Chapter 34 #2
She sat in a simple rocking chair. She wore a calf-length summer dress and had a flower in her hair. I couldn’t tell her age. She could have been twenty-five. She could have been fifty. Her eyes were solemn but warm as she regarded me.
“Please, join me for some tea,” she said. She motioned with one hand to a rocking chair next to her. A small table stood between the two chairs. On the table were two mugs.
I licked my lips, hesitated, then sat. The chair rocked, and I was surprised at how comfortable it was, as though the wood had shaped itself to my body. “Who are you?”
“I am the Consciousness.”
I stared at her for a long moment. “Lyle?”
“Yes, Dad. I’m still here.”
“Where are we?”
“Earth, central North American continent. Eastern Colorado, basically.”
The woman smiled. She picked up a mug and brought it to her lips. “Have some tea. It’s quite good. The leaves are from this very garden.”
She sipped from the steaming mug. I picked up the other. The suit’s force fields retracted or turned into invisible grilles, allowing the liquid to my lips. The taste was subtle, a blend of green and black leaves. “It’s good.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
I took another sip, watching her. “What are you?”
“The same answer as before would apply. I am the voice of the collective consciousness of the Sol system.”
“Are you an AI?”
“I am, in a sense, a constructed intelligence, yes. But I am also much more. I am the summation of a trillion thoughts, a quadrillion ideas and feelings and emotions. I am what has become. The singular emergence. I am the combined pattern.”
“I’m sorry. I still don’t understand.”
She sipped from her mug, the edges of her eyes crinkling.
“When a human or another sentient creature, artificial or otherwise, is close to death, or ready to take the next step in their own evolution, they transition their thoughts, their minds to me. They are integrated. We become one. They contribute to the whole, joining a vast collective mental pattern. Their experiences, their thoughts, their emotions and feelings, all the events of their lives, come into us, and become a part of me.”
“All right,” I said, drawing the words out. “And … what do you do with all that?”
“I exist. I represent those who have come before, provide guidance to those who are now, and prepare for those who are still to come.”
“So, you rule the world? The solar system?” I wasn’t getting Overmind vibes from this woman, but I wasn’t quite ready to let go of my suspicion just yet.
“In a sense. I do have control over a vast technological apparatus spread throughout the Sol system, an apparatus that supports and nurtures billions of lives on Earth and beyond. But I am not an authoritarian, Scott. I am many as one. You could reasonably say that I am humanity, now.”
Her eyes held me transfixed. Age lay behind them, immense and deep and broad. An ocean of knowledge. “Lyle?”
“As far as I can tell, Dad, she’s telling the truth.”
Again, she smiled and drank her tea. She clearly heard Lyle as well as I did.
I stared into her eyes. And, in a mind-twisting moment, I saw it: a billion, a trillion, minds staring back at me.
Depth and breadth of knowledge on a scale I could not comprehend, a scale I could scarcely imagine.
I couldn’t tell whether she was manipulating me, or if she was merely cracking open a tiny sliver of herself, however briefly.
It passed, and I was again staring at a gently smiling woman. “Did you do this to me?” I whispered.
“Do what?”
“Bring me here. Bring me forward through time.” My heart rate picked up. “Did you do this?”
“I’m sorry. No. I brought you here from Mars, after my discussions with Lyle, the clever artificial sentient construct of your son. But no, I had nothing to do with your transit through time.”
It was like the ground dropped out from under me. My heart, which had risen into my throat, plunged down again. I sagged against the chair. “Damn.”
“Why did you think I might be responsible?”
I didn’t answer at first. Instead, I stared across the gorgeous garden and watched the flowers sway in the breeze. “Something Lyle said to me.” My tongue was thick. My throat ached. “A long time ago. When he was still human. About the reason—the reason why I’m going forward through time.”
“What was the reason?”
“To experience.”
“I can see how you came to your conclusion. I am sorry I’m not the one responsible for your transits.”
We sat. She seemed content to let me think. I took a breath. “So, it wasn’t you. Okay. But tell me, what do you know about me? Am I an impossibility?” I was thinking of the Overmind. How Lyle had defeated it, in part, by convincing it that my existence was simultaneously impossible and irrefutable.
“Far from an impossibility, I should think,” the Consciousness said. “You are as real as this chair, this mug in my hand, are you not? A human being, with thoughts and dreams of your own. The only difference is you are twenty-three thousand years outside your own time.”
My own chair felt real. So did my mug. A part of me wasn’t convinced.
This didn’t feel like a dream, but in a slanting way that could have just been my own exhaustion, it felt like how a dream would feel.
Real, but uncertain. I held her eyes, as though daring myself to see how long I could stare into those unfathomable depths.
“Do you know the how? How it’s being done? ”
“No. It is beyond me. Significant parts of modern technology are built on information gained from your transits in the distant past. But the energy requirements to make the time travel jumps are beyond the entire capacity of the Sol system.”
I focused on the craggy mountains in the distance. “Can you stop it?”
“I cannot.”
There didn’t seem to be much more to say. I sat there, not moving, watching the mountains. “I want to go home.” I sounded broken even to me. Defeated. “Back to my time. My place.”
“That’s beyond my power. I can offer you other things, however meager they may be in comparison to what I cannot. But I can show you the world as it is today, and I can provide you with gifts to aid you in your journey. And I can offer you a choice.”
“A choice?”
Her incredible eyes never left mine. “If you should desire it, I would welcome your mind into my own. Into the collective consciousness of the Sol system.”
“What would that mean?” She’d mentioned death before. People uploaded their minds into her when they died. I wondered if that was what she was offering. Death, or a kind of death.
“The ‘you,’ the summation of your memories and emotions and thoughts, would integrate into me, becoming me, contributing in your own unique way. You would become one with a consciousness spreading throughout the entirety of this star system and beyond.”
I chewed on this for a moment. “Is it a transfer? Or a copy?”
“Ancient electronic computing references do not cleanly work as analogies in this case. But the closest equivalent would be a copy.”
“So, this me,” I said, putting my hand on my chest. “I would still be here. I’d still be conscious in here, in this body. There would just be a copy of me—a different me—that would be with you. Like what Lyle did, copying his memories to a computer system.”
“More than memories. An exact duplicate of your brain down to the subatomic level. But, essentially, yes.”
“What does that give me? The ‘me’ that stays behind?”
“An opportunity to contribute to this world. Your memories are from a vastly different time, and you have firsthand experience of historical events that are, to us, hazy or dim fragments, if they are known at all. You would be immensely valuable.”
“But me, the real me, I’ll keep going. Keep jumping forward through time.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” I watched the flowers sway. “All right. Go ahead. Copy me.”
“It is done. Thank you.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” Her smile became sad. “You have seen a great deal, Traveler. I now understand your anguish, your loss. I wish there was more I could do.”
Something the Overmind said came to me. “Can you change me? Augment me? Physically?”
“I see. The Overmind refused this of you. It was unwilling to risk the ire of the intelligence responsible.” Her eyes were on mine, probing, though for what I didn’t know. “Yes, I will augment you. But I must warn you: I don’t believe this will have any impact whatsoever on your transits.”
“It’s worth a try,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“It will, at least, strengthen you for what you may encounter as you continue. As powerful as I am, with as much knowledge as I possess, even I cannot see the future. And your memories show the foolishness of prognostication, especially given the time scales across which you now walk. What I’ve done will help you with whatever you may come to face. ”
“I’ve been enhanced,” Lyle said in my ear, making me jump. “Significantly.” He sounded awed.
“That’s great, Lyle.”
“You have, too. A lot.”
I looked at the Consciousness. “I don’t feel any different.”
“Don’t you?”
I frowned. I did feel different. I wasn’t tired anymore.
My headache was gone. I could see every line and pattern and texture on flower petals even hundreds of feet away.
The world blossomed with details and with sound.
I focused and could hear a birdcall a kilometer away.
I could smell the sweetness of the flowers and a hundred other unique odors mingling with the dirt, the clean bite of the herbal tea, the oak wood of the house.
“My God,” I whispered.
The Consciousness laughed. It was a rich sound. It took me back. I felt like I hadn’t heard honest, free laughter in years. In millennia. “I take it you like it?” she asked.
“Yes,” I breathed, taking in the explosion of sensory input. Even my sense of touch had been enhanced. If I concentrated, I could feel every tiny imperfection in the clay of the mug in my hand. The smooth grain of the wooden armrest of the rocking chair.
“There is much more in addition to your senses,” the Consciousness said.
“I’ve replaced your bones with a carbon matrix composite, and your muscles with a synthetic nanofiber.
Your blood is now a nanonic-based protein- and mineral-rich nutrient fluid.
And as we speak, the nerves of your brain are being replaced, one by one, by identical, but vastly superior and longer-lasting synthetic counterparts. ”
I set the mug down and held up my hands, turning them back and forth under my face, flexing my fingers. “My brain—I’ll still be me?”
“Yes, in every respect. There will be no loss of consciousness, no change in who you are.”
“And my soul?”
“As an entity separate from your consciousness?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. Lyle—before—he did something, to temporarily stop my time travel. It didn’t work, but it—I was delayed. The real ‘me’ was outside my body, behind me, but—beyond me in time. I don’t know.”
“Who does?” She laughed. “If you are speaking in terms of qualia, of the subjective quality of consciousness, of your unique perception of your senses, well … look around. You tell me.”
I looked. Everything I concentrated on came into startling, brilliant focus.
I could hear, if I wanted to, the sound an ant’s legs made as it moved across a leaf.
I could see dust motes in the hazy streams of sunlight beaming through yellow and white flower petals.
I could smell, individually, each unique scent of every flower I saw.
I took a sip of the tea, and the medley of new tastes almost overwhelmed me as they flooded my tongue.
I looked back at the Consciousness. I saw the variations and imperfections in her skin. I smelled her unique scent, an earthly blend of subtle perfume. The clear perfection of her eyes. “I don’t know,” I said again, but I was far less certain this time.
She stood in a single, graceful movement. She held out her hand. “Come. We will walk together through the garden and see if we can find your soul.”