Stephen Baxter - Ring

Come on, Lieserl. We know the systems are functioning. I need to know what you see, what you feel.

“What I feel?”

She spread her arms and sailed backwards through the buffeting air. She opened her eyes again.

The huge semistable convection cells around her reached from the photosphere to the base of the convective zone; they buffeted against each other like living things, huge whales in this insubstantial sea of gas. And the honeycomb of activity was driven by the endless flux of energetic photons out of the radiative sea of plasma beneath her.

“I feel wonderful,” she said. “I see fountains. A cave-full of them.”

Good. Keep talking, Lieserl. You know what we’re trying to achieve here; your senses — your Virtual senses — are composites, constructs from a wide variety of inputs. I can see the individual elements are functioning; what I need to know is how well the Virtual sensorium is integrating —

“Fine.” She rolled over onto her belly, so that she was gliding face-down, surveying the plasma sea below her.

Lieserl, what now?

She adjusted her eyes once more. The flux tubes came into prominence, solidifying out of the air; beyond them the convective pattern was a sketchy framework, overlaid. “I see the magnetic flux,” she reported. “I can see what I want to see. It’s all working the way it’s supposed to, I think; I can pick out whatever feature of the world I choose, here.”

“World ” ?

“Yes, Kevan.” She glanced up at the photosphere, the symbolic barrier separating her forever from the Universe of humanity. “This is my world, now.”

Maybe, just don’t lose yourself down there, Lieserl.

“I won’t.”

It sounded as if there was some sympathy in his voice — knowing Kevan, there probably was; they had grown almost close in the few days she’d had left after her tour with him around the Sun.

But it was hard to tell. The communication channel linking them was a path through the wormhole, from the Interface fixed among the habitats outside the Sun to the portal which had been dropped into the Sun, and which now sustained her. The comms link was ingenious, and seemed reliable, but it wasn’t too good at relaying complex intonations.

Tell me about the flux tubes.

The tubes were each a hundred yards broad, channels of magnetic energy cutting through the air; they were thousands of miles long, and they filled the air around her, all the way down to the plasma sea.

Lieserl dipped into a tube, into its interior; she felt the tingle of enhanced magnetic strength. She lowered her head and allowed herself to soar along the length of the tube, so that its walls rushed past her, curving gracefully. “It’s terrific,” she said. “I’m in an immense tunnel; it’s like a fairground ride. I could follow this path all the way round the Sun.”

Maybe. I don’t know if we need the poetry, Lieserl. What about other tubes? Can you still see them?

“Yes.” She turned her head, and induced currents in her Virtual body made her face sparkle with radiation. “I can see hundreds, thousands of the tubes, all curving through the air — ”

The “air ” ?

“The convective zone gases. The other tubes are parallel with mine, more or less.” She sought for a way to convey the sensation. “I feel as if I’m sliding around the scalp of some immense giant, Kevan, following the lines of hairs.”

Scholes laughed. Well, that’s not a bad image. The flux tubes can tangle, or break, but they can’t intersect. Just like hair.

“You know, this is almost relaxing…”

Good. Again she detected that hint of sympathy — or was it pity? — in Kevan’s voice. I’m glad you’re feeling — ah — happy in yourself, Lieserl.

She let the crisp magnetic flux play over her cheeks, sharp, bright, vivid. “My new self. Well, it’s an improvement on the old; you have to admit.”

Now the flux tube curved away, consistently, to the right; she was forced to deflect to avoid crashing through the tube’s insubstantial walls.

In following the tube she became aware that she was tracing out a spiral path. She let herself relax into the motion, and watched the cave-world beyond the tube wheel around her. The flux tubes neighboring her own had become twisted into spirals, too, she realized; she was following one strand in a rope of twisted-together flux tubes.

Lieserl, what’s happening? We can see your trajectory’s altering, fast.

“I’m fine, Kevan. I’ve got myself into a rope, that’s all…”

Lieserl, you should get out of there.

She let the tube’s path sweep her around. “Why? This is fun.”

Maybe. But the rope is heading for the photosphere. It isn’t a good idea for you to break the surface; we’re concerned about the stability of the wormhole —

Lieserl sighed and let herself slow. “Oh, damn it, Kevan, you’re just no fun. I would have enjoyed bursting out through the middle of a sunspot. What a great way to go.”

Lieserl —

She slid out of the flux tube, relishing the sharp scent of the magnetic field as she cut across it. “All right, Kevan. I’m at your service. What next?”

We’re not done with the tests yet, Lieserl. I’m sorry.

“What do you want me to do?”

One more…

“Just tell me.”

Run a full self-check, Lieserl, just for a few minutes… Drop the Virtual constructs.

She hesitated. “Why? I thought you said you could tell the systems were functioning to specification, and — ”

They are. That’s not the point… We’re still testing how well integrated they are —

“Integrated into my sensorium. Why don’t you just say what you’re after, Kevan? You want to test how conscious this machine called Lieserl is. Right?”

Lieserl, you don’t need to make this difficult for me. Scholes sounded defensive. This is a standard suite of tests for any AI which —

“All right, damn it.”

She closed her eyes, and with a sudden, impulsive, stab of will, she let her Virtual image of herself — the illusion of a human body around her — crumble.

It was like — what? Like waking from a dream, a soft, comfortable dream of childhood, waking to find herself entombed in a machine, a crude construct of bolts and cords and gears.

But even that was an illusion, she thought, a metaphor for herself behind which she was hiding.

She considered herself.

The wormhole Interface was suspended in the body of the Sun. The thin, searing hot gas of the convective zone poured into its triangular faces, so that the Interface was embedded in a sculpture of inflowing gas, a flower carved dynamically from the Sun’s flesh. That material was being pumped through the wormhole to the second Interface in orbit around the Sun; there, convection zone gases emerged, blazing, making the drifting tetrahedron into a second, miniature Sun around which orbited the fragile human habitat called Thoth.

Thus the Interface refrigerated itself, enabling it to survive with its precious, fragile cargo of data stores… The stores which sustained the awareness of herself. And the flux of matter through the Interface’s planes was controlled, to enable her to move the Interface through the body of the Sun.

She inspected herself, at many levels, simultaneously.

At the physical level she studied crisp matrices of data, shifting, coalescing, the patterns of bits which, together, comprised her memories. Then, overlaid on that — visually, if she willed it, like a ghostly superstructure — was her logical level, the data storage and access paths which represented the components of her consciousness.