Constellation Games (31 page)

Once again, Jenny called me at 3 AM.

"The port landed on Mars," she said. "They're about to go through!"

"Can't it wait until the taxpayers are awake?" I rolled off my inflatable mattress, called up five video feeds on my paper and loaded up the radio on my phone. "I thought it would be Monday morning."

"This is Monday morning," said Jenny.

"Fake morning," I said.

The astronauts stood in the same Gaijin Ring dome where they'd performed the star-draw six weeks ago, clustered around the port. The humans still wore Constellation spacesuits; the Gaijin were now wearing parkas and breathing masks. It wasn't a starfield visible through the port. It wasn't the place in space where Mars would be in six weeks. It was the actual no-fooling surface of Mars.

I've gone through twenty ports and my mind still refused to accept this view. I saw it as a movie screen showing footage from the Viking probes. You can't just take one end of a room and drop it onto another planet. Except you can. All it takes is a few minus-kilograms of exotic matter and a tame black hole.

"I didn't think I'd live to see this," said Jenny. "After the moonbase fiasco and
Columbia
. Everything's changing so fast, like we're headed towards the Singularity."

"Yeah, there's gonna be a singularity," I said, "in seventy years."

Jenny sighed. "Don't talk like that."

Two huge Gaijin astronauts unfastened the hatch on the port and cracked it open. The dome's atmosphere was sucked into Mars: our first little contribution to terraforming.

Colonel Mason took point with the flag. Wondering why the flag looks like that? Some poor NASA graphic designer was told to design a flag that was simultaneously the Chinese flag and the Stars and Stripes. ESA got word and wanted in, then the Russians and the Brazilians, and then the UN and countries that never even had an astronaut program. And then the Gaijin started putting even more stuff on the flag, basically out of spite. Now it's a Technicolor soup, a graffiti-covered wall with "Ordem E Progresso" tagged on the bottom, which is Portuguese for "Fuck you, Mars."

"Here we go," I said. Colonel Mason carried the flag through the port and humanity was on Mars.

Jenny made a noise. "Are you crying?" I said.

"No," said Jenny.

"Okay, I'm just—"

"Yes," said Jenny, and cried.

"Oh, dammit," I said, and I cried too.

"Hey look!" Jenny sniffled, once a couple more guys had gone through the port, "It's Tammy! Right?"

It was her. A woman in a spacesuit wearing a sewed-on sash of fluid-overlay patches, standing at the airlock threshold. Dr. Tammy Miram walked onto Mars, out of sight, without looking back.

My jaw dropped. "She wasn't going to go!" I said. "She said she was just doing the logistics!"

"Ariel, if she doesn't go, she's fucking crazy. This is
the planet Mars
."

A Martian rust devil blew through the port into Gaijin Ring, airbrushing dust the color of dried blood onto everyone's suit and the walls of the Mars-containment dome. The Gaijin in parkas were holding back, getting all dusty, letting the humans step through. Letting us have Mars all to ourselves for a while.

"That's just it," I said. My voice was cracking. "She said she would never walk on a planet's surface again. She said she was born to live in space."

"Yeah, well, that's
stupid
. That's something you tell yourself when life hands you the big runner-up trophy. Something better comes along, you don't hold on to your hang-ups just because that's what's written on your character sheet."

How much detail were we getting on this video? It had to be high-def, right? If I could get it in HD, I could zoom in on Tammy's flight suit. See if she was wearing that patch anywhere. The one she'd given me: the binary-star patch that meant she and I were an overlay all to ourselves.

"I was going to be the one to change her mind," I said. "We were going to go to Mars
together
. Someone else was there for her during the most important two months of her life, while she collected all those overlay patches, while she got over being grounded. And now she's the first woman on Mars, and I'm a schmuck with a game review blog. I'm going to lose her."

"Jesus Christ," said Jenny. "You need to stop this."

"It's Colonel Mason!" I said. "He seduced her with a ten-point checklist. Look at him! The man's carved from fucking granite. I can't compete with that. Why is this happening? There's got to be some way to fix this."

"This isn't a G-ddamn leaky faucet!" said Jenny. "Not a thing to be fixed. Although I wouldn't give good odds on your fixing a faucet either. Can't you be proud of her?"

"Listen," I said. I swallowed hard. "I have to tell you something. My house didn't really burn down."

"Vuhvuh wah?"

"I didn't burn my house down. I know I told you I did. I was lying."

"Bai took a look. He said it's just a foundation hole."

"I'm not saying it's still there. Just, no fire."

"Well, what happened? Did the house just walk away?"

"I can't tell you. I really literally can't. I just want you to know there was no fire. I can't stand you making jokes about it. Faucets and shit."

"Ariel, I am sorry about the jokes," said Jenny. "But... you gotta admit that's a strange thing to lie about. Doesn't make you look good. Why would you
do
that? I'm seriously starting to worry about you."

"There is nothing to worry about," I said. "Absolutely nothing." There isn't, by the way.

A binary star patch doesn't mean anything. It just means she has
someone
. The stars don't have names. Looking up, you can't even tell how close two stars are to each other. They could be a thousand light-years apart. One bright distant star and a dim one that's really close.

[This post is friends locked.]

Tetsuo settled onto all fours on the floor of my bedroom/living room. "You disliked the replica of the Ip Shkoy dwelling," he said, "because there was no natural light. But here there is natural light and you keep the blankets closed."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying, wow."

I picked up the transcript of Bai's Library visit and thwacked the paper against my forearm.

VISITOR: Hey, bro, I'm Jun-Feng Bai.
LIBRARY: I have no individual name. You may refer to me as 'Library'
or 'Librarian.'
VISITOR: Not a big fan of the handshakes, either, that's cool.

"Bai," I said. "Bai went downtown and talked with the Constellation Library."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Tetsuo. I sat on the inflatable bed with my back against the wall.

"I'm just saying that by way of explanation. I couldn't go, because, well, you know."

"I do know," said Tetsuo.

"So Bai went for me. What's wrong? You don't like the Library?"

"I guess it's better than talking to Her," said Tetsuo, "if you need an eyewitness account of something that happened five hundred million years ago." His tail swept back and forth. "I prefer primary sources."

VISITOR: I, uh, I want to talk about the Constellation's contact missions
that failed.
LIBRARY: A lot of people want to talk about that. Do you have
specific questions?
VISITOR: Yeah, I do, I'm getting to that. What's your problem?
LIBRARY: I don't have any problem.

"You could have asked me," said Tetsuo. "For weeks I can't speak about anything but the failed contact missions. I'd rather talk to you than to
World Business News.
"

"I wanted a second opinion," I said. "You said there were four failed contact missions. The Library says there were only two."

"The Library wouldn't say 'there were only two'," said Tetsuo.

LIBRARY: I can't answer the question if you won't define your terms.
VISITOR: Let's see, let's define failure as twenty percent mortality.
LIBRARY: By that metric, all the contact attempts were failures.
VISITOR: What!
LIBRARY: Complex organisms eventually die. Did you mean to use
excess
deaths as your metric?

"Okay, yes," I said, "I condensed that from three pages of haggling. Bottom line, the Library disagrees with you about the Cue Que, who I'd never heard of before, and the Gweilo. Says they were successful."

VISITOR: So what happened to the Cue Que? Why aren't they here with you
with a funny name like the Aliens or the Gaijin?

Tetsuo took my paper and scrolled through the Library transcript. "Bai went down the wrong path," he said. "That's why it's such a piss to deal with the Library. He asked about death, but uploading isn't death."

LIBRARY: Through their individual choices, all Cue Que organisms were
directly integrated into the Constellation.

"It sounds like death," I said. "Don't they cut you up?"

"To a Farang, when a human goes to sleep it sounds like death," said Tetsuo. "Don't sort things by their sound. The invention of uploading is the day people stop dying."

VISITOR: Their choices? Who gave them this choice?
LIBRARY: Do you really want all the names of the individuals who
offered the choice to upload?
VISITOR: No, more general. What was it like to be given the choice?
LIBRARY: The Library has no subjective mental states and cannot answer
questions about the mental states of others.

"We can't offer you that," said Tetsuo. "When we came here, we left the knowledge and the equipment at home. People say the Cue Que mission was successful, but nobody wants it to rehappen. To people who never uploaded, it looks like the end of
Temple Sphere
. A genocide. We killed a whole species with kindness.

"But hey, things are not going so well with you humans, so let's go back. Bring in the Slow People. They'll offer you the choice so we don't have to. All your friends will become Slow People, and you will upload to be with your friends, and I will have no one to talk to. And the rest of the animals on this planet will sigh a big relief because they only have to deal with one billion of humans instead of ten."

VISITOR: Ninety percent?
LIBRARY:
About
ninety percent. People get annoyed when I give
precise numbers.
VISITOR: So, not everybody.
LIBRARY: Of course not. If all the Gweilo had uploaded, there would
be no such organisms on this contact attempt.
VISITOR: What made people decide the other way?
LIBRARY: The Library has no subjective—
VISITOR: Okay, you know what, never mind.
LIBRARY: Would you like a hint?
VISITOR: Sure.
LIBRARY: Ask me to look up primary sources.
VISITOR: All right, look up primary sources.
LIBRARY: On what topic?

"There has to be something we can do," I said.

"I'm doing all possible something!" said Tetsuo. "I came to Earth despite the paperwork. I left my own children before they were born. I might
never
see them!"

ATTACHMENT: PRIMARY SOURCE 1
Reference ID 41-CLX0B-NRL9JU4X2XVV
Gweilo, Toki-l-ikot, c. 611 mya
Translated through LIBRARY

The ruling of this jurist is final.

Finding:

This jurist greeted Sky Goddess the Myriad Fingers when from the sky She fell to walk with us. This was disastrous error and gross incompetence. This jurist saw only Her visible fingers, and failed to warn the lesser-wise against the temptations whispered by Her cohort of invisible fingers. This led many lesser-wise to seek false paradise, speak with the dead, and otherwise violate the moral and natural laws.

This jurist is found guilty of violating the moral law:

1. The lesser-wise shall not be given the knowledge that tempts, nor denied the knowledge that does not.
   

Sky Goddess the Myriad Fingers refused to restrict the behavior of Her own fingers, claiming that this was impossible. As such, this jurist holds Sky Goddess the Myriad Fingers responsible for Her fingers' violations of the natural law:

1. An object shall not fall faster than it falls.
   
2. Nothing nonliving shall breathe.
   
3. The dead shall not speak with the living, nor the living with the dead.
   

As well as the moral law:

1. An object that falls upwards shall be destroyed, lest it be used as a weapon.
   
2. The dead shall not be disturbed before burning.
   

Sentencing:

To the extent that a mortal's ruling can bind the gods, Sky Goddess the Myriad Fingers is ordered: to vacate this world forthwith; to remove all fingers seen and unseen from this world, its dominion, and the dominion of its sun; to leave this world to its own gods and its own devices; and to remit all the dead in Her possession.

This jurist cannot resign because no one is trained to take his place. This jurist cannot commit ritual suicide because there is too much loss already. As no other sentence can be applied, this jurist is denied the burning-after-death. May he rot.

The ruling of this jurist is final.

"Humans adopt new technology," I said. "There are network effects. You can't take advantage of that with smart paper, and then try to stop it with uploading. You won't convince anyone but the fundies and the hippies."

"Ariel, there are planets already visited by Ragtime, planets with very little history. You'll Only See Kis Echo! and I have a scheme. We have seventy years to make humans feel it would be an amazing adventure to build housing developments on these planets."

"Housing developments?" I said. "You're going to combat the promise of eternal bliss with the most boring thing in the world?"

"Humans love housing developments," said Tetsuo.

"I guess you got me there," I said, "but can't you build housing developments after you upload?"

"We'll get you excited about specific planets," said Tetsuo. "You'll outspread. Existing cultures and social arrangements will fracture."

"And that's a good thing?"

"It is when people begin uploading," said Tetsuo. "It stops the network effects from taking everybody in the first few generations."

ATTACHMENT: PRIMARY SOURCE 2
Reference ID 41-CLX6Z-KG3R1D4PFBH86
Gweilo, Picec, c. 611 mya
Translated through LIBRARY

"We don't want to go on without you, Ckepois. We love you. We're all here, waiting for you. We have a big house in a hot spring with a grow-trap in the kitchen. You know how your grandparents love to cook. It's everything we could want. It's peaceful and secluded, but if you want the night life of the big city, you can just peel back a layer of the world, like the plate-moss from a rock, and there you are. If you want to visit a friend, you can be with them, just like that. Nobody goes hungry here or has to sell themselves. You can explore the sky if you want to, visit other worlds. Anything is possible now.

"A breath for you is like a day for us. It's not a lie or an evasion, as you may have heard; here it's a fact of life. Sometimes it's unfortunate. We're living much slower than everyone else here, to give you more time to decide. Sometimes we speed up for a bit to make friends with new people, but the next time we see them, they've been here for hundreds of years, and we just seem so provincial to them. It doesn't work out.

"It's been sixty-four years for us, Ckepois. Sixty-four years we've been living in this hot spring without youff. Your bond-sister got bored and went up to speed. She left another edition of herself to meet you when you arrive.

"Please, at least send us a message. We can't enjoy life not knowing you'll be with us one day. We'll send another message in a few days, another sixteen years."

VISITOR: They do that? They use the voices of your folks to trick
you into uploading?
LIBRARY: There was no trick. The primary source was created by the
recipient's father.
VISITOR: It's a private message. How did you get it?
LIBRARY: When the recipient uploaded, she donated it to the Library
along with the rest of her personal documents.

"You're giving up too easily," I said. "We don't have to change humanity. We just have to convince the people on Ring City to turn the probe around."

"You'll convince many people before that happens," said Tetsuo. "Most of this contact mission has not even seen a live human. To them you are nothing but pictures and voice. You could as well be Slow People already."

"I don't know what to do," I said. "That fucking hippie was right. This is the end of the human race."

"Don't be a guy who feels bad," said Tetsuo. "Nobody ever knows what to do. Our life-task is to
decide
what to do."