Tag: Family

Sunset was nearly 3 hours early. They’d made a mistake you see. Rick, in particular. He’d taken the sunrise and sunset times for the West wall of the crater. On the East wall it’s just a bit different.

So instead of having an early breakfast and climbing the last slope to see Lady Luna at sunset, we had no breakfast and rushed up the slope in gathering darkness because Rick, in particular, was determined not to make ‘another mistake’.

I think I was defined as the first mistake, though nobody actually said it out loud.

It was me who’d pointed out that the sun was, in fact, setting, like right now – mainly because I couldn’t sleep anyway and was sitting out on the cool deck above the lake, thinking, and worrying.

Worrying, because I was going to have to tell them.

Except that there was no time to tell them, because Rick was determined to push on, to reach the statue by sunset, even though it didn’t really matter, it wasn’t going to get totally dark, and their disembodiment and return to Arcturus B-66-4 wasn’t scheduled until midday, exactly 15 days after they’d arrived.

I don’t think we quite made it. The sun, anyway, would have been behind a thin layer of cloud that had formed under the sky. Fortunately, the statue had its own lighting, a sort of bioluminescence, which allowed me to get a good picture. The smaller statue in front is made of bronze, in the pre-Expansion Era tradition: its electric uplights came on just seconds after I took this photo, but I think it looks better as it is.

We went on for breakfast to a restaurant called The Grounded Spaceship. I wondered if you really needed breakfast if you were about to be disembodied, but if they were as hungry as I was I didn’t blame them for doing it.

The food was rich and odd: sweet pastries in bright colours, small, hard, nutty things, scoops of coloured ice cream, served on thin metal platters.

We ate, looking out of the window at the last warm red light on the clouds above the horizon. They chatted about the food and the places we’d been, waved at the other customers, generally behaved not at all as if they were about to lose their individual personalities and become part of a vast collective 55 light years away.

Only Ava seemed a little quiet. Eventually, she touched my arm and said, ‘You’re going to have to tell us. Which one of us has got to stay with you.’

I swallowed so hard I almost choked on a little bit of pastry that was still in my mouth.

But she was right. I was going to have to tell them.

‘Umm… None of you.’

They all stared. Naomi’s eyebrows shot up. ‘But…’

‘The ballet people were kind enough to… they put a contact icon on my phone. And I contacted them last night.’

‘But they can’t…’ began Naomi again.

‘They’re a Company, like you. But they…’ Were blazingly furious with these people who’d accidentally brought a new soul into the world and had proceeded to treat him as an inconvenience to their lives rather than something to be respected and loved. But I thought I’d better not say that bit. ‘…said they’d help.’

‘So I asked them if I could speak to Simon. The reptile. So they used the Link for me and… well, he’s going to be my parent. So I don’t need any of you to stay. You can get on with your life.’

‘But we have the child right…’ Naomi again.

Ava shook her head. ‘We’re not Moon citizens. Simon is. If he wants to parent and Paolo doesn’t object, we don’t have any say in it.’ She smiled at me and winked. ‘I told you Paolo, this life is yours. It’s not ours, or the Company’s.’

Rick gave a her a furious glance, but said nothing.

‘I thought Simon liked being alone,’ said Darina.

‘So did I. But I liked him. Maybe we’ve got something in common. I just wanted to talk to him about it, really. Anyway, he said he raised children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, until people stopped having them. And he’s quite happy to do it again for a while.’

He had also, like the butterflies, had a few choice words to say about my breakfast companions, but again I thought I’d better keep that quiet.

After breakfast we took a walk to see one last piece of the Art Trail that we’d missed in our hurry to get to Lady Luna. Called Light and Sand, it was one Carys was particularly keen to see.

I said that I couldn’t understand why it mattered, when he was going to cease to exist in just over two hours.

Carys shook his head. ‘It’s not like that, Paolo. I’m not ceasing to exist. I’m still going to be me, just a – different me. I’ll still be glad I saw this thing, in the flesh so to speak. With human eyes.’ He touched my arm, said quietly, ‘You could come with us, you know. You don’t have to rejoin the Company at the other end. We’ll find you a body. You could be … anything.’

‘But this is the world I know,’ I said. ‘Just like the Company is the world you know.’

He nodded. ‘I suppose there are limits to consciousness, whatever box you put it in.’

‘Cages,’ I said.

He smiled, and we hugged in front of the lights and the falling trails of sand.

In the end, they all gave me a hug, even Rick. I wondered how such different people could become one person, what they would do, what the Company would make of their experiences.

They’ve gone now. Their bodies are being repurposed, and they are riding on a beam of light, inactive, unconscious, but on the way home.

Actually I don’t think they were bad people. They were just surprised by an event they hadn’t planned for, and cut off from the things that would have enabled them to deal with it properly. And I think Ava, and Carys at least, did genuinely try to help me.

But I wouldn’t want to be part of their Company. It didn’t sound right for me. When I finish this I’m going to take a lift down to New Copernicus, and an Expansion Era rapid transit across the city, then another lift up to the West Copernicus Forest, where Simon will meet me by the mining museum.

I’m not sure what or where I’ll be, in 55 years, 5 months and 10 days time, when Ava, Carys, Darina, Naomi and Rick get home. Maybe I’ll be a dancing butterfly, maybe a reptile, maybe one of those anthrozebs that seem to be fashionable at the moment.

But I think it’s most likely I’ll still be a human being, walking with my father, with my friends, perhaps with Pewter the dog, in the green woods and the clear waters, the great city and the tall mountains, along the art trails and the paths of history, in the land where I was born.

So here’s what Ava told me yesterday.

‘Every woman born before 2070 – that’s 100 EE – had the legal right to bear two children. Nearly all of them used it before the end of the 2nd century – or sold it on. I didn’t. I was out in space, I was doing fantastic, exciting stuff, and earning good money. I didn’t need to use it or sell it.’

I stared at her. We – all of us – were sitting on the shore of the lake, on the shady side under the trees. A slight, irregular rustling in the leaves told me something was alive in there. I wondered if it was listening.

‘So you’ve – still got it?’

Ava nodded. ‘The childright came with me when we made the Company. It’s still valid. There were originally billions of them, but there are only a few tens of thousands left now. It’s become a sort of – sacred totem, a link with what we once were.’

Naomi spoke. ‘The issue was whether Ava could use it to legitimise a separate existence for someone who – technically – had existed as part of a Company. So I took a look with some experts from the City.’

‘Turns out it wasn’t us that messed up the template,’ said Carys.

‘Your body had been in storage for a long time. It wasn’t a very popular shape.’

‘Can’t think why,’ said Rick with a grin. Darina jogged his arm and made an apologetic face in my direction.

But I wasn’t too concerned about the popularity of my body type at that moment.

‘Is that why there were things wrong with it?’ I asked Naomi.

‘Stranger than that.’ She made a pattern in the sand with her foot, gazing out at the lake. ‘There are actually wild neurons growing in your brain.’

‘Wild?’

‘Since the…’ she glanced at Ava ‘…3rd? 4th? Century EE, what you can think – what you are – has been carefully managed. Minds – neurons, quanta, dimensional systems – can only operate in a certain way if they want to be conscious. You have a huge amount of freedom, but not the freedom to destroy other people’s.’

‘It started as a set of rules for the first primitive non-human intelligences,’ supplied Ava. ‘But eventually it was realised they needed to apply it to everyone.’

‘“This Perfect Day”,’ muttered Carys. ‘Sorry, I’m just reading something. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.’

‘So wild neurons are a problem. Your body has developed some quirks due to long storage, but we fixed most of those and I can easily fix the rest. But I can’t just cull the wild neurons. I’d be destroying you. Those neurons are why you’re a new person.’

‘You were happy to cull my neurons,’ said Rick.

Naomi made a face at him, ‘Nah. Mostly just pituitary gland changes. Doesn’t look like it’s taken too well either.’

Darina laughed. ‘He’s much better…’ she rolled her eyes ‘… in most ways!’

But Ava didn’t smile. She was watching me, watching my face.

‘So what are you going to do to me?’ I asked desperately.

Naomi frowned. ‘Well, look after you of course,’ she said. ‘As a new being – officially a child – you have to be given a full-time fully conscious carer for at least 16 years. Up to 21, depending on how it goes.’

I smiled at Ava. But she looked away, her face strained.

‘I’ll be doing the carer bit,’ said Naomi. ‘We can’t all stay. You only get one. And I’m the best qualified.’

‘But Ava…’ I said.

I couldn’t explain. Couldn’t speak. Perhaps it was the wild neurons.

Suddenly ‘a huge amount of freedom’ seemed like no freedom at all.

‘Aren’t you … my mother?’ I asked Ava. ‘Shouldn’t you…’

Naomi answered. ‘The child right belonged to all of us as the Company. It’s a matter of who’s the best person to do it.’

‘I have to go back, Paolo,’ said Ava quietly. ‘I am not my own person, not like you. I am a part of the Company.’

‘I’m going back too,’ said Naomi. ‘But they’re allowing me to make a copy for the journey. To give you the continuity you need here. So I get entity status too!’

There was a silence. A small gust of wind rippled the surface of the lake and brought a breath of cool watery air.

‘Yes, but do you really want it, Naomi?’ It was Carys. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t mind. I’ve got quite used to it, being a pain in the teeth.’ He winked at me.

‘Why can’t you all stay?’ I asked.

Another silence.

‘Not enough space,’ muttered Naomi.

After a while, I realised she was lying.

It was Rick and Darina who found me. I was at Deep Crater Lake. I’d scrambled across several kilometres of rough, dry, hot terrain, scraping and bruising my legs, and probably nearly getting heatstroke again. The sun was getting lower, which helped, but it would still be several days before it set.

‘We got worried about you when you didn’t come back for supper,’ said Rick. ‘So Naomi got a tracer on you.’

‘We said we’d come out,’ supplied Darina. ‘We’re the fittest and can move fast.’

I knew that was a lie too – any of them could easily have got here in minutes using a machine – but I didn’t mind it this time. I just looked at her, letting her read my face.

She put her head on one side, nodded. ‘Ava and Naomi have had a talk. Ava can stay instead of Naomi if you really want that.’

‘No.’ I was surprised at the sound of my own voice. How firm and certain it was. I remembered Ava’s protective growl in the hotel room.

‘But I thought you wanted…’ Rick began.

‘I want all of you,’ I said. ‘You’re my family.’