Accelerando, Charles Stross [classic novels for teens .TXT] 📗

as closely as possible, and paid no

attention to learning the more intricate tactics that war in a virtual

space permits.

 

Presently Pierre finds himself in the audience chamber, face and hands

and clothing caked in hideous gore, leaning on the back of Amber’s

throne. There’s only one of him now. One of Boris - the only one? - is

standing near the doorway. He can barely remember what has happened,

the horrors of parallel instances of mass murder blocked from his

long-term memory by a high-pass trauma filter. “It looks clear,” he

calls aloud. “What shall we do now?”

 

“Wait for Catherine de M�dicis to show up,” says the cat, its grin

materializing before him like a numinous threat. “Amber always finds a

way to blame her mother. Or didn’t you already know that?”

 

Pierre glances at the bloody mess on the footpath outside where the

first lobster-woman attacked Glashwiecz. “I already did for her, I

think.” He remembers the action in the third person, all subjectivity

edited out. “The family resemblance was striking,” the thread that

still remembers her in working memory murmurs: “I just hope it’s only

skin-deep.” Then he forgets the act of apparent murder forever. “Tell

the Queen I’m ready to talk.”

 

*

 

Welcome to the downslope on the far side of the curve of

accelerating progress.

 

Back in the solar system, Earth orbits through a dusty tunnel in

space. Sunlight still reaches the birth world, but much of the rest

of the star’s output has been trapped by the growing concentric

shells of computronium built from the wreckage of the innermost

planets.

 

Two billion or so mostly unmodified humans scramble in the wreckage

of the phase transition, not understanding why the vasty

superculture they so resented has fallen quiet. Little information

leaks through their fundamentalist firewalls, but what there is

shows a disquieting picture of a society where there are no bodies

anymore. Utility foglets blown on the wind form aerogel towers

larger than cyclones, removing the last traces of physical human

civilization from most of Europe and the North American coastlines.

Enclaves huddle behind their walls and wonder at the monsters and

portents roaming the desert of postindustrial civilization,

mistaking acceleration for collapse.

 

The hazy shells of computronium that ring the sun - concentric

clouds of nanocomputers the size of rice grains, powered by

sunlight, orbiting in shells like the packed layers of a Matrioshka

doll - are still immature, holding barely a thousandth of the

physical planetary mass of the system, but they already support a

classical computational density of 10^42 MIPS; enough to support a

billion civilizations as complex as the one that existed

immediately before the great disassembly. The conversion hasn’t yet

reached the gas giants, and some scant outer-system enclaves remain

independent - Amber’s Ring Imperium still exists as a separate

entity, and will do so for some years to come - but the inner solar

system planets, with the exception of Earth, have been colonized

more thoroughly than any dusty NASA proposal from the dawn of the

space age could have envisaged.

 

From outside the Accelerated civilization, it isn’t really possible

to know what’s going on inside. The problem is bandwidth: While

it’s possible to send data in and get data out, the sheer amount of

computation going on in the virtual spaces of the Acceleration

dwarfs any external observer. Inside that swarm, minds a trillion

or more times as complex as humanity think thoughts as far beyond

human imagination as a microprocessor is beyond a nematode worm. A

million random human civilizations flourish in worldscapes tucked

in the corner of this world-mind. Death is abolished, life is

triumphant. A thousand ideologies flower, human nature adapted

where necessary to make this possible. Ecologies of thought are

forming in a Cambrian explosion of ideas: For the solar system is

finally rising to consciousness, and mind is no longer restricted

to the mere kilotons of gray fatty meat harbored in fragile human

skulls.

 

Somewhere in the Acceleration, colorless green ideas adrift in

furious sleep remember a tiny starship launched years ago, and pay

attention. Soon, they realize, the starship will be in position to

act as their proxy in an ages-long conversation. Negotiations for

access to Amber’s extrasolar asset commence; the Ring Imperium

prospers, at least for a while.

 

But first, the operating software on the human side of the network

link will require an upgrade.

 

*

 

The audience chamber in the Field Circus is crammed. Everybody aboard

the ship - except the still-frozen lawyer and the alien barbarian

intruders - is present. They’ve just finished reviewing the recordings

of what happened in the Tuileries, of Glashwiecz’s fatal last

conversation with the Wunch, the resulting fight for survival. And now

the time has come for decisions.

 

“I’m not saying you have to follow me,” says Amber, addressing her

court; “just, it’s what we came here for. We’ve established that

there’s enough bandwidth to transmit people and their necessary

support VMs; we’ve got some basic expectancy of goodwill at the other

end, or at least an agalmic willingness to gift us with advice about

the untrustworthiness of the Wunch. I propose to copy myself through

and see what’s at the other side of the wormhole. What’s more, I’m

going to suspend myself on this side and hand over to whichever

instance of me comes back, unless there’s a long hiatus. How long, I

haven’t decided yet. Are you guys happy to join me?”

 

Pierre stands behind her throne, hands on the back. Looking down over

her head, at the cat in her lap, he’s sure he sees it narrow its eyes

at him. Funny, he thinks, we’re talking about jumping down a rabbit

hole and trusting whoever lives at the other end with our

personalities. After seeing the Wunch. Does this make sense?

 

“Forgive, please, but am not stupid,” says Boris. “This is Fermi

paradox territory, no? Instantaneous network exists, is traversable,

with bandwidth adequate for human-equivalent minds. Where are alien

visitors, in history? Must be overriding reason for absence. Think

will wait here and see what comes back. Then make up mind to drink the

poison kool-aid.”

 

“I’ve got half a mind to transmit myself through without a back-up,”

says someone else - “but that’s okay; half a mind is all we’ve got the

bandwidth for.” Halfhearted laughter shores up his wisecrack, supports

a flagging determination to press through.

 

“I’m with Boris,” says Su Ang. She glances at Pierre, catches his eye:

Suddenly a number of things become clear to him. He shakes his head

minutely. You never had a chance - I belong to Amber, he thinks, but

deletes the thought before he can send it to her. Maybe in another

instantiation his issues with the Queen’s droit de seigneur would have

bulked up larger, splintered his determination; maybe in another world

it has already happened? “I think this is very rash,” she says in a

hurry. “We don’t know enough about postsingularity civilizations.”

 

“It’s not a singularity,” Amber says waspishly. “It’s just a brief

burst of acceleration. Like cosmological inflation.”

 

“Smooths out inhomogeneities in the initial structure of

consciousness,” purrs the cat. “Don’t I get a vote?”

 

“You do.” Amber sighs. She glances round. “Pierre?”

 

Heart in his mouth: “I’m with you.”

 

She smiles, brilliantly. “Well then. Will the nay sayers please leave

the universe?”

 

Suddenly, the audience chamber is half-empty.

 

“I’m setting a watchdog timer for a billion seconds into the future,

to restart us from this point if the router doesn’t send anyone back

in the intervening time,” she announces gravely, taking in the

serious-faced avatars of those who remain. Surprised: “Sadeq! I didn’t

think this was your type of -”

 

He doesn’t smile: “Would I be true to my faith if I wasn’t prepared to

bring the words of Mohammed, peace be unto him, to those who may never

have heard his name?”

 

Amber nods. “I guess.”

 

“Do it,” Pierre says urgently. “You can’t keep putting it off

forever.”

 

Aineko raises her head: “Spoilsport!”

 

“Okay.” Amber nods. “Let’s do -”

 

She punches an imaginary switch, and time stops.

 

*

 

At the far end of a wormhole, two hundred light-years distant in real

space, coherent photons begin to dance a story of human identity

before the sensoria of those who watch. And all is at peace in orbit

around Hyundai +4904/[-56], for a while …

 

*