Stephen Baxter: Ring

She felt the muscles in her neck tighten; she felt as if she must scream. Matthew seemed to recede from her, as if she were viewing him through a tunnel.

Once again the laboring nanobots — the vicious, unceasing technological infection of her body — had taken away part of her life.

This time, though, it was too much to bear.

Phillida had never looked so old. Her skin seemed drawn tight across the bones of her face, the lines etched deep. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Believe me. When we — George and I — volunteered for Superet’s program, we knew it would be painful. But we never dreamed how much. Neither of us had children before. Perhaps if we had, we’d have been able to anticipate how this would feel.”

“I’m a freak — an absurd experiment,” Lieserl shouted. “A construct. Why did you make me human? Why not some insentient animal? Why not a Virtual?”

“Oh, you had to be human. As human as possible…”

“I’m human in fragments,” Lieserl said bitterly. “In shards. Which are taken away from me as soon as they’re found. That’s not humanity, Phillida. It’s grotesque.”

“I know. I’m sorry, my love. Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Outside. To the garden. I want to show you something.”

Suspicious, hostile, Lieserl allowed her mother to take her hand; but she made her fingers lie lifeless, cold in Phillida’s warm grasp.

It was mid-morning now. The Sun’s light flooded the garden; flowers — white and yellow — strained up toward the sky.

Lieserl looked around; the garden was empty. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

Phillida, solemnly, pointed upwards.

Lieserl tilted back her head, shading her eyes to block out the Sun. The sky was a searing-blue dome, marked only by a high vapour trail and the lights of orbital habitats.

Gently, Phillida pulled Lieserl’s hand down from her face, and, cupping her chin, tipped her face flower-like toward the Sun.

The star’s light seemed to fill her head. Dazzled, she dropped her eyes and stared at Phillida through a haze of blurred, streaked retinal images. “The Sun?”

“Lieserl, you were — constructed. You know that. You’re being forced through a human lifecycle at hundreds of times the normal pace — ”

“A year every day.”

“Approximately, yes. But there is a purpose, Lieserl. A justification. You aren’t simply an experiment. You have a mission.” She waved her hand at the sprawling, friendly buildings that comprised the House. “Most of the people here, particularly the children, don’t know anything about you, Lieserl. They have jobs, goals — lives of their own to follow. But they’re here for you.

“Lieserl, the House is here to imprint you with humanity. Your experiences have been designed — George and I were selected, even — to ensure that the first few days of your existence would be as human as possible.”

“The first few days?” Suddenly the unknowable future was like a black wall, looming toward her; she felt as out of control of her life as if she were a counter on some immense, invisible snakes-and-ladders board. She lifted her face to the warmth of the Sun. “ What am I?”

“You are… artificial, Lieserl.

“In a few weeks your human shell will become old. You’ll be transferred into a new form… Your human body will be — ”

“Discarded?”

“Lieserl, it’s so difficult. That moment will seem like a death to me. But it won’t be death. It will be a metamorphosis. You’ll have new powers — even your awareness will be reconstructed. Lieserl, you’ll become the most conscious entity in the Solar System…”

“I don’t want that. I want to be me. I want my freedom, Phillida.”

“No, Lieserl. You’re not free, I’m afraid; you never can be. You have a goal.”

“What goal?”

Phillida lifted her face to the Sun once more. “The Sun gave us life. Without it — without the other stars — we couldn’t survive.

“We’re a strong species. We believe we can live as long as the stars — for tens of billions of years. And perhaps even beyond that… If we’re allowed to. But we’ve had — glimpses — of the future, the far distant future. Disturbing glimpses.

“People are starting to plan, to assure we’re granted our destiny. People are working on projects which will take millions of years to come to fruition… People like those working for Superet.

“Lieserl, you’re one of those projects.”

“I don’t understand.”

Phillida took her hand, squeezed it gently; the simple human contact seemed incongruous, the garden around them transient, a chimera, before this talk of megayears and the future of the species.

“Lieserl, something is wrong with the Sun. You have to find out what. The Sun is dying; something — or someone — is killing it.” Phillida’s eyes were huge before her, staring, probing for understanding. “Don’t be afraid. My dear, you will live forever. If you want to. And you will see wonders which I can only dream of.”

Lieserl stared into her mother’s huge, weak eyes. “But you don’t envy me. Do you, Phillida?”

“No,” Phillida said quietly.

Louise Ye Armonk stood on the weather deck of the SS Great Britain. From here she could see the full length of Brunel’s fine steam liner: the polished deck, the skylights, the airy masts with their loops of wire rigging, the single, squat funnel amidships.

And beyond the glowing dome which sheltered the old ship, the sky of the Solar System’s rim loomed like a huge, empty room.

Louise still felt a little drunk — sourly now — from the orbiting party she’d left a few minutes earlier. She subvocalized a command to send nanobots scouring through her bloodstream; she sobered up fast, with a brief shudder.

Mark Bassett Friar Armonk Wu — Louise’s ex-husband — stood close by her. They’d left the Great Northern, with its party still in full swing, to come here, to the surface of Port Sol, in a cramped pod. Mark was dressed in a one-piece jumpsuit of some pastel fabric; the lines of his neck were long and elegant as he turned his head to survey the old ship.

Louise was glad they were alone, that none of the Northern’s prospective interstellar colonists had decided to follow them down for a last few moments on this outpost of Sol, to reminisce with this fragment of Earth’s past — even though reminiscence was part of the reason Louise had had the old ship brought out here in the first place.

Mark touched her arm; his palm, through the thin fabric of her sleeve, felt warm, alive. “You’re not happy, are you? Even at a moment like this. Your greatest triumph.”

She searched his face, seeking out his meaning. He wore his hair shaven, so that his fine, fragile-looking skull showed through his dark skin; his nose was sharp, his lips thin, and his blue eyes — striking in that dark face — were surrounded by a mesh of wrinkles. He’d once told her he’d thought of getting the wrinkles smoothed out — it would be easy enough in the course of AS-renewal but she’d campaigned against it. Not that she’d have cared too much, but it would have taken most of the character out of that elegant face — most of its patina of time, she thought.

“I never could read you,” she said at last. “Maybe that’s why we failed in the end.”

He laughed lightly, a sparkle of intoxication still in his voice. “Oh, come on. We lasted twenty years. That’s not a failure.”

“In a lifetime of two hundred years?” She shook her head. “Look. You ask me about my feelings. Anyone who didn’t know you — us — would think you cared. So why do I think that, in some part of your head, you’re laughing at me?”