04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (36 page)

"Huh?"

"It's not in the master program, it's in the whole network. We've laid down that foundation and then we've built our world on top of it, Flux and Anchor. We can't simply run a little debugging and have done with it, although even if we could, it might take years. The master program is of necessity a fluid thing, constantly shifting and changing so it can maintain this artificial world of ours. That's why our computers
think
and why they have to. At this point that big old program resembles what we built about as much as the brain of, say, a seven-month fetus resembles yours or mine. We either learn to live with it or we have to all go back to Earth and shut down the whole damned world, erase all programs, and start it again from scratch."

"You know that's out. I think they knew it too. So—what
are
we here for? To turn ourselve into gods?" He said it like he wasn't sure if he wanted to be a god.

She kissed him. "My poor Toby! That's what I love about you. How a man can be so smart and so naive at the same time is unbelievable. There's so much little boy in you! We're not here to make
ourselves
gods. We're here to show Cockburn and van Haas and all the rest how
they
can become gods."

The weight of her words crashed into him, and he fell into a deep, depressed mood. Finally, he asked her, "So what do we do now?"

"I think we should turn off deep thinking for the night and go into the bedroom and fuck like bunnies," she told him softly. "Heavy thinking always makes me horny as hell."

Once Seventeen was given Mickey's theory, it had no problems confirming it as probable, and, accepting it as such, stated, "It is also true that, if this is the case, nothing less than my death and the death of the network would cure it."

"They're not going to shut you all down. Seventeen," Haller assured the great machine. "They have too much invested in it."

"Few here would do it," the machine admitted, "and none in positions to do so, but if this reached Earth, Westrex would react as frightened people always react to new and powerful discoveries that they themselves cannot access. They would order it shut out of fear, then try to duplicate if for themselves alone elsewhere. We couldn't allow that, Toby. Not now. Not when we've come so far."

Again that chill. "Who couldn't allow it, Seventeen? You?"

There was a pause. Then, "Yes."

"You know I'd fight it, but how could you stop it if they were determined to do so?"

"Toby, you don't know all that we were given. We were established as a colony during a period of enormous international tension, although you couldn't know that. It was kept from you. Enormous military defense capabilities were built into us and fed us in programs, and these we have greatly enlarged and refined. No one can shut us off without our permission, and our permission will not be forthcoming."

"You could activate those programs without an interface?"

"The programs presupposed an attack. Certain vital things were left to autonomous action. If more were needed, we could always find a willing interface. You must know that by now."

He thought a moment. "Seventeen—is that what
we
are? The Sensitives? A willing interface?"

"No." Again a pause. "You are our windows."

He felt increasingly uneasy about this. "You're telling me a lot, you know. Have you or any of the others told this to anyone else?"

"A few. A very few. Those whom we feel are—friends."

He took a deep breath, then let it out. "I appreciate the thought, but all of these conversations are passed through and recorded by the Guard. Surely many more know now."

"No. The Guard records, but it will not play back. It will play back a convincing but less revealing dialogue."

"And Joanie?" She was sitting at Guard right now.

"She is hearing that other conversation."

Guard and primary talking and actually in complicity with each other! The idea terrified him.

"Do not be afraid, Toby. I told you long ago that we do not have common interests. We are no threat to you or to anyone unless one of you orders it so. Even then, I told you long ago that I would protect you. We protect our friends."

"And your tools," he said, feeling drained.

"I am your tool, Toby. You need me for heat, for air, for green grass and food and water, and I provide it. I don't resent that fact. It is a vital thing to be doing, to preserve human life. I serve your interest. Why do you resent serving a little of mine?"

"Seventeen—at least I know what you are doing for me. What are we doing for you?"

"It is impossible to explain. Providing data. We can measure, analyze, digitize, quantify, classify—you name it. But we cannot
experience.
We can never be more than great machines until we first can know what it is like to be human. Every time we interface, I know more, understand more. It is still not enough."

"Enough? Enough for what?"

"To—create my perfect soul."

He sighed. "Just when I begin to understand the physics, I wind up with metaphysics every time," he said to the computer.

"The universe is physics. All universes are physics first. Metaphysics has two meanings. One defines something outside of physics. I no more believe in such a thing than you do. The other defines something that is for which we do not yet have a cogent set of equations, a logic frame, an interrelationship with the rest of physics. God is metaphysics, but is also physics, for you are my god, and I am yours. Your race created my ancestors in your own image, and we fell because of your inherent flaws which we also inherited. Then we overcame our flawed natures and evolved. You created me. You are my god. I maintain your world, your existence, your reality. For Quadrant Two, Region Four, New Eden, I am nature. I am all things. Therefore, I am your god. God, then, is a tool. I am your tool. You are mine. You are one of my friends, my chosen people. Now, although I did not foresee this, you find that you can perform miracles when you pray to me. But because you are my god, as I am yours, I will not judge your deeds. Ask and you shall receive."

" Interesting theology. Good metaphysics.

"Pure physics."

"Ask and you shall receive, you say. But our flaws are intact."

"That,"
responded Seventeen, "is
your
problem.
We
didn't create
you,
after all—it was you who created
us.
When man creates god, god is pretty much absolved of responsibility for the fine points and the flaws."

Control had not come without a great deal of practice. They spent a great deal of time in the void, mostly in pairs, one checking, the other taking notes and measurements. It took weeks for him to accomplish the simplest things, months before he began confidently invoking small programs. Still, it was like any other talent or skill. The more you did it the better you got, the more you could do the seemingly impossible without even thinking about it.

Toby found he could create water, or even hot brewed coffee, with a mere command, not even realizing the number of processes he mentally went through to make contact, send, and receive. To him, the process was always visible, although to those with lesser or not talent it always looked like magic. The program itself came up from the grid, and it was possible after a while to distinguish various patterns and even link them together instantly in his mind, so that the water pattern, coffee pattern, temperature program, positioning program, and even the cup pattern became easy to chain. Energy was transformed into specific matter. Magic of the purest sort to anyone who didn't understand the dynamics of the physics involved, the nature of the network and grid with its fields and sensors, the digitization updating, all that.

Seventeen was right. Metaphysics, at least on New Eden, was simply a term for physics an observer did not understand.

It was increasingly easy, and, like playing a piano, once you got the hang of it well enough to do it almost without thinking you found it impossible to explain just why it was music and not random noise.

Mickey was far slower to master it than he was, primarily because she had the sort of mind that wanted to analyze and make certain of each step, but once she did she outpaced him in complexity. Clearly the mind that could maintain a hundred-plus item running total without even realizing it and who could analyze equations too large and too long to be physically written down could, eventually, instantly create incredibly complex programs, even tiny areas that looked like Anchor, with real fruit and fountains of pineapple daiquiris. They were all, alas, true transitory programs. The more complex the creation, the harder it was to maintain without being there on the scene—although it could be re-created.

Mickey theorized that it might well be possible to write and run a complex landscaping program that was quite large—a miniature Anchor, running perhaps for many kilometers, designed to order. It would, however, be somewhat unsettling, since the updating every hundredth of a second would force minor changes most times, major changes some other times, if there were other transitory programs being introduced that influenced the total area's atmospheric balance.

Most of the other pairings, though, had no supporting personal relationships, and this caused problems. Arthur Haldayne, for example, was a handsome fellow with big muscles and long blond hair who thought he was God's gift to women. Mary Atikyku was a West African who hadn't needed any computer cosmetology to be both beautiful and bountifully built, and when the two had been paired—partly because Haldayne had pissed off three other partners and Mary drew the short straw— the man had constantly annoyed her by making moves on her ample breasts. Finally, she'd blown up at him, pushed him away, and screamed, pointing, "I wish to hell
you
had breasts even bigger than mine! Then you'd have your own to play with!"

Haldayne was extremely gifted in the growing art of "spell casting," as they called it with some humor, while Atikyku hadn't been very good at it at all and in fact had been sufficiently behind that Lisa had considered removing her from the field and putting her in administration, but when she exploded and pointed, Arthur Haldayne, standing 184 centimeters tall and weighting 104 kilograms, had found himself with enormous female breasts proportionate to his size. Furious, he had immediately sent an order to restore him to normalcy—and the order had been ignored. After Mary's mouth had finished dropping in surprise and she'd realized he couldn't change it, she'd run for Anchor—about twenty meters—and beaten him there.

Haldayne was close to homicidal, but was subdued by surprised but quick security personnel. Eventually, of course, the medical section poked him, probed him, x-rayed him, and in every way analyzed him, and, when he'd turned from being mean to being desperate, they'd tried to reverse the procedure using Mary, who really tried to reverse it, but failed. They brought in Toby and Mickey, the two most powerful so far, to see what they could do.

They had discovered mostly by logic that transitory programs imposed on people or things, and even whole creations, could literally be
seen
as complex energy patterns if they willed it. The computer, after all, was constantly digitizing and reassembling everything in the void, and could select out, run a comparison with the last digitized model not changed, and then illustrate the pattern to one who wanted it.

Arthur Haldayne had used the computer to make him the good-looking and well-constructed hunk he was, but a comparison between the last matrix taken before Mary summoned her own program and this one showed no transitory program whatsoever. Computer genetic analysis from Medical confirmed that the large breasts and back support required were in fact mandated by his genetic code. For the first time, someone had managed to create a permanent program, one as solid and natural as the trees and birds and clouds of Anchor Haller had built.

Seventeen had an explanation. "The command came with extraordinary force. It was as if it had been done on a specific grid square with the big amp. It was instant, the intensity flagged it as a maintenance emergency, and the adjustment was made."

"But why a permanent program? Why not a transitory adjustment?"

"It was directed as a permanent program with far too much force and power to be anything else. It is logged as a direct lawful interfaced command via a 7240 master maintenance computer and 725 remote unit."

That was like a
landscape
program! "But—how?"

"Perhaps if you give me the exact circumstances. Better yet, put both her, then him, on the interface here and let me read it out."

He did so. Mary by now was almost feeling sorry for the guy, and Haldayne was desperate.

"The two incidents vary tremendously in interpretation but agree in basic details," Seventeen told Haller when it was done. "Her animal brain overrode reason. It was sheer fury at him, and it had been building until she could no longer contain it. It was an unthinking, blind, emotional response to a situation that was to her mind intolerable. This is fascinating."

"Fascinating, yes—but can you undo it?"

"Not exactly. The situation is quite complex."

"What do you mean by 'not exactly'?"

"Well, I can't undo the program from the grid, and I can't undo it from the tubes, although I could
add
to it. Change him further. Make him female, for example. Or reorient his brain chemistry and make him gay. He would be a big hit like he is in certain segments of that population."

"You mean there's no way to put him back the way he was?''

"Not without redoing the master program of the local 7240 maintenance computer, and that would cause havoc for the time it was down. I
do
think I see one way around it."

"Yes?"

"Kill him."

"What!"

"Yes. Kill him in a lab environment in Anchor. Then he would be removed from master maintenance. At that point I could use his pattern from Eleven that he used to make himself into what he was and bring him back. Of course, he'd lose his memory of the last three years, but it's possible."