Peter Watts - Beyond the Rift

“They’re just symbols, Jean.” He grinned. At times like this he could almost forget the source of those dreams, the stunted, impoverished existence of some half-self trapped in distant meat. Andrew Goravec’s act of cowardice had freed her from that prison, for a while at least. She soared now, released to full potential. She mattered .

“Symbols. That’s what dreams are supposed to be, but…I don’t know. There’re all these references to dreams in the library, and none of them seem that much different from just being awake. And when I am asleep, it’s all just—screams, almost, only dopplered down. Really sludgy. And shapes. Red shapes.” A pause. “I hate bedtime.”

“Well, you’re awake now. What are you up for today?”

“I’m not sure. I need to get away from this place.”

He didn’t know what place she meant. By default she woke up in the house, an adult residence designed for human sensibilities. There were also parks and forests and oceans, instantly accessible. By now, though, she’d changed them all past his ability to recognize.

But it was only a matter of time before her parents wanted her back. Whatever she wants , Stavros told himself. As long as she’s here. Whatever she wants.

“I want out,” Jean said.

Except that. “I know,” he sighed.

“Maybe then I can leave these nightmares behind.”

Stavros closed his eyes, wished there was some way to be with her. Really with her, with this glorious, transcendent creature who’d never known him as anything but a disembodied voice.

“Still having a hard time with that monster?” Jean asked.

“Monster?”

“You know. The bureaucracy .”

He nodded, smiling—then, remembering, said, “Yeah. Always the same story, day in, day out.”

Jean snorted. “I’m still not convinced that thing even exists, you know. I checked the library for a slightly less wonky definition, but now I think you and the library are both fucked in the head.”

He winced at the epithet; it was certainly nothing he’d ever taught her. “How so?”

“Oh, right, Stav. Like natural selection would ever produce a hive-based entity whose sole function is to sit with its thumb up its collective butt being inefficient. Tell me another one.”

A silence, stretching. He watched as microcurrent trickled through her prefrontal cortex.

“You there, Stav?” she said at last.

“Yeah, I’m here.” He chuckled, quietly. Then: “You know I love you, right?”

“Sure,” she said easily. “Whatever that is.”

Jean’s environment changed then; an easy unthinking transition for her, a gasp-inducing wrench between bizarre realities for Stavros. Phantoms sparkled at the edge of his vision, vanishing when he focused on them. Light bounced from a million indefinable facets, diffuse, punctuated by a myriad pinpoint staccatos. There was no ground or walls or ceiling. No restraints along any axis.

Jean reached for a shadow in the air and sat upon it, floating. “I think I’ll read Through the Looking Glass again. At least someone else lives in the real world.”

“The changes that happen here are your own doing, Jean,” said Stavros. “Not the machinations of any, any God or Author.”

“I know. But Alice makes me feel a little more—ordinary.” Reality shifted abruptly once more; Jean was in the park now, or rather, what Stavros thought of as the park. Sometimes he was afraid to ask if her interpretation had stayed the same. Above, light and dark spots danced across a sky that sometimes seemed impressively vault-like, seconds later oppressively close, even its color endlessly unsettled. Animals large and small, squiggly yellow lines and shapes and color-shifting orange and burgundy pies. Other things that might have been representations of life, or mathematical theorems—or both—browsed in the distance.

Seeing through Jean’s eyes was never easy. But all this unsettling abstraction was a small price to pay for the sheer pleasure of watching her read.

My little girl .

Symbols appeared around her, doubtless the text of Looking Glass . To Stavros it was gibberish. A few recognizable letters, random runes, formulae. They switched places sometimes, seamlessly shifting one into another, flowing around and through and beside—or even launching themselves into the air like so many dark-hued butterflies.

He blinked his eyes and sighed. If he stayed much longer the visuals would give him a headache that would take a day to shake. Watching a life lived at such speed, even for such a short time, took its toll.

“Jean, I’m gone for a little while.”

“Company business?” she asked.

“You could say that. We’ll talk soon, love. Enjoy your reading.”

Barely ten minutes had passed in meatspace.

Jeannie’s parents had put her on her own special cot. It was one of the few real pieces of solid geometry allowed in the room. The whole compartment was a stage, virtually empty. There was really no need for props; sensations were planted directly into Jean’s occipital cortex, spliced into her auditory pathways, pushing back against her tactile nerves in precise forgeries of touchable things. In a world made of lies, real objects would be a hazard to navigation.

“God damn you, she’s not a fucking toaster, ” Kim spat at her husband. Evidently the icy time-out had expired; the battle had resumed.

“Kim, what was I supposed to—”

“She’s a child , Andy. She’s our child.”

“Is she.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Of course she is!”

“Fine.” Andrew took the remote from his pocket held it out to her. “ You wake her up, then.”

She stared at him without speaking for a few seconds. Over the pickups, Stavros heard Jeannie’s body breathing into the silence.

“You prick,” Kim whispered.

“Uh huh. Not quite up for it, are you? You’d rather let me do the dirty work.” He dropped the remote: it bounced softly off the floor. “Then blame me for it.”

Four years had brought them to this. Stavros shook his head, disgusted. They’d been given a chance no one else could have dreamed of, and look what they’d done with it. The first time they’d shut her off she hadn’t even been two. Horrified at that unthinkable precedent, they’d promised never to do it again. They’d put her to sleep on schedule, they’d sworn, and no when else. She was, after all, their daughter. Not a fucking toaster.

That solemn pact had lasted three months. Things had gone downhill ever since; Stavros could barely remember a day when the Goravecs hadn’t messed up one way or another. Now, when they put her down, the argument was pure ritual. Mere words—ostensibly wrestling with the evil of the act itself—didn’t fool anybody. They weren’t even arguments any more, despite the pretense. Negotiations, rather. Over whose turn it was to be at fault.

“I don’t blame you, I just—I mean—oh, God , Andy, it wasn’t supposed to be like this!” Kim smeared away a tear with a clenched fist. “She was supposed to be our daughter . They said the brain would mature normally, they said—”

“They said,” Stavros cut in, “that you’d have the chance to be parents. They couldn’t guarantee you’d be any good at it.”

Kim jumped at the sound of his voice in the walls, but Andrew just gave a bitter smile and shook his head. “This is private, Stavros. Log off.”

It was an empty command, of course; chronic surveillance was the price of the project. The company had put billions into the R&D alone. No way in hell were they going to let a couple of litigious grunts play with that investment unsupervised, settlement or no settlement.