Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

"Maybe." The Greater Scooch-a-mout jumped again, this time to the edge of the drop-off over the loading dock. There was something awesome in the maneuver, knowing the tons of real machine behind it. "But what is this whole conflict about?" It waved its arms, a cheerleader god, and Scoochis screamed with all the amplification they could muster:

"We want our floor space!"

"We want our library!"

"And most of all, we want our REAL books!"

"YES!" said the Scooch-a-mout. "It's the Library we're all fighting about. It's the Library that should decide!"

And with that all the Scoochi sound effects chopped to nothing. An uncertain silence spread across the Scoochis. Sometimes the belief thing got caught in its own metaphors and wound up spouting nonsense. Huynh looked back and forth, gauging the reaction the Greater Scooch had provoked. It sounded good to enlist the library itself, but what did that mean ?

Down in the north-side valley, there was a flare of laughter. The enemy had come to the same conclusion. We are screwed , thought Huynh. But then he noticed that Dangerous Knowledge was not laughing. The creature came partway up the hill, confronted the Greater Scooch-a-mout eye-to-eye. And now there was eerie silence on all sides.

Somehow, Dangerous Knowledge knew what the Scooch-a-mout was talking about. "So," the Hacek godling said at last, and its voice had a silken tone even though it echoed off the library and settled deep in the mind of every one in the world who was watching. "Ye want the Library itself to decide who should care for it and who should have its space?"

"And how real the books should really be," the Greater Scooch-a-mout said, with a smile that seemed almost friendly. "I propose that we put the question to the library — and whichever of us it chooses will be deemed the blessed."

"Ah!" Now Dangerous Knowledge was smiling, too, but it was a fierce stretching of the face. The creature backed down the hillside, but grew with each step so that its eyes stayed on a level with the Greater Scooch-a-mout. Ordinarily, such a cheap visual wouldn't have earned any respect, but the move seemed to fit the moment. Besides, whoever was behind the creature's design had saved some marvelous fractal armor for just this extension of height.

Dangerous Knowledge turned to face the virtual millions behind him. "The challenge is just. I say to all Followers of Knowledge: Join me in a final torque upon the enemy. Show the Library that we are its future and its greatest supporters. And let the Library show its choice to the world!"

The silence was ended as the millions discovered new amplifiers on campus — or somehow usurped and reused the ones that the Scooch-a-mout had appropriated.

The galaxy of players — mechs and humans, real and virtual — all came alive in renewed conflict. Knights and Librarians dumped fire on the Scoochi side. Huynh's Mind Sum was once again stomping and kicking. The ensemble resumed its vasty turn about the university library, and the spiral arms of the battlefront flared even brighter than before. But now the battle cries were appeals to the Library itself. And the library glowed in a light that seemed to come from infinitely high above. That light was purely virtual, but it was seen in every view.

As Huynh tromped along with the screaming multitudes, he was almost totally taken by the moment. Almost. This had gone farther and higher than he had ever imagined. Part of the success was simply the audience, a significant part of the waking world. Part of it was the unexpected acquiescence of GenGen and the UCSD administration, and the awesome possibility of future revenue that might come streaming in from the various entertainment producers that now lurked all around. And none of that would have happened if not for the content that had suddenly appeared when they went to battle. Content from both sides, content that was as artistic as new designs and as physical as what they had done with their bottish legions.

But now everyone's hopes, Hacek and Scoochi, were hostage to the impossible. If the Library did not "reply," or if the reply was simply more imagery, then in about another thirty seconds, the momentum would begin to dissipate and a very large number of people — among them Timothy Huynh — would begin to feel a little foolish. It was the fate of many flash crowds, especially those that at first seemed the most successful. Big promises earned big rewards, up to the point that the promises had to come true.

What could the Greater Scooch-a-mout have in mind ? Huynh used his technician's view and his artist's. He looked out from Scoochi cams, from the aerobots above, even GenGen utilities. The best he could imagine was some pallid surprise, something to distract everyone from the promise that could not be kept.

As the battlefronts tightened around the library, point and counterpoint came from the opposing armies and together made a concerted rhythm. Music seeped into the shouting. After a few moments, every local voice was synched to the sound and everyone was swaying to the beat. It came louder and louder, and Huynh noticed that the amplifiers included police and fire-department equipment. Someone had committed real vandalism to make this even more spectacular.

It would be for nothing without some definite result.

In fact, the singing held together just a few more seconds. Then it faltered as nothing more happened, and no one could imagine anything more happening. But… there was another sound, a trembling vibration that crept up from the ground. Ten years ago, Timothy Huynh had felt something similar. The Rose Canyon earthquake.

Huynh freaked, dropping all the fantasy overlays. He stared out in panic with his own naked eyes. Real lights flashed back and forth, flickering across the faces of the thousands of real rioters, picking out the angular bodies of the larger mechs. Now there was no pillar of light from heaven. The library was occasionally lit, but more often a silhouette against the lights on the other side.

The trembling in the earth grew stronger. The walls and overhanging floors of the library seemed to shiver. The magnificent double pyramid that had survived the decades, that had survived the Rose Canyon quake — it was shaking, all the thousands of tons of real concrete.

In time to the rising music.

There were screams. Lots of people remembered Rose Canyon. But lots of others were taken by the spectacle — and their singing resumed and was picked up by the vision of the night and blasted out across the world.

The library swayed. Parts dipped; parts rose. It was not shaking as much as it was dancing. Not a bouncy riverdance. The building was dancing like a man with feet planted firmly in the ground. And Huynh realized there was no earthquake; somebody had hijacked the building's stabilization system. He had once read that a well-powered building could survive almost any quake short of a great crack opening up beneath it. But here that power was being turned upon itself.

The rhythmic swaying became more pronounced, twelve feet left and right, and up and down, with parts of the building shifting away and together. The shrugging, swaying dance of the overhanging floors shifted to the outlying pillars. There was a sound that might have been real and might have been ingenious invention. It might have been both. It was the sound of mountains being torn from their roots.

The pillars shifted and the library… walked. It was not as spectacular as fake imagery could be, but Huynh was seeing it with his naked eyes. In halting cadence, first one fifty-foot pillar and then another rose visibly from the ground, moved several yards in the direction of the Greater Scooch-a-mout, and descended with the sound of rock penetrating rock.