Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

Myraian was dressed and ready when he finally came out of the bathroom in his shorts and T-shirt. She’d resequenced herself back to her mid-twenties, then tweaked various chromosomes to produce a great figure, which, in combination with a mind that was away mushrooming with fairies most of the time, made her utterly irresistible to him. No accounting for some things, but she’s perfect for me at this time of life . He took an enjoyable look at the thin ankle-length skirt of sky-blue cotton and the black mesh shirt that with her skin color made it look like she was wearing nothing at all. Her skinlight patterns shone through the thin weave, creating weird diffusion ripples.

“Cool combo,” he told her. “Kinda earth mother meets dominatrix.”

“Thank you.” She shook her hair, allowing the long blond, auburn, and pink tresses to sway around her head in an underwater slow motion as the fluff fronds elevated it.

And no way was he ever putting them in no matter how much she nagged. “Let’s go catch them crying into their teacups.”

She pouted. “You should stay up here. I’ll teach them not to bully my baby Ozzie.”

“They’re not nice people,” he told her again, hoping it registered this time. “Don’t let them bug you. And really, man, don’t get cross with them. I don’t want any of that.”

“I’ll eat them up, scrummy yummy,” she promised.

“Yeah.” Okay, maybe it’s not so much the mind that’s the attraction .

He found Aaron, Inigo, and Corrie-Lyn in the lounge, slouched across the couches and looking slightly dazed like a bunch of students from his time at Caltech pulling an all-nighter. The only thing missing was the pizza boxes. They did stare a little at Myraian but didn’t say anything. Ozzie wasn’t really surprised when it was Corrie-Lyn who rounded on him first. She reminded him of not a few ex-wives.

“You knew! You knew you were going to die in the expansion, and you won’t do anything to help us?” she barked.

“I normally have orange juice, coffee, and toast for breakfast. Man, the old habits are the hardest to break, don’t you find?” His u-shadow gave the culinary unit its instructions.

She just growled at him.

“You don’t get it,” Ozzie told her. “You don’t get me . Dude, I’m over one and a half thousand years old. I’ve seen it all, and I do mean all! I can live with dying.”

“But what about the rest of the galaxy? All the people who don’t get a chance to live as you have? The children?”

“Wow! Dude, big shift there from one of the most truly devout Living Dream disciples ever .”

“Cleric Councillor,” Myraian said distantly as her hair fronds swam about lazily. “The Dreamer’s lover. Chief prosecutor in the Edgemon heresy tribunal.”

“That was not-” Corrie-Lyn ground to a halt, furious.

“If you’re so worried about what you’ve unleashed on the rest of us, why don’t you rush into your precious Void and be safe?” Ozzie challenged.

“Enjoy your victory,” Inigo said softly. “The Void is not our salvation. I was wrong to hold it out as a symbol of attainable Nirvana, of a life that can be perfect. It is none of those things. I. Was. Wrong.”

“Crap,” Ozzie muttered. It wasn’t often he was rendered speechless, but a messiah renouncing his life’s work, well, that would just do it every time. “I’ll make that a big pot of coffee. You’d better all join me for breakfast.”

“We all understand the Void threat well enough,” Aaron said as the maidbots slid around the table in the kitchen, delivering plates and cups. “I’m interested in your take on whatever Ilanthe has become. That could be a big factor in the expansion.”

“She was the leader of the Accelerator Faction,” Ozzie said as he accepted his glass of chilled orange juice from the maidbot. “The original idea was that they elevate themselves up to postphysical status courtesy of the Void. Thing is”-he scratched at his hair-“the Accelerator Faction is trapped behind the Sol barrier along with the rest of ANA, so they can’t pull off their whole Fusion concept. And the Silfen Motherholme is worried about her, which is new to me. Nothing gets that placid goddess riled. Nothing. Till now. Draw yourself a map.”

“The Silfen Motherholme?” Corrie-Lyn asked cautiously.

“Sure, babe. I’m a Silfen Friend.” He tried not to sound too smug, settling for merely superior. “I know what’s going down across the galaxy.”

“Ozzie is the father of our species’ mind,” Myraian announced; her skinlight glowed a proud mauve.

There was a polite silence for a moment.

“Of everything that’s happened, I find her involvement the most disturbing,” Inigo said. “It was inevitable Living Dream would be corrupted and manipulated after I turned it over to the Cleric Council-that was the point of me abandoning it as I did. But I never envisaged anything like this. Ultradrives, unbreakable force fields … this was not meant to be.”

Aaron turned to Ozzie. “Do you know anything about these technologies?”

“Not really my field,” Ozzie said quietly. He waited.

“It used to be,” an omnidirectional voice spoke up. Ozzie let out an exasperated breath. It was his own voice. “Just shut the fuck up,” he told it.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Nobody can run from their past. Not forever, dooode .”

“What is this?” Aaron asked.

“I told you, dude,” Ozzie said with an edge. “I’m ancient. Human bodies aren’t designed with this kind of life span in mind. Grab the ‘in mind’ bit there? Back in the first-era Commonwealth when all we had was rejuve, we used to edit memories and store the ones that weren’t important . Then there was memorycells and neural augmentation chips. Biononics added a whole load of new memory capacity. And there’s always an expanded mentality network.” He raised his head and glared at a random point on the ceiling. “That’s if you want to carry all that junk around, contaminating your body. I didn’t. Not anymore.”

“So he dumped me,” the voice said. “Literally. I’m Ozzie. The real Ozzie.”

“You’re a goddamn me-brain-in-a-jar, and don’t you forget it,” Ozzie told it crossly.

“Seriously,” the voice said. “I’m one and a half thousand years of memories, while you’re what? Twenty years’ worth? Who’s the most real of them all?”

“Only one of us got to keep the personality, man,” Ozzie shouted back. “I’m the biochemical, hormonal, awkward, sonofabitch soul of a human. You’re the hardwired copy that’s frozen in the past.”

“You can mouth off all you like, but I’m the one with the knowledge and talent that these fine and sincerely desperate people need. You got rid of all the serious physics and math and shit clogging up your little meat brain. Admit it, tell them. Be a man. As much as you can be with so much missing.”

“Ozzie lacks nothing,” Myraian said calmly. “He has purged himself at a spiritual level to make himself complete again. You are the contamination that was holding him back, preventing the angel within from spreading his wings. He’s been clean for decades now and has grown because of it.” She smiled widely.

Ozzie caught the narrowing of Aaron’s eyes as he noticed the tiny fangs that that otherwise blissful smile revealed.

Aaron blinked and put his hands down on the table. “Okay. Please tell me you can access and assimilate whatever knowledge you need from … you?”

“From the me-brain-in-a-jar? Sure. I retained autonomous integration for the smartcores I stuffed it into-me into.”

Inigo gave Ozzie a bemused grin; there was respect in there, too. “I’m sure you can. But let’s face it: There’s you, me, and him.” He jabbed a thumb at Aaron. “A smart-ass smartcore and a reasonably good replicator. Doesn’t matter how good we all are in combination, we’re not going to bootstrap ourselves a superweapon to smash open the Sol barrier or an even faster ultradrive that’ll get us to the Void before Araminta charges in. And that’s not even talking about the Ilanthe-thing.”