Peter Hamilton - Manhattan in Reverse

‘I thought you’d like to be the first to hear,’ she said. ‘The Neuromedical Protocol Commission have cleared the procedure, effective from twelve thirty pm Rome meantime today.’

‘Yes!’ The word hissed out from my lips. Given what turbulent times we were living in, it was wholly unjustified for me to feel so elated at such a small piece of news. Yet that didn’t prevent me from laughing out loud. ‘I’ve finally brought it to an end.’

‘The Borgias are still in the Vatican,’ she said primly.

‘Show a little confidence. It has to be the pair of them.’

‘I hope so,’ she said. There was a note of concern to her voice. ‘I’d hate to think you were becoming obsessional.’

‘You know as well as I do the percentage of my time which this case occupies is so small it can’t even be measured. This is simply the satisfaction of a job seen through to its end. Besides, I owe it to Francis.’

‘I know. So what’s next?’

‘I’ll start the ball rolling, and haul her in. Is the system on-line here?’

‘Give me three days to complete installation.’ She winked, and her image vanished. The FAI remained on active status.

The light right across the valley suddenly and silently quadrupled in intensity, turning a vivid violet hue. My iris filters closed, and I looked straight up. A brilliant star was burning in the eastern quadrant of the sky, the backwash of energy from a starship initiating its compression drive. Violet drifted into turquoise which in turn began the shade into emerald. I still think the spectral wash from a compression drive is among the most wondrous sights we have ever created, even if it is an accidental by-product. It wouldn’t last, of course. The first generation of faster-than-light starships were crude affairs, creating their own individual wormhole down which to fly. The families were cooperating on the project to construct exotic matter, which would be able to hold wormholes open permanently. That had to qualify as one of the more favourable signs of recent years — even at the height of the crazed sixties we managed to retain enough sense to see the necessity of such collaboration. Even the Caesars joined with us.

Every time I thought of the negotiations I was involved in to revamp the old Joint Families Astronautics Agency I also remembered my trip to Jupiter, and marvelled at how we were so incapable of seeing the utterly obvious. Size hid their goal from us. But how could we have possibly known we had to think so big?

Bethany Maria Caesar called her murdered lover a visionary, but compared to her he was blind. As soon as she began her work on biononic systems back in eighteen fifty she had realized what would happen should she eventually be successful. The self-replicating biononics she envisaged would be the pinnacle of molecular engineering machinery, organelle-sized modules that could assemble single atoms into whatever structure an AI had designed and, equally important, disassemble. Cluster enough of them together like some patch of black lichen, and they would eat their way through any ore, extracting the atoms you required for whatever project you had in mind. They could then weave those atoms into anything from quantum wire and pentospheres to iron girders and bricks. That included food, clothes, houses, starships… Quite literally, anything you could think of and manage to describe to your AI.

The human race stopped working for a living. Just as she said. Or prophesied, depending on your opinion of her.

The human race had stopped dying, too. Specific versions of biononic modules could travel through the human body, repairing damaged cells. They could also reset DNA.

Amongst all the upheaval, it was our view and attitude towards commodities which underwent the most radical of all our revisions. From valuing all sorts of gems and precious metals and rare chemicals, we had switched to valuing just one thing: matter. Any matter. It became our currency and our obsession. It didn’t matter what atom you owned, even if it was only hydrogen — especially hydrogen if you were a Caesar. Fusion could transform it into a heavier element, one which a biononic module could exploit. Every living person in the solar system had the potential to create whatever they wanted, limited only by personal imagination and the public availability of matter.

And the Caesars had the greatest stockpile of unused matter in the solar system: Jupiter. That’s how far ahead they were thinking once Bethany spurred them on. The population pressures we’d been facing were nothing compared with what was about to be unleashed. A race of semi-immortals with the potential to increase their numbers at a near-exponential rate simply by using the old-fashioned natural method of reproduction — never mind artificial wombs and cloning techniques.

To think, when I was young, I used to worry that our early petrol engine cars would use up all the oil reserves. Within weeks of Bethany’s biononic modules coming on-line family spaceships charged off across the solar system to lay claim to any and every chunk of matter a telescope had ever detected. The most disgraceful, shameful year of post-Second Era history. A year of madness and greed, when all our rationality seemed to crumble before the forces of avarice. The Crisis Conference of ’65 managed to calm things down a little. Thankfully, every family rejected the Rothschild claim on the sun. And the rest of the solar system was apportioned almost equally. We Raleighs came out of it with Titan as well as a joint claim — with fifteen other families — on Saturn. But the Caesars still had Jupiter, consolidating their position as the foremost human family. And the FTL starship project was born, the agreement most accredited with easing the tension.

The function of family councils changed to that of resource allocators, enabling us to enforce the original legal framework that underpinned civilization. Controlling the distribution of raw matter was economics stripped down to its crudest level. But it worked, after a fashion, allowing us to retain order and balance. Given the circumstances, it was a better outcome than I would have predicted.

The last of the compression drive’s scarlet light drained away from the sky, taking with it the strange double shadows cast by the oak. I began instructing the FAI to contact a senior representative of the Lockett family.

Christine Jayne Lockett was a stark reminder that I really ought to get myself reset. Men always suffer from the same casual illusion that we simply became more handsome as we matured, and were increasingly desirable as a result. What tosh.

When she walked into my office in the Meridor Manor all I could see was the bitterness leaking from her face. It spoiled her features, a near-permanent scowl highlighting the wrinkles accumulating around her eyes and across her cheeks. Her hair was still long, but not cared for with any great enthusiasm. And the clothes she wore were at least a century out of date; they looked handmade, and badly at that. Paint flecked her hands, lying thick under short, cracked nails.

The small file of personal data which my AI had collected for me told of how she now lived out in the countryside in a naturalist community. They grew their own food, made their own utensils, smoked their hallucinogenics, and generally avoided contact with the rest of their family. No biononics were allowed across the threshold of their compound, although they did have a net interface to call for medical help if any of their number had an accident.

She stalked over to my desk and thrust her face up against mine. ‘Oppressive bastard! Who the hell do you think you are? How dare you have me arrested and forced away from my home like this. I’ve done nothing wrong.’ It was almost a scream.