Atalya walked back into the common room, moving restlessly among the couches and cushions. Blinking into the ship’s personality matrice, she discovered nothing had changed; only the srreals of two people were aboard, both in privacy mode. She clicked into communications hub and found no waiting messages. Calling up that subsystem’s alife she subvocally ordered it to connect with Progeny 3. Instead of a connection menu, she saw in the right corner of her internal viewpoint the ship’s glyph, in shadow. “Privacy lock – not for the whole bloody ship!” She shouted.
She was shouting at alife. Loss of self control– how disappointingly nebbish. Though perhaps the fault does lie with the alife. Calling up the communications monitor, she ordered a system diagnostic, and a few moments late received an affirmative reply. She again tried to connect, and again received the privacy glyph.
Atalya’s life did not include events that made no sense. Now, suddenly, it did. And she couldn’t just pace around, wondering why. She’d have to go there, through the spine’s temporary corridor leading to Progeny 3. Though she hadn’t expected to do so again; she’d said her goodbyes before her last trip to Outpost.
Atalya walked out the door to the plaza. As she moved beneath the branches of the treebot, a message notice clicked into her inner vision. She blinked it open, and saw Jan’s srreal. A moment later the srreal was replaced by his real image; dark brown skin, blue eyes, crown of computronium rings.
Subvocally, she sent, ~What’s happening there? Has something gone wrong?~
~Wrong, no. But a lot has happened since you left. I . . .this is hard to say, ‘Tal. I know you won’t like it, that you won’t be coming with us. New Morning has run simulations of your mind state.~
Things are worse than I’d imagined; Jan seems to be living in some alternative world! An internal alarm sent a series of red dots across her vision, warning of chemical cascades. Her bodimonitor requested permission to counteract their effect. She ignored it.
~New Morning- – who the hell is New Morning and what right has he she or e to run simulations of my mind state?~ Shouting now seemed an appropriate reaction. Even the subvocal equivalent of shouting.
Jan glanced away from her, and down, before meeting her eyes. ~”New Morning is the name the ship took. Our ship, Progeny 3. E achieved sapience and is ready to ascend. So are we, ‘Tal.~
Atalya laughed, abruptly relieved. ~So, this is a joke. All right, enough is enough.~
His expression told her otherwise. ~Ascension has to happen eventually, for everyone. I hadn’t thought about being ready. None of us were planning it. But when New Morning asked our help in creating an ascension package, everything just came together in my mind. And everyone had the same experience. Well, except for Gedd and Eyono. They’re little more than youngsters, after all. It was amazing, almost transcendent. I know you can’t imagine what it was like, and I’m sorry about that ‘Tal. Very sorry.~
It’s meme subversion! The ship subverted the whole populace. Atalya’s awareness dropped into her workspace, where she frantically accessed blocks of knowledge and theory on meme subversion and its antidotes.
In moments she knew what she’d already suspected; there were no remedies available to her, not in an immediate timeframe. New Morning was too far ahead of her.
Atalya shifted back into the physical, noted she was sitting on the paving tiles, the warmth of her presence causing colorful designs to ripple out across the plaza. Her back brushed against the rim of the treebot’s nutrient pool. When had she decided to sit? She brought Jan’s image into the center of her visual focus. She wasn’t quite ready to admit defeat. If I can find some small loophole in the subversion! ~How can you give up our plans for Progeny 7? Everything we accomplished this longcycle. Do you remember our shifts in overseeing the asteroid excavation– setting the factory templates, birthing the alife?~
~ I haven’t lost any memories. But my perspective has changed. All those things seem to have happened long ago, to someone I was . . .then.~
~Jan, do you remember us? You and me, together? ~
~’Talya. Don’t go on with this. Accept what’s happened. We all wish you the best – for now, and for your future ascension. New Morning will be undocking in four minicycles. But Progeny 5 has moved into the system. You won’t have to wait long for its docking. Gedd and Eyono are already onboard with you. You’ll go on with your plans for the ship.~
~With half the planned populace? Without our cohere?~ Atalya hated the pleading tone of her voice. She’d never heard it before. A slight eye movement to the left authorized her bodimonitor’s hormonal intervention.
~Good-bye ‘Talya. From all of us.~ His gaze held hers, waiting, his eyebrows lifted.
~Good-bye, Jan. Tell the others.~
His image disappeared.
Sometime later she noticed she still sat beneath the treebot. She felt sudden hatred for the plaza and its subsentient routines and subroutines, for the deviant she’d rescued and coded into it. Remembering the deviant’s deliberate, multiple efforts at expansion into its original environment, Atalya wished she’d left it to the mercies of the defense system. Was that the way Progeny 3 had become New Morning: from a single routine extending, merging, expanding, subverting? How long had it taken to unbalance the steady state of the alife layers, how long to ruin the plans for her life? Certainly no more than three smallcycles. For the first time, Atalya realized the delicate, fragile balance of that steady state.
Did nebs like Bawajit and his Shamballistas actually have a better grasp of reality, keeping themselves separate from alife?
Even so, their version of truth had nothing to do with her. She was twin-stream, as much artificial as organic.
Will this happen again? Will Progeny 7 gain sentience someday?
Could she lose this ship too?
She remembered the snifter, asleep now in her nanobones. If she spliced it into her primary personality, she’d become ever vigilant, watchful for alife deviance. Her body and sense of self chilled at the thought. She wondered what that would do to her art. Could she create and destroy at the same time? Her thoughts turned to the Dravidian gods of Temple Park. Her interpretation of the old mythologies. They’d surely been capable of destruction, to protect what they’d loved. Yet their world had ended.
As hers would also. As Jan had said, ascension had to happen for everyone, eventually. The archailects must have programmed that into the structure of the universe, alife and organic. But she had some control over when; more time was available to her than to the ancients. She could find new loves, create new worlds, and protect them.
Closing her awareness from the ship, she entered her workspace and touched the blue snifter icon, waking her modified self.
~You have no idea how busy we’re going to be~ she told it.
More about the author, Josephine Goodman, here.
Very very nice! Much more … human than my stuff