Tony Ballantyne - Recursion

Why? It didn’t sound much like the behavior of an agent of the EA.

So maybe Robert wasn’t an agent of the EA. But who else would have access to such resources? And what would their motive be?

It was at that point that Herb remembered something Robert had said, something he had mentioned just before they jumped.

Something about other young men he had captured.

He had named one: Sean Simons. Missing. No one knew where he was except Robert, and Robert wasn’t telling. Had Sean been abandoned, just as Herb had been? Did his corpse now lie on a lost planet somewhere? Were his bones currently bleaching under an alien sun at the edge of the galaxy? Despite the heat, Herb shivered to think of it. What reason would Robert have to do that? Why do that to anyone ?

The object in the distance was growing larger. It appeared to be moving toward him, flickering in the heat haze like a dark candle flame.

Maybe it was Robert coming to save him.

But Robert had been eaten by the VNMs. Herb had watched it happen.

But what about the other ship? Robert had caused Herb’s ship to reproduce before they had made the jump to this planet. Maybe that other ship had come back to rescue him. He hoped so.

Night came, and with it the cold. Herb was shivering violently, unknowingly suffering from the effects of heatstroke. His mouth and lips were so dry he was having trouble thinking straight. He crouched on the flat rock surface, arms wrapped around himself for warmth, drifting into half sleep and then jerking awake. The cold stars shone down on him. Somewhere out on the plain, something was still moving toward him.

Halfway through the night, Herb drifted from a half sleep into half awakening, following the course of a dream that had spilled over into reality. High above in the sky, there was a sudden glittering. A silver thread stretched and expanded itself to reveal a crescent of moon that slowly widened from new moon to full moon in a matter of minutes, as if someone was peeling away a piece of black paper from the lunar surface. He shook his head and wondered if he was hallucinating. What could cause that? he wondered. Dizzy with the effects of heatstroke, it was nearly an hour before the answer occurred to him.

VNMs, he thought. They were up there too, eating away at whatever dark material covered the surface of that moon.

Morning came, and with it the chance to spend just a few hours sleeping untroubled on the bare rock.

Again, he was woken by the pain in his joints. He sat up and looked toward the approaching object. It was much closer now, and it had resolved itself into a human figure. Herb could make out the bobbing movement of someone walking. Someone grey, or wearing grey, picking its way carefully around all the great holes in the surface as it moved toward him.

Herb thought about going to meet the figure, but he felt too tired, too dizzy, and too thirsty. He crouched down and watched as it came closer. Herb had no perception of any distances greater than a hundred meters or so; modern ranging devices had robbed him of the skill or the need. He had no idea how far away the figure was, or how long it would take it to walk to him. He sat and watched it. He had nothing else to do.

The figure appeared to wave to him. Herb waved back.

As the figure came closer, Herb could see it wasn’t human. It was a robot, but there was something strange about its shape. It was fuzzy, hard to see properly, like the half-tuned pictures on Robert’s television set. The robot looked like a half-tuned picture that had just stepped into his world.

It wore a black bag slung carelessly over its shoulder.

Herb rose to his feet, but the robot waved to him to sit down. Now it was only a hundred meters away. Now fifty.

Step by step it approached Herb, closer and closer until finally it reached him. It stopped right in front of Herb and looked him up and down, then turned and scanned the horizon. Finally, it sat down opposite him. Close to, it didn’t seem so much a shape as a smudge in the air. The robot wasn’t quite there.

Herb swallowed with some difficulty. Speaking was going to be difficult with his dry mouth, but he forced himself to anyway.

“Who are you?” he croaked.

“My name is Constantine Storey,” said the robot. “You must be Herb Kirkham. Your great-great-grandmother says ‘hi.’”

Two days ago

This far from the sun, the coma of Comet 2305 FQOO was so insubstantial as to barely register on the ship’s senses. The enhanced visual feed had filtered the coma completely from its picture and then painted the nucleus as a dirty-white ball of frozen gasses cementing together silvery chunks of rock. The mirrored silver lozenge of the stealth ship was a tiny speck slowly closing on the irregular lump of matter.

Constantine Storey came back to life at the flick of a switch. From his perspective, one moment the world of Stonebreak was fading into nothingness, the next he was gazing at the steadily approaching dirty mass of Comet 2305 FQOO.

For a moment he had thought he was dead, but no, not yet. He was in a small room. He was watching a viewing field. On the viewing field there was a picture of a comet. It looked familiar.

Then a woman moved in front of him. She looked familiar, too: a face from his past. Someone famous. Someone from the newscasts and the viewing screens. A legend.

“Katie Kirkham,” he said, “I thought you were dead.”

“Look who’s talking.”

Constantine was sitting down. He shifted a little; his body felt strange. Something moved in front of his vision. His arm? It looked odd. Blurred. His whole body looked blurred.

“What’s going on?”

“You’ll see. Personality Construct Constantine Storey, the year is now 2210; it’s ninety-one years since you were terminated. The Environmental Agency has resurrected you in order that you might complete your life’s work. You are now resident in a robot body clothed in a fractal skin. Stand up, please.”

Ninety-one years? It felt like a couple of seconds. Constantine felt numb from the suddenness of the transition. Slowly, he moved his new body, trying it out.

“Nice interface,” he said. “This feels just like my old body, except it looks so blurry. I take it that’s the effect of the fractal skin?”

He was standing in a small room, bare of everything but a chair and a black shoulder bag lying on the floor.

“See if you can pick up the bag,” said Katie.

“Okay.”

Constantine tried to do so, but the bag slipped through his fingers.

“I can’t get a grip.”

“That’s the fractal skin. It blurs the boundary between you and the rest of the universe. You can relax the effect around your hands and feet in order to interact with the world. I’ll show you how.”

It was as if Katie Kirkham was sharing his body: she reached down inside his hand and did something, so, and there was a change. Now he could grip the bag.

“How did you do that? Are you in this robot along with me?”

“For the moment. Both of us are Personality Constructs of long-dead people. We go where we please. Well, I do, anyway. Now, in a moment, I will open the airlock door. This body is vacuum proof. We’re going to head out to the comet to retrieve something.”

“I thought as much,” said Constantine. He was right to think the comet looked familiar. He had been here before. Sort of.

Constantine floated away from the silver needle of the stealth ship using some mysterious form of propulsion.

“I’ll guide us,” said Katie. “You won’t need to know how the motion poppers work where you’re going.”

“Motion poppers? I can see things have changed in ninety-one years,” Constantine muttered. “Nice ship, by the way. It looks very stealthy.”