“I can’t see him anymore,” said Frances. All around them the shuttle was beginning to disassemble as VNM routines were activated in various regions of the hull. Finger-sized creatures were forming themselves in the material of the ship and tearing themselves free of the surrounding structure. As soon as they were loose, they began to form the rest of the hull into copies of themselves.
Chris now looked like an empty milk bottle. He waved to Judy. Pale grey daylight suddenly filled the interior of the shuttle as part of the roof simply walked away.
“I can’t see him anymore, either,” said Judy. Chris had vanished. The rest of the ship was collapsing faster around them, scuttling away on flickering little legs. Frances took hold of Judy’s hand and led her down a dissolving ramp to a clump of grass that lay half drowned in the cold dunes where the ship had landed. The sea breeze blew a fine spray of sand across Judy’s face. The endless grey clouds above seemed to accent the bleak scene.
Judy and Frances stood in the middle of a widening circle of little grey VNMs that crept off on their mission to render unto the Earth that which was the Earth’s. The stack of wooden crates sat in the sand nearby, a pile of broken wood the only reminder that Chris had actually existed.
“Just what on Earth went on there?” asked Judy.
Frances placed her hands on her hips and turned in a slow circle, her painted eyes and smile ridiculously contrasted by her serious posture.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
Judy cocked her head. Frances sounded thoughtful.
“That wasn’t so much a fuck as a tactical engagement. He was testing me all the time, showing how much more advanced than me he was. Still, I think I may have held my own. I think that what we just saw was an introduction. Chris was just letting us know what he was capable of.”
Judy felt something brush her foot. The last of the VNMs was making its way through the sand, heading off on its mysterious errand. Impermanence-the fate of the shuttle was a stark reminder of the fact. It was a way of life, post-Transition. And yet Judy felt disturbed. The Watcher preached impermanence, and yet wasn’t it the most permanent of the objects known to humanity? If it was right in its guesses on its own origins, it could trace its lineage back almost to the dawn of intelligent life in the universe
Judy stirred the sand with the toe of one of her tabi.
“What are we supposed to do now?” she wondered. “Should we just give up our search before we start? Is that what the Watcher wants?”
“The Watcher was very careful not to say what it wants.” Pale sand drew wind-blown patterns across Frances’ golden skin. “Or rather, Chris was…”
Judy nodded. “So we continue to do what we came to do, then. If the Watcher wants us to stop, it can tell us that now.”
They paused, looking around at the empty dunes.
“Nothing,” said Frances. “I wonder if Chris is still here, watching us.”
“I wonder.” Judy gave a shiver. “If not, I wonder what else he could be doing here on Earth?” She looked down at her white tabi and gave a sigh.
“I wish I’d brought my shoes.”
Justinian 3: 2223
Eh? We were talking about the two slits experiment. Now, concentrate. You fire a photon at a barrier in which there are two slits-”
“I know the two slits experiment,” Justinian growled. Was this pod deliberately trying to irritate him?
“Ah, yes, but I wonder if you
“I do understand,” he said, with forced patience. “They drummed this into us at school. Feynman claimed everything about the nature of quantum mechanics was summed up by the two slits experiment.”
Justinian took a deep, calming breath and immediately regretted it. The air down here stank. He was getting a headache from lack of sleep; his ribs and right leg hurt where he had grazed them while clambering over the slippery rocks of the sea bed. All of that discomfort, however, was drowned out by the all-pervading stench. The undersea bubble smelled really, really bad. The last thing he needed was this prissy, imperious AI pod lecturing him about quantum mechanics.
It had been waiting for him to finish speaking; immediately it carried on making its point.
“
“I know,” Justinian said, almost shouting in frustration. “I experienced this in an eTank when I was twelve! Whichever of the slits you place a photon detector at will be the slit through which the photon always passes!”
“You can place a detector at both slits,” said the pod.
“And if you turn one of them on after the photon is fired, it will still pass through the slit with the active detector.”
Again the pod waited for Justinian to be silent. There was a rich farting noise as wet mud settled nearby.
“Ah, yes, but do you appreciate what that implies?” The pod answered its own question before Justinian could. “It implies that awareness plays a part in the position of the photon-”
“I know! I used to act as birth partner for AIs as they were introduced to the atomic world-”
“A photon is directly influenced by the act of observation-”
“I didn’t need to come to this planet to hear this.”
“Simply looking in a place makes it appear there…”
Justinian and the pod were both raising their voices in order to drown out the other. The sound was strangely deadened in the undersea world.
“The two slits experiment is a possible explanation for the behavior of the Schrödinger boxes. That’s how the name-”
“I’m sorry; do you mind not interrupting me?” The AI pod dropped its voice to speak in such reasonable tones that Justinian wanted to kick it. He found himself shaking, actually shaking with anger at the pod’s attitude. He was annoyed that the pod was right that he, Justinian, had kept interrupting. He was annoyed at its quiet assurance that its thoughts were more important than Justinian’s. Worst of all, he was annoyed that it was probably right in this assumption. Hadn’t he been deliberately trapped on this planet for just that reason-summoned by a group of self- destructing pods for reasons that not even the Watcher could guess? Justinian ran shaking fingers along his console, seeking a dose of something to calm himself.
“Now, I find the existence of Schrödinger boxes fascinating,” continued the pod, as if it were unique in that respect. The indicator on Justinian’s console was flashing to indicate slow poison in the local atmosphere. It was no wonder; he was standing in a viscous bubble blown from the flier’s rear hatch, staring at an AI pod that rested on the floor of a fourteen-kilometer-deep ocean trench. The flier’s lights illuminated only the volume contained by the bubble’s thin transparent wall, beyond which there was just the still blackness of the ocean. Don’t worry about it, Leslie had said; people use
There was a roaring noise coming from the flier’s hatch: the ship’s air-conditioning system fighting a losing battle as it tried to purify the sea bottom atmosphere. It was an exercise in futility. Gas was leaking from cracks in the slimy rocks of the sea bed as quickly as the flier’s life system could remove it.
Justinian didn’t want to think about it. The faster he did this job, the faster he could get out of here.
He looked down. This AI’s body was more developed than the previous ones. The kidney-bean-shaped pod had split open and sprouted various devices and protuberances like a germinating seed. For some reason the pod had grown itself a pair of metal arms that it was using to accentuate its points as it spoke. It was holding its arms wide apart now, as if wondering.
“Consider our position,” it was saying. “We’re standing fourteen kilometers down on the ocean bed of a
