The Long Earth

shore.’

The incoming water was up to Joshua’s knees. He backed up across the strand.

Sally was watching in amazement. ‘You’re talking to it?’

‘She. Not it. I think so. I hear my own voice asking me questions. She seems to know what I’m thinking — or rather, she knows what I know. I have no idea what she is, but she seems to want to learn.’ He sighed. ‘I’m kind of overloaded with wonder here, Sally.’

From the backpack the voice of Lobsang called, ‘Come back to the airship. Debriefing time, I think.’

As they walked back to the Mark Twain more pterosaurs flew over, their silhouettes gaunt against the sky.

Without the winches, the climb back up the rope to the gondola was pretty gruelling, but there were working lights on all decks now, the water heater was functioning, and there was instant coffee, at least.

Of course Sally wanted to talk things over immediately. But she was overruled by both Joshua and Lobsang, for at least the time it took to make the coffee.

Then Joshua tried to relate what he had sensed of First Person Singular’s own story. ‘She was alone on her world.’

‘A survivor,’ Sally said.

‘No. Not that. She emerged alone. She evolved that way. She was always alone…’

Lobsang cross-examined him, and gradually they pieced together, if not the truth, then a story.

On the Earth of First Person Singular, Lobsang speculated, as on many Earths, the early ages of life were long aeons of struggle for survival by half-formed creatures that had not yet discovered how to use DNA to store genetic information, and whose control over the proteins from which all living things were constructed was as yet poor. There had been billions upon billions of swarming cells in the shallow oceans, but they were not yet sophisticated enough to be able to afford to compete with each other. Instead, they cooperated. Any useful innovation flashed from cell to cell. It was as if everything in this global ocean operated as a single mega- organism.

‘With time,’ Lobsang said, ‘on most worlds, and certainly on Datum Earth, complexity and organization reach a point where individual cells can survive unaided. And then, on most worlds, competition begins. The great kingdoms of life begin to separate, oxygen bleeds into the air as a waste product of creatures that learn how to harness the power of sunlight, and the long slow climb towards multicelled forms begins. The age of global cooperation vanishes, leaving no trace save enigmatic markers in genetic composition.’

Sally said, ‘On most worlds, but not on First Person Singular’s.’

‘No. Actually that world must have been a remarkable Joker. There, the gathering complexity drove a familiar-looking evolutionary story — but the unity of that single global organism was never lost. We really have travelled to a very distant branch of the contingency tree. It—’

‘She, Lobsang,’ Joshua said.

‘She: yes, the feminine is appropriate, she appears to be positively gravid with apparently healthy life forms. She was more like a maturing biosphere than a creature like a human. As complexity increased, knots of control must have formed. To grow further it would have become necessary for the information structure to construct and contain a copy of itself, for the whole to become self- reflective. That is, conscious.’

Sally frowned, trying to take this in. ‘But what would such a creature want?’

‘I can tell you that much,’ Joshua said. ‘Company. She was lonely. Although she didn’t know it until she encountered the trolls.’

‘Ah.’

They would never know how a band of trolls had ended up on that remote world, Joshua realized. They must have come through the Gap; perhaps they were traumatized, some of them injured by exposure to vacuum. ‘But she was fascinated,’ he said, eyes closed, concentrating, trying to remember. ‘By the simple fact that there was more than one of them. The way they looked at each other, worked together — each of them recognized the other. They were not alone, as she was. They had each other. She wanted what they had. The one thing in the world she lacked…

‘A troll came to the water.’ He had a vision, like a waking dream, of the troll crouching, innocently scooping crabs from the shallow water — a mound of water rising, embracing him.

‘Killing him,’ Sally said, when Joshua described this.

‘Yes. She didn’t intend it, but that was the outcome. The trolls fled. Maybe she caught another one, an infant … studied it…’

‘And learned to step,’ Lobsang guessed.

‘Yes. It took her a long time. The thing we encountered isn’t all of her, all she was; once she filled an ocean. The thing in the sea here is — an expression of her. The essence. A form compact enough to step.’

‘So she followed the trolls,’ Sally said. ‘Heading West down the chain of worlds.’

‘Yes,’ said Lobsang. ‘Slowly but surely heading towards the Datum. And surely she is the reason for the stampede of the trolls, and perhaps other life forms. I am incubating the hypothesis that she has the same effect on pre-sapient species such as the trolls as does a large congregation of humans. Imagine the thunder of her thinking…’

‘So, behold the migraine monster,’ Sally said. ‘No wonder the trolls are fleeing.’

‘She doesn’t mean any harm,’ Joshua said. ‘She only wants to know them. To embrace them.’

‘You know, Joshua, you make this thing sound almost human.’

‘That’s how it felt.’

‘But that is only a partial perception,’ Lobsang said. ‘There is more. The entity you have encountered is only … a seed. An emissary of the integrated biosphere from which she originated. Her absorption of local life forms, even of higher mammals like trolls, is only an interim step. Her goal is, must be, to transform each Earth’s biosphere into a copy of her own. The entirety of it, enslaved. With every resource dedicated to a single purpose. That is to say, her own consciousness. This is not a malevolent phenomenon, or in any way wrong. There is no villain here. First Person Singular is simply an expression of another kind of sentience. Another model, if you like. But—’

Sally’s face was ashen. ‘But for the likes of us she represents a termination. She brings the end of individuality, ultimately, to every Earth she touches.’

‘And the end of evolution,’ Lobsang said gravely. ‘The end of the world, in a sense. The end of world after world as she works her way along the chain of the Long Earth.’

Sally said, ‘She is a destroyer of worlds. An eater of souls. If the trolls sensed any of this, no wonder they were terrified.’

Lobsang said, ‘Of course there is the question of why she hasn’t already reached the inhabited worlds. Why she has not already consumed the Earth. Destroyed it, with curiosity and love.’

Joshua frowned. ‘The Gap. It can’t be a coincidence we found her so close to the Gap.’

‘Yes,’ Lobsang said. ‘She can’t cross the Gap. Not yet, at any rate. If not for that she might already have reached the inhabited worlds.’

‘We can cross the Gap,’ Sally said. ‘The trolls can. Surely she’ll learn. And then there are the soft places. If she could use them — my God. It’s like a plague, consuming the Long Earth world by world.’

‘No,’ Lobsang said firmly. ‘This is no plague, no malignant virus or bacterium. This is a conscious entity. And there, I believe, lies hope. Joshua, how did she speak to you in the first place? You heard your own voice in your head, yes? That doesn’t sound like telepathy — a species of communication for which I have yet to find one single reliable piece of evidence. This sounds like something new. It asked you what a nun was! If I may hazard a guess, it accessed the information then currently at the top of your thoughts. Thinking of Sister Agnes, were you? As an engineer I find it all hard to believe. But as a Buddhist, I accept there are more ways to think about the universe than one can imagine.’

‘I sincerely hope we are not going to start talking religion,’ said Sally sharply.

‘Open your mind, Sally. It’s only another framework for understanding the universe, just another tool.’