Distress

to all the ordinary laws of physics. It doesn't start 'mixing with information' just because someone completes a Theory of Everything on the other side of the planet.'

Akili said, 'Two days ago, I would have agreed with you. But TOEs which fail to deal with their own basis in information are as incomplete General Relativity—which required the Big Bang to take place, but then broke down completely at that point. It took the unification of all four forces to smooth away the singularity. And it looks like it's going to take one more unification to understand the explanatory Big Bang.'

'But two days ago—?'

'I was wrong. The mainstream always assumed that an incomplete TOE was just the way things had to be. The Keystone would explain everything—except how a TOE could actually come into force. Anthrocosmology would answer that question—but that side of the equation would never be visible.' Akili held out both hands, palms pressed together horizontally. 'Physics and metaphysics: we believed they'd remain separate forever. They always had, in the past, so it seemed like a reasonable premise. Like the single Keystone.' Ve interlocked vis fingers and tipped vis hands to a forty-five-degree angle. 'It just happens to be wrong. Maybe because a TOE which unifies physics and information— which mixes the levels, and describes its own authority—is the very opposite of unraveling. It's more stable than any other possibility; it affirms itself, it tightens the knot.'

I suddenly recalled the night I'd visited Amanda Conroy, when I'd concluded, tongue-in-cheek, that the separation of powers between Mosala and the Anthrocosmologists was a good thing. And later, Henry Buzzo had jokingly postulated a theory which supported itself, defended itself, ruled out all competitors, refused to be swallowed.

I said, 'But whose theory is going to unify physics and information? Mosala's TOE makes no attempt to 'describe its own authority.''

Akili saw no obstacle. 'She never intended it to. But either she failed to understand all the implications of her own work—or someone out on the net is going to get hold of her purely physical TOE, and extend it to embrace information theory. In a matter of days. Or hours.'

I stared at the ground, suddenly angry, all the mundane horrors of the day closing in on me. 'How can you sit here wrapped up in this bullshit? Whatever happened to technoliberation?. Solidarity with the renegades? Smashing the boycott?' My own meager skills and connections had already come to nothing in the face of the invasion but somehow I'd imagined Akili proving to be a thousand times more resourceful: taking a vital role at the hub of the resistance, orchestrating some brilliant counter-attack.

Ve said quietly, 'What do you expect me to do? I'm not a soldier; I don't know how to win the war for Stateless. And there'll soon be more people with Distress than there are on this whole island—and if ACs don't try to analyze the mixing plague, no one else is going to do it.'

I laughed bitterly. 'And now you're ready to believe that understanding everything drives us insane? The Ignorance Cults were right? The TOE sends us screaming and kicking into the abyss? Just when I'd made up my mind that there was no such thing.'

Akili shifted uncomfortably. 'I don't know why people are taking it so hard.' For the first time there was a hint of fear in vis voice, breaking through the determined acceptance. 'But… mixing before the Aleph moment must be imperfect, distorted—because if it wasn't flawed in some way, the first victim of Distress would have explained everything, and become the Keystone. I don't know what the flaw is—what's missing, what makes the partial understanding so traumatic—but once the TOE is completed…' Ve trailed off. If the Aleph moment didn't put an end to Distress, the misery of a war on Stateless would be nothing. If the TOE could not be faced, all that lay ahead was universal madness.

We both fell silent. The camp was quiet, except for a few young children crying in the distance, and the faint clatter of cooking utensils in some of the nearby tents.

Akili said, 'Andrew?'

'Yes?'

'Look at me.'

I turned and faced ver squarely, for the first time since I'd arrived. Vis dark eyes appeared more luminous than ever: intelligent, searching, compassionate. The unselfconscious beauty of vis face evoked a deep, astonished resonance inside me, a thrill of recognition which reverberated from the darkness in my skull to the base of my spine. My whole body ached at the sight of ver, every muscle fiber, every tendon. But it was welcome pain, as if I'd been beaten and left to die—and now found myself, impossibly, waking.

That was what Akili was: my last hope, my resurrection.

Ve said, 'What is it you want?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Come on. I'm not blind.' Ve searched my face, frowning slightly, puzzled but unaccusing. 'Have I done something? To lead you on? To give you the wrong idea?'

'No.' I wanted the ground to swallow me. And I wanted to touch ver more than I wanted to live.

'Neural asex can make people lose track of the messages they're sending. I thought I'd made everything clear, but if I've confused you—'

I cut ver off. 'You did. Make everything.' I heard my voice disintegrating; I waited a few seconds, forcing myself to breathe calmly, willing my throat to unknot, then said evenly, 'It's not your fault. I'm sorry I've offended you. I'll go.' I began to stand.

'No.' Akili placed a hand my shoulder, gently restraining me. 'You're my friend, and you're in pain, and we're going to work this out.'

Ve rose to vis feet—but then squatted down and began to unlace vis shoes.

'What are you doing?'

'Sometimes you think you know something, you think you've taken it in. But it's not real, until you've seen it with your own eyes.' Ve pulled vis loose T-shirt over vis head; vis torso was slender, lightly muscled, vis chest perfectly smooth—no breasts, no nipples, nothing. I looked away, and then climbed to my feet, determined to walk out—at that moment, prepared to abandon ver for no better reason than to preserve a desire which I'd always known led nowhere—but then I stood there paralyzed, light-headed, vertiginous.

I said numbly, 'You don't have to do this.'

Akili walked up to me, stood beside me. I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead. Ve took my right hand and placed it against vis stomach, which was flat and soft and hairless, then forced my sweating fingers down between vis legs. There was nothing but smooth skin, cool and dry all the way—and then a tiny urethral opening.

I pulled free, burning with humiliation—swallowing a venomous barb about African traditions just in time. I retreated as far as the tent allowed, still refusing to face ver, and a wave of grief and anger swept over me.

'Why? How could you hate your body so much?'

'I never hated it. But I never worshipped it, either.' Ve spoke softly, striving for patience—but weary of the need to justify verself. 'I didn't pick you for an Edenite. The Ignorance Cults all worship the smallest cages they can find: the accidents of birth, of biology, of history and culture… and then rail against anyone who dares to show them the bars of a cage ten billion times larger. But my body is not a temple—or a dung-heap. Those are the choices of idiot mythology, not the choices of technoliberation. The deepest truth about the body is that all that restrains it, in the end, is physics. We can reshape it into anything the TOE allows.'

This cool logic only made me recoil even more. I agreed with every word of it—but I clung to my instinctive horror like a lifeline. 'The deepest truth would still have been true if you hadn't sacrificed—'

'I've sacrificed nothing. Except some ancient hardwired behavioral patterns buried in my limbic system, triggered by certain visual cues and pheromones… and the need to have small explosions of endogenous opiates go off in my brain.'

I turned and let myself look at ver. Ve stared back at me defiantly. The surgery had been well executed; ve did not look unbalanced, deformed. I had no right to grieve for a loss which existed only in my head. Nobody had mutilated ver by force; ve had made vis own decision with vis eyes wide open. I had no right to wish ver healed.

I was still shaken and angry, though. I still wanted to punish ver for what ve'd taken from me.