Chapter Text
IMAGINE THAT YOU LIVE IN REALITY. THIS SHOULD BE PRETTY EASY EVEN FOR THE GAGGLE OF CONTEMPTUOUS IDIOTS THAT YOU ARE.
NOW IMAGINE REALITY AS A FLAT, WIDE SHAPE LIKE A FABRIC INSULATION PLANE. AND SOMEONE TOOK EACH OF THE FOUR CORNERS AND BUNDLED YOU UP INSIDE LIKE A CAVERN STEWARD WITH A PARTICULARLY NAUGHTY GRUB, AND STARTED BEATING YOU WITH A BIG STICK.
YOU'D NEVER SEE THEIR FACE. YOU'LL NEVER GET OUT EITHER, BECAUSE THE DOOR IS LOCKED FROM THE OUTSIDE. AND IF YOU'RE REALLY STUPID, JUST A SMEAR OF ROADKILL ON LIFE'S INTELLECTUAL HIGHWAY, MIGHT NOT EVEN FIGURE THERE'S A GUY AT ALL. ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE NOT THE ONE GETTING BEAT.
SOMETIMES IT'S NOT EVEN STICKS. SOMETIMES GOD'S A REAL SICK FUCK AND GETS CREATIVE. HE'S GOT OPTIONS-- VIVISECTION, PERFORATION. WHISPERS IN THE DARK. BUMPS IN THE NIGHT. THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL LAWS IN OUR UNIVERSE.
SOMEONE TRIED TO EXPLAIN IT TO ME ONCE. I TOLD HIM TO SHOVE IT DOWN HIS MAW AND STOP DELUDING HIMSELF.
IMAGINE YOUR ONE SOLACE IN A WORLD LIKE THAT, TOO MUCH OF A COWARD TO ACCEPT A BASIC PREMISE OF HIS OWN EXISTENCE.
I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE STABBED ME TOO.
-- Imperious Vantas, Red Hand of our Throneless Queen, our salvation at Venus. Ten years before the Skyblade.
Dirk lays a thin acrylic slab, rounded and protected by a rubber encasement (like you'd find on a dad's iPhone) on a stack of its brothers. He stands almost exactly fifteen feet down a one-hundred-and-fifty foot hallway. Each slab rests perfectly against the wall, between two yellow marks in a vertical series. The number '378' is stenciled above them in fading paint.
Dirk had a sense-- or rather a philosophy-- that the fundamental conflict of a human life was with its own permitted spacetime and capability, which defined the upper limits of labor and its value. If any works outscoped a single human lifetime, then there would be no end of history. Labor would always be sought out and occupied by cooperation, coercion, or some mix of the two.
Fifteen feet down a one-hundred-and-fifty foot hallway was ten percent. It would take another eight-thousand days to complete the rest of the thin sheets of microscopic circuitry he would wrap and fold into the brain of a machine that could see outside of time. A shadow that can cast itself. An ape that can stand. A vile vie for a virgin villain-Virgil to stand vigil.
He doesn't have anyone to tell these stupid jokes to and that still doesn't stop him. Maybe it's a good sign.
This isn't the first prototype. He hasn't tested his third attempt yet. He knows it will fail, spotted the errors in the simulations two weeks ago. It's too late to try and unseal the casing and fastidiously unsolder the millions, trillions of small connections that happened spontaneously during assembly. There's no saving it. But it's not a total loss, either. The numbers were plateauing at the top, at least. She might have something to tell him this time.
He ducks into the kitchenette for a protein drink and some red berries. Not a lot of ceremony. Never had been.
Maybe we should have brought some of your cultists. Asking for trouble, sure. But if he was going insane he might as well have done it in the right atmosphere-- he could have sworn he saw a dog yesterday on the way to the bathroom, crossing a doorway on the other side of the hall.
Not a lot of ceremony. He's stalling, which is extra pathetic given the circumstances.
Dirk heads to the lab.
*
There's no need for the airlock and surgical drapes, because he isn't building a brain today. Dust has even settled on the ground. He's left them up, because procrastination tends to dull the imposing scope of time into manageable future task-points. Maybe after this...
The body is under a sheet on the table, taped down under each corner. He checks and re-checks the contact ports, crude compared to the instrument inside the five pound, black semi-sphere he takes from the case in the back of the room. A bead of oil and a faint click later, and she's mostly assembled. He's left off the faceplate and most of the shielding of the upper torso; failure could damage them, and even with limitless time and resources it still felt like a waste.
His heart pulses. His palms are clammy under his latex gloves when he moves her to a chair, props her up and connects her spine to the power cable draped from the ceiling. He checks the camera and mic, double-checks all readings from the reactor buried beneath them, the diagnostic machines and their own power supplies. Forgets not to touch his hair or face, and throws away the contaminated gloves in the trash. He doesn't need another pair-- the brain won't last this test.
Rose's light had overtasked every mind he'd built so far. It was the nature of her mythological role, burning through her stamina like filament wire. Information was too fundamental, and a seer couldn't help but See. At the end, she could read books in other rooms. Tell him the exact number of leaves on the trees outside her window. That was with her eyes closed. And with them open...
He was different. He could slough off bits of himself when they became too large or heavy. His external shape could continue to define him. But he wonders how many souls he's gone through by now. He doesn't remember when they came here, or anything before. He can visit it in chat logs and memos and photographs, catch glimpses of selves as they pass through him like breath or food, but there's no keeping track of something like that.
"This is take three. Doubled manifold, projected total failure at the Gödel limit." He used to have more to say, going off the old records. This had never felt good, based on how his past self had slumped over and wrung his hands and swore under his breath, but maybe at one point it had felt vengeful. He had to bank off muscle memory now, pure momentum and pattern aligning charts, tucking his mouth to his elbow when he cleared his throat. Had to trust in the work over the fickle tides of his own neurochemistry. Dopamine was a cruel and unjust manager.
He turns on the power and waits. "Calling Lodestar."
Even if she's awake for a second, that's long enough to kill him.
It could be just. He can see it in his mind's eye; the dead robot and the dead boy and his dead daughter in the empty solar system. They would go undiscovered for hundreds or thousands of years. There aren't carrion pests or bugs on the planet; maybe he'd desiccate, or putrefy to his own gut flora. With the ventilation system, he isn't sure. Doesn't know enough about it. Could research it and make another simulation. Maybe code a drone to write "dumbass" in chalk around the body.
That's the rambling, morbid paranoia of someone that hasn't talked to another person in....
Small lights flicker on across her face and shoulders. Positive readings from all but C7-R. He taps out the letters into a sheet while Rose begins to mutter inaudible gibberish.
"Hey," he says, rolling his chair back in front of her. "Hey. Can you hear me?"
Silence. A breath. Moving of the fingers.
"Rose," he says. He does a poor job masking his feeling. "How close are we."
Her hands open and close. She isn't moving her head, he wonders if the sensors are wrong and there's more errors in the cervical spine than they're letting on. Wouldn't affect this, but still. Sloppy. Should have done another test with the dummy-mind. He--
"It's a tree bent into a wreath. Its roots kiss its branches." She blinks. "Think about it. How would you hold a river--"
Her right eye pops in a flash of light that makes him jump backwards. The metal body slumps forwards as smoke pours from the socket, then a small orange glow that stares at him before it turns into an engulfing fire crawling up the umbilical cable.
He grabs the extinguisher from the corner and douses the whole thing in fog. Stands there in a daze until the lights go out. Panic-- before he remembers the backups, they kick to life in a moment, all good. Paces the room until his breaths slow down. Checks the recording. Worked. Looks back at the robot limp in its chair, blackened head and silver body painted white all on one side....
Maybe it's time to admit he isn't sure what he's fucking with. A little too late for that. A better concession; maybe he should stop putting stake in omens and get back to work. At least clean up the place. Stop jumping at shadows. Stop straying from the path. Stop...
He goes back to his chair and sits down, in front of what isn't Rose's body yet. He sits there for a long while. Her empty eye looks back, filled gray like a crater on the moon.
He hopes it hadn't hurt. He'd done his best, but ultimately he was brute-forcing a problem he lacked the finesse to solve. He wouldn't be able to know until she could say more than nonsense to him. Failure stares him back in the face. Silent, like asking what do you want me to do about it?
"I'm sorry," he says, to absolutely no one who cares. Like an idiot.
He has eternity to make up for it. Time to get started.