after nightfall on the battlefield.'
'I ran into the Wunch,' Donna volunteers helpfully. 'The first couple of times they ate my ghost, but eventually I figured out how to talk to them.'
'And there's other aliens, too,' Su Ang adds gloomily. 'Just nobody you'd want to meet on a dark night.'
'So there's no hope of making contact,' Amber summarizes. 'At least, not with anything transcendent and well-intentioned toward visiting humans.'
'That's probably right,' Pierre concedes. He doesn't sound happy about it.
'So we're stuck in a pocket universe with limited bandwidth to home and a bunch of crazy slum dwellers who've moved into the abandoned and decaying mansion and want to use us for currency. 'Jesus saves, and redeems souls for valuable gifts.' Yeah?'
'Yeah.' Su Ang looks depressed.
'Well.' Amber glances at Sadeq speculatively. Sadeq is staring into the distance, at the crazy infinite sunspot that limns the square with shadows. 'Hey, god-man. Got a question for you.'
'Yes?' Sadeq looks at her, a slightly dazed expression on his face. 'I'm sorry, I am just feeling the jaws of a larger trap around my throat -'
'Don't be.' Amber grins, and it is not a pleasant expression. 'Have you ever been to Brooklyn?'
'No, why -'
'Because you're going to help me sell these lying bastards a bridge. Okay? And when we've sold it we're going to use the money to pay the purchasing fools to drive us across, so we can go home. Listen, this is what I'm planning…'
* * *
'I can do this, I think,' Sadeq says, moodily examining the Klein bottle on the table. The bottle is half-empty, its fluid contents invisible around the corner of the fourth-dimensional store. 'I spent long enough alone in there to -' He shivers.
'I don't want you damaging yourself,' Amber says, calmly enough, because she has an ominous feeling that their survival in this place has an expiry date attached.
'Oh, never fear.' Sadeq grins lopsidedly. 'One pocket hell is much like another.'
'Do you understand why -'
'Yes, yes,' he says dismissively. 'We can't send copies of ourselves into it, that would be an abomination. It needs to be unpopulated, yes?'
'Well, the idea is to get us home, not leave thousands of copies of ourselves trapped in a pocket universe here. Isn't that it?' Su Ang asks hesitantly. She's looking distracted, most of her attention focused on absorbing the experiences of a dozen ghosts she's spun off to attend to perimeter security.
'Who are we selling this to?' asks Sadeq. 'If you want me to make it attractive -'
'It doesn't need to be a complete replica of the Earth. It just has to be a convincing advertisement for a presingularity civilization full of humans. You've got two-and-seventy zombies to dissect for their brains; bolt together a bunch of variables you can apply to them, and you can permutate them to look a bit more varied.'
Amber turns her attention to the snoozing cat. 'Hey, furball. How long have we been here really, in real time? Can you grab Sadeq some more resources for his personal paradise garden?'
Aineko stretches and yawns, totally feline, then looks up at Amber with narrowed eyes and raised tail.
''Bout eighteen minutes, wall-clock time.' The cat stretches again and sits, front paws drawn together primly, tail curled around them. 'The ghosts are pushing, you know? I don't think I can sustain this for too much longer.
They're not good at hacking people, but I think it won't be too long before they instantiate a new copy of you, one that'll be predisposed to their side.'
'I don't get why they didn't assimilate you along with the rest of us.'
'Blame your mother again – she's the one who kept updating the digital rights management code on my personality. 'Illegal consciousness is copyright theft' sucks until an alien tries to rewire your hindbrain with a debugger; then it's a lifesaver.' Aineko glances down and begins washing one paw. 'I can give your mullah-man about six days, subjective time. After that, all bets are off.'
'I will take it, then.' Sadeq stands. 'Thank you.' He smiles at the cat, a smile that fades to translucency, hanging in the simulated air like an echo as the priest returns to his tower – this time with a blueprint and a plan in mind.
'That leaves just us.' Su Ang glances at Pierre, back to Amber. 'Who are you going to sell this crazy scheme to?'
Amber leans back and smiles. Behind her, Donna – her avatar an archaic movie camera suspended below a model helicopter – is filming everything for posterity. She nods lazily at the reporter. 'She's the one who gave me the idea. Who do we know who's dumb enough to buy into a scam like this?'
Pierre looks at her suspiciously. 'I think we've been here before,' he says slowly. 'You aren't going to make me kill anyone, are you?'
'I don't think that'll be necessary, unless the corporate ghosts think we're going to get away from them and are greedy enough to want to kill us.'
'You see, she learned from last time,' Ang comments, and Amber nods. 'No more misunderstandings, right?' She beams at Amber.
Amber beams back at her. 'Right. And that's why you -' she points at Pierre – 'are going to go find out if any relics of the Wunch are hanging about here. I want you to make them an offer they won't refuse.'
* * *
'How much for just the civilization?' asks the Slug.
Pierre looks down at it thoughtfully. It's not really a terrestrial mollusk: Slugs on Earth aren't two meters long and don't have lacy white exoskeletons to hold their chocolate-colored flesh in shape. But then, it isn't really the alien it appears to be. It's a defaulting corporate instrument that has disguised itself as a long-extinct alien upload, in the hope that its creditors won't recognize it if it looks like a randomly evolved sentient. One of the stranded members of Amber's expedition made contact with it a couple of subjective years ago, while exploring the ruined city at the center of the firewall. Now Pierre's here because it seems to be one of their most promising leads.
Emphasis on the word promising – because it promises much, but there is some question over whether it can indeed deliver.
'The civilization isn't for sale,' Pierre says slowly. The translation interface shimmers, storing up his words and transforming them into a different deep grammar, not merely translating his syntax but mapping equivalent meanings where necessary. 'But we can give you privileged observer status if that's what you want. And we know what you are. If you're interested in finding a new exchange to be traded on, your existing intellectual property assets will be worth rather more there than here.'
The rogue corporation rears up slightly and bunches into a fatter lump. Its skin blushes red in patches. 'Must think about this. Is your mandatory accounting time cycle fixed or variable term? Are self-owned corporate entities able to enter contracts?'
'I could ask my patron,' Pierre says casually. He suppresses a stab of angst. He's still not sure where he and Amber stand, but theirs is far more than just a business relationship, and he worries about the risks she's taking.
'My patron has a jurisdiction within which she can modify corporate law to accommodate your requirements. Your activities on a wider scale might require shell companies -' the latter concept echoes back in translation to him as host organisms – 'but that can be taken care of.'
The translation membrane wibbles for a while, apparently reformulating some more abstract concepts in a manner that the corporation can absorb. Pierre is reasonably confident that it'll take the offer, however. When it first met them, it boasted about its control over router hardware at the lowest levels. But it also bitched and
