Divergence

“What about love?”

“Love? Pah! This too has been modeled. Simulations have been run.” Ivan waved his hand dismissively.

“Sometimes it is appropriate for members of a species to aid each other. Love is the name given to this bond. It is an evolved thing, nothing more.”

“Ah,” said the priest, “I see. So, you are saying that love is just as inevitable as thought and life and self-replicating molecules and stars. So then you agree with me, that love is written into the universe at a fundamental level.”

And at that the priest took another sip from his flask. He offered it once more.

“Now, another drink,” he said, “and then shall we walk back to the building?”

Pobyedov, called Judy in her sleep. Through Eva’s eyes she watched him walking beside them in the gathering gloom. She raised her voice and shouted again: Speak to me, Pobyedov! Who are you? I can feel you through the meta-intelligence. Who are you?

She was lying in her bed, lying under black sheets, dreaming in her room that was like a great bell that echoed with the sounds that reverberated through the ship. Echoed with the thoughts of the crew of the ship. She was picking up on the thoughts of the others. Pobyedov? He was part of the FE software, she realized. Part of it. An echo from the past. From the very core of its being.

Pobyedov was in its bones, one might say.

maurice 4: 2252

They had both been drunk and they had both done something stupid, but in the grand scheme of things that was hardly something of note. Maurice had started it by unfolding his console, but it was Saskia who drunkenly raised the question. They had entered into a Fair Exchange, and both had been outwardly satisfied with the outcome, and inwardly put out at its equality. Both had thought themselves a more attractive proposition than the other. As is so often the case in life, it turned out that they were not.

Saskia’s hair spread out on the white pillow. She was smiling at him.

“Thank you,” she said. “If I turn around will you hold me?”

“Of course,” said Maurice, and she rolled over and shuffled against him so that her pale back and thin buttocks were pressed against his thighs. He placed his hand on her flat stomach and remembered the shadows of her ribs, remembered feeling the dark buds of her tiny breasts beneath his thumbs. Truth be told, he hadn’t fancied her that much, but nonetheless he felt an enormous sense of release and relaxation lying there. They had both felt it. Saskia had given an enormous shudder as she had climaxed, and Maurice had felt the tension ebbing from her body immediately afterwards. Judy had been right.

“Judy was wrong,” murmured Saskia.

“What do you mean?” yawned Maurice, already drifting off to sleep.

“She told me to keep away from you,” she confided. “Said that you were only after one thing. She didn’t seem to realize that was what I needed, too.”

“Mmmm.”

“I suppose, being a virgin, she wouldn’t understand.”

Maurice was already drifting in a snugly warm world. Of course she understands, he thought. She manipulated you as deftly as her kind always does. The best way of getting you to do anything, Saskia, is by telling you to do the opposite.

“You realize this is just about companionship, don’t you?” whispered Saskia.

“Yes, I know that.”

“Are you sure? You just went all tense.”

“I was thinking about something else,” said Maurice. He was suddenly wide awake, his mind bubbling over. Judy had manipulated them, hadn’t she? And, he realized, it wasn’t for the first time.

“I wonder what she will do for Edward,” Saskia thought aloud.