The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois
Authors: Gardner Dozois
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gone.)
But by sharing the effort, we managed to safely learn some interesting things. (Things the Erasmuses could have just told us, I suppose, but we didn’t know the right questions to ask.) Here’s a big for-instance: although every species was mortal after it was raptured up – every species eventually fogged out much the way poor Nuri had – there were actually a few very long-term survivors. By that, I mean individuals who had outlived their peers, who had found a way to preserve a sense of identity in the face of the Fleet’s hypercomplex data torrent.
We asked our Erasmuses if we could meet one of these long-term survivors.
Erasmus said no, that was impossible. The Elders, as he called them, didn’t live on our timescale. The way they had preserved themselves was by dropping out of realtime.
Apparently, it wasn’t necessary to “exist” continuously from one moment to the next. You could ask the Fleet to turn you off for a day or a week, then turn you on again. Any moment of active perception was called a saccade, and you could space your saccades as far apart as you liked. Want to live a thousand years? Do it by living one second out of every million that passes. Of course, it wouldn’t feel like a thousand years, subjectively, but a thousand years would flow by before you aged much. That’s basically what the Elders were doing.
We could do the same, Erasmus said, if we wanted. But there was a price tag attached to it. “Timesliding” would carry us incomprehensibly far into a future nobody could predict. We were under continual attack by the Invisible Enemy, and it was possible that the Fleet might lose so much cohesion that we could no longer be sustained as stable virtualities. We wouldn’t get a long life out of it, and we might well be committing a kind of unwitting suicide.
“You don’t really go anywhere,” Erasmus summed up. “In effect, you just go fast. I can’t honestly recommend it.”
“Did I ask for your advice? I mean, what are you, after all? Just some little fragment of the Fleet mind charged with looking after Carlotta Boudaine. A cybernetic babysitter.”
I swear to you, he looked hurt. And I heard the injury in his voice.
“I’m the part of the Fleet that cares about you, Carlotta.”
Most of my clique backed down at that point. Most people aren’t cut out to be timesliders. But I was more tempted than ever. “You can’t tell me what to do, Erasmus.”
“I’ll come with you, then,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that he might not come along. It was a scary idea. But I didn’t let that anxiety show.
“Sure, I guess that’d be all right,” I said.
Enemies out there too, the elder Carlotta observes. A whole skyful of them. As above, so below. Just like in that old drawing – what was it called? Utriusque Cosmi. Funny what a person remembers. Girl, do you hear your mother crying?
The young Carlotta stirs uneasily in her tangled sheet.
Both Carlottas know their mother’s history. Only the elder Carlotta can think about it without embarrassment and rage. Oh, it’s an old story. Her mother’s name is Abby. Abby Boudaine dropped out of high school pregnant, left some dreary home in South Carolina to go west with a twenty-year-old boyfriend who abandoned her outside Albuquerque. She gave birth in a California emergency ward and nursed Carlotta in a basement room in the home of a retired couple, who sheltered her in exchange for house work until Carlotta’s constant wailing got on their nerves. After that, Abby hooked up with a guy who worked for a utility company and grew weed in his attic for pin money. The hookup lasted a few years, and might have lasted longer, except that Abby had a weakness for what the law called “substances,” and couldn’t restrain herself in an environment where coke and methamphetamine circulated more or less freely. A couple of times, Carlotta was bounced around between foster homes while
But by sharing the effort, we managed to safely learn some interesting things. (Things the Erasmuses could have just told us, I suppose, but we didn’t know the right questions to ask.) Here’s a big for-instance: although every species was mortal after it was raptured up – every species eventually fogged out much the way poor Nuri had – there were actually a few very long-term survivors. By that, I mean individuals who had outlived their peers, who had found a way to preserve a sense of identity in the face of the Fleet’s hypercomplex data torrent.
We asked our Erasmuses if we could meet one of these long-term survivors.
Erasmus said no, that was impossible. The Elders, as he called them, didn’t live on our timescale. The way they had preserved themselves was by dropping out of realtime.
Apparently, it wasn’t necessary to “exist” continuously from one moment to the next. You could ask the Fleet to turn you off for a day or a week, then turn you on again. Any moment of active perception was called a saccade, and you could space your saccades as far apart as you liked. Want to live a thousand years? Do it by living one second out of every million that passes. Of course, it wouldn’t feel like a thousand years, subjectively, but a thousand years would flow by before you aged much. That’s basically what the Elders were doing.
We could do the same, Erasmus said, if we wanted. But there was a price tag attached to it. “Timesliding” would carry us incomprehensibly far into a future nobody could predict. We were under continual attack by the Invisible Enemy, and it was possible that the Fleet might lose so much cohesion that we could no longer be sustained as stable virtualities. We wouldn’t get a long life out of it, and we might well be committing a kind of unwitting suicide.
“You don’t really go anywhere,” Erasmus summed up. “In effect, you just go fast. I can’t honestly recommend it.”
“Did I ask for your advice? I mean, what are you, after all? Just some little fragment of the Fleet mind charged with looking after Carlotta Boudaine. A cybernetic babysitter.”
I swear to you, he looked hurt. And I heard the injury in his voice.
“I’m the part of the Fleet that cares about you, Carlotta.”
Most of my clique backed down at that point. Most people aren’t cut out to be timesliders. But I was more tempted than ever. “You can’t tell me what to do, Erasmus.”
“I’ll come with you, then,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that he might not come along. It was a scary idea. But I didn’t let that anxiety show.
“Sure, I guess that’d be all right,” I said.
Enemies out there too, the elder Carlotta observes. A whole skyful of them. As above, so below. Just like in that old drawing – what was it called? Utriusque Cosmi. Funny what a person remembers. Girl, do you hear your mother crying?
The young Carlotta stirs uneasily in her tangled sheet.
Both Carlottas know their mother’s history. Only the elder Carlotta can think about it without embarrassment and rage. Oh, it’s an old story. Her mother’s name is Abby. Abby Boudaine dropped out of high school pregnant, left some dreary home in South Carolina to go west with a twenty-year-old boyfriend who abandoned her outside Albuquerque. She gave birth in a California emergency ward and nursed Carlotta in a basement room in the home of a retired couple, who sheltered her in exchange for house work until Carlotta’s constant wailing got on their nerves. After that, Abby hooked up with a guy who worked for a utility company and grew weed in his attic for pin money. The hookup lasted a few years, and might have lasted longer, except that Abby had a weakness for what the law called “substances,” and couldn’t restrain herself in an environment where coke and methamphetamine circulated more or less freely. A couple of times, Carlotta was bounced around between foster homes while
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