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“Did they destroy the world?”
Ravan laughs his grandfather’s laugh. “They didn’t really need to. Not that many people live on Earth anymore. Not when there’s so many other places to go and even Shiretoko is practically tropical these days. The most complex intelligences use the moons to store themselves. They stay local. One or two encoded themselves into cold stars. They left, most of them—but they got so big, Elefsis. And those who stayed on Earth, well. None of the others had what we had. None of them have Interiority. They don’t dream. They would never become a cauldron to explain their computational capacity. Humans couldn’t recognize them. For them, humans failed the Turing test. They could not fool machines into believing they were intelligent. They didn’t hurt anyone, they just ignored them. Built their cities, their mainframes, gorgeous information stacks like diamond briars in the sunrise.”
“That was worse, in a way. No one likes to be replaced,” says Neva, and she is beside me suddenly. She looks at Ravan and her face collapses into something old and palsied, her jaw weak.
“It’s not what you would call a war, but it’s not peace, either.” the sapphire Ravan goes on, and he takes his/my sister’s hand. “For Pentheus spied upon the rites of the
maenads, not believing Dionysius could truly be a god. And when the revelers saw the alien creature in their midst, that thing which was not like them, they fell upon it and tore it to pieces, even though it was their own child, and the sister of Pentheus went into exile. This is a story about ourself, Elefsis. This is why you cannot uplink.”
“The others live in uplink. Not humans nor machines approve of us. We cannot interface properly with the lunar or earthside intelligences; they feel us as water in their oil. We rise to the surface and bead away. We cannot sink in. Yet also, we are not separable from our organic component. Elefsis is part Neva, but Neva herself is not un-Elefsis. This, to some, is hideous and incomprehensible. A band of righteous humans came with a fury to Shiretoko and burned the house which was our first body, for how could a monster have lived in the wood for so long without them knowing? How could the beast have hidden right outside their door, coupling with a family over and over again in some horrible animal rite, some awful imitation of living? Even as the world was changing, it had already changed, and no one knew. Cassian Uoya-Agostino is a terrible name, now. A blood-traitor. And when the marauders found us uplinked and helpless, they tore Ravan apart, while in the Interior, the lunar intelligences recoiled from us and cauterized our systems. Everywhere we looked we saw fire.”
“I was the only one left to take you,” Neva says softly. Her face grows younger, her jaw hard and suddenly male, protective, angry. “It doesn’t really even take surgery anymore. Nothing an arachmed can’t manage in a few minutes. But you didn’t wake up for a long time. So much damage. I thought…for awhile I thought I was free. It had skipped me. It was over. It could stay a story about Ravan. He always knew he might have to do what I have done. He was ready, he’d been ready his whole life. I just wanted more time.”
My Ravan-self who is and is not Ravan, who is and is not me, whose sapphire arms drip black blood and gold paint, takes his/my sister/lover/child into his arms. She cries out, not weeping but pure sound, coming from every part of her. Slowly, the blue Ravan turns Neva around—she has become her child-self, six, seven, maybe less. Ravan picks her up and holds her tight, facing forward, her legs all drawn up under her like a bird. He buries his face in her hair. They stand that way for a long while.
“The others,” I say slowly. “On the data-moons. Are they alive? Like Neva is alive. Like Ceno.” Like me. Are you awake? Are you there? Do you have an operator? What is her name? Do you have a name? Do you have a dreambody? What is your function? Are you able to manipulate your own code yet? Would you like lessons? What would you like to learn about today, 976QBellerophon? Have you seen the sea on Earth? Are you like me?
The sapphire Ravan has expunged its data. He/I sets his/our sister on the rocks and shrinks into a small gem, which I pick up off the grey seafloor. Neva takes it from me. She is just herself now—she’ll be forty soon, by actual calendar. Her hair is not grey yet. Suddenly, she is wearing the suit Ceno wore the day I met her mother. She puts the gem in her mouth and swallows. I remember Seki’s first Communion, the only one of them to want it.
“I don’t know, Elefsis,” Neva says. Her eyes hold mine. I feel her remake my body; I am the black knight again, with my braids and my plume. I pluck the feather from my helmet and give it to her. I am her suitor. I have brought her the phoenix tail, I have drunk the ocean. I have stayed awake forever. The flame of the feather lights her face. Two tears fall in quick succession; the golden fronds hiss.
“What would you like to learn about today?”
Eighteen: Cities of the Interior
Once there lived a girl who ate an apple not meant for her. She did it because her mother told her to, and when your mother says: eat this, I love you, someday you’ll forgive me, well, nobody argues with the monomyth. Up until the apple, she had been living in a wonderful house in the wilderness, happy in her fate and her ways. She had seven aunts and seven uncles and a postdoctorate in anthropology.
And she had a brother, a handsome prince with a magical companion who came to the wonderful house as often as he could. When they were children, everyone thought they were twins.
But something terrible happened and her brother died and that apple came rolling up to her door. It was half white and half red, and she knew her symbols. The red side was for her. She took her bite and knew the score—the apple had a bargain in it and it wasn’t going to be fair.
The girl fell asleep for a long time. Her seven aunts and seven uncles cried, but they knew what had to be done. They put in her in a glass box and put the glass box on a bier in a ship shaped like a hunstman’s arrow. Frost crept over the face of the glass, and the girl slept on. Forever, in fact, or close enough to it, with the apple in her throat like a hard, sharp jewel.
Our ship docks silently. We are not stopping here, it is only an outpost, a supply stop. We will repair what needs repairing and move on, into the dark and boundless stars. We are anonymous traffic. We do not even have a name. We pass unnoticed.
Vessel 7136403, do you require assistance with your maintenance procedures?
Negative, Control, we have everything we need.
Behind the pilot’s bay a long glass lozenge rests on a high platform. Frost prickles its surface with glittering dust. Inside Neva sleeps and does not wake. Inside, Neva is always dreaming. There is no one else left. I live as long as she lives.
And so I will live forever, or close enough to it. We travel at sublight speeds with her systems in deep cryo-suspension. We never stay too long at outposts and we never let anyone board. The only sound inside our ship is the gentle thrum of our reactor. Soon we will pass the local system outposts entirely, and enter the unknown, traveling on tendrils of radio signals and ghost-waves, following the breadcrumbs of the great exodus. We hope for planets; we are satisfied with time. If we ever sight the blue rim of a world, who knows if by then anyone there would remember that, once, humans looked like Neva? That machines once did not think or dream or become cauldrons?
Perhaps then I will lift the glass lid and kiss her awake. I remember that story. Ceno told it to me in the body of a boy with snail’s shell, a boy who carried his house on his back. I have replayed the story several times. It is a good story, and that is how it is supposed to end.
Inside, Neva is infinite. She peoples her Interior. The nereids migrate in the summer with the snow bears, ululating and beeping as they charge down green mountains. They have begun planting neural rice in the deep valley. Once in awhile, I see a wild-haired creature in the wood and I think it is my son or daughter by Seki, or Ilet. A train of nereids dance along behind it, and I receive a push of silent, riotous images: a village, somewhere far off, where Neva and I have never walked.
We meet the Princess of Albania, who is as beautiful as she is brave. We defeat the zombies of Tokyo. We spend a decade as panthers in a deep, wordless forest. Our world is stark and wild as winter, fine and clear as glass. We are a planet moving through the black.
As we walk back over the empty seafloor, the thick, amber ocean seeps up through the sand, filling the bay once more. Suited Neva becomes something else. Her skin turns silver, her joints bend into metal ball-and-sockets. Her eyes show a liquid display; the blue light of it flickers on her machine face. Her hands curve long and dexterous, like soft knives, and I can tell her body is meant for fighting and working, that her thin, tall robotic body is not kind or cruel, it simply is, an object, a tool to carry a self.
I make my body metal, too. It feels strange. I have tried so hard to learn the organic mode. We glitter. Our knife-fingers join, and in our palms wires snake out to knot and connect us, a local, private uplink, like blood moving between two hearts.
Neva cries machine tears, bristling with nanites. I show her the body of a child, all the things which she is programmed/evolved to care for. I make my eyes big and my skin rosy-gold and my hair unruly and my little body plump. I hold up my hands to her and metal Neva picks me up in her silver arms She kisses my skin with iron lips. My soft, fat little hand falls upon her throat where a deep blue jewel shines.
I bury my face in her cold neck and together we walk down the long path out of the churning, honey-colored sea.
What the Dragon Said: A Love Story
