Tony Ballantyne - Recursion

She looked frantically around. Her eyes alighted on Marion.

“Marion. Your console. That’s not your console!”

Marion gazed at it, bright in the light that streamed through the doorway. She turned it over in her hands.

“You’re right. This isn’t my console…”

“Get away from the door. Run!”

It was too late. The doorway twisted, expanded, reached out and gulped Marion up. Jay and Constantine turned and ran without hesitation, dodging through metal trunks, bright light at their heels, running for the shadows.

Constantine heard his own console pinging. He ignored it. Jay seized his arm and dragged him toward a door that had suddenly formed in the air.

“This way!” she called, pulling him out into brightness.

“No!” he said. It was too late; they tumbled over each other, tumbled out through a doorway in the air, back into the cornfield.

It was early morning again. A pale blue sky, slowly deepening in color. Fresh air in their lungs and the rough feel of stubble beneath their hands and knees.

Constantine slowly pushed himself to his feet. Jay was already standing, looking around her.

“We’re safe, I think,” she said. “I’m sure we are. We’re still on 113 Berliner Sibelius time. I saw the door in the air and it looked right.”

“What happened back there?”

“DIANA almost tricked us, I think. Got a Trojan in here on the back of that last attack. Used it to replace Marion’s console. They were leading us straight toward them. We almost stepped into the jaws of the beast.”

“Marion did.” They were silent for a moment.

Jay spoke hesitantly. “Berliner Sibelius can resurrect her, maybe?”

“If we get out of here alive. I wonder if what she said about suppressing Grey was true?”

The corn nearby waved and formed a pattern, twisted itself into letters that spelled out words for them.

It’s true. Ten more minutes.

“Ten minutes,” said Constantine. He reached out and took Jay’s hand. She looked up at him and gave a little smile. She held out her other hand. He took it and squeezed it.

“They put you in here because you knew where the Watcher came from.”

“I don’t. That was just the theory circulating on the space station.”

“They seem to think it’s the right one.” He looked thoughtful. “The Watcher. So it’s a seed from another world that has taken root in our computers…”

Jay squeezed his hand again. “Nine minutes now,” she said. “Are you going to tell them what they want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe what poor Mary said about the Watcher?”

Constantine shook his head. “A powerful force shaping humanity toward some bright new future? It’s a nice idea. I want it to be true. But I can’t help thinking there’s more to it than that. Things are never so pat.”

“I know,” she said.

Eight minutes , said the corn.

They moved closer together. A gentle breeze blew, stirring the heads of corn surrounding the clearing in which they found themselves. It all seemed so peaceful. It was hard to believe that one of the most powerful corporations on the planet was actively seeking their destruction.

Seven minutes.

Constantine began to wonder if they would make it.

There was a click and the sky was the brilliant blue of midafternoon for a moment, then it went black.

Constantine looked up at the tiny lights of the stars, high above. The heat of the momentary day was vanishing, billowing up into the sudden night. Bizarrely, the meadow still appeared bathed in daylight.

“What’s happening?”

A console signaled. Jay’s. She looked hesitantly at Constantine, then answered it.

“Yes?”

The message was set for her ears only. Her face crumpled.

“What’s happened?” Constantine said anxiously.

She looked at him and her eyes were wide with uncertainty. “DIANA got a handle on this system. They’ve succeeded in taking a snapshot of you. Constantine, we haven’t got much time left. DIANA’s lawyers now have the proof that you’re in here. They will be seeking an injunction to have you wiped. They will win that injunction. Tell 113 Berliner Sibelius what they want to know. Where is the VNM that you took from Mars? What are you going to do with it?”

Constantine shook his head. “I told you. I can’t say anything. Grey is blocking me.”

Somewhere inside his head he heard laughter.

Jay was shouting into the console in frustration. “Six minutes! Can’t you stall the injunction for six minutes?”

“I don’t know what to do…” Constantine muttered to himself. He appealed to the other voices in his head. “Red, Blue, any ideas?”

– I’m thinking, I’m thinking, Red said frantically.

– Do we really want to help them? asked Blue.

– We’re losing resolution, said White.

“Look! Over there!” Jay seemed very excited. Yet another door had opened in the air. Yellow dawn sunshine poured out of it, a patch of hope on the cold ground beneath the starlit sky. She pulled Constantine through and the door slammed shut.

They were standing in the cornfield again. Damp corn hemmed them in on all sides, shining golden in the light of the new day. They looked at each other. Jay’s hair was tangled with fragments of vegetable matter.

“What now?” Constantine asked.

“I don’t know. We have to maintain ‘radio silence’. 113 BS have us locked up in a bubble of memory. They’re time-slicing it through the processors at irregular intervals in an attempt to avoid detection.”

“Fair enough. Well, let’s get out of this field.”

“No…”

But Constantine had already begun to walk away, pushing aside the tall plants, taller than her head, and clearing a path for them.

“There’s no point,” Jay continued as he pushed through the corn behind her. He looked at her with a surprised expression that quickly faded. He nodded his head in acceptance.

“I suppose they can’t keep too big an area open. I like the wraparound effect.” He crouched down, brushing aside the dead stalks and debris, then sat down.

“We may as well make ourselves comfortable.”

Jay did the same. The ground felt soft and slightly spongy. Less like soil than a piece of Madeira cake.

– We’re losing resolution still, said White.

“Can you speak yet?” asked Jay.

Constantine shook his head. “No. Tell them to hurry up and wipe Grey. How much longer?”

“Too long, I think,” said Jay, tight-lipped. The corn around them was fading.

“Just one more thing,” said Constantine. “I never understood. If they have my mind on their computer, why not just read it directly?”

Jay answered softly.

“How could they do that? They can replicate your memories and your thought patterns electronically, but it’s the interaction of those things with the outside world that produces the mind. You might as well ask a book what it’s thinking. You can’t be a personality in a vacuum; you need something to interact with. Everyone needs an environment in which to be themselves.”

The corn had faded from view. Now the ground beneath them vanished too, then the sky. They floated in grey nothingness.

Jay reached out toward him. Constantine pulled her close. He had just realized something.

When everything else in their world had vanished, when even the bodies that remained were artificial, they still had their humanity to hold onto.

That was important. He knew it.

A voice spoke gently behind him.

“Personality construct Constantine Peregrine Storey.”

“Yes?” He turned. There was nothing there.

The voice continued.

“The firm of Drury, Faiers, Jennings and Mehta, acting on behalf of DIANA, have secured the computers, memory, long-term storage, and all associated hardware and software of 113 Berliner Sibelius currently engaged in maintaining and operating the personality construct of Constantine Peregrine Storey. The firm of Drury, Faiers, Jennings and Mehta wish to make it known that they have secured a court order declaring that the personality construct of Constantine Peregrine Storey is in breach of copyright of the original personality of Constantine Peregrine Storey, currently employed by DIANA. The personality construct of Constantine Peregrine Storey maintained in this computer has been declared illegal and will be erased immediately.”