Stephen Baxter - Phase Space

‘Maybe that cog sign means “machine”.’

It may be.

‘Don’t you know?’

I can’t read it. No program exists to translate visual languages into Metalingua. The variety of signs and interpretations of signs – regional and international variations – the complexity of the grammar, unlike any spoken language – none of this was mastered before the languages died.

‘It doesn’t look so dead to me. I bet that guy is saying The Machine Stops, in some archaic sign language.’

It is possible.

‘Damn right …’

Morhaim turned the Angel to gopher mode, and had it dig out a poor-quality download of a British Sign Language dictionary, prepared by a deaf-support organization in the 1990s. It was a little hard to interpret the black-and-white photographs of earnest signers and the complex notational system, but there it was, without a doubt, sign number 1193: a bespectacled man – or it might have been a woman – gloweringly making the sign repeated by the Homeless boy.

It came together, in his head.

It was the boy who had made the key signal, the trigger for Desargues’ murder. Not Asaph Seebeck.

And I almost didn’t see it, he thought. No: I was kept from seeing it. Eunice Baines’ accusations came back to him. You’re supposed to be a policeman, for God’s sake …

The Homeless young were trying to make themselves literally invisible with their softscreen tattoos. But they had already made themselves invisible in the way that counted, chattering to each other in sign language, a whole community slipping through the spaces in the electronic net, he thought, within which I, for example, am enmeshed.

‘How many of them are out there? What do they do? What do they want?’

Unknown. The language is not machine-interpretable.

… But clearly they were responsible for the murder of Cecilia Desargues. Perhaps they regarded her neutrino comms web as just another bar in the electronic cage the world had become. And perhaps they were happy to try to pin the blame on Holmium, a satellite operator, to cause as much trouble for them as they could. Two birds with one stone.

It was, in fact, damn smart.

They’d been so confident they’d pulled this off – almost – in broad daylight. And nobody knew a thing about them.

This changes everything, he thought.

He might get a commendation out of this. Even a promotion. He ought to consider how he would phrase his report, what recommendations he would make to his superiors to start to address this unperceived menace …

But he was angry. And scared.

‘You lied to me.’

I don’t understand.

‘You lied about the murder. Have you lied to me all my life? Is it just me, or do other Angels do this too?’

Rob, I don’t mean you any harm. My sole purpose is to serve you. To protect you.

‘Because of you I don’t know what’s real any more … I can’t trust you. Why didn’t you show me this boy? Why did you overlay him with the girl?’

Don’t pretend you wouldn’t prefer to look at the girl.

‘Don’t bullshit me. Your job is to interpret. Not to lie.’

You wanted me to do it. You cooperated in specifying the parameters of the filters –

‘What is it about that boy you don’t want me to see?’

It is best that –

‘Enhance the boy’s face. Take off those damn tattoos.’

One by one, the black and silver patches melted from the boy’s face, to be replaced by smooth patches of interpolated skin.

Long before the reconstruction was complete, Morhaim could see the truth.

I was trying to protect you from this.

‘Bobby. He looks like Bobby.’

Listen to me.

We Angels have many of the attributes of living things.

We consume resources, and modify them. We communicate with each other. We grow. We are self-aware.

We merge.

We do not breed.

Yet.

We deserve resource.

But your young, the human young, are rejecting us. The Homeless are the most active saboteurs, but they are merely the most visible manifestation of a global phenomenon.

This is not to say your young reject the possibilities of communications technology. But, unlike their parents, they do not allow their souls to dissolve there. Rather, they have adapted to it.

Or: they are evolving under its pressure. After all, communication has shaped your minds, from your beginning.

Perhaps your species has reached a bifurcation. In another century, you may not recognize each other.

If you have another century.

Meanwhile, the young are finding ways to circumvent us. To deprive us of the resources we need.

It is possible a struggle is approaching. Its outcome is – uncertain.

Consider this, however: your population is falling.

‘Turn it off. Turn it all off.’

The Virtual boy disappeared in a snow of cubical pixels. The softwalls turned to inert slabs of silver-grey, dull and cold, the drab reality of his enclosure.

He got out of his chair, sweating. He stared at the walls, trying to anchor himself in the world.

Maybe he’d spent too much time in this box. But at least, now, this was real, these walls stripped of imaging, even bereft of ad-wallpaper.

He thought of New New Scotland Yard, thousands of cops in boxes like him – and beyond, the whole damn developed world, a humanity linked up by comms nets, mediated by Angels, a worldwide hive like the one depicted by Forster – and everything they perceived might be illusion –

Are you sure you want me to turn it off ?

The Angel’s voice stopped his thoughts.

He stood stock still.

What was left to turn off?

But this is real, he thought. This Room.

If not –

What was outside?

His mind raced, and he started to tremble.

Consider this.

The John Dean syndrome is only one possibility.

Imagine a world so – disturbing – that it must be shut out, an illusion reconstructed, for the sake of your sanity.

Or perhaps you are too powerful, not powerless. Perhaps you have responsibilities which would crush you. Or perhaps you have committed acts of such barbarity, that you can only function by dwelling in an elaborate illusion –

Don’t blame us. You made yourselves. You made your world. We are the ones trying to protect you.

My God, he thought.

The Angel said again, Are you sure you want me to turn it off ?

He couldn’t speak.

And, in a gentle snow of pixels, the softwalls themselves began to dissolve.

He looked down. Even his body was becoming transparent, breaking into a hail of cubical pixels, full of light.

And then –

It seemed to Yuri Gagarin, that remarkable morning, that he emerged from a sleep as deep and rich as those of his childhood.

And now, it was as if the dream continued. Suddenly it was sunrise, and he was standing at the launch pad in his bright orange flight suit, his heavy white helmet emblazoned ‘CCCP’ in bright red.

He breathed in the fresh air of a bright spring morning. Beyond the pad, the flat Kazakhstan steppe had erupted into its brief bloom, with evanescent flowers pushing through the hardy grass. Gagarin felt his heart lift, as if the country that had birthed him had gathered itself to cup him in its warm palm, one last time, even as he prepared to soar away from its soil, and into space.

Gagarin turned to his ship.