Paul Di Filippo - After the Collapse

Its mail delivered, the cloud wisped away into its mesoscopic constituent parts. A light misty drizzle refreshed Pertinax’s face. But otherwise he was left with only the uneasy feelings occasioned by the message.

Of course he would help Sylvanus. Interference with the tropospherical mind could not be tolerated. The nerve of those Overclockers!

Not for the first time, nor probably the last, Pertinax ruefully contemplated the dubious charity of the long-departed Upflowered.

When ninety-nine-point-nine percent of humanity had abandoned the Earth for greener intergalactic pastures during the Upflowering, the leavetakers had performed several final tasks. They had re-arcadized the whole globe, wiping away nearly every vestige of mankind’s crude twenty-second-century proto-civilization, and restocked the seas and plains with many beasts. They had established Pertinax and his fellows—a small corps of ensouled, spliced and redacted domestic animals—as caretakers of the restored Earth. They had charitably set up a few agrarian reservations for the small number of dissidents and malfunctioning humans who chose to remain behind, stubbornly unaltered in their basic capabilities from their archaic genetic baseline. And they had uploaded every vestige of existing machine intelligence and their knowledge bases to a new platform: an airborne network of miniscule, self-replenishing components, integrated with the planet’s meteorological systems.

During the intervening centuries, the remaining archaic humans—dubbed the Overclockers for their uncanny devotion to both speed and the false quantization of holistic imponderables—had gradually dragged themselves back up to a certain level of technological achievement. Now, it seemed, they were on the point of making a nuisance of themselves. This could not be tolerated.

Hurrying back into his compact domicile, Pertinax readied his reply to Sylvanus. From a small door inset in one wall, which opened onto a coop fixed to the outside wall, Pertinax retrieved a mail pigeon. He placed the docile murmuring bird on a tabletop and fed it some special seed, scooped from one compartment of a feed bin. While he waited for the virgula and sublimula within the seed to take effect, Pertinax supplied his own lunch: a plate of carrots and celery, the latter smeared with delicious bean paste. By the time Pertinax had finished his repast, cleaning his fur with the side of one paw-hand all the way from muzzle to tufted ear tips, the pigeon was locked into recording mode, staring ahead fixedly, as if hypnotized by a predator.

Pertinax positioned himself within the bird’s field of vision. “Sylvanus my peer, I enlist wholeheartedly in your mission! Although my use of the tropospheric mind is negligible compared to your own employment of the system, I do have all my statistics and observations from a century of avian migrations stored there. Should the data and its backups be corrupted, the loss of such a record would be disastrous! I propose to set out immediately by hopper for ‘Chicago.’ Should you likewise leave upon receipt of this message, I believe our paths will intersect somewhere around these coordinates.” Pertinax recited latitude and longitude figures. “Simply ping my hopper when you get close enough, and we’ll meet to continue the rest of our journey together. Travel safely.”

Pertinax recited the verbal tag that brought the pigeon out of its trance. The bird resumed its lively attitude, plainly ready to perform its share of the mail delivery. Pertinax cradled the bird against his oddly muscled chest and stepped outside. He lofted the pigeon upwards, and it began to stroke the sky bravely.

Once within the lowest layers of the tropospheric mind, the bird would have its brain states recorded by an ethereal cap of spontaneously congregating virgula and sublimula, and the bird would be free to return to its coop.

Pertinax’s message would thus enter the meterological medium and be propagated across the intervening leagues to Sylvanus. Like a wave in the ocean, the information was not dependent upon any unique set of entities to constitute its identity, and so could travel faster than simple forward motion of particles might suggest. To span the globe from Pertinax to the antipodes took approximately twelve hours, and Sylvanus lived much closer. Not as fast as the ancient quantum-entanglement methods extant in the days before the Upflowering. But then again, the pace of life among the stewards was much less frenzied than it had been among the ancestors of the Overclockers.

Having seen his mail on its way, Pertinax commenced the rest of his preparations for his trip. He finished feeding his parrot tulips, giving them a little extra to see them through his time away from home. If delayed overlong, Pertinax knew they would estivate safely till his return. Then from a cupboard he took a set of large saddlebags. Into these pouches he placed victuals for himself and several packets of multipurpose pigeon seed, as well as a few treats and vitamin pills to supplement the forage which his hopper would subsist on during the journey. He looked fondly at his neat, comfortable bed, whose familiar refuge he would miss. No taking that of course! But the hopper would provide a decent alternative. Pertinax added a few other miscellaneous items to his pack, then deemed his provisions complete.

Stepping outside, Pertinax took one fond look back inside before shutting and latching his door. He went around shuttering all the windows as a precaution against the storms that sometimes accompanied the more demanding calculations of the tropospheric mind. From the pigeon coop he withdrew three birds and placed them in a loosely woven wicker carrier. Then he took a few dozen strides to the hopper corral, formed of high walls of living ironthorn bush.

Pertinax’s hopper was named Flossy, a fine mare. The redacted Kodiak Kangemu stood three meters tall at its shoulders. Its pelt was a curious blend of chestnut fur and gray feathers, its fast-twitch-muscled legs banded with bright yellow scales along the lower third above its enormous feet. A thick strong tail jutted backward for almost half Flossy’s length.

Pertinax tossed Flossy a treat, which she snapped from the air with her long jaws. In the stable attached to the corral, Pertinax secured a saddle. This seat resembled a papoose or backpack, with two shoulder straps. Outside again, Pertinax opened the corral gate—formed of conventional timbers—and beckoned to Flossy, who obediently came out and hunkered down. Holding the saddle up above his head, Pertinax aided Flossy in shrugging into the seat. He cinched the straps, then hung his saddlebags from one lower side of the seat and the wicker basket containing the pigeons from the other. Deftly Pertinax scrambled up, employing handholds of Flossy’s fur, and ensconced himself comfortably, the seat leaving his arms free but cradling his back and neck. His head was now positioned above Flossy’s, giving him a clear view of his path. He gripped Flossy’s big upright ears firmly yet not harshly, and urged his mount around to face northeast.

“Gee up, Flossy,” said Pertinax, and they were off.

Flossy’s gait was the queerest mixture of hopping, vaulting, running and lumbering, a mode of locomotion unknown to baseline creation. But Pertinax found it soothing, and his steed certainly ate up the kilometers.

For the first few hours, Pertinax enjoyed surveying his immediate territory, quite familiar and beloved, noting subtle changes in the fauna and flora of the prairie that distance brought. In early afternoon he stopped for a meal, allowing Flossy to forage. Taking out a pigeon and prepping the bird, Pertinax recited his morning’s scientific observations to be uploaded to the tropospheric mind. Its data delivered, the bird homed back to Pertinax rather than the cottage. In less than an hour, the warden was underway again.