Postsingular (33 page)

“The subbies ate my pigtails,” said Thuy, her expression halfway between laughter and tears. “And my favorite shoes. Bastards.” She put her arms around Jayjay. “We had some wild times, didn't we?”

“Better than I ever expected,” he said, planting a kiss on her mouth. “Maybe we can share one last analog fuck. If you're up for it.”

“I'd like that. A final golden memory to treasure when we're dipshit sims. But right now my fingers are—”

“Thuy?” Kittie was calling up the staircase. “We saw the video feed of you facing down Luty at ExaExa. You were so great! And guess who's here? Chu! He says you helped him get back from the Hibrane.”

“Hi, Thuy,” said a boy's voice. “I'm watching you in the orphidnet.”

Thuy winced and silently shook her head, then went into the bathroom.

“We'll be right down,” called Jayjay. In the background, he ran an orphidnet check on the cave beneath Easter Island. The nants had grown to a seething ball several hundred meters across, too big to erase with any bomb. Too late to call in the Air Force.

The only thing to do was to sit down at the harp and start trying to play the Lost Chord. But the prospect seemed so hopeless. Why not enjoy the last few minutes of real life that he and Thuy had?

Jayjay helped Thuy dress her wounds, patched his own fingers, and then the two of them went downstairs to visit with the others. Keenly aware of impending doom as Thuy and Jayjay were, everything felt classic and heavy and for-the-ages.

The garage was all lit up, a vintage car-buff scene. Nektar was admiring Kittie's retrofit job on the SUV; to finish it off, Kittie had painted a gorgeous wraparound image of a woman's head being diced into cubes by the car's front grill—and reassembling itself at the rear. It was a mural of Thuy going through the grill in the office wall of that dough-faced bully, the guy whom Gladax had later killed with a poke to the brain—Jayjay couldn't remember his name. His real life memories were buried under sixty years worth of bogus crud.

A bright-eyed boy with brown hair was expressionlessly polishing the SUV.

“This is Chu,” said Thuy, giving the boy a sharp pat on the head. “He and his father left me to die. And, Chu, this is my boyfriend, Jayjay. Show some manners and say hello. Did your dad make it back? Where is he?”

“Ond went to see Jil on her boat,” said Chu in his flat voice. “He loves Jil instead of Nektar.”

“Which is
quite
all right with me,” said Nektar, tossing her thick fall of hair. “I'm happier with Kittie. Don't worry Chu, Mommy and Daddy will be good friends. I just wonder what we'll do about our house. I'd like to stay here, but I don't want Ond moving in.”

“So Jil really broke up with Craigor?” mused Jayjay. He felt just a tiny bit jealous of Ond, although of course that was crazy, and he should be completely happy and satisfied now that he had Thuy again. Not to mention how ridiculous it was to be so self-centered when the whole freaking planet was being munged into nanomachines.

“Craigor's up the hill with Lureen Morales,” said Kittie with a laugh, happy with her cozy, human-scale life. “The
Founders
action never stops!”

“We're in a live soap opera,” Chu said to Thuy. “I don't like that.”

“
Founders
pays us very well,” said Nektar. “You'll get used to it, Chu. Everyone is going to love you.”

“I don't think so,” Chu said in a sulky tone and went back to polishing the SUV.

“So, what happened on Easter Island?” said Kittie. “You guys dropped out of sight in that cave and then—oh no. Look at the orphidnet news.”

“We know,” said Thuy. Easter Island was almost gone. The nant blight had grown to ten kilometers in length.

“Nants!” shrilled Chu. “Let's jump back to the Hibrane, Thuy. You come too, Nektar. And someone tell Ond. I still know my special Knot. Pay attention, Nektar, I'm messaging you the jump-code. Do you need it again, Thuy?”

“I don't like the brane-jump,” said Thuy. “Those bird-men we saw—they're subdimensional killer plants. They almost ate me alive.”

“You were silly to stop flying,” said Chu. “I'm gonna jump to the Hibrane right now.” He squeezed shut his eyes.

But now a ghostly, glowing giant came poking into the garage. He ran his hand through Chu's head, distracting the boy from his jump. It was Azaroth, not looking so friendly anymore.

“You can't come to the Hibrane,” the Hibraner told Chu. “Not with the nants loose again. If you go there now, I'll bring you right back.”

“I will too jump,” Chu cried. “I'll jump after you're gone. I have the code.”

“Your code's not gonna be working much longer, kiddo. We're changing the angle between the branes. Very vibby. All the Hibraners are teeping together and pushing your world's timeline away from ours.”

“But why?” wailed Chu.

“You guys have ruined one planet, and that's enough.” Azaroth glared over at Thuy. “You know, I went to a lot of trouble convincing Gladax to let you borrow her harp. I even had to promise to have tea with her every afternoon for the next three months. And now I come here and you're not even
trying
to play the Lost Chord. Losers. I need to bring the harp back to the Hibrane before it's eaten by your filthy nants.”

“We
are
trying to use the harp,” said Jayjay, uncomfortably realizing he sounded as petulant as Chu. “It just doesn't look that way. I'm waiting for inspiration instead of wearing out my fingers with random strums. I already know what the Lost Chord should sound like; I had a dream in virtual reality.”

“Virtual reality is weak bullshit,” exclaimed Azaroth. “Don't you understand that yet? The magic harp is real.” The Hibraner shook his head as if disgusted by Jayjay's folly, then relented a bit. “I'll tell you what, since Thuy's a friend, I'm not gonna repossess the harp for another fifteen minutes. But I have to be outta here before Gladax and the gang change the jump params. Play the frikkin' Lost Chord, Jayjay! Unfurl the eighth dimension!”

“I want to go to the Hibrane!” screamed Chu, getting up on the SUV's hood and flailing at Azaroth's insubstantial face. “I hate the nants!” He slipped and fell to the floor, leaving a scuff-mark on the car.

Nektar crouched over Chu, comforting him. Kittie was in a blank-faced state of panic, mechanically rubbing the scuff off the hood while watching the orphidnet disaster news in her head.

“Let's go to my room,” Thuy murmured to Jayjay. “I'll inspire you.”

Upstairs they locked the door behind them. They undressed and began making love. They had all the time in the world. Everything was going to be all right. At least that's what Jayjay kept telling himself. And somehow he believed it. He and Thuy were one flesh, all their thoughts upon their skins. Their bodies made a sweet suck and push. The answer was near.

Jayjay had been too tense and rushed to teep the harp before. But now—now he could feel the harp's mind. She was a higher order of being, incalculably old and strange. She knew the Lost Chord. She was ready to teach it to him. He'd only needed to ask.

Jayjay and Thuy melted into their climax; they kissed and cuddled.

And then Jayjay got up naked and fingered the harp's strings. They didn't hurt his fingers one bit.

The soft notes layered upon each other like sheets of water on a beach with breaking waves. Guided by the harp, Jayjay plinked in a few additions, thus and so. And, yes, there it was, the Lost Chord. Space twitched like a sprouting seed.

“Sorry!” It was Azaroth, pushing his head and shoulders into the bedroom. He was in a state of panic. “Oh, what did you do to the harp's painting, Thuy? It's all scraped off! Gladax is gonna kill me.” He wrapped his big hands around the vibrating instrument. “I'm worried I waited too long!”

“Don't go!” shouted Jayjay. “The harp's just now beginning to work!”

“Hope so,” said Azaroth. “But I've got to try and get home.” And with that, he and the harp were gone.

No matter. The sound of the Lost Chord continued unabated, building on itself like a chain reaction, vibrating the space around them. Jayjay smiled at Thuy. He had a sense of endlessly opening vistas.

“You did it,” said Thuy. “You're wonderful.” She wasn't talking out loud. Her warm voice was inside his head. True telepathy. Jayjay had unrolled the eighth dimension. He and Thuy had saved the world.

Thanks to the universally accessible eighth-dimensional point at infinity, anyone could see anything now. Omnividence, telepathy, and endless memory were the natural birthrights of every being on the globe.

And this applied to objects, too. The alchemical addition of lazy eight memory to nature's gnarl was enough to make everything aware. The air and the trees, the flames, brooks, and veins of stone—all became conscious.

The ancients had viewed nature as inhabited by spirits: sylphs and dryads, salamanders, undines and gnomes. And now the myths were true. Earth and everything in her were alive.

The ubiquitous natural minds would become known as
silps
. Some were like
genii loci
or “spirits of place,” residing in cataracts and pools, in tangled glens and groves, in wind-scoured cliffs. Silps arose in less exalted locales as well: in human hairs, in scraps of paper pinwheeling down city streets, in drapes and clothes, in elementary particles, in fumes.

With their lazy eight overview of the world, the silps readily understood about the nants. Quickly the silps copied all the data they found within the nants and, for good measure, they copied the orphids' information as well. The silps didn't trust any of the nanomachines. And now they went on the attack. Using fierce air currents, tiny matter-quakes, and anomalous electromagnetic fields, the silps ripped the nants and orphids to shreds. Nanomachines were no more.

With the orphidnet data intact within the silps, the Big Pig reconstituted hersef like a phoenix—finding a niche as a human-friendly interface for the planetary oversoul. The ported Pig was content to be part of Gaia. Gaia's native computational architecture embodied a far richer system than any swarm of humdrum digital machines. And with the Big Pig inside Gaia, the global network of matter and mind had the searchable quality of the old-school Internet. Win win.

Craigor spent a few more days with Lureen Morales, grew tired of her, and made yet another effort to patch up things with Jil. She stonewalled him. The marriage was over. Craigor moved to a new girlfriend, then another and another. But all the while, he kept on visiting the
Merz Boat,
chatting with Jil and the kids, fishing for cuttles, fiddling with his junk. He was free, but he was lonely.

Meanwhile, Ond solved his house problem with Nektar by building a second home on their large lot. In some ways, working with intelligent materials made building easier. For instance, Ond could teep into a piece of lumber to find the best spot for a nail—the silps in the boards were quite cooperative. They enjoyed linking together to make a structure. Ond built his house with four bedrooms, the better to convince Jil and her kids to move in.

Fed up with Craigor's visits, Jil finally acceded to Ond's courtship. She and the kids abandoned the
Merz Boat
and began living with Ond. He was happier than he'd ever been.

Chu was glad for the company, although mostly he slept at Nektar's. Bixie made him a little shy. At Nektar's urging, Chu began teeping into the gray matter of his own brain, coaxing the tissues towards a healing of the congenital defect in his cingulate cortex. Bit by bit he grew more personable.

As for Jayjay and Thuy? They got hitched.