infinities (2 page)

'I have read "Beside the Sea" perhaps four or five times since its original publication... It's a magical fantasy, a parable in the form of a rite-of-passage story, both frightening and bizarre... It's a story I come back to again and again, and one which I wish I had written myself - and there can be no greater recommendation than that.' —
Eric Brown
("Beside the Sea" included in
Memesis
)

'"Jurassic and the Great Tree", with its brilliant and remorseless anthropological logic, resembles Michael Bishop at his best. But that's because it's well-argued anthropology, rather than well-copied Bishop.' —
Simon Ings
,
Foundation
(this story included in
Liberty Spin
)

'a dazzling work of the imagination.' —
SF Site
, of Brooke's
The Accord
(
Accord
story "The Man Who Built Heaven" included in
Faking It
)

'I am so here!
Genetopia
is a meditation on identity - what it means to be human and what it means to be you - and the necessity of change. It's also one heck of an adventure story. Snatch it up!' —
Michael Swanwick

'if you're looking for great, well-written new science fiction novels by writers you have a reason to trust, then Brooke is now your man' —
Trashotron
(yes, okay, we're talking about short stories here, not novels, but what the Hell ;-))

'a progressive and skilful writer' —
Peter F Hamilton

'Keith Brooke is a wonderful writer. His great gift is taking us into worlds we never imagined...' —
Kit Reed

'Keith Brooke's prose achieves a rare honesty and clarity, his characters always real people, his situations intriguing and often moving.' —
Jeff VanderMeer

'in the recognized front ranks of SF writers' —
Locus

Last night I dreamed. The same old dream. The same old dream, and different every single time.

You... laughing, fooling around. To see you so liberated, so
you
, is a blessing in itself. I hardly need more, although... I always need more. You take my hand, lead me down to the river. Long sleek cruisers line up like toys along the far shore. A rank of needle towers, each 60 storeys high, scrapes the sky beyond them.

We walk. And talk, of childhood, of writing in chalk on the pavement outside your house, of tying skipping ropes between gate and lamp-post to snare passers-by. Of the beach nearby, childhood playground, childhood escape, shaggy dunes alternating with craggy extrusions, a row of white coastguards' cottages facing the sea. That childhood, long before you were elected.

You will take me there one day. You tell me that, in the dream, the same old, different old dream.

~

Noah Barakh tucked his head low against the drizzle and walked. The river loured, flat and grey, to his left, a scattering of tour boats lining the far shore, a single, half-constructed needle tower clawing a vertical, dark slot out of the city skyline. All around, people pressed, hurried, coats slick, breath steaming.

Noah didn't like to come to the city. As one of the principal architects of what they had recently taken to calling the Accord, Noah, if anyone, should be adept at virtual working, and his studio out in the wild Essex flood-marshes was normally his chosen place of work.

But some days there was still no substitute for an old-fashioned flesh-meet, and this was one of them.

The fact that Electee Priscilla would be at the Complex was irrelevant. Noah ducked lower against the rain. He was smiling, smiling at the pain and longing that loomed large over every aspect of his miserable, world-changing, epoch-making little life.

The doors slid open for him, greeted him cheerily; there was always a welcome for Professor Barakh. He walked into the lift and closed his eyes to deal with mail while he was whisked up to the 12th floor.

She was there already, talking intensely with Warrener, but as the door opened she looked up. Her eyes met Noah's briefly, a smile pulled at her mouth, and then she was talking again, her sentence barely interrupted. Noah and Priscilla were colleagues, she the Electee overseeing the project, he the advisor, the consultant, the architect. There was nothing more to it than that.

~

"We are building it," Noah reiterated. "It is an incremental process. With all the processing power in the world, we could not push the process much faster than we do currently."

"We run and re-run realities all the time," said Priscilla, leaning towards him across the wide meeting table. He had explained that to her months ago: so many realities needed in order to build consensus!

Noah's attention was caught by the charms hanging from a delicate silver chain around her neck. He had kissed that neck, he knew its taste, knew the soft gasp she gave in response to the touch of his lips, his teeth, his tongue. But he did not, had not. Could not.

"We do," said Noah. "It is the process. Consensual reality, however, is of a different order of magnitude. It will come when consensus has been reached, a critical mass of realities, an accord, if you will." He smiled, realising that it was the first time he had spoken the name aloud, the label the media were applying to the project: the Accord, the consensual reality that would leave all other VRs behind, a reality built from the mass of human experience, a super-city of the mind, a reality where humankind could live on after death.

Noah was its principal architect: he and his team were building the Accord. Noah Barakh knew that he would go down in history as the man who built heaven.

And every night he ran and re-ran realities, private realities, a consensus of one.

Priscilla nodded. "I'm not pushing you, Professor Barakh," she said softly, her green eyes locked on his. "I am being pushed."

In his head she pinged him, one to one, a warm hug, a friendly embrace. She didn't mean to come down on him like this, he knew.

She did not need to mention the trillions of euros that had been sunk into this, but she mentioned them still. She did not even need to push him. Noah Barakh would deliver the Accord: they all knew that. But still, they had to jump through the political hoops, and minuted records of these meetings helped tick boxes in Brussels and Shanghai.

~

We sit in a seventeenth century pub by the water. This time, this dream, we are out on the coast, a broad Essex creek laid out before us through the windows. Yachts stand higgledy-piggledy on the exposed mud, wading birds scuttle and probe, dogs walk their owners in an age-old routine.

We have just kissed across the table. We have just spent the morning making love, sunlight streaming into our room above the bar.

Your hand is on the table. I cover it with mine.

"You were so shocked!" you say, chuckling. "Even though we had always flirted like that."

"Not like that," I say.

That day, the day we are laughing about, was the day we had crossed the line. Fleetingly. For the shortest of times we had been more than Electee and consultant.

"You asked and I answered!" you say, mock-indignant.

"I asked what was on your mind, you seemed distracted."

"I was. It was a revelation to me, a paradigm shift: that moment when you changed from Professor Barakh to
oh my!
Something about the look in your eye just then, the way you held my gaze a moment too long..." You smile, reliving that moment, as we do so often.

"You didn't put it quite like that."

Your smile broadens. "So I was more succinct."

"You said you were imagining fucking me like there was no tomorrow."

You look down. "I shouldn't have said that."

"You should."

I dream of you. I always dream of you. I make sure that I do. I am the architect of Accord: I can run reality. I can run realities.

~

Noah had been hooked into pre-consensus Accord for most of the day. Emerging was a disorientating experience. He had been walking the streets of a consensual Manhattan, downing bourbon with Dylan Thomas in the White Horse, unconvinced as ever by the quality of the reconstruct. That was not what consensual reality was all about in any case: it was a consensus of the living, of the yet-to-die. Already, the Accord was being built from the consensus of over a million souls, and the project teams were adding more every day, batched up and re-batched into assorted realities, fractal fragments of what would become consensus. Poor Dylan was a gimmick, a toy to amuse the Electees and the media, and all he had was virtual whiskey and a way with words with which to defend himself.

Noah rose from his chaise longue and walked slowly to the window. Marie was down at the end of the garden, hacking at a rambling rose.

Noah swallowed, turned his gaze away, stared unfocused at the distant marshes; ribbons of silver water snaked through hard mud matted with samphire and purslane.

He should not feel this way. He had done nothing wrong. He had not betrayed Marie, had not once laid a finger on another woman. On
the
other woman. Priscilla. Not once.

He turned his back on the window.

He had betrayed Marie many times. He had the guilt many times over. He was betraying her now, always, repeatedly.

He closed his eyes: mail from Elector Burnham. Priscilla must have reported to him by now, even though Noah had given her little to report. The Elector would want hard dates, commitments, a precise measure put on the unquantifiable... When do you know that heaven has been built? When do you know it is time to open the gates? Noah knew they were close, but the gut feeling of an artist of the uber-real was not adequate for Burnham's needs.

He opened his eyes, left the mail unviewed. Let them think he was lost in his work.

He sank back onto the chaise, and was immediately back in the data shell of the Accord. It was time to reload. Those who chose to live on in the Accord after death would only do so as the last-recorded instance of themselves — the final minutes, hours, days would be lost forever, all the way back to their last upload... always working from the last snapshot of the soul. Noah had not uploaded for most of a month, preferring to let instances of himself continue to play out their existence in the Accord realities in which he had placed them. But now it really was time to reload, before anyone spotted what he had been doing.

He drifted, allowed himself to be read for change, development, difference, so that the new him would overlay any previous instances.

Outside the window, Marie sang an old pop song, something about love, always something about love.

~

"You look distracted... What's in your thoughts?" he asked Priscilla.

They were leaning close, drinking tea, peering into multiple overlays of data on the widescreen display. Noah had been trying to explain the concept of fractal realities, how they would ultimately combine to form a super-reality, an over-reality, an entire virtual universe in which the dead could live again. She understood, he knew. She was just playing dumb, teasing him, toying with him. But then... then she had paused, her eyes locked with his. Something had changed.

"You really want to know?"

He nodded.

"You sure?" Her reluctance seemed genuine now, no games.

Noah sensed boundaries being pushed, lines being redrawn. He nodded again.

"I'm thinking, well fuck, I'm thinking, Christ, I'd like to screw that man like there's no fucking tomorrow."

Noah stared. He felt his skin prickling with sudden heat. He felt his throat suddenly dry, his heart racing. He stared.
I love you
, he thought. He had always loved her, from the very first day.

"And now you're thinking, Christ, how do I get out of this awkard, embarrassing situation with the woman who is ten years my senior and controls my budget, aren't you?" She looked away now, down, into her steaming tea.

"No," he said softly. "I'm thinking how much I would like to kiss you right now, even though there are people in the room. I'm thinking how beautiful your eyes are — how here I am, a man trying to create perfection but who has perfection sitting right at his side. And finally, I'm thinking, Christ, yes, yes, please do fuck me like there's no tomorrow."

Warrener strode across from his console just then. "The Shanghai question?" he asked Noah.