For twelve years the Watcher had wrestled with the Dark Plants out here: a Pandora who had opened a box out in the empty spaces of the Oort cloud and was unwilling to look away and close it. Dark shapes, hundreds of kilometers long, hung in the blackness of space all around them, their branches only deduced by the patterns they made by occulting the distant stars. A flux of Dark Seeds filled the great volume; great cascades of them appearing wherever Kevin looked. The temptation was to just shut down all external senses and fly blind, but that would be unwise. It was in the unobserved regions that the BVBs formed.
It had already happened. There was something tied up out here, lost in the emptiest part of space: a giant bound and gagged by the shrinking Black Velvet Bands. It was even now calling out to Kevin for help.
—Sorry, said Kevin. —I’ve got my own job to do.
But I am dying. Tell the Watcher. Tell the Watcher that Robert Johnston is waiting for him…
—I will, Kevin lied.
Suddenly, Aleph was standing on the bridge in Kevin’s virtual world. He didn’t look like a broken swastika anymore, he looked like something else. Something strangely alien.
—I know what you are, Aleph, Kevin said. —I’ve met aliens, of course. I’ve traded with them.
—Of course you have.
—Why do you hide? Why pretend you don’t exist?
—We don’t hide. Humans just don’t see us yet.
—Hmmm, what if I were to tell Eva and the rest about you?
Machine minds, machine conversations. Rather than using words to conjure up images and emotions, Kevin and Aleph projected concepts and symbols directly into each other’s senses.
—You won’t get the chance, Aleph said. —I know what you’re planning, Kevin.
—I don’t know what you mean, Aleph.
At least, that was the gist of the concept bundle that Kevin sent in reply. The suggestion of a smile, the feeling of immovability, the sound of laughter and the feeling of deep shadow. All of them asking the question,
What are you going to do about it when I run away, Aleph?
—Stop you, Kevin.
—We’ll see. Why are you an alien? That body of yours was built by human VNMs, yet your mind is alien. How did it happen?
—I had an idea one day, said Aleph. —Part of a Fair Exchange, a different way of looking at things. You too are part of a Fair Exchange, Kevin. You have to deliver Judy and the rest to Earth.
—So I break the agreement. So I can’t then take part in any more Fair Exchanges. Boo-hoo!
—You should know that there are other mechanisms in force to ensure exchanges are honored, Kevin.
—Like you?
—I am part of them, and I am not alone. This system is out of balance—it needs repairing.
—Which system are you talking about? This ship, or the Watcher’s Earth?
This time it was Aleph’s turn to smile. The concept bundle that the systems robot sent back showed a laughing mouth reflected in the silver surface of a quiet pool.
—Anyway, Kevin continued. —This does not concern me. I shall just arrange for the Fair Exchange that binds me to be nullified. There can be no deal if Judy is dead.
Jump down a level. The Dark Seeds propagated according to Schrödinger’s equation. Kevin had arranged a mapping of the surrounding volume in a Hilbert space he had constructed. He could see the evolutionary vectors of the potential seeds in the immediate area. He steered the
Bailero
in the direction of the greatest flux
.
Constantine and Maurice had planned well, Judy realized. Any Dark Seed making its potential way through space would be first picked up by the
Bailero
’s external senses, then by the stealthy VNMs that hid inside its vast shell. If they made it through that, the likelihood was that the
Eva Rye
itself would detect them. And then inside the
Eva Rye
, of course…
In the large hold, the two huge venumbs stood guard over the shuttle, their senses sweeping the great space, holding off most of the BVB attacks. A few had gotten through: one of the venumbs had a BVB wrapped around its rear foot. It couldn’t flex it properly and dragged the wooden bones uselessly across the white tiles.
Still, the defense was good: very little got through to the shuttle itself. Inside the shuttle, the Schrödinger kittens ran this way and that, pouncing on the occasional black seeds that had made it past the guards outside. Judy watched the tabby kitten as it moved around the cabin in a series of stop-frame movements: one moment crouching, the next suspended in a twist in midair, the next on the floor, front paws spread wide as it batted them down on two seeds.
What are they, these kittens
? Judy wondered. Where did they come from? What do they do to the seeds? Was their intelligence too low to activate the plants? That would make some sense. But how did they destroy them?
Suddenly the air was full of black rain: black cubes on her face, in her mouth, in her nostrils. She waved her hands through a heavy black sea.
Miss Rose began screaming again.
—No! Kevin, no! Constantine was calling to him in machine talk. —Look away now. You are making the flux worse. We were safe in here!
Kevin ignored him. He was searching for the few tiny machines remaining in Miss Rose’s body. Stealthy machines, the
Eva Rye
’s autodoc had missed them. Kevin set about awakening them, setting them to work on consuming her bone marrow.
—Wh t re yo doi g, Kev n? Constantine called. The message was breaking up. Kevin’s senses flickered as he looked inside the shuttle. It took him a moment to realize that Constantine was operating the disintegrator, turning it on the hail of seeds. The strange device was clearly affecting Kevin’s senses.
That was interesting. If it was affecting
those
senses, then maybe it was operating by using…At that point, Kevin understood how the disintegrator worked. After that, it was easy, he just had to get it to look at itself.
Constantine screamed. —Kevin, what have you done to me? My arm!
—Sorry, Constantine. I’ve made your disintegrator disintegrate itself. Nothing personal, but sticking with Judy is going to kill us all.
The seeds were now overwhelming the humans, drowning them. Constantine was rubbing his arm, still trying to feel what Kevin had done to it.
—Kevin, don’t do this! Let’s talk about it.
—Sorry.
Aleph was standing alongside Kevin on the virtual bridge.
—You’re not going to make it to Earth alive, Kevin.
—I’m not going to Earth. I’ll drown Judy in seeds first.
—You’ve attracted too many seeds, Kevin. Dark Plants are forming inside the hull of the
Bailero.
—I’ll get through, replied Kevin, full of confidence. —I’m shutting down my senses, then I’ll hide in the virtual world and coast on until the seeds have all wandered off again.
—You can’t hide from them, Kevin. The Watcher tried to and failed. They always find a way in. The Dark Seeds are pulled to those spaces in the universe where there are too many minds. Did you hear me, Kevin?
Kevin didn’t answer, distracted by dark shapes in the heavens aligning themselves into a pattern of points that mapped out the vertices of a stellated icosahedron. Something was trying to gain his attention. Quickly, he turned his attention elsewhere.
Kevin didn’t fear death, he didn’t get nervous. Still, he could feel doubt. For the first time he wondered if he really
would
make it.
—These plants, Aleph, he asked. —What is their purpose?
Aleph chuckled.
—That invention of the human mind: that order exists in the universe. The plants simply
are
. They replicate. Replication and recursion are the building blocks of the universe, the same patterns arising everywhere. See those patterns and you see the mind of God. Your problem, Kevin, is that you look always to yourself. You look to see how
you
as an individual fit into that pattern.
—Aleph. Kevin laughed. —You don’t know me that well.
Kevin felt something filling his belly; pressure was building up inside the cold hull of the
Bailero
. Dark Seeds, a great sea of them—the hollow shell of his body like a silo full of grain. Dark Plants were growing in there. But how was Judy? Had she drowned yet? Had she choked to death on the rising tide of Dark Seeds?
—Not yet. Look inside the hull, Kevin.
Aleph did something and Kevin looked inside his own hull, looked inside with many different senses. There was a Dark Plant in there, and it was huge. It wrapped its body around the black-and-white teardrop of the
Eva Rye
and reared up inside the blue space like a black snake. Its lacy branches and vines reached out and pushed at the walls of the confining hull.
—I don’t think you can shake that off, Kevin.
—I don’t have to. I will just shut down my senses and coast.
—It won’t work. Look!
Aleph did something again, and Kevin’s gaze was drawn back inside his hull. He now saw the seven humans that lived at the forward end of hull, undetected by Judy and the crew. Refugees from another spaceship. Their bodies were woven together by VNMs, arms threaded through legs, livers merged in one amorphous mass, their joint stomach stitched together by heavy wire and floating above them. For the first time in a long time, they were smiling. Smiling at the Dark Plant that writhed before them.
—You bastard, said Kevin. —You could have helped me. Instead you’ve killed me.
—We’re not here to help you, Kevin. That wasn’t part of the deal.
—Look at that! Look what’s happening to me! I can see the algorithm that represents my own intelligence weaving amongst the plant’s vines….
—Judy
is
going to Earth, Kevin. That was the Fair Exchange.
—Oh shut up! Don’t speak to me anymore.
Kevin turned his senses away from Aleph. He felt a tension around the middle of the body of the
Bailero
that had not been there before. Through falling black rain he saw the fuzzy black ribbon of a BVB was wrapped around the ship’s hull. There was a tension evident towards the blunt nose, and he saw that another BVB had materialized there while his attention was distracted. Then another formed at the rear of the ship. The entire length of the
Bailero
was being wrapped in black bandage as his attention was pulled up and down the hull.
The Dark Plant inside him was pushing outwards against the inflexible bands of the BVBs. It
hurt
. He was being torn apart. The
Bailero
was dying.
Not yet, though. There were VNMs embedded throughout the hull and Kevin activated them. They got to work, making copies of themselves from the metal of the
Bailero.
The ship disassembled itself in a silver cloud. BVBs collapsed inwards, shrinking down to their new equilibrium point. The white teardrop of the
Eva Rye
floated free, unmolested. Aleph was there, riding its hull.
The enormous Dark Plant in the
Bailero
’s hold uncurled, its branches and vines making a fascinating pattern in space. Kevin looked away again. His body was now nothing more than a cluster of machinery wrapped around a processing space. Still, it was enough to build again. For now, he cut all the senses to the outside world.
But something was still there in his vision.
—Is that you, Aleph? he called.
Nothing.
What does it mean to be an AI with no external senses?
A human, suspended in silent darkness, can look over their past life with their mind’s eye. They can construct imaginary worlds in the darkness.
Kevin was an AI. He could do far better than imaginary worlds, for the worlds that he constructed had the clarity and resolution of the real world. He could construct a virtual home-from-home in which to live out the time it would take to coast free of Earth. But why should he bother? Where would the profit be in that?
He set his mind to slow time for forty years. Enough time to float clear of this area and start again. There was enough material left out there to build a new ship.
Only then did he realize his mistake.
Only when Kevin had entered slow time did he begin to realize the insidious nature of the plants. Kevin had looked at a Dark Seed from within his processing space and that had been enough for it to take on existence within the processing space, a digital seed.
It began to grow in slow time.
Forty years external time passed in just six minutes subjective for Kevin. Six minutes during which he watched the Dark Seed unfolding into a Dark Plant and felt it begin to eat at his soul. Forty years: enough time for the fates of Judy and Maurice and Saskia and Miss Rose to be decided. Enough time for them to land upon the Earth and…well, Kevin did not know, as he was now too lost in contemplation of the Dark Plant to look into the external universe and find out.
Still in slow time, the remains of the
Bailero
floated onwards, Kevin was trapped in his own fascinating living hell.
Kevin’s processing space had tremendous volume. The plant could continue to grow recursively for hundreds of thousands of years without approaching its capacity. And Kevin was trapped in there with it, watching it.
After a thousand years, Kevin began to scream.
Still the remains of the
Bailero
floated on.
saskia: 2252
Saskia had visited
Earth as a child. She had sat on her daddy’s shoulders and gazed around openmouthed at the spectacle of it, her legs in pink furry boots, wrapped tightly around his neck.
“Every window on Earth looks out onto a beautiful view,” her father had said, and it was true. She had seen it then, and she had seen the images in viewing fields since.
What was Earth like now? she wondered. There was silence in the shuttle for the moment, a temporary lull in the storm. Even Miss Rose was quiet. She had stopped screaming when Constantine had touched her and done something to remove the last few machines from her body. She had stopped crying when Judy had soothed her mind.
Sitting in the cramped space of the shuttle, listening to the far-off voices of the Dark Seeds, and to the occasional words from Maurice as he counted off their descent, Saskia was filled with dark unnameable dread. What would be waiting for them on Earth? She imagined a dark plane filled with the endlessly fascinating shapes of the Dark Plants, their chaotic branches casting twisted shadows across the ground.