“Isn’t it good to do something all on your own, without the interference of Social Care?” he would say slyly.
“What I like about these things is the way you can understand them,” he told Joanne, swigging beer from a bottle. “You make them yourselves; you know how they are made. You don’t need an AI figuring out all the details.” The comment sounded like something that Claude had rehearsed: a line he had been instructed to drop into the conversation.
“You know, people used to live on what they produced for themselves,” he had said, laughing, as Joanne and Michel had passed across a complicated double helix in return for the three hundred and six strands that Claude formed by performing a complicated twisting action on successive bundles of n-strings. “…and then AIs and VNMs came and offered them something for nothing. Are they any happier for it?”
“Show me how to do that,” said Joanne, leaning forward as she tried to follow the complicated movement of his hands. Claude paused in the action of pulling strands from nowhere.
“Sorry, single strands are too difficult for beginners.” He smacked his lips thoughtfully. “But I suppose I could show you this, instead…”
They huddled close together as Claude demonstrated a new move, and Maurice lost interest for a time as Armstrong called his attention back to their growing pile of bracelets.
“Come on,” Armstrong urged. “Donny and Craig are pulling ahead of us.”
Maurice picked up some of the strands, ready to restart the process of folding the Cradle. He ran two of the n-strings through his fingers, experiencing the odd sensation they gave of stillness, even when they moved. Twist them in the wrong direction and it was as if they weren’t there at all.
They got back to the work. The splash of the waves, the clinking of beer bottles on tables, the sounds of chatter…
It was only a short time later that the whole table noticed that Joanne and Michel had come from nowhere to build up a decisive lead. The pile of double helices in front of them seemed to be growing at an astonishing rate.
“Good work,” Craig said approvingly.
“Hey, that’s not fair!” Armstrong called out. “Look what she’s doing!”
Joanne was taking hold of the ends of a double helix and twisting them around and over themselves in the same complicated motion that Claude had used. When the bracelet was a tangle of strands, she would gently pull it apart and there would be two of them. She had the grace to blush and look embarrassed.
“Claude showed me how to do it,” she apologized.
“And why shouldn’t I? It’s not in the rules.”
“But it gives her an unfair advantage,” called Armstrong, in his agitation kicking one of the beer bottles that lay at his feet.
Claude adopted a thoughtful pose, and Maurice became more convinced than ever that he was delivering a practiced speech.
“So you are saying that replication is unfair, Armstrong? Just like AIs give one an unfair advantage in this game.”
“Exactly!”
“Yet you come from a society where these advantages are assumed on a daily basis.”
The sound of the waves could be heard distinctly in the room, that and the skittering echo of Armstrong’s beer bottle finally spinning to a halt.
“Yes, but you can’t compare this
game
to the way we live.” Donny’s words dripped with all the bitterness and bile that had built up within him since his wife had walked out.
“And why not?” Claude asked gently.
“Because…” Donny began. His voice trailed away to nothing.
“I know one reason why,” said Claude softly. “Because we
choose
the games we play, and yet the way we live is immutable. It is imposed upon us from our birth by the Watcher and Social Care. Well, what if I were to tell you there are other ways to live?”
Craig leaned forward. “I’ve heard about this,” he said excitedly. “I knew a girl on Lorient; she talked about people getting out from under the gaze of the Watcher and living a different sort of life. It’s an old-fashioned sort of thing, she said, getting back to basics.”
“Not old-fashioned at all,” said Claude. “It gives humans a chance to live as they should do, thinking for themselves, not as unwitting slaves to the will of AIs and Social Care.”
“Somebody’s coming.”
They swept the colorful strands of the n-strings into pockets, onto chairs, pushed them up their sleeves. They started to giggle at the futility of the task. There were so many of them. Too many. Armstrong was even shoving them down the front of his trousers, smirking at the obscene bulge they formed. Joanne shook her head at his childishness.
“It’s Saskia,” said Craig as a pale face appeared in the darkness. Saskia strode into the open-fronted space of the café.
“You know that Social Care are coming?” she said, taking in the scene in the midnight-bright room. “How much have you been drinking, Craig?”
“Not enough,” muttered Craig, and they all collapsed with laughter again. Maurice began to push n-strings down the front of his trousers, imitating Armstrong.
Saskia’s eyes fell on Claude. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” she asked. Craig couldn’t stop giggling.
“This is Claude,” said a still sober Joanne, placing her hand on his dark wrist. As he clasped it in his own, Joanne looked up with dancing green eyes. “I wonder how Social Care knew that we were here, Saskia?”
Saskia flicked her dark eyes around the table. “I don’t think that she should be able to make such accusations unchallenged, Michel.”
“Don’t start, Saskia,” Craig said, suddenly serious again. “Who’s coming?”
“One of the Stephanies.”
The assembled people looked at one another.
“We should go now,” Armstrong decided, pushing back his chair in a clatter of beer bottles. “Claude, it was nice meeting you.”
“You don’t have to go,” Claude said quietly. “I have a ship waiting not one minute away. Join the game, Armstrong.”
Maurice felt more tempted by the sudden offer than he would have imagined, but Armstrong was shaking his head.
“Not for me, Claude. I’ve got nothing to hide from Social Care.” He shook his head again. “I’ve got nothing against them, either.”
“What about when they stop you from drinking?” Maurice asked.
“They’re just doing the job,” Armstrong replied, drunkenly sanctimonious. “And I’ve got mine to do, too, Maurice. I signed up for duty on this planet and I’ll see it through. It’s the same with Social Care. You get the rights, you accept the responsibilities.”
“You should be getting them out of here,” murmured Saskia to Michel. “It won’t look good for you if Social Care realize that you let your team play the n-strings game.”
“All right, I know,” said Michel. He gave an apologetic shrug.
“Way to spoil the party, Saskia,” Joanne murmured.
“Be quiet, Joanne,” Michel said. “Come on, everyone, back to the flier.”
Slowly, with a scrape of chairs and further skittering of bottles, they began to make their way from the table. All except one.
“I’m not going.” Donny spoke up, his voice darkly sullen. “Claude, tell me some more about this new way of life of yours.”
“Look out,” Craig called. A disc came spinning out of the night; it bounced off the table and fell to the floor.
“Hello, Stephanie,” said Saskia.
“Hello, Saskia.”
Maurice shivered. This Stephanie was a personality construct of the human Stephanie, who was no doubt even now being woken and bundled onto a flier so she could be rushed across the world in order to speak to the erring crew.
“I see you have all been playing the n-strings game. It’s a charming diversion. I have played it myself a few times.”
“What, in digital space?” Joanne’s voice was sweetly sarcastic. “You have precious little chance of leaving your world, Stephanie.”
“Don’t be so prejudiced, Joanne,”
Stephanie replied lightly.
“I have the same rights to self-fulfillment as anyone in what you like to call the atomic world. Besides, I don’t need to walk in the
physical
world to realize that the concept behind this game is flawed.”
“It’s a diversion,” said Craig. “Look!”
Fine silver bars were silently growing downwards to block the open front of the café. Everyone present made a dash for the cool space outside. Claude whispered something into the heavy silver ring that he wore on his little finger.
“It’s not a trap,”
called Stephanie.
“It’s for your own protection. You need to think sensibly about this, so as not to be rushed into an unwise decision.”
Armstrong scowled. “Who’s rushing us, Stephanie?” He raised his voice. “Claude, what do you mean when you say there is another way to live? Whose idea is this?”
Claude was scanning the sky. Up above, Maurice thought that he saw a pinprick of light drifting across the stars.
“Oh, some old guy from history,” said Claude distractedly. “I don’t remember his name.”
Maurice could see that Craig had now taken Saskia off to one side. He could hear the harshness in his voice as he berated her.
“What’s going on here, Saskia? Why did you tell them what we were doing?”
Maurice strained to hear Saskia’s answer, spoken in a self-righteous whisper.
“I didn’t want to tell them anything. Craig, you know what they’re like. Social Care always know what you’re thinking. But I promise, I didn’t want to tell them anything!”
Craig said nothing to that.
“Hey, you don’t suppose you’re the first person to come here, do you?” said Saskia suddenly. “Claude’s been up and down the coast for the past week, looking for people to join his commune, or whatever it is.” She reached out and touched the bracelet that Craig had tied around his wrist. “That’s a six plait,” she said. “I can do that.”
Something was dropping towards them. A sleek teardrop shape, the light of the café reflected off its burnished side.
“It’s the
Borderlands,”
said Claude. “This is my ship. You are welcome to come aboard with me. I can get the
Borderlands
to reproduce. Give you a ship of your own.”
“I’m coming,” said Donny.
“But Donny, what about your children?”
The disc holding the personality construct of Stephanie rolled on its side like a wheel, following them away from the café into the night and the noise of the waves that splashed invisibly all around them.
Donny clenched his fists. He was unshaven, his hair hung in greasy strands. The barely suppressed anger that had burned so brightly within him for the past weeks flared white-hot for a moment. With difficulty, he restrained it.
“Are you saying you would keep my children from me?”
Stephanie said nothing.
Suddenly he relaxed. He gave a laugh that made Maurice shiver with its wildness.
“This is all a bluff, isn’t it?” He walked back to the café entrance, where the silver bars had now grown to floor level. He took two in his hands and bent them apart easily. “Social Care doesn’t imprison us with bars and locks. You use words and gestures, wall us up behind our manners and upbringing, and then you beat us with our conscience when we stray from your path. You’re not going to stop us boarding this ship. You’re counting on us returning to you in a few weeks’ time, when you’ll be waiting for us with sympathy and kind words and then you’ll take us back into your stifling grasp.”
The
Borderlands
was sliding over the beach, dwarfing the cafés and bars of the seafront, the humming of its engines mixing with the splash of the waves. An exit ramp was dropping open halfway down its enormous length, a tongue of light shining out from the inward curve of the teardrop.
“Where are you going?” There was a note in Saskia’s voice that none of them had heard before. It almost sounded like terror. Armstrong, who was marching towards the ship with a determined look on his face, mistakenly thought she was speaking to him. He called his reply over his shoulder as he went.
“I’m getting on board. You heard what Donny said. He’s right. I’m fed up with Social Care always telling me what to do.”
But Saskia ignored him. She was following Craig down onto the sand.
“Craig, wait! Are you sure that really want to do this? You won’t be welcome in the Enemy Domain when you come back. They’ll send you back to Earth.”
Craig turned and thrust his face close to hers.
“And what are you going to do when I’ve gone, Saskia? Whose life are you going to organize when Donny and the rest of us are off flying through the stars? What if we even make a go of it out there?”
Maurice pushed past them, eager to be on the ship. Michel walked on thoughtfully, Stephanie’s wheel rolling alongside him.
“There will be a flier here in five minutes. Why not wait for its arrival? Talk things over with the atomic Stephanie. You can still go with this ship tomorrow.”
Michel paused. Saskia suddenly appeared at his shoulder. She made a little noise that sounded something like a sob.
“Don’t listen to her, Michel. Come on, we’re going to need you to tell us what to do.”
She took him by the arm and led him up the ramp.
“And that’s it?” asked Judy.
“And that’s it,” said Maurice. “It was just like a game of dare. We all thought that we were going to give up at any moment, but somehow we just went on playing. Claude and his crew took us up into space, where they triggered the self-replication routine on the
Borderlands,
and the
Eva Rye
was born.”
Judy frowned. “I thought that you weren’t allowed to use self-replication. I thought that wasn’t in the rules of the game.”
Maurice shrugged. “We’re still learning the rules of the game, Judy. I think that you’re allowed to use VNMs when you bring in new players. The
Borderlands
got an upgrade, I guess. The original
Eva Rye
was very basic. A complete hodge-podge of styles, most of which didn’t work.” He cast a thoughtful eye around the black-and-white interior of the room. “So now we just go around trading, though we don’t do very well. I suppose if we had an AI, then we wouldn’t keep making mistakes. But I suppose if everyone had AIs, then we’d be right back to where we started.”