Fiona gripped Eva’s arm and pointed.
They were in a landscape that looked every bit as naturally formed as the rugged mountains to the north. A vista of low hills and twisting dales, filled with the gentle splash of running water. And yet there was no grass or plants or mud to paint the scene. The entire landscape was built of concrete and brick. Broken buildings reared around her, rubble and bricks forming scree at their base. Tarmacked roads, cracked into eroded plates, formed jigsaw paths through the greyness. And now, off to one side, silver VNMs were spilling out of a depression, spreading over the land like water welling from a hole.
Eva gave an involuntary whimper, and Ivan placed a gentle hand on her knee.
“It’s okay,” said Fiona, “they won’t get this far.”
Silver spiders flooded out across the land, washing over the road ahead.
“See?” she said triumphantly. “See, if you’d been up there they’d have stripped this cart apart and made it into copies of themselves! Look at them, can you see how they wave their little legs about? They’re looking for something, sensing for metal. Look at how their bodies are silver, and you can’t see any joints.”
Fiona had remarkable facility for describing what was perfectly obvious to everyone else.
“See they are still coming, but fewer and fewer of them…”
The tide slowed, hesitated, and began to run backwards.
“Okay,” she called, “they’re reversing. It will be safe to follow them now. Come on, you’ve got to see this. Julian says he has never seen anything like it.”
She climbed down from the britzka and made her way up a low slope of broken bricks to the sound of clinking and scraping.
“It’s okay,” she said, pausing at the top of the pile to wipe her hands. “Come on, you’ll be perfectly safe. They only eat metal.”
Eva looked at Ivan, who nodded. He pulled something out of his orange-banded toolbox and helped Eva down from the britzka.
They stood at the edge of the dusty road, staring at the shifting sea of bricks.
“Does that look safe to walk on to you?” asked Eva.
Ivan took her arm and helped her across the uneven surface. They kicked silver beads of melted glass to set them bouncing over the dry ground. Fiona didn’t seem to notice; she puffed on ahead, keeping up a constant monologue.
“We were out here looking for railway lines, you know. We’re close to the border with East Coast Company and they keep trying to grow them through here. If DIANA or Berliner Sibelius can get a link across to Enterprise City, then they’ll have a corridor through the RFS that they’ll slowly widen. They’ve already got pipes under here from Colourtown to Openport, carrying oil and carbon, but they’re too deep to touch. Still, you’ve got to do what you can, haven’t you? And now there’s the flower. It’s just over here, not long now, Eva. Emily thinks it’s some sort of signaling device. She says she saw something like it over in Patagonia back in ’75. She says it will be sending a pulse to some receiver, describing the layout of the land. Anyway, here it is, down here.”
The red landscape rose and fell around them like an industrial moon surface. Eva coughed, her mouth dry with the heat and the smell of brick dust all around her.
“It’s so dry and broken,” she said. “It makes me think of bones rubbing together.”
“Bones?” said Fiona. “No. Sloppy sentimentalism. Look, there it is.”
Eva guessed that they were looking across what had once been the basement of a building; she saw a set of stone steps climbing into the air nearby, and she wondered who had once skipped down them, and for what purpose. Now the building was long gone and they stood at the edge of what looked like a silver pond of VNMs, silver insects the size of Eva’s hand, waving their feelers in the air. And yet the pond was contracting while bulging at the center. A silver column was rising into the air, made up of the swarming insects climbing over one another to get the very center of the pool. The column rose until it was roughly twice Eva’s height, and then the top began to swell. The pond at the base was shrinking away to nothing, leaving the dirty tiled floor of the basement exposed, and now there was only a metal flower, its stalk thinning as the top bulged larger and larger.
“What
is
it?” whispered Eva to Ivan, filled with an uneasy thrill. It was a robot dandelion, a metal puffball. The silver flower flashed brightly under the hot sun. Eva felt a strange lump inside her stomach, an edge of excitement. This was why she had come to the RFS: the Watcher thought it controlled everything, and yet it had not counted on this. This was a new sort of life, emerging from the broken past of the industrial world, this was…
“It’s nothing,” said Ivan, woodenly, and Eva felt her hopes come tumbling down. For once, he didn’t seem to notice her distress. “I’ve seen this before,” he said, “it’s a—”
“It
isn’t
nothing,” said Fiona angrily. “Watch. You haven’t seen what happens next.”
The top of the flower was growing larger as the stalk grew ever thinner; every VNM present seemed to be trying to climb to the center of the growing puffball, climbing over the bodies of those around it in order to achieve its aim. The stalk grew thinner and thinner, till the inevitable happened.
“Now!” breathed Fiona as the dandelion began to tilt ever so slightly to one side, and then, falling faster and faster, it smashed to the ground and burst apart in a spray of silver bodies. They began to scatter, running apart in a widening circle.
Eva flinched as they came towards her, a chittering tide of silver bodies. Ivan put a hand on her arm. “Don’t worry, they won’t harm you.”
“They’d strip your cart apart without a moment’s hesitation, though.” Fiona laughed nervously. The silver creatures were skittering past her sandaled feet, and it was obvious that she herself was not quite convinced that they were safe. “Good job you moved it well back.”
Eva nodded and bent her knee slightly, lifting one foot off the ground a little. She could feel the whispery brush of delicate feelers against her ankles; she could hear the pitter-patter of feet on the tiny pieces of broken concrete, and she felt nauseated.
“Look,” said Fiona, “here’s Julian and Emily and Will. Let me introduce you.”
Eva and Ivan exchanged glances as the three strangers approached from the other side of the basement. They were all in their fifties, Eva guessed, about the same age as Fiona. She had met lots of their type in the RFS: well educated, with good jobs back in the surveillance world, with just enough character to see themselves as different from others but not enough to accept their similarities.
“Julian,” said Fiona, “I’d like to introduce you to Eva. She’s from England.”
A handsome man with greying temples held out his hand. “Whereabouts?” he asked with genuine interest.
“All over,” said Eva. “I lived the last thirty years in the North West Conurbation.”
“Ah yes.” Julian nodded. “The green needle. We took the kids up to see that when it first started growing. To think how far VNMs have progressed.”
“And this is Ivan,” continued Fiona. “He’s Russian.”
“Good to meet you, Ivan,” said Julian. “What do you think about this, then? Emily here thinks it’s a signaling device.”
“It’s not,” said Ivan. “It’s a Conway event.”
“Really? That’s interesting,” said Julian, and Eva flushed angrily to see how quickly he dismissed her friend. He waved a hand at the other two. “This is Emily, and this is Will.”
Two more people shook hands. The tide of silver machines that clittered past their ankles was thinning.
Fiona could not abide a lull in the conversation. “And where do you live now, Eva?” she asked.
“What’s a Conway event, Ivan?” Eva asked deliberately.
Ivan wore a sulky look. “It is quite a common occurrence with these sort of devices,” he said, ignoring Julian and the others. “Sometimes the units get locked into a dynamic equilibrium—”
“Look!” interrupted Will. “That one’s wearing a jacket!” He pointed to one of the machines scuttling by. There was a flash of white on its back.
“Gosh,” said Emily, kneeling down and reaching out to catch hold of the machine. It snickered past her; she was too hesitant to get a proper grip on it. “Camouflage?”
“No,” said Ivan, “venumb.”
“You told me about those,” said Eva loudly. If Ivan wasn’t going to shine, she was damn well going to do the showing off for him. “Is that birch bark?”
“I think so,” said Ivan, picking up the little creature. “When metal is in short supply, these machines are programmed to adapt.”
Julian leaned closer. “Do you mind?” he said, taking the little machine from Ivan. He held it by the body, its legs waving as it sought purchase with anything available. “Yes, it is birch,” he said as if there had been some doubt. He shook his head. “Things are getting worse. They programmed these things to interfere with the natural environment…”
“No,” said Ivan, “this is almost an evolved process. New forms of life are thriving in the RFS all the time. VNMs are abandoned to replicate here unchecked. The errors in progressive generations are not corrected by outside organizations, as they would be in the surveillance world. These venumbs are occurring more and more frequently. No one could have ever thought that VNMs would interact with plants.”
Julian let go of the creature and watched as it scuttled off.
Fiona looked at her watch. “Three more minutes until the plant re-forms. The signaling pulse must have a period of about five minutes thirty-three seconds.”
Her attitude annoyed Eva. “Weren’t you going to tell us what a Conway event is, Ivan?” she said in a loud voice.
“I was…”
“So, where do you live now, Eva?” interrupted Julian.
Ivan gave a shrug. “Excuse me, Eva, I have something I want to try.” He walked off from the group, stamping down the stone steps into the basement where the flower had grown. He was fiddling with the device he had taken from his tool kit.
“Be careful, Ivan!” she called. “They’ll be coming back soon. They will fill that basement with you in it.”
“I will be okay,” said Ivan.
Eva didn’t really blame him for abandoning her.
Julian was staring at her, and she felt some of the old embarrassment at being in company creeping back. She didn’t know what to say, so she answered his question.
“We live in Narkomfin 128. It’s a communal building about fifty kilometers from here.”
Julian tilted his head at that.
“What’s the matter?” asked Eva.
“Oh, nothing.”
“No it’s not. Why do you look like that?”
“No reason,” said Julian, “just silly rumors. Narkomfin 128 is quite well known, isn’t it? There are lot of handicapped people there, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” said Eva, “a lot of incurables. And then there are the elderly, and the alcoholics that don’t want to be cured, and the children with—”
“A lot of MTPH addicts, too, I hear.” For a moment Julian looked as if he was going to say something more, then he thought better of it and changed the subject. “We’re from Saolim. Have you heard of it?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve heard of it,” and at that she relaxed as she saw Ivan come stumping back up the steps.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“Yes.” He gazed blankly down into the dusty pit below.
“Here they come again,” said Fiona.
The tide had turned again. Already silver machines were scuttling back, tumbling down the walls of the basement, heading towards the site of the flower. Ivan wore that sulky look of hurt pride that Eva knew only too well.
“What have you done?” she whispered. Ivan didn’t reply, and Eva realized that she had the eyes of the group fixed upon her.
“Ivan builds robots,” she said, as if that explained everything. For a moment, she felt as if she had to justify his behavior, and maybe excuse him.
More and more VNMs flowed past. They noticed others that were wearing birch jackets.
“A Conway event,” said Ivan suddenly, and to no one in particular, “is named after John Conway’s game of life. In this game, cells operating according to a few simple rules can exhibit incredibly complex behavior. From the early days of their use, it has been noted that VNMs following rules insufficiently defined for their environment can become locked in a dynamic equilibrium. Essentially, they get caught in a loop.”
He seemed to be reciting someone else’s words, Eva noted. Though Ivan’s English was excellent, this was not his usual style of speech.
The machines had now formed a silver pool again in the depression. The middle was beginning to bulge and rise as they headed towards the center, striving to climb to that point three meters up in the air.
Ivan continued speaking. “Think of a VNM designed to grow into a building. How might you program its prototype? Like this, I think. If you were the VNM, first, make enough copies of yourself. Next, find the foundations and spread yourself out over them to make a floor.”
He waved his hands in illustration, spreading his fingers wide and drawing a big circle in the air.
“You see? Now, when you have done that, climb up a height of, say, three meters to where the next floor would be. Spread yourself out again, and keep going like this until the building is done. This would work fine if you had other separate VNMs building the foundations and raising a frame for you. But what if those other VNMs are not present, or what if your own VNM should get lost? What if it was to find itself all alone, perhaps here in the RFS?”
The silver stalk had grown considerably now; the bulge was already forming on the top as the VNMs climbed up to a next floor that did not exist. Ivan frowned and looked around the brick-strewn landscape.
“Maybe that same VNM would wander the industrial wasteland, making copies of itself until eventually it had enough. Then it would search for the foundations of a building that did not exist.”
He pointed downwards to the rippled concrete floor of the basement, once again exposed.
“But that floor down there is solid enough. Maybe
this
is the foundation it has been seeking? So then it searches for the next floor up. There is no frame, so it climbs up over copies of itself, until every creature is climbing over every other one, trying to get as high as possible, but the pedestal becomes too thin, and the machines fall and, believing themselves on the next floor up, spread out to find a space that needs covering. Not finding it they rise yet again, and the process repeats and repeats itself until…”