Terry Pratchett - The Long Earth

Walking right up to that misty hull, he touched it with the tip of a finger. There was a slight sensation, nothing painful.

A voice in his head said, ‘Hello, Joshua.’

And information poured into his mind, like a sudden awakening.

ONCE, LONG AGO, on a world as close as a shadow:

A very different version of North America cradled a huge, landlocked, saline sea. This sea teemed with microbial life. All this life served a single tremendous organism.

And on this world, under a cloudy sky, the entirety of the turbid sea crackled with a single thought.

I…

This thought was followed by another.

To what purpose?

‘TIS A HISTORIC moment,’ Lobsang babbled. ‘First contact! The dream of a million years fulfilled. And I know what this must be. Shalmirane… Didn’t you read The City and the Stars ? It’s some kind of colony organism.’

Sally said archly, ‘Behold the alien! So what now? Are you going to set it mathematical puzzles, like Carl Sagan and those SETI guys?’

Joshua ignored them both. He spoke to First Person Singular. ‘I didn’t tell you my name.’

‘You didn’t need to. You are Joshua. I am First Person Singular.’ The voice in his head sounded like his own.

Inside the translucent skin, the creatures. He recognized fish, birds, and, he realized after a while, a very definite elephant , moving slowly through whatever was in there, half walking, half swimming, eyes closed. And trolls, and elves, and other humanoids.

The tide was coming in. Very carefully, so as not to give offence or cause alarm, Joshua walked backward. ‘What is First Person Singular … for?’

‘First Person Singular is the observer of worlds.’

‘You speak good English.’ It was a dumb thing to say, but what was the right thing to say to a miles-wide slug? Sister Agnes would have known, he thought.

The reply came back immediately. ‘First Person Singular does not know what «Sister Agnes» is. I am still learning. Can you define for me a nun?’

On this bleak shore, Joshua’s jaw dropped.

First Person Singular said, ‘Cross-reference, yes — a nun is a female biped who refrains from procreation to service the needs of others in the species. Comparison with eusocial insects, perhaps? Ants and bees… More. Also rides large vehicles propelled ultimately by the remains of ancient trees. More. Is dedicated to the contemplation of the numinous. This is acknowledged as an interim description pending further investigation of relevant details… I myself would appear to be a nun, by some definitions. I perceive the world of worlds in their entirety. I believe I understand what is meant by breathless with adoration … You should move back on to the shore.’

The incoming water was up to Joshua’s knees. He backed up across the strand.

Sally was watching in amazement. ‘You’re talking to it?’

‘She. Not it. I think so. I hear my own voice asking me questions. She seems to know what I’m thinking — or rather, she knows what I know. I have no idea what she is, but she seems to want to learn.’ He sighed. ‘I’m kind of overloaded with wonder here, Sally.’

From the backpack the voice of Lobsang called, ‘Come back to the airship. Debriefing time, I think.’

As they walked back to the Mark Twain more pterosaurs flew over, their silhouettes gaunt against the sky.

Without the winches, the climb back up the rope to the gondola was pretty gruelling, but there were working lights on all decks now, the water heater was functioning, and there was instant coffee, at least.

Of course Sally wanted to talk things over immediately. But she was overruled by both Joshua and Lobsang, for at least the time it took to make the coffee.

Then Joshua tried to relate what he had sensed of First Person Singular’s own story. ‘She was alone on her world.’

‘A survivor,’ Sally said.

‘No. Not that. She emerged alone. She evolved that way. She was always alone…’

Lobsang cross-examined him, and gradually they pieced together, if not the truth, then a story.

On the Earth of First Person Singular, Lobsang speculated, as on many Earths, the early ages of life were long aeons of struggle for survival by half-formed creatures that had not yet discovered how to use DNA to store genetic information, and whose control over the proteins from which all living things were constructed was as yet poor. There had been billions upon billions of swarming cells in the shallow oceans, but they were not yet sophisticated enough to be able to afford to compete with each other. Instead, they cooperated. Any useful innovation flashed from cell to cell. It was as if everything in this global ocean operated as a single mega-organism.

‘With time,’ Lobsang said, ‘on most worlds, and certainly on Datum Earth, complexity and organization reach a point where individual cells can survive unaided. And then, on most worlds, competition begins. The great kingdoms of life begin to separate, oxygen bleeds into the air as a waste product of creatures that learn how to harness the power of sunlight, and the long slow climb towards multicelled forms begins. The age of global cooperation vanishes, leaving no trace save enigmatic markers in genetic composition.’

Sally said, ‘On most worlds, but not on First Person Singular’s.’

‘No. Actually that world must have been a remarkable Joker. There, the gathering complexity drove a familiar-looking evolutionary story — but the unity of that single global organism was never lost . We really have travelled to a very distant branch of the contingency tree. It—’

‘She, Lobsang,’ Joshua said.

‘ She : yes, the feminine is appropriate, she appears to be positively gravid with apparently healthy life forms. She was more like a maturing biosphere than a creature like a human. As complexity increased, knots of control must have formed. To grow further it would have become necessary for the information structure to construct and contain a copy of itself, for the whole to become self-reflective. That is, conscious.’

Sally frowned, trying to take this in. ‘But what would such a creature want?’

‘I can tell you that much,’ Joshua said. ‘Company. She was lonely. Although she didn’t know it until she encountered the trolls.’

‘Ah.’

They would never know how a band of trolls had ended up on that remote world, Joshua realized. They must have come through the Gap; perhaps they were traumatized, some of them injured by exposure to vacuum. ‘But she was fascinated,’ he said, eyes closed, concentrating, trying to remember . ‘By the simple fact that there was more than one of them. The way they looked at each other, worked together — each of them recognized the other. They were not alone, as she was. They had each other. She wanted what they had. The one thing in the world she lacked…

‘A troll came to the water.’ He had a vision, like a waking dream, of the troll crouching, innocently scooping crabs from the shallow water — a mound of water rising, embracing him.

‘Killing him,’ Sally said, when Joshua described this.

‘Yes. She didn’t intend it, but that was the outcome. The trolls fled. Maybe she caught another one, an infant … studied it…’

‘And learned to step,’ Lobsang guessed.

‘Yes. It took her a long time. The thing we encountered isn’t all of her, all she was; once she filled an ocean. The thing in the sea here is — an expression of her. The essence. A form compact enough to step.’

‘So she followed the trolls,’ Sally said. ‘Heading West down the chain of worlds.’