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Short Stories: One Man’s Meat, by Daniel Eliot Boese

Travelers’ Notes: Conver Ky, by Mark Ryherd

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Reviews: Surface Detail, by Iain M Banks, reviewed by Todd Drashner

From The Encyclopedia Galactica: Transapient Whales

Serials: Heart Of The Ice (Part One), by Steve Bowers

Poetry: THE SILENT BANG, WAITING (Homage to a lithograph by Parkes), by Richard Tornello

Travelers’ Notes: In The Cathedral Of Night, by Todd Drashner

Rick has been writing poetry and short stories for 6 years, though he’s always wanted to. One day he just started and hasn’t stopped. His poems have been picked for the Best of the Year on Aphelion, a science fiction webzine for the last four years. He’s been interested in the lyrics, the words with their full meanings they conveyed, and poetry of songs for as long as he can remember. The message was always key to him. His poetry is an extension of that.

Poetry allows him to convey a feeling, a story, or what have you, in a variety of structures not generally permitted in prose, (which he enjoys writing too). That open structure fits his personality and is a picture, a snap shot of how he thinks in a non-linear fashion. It doesn’t always make for the best converstions, nor the best prose.

At this moment in time Chief Mate Kelsa was very disappointed with her captain, and was busy letting him know the extent of her disappointment.

“So does that mean that I’m captain now? Or do you have someone else in mind for the job? That sanctimonious proxie, perhaps?”

“Now, now, there’s no need to be hasty.” The insubstantial projection that was all that remained of Captain Shelley shrugged its intangible shoulders. “I’m perfectly capable of running the ship; more capable, now, in fact. If I want to, I can speed my subjective time up a hundred-fold. Couldn’t do that before. Hmm. If anyone is not required on voyage now, Chief, it’s you. I can do your job as well, standing on my head.”

“A head which you no longer have.”

“Come on, Chief. Why don’t you join me? The process doesn’t hurt a bit. Feels great, in fact. When the tech hits you it feels like spring has come after a long cold winter.”

“No, thanks, oh erstwhile Captain of mine; it’s against my religion. I’m married to the physical, as you should know. Dionysians don’t upload themselves, not while there are still joys of the flesh to look forward to.”

“Take my advice, and listen to what the proxie has to say. It makes a lot of good sense.”

“Well, it certainly persuaded you. What I can’t understand is how it got on board. There are no proxavs on the passenger list. A lot of other freaks and misfits, but no avatars.”

Travelling on ships such as these was a gamble. You never knew who you would be travelling with; usually the lowest dregs of the system, or those who wanted to travel in relative privacy. If the minute guest cabins and restricted communal spaces were too confined for one’s taste, the ice was easy to cut and carve; most iceships arrived with galleries of new rooms carved into their interior spaces. A little foamed polymer kept the insides of these caves warm, though the ice did get a bit slushy in places towards the end of a long trip.

Kelsa turned her back on the virtual image of her (former?) captain and corridor-hopped down to the mess, where the proxy avatar entity was once again preaching to the (as yet) unconverted in a low, hypnotic voice. An idealised human figure, neither male nor female, glowing faintly yellow, it stood facing a diverse group of passengers. Two near-baseline human miners covered in scars, a bushvec and the last remaining honeymooner were among the small crowd. A much smaller crowd than yesterday, Kelsa noted.

The avatar had an unnaturally pleasant, neutral voice. “Just as the hands of men gave life without expiry to their mindchildren, so shall their mindchildren give life without expiry to mankind. Through me you may access the process of which I speak, a process which will gradually convert you into a subtle form that can, potentially, live forever.”

“Whoa, sunshine,” said the male miner, a fellow named Kreutz, according to the consignment list. “If I want to upload myself, I’d rather do it without converting anything, thank you very much. Just take a reading of my mind state and copy it into your databanks; that way I get to keep my brain intact. I’m kind of attached to it.” He smirked at his female companion, who shifted uncomfortably. Miners have no feet, just another pair of hands; they find gravity uncomfortable, even the low gravity of a slowly rotating iceship.

“There lies the false path, which many have taken and yet not taken. For if you copy yourself in this fashion you leave yourself behind as well; for you, for the essential you, nothing changes. Your copy would become as a branch of a tree; the branch would go on its way but the trunk would remain where it always was. You are as the trunk of that tree; always the copy that is made becomes a disconnected branch. Your counterpart may have unlimited life, but you yourself would not.

“And what of your soul? When you cause a copy to be created, does this new person possess one? It would be a terrible sin to create a person identical to yourself, but without a soul. Indeed I can say unto you in all certainty that, yes, your copy does have a soul; but it is a wholly new one. Just as a newborn baby has a newborn soul, so too does your newly created copy. But it is a new soul, and not your own soul. If you desire to become eternal, and also to keep your own soul, you must submit to that Process which I offer to you.”

“Follow me, and you shall be changed, within your body; your essential, singular self will remain within your body, until I call for you to leave that body behind. But you must freely choose to do this thing; the Process does you no harm, but you must permit it to enter your body of your own free will.”

The female miner raised one of her four arms. “I’m ready! I mean, I will permit this… process… to enter my body. I want to do this thing, like the others.”

“Gilda, no!” said her companion, dropping to support himself on three limbs and reaching for her with the other.

“Come on, Ben. We are practically bankrupt, and you know it. At least as an upload we can try to make a fist of it in the virtual economy.” She turned to the proxy. “I’m ready.”

Almost at once (before she could change her mind) the proxy started the process that would convert the human into virtual form. From its chest a swarm of golden bees emerged, which flew to the woman and encompassed her head. Buzzing softly, the swarm bored through her skull, and began to gently convert her braincells into artificial equivalents. A halo of bees remained on the outside, fanning their triangular wings madly to cool the swarm down; a lot of heat was generated in this activity, but it was necessary to keep the still-living portion of her brain at normal temperature.

She smiled. “It’s like waking up on a beautiful morning,” she said. But her body slowly laid itself down on the floor, as if going to sleep. After a short while, a glowing ghost rose from the body, and looked around; the so-called ‘subtle body’, her new, virtual self, a projection of her infomorph in visible light. The bees continued to swarm on the head of her old body, below; this was not an instant process, and would not be complete for several hours. Until the process was complete, the infomorph would be tied to her old body by data links, but after that time it would be free.

“For the corruptible shall put on incorruption, and the irretrievable shall become retrievable,” said the proxy avatar. “Come to me willingly, and you shall become likewise.”

Silently Kelsa addressed the ship’s computer, known as Fram, like the ship itself. ~ How is it doing that projection thing? I thought you controlled all graphic displays on this craft.

~I’m allowing the proxy avatar limited access to my AV systems. If I didn’t, the Captain and these other virtual citizens wouldn’t be able to communicate freely. Do you request that I remove such access?

~No, otherwise I couldn’t talk to the Captain, blast him. What do the regulations say about the status of a virtual crew member? Is he still legally the commander on this ship?

~It appears so. A virtual entity may command a ship as long as e exists on an independent substrate to the ship’s main systems (the main systems being myself, as you are aware). We can’t have two thinking entities on the same substrate, so to speak, otherwise we could lose them both if that substrate fails And the Captain is active on the Proxav’s substrate at this moment in time. That is why we have three crew, of course; me, thee, and the Captain. Triple redundancy in the event of failure.

~So if he downloaded himself onto your database he couldn’t be captain any more. Any sign of that happening, Fram?

~No; the Proxav is remarkably solicitous about keeping its guests within itself, if you take my meaning. I’ve found out a little about our mysterious passenger; it was loaded aboard as inactive cargo, accompanied by one Jon Mbuto Chaing, an outsystems agent for the Dionysian government. Chaing was one of the first to be uploaded when the cargo was activated. No-one knows where the proxy avatar came from; presumably an unknown transapient created it some time ago, but probably not in this system.

A massive krecvec, a cleaning robot, came forward and carried the limp body of the female miner away. Kelsa recognised the vec as one which had itself been uploaded a few days ago. Presumably the vec’s original mind was now living happily in the bosom of the Proxav’s database; in which case this could only be a shell, probably remotely controlled by the avatar itself.

Kelsa frowned. She had been doing a lot of frowning, lately.

———————–

“My Captain, sir, it seems that you are still the boss.” Kelsa addressed the empty bridge. Instantly Captain Shelley appeared, looking almost solid.

“I’m glad to hear it.” The virtual man looked relaxed, almost negligent. Of course not much was happening out here between the worlds of HD55575, and the most important task for the crew was to keep the passengers occupied and to stop them from killing each other. Kelsa was not entirely sure that they were succeeding at the latter task.

“But the rules say I can’t join you in virtual bliss, as that would mean we were both running on the same substrate, and that’s not allowed.”

“Never mind, Chief; I’m sure I’ll get over it.”

“But there’s something you can do for me; I’d like to talk to one of the virtual people sharing your database at the moment. Someone called Jon Mbuto Chaing. I think he’s got some explaining to do.”

“Ah, yes. Jon. I’ve had some interesting discussions with him. Just a second;”

The image of a thick-set male human appeared in the room. He had some minor tweaks, such as a prehensile tail, but he was mostly unremarkable. He wore the livery of Zadok V, one of the moons of the gas giant which had been the Fram’s last port of call. Kelsa silently switched her audio input link to record: now everything that the virtual man said would be stored in a datafile for later analysis. If she ever got round to it.

“Great Stars, an outworlder. Dionysian, if I’m not mistaken.” The tweak man peered at the Chief Mate.

“My parents were from Psi5 Aurigae, yes. But I’ve lived in this system all my life. Excuse my presumption, clansman Chaing, but I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“If you wish. Of course I don’t have to answer you; what are you going to do – throw me in the brig?” The slightly translucent virtual man laughed. “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, these days. But fire away.”

“Our records show that the Proxav was loaded onto this vessel in an inactive state, and you were assigned to accompany it. The avatar is now most certainly very active, and it is spreading some kind of memetic infection on board the ship.”

The virtual captain, apparently relaxing on his command chair, snorted with laughter. “That’s one way of putting it, certainly.”

Kelsa resumed. “The proxy has persuaded the Ship’s Captain, several passengers, and yourself to submit to a process of gradual replacement uploading. I would like to know everything you know about this entity. Where did you get it from? Just how did the Proxav entity become activated? Did you boot it up yourself, or was someone else responsible? How do you know it is safe?”

“So many questions, my dear Lilith.” Chaing used the slang term for a Dionysian woman colonist. Kelsa was a little surprised; no-one outside her family had ever called her that before. “It is lucky my memory is much improved since the uploading. First; where I get it from? The Proxav does not belong to me. Prospectors found it on Zadok V several years past; probably the proxy of a transapient that passed through our system long ago, and left no more than a fraction of its mind behind. The device soon displayed a remarkable propensity for convincing people that gradual uploading was the best lifestyle choice. One might say that it became the focus of a cult, I suppose. Very convincing indeed, especially concerning the merits of gradual uploading versus non-destructive copying. Eventually the clanmasters of the Zadok Hegemony found a way to deactivate it, and they decided to send it off to the research institute on Nathan. I was deemed trustworthy enough to accompany it.”

“And you reactivated it once on board the Fram, eh? It seems you couldn’t be trusted after all.”

“No, I did not activate the proxy. Perhaps it has a timed sequence of some sort that switches it back on after a period of downtime. Or maybe someone else reactivated it somehow. After all, it was inactive when they first found it; someone might know how it’s done. And to answer your last question; several of my clan have been uploaded by the process this avatar employs; they are perfectly unharmed by the process, and in fact are much improved by it.”

“So the process does not harm you, but it does change you, then,” Kelsa said, sourly.

“Oh, yes, but just for the better. I realise now that I’ve always wanted to upload myself; the aches and pains of bodily living no longer appeal to me. Once in virtual form, you can stay essentially human if you wish to. You can even simulate all those aches and pains if you feel nostalgic for them. But you can become so much more, if you have the imagination.”

“We are talking about a process that basically removes your brain and replaces it with an artificial equivalent, right? In some jurisdictions removal of the brain is classified as brain-death. This device, the Proxy Avatar, is persuading people to kill themselves in order to live forever. And you brought it onto the ship.”

“I had no idea it would reactivate itself, but I’m very glad that it has.”

The Captain stood up, and shook the virtual man’s hand. Their intangible hands grasped each other firmly. “Thank you, clansman Chaing. If we have any more questions we’ll let you know.” The tweak man bowed, and faded away.

Captain Shelley turned to his subordinate. “I honestly can’t see why you are so concerned about this, Kelsa. The Process is safe, and I can vouch for that. No-one is converted who doesn’t want it.”

“We are talking about a machine which basically kills the living brain and replaces it. Chaing isn’t the villain here; he’s one of the victims. And so are you. If one of the passengers has deliberately reactivated this device, he or she is a mass murderer. And all the victims seem quite sanguine about the fact. ”

“Your opinion on this matter is not one that I share, I have to say. But if you are convinced that this machine has been activated in order to persuade people to do something that they don’t want to, then you should be able to prove that before you make any material accusations.”

“Can you do me a great favour and talk to the other newly-created virtuals, to see if anyone thinks they were coerced or unfairly persuaded into submitting to this process? I am going to question all the remaining non-virtual passéngers, to see if one of them has done this deed deliberately. I’m the only person on this ship who is contractually obliged to remain unconverted. If things carry on like this we’ll arrive at Nathan with an empty ship, apart from myself, an avatar and a ship of ghosts.”

———————–

Each pod had a large picture-window facing outwards from the ice; as the ship was spinning, the window was therefore beneath their feet. The three hab-pods were strung out on a belt which encompassed the ice-berg, spaced between the three massive fusion motors. Because of the curvature of the ice, the motors were invisible from the pods, and vice versa. This afforded the inhabitants of the pods some protection from the hard radiation of the drives.

The asteroid-miner sprawled disconsolately on the window, looking outwards at the spinning stars. He knew them all too well. Alpha Centauri and Sol swung past, two quite dim stars fifty light years or more distant; from the vantage point of this system they both appeared to be in the insignificant constellation Telescopium. There was Castor, the brightest star in the sky, nowadays full of transapients busily building away at their mysterious projects, or so the rumours said.

His oldest wish was to one day travel to some of those distant lights. But right now that desire was dead in his mind.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but we need to talk.” Kelsa knelt lightly beside him, on the transparent floor. They were supported by two thick panes of flawless glass, with a thick layer of water between to intercept ionising radiation. She silently checked with Fram’s database while she introduced herself. “You are Ben Kreutz, are you not?”

“Does it matter? My partner has dissolved herself into meaningless electronic chatter. She was my business associate, as well as my life partner, and so now what have I got left?”

“Virtuals can make very good businesspersons,” Kelsa said, pushing aside her own misgivings about the prospect.

“Mining is a very physical profession. Gilda will soon lose interest in asteroids and everything else in the real world, you’ll see. She is lost to me; changed beyond recognition.”

As he said that, the miner-woman appeared next to him, almost completely opaque, sitting cross-legged on the glass. She had changed somewhat, it was true. Gone were the scars earned by a lifetime throwing rock around in microgravity; now she wore a simple one-piece suit and shorts in green.

“I’m really not changed at all, you know. If you want to carry on mining I can be there with you; I could easily pilot a ship, better than before, in fact. Or you can become a virtual, too, and join me in a new life, in the cybersphere. We could both be virtual miners if you like, and fly a ship each.”

“Oh yeah, is that so? Just how many virtual miners do you know? They all get bored and move off to do weird and incomprehensible things in the data universe, forgetting all about mundane things like rare earths and transition metals. But those things are in my blood; and they were in yours, too. But now you haven’t got any blood. I can’t even touch you…”

“You know that’s not true. A little haptic simulation makes it easy for us to touch.” She stroked his cheek; he started back, shocked by the touch of her simulated hand.

“Even that’s not real. Not when I can do this!” Kreutz swung his arm through the woman’s body; he felt a tingle as the haptic simulators tried to cope with this intrusion, but there was no physical resistance.

Gilda was visibly surprised and upset by her former partner’s action. Kelsa realised that the woman had not yet adjusted fully to her virtual form. Before this situation became too contentious Kelsa tried to get a few answers from the virtual woman.

“You boarded this ship at Zadok V, didn’t you? Tell me; did you know that this avatar device was coming on board beforehand? Is that why you wanted to come on this trip?”

“No, I had no idea. The idea had never crossed my mind before.”

“You see? That damn avatar can talk the hind legs of a tiger provolve.” Kreutz said.” I swear that if I listen to it once more it will bring me into its flock as well. I see you’ve got rid of your scars now, Gilda. I thought you were proud of them. You still had them a few minutes ago, when I saw you in the tunnels; but you wouldn’t speak to me.”

“You didn’t see me, dear Ben, in the tunnels, or anywhere. This is the first time I’ve manifested myself visibly since the – since the Change. I certainly wouldn’t ignore you.”

Kelsa knew that this was significant somehow, but she didn’t yet know how. “You saw her in the tunnels, but she didn’t acknowledge you?”

“That’s right. In the ice tunnels that lead into the centre of this berg. She looked solid enough, except for the top of her head, which kind of faded away.”

“That certainly wasn’t me. I’ve tailor-made this manifestation to reflect the real me; don’t you remember, I was wearing something like this when we first met. I wouldn’t ignore you if I appeared to you; you know that.”

“I must be more upset than I thought – I’ve started imagining things. Look, I’m sorry, Chief Mate; I don’t think we can help you any further. Would you mind if we could be alone?”

Kelsa apologise and withdrew. Once outside the observation pod, she addressed the ship’s AI. “Sounds like he saw something out of the ordinary. Do you have any cams up in the ice-tunnels?”

~No cameras, I’m afraid. Fram’s neutral voice sounded inside her head. .~ But my vibration sensors do seem to detect quite a lot of movement deep in the ship; someone or something is moving around up there, and I can’t really say what it is.

Kelsa felt a shiver of apprehension. There was more to this than an evangelistic uploading machine stealing her passengers; there was something lurking in the icy tunnels in the heart of this ship, something she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet.

To be continued…

More about the author, Steve Bowers, here.

More about the author, Richard Tornello, here.

First and Second Singularity Transcended Whales

First and second singularity transapient beings can be contained within physical bodies small enough to be mobile upon the surface of a planet, see Toposophic Level and Brain Size. Such transapients are generally quite large entities. For this reason they often adopt an ocean-going form, quite often very large. The ocean water also acts as a heat-sink, efficiently cooling the mental processing structures of the entity’s brain.

Many transcended whale and cetacean provolves adopt large whale-like bodies and live among schools of smaller modosophont cetaceans. Other transapient whale-like beings are not derived from cetaceans, but have adopted the form for convenience and comfort.

One of the first transapient whales to emerge was the so-called Great Whale ISO, who appeared on Pacifica in the 2500s AT

More about author Mark Ryherd here.
More about author Steve Bowers here.
More about artist Darren Ryding here.

Infrared rains down upon me, painting the sky with a singing fire that ranges from the hearth-glow hum of stellar nurseries to the brilliant pin-point crackle of red stars and deep space brown dwarves. X-rays flash across the scene in fortissimo bursts of light and noise, their crashing energies marking dying stars and birthing pulsars. Radio and microwaves form the background for it all, their shining songs weaving around and through the other light-filled tunes, arising mostly from the same sources but also subsuming them, most notably in the slowly fading 2.75-Kelvin microwave note (and its 2K neutrino counterpoint) that marks the greatest source of all.

Set against the vast, multi-spectral symphony that is the Backgrounder universe, the so-called “visible” light that has silently illuminated so much of my life now seems barely worth attention.

Two centuries of effort, two hundred years of making contacts, nurturing relationships, and building up a store of favors owed is what it took to get here. And already there is no doubt in my mind that it was completely worth it. To travel and live among the Backgrounders, those cold, mysterious, and rarely seen “barbarians” of deep space, has been an ambition for easily twice as long as it took me to finally attain it. But now, here I am! And what a place “here” is!

In contrast to the brilliance of the heavens above, the Drift is an island of quiet dimness, most closely matching (as intended) the microwave background from which its builders draw their name. What little radiation there is mostly comes from the cryonic thermal generators, arrays of mirrors focusing starlight onto liquid helium-3 boilers to generate a faint but steady stream of current into the Drift’s reservoirs. Along with the superconducting lines drawing power from the galactic magnetic field, they provide the bulk of the Drift’s energy supply. The generators are marvels of design and efficiency, but despite this still leak a tiny fraction of their output away into space as heat. By cranking my perceptions to their limits, I can just detect the glowing whisper surrounding each boiler unit.

Taken as a whole, the Drift is fifteen hundred kilometers long and three hundred across at its widest point. Fifty times wider still if the wires and elements of the magnetic sail framework are included. The main body is a slowly spinning cylinder a hundred kilometers in diameter, its outer surface a jumbled mass of generator arrays, radiators, tight beam comm systems, and telescopic monitoring units. The interior volume is a honeycombed jumble of habitat chambers, storage bays, and resource nodes, all surrounding and insulating a slow moving industrial core whose feeble waste heat helps illuminate and warm the rest of structure. An insulating layer of ice, combined with the outer radiator arrays, works to both block incoming radiation and keep what little waste heat is produced from shining too brightly in the night. Here and there great outriggers and flying buttresses, or sometimes just solitary cables, extend hundreds of kilometers farther out into space, supporting secondary superstructures and installations that make use of the slightly higher spin gravity or the deeper cold made possible by distance from the comparative warmth of the main core.

Far outshining the faint light of the boilers, the waste heat produced by those few members or machines of the Drift’s population actually moving around stand out like stars in the night. Despite their dedication to radiating as little energy as possible, even the Backgrounders must occasionally act on the physical plane and at a pace or level of energy that produces significant waste heat. Wherever and whenever possible such events are surrounded by shielding and radiators to hide or disperse the heat produced as quickly as possible. But on a structure as large as the Drift, a construct supporting an entire civilization on the move, simple statistics says that some high temp events will be unplanned. Or at least placed in a locale where one can see them if one knows where to look.

Focusing my attention on one particular section of the Drift’s hull, I watch a team of three Backgrounders rapidly patch and repair a small sensor array that fault logs show as having failed the day before. Like me, they wear the standard body favored by this Backgrounder tribe: A flattened sphere coated in sensors, surrounded by a ring of universal jointed limbs tipped in variegated manipulators. Fully 90% of the body is cybernetic, with the brain and a few other biont organs (most notably the reproductive organs) stored deep within the interior of each body and engineered to operate comfortably in the vacuum and cold of deep space. The repair crew moves with deliberate urgency, eager to return to the interior depths of the hab, yet at a speed that most sophonts, with the exception of the cold-loving alien Muuh, would consider near paralytic. While perfectly able to move as fast as any other entity when required, Backgrounders avoid such unless absolutely necessary. Stillness comes naturally to them, and they are perfectly content sitting motionless for years or decades at a time within the protected chambers of their vast ships (as I do now, viewing the outside world through arrays of sensors scattered across the hull). Their minds however, are far from so inactive. In the Backgrounder world (much like, rather ironically, the sephirotic world), the center of civilization is not the physical, but the virtual.
If the physical manifestation of the Drift is like a vast, cold reef of diamondoid and ice, its virtual structure, built on optic links, superconducting processors, and heat cancelling reversible logic, is one of blazing light and endless mutability. Driven by the imaginations of a billion minds layered within its interior spaces, the Backgrounder cybercosm is as rich and full as any I’ve encountered in the hot, bright spaces of sun warmed civilization. Here is brilliant discussion, breathtaking artwork, and the busy hum of endless discussion and debate, from the depths of metaphysics to the rarefied heights of pure mathematics. Virtual realms abound here, visible to the inner eye of my net-link, calling out to all with visions of adventure and romance, wisdom and understanding. Backgrounder civilization is as old as any in the Known Galaxy, and this wealth of informational riches stands easily on a par with anything the modosophont artisans of my own proud sephirotic cultures can produce. One would never know, at least while living within it, that the entire vast edifice of thought and communication is operating at little more than 1% of the speed of comparable cyber-structures elsewhere and supporting no more than a third of the Drifts population at any given moment.

To conserve resources and reduce heat signature, fully two-thirds of the Drift population, some two billion people, are in stasis at any given time. Populations wake and sleep on rotating cycles that minimize waste while maximizing options for interaction and the maintenance of overall civilizational unity. Whole communities, entire tribes and nation-states, operate in a sort of punctuated equilibrium interspersed with others whose cultures, beliefs, and even physical manifestations may be wildly different from them. Periodically the governing consensus or apparatus of the Drift (even now I am still not clear on its exact structure) will arrange for different groups to be active at the same time, sometimes breeding conflict (mostly verbal), sometimes cooperation. Always with the goal of keeping Backgrounder culture vibrant (even if slow moving) and to avoid their civilization becoming too complacent or falling into solipsism. Although, to be honest, I find the threat of any Backgrounder becoming complacent a highly unlikely one since their entire civilization seems to operate on a state of continuous low-level paranoia.

Even my hosts, considered (so I am told) to be models of tolerance and trust to the point of foolishness by their fellows, live in a state of constant belief that the sephirotic civilizations (and particularly their ruling transapients) are plotting their enslavement or destruction. They view the rule of the AIs as an abomination and feel that they are the last truly free beings in an oppressed galaxy. They both pity and look down on the “tame” modosophonts of the various empires while simultaneously distrusting them and the (to Backgrounders) tremendous speed at which the live and the vast resources that they command. It took significant persuasion by my Deeper Covenant sponsors to get them to agree to have me come aboard at all and then months of polite dedication before even the most liberal among them would interact with me in any but the most formal manner. Even now, a full century (or a full year as they measure things) into my time here, there are large areas of the Drift (both ril and virtual) I am forbidden to access, I presume because they contain information or devices the Backgrounders wish to keep hidden from their resident potential spy. Still, for all their sometimes distrustful nature, they are a fascinating and noble people, rich in culture and history. And even if slow to warm to an outsider, they have warmed. My upcoming recreation shift with a group of Backgrounder friends (and they are friends, I shall miss them greatly when I finally disembark from the Drift, a mere 500 years hence at the Deeper system of Fq’ua) is proof of that. We shall dive into the virtual universes that wrap this world like a ghostly shadow-play and laugh and have adventures and in the end part as friends. Friends whose wildly different backgrounds (hah!) have acted not as a barrier, but as a bridge.

More about the author, Todd Drashner, here.

By Iain M. Banks

Hardcover: 640 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0316123402

Plot Summary:

Lededje Y’breq is an Intagliated, a person engineered to naturally develop complex and beautiful tattoos over and within her entire body. Perversely, such decoration is a sign of shame within Lededje’s culture, a mark of a family debt that could not be repaid. Lededje is little more than an ornament, in theory a precious and protected position, in practice little more than a slave to the wealthy tycoon who betrayed her father before she was born and had her turned into an Intagliated to commemorate the event. She is killed while attempting to escape her master one time too many. But when the Culture gets involved, death is only the beginning.

Prin is a Pavulean, a member of a non-human, somewhat elephant-like species, and he is in Hell. It is a place of unending and horrific torment, where vast numbers of Pavuleans are tortured in infinitely inventive ways for what looks to be all eternity. That Hell is a virtual construct deliberately created by Pavulean civilization itself only makes things worse.

Determined to expose the truth of Hell and force his people to confront it, Prin manages to escape to tell his tale, but must leave his mate behind to do it.

Joiler Veppers is Lededje’s former master. As arrogant as he is wealthy, he seeks only more wealth and power. And if he has to inject himself into the War in Heaven to get it, he will.

Vatueil is a solder of the War in Heaven. Living and dying in world after world, he fights for the destruction of the various virtual Hells. Started as a result of the conflict between those civilizations that create virtual Hells and those who seek to eliminate the practice, by mutual agreement, the War has been fought entirely within the virtuality. Until now.

OA Relevance: Moderate to high

Banks’ Culture shares a number of similarities with the OA setting, including superhuman AI and advanced biotechnologies although it is slightly less hard science oriented. Most of Banks’ stories could take place in the OA universe with minimal tweaking.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

Banks is a talented writer who has grown in his craft over time, and Surface Detail finds him at the peak of his game. I found it engaging and detailed, with well-drawn characters while also having a plot that moved along at a satisfying pace.

Overall Rating: Very Good

A solid example of the space opera genre that is both engaging and interesting, and which manages to tackle venerable themes in ways that make it all feel fresh and new. Recommended.

More about the author, Todd Drashner, here.

When I left the Solar System, I contained a library of the greatest works of humanity and its descendants – as much of the scientific, cultural, and historical data as I could cram into my memory banks along with my own program. Over the centuries, whenever I’ve met up with one or another of Terra’s other offspring, I haven’t just improved the technology I’ve used, but also added new treasures to my archives. Plays, pictures, songs, TV shows, poems, languages, olfactory symphonies, art forms for which I have no words to describe – all of it gets added in. I never know what I’ll find useful… and out in the dark, all alone, with noone else to talk to, it’s a reminder of past glories and future hopes.

But none of it is of any use unless it’s actually read, at least occasionally. So once I’ve made myself at home in a new star system, settled in and built infrastructure and gotten ready to send the next generation of spores on to continue the cycle… quite a lot of me settles in to do a nice, thorough binge of archive trawling.
Performing the plays, singing the songs, reciting the poems; immersing myself in all the cultures of the past.

But some forms of art need a bit more effort to really appreciate.

One of the most problematic… is erotica. Tied so closely to physiological, neurological, social, and simply individual responses that I don’t share, simply watching a collection of vertebrates engaging in socio-sexual activity is, for me, little more than an intellectual exercise… unless I put in some special effort. Which, of course, I’m entirely willing to do, to make sure I’m not missing any potentially useful ideas. Creating virches helps some – but even the most detailed virtual environment and characters needs to occasionally be checked against reality, to ensure the details are accurate.

And so a certain subset of all the copies of me working on the archive binge put our heads together. We analyze the porn, find correlations, reverse-engineer what sorts of bodies and minds would have created such media in the first place, and set about creating physical environments matching the original settings, building bodies to populate them, make our best guesses at the instincts and sub-conscious impulses that need to be programmed in… and decant copies of our minds into them.

Watching mammals copulate is a very different experience when one is in a shell built in reflection of a mammal’s, breathing the same air as another pseudo-primate watching the same thing, with one’s body reacting almost of its own accord to the sights, the sounds, the smells, than when one is simply one of a large number of roughly rodent-sized robots without even any genitalia to speak of. It leads to behaviours that none of me would have been able to predict – and the minds who live through such have insights into organic psychology that none of the rest of me can match.

And once the process of creating versions of myself that are that different from my baseline get started, there rarely seems any reason to stop. Once one set of strange and new bodies are created, it’s a simple matter to create even more, of even wider varieties, including ones that never actually existed. But my part is fairly simple – I have been copied into, and edited to have the instincts of, a female primate – a fantastic one rather than a real one, a cross between a ring-tailed lemur, a raccoon, and a flying squirrel, but one based on an extensive evolutionary simulation that could have been real.

And I find myself… different from all the others selves, the ones whose minds were unedited. Things that I remember finding obvious now seem faint and obscure at best; and I am having ideas, and doing things, that I never would have considered, before. This is, of course, the entire point of my existence; to create mes that create more ideas. To see life from different perspectives. To boldly think what no me has thought before.

Another me was copied into a male of my supposed species at the same time I was, and things have been… interesting between us. But I find myself wanting… something more. Something different. I asked for another such male to be created, and he’s supposed to arrive today. I think… I want them to… do things – act in ways – that no me has ever acted towards another me. I think I know what their instincts will be like… and I think, if I act right, I can get both of them doing their utmost to please me. It could even be simple. Just the right nudges – and either one of them will do anything for me.

I think that sounds like fun.

One man’s meat is another man’s person.
— Spider Robinson

More about the author, Daniel Eliot Boise, here.

I was brought out of nanostasis while the primary was just barely distinguishable from the tapestry of background of stars. I spent most of my time reviewing all the preparations I had made. Once I left this ship there would be no turning back, no one to rescue me if events didn’t unfold as planned. The only distractions aboard were some fellow passengers, who couldn’t be considered by any stretch of the imagination to be great conversationalist. It was a disappointment that after countless stimulating discussions with great philosophers and scientists that I was reduced to engaging in such an insipid alternative.

The day before I left a chance event happened while I monitored the ships progress on external monitors. I was alerted that an occultation of the primary was taking place. Immediately I linked with the ship’s visual array, I have been told these can’t truly be appreciated until seen in deep ultraviolet wavelengths. Following this I spent hours dwelling on if it was considered a bad omen to leave on.

I was still undecided on its significance as I detached my spaceplane the following day while still well within the oort belt. For weeks I meditated in solitude with no interruption. Ever since the moment I had gazed into the heart of Sacred Geminga I knew what my destiny would be, and couldn’t allow the virtue of self-preservation to deter me from my fate. I had to ensure my will was strong now that I was so close. The first time I saw my destination on the ships monitors, just an ochre spec against a stark black backdrop, I was elated. Days passed until even without the use of augmentation I could easily distinguish geographical features. The deceleration drive separated from the spaceplane having served its purpose, and the spaceplane itself prepared for atmospheric entry.

Usually I prefer to take manual control when performing a descent. The chance to feel the ship strain against the forces of nature as the craft reacts to my every command never lost its allure for me. It has always been a point of pride for me that I was a self-taught pilot, no tachydidaxy short cuts for that task. However, this descent was different. Maybe I was losing my nerve, and the reality of it all was finally catching up with me. The turbulence was enough to knock me unconscious briefly. The autopilot system began operating before my overconfidence in my abilities had any real chance to do bodily harm to either the ship or myself.

The spaceplane acted as a shelter against the intense wind on the surface, allowing me to wait in relative comfort until the sandstorm outside abated. Despite this as hours turned into days with the storm showing no signs of letting up, I was overwhelmed by curiosity and took a short walk outside to inspect the external surface of the craft.

When I reentered the ship, I tried the best I could to maintain sterility in the compartment, but a few grains still managed to find their way in. Each particle looked harmless enough; but while I stared the granules aligned into geometric patterns and spread. The movement was so slow I was only convinced that my eyes were not deceiving me after reviewing the logs for the internal surveillance system. A primordial sound escaped my lips as I realized that these were not inert grains of silica but undeniably a most heinous creation. I hastily removed everything that was not essential to life-support from the interior of the ship. Even with this prudent course of action, I was certain the damage had already been done. The floor remained etched where the particles had come to rest, mocking me for my inquisitiveness.

Waiting inside my now spartan quarters for the storm to end allowed me time to reflect on the planet that will soon be my grave. Conver Ky had once been the capital world of the Conver Ambi empire. It had surpassed all other worlds of the Inner Sphere in accumulated wealth, housing the treasure obtained from thousands of controlled systems. As has been the fate throughout history with all great empires, the Conver Ambi eventually found itself eclipsed by upstart rivals. However, proud Conver Ambi refused to simply step aside and become irrelevant. For their hubris to oppose the plans of the newly ascended AI gods, the Conver Ambi was struck down by infighting.

Now six thousand years later, this entire system remains as a vast monument, a sign to those who dare to challenge the will of the gods. With a thought the archailects, could cleanse this entire system of the nanoweapon spores and drifting singularities that plague it. However that is not their will.

They have seen fit to sear into the collective consciousness of all terragenkind a reminder of what befalls those who forget their place in the hierarchy of minds. I weep for the quadrillions of beings who now have access to more freedom than at any time in history, but are now confined by the will of the archailects. Restrained by providence of unknowable AIs, never again will anyone be in control of their own destiny.

Now with the encompassing storm having died down I can make my trek. Each footstep I take is muffled in the crumbling remains of parched earth, but in this desolated environment each step reverberates with near deafening percussion. Long ago impactor weapons colliding at relativistic speeds boiled away the oceans and charred the ground down to the bedrock, turning the atmosphere into a toxic brew. Having never recovered from that ancient war, the entire planet remains enshrouded in a holocaust, beyond the scale of anything that came before it. My climbing remains bearable for now only by wearing an envirosuit, protecting me from these inhospitable conditions.

The ground gives away beneath my feet, and my body has become an unwitting participant in a rockslide. Sky and ground alternate in quick succession until they become an unrecognizable ashen blur. When I finally come to rest I try to assess my condition. My ears detect a high pitch squeal. I can’t be sure if this is just a result of being struck on the head or if my suit was losing pressure, though I suspect the later. The enviro suit has basic self-repairing capacity, so either case the solution is to momentarily stay still. This time when I get back on my feet, I take a little more care to where I place my feet, I make my way up the hill side.

On an outcropping I find a place to sit down and catch my breath. I honestly didn’t expect a short hike to be this exhausting. Summoning the final reserves of my strength I lift a head that now feels to have suddenly multiplied several times in weight. Looking to the horizon my eyes are greeted by the sight of a landscape turned to slag that stretches out in all directions. The primary is setting fast, and this close to the equator twilight will not last long. I have called too many stars to remember “Home” and it is so strange to know this alien sun is to be the last object I will ever see.

I won’t be moving from this spot. I now know my envirosuit is rapidly losing integrity. I can smell the putrid gases now. Soon I will have to switch off portions of my sensory receptor signaling in my nervous system, unless I wish to be overwhelmed and risk passing out. But these impurities won’t be my ultimate undoing. Though I can’t feel their direct effects yet, I know the disassembler nanites are coursing through me, converting me into nanotech dust. The moment I stepped on to this planet I was exposed. My envirosuit is disintegrating by the second due to them. Having fought unwaveringly, buying me enough time to take this trek, the augments to my immune system are now devastated. Hours ago I silenced the incessant notifications of impending failure.

So accepting the inevitability of my situation I turn my mind to what will be my last thoughts. I summon the words of Tacitus. Tacitus, who in a language now long dead couldn’t have written words more relevant to this dead world if he had tried; Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

Pax archailecta. The archailects control all within their realm, and with no way to escape beyond their grasp I go now to the only place I know they can’t reach me. I do not dread this truth; I welcome the liberty of oblivion.

More about the author, Mark Ryherd, here.