voluminous octahedron — the door that had been behind us moments ago had vanished, swallowed by the wall. Buoyed on the moist currents of air circulating in the center of the room hung veils of a white, diaphanous material. They congealed out of thin air and swirled together, out of the corners and into the center of the room. For minutes, they entertained us with a dizzy introductory dance. And then, one by one, they began to come apart, dissolving and diffusing together, forming a knot at the chamber’s heart.

Droplets of moisture condensed out of the hazy atmosphere and fell impossibly toward that central confluence. Within minutes, a quivering sphere a fluid had formed there. The twists of white material had dissolved within it. Only a few shreds remained, sheeting across its surface. At first perfectly transparent, it began to grow cloudy. I squinted to see through it — through the rheumy fog of my own ancient vision.

My eyes played tricks on me. The hovering globule began to pulsate slowly. The red of the room bled into its bulk. Within seconds, the light around me went from crimson to hazy white, and the floating globule of fluid turned blood red. As I watched, an explosion of dark little tendrils branched out from the center of the mass, veining it with a throbbing, anfractuous structure.

I saw something I could only describe as a heart congeal at its center. It grew from a speck in moments, pumping in time with the shuddering vibration of the intricate web-work in which it nestled. I scarcely noticed that my guide had begun laughing, gleefully, manically, clapping her hands as the dance of perverse magic went on in the air above us. I had become so engrossed that I had lost all track of her shifting features. She — he? — it? — was trying on new faces as quickly as the hovering globule was trying out different strategies of organizing its components, all the while growing and developing at blinding speed. It was like watching a three dimensional puzzle assemble itself — a puzzle whose pieces were the very fundaments of life itself.

My guide began gesticulating wildly with its hands — ‘it’ was at this point the only pronoun I could think to apply to it. It had taken on, in the past few seconds alone, traits both distinctly male and female … and neither. It twisted and shuddered, laughing and crying out in what looked to be an almost orgasmic kind of bliss. I knew without a doubt then, as I watched it, that it was indeed much more than it appeared. My skin crawled with the sensation that it’s being extended far beyond the amorphous body I saw before me — that it’s apparent identity crisis was just a reflection of a much larger, much more complete kind of being. It was not its failing that it could not make up its mind as to the appearance it wished to wear. Rather, it was my failing that I could not accept the constancy of identity behind its masks.

The thing growing in the air above us was as much a part of it as its avatar-body — as much as the Hall. As much as, I began to suspect, the whole world. I felt suddenly outside myself — that I was not my own person. A deep, unraveling terror began to build inside me. The thing over our heads had begun to take shape. It was a thing not unlike those I had seen on my way in — those once-living statues encased in glass. Only this thing was still alive … or rapidly on its way to becoming alive. In the moments of my floundering apprehension, it had grown nerves, skeleton and now the rudiments of a musculature around the framework its circulatory system had laid down.

It was a demonstration of the Flesh Sculptors’ highest art, being carried out before my very eyes. Just like a puzzle, they assembled bodies one molecule — one cell — at a time, constructing complete creatures from scratch. And, amazingly, those creatures lived. Not at the end — not with some flash of lightning or zap of unnatural magic to impart that vital spark — but from the beginning, from the moment the first cells were assembled and guided nimbly by those phantom fingers into place.

The Sculptors must work fast, for at first their products are unstable. They bring each new cell into being and guide it into contact with its siblings. They lace the structure of the thing together until it takes hold of its own form-to-be. Every branching vein, every twisting sinew or quivering nerve they place with clockwork precision. Like building ships in bottles from scraps of balsa wood, they assemble beings in vats from stray molecules and proteins in solution. The awesome delicacy of the procedure took my breath away … along with the horrifying rapidity at which they went from an empty room of air-suspended protein fragments to a fully functioning product.

In this case, a fully functioning human being.

It floated there in its amniotic bubble, fully formed, fully human. All this only a scant five or six minutes after we had entered the room. It was as perfect as my guide — as artfully crafted, as much a testament to the skill and mastery of its creator as the body that creator wore itself. My guide had suddenly stopped laughing. Now he was watching me keenly, following my twitching, apoplectic movements and my gaping, bewildered stares with eyes that shone dark like polished onyx, pattered with flecks of jade.

“I want to offer you a gift for coming here,” he said. “A thank you … for being an audience to my work. It’s been some time since I’ve been able to work for anyone. I would be honored if you would give me the satisfaction … of accepting my work as your gift?”

If it was a genuine question, I had no doubt he already knew my answer. I stood in the presence of a creature so far above me as to be a god of gods … a creature so beyond my comprehension as to regard me with little more consideration than I might a bacterium. And yet it wanted to offer me a gift? To what end, I wondered, even as I nodded my ascent, throat too clenched to give words to my robotic acceptance.

It — she, as she has shifted once again into the female form I’d known initially and seemed, for once, to settle into a temporary kind of permanence with that shape — smiled at me again. It was the same smile she had worn on our way here. “You understand,” she said, “that what we still find some challenge in is the sculpting of a mind. I would very much like to try … if you would be willing … to sculpt your thoughts in this flesh?”

A million reasons for refusal escaped my thinking that day. Whatever happened next, I cannot recall with any certainty. All I know is that I left that hall a different man than I had entered. A better man, I think. A man with greater understanding of his world.

Certainly, if nothing more, a younger man with uncounted centuries of life still left to live.

As I have studied over the years — as I have come to understand the Sculptors’ talents and their methods; to comprehend the finer delicacies of their craft — I have begun to see the appeal of the Sculptor’s art. To create life, to create being … is as intoxicating a venture as ever I could pursue. And so I have been considering, in the centuries since my rebirth, that I might like to one day try my hand at that curious art.

Perhaps then I will return to the Flesh Sculptors’ Hall. Not this time to visit, but to stay.

More about the author, David Jackson, here.

As I met ambassador Keilen she was wearing a formal spacesuit, covering with glittering black diamonds and the dull Negentropy pentagon. On her waist she had a metal grey sash embroidered with the line codes of her offices. I could not help shivering when I noticed the 7-7 knot – the symbol for ordered suicide.

‘Greetings, your Excellency. May your trip here have been reversible and swift.’ She greeted formally, but with her usual half hidden smile.

‘Likewise, your Excellency. I hope our confluence will hasten the eternal state.’

‘No need to be that formal, Ologa-Zan. Besides, isn’t referring to the eternal state here of all places a bit of bad form?’ I blushed and she laughed and hugged me. ‘It is good to see you again, even if this has to be brief. I have a pressing engagement.’

‘I came as soon as I heard about the directive.’

‘Yes. The arch-conservatives back home finally decided to send me the silken thread. I can’t say that it was unexpected. I took a chance with the Pyxis settlement, but you cannot win them all…’

I followed her as she strode along the gallery towards the farewell chamber. I desperately wanted to tell her how much I admired her, how wrong this was, that I would gladly do anything to change her mind or save her. But a look at her sparkling eyes told me that she already knew it. She gently shook her head and smiled at me.

‘No, I cannot back down. They have my family, and they will suffer if I don’t act properly. Trust me, I know what I am doing.’

‘I never doubted that, but there must be possibilities?’

‘Actually, I think they suspect my loyalty and purity more than any purely legal shortcomings. And that is much more serious for my gene-line than if I had eloped with a few kilograms of amat or accidentally spilt trake on the God-Emperor. I better show them just how loyal I am.’ Again that smile.

‘But Keilen… what about the Velaria cease-fire?’ Damn! It sounded so self-serving, so coolly pragmatic. But at the same time I had to ask on behalf of my government, my people. The cease-fire in all its bizarre splendour hinged on one thing: it would only last as long as Keilen lived. She had impressed the I4 and their tweak enemies to the extent they actually based the whole deal on her. And we were dependent on the cease-fire lasting at least a few years more, if we were to survive.

‘Actually, that is why I am here. To save it.’

Keilen stepped into the farewell chamber and looked around. The floor and one of the walls were solid diamond, giving an unobstructed view of Threshold. Ahead the sprawling meshwork of hospices, temples, cathedrals, prayer polyhedra and hotel facilities spread towards the infinite horizon line, surrounded by the steady cold light of the stars on all sides. Straight ahead a causeway with ornate railings stretched straight out, ending in nothing 30 meters away. Beneath… it was hard to see, but the faint Einstein rings gave it away. Straight down, the black hole yawned.

Keilen walked on the transparent floor with no hesitation, while my brainstem sternly told me not to. Instincts older than thought told me that walking on a near invisible floor above a literally bottomless hole was not survival enhancing. Again I envied Keilen her iron nerves and rationality. Or did I? The same practical logic that had saved us so many times now made her prepare for a very long fall indeed.

‘I don’t get it. Please explain to a mere Mensan. If you are going to jump into oblivion I better want to know why, except for a misplaced sense of duty. If you had just wanted to end your life you could probably have done it instantly, couldn’t you?’

‘You are getting warmer.’ She smiled at me and fastened the helmet onto the spacesuit. Then she hugged me again and gave me a storage device. ‘Give this mindstate to my family. They will understand. And… I’m happy you are here with me. Just don’t worry.’

As I stood there dumbfounded she elegantly walked into the airlock which shut with a discreet susurration. She waved and stepped outside. I could do nothing but watch as she walked along the causeway outside. A small part of me wondered why they had bothered to put up handrails on both sides. After all, somebody walking along it probably had no desire to avoid falling off. Although to some, I guessed, dying in a less than perfect way would be worse than anything. I began to understand.

‘Keilen, aren’t the Velarian Confed strict physiclassicists?’ I asked over the radio in the room.

She turned around at the edge, now smiling openly at me. ‘I knew you would work it out. Can you see how the pieces interlock? It is so simple.’

She jumped, leaving an empty causeway. Beneath me I saw a moving star among the others, falling towards the unseen distortion in the centre.

‘The conservatives will be happy, since I will be quite dead. One loose cannon less. I have proven my loyalty to my planet, and no shadow can fall on my family. The Velarians on the other hand… to them I will never die. I will just approach the horizon forever, becoming eternal. The cease-fire will remain forever.’

It was indeed simple and beautiful. A solution perfectly expressing the Precepts of Negentropy – and hence the most devious and inescapable revenge on the arch-conservatives back at Cirici that anybody could come up with.

‘It is… wonderful.’

‘Yes. Now you know why I was so glad you could come. After all, the Velarians would want a witness.’

‘I will do that. But Keilen, what about yourself?’

‘Myself?’ the radio voice asked.

‘You have worked for as long as I know you for others. You have saved billions with your negotiations. You saved my skin at the Antares conference. You just saved your family, your honour and the cease-fire. But what’s in it for you?’

The room was silent. I tried to discern the falling star against the background below, but could not make put anything in the diffused light around the hole.

After an interminable silence the radio spoke again: ‘It has been fun watching.’

‘What?’

‘The best way of getting a front seat at some historical event is to arrange it yourself. This way I got all the opportunities, all the fun. You think I have been as unselfish and self-eradicating as the NoCoZo makes us out to be, but you’re wrong – I did it all for my own pleasure. I’m the most curious and selfish woman in the world. And now… let’s see what happens!’

The signal broke up. A moment later the unseen point beneath me flared up in a blaze of gamma.

More about the author, Anders Sandberg, here.