Rapture of the Nerds

pity. “Why?” she asks.

“It calls itself the Authority. It claims it represents a hive-intelligence merged from about 216

intelligent species from the oldest part of the galaxy. It claims that there were once about four orders of magnitude more such species, but the rest were wiped out in vicious, galactic resource wars that only ended with the merger of the remaining combatants into a single entity. Now it patrols the galaxy to ensure that any species that attempt transcendence are fit to join it. If it finds a species wanting, pfft! It takes care of them before they get to be a problem.”

“You’re saying that this thing can move faster than the speed of light, and that it’s descended from species that had the same ability?”

“We don’t know much about its capabilities, but yes, those sound about right.”

“No, on the contrary: That sounds completely crazy. You’ve been had. Why would a civilization that could beat lightspeed bother to fight wars? What, precisely, could they fight over? If your neighbor wants your rocks, go somewhere else with more of the same rocks. Unclaimed rocks and sunlight aren’t scarce; otherwise, the neighbors would have dismantled us for computronium back in the Triassic. So the resource wars they’re talking about are a big hairy fib. And that’s leaving out all the causality stuff, which is a bit of a reach. Put it all together, and it stinks of bullshit.”

“We don’t think so.” The chair of the Planning Committee is intently focused on Huw, and it’s making her skin crawl. “They are many millions of years older than we are. They command an understanding of physics that makes us look like naked, rock-worshipping neolithics. We do not know what led to their wars—aesthetic jihad? A philosophical crusade? A bad hand of poker? Whatever it is, they say that there’s a pretty good chance we’ll grow up to want to do it too, and if that turns out to be the case, they plan on doing something about it, preemptively.

“Which is where you come in. When the Authority manifested here, it demanded that we send it an ambassador to parlay. Well, we just happened to have one lying around.”

“You didn’t.” Huw’s eyes widen.

“We did.” Does the chair for a moment sound just slightly smug? “And we need you to interface with it.”

Huw bolts. A moment later she’s on the floor, nose-to-nose with Bonnie. Oddly, her feet don’t seem to want to work properly. “I told you she’d do that,” says the djinni.

Fuck, another traitor, Huw realizes despairingly. Does anyone in here not have a covert agenda?

The chair looms over Huw. “Ms. Jones, this unseemly and improper display notwithstanding, this court needs representation before the Authority. And so, we are hereby deputizing you to speak on all our behalfs. Do the job right and when you get back here we will listen to your testimony before the Planning Committee with a sympathetic ear. Fuck up, and there won’t be a Planning Committee to testify to. Or an Earth, in whose behalf to speak, for that matter.”

The chair-orc rummages in her scale-mail and produces a familiar, dreadful cylinder. A whistle. “This won’t hurt a bit,” she says. “Now, say 'aaah.’”

Finally, an order Huw is glad to follow. The lack of an actual throat and actual lungs lets her scream much longer and louder than her meatself ever managed. The resulting esophageal tunnel makes a neat target for the chair, who tosses the whistle like a javelin; it lodges firmly in Huw’s windpipe and tunnels home with a fluting squeal of welcome.

Huw tiptoes out of the Marriott’s lobby in glazed disbelief, hands crossed over her chest protectively. The fact that it’s not her body being violated, but a mere representation of it, is of no comfort. Indeed, since the ambassador currently lodged in her not-windpipe is a lump of dense code created by the collective consciousness that evolved her digital representation, there’s no telling how entwined with her self it might be.

The djinni isn’t waiting for her. Even Bonnie is gone. Indeed, it takes a moment for Huw to realize that there’s nothing physical in this simspace. She is floating in a featureless void, except that floating isn’t the right verb to use, because she doesn’t have the sensation of floating, nor the sensation of not-floating. She is even more disembodied than usual.

“Well, look what the cat drug in, Sam,” says a familiar voice, which comes, of course, from everywhere and nowhere. “Amazing the sort of degenerate secondhander parasite you get, even here. I reckon we’ll have to take care of that, soon enough.”

The next voice she hears is likewise familiar—gravel in a cement-mixer, tinged with a kind of smug, celestial calm. “I reckon she’s a-here on a technicality,” Sam says. “Mean to say, from what I hear, she didn’t come under her own power.”

Huw attempts to propel herself into another sim, or out of this sim, but whatever trick is necessary for virtual locomotion in the absence of a virtual physicality, she doesn’t know it. Yet another thing she probably should have paid attention to back on the trainer. But it appears she can speak—or squeak. After a moment of high-pitched tweets, she and the ambassador recover their old, uneasy accommodation. “What are you guys doing here? I thought you were back on Earth, waiting for Zombie Jesus to return with Magic Sky Daddy and His heavenly host to sweep up the faithful.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, heathen,” Doc says, “but the Lord has spoken and His Prophet has clarified a few things about the uplifting and all.”

“Turns out we gotta prepare the way for holy war in cyberspace,” Sam says.

Huw boggles. “Cyberspace? Who even says ‘cyberspace’ anymore?”

“The Prophet, that’s who,” Doc says. “He knows how to talk like a real person, knows that the old language is best: if King James’s English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for him, he says. None of this ‘cloud’ and ‘sim’ business. He’s a plainspoken, people’s prophet. We’re Soldiers of the Lord, here to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven. And step one of that was to summon our army—all those who ain’t yet heard the Prophet’s word and don’t know what’s good for ’em. We had it all fixed, you know. Demolish the Earth, upload everyone dirtside in one go, and whompf, we’d of had an instant organized militia at our disposal, ready to start work on the final program. Then you made a hash of it all, with your foolish meddling, undid all the Prophet’s good work and all the work of His advance guard.”

“Us,” Sam says.

“Us,” the doc says. “And you don’t even belong here! You’re part of the heathen masses, scheduled to be swept up and quarantined in the Pre-Rapture for brainwashing and indoctrination. You try me, missy, you really do.”

“Guys,” Huw says, using her most reasonable voice, “this is all really fascinating, but I’ve been summoned to some sort of galactic tribunal to debate whether some vast, starry power will end the human race and its uplifted descendants, so perhaps we could do this later?”

“We’ve heard tell of this,” Doc says, “and we’re of two minds about it.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “I think it’s just an unfortunate coincidence, mean to say, just one of those things.”

“And I think it’s the end times,” Doc says. “A snare of Satan. Which puts us behind schedule on our whole program of assembling our Army of Glory, but on the plus side, it’s all going to be moot soon.”

“What if the galactic tribunal decides we’re fit to join up with them?” Huw says. “They might be a really lovely bunch of chaps, with all sorts of excellent advice and technology for their new chums.”

Doc chuckles. “You’ve got some high opinion of those alien scum, I figure. Way I see it, there’s only one way Judgment Day can play out, even assuming these galactic bastards are the fairest-minded bunch of sweetie-pie fairies that ever danced over the celestial firmament: and that’s annihilation. Between your garden-variety sinners and the hordes of thumbless, brainless leeches that suck the vitality and vigor out of everything that their betters attempt, there’s no sense in pretending otherwise. Do you seriously believe that you and your tin whistle are going to convince these interstellar Ubermenschen that they should let us go on polluting reality with our existence?”

Huw’s losing patience. “Isn’t the whole point of your faith that humanity is redeemable?”

Doc and Sam laugh together. “Missy,” Doc says, “I wouldn’t give you two wet farts for ‘humanity.’ A few select individuals, who understand the importance of humility before their betters, obedience to authority, piety and faith, sure, but those sorts’re pretty thin on the ground, even now that the least redeemable portion of the species