The Machinery of Light

“Other Sinclairs,” says Sarmax.

“Other Haskells,” says Lynx. “Infinite numbers who have accomplished—”

“There are,” she says. “They’ve converged.”

“Meaning what?” asks Carson.

“They’re all me.”

Linehan’s the only one I might be able to get to

The voice rings out clear within him, but it’s not telling him anything he doesn’t already know. Sarmax is going to side with Sinclair rather than face a life without the woman he lacked for so long. Lynx will play the chameleon to the end. And the Operative can only wonder if Sinclair has planted some last trick within his head. He glances at him again—sees that he’s focused only on Haskell now—

“So you’re really a nexus,” says Sinclair.

“There must be others—”

“Presumably. That’s what makes this so exciting.”

“That’s why you said you didn’t want to go back.”

“And now you see what I mean. It’s like we’re on a ladder. All we can do is climb the rungs. All this talk about world-conquest, and all it signifies is how small everybody’s been thinking. The whole point of the eternity-game is to get out there and stretch your legs.”

“Eternity?” asks Lynx.

“Every last one of them,” says Sinclair.

“You can make me live forever?”

“Been wondering when you’d get around to asking that.”

“Stefan,” says the Operative, “back off.”

“What do you mean?” asks Lynx.

“I mean he’s tempting us with whatever we most desire.”

“More than just tempt,” says Sinclair.

“You can really deliver?” asks Lynx.

“Haskell’s already cheated death. No reason the rest of us can’t either.”

“Has it occurred to you that might be a bridge too far?” says the Operative.

“No need to get all mystical,” says Sinclair. “Death is merely the ultimate event horizon. And Claire’s already crossed it. She’s seeing things that no one has a hope of seeing until they expire. Access to states of consciousness that one typically has to give up the body to get to—”

“I did give up my body,” she says.

“But I have yet to cut the cord,” he replies.

Which you’d be a fool to do.”

Except she’s nowhere near as confident about that as she’s trying to sound. Even though her body seems just like a fiction to her now, she’s under no illusions that it gives Sinclair advantage. She feels like a balloon on a tether that he’s controlling—feels like all her purview is merely a function of his sufferance, that everything that’s happened is still part of the way he intended it. She takes in the Room, an anchor far beneath her—takes in the way it hangs amidst nothing, superimposed against the core of the Moon of one universe in particular, superimposed against all those other Moons in all those other universes—all of them resolving themselves into Sinclair’s face. She can see he’s only looking at a few of the images on those screens now—that many of the remaining screens are starting to wink out. That he’s almost narrowed down her coordinates. That as soon as that happens—

“You’re mine, child. You can’t escape that—”

“But whose are you?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

But she doesn’t. Not when the real question is how this all began. Did Matthew Sinclair become the tool of some entity that reached in from beyond to give him guidance as part of some unholy barter? Or did he accomplish this all on his—

“What makes you think there’s a difference?” he asks.

“What?”

“Whatever I summon, I consume.”

“Just like he did with Control,” says Carson.

“I thought you built Control,” says Lynx.

“I did,” says Sinclair. “In my own image, I might add. Same with all of you. Endlessly scheming, endlessly rebelling, and all of it really just furthering my own purpose. But in the end, everyone here is going to have to make a choice. A genuine one. I was born human like all of you, but we’ve broken beyond all frameworks now. The lives you left behind were plotted through one particular universe. That’s what made the Autumn Rain hit- teams so unstoppable. They made the right choice every time—threading their way through the most advantaged world-line, navigating the forking paths of multiverse to get the drop on their enemies.”

“And those versions of the Rain that didn’t?” asks Sarmax.

“Got left behind in the dust,” says Sinclair. He shrugs. “You have to shift your thinking. Multiverse is a matter of probabilities. Everything happens. Some things happen more than others. Once we had a mind that could ride existence like a water-strider rides liquid—that was when things got interesting. That was what laid the groundwork for steering one universe in particular toward—

“A singularity,” says Haskell.

any moment now

The Operative breathes out slowly, relaxing his body, preparing his flesh. It seems to him that Lynx and Sarmax are doing the same thing—like they know what’s about to happen even though they don’t know which way everybody’s about to jump. Linehan seems to be off in a world of his own. Most of the screens are blank now. There are only a few left. And Sinclair just seems focused on whatever duel he’s waging with the thing that Haskell’s become—

“Exactly,” he says. “A real singularity. Not the low-rent kind they envisioned back at the dawn of the networked era. Paltry imaginations capable only of conceiving some kind of mass-uploading—like we’d ever take the masses—some silicon version of the Heaven they’d been conditioned to think of as their birthright—or some machine overmind to act as the God they’d been promised as children and which their subconscious was still bleating for. Infantile’s the only word to describe any of it.”

“What was infantile about it was the conflation of the fate of the self with the fate of the species,” says Haskell. “The lust for personal immortality. The same thing you’ve been offering—”

“And the prize which everyone here can claim. We’ve already broken through all the barriers humans were never meant to cross. This meat we inhabit is of no more significance than flea-bitten clothing. And I’ll have need of servants as I explore the ultimate. Why would I deny them attributes worthy of their station?”

“But that’s not the real reason you brought us here,” says the Operative.

“You’re the ones who’ve done that,” says Sinclair. “Came here under your own power, of your own initiative— the strongest members of the Rain—the survivors … all of you converging upon this point along a precise sequence of events in which you mirrored each others’ actions, ebbing and flowing against one another, running point and counterpoint in games of byzantine complexity played out across the Earth-Moon system, patterns so intricate no single mind could possibly divine the probability clouds that define them—”

“Save your own,” snaps Lynx.

He can barely follow the conversation, but he can see that things are coming to a head. He’s aware, too, of these creatures in his mind, and they don’t seem to be able to make up theirs. One’s struggling to absorb the infernal machine. The other’s not coming through too clearly. It sounds like the woman from earlier, though. Even though Linehan can barely hear her. He can remember even less. But there was a woman. It’s her face—on the screens in front of him. And on the vast screen beyond all of that …