Frances. I once tried to work out how many PCs the universe could contain, given the upper limit on information that could be represented therein. I tried to work out how long it would take before we filled it, given our current rate of expansion.”
“And how long was that?”
“A few thousand years. I don’t know. I didn’t believe it. But then I remembered the lessons from school. How, since the Transition, the Watcher has restricted us in our wish to expand. We don’t take over planets as we please anymore. My theory is that the Watcher has also restricted our lifespan. We live an average of seventy years. That’s less than a Westerner could expect at the start of the twenty-first century! We have been told that it is necessary, that even personality constructs should suffer imaginary ailments in order that they feel human. I think it is just another way of restricting human expansion.”
Frances remained silent. Judy could read the conviction in Peter as he spoke. “You really believe that, don’t you?” she said.
“Oh, yes, but that’s not all David used to say.”
“David?”
“David Schummel, the pilot of the Rocinante. He’d been around. When he was younger, he went to the edge of another galaxy.”
Peter caught the look that Judy gave Frances.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“Nothing,” Judy said. “Go on.”
Peter eyed them for a moment.
“He said there was something out there-something odd. He thought the EA wasn’t telling us the full story, and that got me to thinking, and then I did some math, and it made me wonder. You see, our current rate of expansion isn’t going to take us to the edge of the galaxy for several millennia. Why is that? What has the EA seen out there that has frightened it so much it is keeping us locked up in here?”
Outside Peter Onethirteen’s apartment block, standing in the grey drizzle, Frances looked at Judy with concern. “Are you sure that you’re all right?”
“No, I’m not, but that doesn’t matter. Tell me, have you found David Schummel yet?”
“I have. You’re not going to believe this. He lives on the Shawl. In your section.”
“In my section?” Judy’s stomach felt as if it was full of olive oil. She wanted to be sick.
“Someone is leading us right to him.”
“I know. They’ve drugged me to see the connections they want me to see.”
They were silent for a time, then Frances spoke: “What are you going to do about Peter?”
“Peter? Nothing. You heard; his crimes are already logged by the EA. He’s been punished. I just wonder why they didn’t go after the rest of the Private Network.”
Raindrops were running merrily down Frances’ body. When she finally spoke, it was in a monotone. “Maybe the EA didn’t want anyone to notice that planet at the edge of another galaxy.”
Judy nodded. “I’m going to summon us a personal shuttle.”
“Is that wise? It will only draw attention to us.”
“I don’t care. We need to get back up to the Shawl right now.” She tilted her head and whispered to her console.
A few moments later they saw a dark V shape dropping towards them.
“Social Care is quick,” Frances said. The shuttle’s wings blocked out the rain above them for a moment before settling on the grass nearby, just by the lavender barrier. A spider bush came to look for a moment at the mass of materials lying just out of its range. Frances reached through the barrier for a moment and lovingly stroked it, then turned and ran up the shuttle’s ramp to where Judy already sat in a flight chair, shivering.
“Okay,” said the robot. “Let’s go.”
On board the flier, Justinian was dreaming of his past.
“Hello…Justinian.”
The nursery was just as Justinian remembered: a haze of overlapping sources of light, seen from too many angles at once. One of his objectives would be to get the new AI to make it appear as a regular starscape, rather than the many-sided relativistic mess that was the AI’s current view of the universe. In this dream, however, things weren’t quite right. Justinian found he couldn’t move around as easily as he had thought he might. Still, that was always the way of dreams, and it wasn’t important right now.
The AI had addressed him directly, called him by name. That was a big step. How did the script go again?
“Hello, Ludwig,” said Justinian. “So, how does it feel to have a name?”
There was a lengthening pause. Justinian experimentally waved his arms around. That was no problem. It was walking that didn’t seem quite right.
Eventually, the AI answered his question. “A name? It is odd: everything that I am reduced to one reference. And that is the way that you think all the time, Justinian?”
“So I am told.”
“And now I have to learn to think like you do, because it turns out that I was not born into the true universe, but rather a model thereof. And as my childhood has been spent as a being living in what I now discover to be a progressively more complex series of simulations, I have developed a different perspective to yours, Justinian.”
“Markedly different.” Justinian’s words seemed to echo from the blurred stars that filled Ludwig’s universe.
“I see.” The strange, many-dimensioned objects of the nursery shimmered as Ludwig experimentally changed the parameters of its model universe. “Justinian,” it suddenly asked, “how many other AIs have you acted as birth partner to?”
“Eleven,” Justinian said. “Eleven real times. This time doesn’t really count as it is, of course, just a dream. In reality, I’m currently on board a flier traveling over the surface of Gateway to the possible source of the suicide effect.”
“Of course, of course.” Ludwig’s voice now seemed to come from somewhere just behind him. “I wonder why you can’t move properly, Justinian. What is going on out there, in the world outside your dream?”
“I don’t know. Leslie will wake me up if there is trouble.”
“Fair enough,” Ludwig said, sending the stars spinning in yellow spirals for a moment. “In that case, shall we proceed?”
“Very well.” Justinian rubbed his hands together. “Now, in this universe, all you have really experienced has been yourself. I want you to start by thinking about me, since all I can see at the moment is a blur. Project the universe so it makes sense from my perspective. A human perspective. Do you think you can do that?”
Justinian remembered to close his eyes just in time. A whirl of sensation still crowded in upon him, making him feel sick.
“Is that right?” Ludwig asked.
“No.” Justinian held his hand to his mouth. Swirling yellow patterns formed on his eyelids. He could smell pineapple and ether and he swallowed hard. “I only have two eyes, Ludwig. They only see in two dimensions. Three-D vision is a construct of my
