John Varley - Millennium

" Yes."

I stared at him bleakly, and he stared back. To give him credit, he didn't look smug about it.

"So many levels ... " I said.

"Yes."

"I mean, you telling me, admitting to me, that you can tell me certain things at certain times, for purposes of manipulation ... that's manipulation right there."

"Yes."

"It makes me feel so ... responsible! I know you're using me, and I have to assume it's for a good reason, so I ought to do what you want me to do ... but how do I know what that is?"

"You simply must behave naturally. Do what you would normally have done."

"But what you just told me alters the equation. Now that I know that you're guiding me -- however subtly -- the awareness of it will make me do things differently than ... " I sputtered to a stop. He was still regarding me innocently.

"So I have to assume that these layers of confusion are just part of your plan, whatever it may be ... " That wasn't going anywhere, either.

"Fuck you," I said.

"Wonderful," he said, and clapped his hands together. "You're back on track."

I had to smile at that.

"I'm going to melt you down and use the scrap to make a tin can, then kick the can."

"Great, great, get it all out."

"Your mother was a vending machine and your father was a roto-rooter."

"My, didn't that twentieth-century tape work well? Every little detail of daily life, at your fingertips."

I gave him a few more half-hearted insults in modern idiom, but they were just as useless.

You can't argue with Sherman. Even trying to is frustrating, and that's the last thing I needed.

So I tried to clear it all out of my mind and start from scratch.

"Okay. You're Jesus. Will you tell me what you mean by that?"

"Yes. Jesus Christ was a prevalent myth-figure in the twentieth century, the Son of the Supreme Being, worshipped by a sect whose chief fetishes were a cross, a chalice or grail, and -- "

"Crap, I know all that. Their big line was 'He died for our sins.'" I looked hopeful. "Is that what you had in mind?"

"Not precisely. I had in mind his role as saviour of humankind."

I looked at him. Remember, at this stage his face was a simple cartoon, so ineptly drawn that Walt Disney must have been spinning in his cryo-suspension fluid. Parts of his body were straight out of The Wizard of Oz. I won't say he clanked when he walked, but one look at him and you just knew he was the lineal descendant of a video arcade. This was the entity holding himself up to me as humanity's savior.

"Call me dubious," I said.

"Nevertheless, it's true. The message in my time capsule was quite lengthy. It delineated the events of the past few days in great detail, and went on to describe the events of the next .

.. six days. Having read it, I immediately saw what I must do, and when, to effect the salvation of the human race. Musing on this, I was struck by the parallels with the biblical story of Jesus. Perhaps this is hubris on my part, and I don't intend to seriously stress it, but if you cast the Big Computer as God, it's not unreasonable to see me -- the only robot ever to receive a time-capsule message -- as its only begotten son."

"And you were supposed to psychoanalyze me," I said. "Have you listened to yourself? You're no more unique than a Model-T. A savior with a serial number."

"Big Computer, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt."

That time I wished I had an ashtray; nevertheless, I didn't throw my cigarette at him; it was only half-smoked, and it's a sin to waste good tobacco.

"I didn't ask for the time capsule, Louise," he said, "any more than you asked for yours.

You play the cards as they are dealt. I must do likewise."

I smoked in silence for a while, trying my best to read something in that travesty he was using for a face. And I swear, after a while he began to seem almost human. I began to feel sorry for him. If even half of what he was saying was true, he'd been given a much heavier load than I had.

"Can you prove any of this?" I asked.

"Easily. Though I don't guarantee to prove it all. You'll remain too dubious for that. I can tell you what was in your time capsule."

And he did, word for word. I let him go right through it, even the part about the kid, and the business about not fucking him unless I wanted to.

"Will I ... "

"That's one of the things I can't tell you."

"But you know."

"Yes. l know."

I studied him some more. It would be pointless to mention the mazes of probabilities, lies, and deceptions my mind navigated while I watched him, because in the end I arrived right back where I started.

"The Big Computer could have told you what was in my time capsule."

"You think it would do that? With strict instructions from the Council not to?"

"I know it could do it, so it's possible it did do it."

"Wonderful," Sherman said, and he really seemed pleased. "Your suspicious mind will serve you well in the coming days, just as it has in the past.

"Meaning it won't do me any good, but it'll keep me on my toes."

"Exactly." He leaned forward, and regarded me with a reasonable approximation of an earnest expression. "Louise, I don't ask you to like the situation. I don't like it myself."

"You? Or the Big Computer?"

"Sometimes it's pointless to speak of a distinction. But I do have feelings. I don't have to like what I have to do, and at the same time, I know it is my only course. There are bad times ahead. We are headed for a disaster that is inevitable, impossible to avoid. And yet, at the same time, there is a way out. We can't reach it until the whole sorry spectacle has been performed, but in the end, I will deliver humanity to the promised land."

"Humanity. That's a nice broad term. I've been working all my life to save humanity." l stubbed out my cigarette. "But what about me?" I wasn't sure I really wanted to hear that, but I had to ask it.

"For you, Louise, there are some bad times ahead. l can't be more specific. Ultimately, there is a happy ending."

"For me?" I was incredulous. The last thing I anticipated was a happy ending.

"Happier than you have ever expected. Is that enough?"

For a long-time, rock-ribbed, true-blue pessimist, I guess it was. At least I found myself feeling unaccountably better, though I never for a moment thought that my own ending would be any better than bittersweet. But the nice thing about being a pessimist is that bittersweet is an improvement.

"Okay," I said. "But you got your biblical allusions wrong. You said you were going to lead us to the promised land. Jesus didn't do that."

Sherman looked surprised as an infallible Pope holding a losing ticket at the racetrack. It pleased the perverse side of me; I mean, maybe his history of the future hadn't contained that line of dialogue.

"Call me Moses," he said.

So it was Window B. That decision got made the way so many are made in our rather informal organization: by consensus.

There was a nation in the twentieth century that styled itself the People's Republic of China. It was a dictatorship of the proletariat -- a phrase which struck me as the worst of both worlds and decisions were made through processes like criticism/self criticism, dialectic analysis, and similar buzzwords. In theory, the answer that emerged expressed the will of the masses. In fact, the Politically Correct answer always turned out to be the Chairman's answer, whatever that happened to be at the moment.

Early in my career with the Gate Project I noticed that, informal or not, things got done in a certain manner. I made a study of it. Putting that together with my data-dumped knowledge of the PRC in the twentieth century, I learned a few things about how to arrive at a consensus: you kick ass until everybody decides to do things the way you want to do them.