Divergence

Eventually, the corridor came to an end at a black-and-white striped hatch. Judy contemplated a koan, trying to calm herself.

The hatch slid open.

It made sense when she thought about it later. Spaceships were built by AIs; in fact, they were VNMs that reproduced themselves. They came therefore in two parts: a machine part, and a part for humans to live in. There were no access hatches for humans to reach the processing spaces or the engines. Why should there be when the machines constructed, maintained, and repaired themselves? So the corridor that led to the processing space of the Eva Rye had been constructed specifically for her use. Judy realized she had never even seen a processing space before. She lived in a world designed, built, and run by processing spaces, but she had never actually seen one in the flesh, as it were. And now she was right in the presence of one. A silver sphere, half her own height, it floated in the middle of the room. Not just any processing space, this one housed the FE software that resided in the Eva Rye: that strange, unliving thing that even now the meta- intelligence was straining to see. The room was not much larger than herself. If she were to stand in the middle, her head where that shimmering globe hung, and if she were to reach out her arms wide, she would almost be able to touch the walls.

She cleared her throat, wondering if she should speak. Something else spoke first.

“Five minutes gone.”

It was her console. She relaxed, feeling both relieved and disappointed. Five minutes had elapsed since she had left Saskia and Miss Rose. In ten minutes from now she had to be on the shuttle.

“Er, hello?” she called.

She wasn’t used to feeling such hesitation. Her voice sounded dull and empty; it did not echo back from the leaden walls of the chamber.

“Why have you brought me here?”

No response. She looked at the shimmering sphere with her eyes; it seemed almost transparent, a series of silverishly clear layers built one on top of the other, gradually obscuring the processing space’s interior. She looked at the sphere through the meta-intelligence and she saw…exactly the same thing, a silverish sphere. There was a lump in her throat as she realized the implication: this processing space was defined in terms of itself. The processing space hardware was written out of the software that ran upon it. What did that mean, though? She strained to understand. What had Maurice been talking about earlier, about the way the Eva Rye had re-formed itself? About software forming its own hardware—was that possible? Understanding seemed to hover, teasing, just out of her reach. What now, then?

She looked at the processing space through MTPH.

Judy was standing in Eva Rye’s apartment, just by the dining table. Through the window she could see evening settling over the landscape of the Kamchatka peninsula. A half-full glass of tea steamed on the table beside her, its rim speckled with yellow crumbs from the half-eaten golden madeleine that lay beside it.

Judy reached out and felt the warmth of the wood of the table, and in doing so she noted her white hand, her black fingernails. She was here as herself, not as Eva Rye. The door to the bedroom clicked open and Eva Rye walked into the room. She stopped when she saw the stranger in her lounge. The two women stared at each other.

“I know you,” said Eva. “You’re Judy, aren’t you? I dream about you sometimes.”

Eva had had her long silver-grey hair done; it was clipped back neatly with a silver clasp. She wore lipstick and mascara and smelled of perfume. She wore a long yellow dress over dark tights and pair of patent leather shoes. Judy suddenly felt very frumpy, standing next to her in her black passive suit.

“I dream about you, too,” she said.

“But which one of us is real?” asked Eva.

“We both know it’s me,” Judy said.

Eva tilted her head as she tried to put in a silver earring.

“Let me,” said Judy, taking it from her.

Eva winced as Judy inexpertly threaded the silver loop of the earring through the pierced hole in her earlobe. That made Judy feel even more inadequate. There had been a time in her life when she too had taken great care with her appearance, but that had been about show, not about making herself desirable.

“Thank you,” Eva said. She stood checking her appearance in the mirror.

“I used to get dressed up as well,” Judy said apologetically. She needed to explain to Eva. “I used to wear silk