Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

And just as I'm thinking that, with no warning whatsoever, Richard drops me into his skull.

Just like that. Bang . The same way he gave me Leah, for the last thirty seconds of her life, the same way he steps into me and I step into him, through the quantum communication between the microscopic robots that live under my skin and Pilot Xie's, and that make up Richard's body, if a body, precisely, is what he can be said to have. For a second or two I'm feeling the air on Xie's skin, the way it prickles the hair at the nape of his neck and the way the ready-room lights are too bright. I can barely pick up the flicker, untriggered and well rested; to Xie it's a strobe. We've got to do something about that, I say to Richard. Rip out every fluorescent light on the Montreal if we have to—

I realize too late that Min-xue — which is his name, after all, and the way he thinks of himself — can hear me when his lips peel back from crooked teeth in a most engaging grin, and bows even more deeply.

“I would be in your debt, ma'am,” he says inside my skull, the same way Richard does. I shake my head, amazed.

I have to try it myself. Please. Call me Jenny.

“With great pleasure, Jenny.”

Dick, how long have you known about this?

“Since Leah, more or less. The practical implications, however, are just starting to work themselves out.”

Practical applications beyond telepathy?

“Beyond worldwide, instantaneous communication, Master Warr— Jenny?” Min-xue is smiling, enjoying his advantage.

Galaxy-wide. Instantaneous. Your word, ansibles. Ansibles in our heads. Completely private — or is it, Dick?

“It's as private as I make it,” Richard says, and I can see from the way Min-xue angles his head that his smile is for the AI whose image we both see real as if he were in the room, and who would be transparent as a ghost to any unmodified human who stepped in beside us.

Once again, you rule our destiny . I mean it to be mocking, but I can't help it if it comes out a little defenseless, as well. This is going to change the world. This is… this is the Net writ large.

“The global village,” Richard says quietly.

“The what?” And I'm not sorry Min-xue's wired a little faster, if it means he got to be dumb quicker. I must think it out loud, because he ducks his chin and tilts an apologetic smile at me, and Richard laughs.

“An antiquated catchphrase,” Richard says. “You might call it an advertising slogan.”

But is it really going to change the way the planet is run? Or is it just going to give us more differences to fight over?

“Too soon to tell. Might eventually give world leaders a hell of a lot of grief making people believe geographic boundaries have any value, though.”

“That will take generations,” Min-xue interjects.

I run both hands through my hair, turning my back on him — except I can't, really, because I carry him with me as I walk to the porthole and pause.

“Only one or two, Min-xue. Patty's already adapting to her AI linkages with real fluidity.”

Dick, does Ellie know about this yet? Valens and Riel?

“Only you two.”

They need to. They need—

Shit.

“Ah. I see you've arrived.”

“The Benefactors.” I say it out loud, and Min-xue, who has closed his eyes against the flicker of the lights, jumps at the sound of my voice. I don't see him jump. I feel it. Completely fucking bizarre.

That thing they do. Where they… slide through each other. That's why they grabbed Les and Charlie; they're still trying to talk to us.

He doesn't comment.

What are we going to do about it, Dick?

“It's easier to get forgiveness than permission.”

Because conspiracy's served us so very well in the past.

“There is that,” he says, spreading his fingers wide as nets while Min-xue looks on, watching silently. I catch something from him, a flicker of Chinese, a rhythm like poetry. It calms him, whatever it is. Mantras?

“Li Bo,” he answers, with that same off-center smile.

I know where you're going, Dick.

Richard likes watching me think, damn him to hell. “What?”

This is it. This is everything. I press my face against the cold, cold porthole crystal as if it could calm the sensation that has me shivering, the same sensation you have when you look up and you can see the wave breaking, and it's not on you yet, and it's much much bigger than you and it's much much too late to get out of the way. How did Charlie reprogram the first nanites, Dick? How did he get them to accept our alien earthling code?

“Gabe and I know the process. It's more straightforward than you might think.”

It's Min-xue, strangely, who breaks the tableau. I feel him come up behind me, and — light as a leaf brushing my skin — lay his palm against my shoulder, carefully touching only cloth. “It could kill them,” I say.

“Staying where they are will likely kill them, too.”

“And you're relying on my conscience, Dick?”

“The last time I checked, you were still arguably a human being. If I'm going to organize a coup, I'd feel better knowing I'm not a megalomaniac AI.”

Dick. He grins before I say it. You are a megalomaniac AI. That doesn't change the fact that you're right. Min-xue?

The Chinese pilot stares at me as I turn around to face him. His arm drops to his side. He looks at where Richard would be if Richard existed, and he nods, slowly, his eyes unfocused and his expression grave. “If the nanites are how the Benefactors communicate among themselves, and they've taken our two scientists alive, we might be forgiven for assuming that the contact is a further attempt to communicate with us.”

Of course, since we've seen no proof that the two groups of Benefactors can talk between themselves, there's no guarantee that adding a third language to the Tower of Babel will help—

“Did you spend your entire childhood in Sunday school, Jen?”

It only felt like it. Look, I'd feel better about this if we could ask Charlie and Leslie if they were game.

“So would I.”

“When fate intervenes, we serve where we are standing,” Min-xue says. “They would do it, if they knew.”

He's right, of course. How do you propose to pull this off?

“I'm going to… the closest equivalent would be to say I'm going to flash the bios on some of the nanites in the Benefactor… um, conjoined mass? When Charlie reworked the original Benefactor tech into something we could use, he cleaned out their brains with a focused electromagnetic pulse, and then retrained them. I don't have time to do that, but I do have considerably more information on how they work than he did when he started. And I have Gabe, who's a better code jockey than Charlie ever was.”

I try not to glow too much at the praise of Gabe. I'm somewhat attached to him.

“And then,” Richard finishes, “I'm going to try to take control of the birdcage entity, and get it to kick Leslie and Charlie free. I'll need somebody to catch them, if it works.”

Me, he means, or Min-xue. Or Patty. “And if it doesn't?”

“Then I'm going to use the nanites to begin to modify Charlie and Leslie.”

Without medical support.

“It will be less drastic than your surgery, Jen. I don't need them wired fast enough to fly a starship, after all. I just need to be able to read their minds.”

I find myself nodding, agreeing, knowing perfectly well that Wainwright and Valens are going to take turns breaking my fingers when they find out I knew about this, and I'm not even going to be able to work up a valid protest that I don't deserve it. All right, Dick. I'll take responsibility. But dammit—