《Ten Thousand Sallys》 Chapter 1 Sally swam toward the glow above, paddling and kicking slowly but strongly. The bright surface above grew closer. Steadily, she pushed through the water. Pull, kick, pull, kick, up she rose as the surface neared. With one last effort, her head broke through and she forced her eyes open. Slowly, ever so slowly, she realized that instead of being in the middle of an ocean, she was lying in a room... somewhere. Staring up, all she could see were fuzzy shapes and blobs of colors. She blinked repeatedly, but everything remained blurry. Her first impulse was to rub her eyes but she found that she couldn¡¯t move her arms at all. Each one felt as if it weighed millions of tons. In spite of dreaming about swimming, her mouth was completely dry and her throat felt like someone had sandpapered it. Taking a breath, she attempted to call for help, but nothing came out. She tried again and managed to produce a faint moan. It felt like she needed to clear her throat, but when she tried, it hurt too much. Maybe if her mouth wasn¡¯t so dry she would have more success? As she struggled to generate even a little bit of spit, an indistinct shape approached and blocked her view. A wet cloth touched her lips and water dripped into her mouth. She worked it around and swallowed, finding that her throat was so sore that the water burned as it went down. She tried clearing her throat again, and this time the results were better. ¡°Hello?¡± And again, ¡°Hello?¡± Even she could tell it was barely understandable, slightly better than a croak. There was no answer. ¡°Hello, anyone there?¡± she rasped. Nothing. Sally could hear sounds of activity; the indistinct rumble of people talking in the distance, things being wheeled down a hallway, and electronic beeps. Where was everyone? Whoever had given her the water wasn¡¯t talking. Where were they? Turning her head to look around proved impossible, so she gave up and tried her arms again. With a herculean effort, she managed to move them a little, but it left her exhausted. After a long pause, she attempted to shift her legs, but there was no response. She couldn¡¯t even really feel them. Hopefully, they were still there. Sally was pretty sure that she was lying in a bed with her head propped up on a pillow. As best she could tell, the room was painted a greenish color, but she couldn¡¯t make out any details. As her thoughts cleared, it was starting to annoy her that her vision was still blurry. ¡°Eyes. My eyes. Can¡¯t see.¡± This came out as little more than a mumble. Everything went dark, and she felt the wet cloth dabbing at her eyes. When it was removed, Sally blinked and began to discern shapes. After a few more blinks, she could see a bit better but found that even this tiny task exhausted her. She rested for a moment, and her eyelids started to drift closed. She was nearly asleep when she caught herself and jerked awake. ¡°No!¡± She¡¯d slept enough and didn¡¯t want to be plunged back into the depths she¡¯d just escaped. Automatically, she attempted to rub her face, and, this time, actually achieved a reasonable approximation. A minor victory, yes, but even so, she felt some satisfaction. As her vision improved, it was pretty obvious that she was in a hospital room. No one else would paint the walls that color of green. Past the foot of her bed was a window covered in sheer curtains that let in a little light, and beside her bed was an IV stand with a few bags and boxes with lights. Plastic tubes descended from the stand onto her bed. Sally¡¯s arm was lying on the tubes, but, as far as she could tell, they didn¡¯t seem to be connected to anything. She dimly remembered something in her mouth, probably one of the tubes, but she wasn¡¯t really sure if this was an actual memory or just a dream. It would explain her sore throat, though. She guessed that some of the tubes had been used for dealing with other biological issues and their odor reinforced that idea. She was somewhat repelled, but less than she would expect. Maybe they¡¯d given her something? They must have, because even the simple task of looking around was tiring her out. She was confused, exhausted, and had no idea what was happening. In spite of her best efforts, she fell into a light sleep. Sally woke up sometime later, angry at herself for her weakness, but feeling more refreshed. Her mouth was dry, but it wasn¡¯t as bad as when she¡¯d first awakened, and she was even somewhat hungry. Still in the hospital room though, and it appeared that nothing had changed. The light from the window and the noises were coming from the hallway were the same as before. Feeling slightly more alert, she began to process her situation. Things didn¡¯t seem to be right. Who¡¯d removed the tubes? Where was everyone, and who was the silent person helping her? She tried yelling, ¡°Hello? Anyone?¡± Her voice was weak but much better than her earlier efforts. No response. She made a stab at sitting up, but only shifted a little. Her energy level was too low to undertake such a mighty task, yet. There was some movement at the foot of her bed and she looked down to see a couple of hands reach up and grasp the metal tubing of the bed frame. The hands were followed by a tuft of hair and then a small head popped up. Sally¡¯s first impression was that it was a little kid, maybe eight or nine years old. He might have been wearing a headband because he had some sort of medallion on his forehead. He stared at her. Sally stared back. Upon further reflection, the boy looked odd. He had dark copper colored skin, blond wispy hair, a sort of average face, but there was something wrong with his head. What she¡¯d thought was a headband had no band, there was a gold-bronze disk stuck on his forehead, off-center, more to the right than the left. The really strange part was that it looked like the disk was embedded in his forehead and that his head actually bulged up to contain it.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Maybe this was why he was in the hospital? Sally looked at him and he looked at her. ¡°Um, hello?¡± she asked. This was almost understandable. Nothing. It appeared he wasn¡¯t too chatty. ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± she ventured. Still nothing. Sally gave up trying to speak to the boy and looked around the room for whoever had been helping her. She couldn¡¯t spot anyone, but she noticed that the plastic tubes she had seen earlier were still beside her on the bed. It was a little upsetting that they had been left there. Where were the nurses? She turned back to the boy. She could see that he wasn¡¯t dressed like she was. He had on a red pullover shirt, which she was pretty sure wasn¡¯t standard hospital garb. Maybe he was visiting someone here with his mom? ¡°Can you get a nurse or something?¡± she asked him. He didn¡¯t respond. She turned toward the door, ¡°Hello!¡± she yelled, hoping to get the attention of someone, anyone. Sally was pretty sure that she had tried yelling before. ¡°Hello, anyone? Patient awake here!¡± Still no response from outside the room. This was getting silly. Sally supposed she should go see what was happening, besides which, she had to pee fairly badly. She decided to try the little boy one more time. Maybe he wasn¡¯t too bright, but if she explained to him what she wanted in very simple language, he might understand. She tried speaking very slowly, ¡°Ok, little boy, I need help. Do you understand? I need a nurse. A nurse. Someone.¡± She motioned with her arms toward the door. ¡°Go, get someone, an adult, hell anyone, even a janitor, I don¡¯t know! Are you listening?¡± She realized she was yelling again and had sort of lost it for a second. That probably wouldn¡¯t help. The boy looked at her, and stated, in a flat tone, "Middle America, colloquial English, mid or late twentieth century to mid-twenty-first century, female, late teens, early twenties. Clock rate thirteen point seven on the standard scale.¡± Sally was astounded. ¡°You can talk!¡± Then she felt a little stupid for stating the obvious. ¡°Can you get help?¡± She was still speaking very slowly, then felt stupid again. He might be strange but apparently, he could understand her. He looked at her. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°What?¡± She paused. ¡°I hear people outside, just go and get someone.¡± ¡°There is no one else, just you and I.¡± Ok, he was nuts. Or hopefully, if her experience with her young cousins was any indication, just contrary. But not helpful, either way. Sally guessed it was up to her. She wasn¡¯t very strong, but maybe it would be possible to make it out to the hall and get help. She tested moving her legs. This time there was some response, but even pushing against the blankets was hard. She worked up onto her elbows and heaved herself into a sitting position. This effort drained her and she had to rest for a few minutes to recover some energy. Once she felt capable, she reached down and pulled the covers back, revealing a hospital gown that was simply draped over her. It was likely to be an annoyance when she moved around because it didn¡¯t have any ties, but that didn¡¯t matter much since she wasn¡¯t in any shape to be able to use them, anyway. Her legs sticking out from the bottom of her gown looked okay, not too thin, so she probably hadn¡¯t been here very long. Taking it very slowly, she edged her feet toward the side of the bed, adjusting her gown as best she could. The boy wasn¡¯t positioned the best for maintaining her modesty. Sally looked at him. ¡°Move!¡± she said. ¡°Come to the side of the bed and help me down.¡± Best to be clear with little boys. The boy, to his credit, didn¡¯t pause. He got down and went to the side of the bed. Sally inched her feet over the edge. The boy looked at her. ¡°It is common, in cases where a patient has been bedridden for a significant amount of time, for the individual to suffer from muscle weakness and/or atrophy. It is recommended that the patient undergo at least a week of rehabilitation to regain muscle tone, depending on the level of impairment.¡± Sally looked at him. She was somewhat familiar with the stages little kids could go through, but this was little extreme. Wasn''t her problem, though. ¡°Thanks," she replied. "I will be sure to do that when I can.¡± No response. Sarcasm appeared to be lost on the boy. Sally sighed. As much as she was sure that this wasn¡¯t going to go well, there wasn¡¯t much choice. She slowly slid her feet over the edge of the bed. As expected, the gown was threatening to expose her, so she wiggled around to maintain a bit of dignity, but it was pretty much a lost cause. The boy moved, positioning himself to catch her. Sally almost warned him out of the way, but she was quite weak and if things went badly there was some chance that he would break her fall without getting too squished. She paused on the edge of the bed as she worked up her courage. The bottom of the bed was close enough that she might be able to reach the metal frame if things went badly. Unfortunately, it wasn¡¯t an easy reach, and she didn¡¯t think she had the muscle to be able to get closer. Sally inched forward, and as gravity took over she tried to twist and catch the frame. Flailing out, she missed her grab and kept sliding down. When her feet hit the floor, she told herself to stand but there was no noticeable effect and she kept descending. Anticipating the worst, she was surprised when a couple of arms caught her and deftly lowered her to the floor. The boy put her down and then stood up, watching her. Her first thought was that the little boy was really strong, and her second was that the gown had failed to properly cover her. The boy showed no sign that he cared while Sally re-arranged everything for some dignity. Lying on the floor, she found that she had absolutely no energy. Walking to the hall was out of the question and crawling was unlikely too. Exhausted and scared, a few tears leaked out. It took several minutes until she was able to move enough to look around. She focused on the boy, who was still watching her. He didn¡¯t fidget or do anything she expected from someone his age. At the moment he was her best bet. ¡°Can you, I don¡¯t know, maybe help me get to the hallway?¡± she asked. "I don¡¯t think I can do it myself, and I don¡¯t want to spend a day on the floor here. And I have to pee.¡± Oops. Probably too much sharing. ¡°I have done a cross-correlation viability analysis of your situation and stated objectives, as well as utilizing the information I have obtained through my investigations. The three most advantageous alternatives that I can recommend are; one: stay here until you have recovered enough to move, two: let me carry you to the hallway, and three: allow me to bring over the wheelchair that is behind the door to this room and place you on it.¡± He looked at her. Still no expression. Sally laughed at the absurdity of the whole situation. ¡°Ok,¡± she said, ¡°let¡¯s go with option three.¡± She watched from her position on the floor as the boy walked around the bed to the door, reached behind it, pulled out a folded wheelchair, unfolded it, released its brakes, and wheeled it over. He then set the brakes, put up the footrests, came over to her, picked her up, and put her in the wheelchair. Sally was amazed. The kid was so strong, even with his small size he¡¯d moved her easily. And not only was he strong, but his arms and shoulders were hard as a rock. She didn¡¯t know what to think of this. She¡¯d also managed to get a good look at his face as he¡¯d shifted her; he looked normal, except for the thing on his forehead. The boy adjusted the footrests for her and stood back. Sally slumped in the chair, beyond exhausted. When she finally tried to roll the chair, it didn¡¯t budge. Looking at the boy, she asked, ¡°Could you help me?¡± He returned her look. ¡°Please be more specific,¡± he stated. Sally looked at him. ¡°Um, can you, maybe, push me to the hall?¡± she ventured. The boy walked over, released the brakes, moved to the back of the chair, and pushed it around the bed and through the door. Chapter 2
As they wheeled out of the room Sally saw what she expected, initially. The wall facing the door was also painted hospital green. Things got weird, though, when they actually entered the hallway.
The green paint on the hallway walls ended a short distance past where it could be seen from inside the room. After this, the walls appeared to be a white plastic, with beams of wood running near the ceiling and floor. The hallway continued into the distance in both directions. The oddest thing was that there were no light fixtures, instead, the walls and ceiling glowed. Sally had never seen or heard of anything like that, but then, she was from a small town.
She looked around for the nurses¡¯ station. There wasn¡¯t one, but when she glanced to the left, beside her room door, there was a box that was making the sounds of a hospital! She tried to process what she saw, but it made no sense. What she had thought were people outside her room was simply some sort of recording being played over a speaker! Sally stared at it.
What was going on? Some sort of sick joke?
Sally slumped in the chair. She was tired, weak, thirsty, effectively naked, and even she could tell her thinking was very slow.
To top it off. her bladder was complaining. She started as a disconcerting thought drifted through her mind, prompting her to call over her shoulder. ¡°Kid! Come here!¡±
She pointed in front of her.
He walked to where she¡¯d indicated. Sally was fairly sure she wouldn¡¯t like the answer, but she had to ask. ¡°Umm,¡± she started, then went on, ¡°Did you, I mean, umm, well¡­¡±
This was difficult. She had to know, though.
She started again. ¡°Uh¡­ those tubes. They were for more than just feeding me.¡±
She looked at him. He looked back. It was very likely what she feared.
She had a hard time saying it, after some false attempts she squeezed out, ¡°Uh, did you, um¡­ did you... did you take the tubes out of me?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
Sally was mortified, and at a loss for anything to say. She simply stared at the boy.
The boy just stared back at her. Sally was starting to think he didn¡¯t have many social skills. It appeared she had to ask specific questions to get answers. Best deal with the immediate issue, or rather, the most immediate one.
¡°Do you know where there¡¯s a bathroom?¡±
¡°There are no bathrooms that correspond to the type you are used to in mid-twentieth century America. There are a number of alternatives that I can propose that would be sufficient, assuming you do not want to urinate on yourself.¡±
Sally couldn¡¯t help herself, she snickered. ¡°No, I would rather not.¡±
She paused, and then continued, ¡°You don¡¯t talk like a little boy.¡±
Nothing.
¡°Oh yeah,¡± Sally muttered.
She tried, ¡°How old are you?¡±
A direct question would probably be something he would answer.
¡°In your terms, referenced to your estimated time frame, approximately 537 years. I do not have an accurate date for when I started running an internal chronometer, so I have rounded off the accuracy. If you want the time to more precision I can refine the estimate and state the assumptions I have made.¡±
This was so far away from what Sally had expected that she didn¡¯t really have a way to process it.
She slumped even further. "I¡­ I¡­ I don¡¯t know what to say about that.¡±
She paused, then changed the subject, "Maybe we should find one of those bathroom thingies that you mentioned.¡±
The boy walked back into her room and returned shortly, pushing the IV stand, which he tied to the back of the chair with some of the tubing. He also retrieved the blankets and pillow from the bed and put them on her lap. When he was done, he started pushing the chair down the hallway, past the box that was still sounding like a hospital ward.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Sally was going to ask why he brought the IV stand when something flew past the chair near the floor, making her jump. Whatever it was, continued down the hallway to the limit of what she could see, and then started strobing different lights and making various sounds as it flittered about. There was no particular pattern she could pick out.
¡°Hey kid!¡± she threw over her shoulder.
No answer.
¡°Uh, kid, did you see that thing? The thing that flew past us?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°How could you miss it? Something just flew past us, and I can sort of see it ahead, up there.¡±
Nothing. Maybe she¡¯d asked the wrong question.
¡°Uh, kid, do you know what just flew past?¡±
¡°Yes, it is a remote sensor.¡±
¡°A remote sensor?¡±
Nothing.
¡°Ok kid, although you may not be a kid, well, whatever you are, do you know who sent the thing, the sensor? Uh, and¡­¡± she thought for a second, then added, "and do you know anything about what it¡¯s for?¡±
Instead of directly answering the boy asked ¡°Do you want a detailed explanation or a summary? The detailed version, in itself, needs to be broken down by complexity, but the total duration will be 637.35 hours, using this audio transfer medium and limiting it to details pertaining to the technology involved, the analysis of the optimization process for construction, how it is meant to be deployed, and other ancillary information.¡±
The absurdity of the answer forced a laugh out of Sally. She kept laughing, and couldn¡¯t stop as tears ran down her face. She started hiccupping. Eventually, she wound down and gathered herself, although one final giggle forced its way out.
It appeared that she would have to be more specific.
¡°Give me the information in a short, less than one minute, summary.¡±
She felt she was getting the hang of communicating with the boy.
The boy answered "I constructed the sensor drone based on pertinent information available from the request I posited for minimizing events that could cause disruptions. I also control it to sweep the passages in front of me, now us, in case there are conditions about which I would like to have advance warning. The collection and analysis of the data have been optimized as a compromise for speed and detail, as recommended in various studies and analyses of data processing techniques for hazardous environments.¡±
Sally was taken aback. Even the summary was hard to comprehend.
¡°Uh-huh,¡± she said, and then paused. She added, ¡°Where was it when you were in the room? I didn¡¯t see it when we got into the hallway, and you didn¡¯t seem to be carrying anything.¡±
The boy put his arm over the seat back beside her head. For a moment Sally didn¡¯t see anything out of the ordinary until¡­
¡°Oh My God! Your hand is missing!¡± Sally screamed and jerked away. The boy didn¡¯t remove his arm. Sally took a quick glance back at it. The hand was still missing. She reached up and held his arm at the elbow.
She bent forward, expecting a bloody stump, or something similar but what she saw amazed her. His arm appeared to have been cleanly sliced and capped with something like plastic. It looked like what you¡¯d see if you took the hand off of a store dummy.
Sally was repulsed and intrigued, in spite of herself.
¡°Boy,¡± she said sternly, ¡°stop pushing and come around here.¡±
He did so.
Sally looked at his face and was jolted. The boy had his eyes closed, but the metal plate in his forehead was gone, replaced by a clear window revealing lenses, gears, lights, bubbles, and belts moving up, down, across, and around inside of his head.
Sally felt her mental processes crash. She just sat and stared. She had nothing to say.
The boy walked back and resumed pushing.
Sally had reached her limit. She started to shiver and her vision tunneled. All that she could see was what was right in front of her.
Somehow the boy understood that she was in distress. He stopped pushing the chair, came around to the front of the chair, pulled a blanket from the pile and tucked it around her. Sally noted, in passing, that his stump had extruded a tentacle to make up for the missing hand. Her emotions had shut down, and she found herself thinking that she didn¡¯t care, and couldn¡¯t even care that she didn¡¯t care.
It slowly dawned on her that she was going into shock. She had heard of that happening to people but never knew what that really meant, until now.
She tried to kick herself out of this funk but found her body had taken over and she had no say. She just rode in the chair as the boy started pushing it again, and tried to stay conscious. It was a strange feeling to be out of control.
After several minutes of simply staring at the small patch of floor in front of her, she became aware that the hallway was starting to get brighter. It took a major effort to raise her head and see what was happening. They had reached the end of the hallway and were emerging into a much larger room that looked like an unkempt garden.
The boy pushed her up to a raised section next to a window. As they approached Sally could see that it was actually a trough with water flowing through it. He stopped the chair, put the brake on, and came around to face her. As effortlessly as before he lifted her over to the edge of the trough and sat her on it. Fortunately, the side was fairly wide and not uncomfortable to sit on, even with her butt over the water. She teetered a bit but managed to stay upright. She looked at him. Everything was an effort.
¡°Pee,¡± he said.
Sally was so disconnected she had no problems carrying out his orders. When she finished he lifted her back to the chair, sat her on it, and rolled the chair back toward the hallway, stopping by a patch of grass. The boy fiddled with the IV stand and handed her a tube.
¡°Drink!¡± he ordered.
Sally did so. She idly noted the fluid had no taste but was oddly satisfying. When she had taken in a little he took back the tube and looped it on the stand. He used a blanket and the pillow to make an impromptu bed on the grass, lifted her over to it and tucked her in.
She passed out immediately. Chapter 3 Sally was on a ride at the fair, not one of her favorite ones. Her stomach started complaining as it spun her around, but the ride kept on going. This wasn¡¯t going to end well, she could tell. The ride went faster and faster until she couldn¡¯t help it, her stomach heaved and she threw up. She felt her head being turned and opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry, but she didn¡¯t care, her whole attention was on her spleen trying to eject itself through her mouth. This was bad. Much too slowly, the heaves subsided. Something was holding her head, and her feeble attempts to move were no match for the iron clamps that held her in place. She blinked, and surprisingly, her vision cleared. The view was not impressive. She was looking at the blanket beside her and there was some sort of nasty black fluid puddled on it. As she watched, the fluid, probably what she¡¯d just thrown up, was slowly absorbed by the blanket which regained its original color as her vomit disappeared. That was weird. She felt the iron restraints being removed, and with more effort than she thought it should take, turned her head to look up, and yelped. There was a face two inches from her own. It was a little boy. She had dreamed about a little boy who had picked her up from the floor and flown her around a hospital room, then out into a hallway where the staff had stared at her, laughed, and then run away. After that, she had floated down a hallway while watching the little boy walk backward as his arms turned into tentacles. That was a weird dream! The boy¡¯s head receded from her vision so she had to refocus. Her mouth tasted like crap, she tried to work up enough saliva to spit, but the residue in her mouth was giving her a slight case of the heaves. She felt a plastic tube being pushed into her mouth. ¡°Drink,¡± she heard. She started to, almost swallowing before realizing that she probably shouldn¡¯t, instead she washed out her mouth and turned her head to spit out the water and the tube. That was much better. She opened her eyes and yelped because the boy¡¯s head was two inches away, again. He pulled back and stood up, taking the plastic tube with him. ¡°You should drink some more," he directed. "The machines are being purged from your system and you should drink to remain hydrated.¡± Her mind said something intelligent, but all that came out was: ¡°Whaaa?¡± ¡°The machines that maintained your physical health while you were unconscious are very crudely programmed. Once they deemed you conscious they returned functionality to your body¡¯s natural processes and triggered a purge, which is underway. You will need to vomit and void your bladder and bowels a few times until the machines are reduced to a low enough level that your body will not react to them. If I had more time I could reprogram them so this process would be imperceptible, but at this point, it is best to let them run as originally designed.¡± ¡°Uhhhh,¡± Her mouth wasn¡¯t working, and come to think of it, her brain really wasn¡¯t doing so well, either. It didn¡¯t matter, her stomach let out a massive gurgle. It sounded like the other part of what he said was about to take place too. Her attention refocused on those immediate issues. About an hour later, or at least two hundred years in personal hell, the mass exodus subsided. In-between bouts of yelling and purging, usually both at the same time, Sally noted that the various disgusting fluids that her body ejected had disappeared into the blanket, over time. That was very convenient. During the process, whenever it was safe, the boy had dashed in, given her the tube to drink from, and wiped her off. He was shockingly competent for a kid. Eventually, Sally lay on the blanket, panting, surrounded by the shrinking puddles of the latest fluids. The boy stepped up beside her knelt down and put one finger in her vomit. Then he... ¡°No, no, no, no! Don¡¯t! Don¡¯t!!!!¡± she yelled as best she could. He put his finger in his mouth. Sally gagged, nearly starting another round of purging. ¡°Why did you do that!!!¡± she demanded. The boy was unfazed. ¡°It appears the machinery is diluted enough that this latest round of purges is the last. The units in this fluid have shut themselves down. Now your biological processes will return to normal operation.¡± Sally just stared at him. He reached over to an IV stand, selected one of the tubes, and offered it to her. This was where the water had been coming from. After she drank, he removed the tube, stood up and walked out of her field of view. She tried to turn her head to follow his motion, consciously telling it to move, but she just couldn¡¯t get it to respond. She looked at what she could see, a high ceiling, glowing, but not too brightly. On one side, was a wall with doors in it, on the other, a large room opened up. The walls and ceiling were a white material that looked like plastic, or maybe ceramic. Around her were a few branches and leaves that she could just see out of the corners of her eyes. Her bed was a blanket thrown over some feathery plants. Where was she? She tried again and managed to turn her head a tiny bit to see more plants beside her, but this didn¡¯t help her figure out what was going on. Her stomach rumbled, this time from hunger, not something more ominous. ¡°Hey, kid!¡± He reappeared in her view. ¡°I sort of remember asking this before, but where is everyone? Uh... did you tell me, um, something like there isn¡¯t anyone else?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± She was starting to remember things. The boy didn¡¯t always give much of an answer, except when he gave too much. ¡°You can¡¯t fly, can you?¡± ¡°No.¡± There was one thing nailed down. Her stomach growled again. ¡°I¡¯m really hungry. Sorry to ask, but is there something to eat?¡± The boy handed her a tube from the IV stand. She reached for it. Or she meant to, but her arm barely moved. The boy put the tube in her hand, then put her hand on her chest. Her fingers weren¡¯t working too well so she dropped the tube and he gave it back to her. She tried harder this time and managed to hang on. ¡°The solution in this bag is more than water, drink as much as you can, it will sustain you for now,¡± he said. Sally found she could move just enough to get the tube to her mouth. The boy would have to help her if she dropped it again. When it looked like she could handle this complex task he wandered off, leaving her able to drink at her own speed. It did appear that whatever was in the bag was more than water since she felt somewhat full after drinking a good amount, more than just water full. To celebrate, she dozed off.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. When she woke everything looked the same. She was still lying on a blanket in the big room. The tube was gone. Maybe the boy had taken it? She must have slept for just a short while because the light hadn¡¯t changed. She tried to sit up, but only managed to move a tiny bit. She scaled back and tried to move just her arms, finding that she couldn¡¯t lift them but she could drag them back and forth. Rubbing her face turned out to be more like bunting it with her hands, but it worked, sort of. She tried to roll, but only rocked back and forth. This was going to take a while. She had a little more energy, just not much strength. She heard a noise and managed to turn her head enough to see the boy approaching. He walked up to the blanket and stopped, looking down at her. She waited for him to say something. And waited. He just stood watching her. Sally had lots of questions, but he was weird. While both of them waited for the other to say something Sally¡¯s attention went to something she¡¯d noticed before she¡¯d gone to sleep. She sniffed. Then sniffed again. Something was missing. Where had the pukey smell gone? Her nightgown had been quite rank when she fell asleep. ¡°Um, why is my nightgown clean?¡± ¡°I washed it while you were asleep.¡± Gaaaaa! No, no, no! Sally reined in her emotions and forced herself to focus on little things. ¡°If you washed it how did it get dry so fast? I don¡¯t think I was asleep for that long.¡± ¡°I flew it around on the sensor drone.¡± Oh yeah, she was starting to remember. She looked at his hands, which looked normal. ¡°Your hand, right?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± Ah, so the tentacle part wasn¡¯t a dream. ¡°It¡¯s coming back to me. You took me out of the hospital room, and brought me here.¡± ¡°Correct.¡± ¡°Okay... I remember being able to move better, um... before.¡± ¡°That was the machines in your body. Once they left, you reverted to your biological resources, which need conditioning. The programming of the machines was deficient, there¡¯s no need for this transition to be as stressful as it is. This is solid information.¡± Sally didn¡¯t know what he meant by that. ¡°So... you¡¯re not a little boy, are you?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°Yes, you are a real boy, or yes you aren¡¯t a real boy?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± He was exasperating! ¡°Are you a real boy or not?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± Sally stopped, this wasn¡¯t getting anywhere. Slowly she ventured, ¡°Are. You. A. Real. Boy?¡± ¡°No.¡± Sigh of relief. ¡°What. Are. You?¡± ¡°I am what is termed a data vault, I research and maintain large data stores and libraries. I have many facilities to acquire the data, and ensure it is valid.¡± This wasn¡¯t exactly what Sally had been expecting, in fact, it wasn¡¯t on the list of anything she had been expecting. ¡°I remember... your hand comes off and your forehead opens up. Are you a robot or something?¡± ¡°I have perused my databases and would venture that you would perceive me as either a humanoid robot or an android, the boundaries of the definitions having been blurred by anime.¡± Okay, this was closer to what she had expected. Not that it made any real sense, but it made a little sense. There was a crackling from somewhere out of her view, which, to be honest, was almost everywhere. The kid looked up. His hand separated from his arm, slowly descended toward the floor, then shot off in the direction he was looking. A tentacle emerged from his arm and replaced his hand. She stared at the tentacle. ¡°Yep, there it is,¡± she mutterd to herself. There was a crash and some banging and after a short time the hand returned and reattached itself after the tentacle disappeared back into the boy¡¯s arm. ¡°What just happened?¡± ¡°One of the rabbits was eating the grass I planted. It is necessary to dissuade the creature until the grass is well established.¡± ¡°Grass? Why would a robot need grass?¡± ¡°I have planted grass and trees that provide nutrients I require to grow and maintain various internal structures.¡± ¡°Could I eat them?¡± ¡°Yes, but you would be very ill.¡± ¡°Not what I meant.¡± The boy didn¡¯t respond. ¡°Okay¡­¡± she stretched it out. ¡°I can¡¯t see anything from here. Can you help me up?¡± She had to give it to the little boy, he didn¡¯t hesitate, just walked over to her, placed his hands under her arms, lifted her up, and started walking. This feat of strength was amazing. Sally could see the entire room, although her head tended to flop around a little, requiring significant effort on her part to control. The room was big, with a long blank wall on one side, and windows on the other. She only got the occasional glimpse of the windows since they were behind her. With a lot of effort, she turned her head. She could see some grass and shrubs on the floor of the room, and more doors at the far end. The boy turned and sat her in the wheelchair, took a blanket that was draped over the back, wrapped it around her body and the back of the chair, and tied her in place. Her range of motion was limited, but she could see. She was facing the windows, which offered a bland view of the side of a huge building a good distance away. She forced her head to turn so that she could look down the length of the room, but all she could see was a few scrubby bushes, a number of small trees in rows, and a fair amount of grass growing on the floor. Sally turned to look at the boy, noting that it was getting to be a little easier to move her head. ¡°Where are we?¡± she asked him. ¡°That query is ambiguous.¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°I am next to you, we are in this room, this room is in a series of similar rooms connected by hallways, or if you mean in the conversational sense, we have discussed who I am and that you had to pee. Your question is imprecise.¡± Sally was starting to get it. The boy was being difficult, pretending he couldn¡¯t figure out what she meant if she said the things the way everyone normally did. She tried again, ¡°Um, what is this place? All of it. The buildings and everything. I see a big funny-looking building through the windows, is this a city somewhere? Are we near home, I mean, like somewhere in the United States?¡± ¡°I do not know our location. I am collecting information, when I have enough evidence then I will be able to conclude where we are, exactly. And yes, and no.¡± Sally thought back over what she¡¯d asked, he didn¡¯t know where we were, it¡¯s a city, and not near home, or maybe the US, she wasn¡¯t sure what he meant. This answer was at least better. It sort of helped. ¡°Was I kidnapped to somewhere? Is this Russia, or something? It doesn¡¯t look like it.¡± ¡°No, further than that. I calculate that at the rate I am acquiring information I should have an answer in a day or two.¡± What was further than Russia? Australia? Well, he said he would know shortly. Maybe she would try to get some other answers. ¡°So... kid? I¡¯m Sally, what is your name?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have one.¡± ¡°Um... why not?¡± ¡°Until now there has only been me, I have had no need for a name; with the two of us it is still not necessary.¡± He had a point. If she was talking to someone it probably was him. She could start talking to herself, she had seen some people in the city who did that. If she did, though, then him not having a name wouldn¡¯t be her biggest problem. Even so, he should have a name, everyone had a name. Where did he come from? ¡°Where did you come from?¡± The boy started to point to one of the openings at one end of the room. ¡°Nope, don¡¯t do that, I mean where did you grow up, who were your parents, um, owners, builders, whatever robots have?¡± ¡°I became aware in my room, at that time I was by myself.¡± ¡°By yourself?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± Oh, this was tedious. ¡°Okay, where was your room, what was in it, what was it like, why are you here now, and... oh I don¡¯t know, tell me other stuff like that.¡± ¡°My room is seven of these atria down that hallway, through an anomalous hallway in the back of the first atrium, and at the end of a subspace tube situated at the end of the aforementioned hallway.¡± ¡°Okay... what¡¯s a subspace tube?¡± ¡°It is a tube through subspace.¡± ¡°Oh, come on! Now you are just being difficult.¡± ¡°It is an extension of Tarreen-grangean vector inversion...¡± ¡°STOP! Explaining to me using words I don¡¯t know doesn¡¯t help!¡± Sally was starting to understand why this boy had been left in a room by himself. The boy paused. That was odd. Up until now, the boy seemed to flow into one thing after another. A few seconds passed. ¡°I have reviewed a significant amount of data from Earth, I should be able to answer in a manner that is more appropriate to what you expect.¡± ¡°Earth? What do you mean Earth? Aren¡¯t we on Earth?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Glrrrk!¡± Chapter 4 She should have figured it out. A robot, machines in her blood, flying hand, but really, who in their right mind would think they had been abducted by aliens? Was she in her right mind? How would she know? If she was living in her imagination, she wouldn¡¯t be feeling so wretched, would she? Sally didn¡¯t know, she¡¯d never been insane before. She must be stuck in her imagination, aliens with tentacles? Puleeeze! To humor herself, she might as well ask more questions and see what her imagination could come up with. ¡°All right then. How did you get from your room to here? Wait! Don¡¯t say you walked, give me a reasonable amount of detail, not too much. And, uh... how do you know stuff, if you were by yourself?¡± ¡°I will answer, largely in reverse order. My room has a square floor-plan, with the same area as the room we are currently inhabiting. The ceiling is lower and mimics a sky, with a sun that¡¯s a glow which crosses the sky from one side to the other, then there¡¯s a night. The room is filled with grass and rows of trees, except for the center, which has a sandbox that is ten feet square. In this sandbox is a pillar with a small box at its base. My food pellets and information packets appear in the box once a day. The food pellets, leaves from the trees, and blades of grass contain the extra nutrients I need to build new structures.¡± At this point, he dug around in a pocket of his pants and pulled out a pellet that was probably his food. He showed it to her and put it back in his pocket. The boy appeared to be getting better at talking. This time, she¡¯d understood most of what he¡¯d said. She wanted to learn more, but even though she¡¯d only been awake for something like a half hour she was feeling really worn out again. ¡°I am sorry, this is good to know and all that, but can we take a break and finish later?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± The boy fetched the IV stand and Sally drank. Once she had enough she started nodding off, and just went with it. When she woke a while later, the light still seemed to be the same. Was it ever going to be night? She looked around and was a little shocked that moving wasn¡¯t that hard! She tried raising her arms, and found that she could lift them up to her shoulders! For just a little while, but still! She tried to push the wheels on the chair, but the brake was set and she couldn¡¯t deal with that. Where was the kid? She got a little panicky, then heard something above her. She looked up and there he was, crawling around the ceiling like a fly. And, like a fly, he would stop every so often and lick the ceiling. That was going to take some getting used to. He turned his head, looked her direction, then crawled to the back wall. He didn¡¯t stop, just went headfirst down to the floor, did something acrobatic at the bottom to land on his feet, and walked over. ¡°Are you thirsty? Do you have to pee?¡± ¡°Yeah, and no.¡± It felt good to give the kid the same treatment he gave her. Petty? Yes. He gave her more to drink. Sally noticed the taste of puke was almost completely gone from her mouth, but she was sure her breath would kill small animals and young children. For some reason, she¡¯d forgotten to pack her toothbrush when she¡¯d been abducted. She drank and handed the tube to the boy, noting that her arms were getting stronger. The boy looped the tube on the stand then continued telling his story. ¡°One day I was absorbing an information packet when I found a rabbit in my room. This was odd since there were no entrances or exits; it was a closed environment. The rabbit escaped through a rogue subspace tube. I followed and found the series of atria we are now in.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. ¡°When I left, I brought along some of the leaves and blades of grass which I have been planting in the rooms as I traveled. They grow very quickly and I can return to these rooms to stock up as I grow new structures within myself. I also brought the box but so far, only food pellets have been delivered to it.¡± Sally was impressed, the kid could have added in tons of detail, but this was a fairly good summary. ¡°How long have you been here?¡± ¡°Approximately two months.¡± ¡°It took you two months to travel through, what did you say? Seven rooms?¡± ¡°Yes. I had to be careful.¡± That was interesting, he had clarified something without her having to ask. ¡°Are the other rooms like this one?¡± ¡°Yes, with minor variants in the detritus and scrub growth.¡± ¡°Detritus?¡± ¡°Garbage, or discarded material.¡± ¡°So, there are others here?¡± ¡°I have found no other inhabitants, except for the rabbits, which are not intelligent enough to generate garbage. I do not have enough information to make other conclusions involving the garbage.¡± Sally didn¡¯t really know what he meant. Garbage was garbage. The stupidest thing was that she was talking about garbage with a robot. ¡°Alright, so what do we do now? Wait! Let me say that a better way.¡± She thought it over. ¡°What plans do you have about what we are going to do in the next few days? Not too much detail, but enough so I can understand what will be happening.¡± She thought that should be pretty good, at least she wouldn¡¯t have him telling her how many steps he was going to take in what direction. ¡°We should stay here to allow you to recover. I can keep examining this room to obtain longer duration results to verify earlier observations. When you are able, we can expand our field of operation and investigate further along this series of rooms. From my observations of the building across the way,¡± he indicated the building that she could see through the windows, ¡°I can see reflections that show the rooms are of a finite number in the direction we will travel.¡± Goodness, he could be longwinded. For once, she didn¡¯t have anything to say. It was a do-able plan. That was enough of this, for now. As she recovered she could ask the kid some more questions and see what other things she could find out. Sally thought about what he had told her. It was very strange, but honestly, everything seemed out of her control. She couldn¡¯t move much, had no idea what was going on, and even if she did, what the heck could she do? Sally mentally kicked herself. Stop moping! She¡¯d just woken up, something would happen. Hopefully, something good. It wasn¡¯t time to sit around doing nothing and feeling sorry for herself! She wasn¡¯t that sort of person. She rallied. ¡°Hey! Can you take the brakes off, so I can try rolling around.¡± The kid was right, it was obvious who she was talking to, he didn¡¯t really need a name. On the other hand, maybe she would call him ¡°Hey¡±. That was funny. The boy released the brakes and Sally tried moving the chair. Once she got it rolling on the level floor the chair coasted for quite a distance before stopping. She struggled to turn around and roll back. Sally snickered to herself as she pushed herself along. Old folks Olympics! After a few back and forths, it wasn¡¯t so funny. Rolling the chair was a lot more work that it should have been. She was panting, sweating, and could barely get the chair to move. Enough! Time for a break. Sally turned the chair so she could see the plastic bag of water? drink? Whatever it was, on the IV stand. The ultimate generic fluid for humans. It was impossibly far, a few feet away behind some brush. She looked around for the kid, even checked the ceiling, then stared at the drinking tube. It obstinately stayed out of reach. ¡°Uh, kid?¡± she yelled, ¡°Could you get me a drink, please?¡± He appeared right beside her. Sally jumped, at least on the inside. How had he gotten there so fast? He gave her the tube and she drank. When she was done the bag was empty. Oh-oh. ¡°Hey, what now? The bag¡¯s empty!¡± ¡°It will refill in an hour, or so.¡± ¡°What? How?¡± He showed her one of the boxes connected to the bag by a little plastic tube. She hadn¡¯t really noticed it before and watched as a drop came out of it and fell into the bag. How did that work? Sally was interested, but she was tired. Again. Another question for later. ¡°Would you mind helping me to bed, and no I don¡¯t have to pee. Oh, and let me know if you want to wash my gown so I can cover myself with a blanket.¡± Maybe she was getting the hang of dealing with the boy. The boy untied her, carried her to the bed, lay her down, and covered her with a blanket. Sally tried to tuck it around her shoulders but she fell asleep mid-tug. Chapter 5
Sally woke, warm and comfortable. Her bed was nice. She snuggled down. Just a little more sleep before she had to get up.
Her eyes popped open. She could hear the trickling of water! That wasn''t right. She sat up, or tried to. Instead, she ended up having to turn onto her side, work her arms under her body, then heave herself up. Eventually, she was sitting and supporting herself with her wobbly arms. Success!
After yesterday''s revelation, Sally had decided to focus on things she could do something about. Which, granted, wasn''t much. She was reintroduced to the bathroom troughs and that was about all she could handle. As she flagged, the boy mentioned something about his grass needing light, then moved her blanket to another patch of grass near the center of the room. One obvious thing she could see was that overnight everything had grown! She called it overnight because she had slept quite a while, but the light was the same as always. Maybe there was no overnight.
Around her were a number of small trees, all the same size, looking like they were growing in rows. In fact, more than being the same size, the trees looked completely identical, but that couldn¡¯t be right! There were large patches of grass surrounding most of the scrubby brush growing in clumps around the room. Now that she was near the middle of the room she could see that there was a stream running diagonally across the room, in a slight depression. The floor was made of wood, so it was strange to see the water flowing on it. The stream appeared to come and go through the ends of the room, from raised sections, the one where the water exited was her bathroom trough.
She looked around, marveling at the oddness of the room. She peered through the windows at the building across the way. She hadn¡¯t really noticed much about it before, but now Sally could see that it was made entirely of glass windows that formed tiers. These tiers didn¡¯t form straight lines, they sort of oozed and flowed. It was very artsy.
Each end of the room had two levels of doors. On one end the boy was going from door to door, crouching down and waving his normal hand in front of each opening. The sensor thing was flying around the room, sometimes near the boy, sometimes going through the doors, and sometimes just hovering in place.
She tried to get up but found she was still having a lot of difficulty moving and couldn¡¯t manage it. Darn it! She didn¡¯t like this helplessness. Instead of asking the boy for help, she decided it was up to her to do something. The wheelchair was nearby, the boy must have moved it too. Sally stared at the chair. She would get on it... or not, but at least she would try.
She dragged herself across the floor. It was slow going. Her legs weren¡¯t any help, so she couldn¡¯t really even crawl, she had to pull herself along with only her arms. It took a while, but she finally got to the wheelchair. It was quickly evident that she wasn¡¯t going to be able to simply climb up onto it from the floor.
Looking around the room, she noticed that the troughs were lower than the wheelchair seat there was a buildup of dirt and grass next to them that would provide a bit of a ramp. She sat up as high as she could and formed a plan. She would drag herself, the IV stand, and the chair over there, around that, past the other part, and then to the trough that was waaaay over there. Then she would haul herself up onto the trough and transfer over to the chair. Easy! No problem. Besides, she could always call for help if she needed to.
Sally started her trek, pushing the chair and IV stand so that they rolled ahead in the general direction she wanted to go, then she pulled herself up to them, and repeat. Her arms were really wobbly, her legs were useless, and this whole thing was hard, but she would do it!
A little twinge reminded her she shouldn¡¯t doddle. It seemed that she needed to pee quite a lot. Probably a less devastating side effect of whatever had been pumped into her when she was in the hospital room. Sally modified her task list, she would get up on the trough, pee, and then climb onto the wheelchair. Excellent plan.
At the halfway point she took a break. Really not the first break, but this was the first planned one. She had a drink and watched the boy, who was still peeking into the end rooms. He had to know she was out and about, but he was letting her do her own thing.
Enough rest, time to finish the job.
Even after leaving the IV stand behind, the second half was very slow and frustrating, but she persevered. Finally, she managed to drag the chair over to the trough and work her way up until she was sitting on the edge. Along the way, she enjoyed an impromptu butt dunking in the stream, but only one. Sally celebrated the success of the first half of her task by peeing. It felt good. She was fairly proud of herself. In one day she had gone from having to be hauled everywhere, to be able to slowly drag herself around. Even better, she didn¡¯t need the kid to hold her up when she went to the bathroom.
She rested for a while then reached for the wheelchair. Her hand hit one of the arm supports and it was immediately obvious that she¡¯d forgotten to set the brakes, because the chair rolled a few feet away. She stared at it and willed it to come back, but it was apparent that her psychic powers were as strong here as they had always been. She had to get down, chase down the chair, return, set the brakes, and repeat the climbing process. A copious and steady stream of invective helped immensely. Sally¡¯s aunt had not approved of swearing, but there were times when it was necessary. One last mighty effort and she managed to transfer over to the chair.
She was startled when she looked around and found the boy standing right beside her. He was back to ¡­normal? The covering was over the opening in his forehead, and he had two ordinary hands. He was wearing the red pullover shirt, long blue pants, with no shoes or socks. Same as yesterday. Like ¡°overnight¡±, Sally wasn¡¯t sure if ¡°yesterday¡± was the right word, but it was good enough, for now. She looked at him. He stared back.
Time for some more answers.
Sally went over their discussions from yesterday, still having a bit of trouble keeping track of things. She was somewhere, for some reason, with him as a friend, helper, companion... or something.
There, that was all the questions answered, her work was done.
What about the boy? A robot, really? She thought it over. It seemed too pat. He had tentacles, and he wasn¡¯t very good with the social stuff. For instance, at the moment he was just standing, watching her and not moving even a little bit. Kind of creepy.
Yesterday she sort of went with the flow, but today she was feeling much more herself. That was, she was reasonably alert, and had higher energy levels. Some of what he¡¯d said yesterday she¡¯d just let slide, today she would try and get some better answers.
¡°Can I ask you some things?¡± she ventured.
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Yesterday you said you didn¡¯t know where we were, then you said we weren¡¯t on Earth. Why didn¡¯t you think thatlittle bit of information was important? I want to know! WHERE ARE WE????¡± Without waiting for an answer, she stormed on, ¡°And I¡¯m remembering more, waking up in the hospital. What the heck was that all about? What¡¯s going on? What are you? There¡¯s nothing like you for real. Aliens? Give me a break! This has to be some big joke, like a TV program. Where are the cameras?
Now that she¡¯d started her rant she couldn¡¯t stop. ¡°And where are my aunt and uncle? They wouldn¡¯t sign me up for this!¡± She was so charged up! Her heart was racing and she was panting. With a mighty effort, she managed to pull herself to a stop.
¡°Wait,¡± pant, ¡°wait... ¡®till I get my breath.¡±
She breathed deeply a few times. ¡°Let me start again... uh, no. Give me a sec.¡±
She took another breath, paused, then another.
¡°Ok, ok...¡± pant, ¡°ok¡­ first¡­ my throat is dry.¡±
She looked at the stream. ¡°Uh... can I drink that?¡±
¡°It is not advised you drink that solution,¡± the boy answered. ¡°As ¡°solution¡± implies, it is predominately water, but it has traces of substances that are incompatible with your biology. You should only drink from the IV bag; the fluid it contains has been tailored for you and has what you need to remain viable and to function adequately. Because it was designed to sustain you when in an unconscious state, it will be necessary to find a way to supplement it once you become more active.¡±
Sally understood most of that. She had a new worry. ¡°Wasn¡¯t that what they,¡± whoever they were, ¡°fed me to keep me asleep? Is that why I¡¯m so weak? I don¡¯t want to be knocked out like the way I was when you found me!¡±A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The boy responded, ¡°I have disconnected the feed of technologies that maintained your unconscious state.¡±
The boy just didn¡¯t talk like real people, but she got most of what he said. He didn¡¯t seem to be lying, but he wasn¡¯t really answering all her questions.
Sally thought some more. If this was some sort of prank show they wouldn¡¯t waste all the money they¡¯d already spent and just tell her. What she could do is pick at what the boy said until the real story came out.
¡°I don¡¯t understand. What do you mean ¡°technologies¡±? Don¡¯t you mean drugs?¡±
¡°No, a drug is typically a chemical compound. What was given to you was a mixture of various molecular machines that were programmed to maintain your biological machinery and keep your thought processes in a low energy state.¡±
Sally didn¡¯t know what to think. She had just finished high school, but she wasn¡¯t stupid. She had never heard about machines that could do anything like that. Even if they did exist they wouldn¡¯t be used on her. Heck, her health coverage wouldn¡¯t even pay for a Band-Aid.
¡°I don¡¯t believe you.¡± She glared at the boy.
They looked at each other. After a minute Sally couldn¡¯t maintain the glare. She was pretty sure the boy wasn¡¯t going to crack.
She tried something else. ¡°Ok, then. Are you sure I can¡¯t drink the water? How would you know?¡±
¡°I have done an analysis of your technology, and the water, and the results are conclusive.¡±
Sally jumped on that, ¡°How would you know? I haven¡¯t seen any labs or anything you could use.¡±
¡°I contain the necessary faculties within my body, it is part of the tools I have to facilitate the gathering of information. When I discovered you in the room I took a number of samples to determine your technology, and I also sampled the various substances entering and leaving your body.¡±
Sally shied away from what that implied, she¡¯d already had an example of what he meant.
Oops, she was starting to slip, she almost fell for his story. Darn it, she¡¯d been so full of energy, now she was losing focus and getting tired again. And thirsty.
What could she do?
Her thinking went back and forth for a while, should she keep drinking the fluid, or not? Well, there really wasn¡¯t any choice, and she had been drinking it all yesterday.
¡°Ok,¡± she said, eventually. ¡°Give me the tube.¡±
So far, her plan to uncover the truth wasn¡¯t going so well.
She wasn¡¯t ready to believe the boy, yet. When she had more energy, she¡¯d keep digging into the mystery of whatever was going on.
He handed her the tube. She examined it, then the stand. Maybe what he¡¯d said about disconnecting the bad stuff was true. Some of the lights on the boxes were dark. She gave in and drank.
When the bag was empty she handed the tube back to the boy and looked at him.
¡°About your name, you really need one.¡±
¡°I have no need of an individual moniker. If you need one you may designate it yourself.¡±
Sally guessed moniker meant name, so she asked, ¡°Do you have a preference?¡±
¡°No.¡±
Sally thought for a moment. He was kind of like a doll, even though he was sort of a person. Sally had never been much of one for dolls, but long ago she¡¯d had a particular one, a sort of sorry rag doll that had been her companion for quite a while. She had to admit that the doll¡¯s life had been hard, up until it expired in the wood chipper incident.
¡°Ok, then, I will call you Jon, without an h.¡±
When she was little she spelled the name without the ¡°h¡± because she had sounded it out.
¡°Just stay away from big machinery,¡± she snickered.
The boy, Jon, didn¡¯t respond. Sally took this as acceptance. It was tiresome to extract information from Jon, she would think of more ways to trip him up and hit him with them later. For now, she decided to roll over to the windows to see if she could pick out any details of this ¡°strange new world¡±.
With the new grass in the way, she had to roll back to where her bed was and approach the windows from that direction. This would require that she wheel the chair through the stream then up to the windows. No problem.
It turned out to be easier said than done. Her arms were better, but still weak enough that even wheeling through the few inches the floor dipped for the stream was difficult. Persistence paired with a little swearing eventually worked, and she made it to the windows. Looking down she could see a small ledge outside the windows and beyond the ledge, everything dropped off. She couldn¡¯t see a bottom. Peering up, all she could see was more of the building across the way.
Hmmm, no sky, no ground, she looked left and right, nothing but building. She tried to look through the windows across from her, but they were too far away and might be mirrored. All she could see was reflections of more windows. She turned back to the room.
Jon had gone back to playing in the doors. Sally looked at the stream that flowed to her bathroom trough. It went from the floor up to the trough and then left the room. There appeared to be a waterfall between the two levels.
It struck Sally that what she was seeing couldn¡¯t be right! How could the water fall up? She rolled over, and yep, the stream came across the floor to the ¡°waterfall¡± and then somehow flowed up to the higher level. Maybe there was a tube or something that she couldn¡¯t see? She reached over and put her hand in the water. Nope, no tube. Sure enough, the water was rising all by itself!
Sally played with the waterfall, um, water rise? water un-fall? ¡­ thing for a while. She wasn¡¯t sure what to call it. When she put her hand in the water she didn¡¯t feel anything to explain the mystery. The water simply pushed her hand in the wrong direction.
She sat back in the chair. This little thing nailed the coffin shut on any idea that she was anywhere normal. Her confidence that this was a prank was wavering.
Time for more questions.
Joy. Talking with Jon was such fun. In addition to the effort to get answers that she could understand, she might not want to hear what he had to say. Really, she didn¡¯t want to have to do this.
She looked around the room while she talked herself into quizzing Jon.
Wait, what? There was some movement in one of the clumps of bushes! Sally stared, but for a moment she couldn¡¯t see anything. There! More movement! There was something small and brownish rooting around in those bushes. Maybe it was one of Jon¡¯s rabbits!
Whatever she had seen was diagonally across the room, near where the stream entered. Sally slowly wheeled closer. Very slowly. She had crept up on squirrels when she was younger and had learned to be very quiet and stealthy. As a kid, she had thought of it as her one super-power.
Sally approached where she had seen the movement. It appeared to be a loaf of fur. Maybe it was eating the grass? Was it a rabbit, or more like a groundhog? She couldn¡¯t tell.
She stopped about ten feet away from where the thing was rustling around and watched. Whatever it was remained partially hidden by the foliage but Sally was patient.
Eventually, the creature edged onto the floor area. It looked like a small carpet of fur which rippled as it moved, but she really couldn¡¯t make out much in the way of details.
Sally coughed. Just a little. The results were dramatic. Way too many bony legs shot out from the creature and started scrabbling at the floor, then it spun in circles a few times until it caught some traction and shot off toward one of the hallways. At the same time, Sally yelled and tried to climb over the back of her seat to get away, but only managed to turn the wheelchair around.
Sally panted, and eventually calmed down. A little. Through her pointless defense, she had kept her eyes glued to the creature, which was now long gone.
She berated herself. Well, that was useless! All she¡¯d done was scream!
She looked at the place the creature had been foraging. It had left behind a gift of droppings. Sally jumped a second time as the pile of droppings started moving in small random circles.
¡°What the hell?¡± she exclaimed, but once was not enough, ¡°What... the... hell?¡±
The pile suddenly broke apart into a bunch of smaller parts, which headed for the foliage around the area and disappeared into the brush.
Sally just sat, breathing rapidly. Her first thought was that she had to move where she slept. Her second one was another ¡°What the hell?¡± as was her third and many more.
Jon appeared beside her. ¡°I see you met the rabbits.¡±
Sally stared at him. ¡°That was no rabbit! I don¡¯t know what it was. What was it? Some sort of rabbit-spider thing? What the hell, I mean heck, is going on?¡±
Then she looked at him more closely. ¡°Wait, did you just volunteer something without me having to ask?¡±
"I have been working on resolving the typical behavior with which you would be familiar. It took time to develop a compromise between my default mode and one which you would expect. I have implemented an approach which I posit will make you more comfortable. I have also gauged the level of information you can handle and the use of vernacular you expect. I will modify my methods as events dictate.¡±
¡°What?¡± Sally forced out. "What?¡±
He looked her in the eye and then said, ¡°I speak gooder now.¡±
Sally laughed, and then laughed some more. She had gone from a world that didn¡¯t make sense to another world that didn¡¯t make any better sense.
Eventually, the laughter receded to giggles, then tapered off.
She calmed down, took a breath and then looked at Jon. ¡°If I understand what you said, which I don¡¯t entirely, you mean you have done something to be able to talk to me more like a normal person? Is that what you said?¡±
¡°Yes, essentially.¡±
A wave of exhaustion rolled over her. She hadn¡¯t been awake very long and once again she was almost completely drained of energy.
¡°I''m not sure I can take in any more, right now. I need to eat something and sleep some more.¡± Then she had a thought, ¡°But, I don¡¯t want to sleep with the things that, that¡­ rabbit left behind. By the way, what was that spider-rabbit thing? Is it dangerous?¡±
¡°It is a creature that fills the ecological niche that an earth rabbit does. It is not really dangerous, except when cornered, and there are some questions about its presence that I want to have answered as well. As to what it left behind, these are both droppings and its young. They are meant to distract predators. The young are a pest, similar to fleas. My analysis shows you and they are biologically incompatible. You cannot digest them, and they will not survive biting you, although their bite would be an inconvenience. I will take steps to ensure they do not bother you.¡±
Sally thought about what he¡¯d said. She wondered, ¡°I¡¯m not sure I can call that thing a rabbit. It isn¡¯t like any rabbit I have ever seen! What is it called where it comes from?¡±
Jon looked at her. ¡°The closest I can come is...¡± and suddenly his head was surrounded by a bunch of sparkles with bits of some sort of string fluttering through them.
Sally stared at him. Eventually, the light show died down.
This raised even more questions, but Sally was too worn out to chase them down right now. She simply said, ¡°Ok, spider-rabbit it is.¡±
She rolled over to the IV stand, had a scrumptious meal, rolled to her bed, and fell into it. She dreamed of little bugs carrying the bed away. Chapter 6 When Sally woke, she lay in her bed for a while, just thinking about things. It was probably time for her to put a real effort into becoming mobile, except she just wanted to lie under her covers. She¡¯d totally lost track of day and night because the light never changed. She could probably ask Jon, but it was a pain to not just know. She also felt a little hollow inside. Probably the liquid diet was catching up with her. She had expected Jon to have found something to supplement her diet by now, but he hadn¡¯t said anything. As far as Sally could tell, he spent all his time checking the doors, over and over. She didn¡¯t really understand him, but if she could move on her own, then she could look for food by herself, or at least do something along with Jon. It was time! The day to excel! Or at least to try and crawl. First, she had to get moving, but she was feeling lazy. So, instead of doing anything useful, she reached over and pulled at a bunch of grass sticking out from under the blanket. It felt more like plastic than normal grass. She tried to rip out a few strands, but they didn¡¯t break, so she pulled as hard as she could, and still couldn¡¯t pull any of the blades out. This was yet another strange thing. How had the spider-rabbit done it? She would have to watch more closely if one of them wandered into the room. Back to the business at hand. This wasn¡¯t going to be pleasant. Sally dragged herself out of bed and over to the wheelchair. Today her arms were working fairly well, so she tried a few ways to haul herself up onto the seat of the wheelchair. She found that if she pushed up to a kneel, then it was possible to pull herself onto the seat, wiggle around, and end up sitting normally. After getting her breath back, she went about going to the bathroom and eating. Along the way, she repeated her butt dunking comedy routine. Dang, the water was cold! Relieved and refreshed she tried to drum up some enthusiasm about convincing her legs to cooperate. She took a deep breath. Bad idea. It reminded her that her gown was getting somewhat ripe, and she could use a bath. She only had the one gown, so if she washed it and herself she could probably use the blankets for cover, or just go naked. She wasn¡¯t overly shy and well, whatever, Jon didn¡¯t seem to care. Sometimes you had to do what you had to do. Just not right now. She would relegate bathing and laundry to the to-do-later list. Enough procrastinating! Time for the real work of the day. Sally rolled back to her bed and threw the extra blanket on top of the other two. She climbed onto her bed and threw two of the blankets around to make a blanket path, away from her bed. This was her cunning plan to spare her knees. She started out crawling. Her arms were doing okay, legs not so much. It took a lot of convincing to make them do what they were supposed to. When she got on the last blanket she grabbed the previous one and threw it ahead to continue the path. After about fifteen minutes, she¡¯d managed to cover six whole blanket lengths and was totally spent. Her legs were trembling and barely supported her. She collapsed. Crawling, along with her morning routine, had used up all of her energy. She realized she was currently stranded an impossible distance from the wheelchair. Time for a short nap. She dozed for a while, rallied, then commenced the long trek back. She made it, although she had to take a lot of rests. Surprisingly, her legs were shaking less than at the halfway point, but she was sweating as if she¡¯d run a marathon. That was enough for now. She rested for another minute, or ten, then heaved herself onto the wheelchair seat. She looked over where Jon was playing with the doors. It was time for more answers, or different questions, at least. She rolled herself to the door Jon was currently crouched next to. He was in tentacle mode and held his normal hand by the corner of the door. Sally looked closer. She had been wrong, even his normal hand had something in its palm that looked like a lens. More body mods. She was becoming used to the new normal. ¡°What are you doing?¡± She asked. ¡°Checking this room for significant issues.¡± ¡°Haven¡¯t you done this, like, a hundred times, already?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ...This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. ¡°Um, why?¡± Sally was sure she would have to do the old cross-examination to nail him down, but Jon surprised her. ¡°It is just as important to check information as it is to acquire it. There is information in repeatability. The data can be regarded with a higher degree of trust when it is verified.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t you get bored?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Well¡­ okay then. Since you have thoroughly checked these doors and verified that there are actually... uh, rooms on the other side, then what is inside these rooms?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, exactly. I have sensor readings, but I have not physically verified them.¡± ¡°You mean, in all this time you haven¡¯t gone in and checked out what''s inside? Aren¡¯t you curious? Oh, don¡¯t answer. I know, no.¡± ¡°I have physically investigated the small rooms connected to the previous atria I traversed. The contents consisted of various items from a number of cultures, mainly degraded foodstuff, various materials for construction of common items, and other small items used in day-to-day living. I have current observations and sufficient previous samples to know to a high degree of probability that these rooms contain similar material. In the low likelihood that they are different I will revise my probability tables, but for the current time, it is more important that I ensure my source of higher value information remains secure. By higher value information I refer to the instances that cause an increase in the variance of the statistical representation of my analyses of events.¡± ¡°Huh? What? Are you saying that you think something is more important than what is in these rooms? What would that be? I think you said you have already been through a bunch of rooms, and they are basically the same? The only thing different about this room is us¡­ wait!¡± Sally paused. ¡°You mean me, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°What is special about me? I''m just a girl from a little town, stuck in, well, wherever we are.¡± ¡°No, you are not.¡± Not what she had expected. ¡°What?¡± ¡°When I entered the hospital-room analog I analyzed you using multi-dimensional imaging and a thorough chemical and atomic analysis. You are overtly what you think, a twenty-first-century girl from mid-America. You have many of the expected genetic and environmental markers to substantiate this. There are, though, a number of indicators present that show that you were constructed, much as I was.¡± Sally was flabbergasted! What the heck was he saying? She yelled, ¡°I grew up just outside Parkersburg, Iowa! My mom and dad died when I was a baby, and I was raised by my aunt and uncle. I went to school there and graduated from high school last year. I remember all this! I don¡¯t know what you are talking about! You don¡¯t make any sense!¡± Jon responded, ¡°Sorry to upset you, it is normally my task to answer questions and provide support. I spend a great deal of effort in building my knowledge base and checking the validity of the data. I spend even more effort correlating facts than actually adding new information because data without verification is not useful. What I am doing here is a compromise between my drive to find new information, and to protect potential sources of high-value unique data. As we concluded, this source is yourself. I can now estimate, to a high degree of likelihood, where we are, why we are here, and I can eliminate some alternatives of how we came to be here. You must understand, this is the sort of analysis I was made for.¡± Sally stared at him. This very dry presentation helped her calm down. She was still upset but was ready to admit that wherever they were, it wasn¡¯t anywhere she knew. At least Jon appeared to have some of the answers. Sally sat and attempted to come to grips with everything, which took a while. Fortunately, Jon was patient. Eventually, she broke the silence. ¡°I want to know more, but¡­ this is all so...¡± She didn¡¯t know what to say. Jon looked at her. ¡°Nothing I can tell you will fundamentally alter our situation. It is best to regard what I will say as an intellectual exercise. We can talk about the details later. I have calculated that there is a high probability that we are in a dimension of the multiverse that is called the Infinite City because that is indeed what it is. What you see around you goes on forever, and is populated by everything that is possible. The city changes to accommodate the inhabitants. We are in an area that is reasonably friendly to your species. However, one anomaly is that it is very unusual to have an empty space that is as large as we have here. The city is infinite, but it is also densely populated. This leads me to the conclusion that we are in an artificial island, fundamentally a spatial eddy in the City. ¡°A thorough analysis results in a very high probability that a high-level entity has arranged for it to be so and that our presence here is not accidental. I need to gather further information to resolve our situation in more detail. ¡°In the larger scheme of things, it is not unusual for people such as us to be knowingly or unknowingly involved in some complex plot directed by more advanced beings, and we may never completely understand what is happening. This can be because we will never have enough information, or that the situation is so arcane that we cannot understand it. Not that we should consider ourselves stupid, but it can be likened to explaining calculus to a dog.¡± Sally went over what Jon had said. Maybe the two of them were involved in something so complicated not only would they never know why, they may not be able to know why. Sally really thought about what this meant. ¡°Woof,¡± she said. Chapter 7
¡°So, let me get this straight. I was stolen and cloned, but now I''m in a private zoo, and, probably maybe, you are my zookeeper, and, in spite of what I remember, you cannot find any evidence I actually existed on Earth, except, again, your information probably came from whoever, whatever, is running this experiment, so maybe it''s false, or maybe not.¡±
After this summary, Sally was out of breath. It was a few ¡°days¡± later, she had made progress in being able to walk, and could now move a few steps when holding onto a wall. She had washed herself and her gown, both had been getting pretty rank, and she¡¯d left the gown to dry while she slept. Nothing else had changed, except that spider-rabbits had wandered in and out of the room. Sally was getting used to them.
Jon and Sally¡¯d had a number of conversations, which she had privately named her morning punch-in-the-face.
¡°And,¡± she continued, ¡°as far as you know it¡¯s at least two hundred years later than I think it is. You¡¯re going to see if you can make a better estimate, somehow. Earth is a closed planet because people are stupid and couldn¡¯t handle access to the larger universe because it¡¯s a madhouse out there. Oh yes, except there were some people who managed to improved themselves, somehow, and they were let out. But, for the most part, for everyone left behind, life remains sort of the same as I remember it.¡±
Sally and Jon were sitting at the end of the main room, which Jon insisted she call an atrium, getting ready to enter one of the little rooms Jon had evaluated but never gone into. One reason why they¡¯d decided to step up the exploration was to get Sally some exercise, but an even more pressing need was that her higher level of activity was making it critical that they find better food.
Jon spoke up, ¡°Also, I haven¡¯t found any indication that there are any radio, microwave, laser, subatomic patterning, or quantum resonance links active in this region. I¡¯ve even looked for more esoteric means of communication and all my searches have turned up negative. This lack of signals is very unusual, since everything runs on information.¡±
Sally added this little tidbit to her pile of not very helpful information. She¡¯d given up trying to understand everything Jon said, and usually just accepted what she could. At least, she tried to understand the gist of what he told her, even if she couldn¡¯t understand the details. Which was a lot of the time.
Once or twice she had made the mistake of asking for clarification and had discovered that it was a good way to be inundated with gibberish masking as information. To his credit, Jon tried, and she felt that she could eventually understand more of what he was saying, but not without a lot of explanation. It would take a concerted effort on her part, and a lot of work. For the most part, she postponed it for later... much later.
Anyway, it was time to explore! Sally was excited. She was aching for a change from the drudgery of her physical recovery and the constant beating of her ego from the discussions with Jon. She just wanted to do something.
She decided she would start with a pep talk.
¡°Ok team. We''re ready to go, here¡¯s the plan: I will rush in slowly, and when the huge many-teethed, multiple-eyed beast attacks, I will marginally slow it down before you, Jon, deal with it. You will mourn my passing.¡±
Jon responded with all the enthusiasm Sally had come to expect, which was none.
Sally wasn¡¯t to be denied. She turned the wheelchair toward the door of the nearest little room.
Jon blurred and was suddenly between her and her goal. His hand detached and flew around them once and then into the room, with Jon following.
Sally just sighed and followed after.
Each door to the smaller rooms was simply a rectangular hole in the wall with nothing to close it off, and as she entered, the walls began glowing. For some reason they hadn¡¯t responded to Jon. She looked around, and as empty rooms went, this was one.
Jon, for his part, had his third eye open and was scanning the walls, floor, and ceiling with a variety of lights and sounds. Sometimes the light was extremely bright and changed colors, sometimes looking like a laser making patterns, and occasionally there were flashes of characters.
The walls and ceiling followed the plan of the atrium and halls, consisting of a plasticky white substance with two bands of wood. Jon had insisted that almost everything, including the walls, floor, and windows, were actually made from the matter of this universe, and just looked like other things. This material was impervious to just about everything and couldn¡¯t be scanned through.
Jon finished whatever he was doing and approached her chair. Sally watched as his open third eye suddenly was covered by the metal disc, and she noticed his hand was back on.
¡°This room appears to be empty, and scans as similar to the typical empty rooms I have investigated previously,¡± he reported.
¡°Any idea why the walls glowed for me but not you?¡± she asked.
¡°I think it is because I do not need the light, but you do.¡±
¡°Does that mean the room knows we are here? Is something watching us?¡±
¡°Yes, and yes. It is always best to assume you are being watched. One of the factors in a technically advanced civilization is that there is never any real privacy. In particular, the Infinite City has gods. These are also called controllers, or the equivalent. Different names for the same thing.¡±
This was great. Just great. Sally certainly hadn¡¯t been thinking about this while she had been wandering around in her less than adequate gown. She groaned, ¡°Wait until pictures of me hit the internet. A million followers¡­probably not. Who cares about a naked primitive, anyway?¡±
Oh well. Nothing she could do about it.
Jon started toward the door.
¡°Wait!¡± Sally shouted. Jon stopped.
¡°If video games have been any use, they¡¯ve taught me to check before I go back to the previous room for anything new that¡¯s shown up.¡±
Jon looked at her with an annoyed version of the same non-expression he always wore. ¡°You have a point.¡±
His hand flew off, through the door, and he did his little check of crouching by the door and quickly flashing his remaining hand into the opening, like it was a camera. It probably was. After a moment, he stood up and left the room.
Sally did a little happy dance in her chair. Jon wasn¡¯t perfect! She basked in her glory for a little while and then headed for the door.
Sally had a sudden thought and turned back to face the room. Jon had told her that the way that the inhabitants changed the walls and rooms was to do something like praying to the gods, or whatever ran this place. Then he gave a bunch of examples of how this was done, but she hadn¡¯t understood anything he said. It was all math and stuff. One thing she could understand, though, was praying for divine intervention. She had been a high school student, after all. It was worth a shot.
¡°Oh, great and wonderful gods of this infinite universe of loveliness, show me any secret passages and compartments, because, well, why not?¡±
That was fairly lame, but, whatever.
Nothing changed. Maybe next time.
They checked all of the rooms on one side of the atrium and didn¡¯t find anything worthwhile, just garbage, like Jon had said. To access the upper level Jon carried Sally up the ramp, where he put her down so she could shuffle along behind him. They could¡¯ve hauled the wheelchair up, but Jon wanted to get her out of it as much as possible.
There wasn¡¯t much to see, the only difference in each room was a few feet of variation in the floor dimensions, and the kind of garbage. They moved to the other end.
In the lower level room, they found a small pile of cloth, but it disintegrated when Jon poked it. Sally was relieved when the powder didn¡¯t try to run off. She shuddered when Jon tasted the dust that remained, but he didn¡¯t seem to notice as he informed her that the powder wasn¡¯t suitable for her to consume.
Jon carried her up to the second floor. He scanned the empty rooms from the outside and entered one of them. While he examined the room, she stood in the doorway and watched. Standing and moving were okay, if she held onto the wall.
Jon walked out of the first room, past her, and on to the next. Sally entered the room he¡¯d just left and leaned on the wall. As with the other rooms, the walls and ceiling started to glow when she entered.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
Sally was getting tired and discouraged. ¡°Oh, glorious gods of this universe, blah blah blah, show me stuff.¡±
On the floor in one back corner of the room, the outline of a square started glowing with a golden light.
¡°Jon, Jon, Jon, JON!¡± she yelled.
There was a loud snap and Jon simply appeared in front of her. He¡¯d moved so fast he seemed to teleport.
He stopped and froze, staring at the glowing square.
¡°Look! Look what happened!¡± Sally squealed.
A pause, then he said, ¡°Humph.¡±
Sally looked from the glowing square to Jon.
¡°What does humph mean? Good, bad, what?¡±
¡°I have searched through a huge number of documents, novels, movies, and interviews, and humph seems to be the appropriate response.¡±
¡°Well, can we see what is there? I prayed to the universe and it listened. Ooooh, this is so cool, just like a real-life computer game.¡±
Sally thought for a minute, and then asked seriously, ¡°Are we in a game? Do you think?¡±
¡°It is part of my processes to try and uncover inconstancies that would indicate that sort of deception, and I have not found any, to date. Being immersed in an artificial reality is not an unheard-of situation. It is generally recommended to treat everything as real, but remain vigilant and watch for clues that may indicate otherwise.¡±
He paused and added, ¡°This situation underlines that I am not infallible. It does imply that the information I have may not be as complete as it should be. This, as well as other facts, such as my appearance as a small human boy, and the depth of the information I have concerning Earth, implies a tailoring of the data I have been absorbing, and that this tailoring is aimed toward some unknown goal.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t care, don¡¯t care, can you open the door in the floor?¡± Sally rushed out. Actually, she had listened but priorities, you know?
Sally used the wall to work her way over to the square. She put her foot on the band of light. For some reason, Jon didn¡¯t stop her. The floor didn¡¯t feel any different here than anywhere else. Sally slid down until she was sitting next to the square. She felt around with her hands. Still nothing.
¡°Any ideas on how to open this? I assume there¡¯s something here and not just a glow-y square.¡±
¡°I have been trying a number of tests, but there has not been any response, and except for the light, I cannot detect a difference between that region and the floor in general.¡±
Sally yelled ¡°Open Sesame!¡± Nothing.
She leaned over and pushed and pulled on the area of the square nearest her. Still nothing.
She hit the floor and yelled, ¡°Open, you stupid door!¡±
The door swung up to lean against the wall, forcing Sally to scrabble back out of the way. She sat for a moment.
¡°Humph,¡± she said.
The glow in the floor had extinguished, and the door opened onto a dark space. The light from the room only dimly illuminated a few feet of the floor of whatever was below.
Jon¡¯s hand flew past, and down into the hidden room. Lights and sounds emanated from below as it scanned. The sensor flew back up and attached itself to Jon¡¯s arm.
This had become a normal event for Sally by now. ¡°Ok, can we go down? Is there a ladder, or something? What¡¯s down there?¡±
Jon walked over to the opening and stepped in. There was a thump as he landed and then the room lit with scanning energies as he walked out of sight. He returned, walking slowly.
Sally jerked back as he jumped back up through the trapdoor. That had to be at least 8 feet!
¡°I can lower you down, and you can see for yourself.¡±
Sally wasn¡¯t so sure. She was still weak but had faith that Jon knew what he was doing. She scooted over until she was sitting on the edge, with her feet dangling. Jon came up behind her, gripped her hands in his, used his foot to shove her butt forward, and then lowered her into the hole. The walls began glowing as she dropped. Sally¡¯s feet touched the floor. She looked up and saw that somehow Jon had managed to end up lying on his stomach. He let go and Sally pulled her gown back in place and then looked around as she rubbed her hands, which were sore where Jon had held them.
The room was not very large, just a short dead-end hallway. It was lined with open-topped bins that held a variety of things. Sally moved herself along, holding onto the bins for support. She worked her way down the row while examining the contents of each bin. It was like rooting through boxes at a flea market, but far more important! Most of the bins contained seeds and roots, but one had something that was probably cloth. Whatever was stored here seemed well preserved. She touched what was in several bins and nothing disintegrated.
With a thump, Jon landed behind her. He walked down the bins tasting the contents of each one. When he was done he returned. ¡°This is good. You can digest the contents of six of these bins, and they will go a long way to supplementing your diet. I can modify a few of the rest to fill in the remaining needs. This should be sufficient for a complete diet for four months, and a partial, but adequate, supplement for two more.¡±
Out of the blue, Sally was struck by the sudden knowledge that she was stuck in this place, probably for forever! She froze where she was, quite lost.
Unexpectedly, Jon came over and put his arm around her. Sally was a usually touch-me-and-die type person, but the attempt was appreciated. They stood there for a few minutes until Sally started to feel a bit awkward. Sure, Jon had been carrying her everywhere, but this was a bit different. It wasn¡¯t too bad because a hug from Jon was kind of like being held by a crowbar. This thought caused a small chortle to squeeze out. She looked down at him.
¡°How did you know I was having problems?¡± she asked.
¡°A surprising number of documents pertaining to human relationships state that when a female exhibits non-linear behavior there are a number of methods to deal with the situation. I find myself lacking flowers, chocolates, punching bags, or hundreds of other choices, but I am supplied with an infinite number of hugs I can share.¡±
Oddly enough this made Sally feel a bit better. It wasn¡¯t the hug, but more the attempt that pointed out that she wasn¡¯t alone. Jon might be the strangest person she had ever met, but he was here, and he tried his best. She took a deep breath, then extracted herself from his arm, and looked around. She was sure there were going to be more shocks, and maybe more moments like this. She would just have to be tough.
¡°Jon?¡± She asked ¡°Do you know anything about that bin full of cloth? Can I use it to make clothes? It won¡¯t fall apart, or, cause a rash, or anything?¡±
¡°It should be adequate. It is a processed version of chitin that is very durable and is a good choice for rough use. Additionally, I can use it to make backpacks and other items, and since it is a very rare and sought-after commodity it would be a good trade item if we ever have the need. A few of the bins contain what are regarded as spices, which you should avoid, and some high energy density foods, most of which are compatible with your biology.
¡°Whoever or whatever stored the items in this room made very good choices for a fallback cache for times of need. I have no idea why everything was stored here, or what happened to the entities who stocked it.¡±
¡°How do I use the cloth? Are there, like, scissors, and thread, or whatever?¡±
¡°That is not a problem. I can tailor clothes for you, as well as carrying bags and any other items we may decide we need.¡±
Sally was curious how this would happen, but when Jon said he could do something, then there was no doubt he could. She had learned that when he wasn¡¯t certain he would usually give what she called ¡°footnotes¡±. That is how she thought of his statements about percentages, likelihoods, and assumptions. She wasn¡¯t sure how his mind worked, but she was getting a little more of an idea.
Her immediate problem was that she didn¡¯t have a good idea of how she would get out of the storage room. She probably wasn¡¯t strong enough to be boosted out. As usual, Jon had a plan. He startled her when he jumped up and out of the room. He then reached down for her and pulled her up until she was sitting on the edge. It was very impressive. It also really drove home that although he looked like it, he was not a little boy.
Jon jumped back down and started passing sheets of the cloth to her, which she piled on the floor.
When they were done, she edged out of the room and carefully inched down the ramp to the main floor. At the same time, Jon tossed the cloth off the ledge then jumped down. He gathered up the sheets and carried them to where the bed was laid out.
Sally rolled the chair over.
¡°What type of clothing would you prefer?¡± Jon asked. ¡°I would suggest something light, but practical. Once you are mobile, it is likely we will be moving around a significant amount.¡±
Sally thought for a while, debating her options. She didn¡¯t need anything too complicated, all she needed was a simple pull-over and pants that covered her knees. All the crawling she had been doing had taught her the importance of knee protection. She told him what she thought and they discussed the details.
Once Sally explained her ideas, Jon went to work. He spread out a few sheets and ran one finger over them, following a pattern only he could see. Sally was surprised when the cloth split apart where he¡¯d touched it. He then butted two edges together, ran his finger over the join, and they bonded with a nearly invisible seam. Sally was amazed.
She watched as he made a top and pants, along with cutting some strips for lacing and putting appropriate holes in the clothing to allow for adjustments to make them fit. All in all, he was pretty impressive. The clothing he made was simple but functional.
Jon had also cut strips from one of the blankets they¡¯d brought from her hospital bed to make a loincloth that would work as underwear. After watching the vomit disappear, Jon had told her that the blankets were made from a special material that would absorb body fluids and convert them to base elements. They didn¡¯t even really need cleaning. This took care of a few problems Sally had been reluctant to bring up. Jon, on the other hand, had rattled on with way too much detail about how the material dealt with menstruation, sweat, anal leakage, and involuntary urination.
Sally tried on a top and pants, they fit amazingly well. She felt much better now that she wasn¡¯t dressed in a perpetual peep show.
Jon went on to make two more outfits and some carrying bags. When he was done he went back to the hidden room and filled the bags with stuff from the bins.
Sally looked at the food he had retrieved. It was just a bunch of sticks and seeds and didn¡¯t look very appetizing.
Jon watched her as she stared at the... kindling. ¡°Go ahead, this will give you enough energy that your recovery to full functionality will happen much more quickly.¡±
Sally thought the seeds looked to be the safest bet. When she put one in her mouth she found it was more like gum than she¡¯d expected. In spite of having no real flavor, it really started the saliva flowing.
Maybe it was okay.
She chewed, and chewed, and chewed. Eventually, she swallowed the last of it.
Next Sally picked up one of the sticks. It was quite thick, and when she tried to take a bite, she just put a few teeth marks in it. She started gnawing and finally worked a few small pieces off and doggedly chewed on them.
It tasted just like some random stick would taste. She swallowed and decided that was enough for now. She ran her tongue around her mouth. The wood had left a bitter aftertaste that a drink of the IV fluid didn''t remove. Maybe she should scrape her tongue with her fingernails?
Instead, she stated her opinion. ¡°Bleccch!¡±
Jon was no help. ¡°Chewing on the sticks will also be good for keeping your teeth clean. You should keep that in mind.¡±
Sally drank some more and eventually, the taste subsided.
At this point, she decided it had been a reasonably productive day. They had food, at least for now, clothing, and she was becoming more mobile. Time for a rest, then back to the grind. Chapter 8 Sally woke, rose, and started walking toward the stream for her morning ablutions. She took a few steps before she realized she was walking on her own! She took a skip and nearly collapsed. But she was walking! She finished her business, changed into another outfit, and went over to where the food was piled. Jon had powdered most of the sticks and put the powder into bags. It was more compact and easier to move in this way. Palatable? Well¡­ no. The powder was still bitter. Sally suspected that she would get used to the new diet, in time. She had found that eating a gum seed after the wood helped somewhat. The important thing was that Jon had been correct about the new food; she felt much better. Jon was still wandering around the room, doing whatever he did. He never seemed to get bored, even when carrying out the same investigations over and over. Sally called for him to come next to her. Once again, it was time for a bit of a talk. ¡°So, Jon. Do you think we can do a little exploring today? I think I can walk a lot better, and, I have to admit, it¡¯s getting a little boring staying here. Maybe nothing too hard, but at least we can look down one of these hallways a short way. Maybe?¡± ¡°I have done an analysis of your mental and physical prowess using six-hundred-thirty-seven points of¡­¡± Jon stopped. ...9, 10, 11... Sally had stopped listening and was counting her teeth. Someone had told her it made it look as if she was paying attention. Jon wasn¡¯t fooled. He paused and then simply stated, ¡°Okay. Nothing too strenuous.¡± Sally was surprised. When Jon had talked to her yesterday, he had said something about optimizing an interaction emulation model, which Sally thought meant that he was trying to understand her better. Her experience, though, was that people often talked but never really delivered. Maybe he really was changing? This, more than anything else, made her believe that he was some sort of alien. After hanging a bag of her food and the re-filling IV bag on the chair, Sally pushed it over to the hallway that led to her hospital room. She looked back at Jon, who hadn¡¯t moved. ¡°Are you coming?¡± Sally called out. Jon didn¡¯t answer immediately. Sally had noted that since they¡¯d found the hidden room, it seemed that he took much longer to do anything. Like he was questioning every decision he had to make. Sally was starting to suspect that he had a hard time dealing with anything that wasn¡¯t already in his databanks. Jon had admitted that even though he knew about the hidden room, he still wouldn¡¯t be able to find it. He¡¯d then added that due to his inability to detect the door, he had massively increased his search methodology to find a way to correct this deficiency. Sally had told him to buck up and deal with it, and Jon had taken her advice as he always did. He ignored it. After a while, Jon walked over to the hallway, detached his hand and sent it ahead. The two of them followed. It took much less time than Sally expected to return to the room she had been found in. Nothing had changed. There were still the hospital sounds coming from the speaker outside the room, and the room itself was the same as they¡¯d left it. Sally went over to the window and opened the curtains. Outside the window was just a glowing wall, nothing else. It was all fake. Jon waited by the door. Sally walked past him, back to the hallway. ¡°Do you have any idea why this pretend hospital room even exists?¡± she asked. ¡°I do not have enough information and no particular scenario has a higher probability than any other. It is a persistent thread that this lack of understanding is common when ensnared in the schemes of higher entities. Often these questions are never adequately answered.¡± Sally turned and started pushing the chair down the hallway in the direction they hadn¡¯t explored. Jon hurried to get in front of her. His hand exited the room, flew past, and began questing ahead. After a few more minutes the hallway opened up into another atrium. Jon stopped and Sally followed suit. She assumed he was reviewing whatever the sensor was sending back. Eventually, Jon started walking again. They entered the room, which was very similar to the one they were camped in. Sally sat in the wheelchair while Jon investigated the little rooms at each end. The large open area was in the same overgrown state as much of their room, without the patches of grass or trees which Jon had planted. When Jon was satisfied that nothing sinister lurked anywhere, Sally went into each room, entreating any gods that were listening to show her their secrets, but nothing happened. They continued down the next hallway and went through five more atriums with no significant finds. Jon said it should be atria, but Sally thought that sounded stupid. Sally sang to herself. A-tree-a, A-tree-um, A-tree-dee. She was starting to get bored and tired. Jon had to push her in the chair to the next room. After another fruitless search, Sally looked at Jon. ¡°Well, this is certainly exciting. Let¡¯s do one more room and then go back. We can talk about what we want to do after I rest a bit.¡± Jon had no comment and pushed her into the unexplored hallway. They traveled down it for a few minutes, getting close to where the next atrium should be, when Jon stopped abruptly. ¡°This is different,¡± he said, staring down the hall where his sensor had gone. Sally couldn¡¯t see anything special. Jon was silent. ¡°What?¡± she asked. He didn¡¯t say anything, just resumed pushing her forward. She could see that where the hallway ended there was a mound of... something, on the floor. The sensor hovered above it. As they got closer the mound resolved into a shaggy pile about three feet high. It really looked like long fur. Sally held up her hand to stop. ¡°Am I going to like what this is?¡± She asked. ¡°No.¡± Aw crap. She got up from the chair and inched around the pile. It turned out to be something dead that looked similar to a good-sized bear: four legs with black foot pads and claws, and a very shaggy head that was pulled down onto its chest. The shaggy head was resting on the head of something else. It took a moment for Sally to register what she saw. Tucked into the beast¡¯s chest, as if it was trying to protect it, was an emaciated corpse of a human. The skin was all shriveled, the eyes were closed and sunken, and the teeth were showing in a grimace, but it had the same frizzy black hair Sally had and was wearing something similar to the same hospital gown she had been wearing. Sally felt suddenly weak and sank to the floor while she stared at the bodies. After several minutes, she shook her head, dredged up a bit of energy, and stood up. This was difficult to process, but she had known there were going to be more shocks. ¡°Big breath.¡± She took that breath, and then another. If you can breathe you can deal. At least that¡¯s what her aunt had told her. Usually, it worked.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. She looked at Jon. ¡°Do your stuff, tell me what is going on here.¡± Surprisingly, Jon had waited for her. He looked at her for a moment, then he looked at the bodies. ¡°This seems to verify some options and narrows my list of what is happening to the two of us. An initial study shows two expired entities, the cause of death: unknown. One of the bodies is very similar to you, and, at this point, I expect that you and she are copies of the same individual. The shaggy creature is a lifeform that has no name that you could say and is a moderately advanced species. The proximity of the two implies that they had a mutual relationship, the nature of which will become clearer as I progress in the investigation. Immediately, I can see that there are modifications to her gown to make it more resilient, and her socks, pants, and shawl are constructed from a cloth woven from fibers of the fur taken from the other entity, which I will call a bear. ¡°I have noted that the female shows signs of good health at the time of death, and callouses on her feet imply that she had been active for a fairly long duration. I conclude that she had some way to feed herself and was active until her demise.¡± Sally thought she was dealing with this situation well, taking in information and processing it without getting too emotional. Maybe it would hit her later. The fact that the human body was completely dried out made it seem less real. Jon continued. ¡°I do not have enough information to determine exactly what has occurred. I will investigate more thoroughly, although I am sure there will be many unresolved issues. Maybe you can look around and see if there is something we can learn from the scene?¡± Sally knew what he was doing. He was trying to distract her. That was good. She wanted to be distracted. Jon was done with his summary, so he approached the bodies and began a more thorough examination. It was both fascinating and difficult to watch. He started by scanning with a very intense light show, then he moved the bodies apart. Sally was still impressed how he could do this with no sign of effort. The shaggy creature must weigh a significant portion of a ton. Then, to her disgust, he went around tasting everything. At this point, Sally decided she would follow his suggestion and look around the room to see if there was anything she could find that would contribute to the effort. And not watch him taste... stuff. The atrium they were in had the long abandoned and overgrown look of the others, but was lacking the smaller rooms on each end. There was just the hallway they had entered and another hallway on the opposite end. Sally slowly walked diagonally across the room, following the ever-present stream. Near the other end of the room, she found the remains of a fire. Sally had no idea how to start a fire under these conditions, but it appeared that it was possible to burn the overgrowth that each room had. She poked in the ashes and turned up one of the legs of a spider-rabbit. Maybe the shaggy thing could eat these, or maybe they had found a way to prepare them so the other girl... Sally? could eat them. She looked over at Jon, then quickly turned away; he was in the process of cutting the bodies apart. She really didn¡¯t want to know. Getting up from the fire, she walked over to the other hallway, and peered down it. It too seemed different from all the other hallways. From what she could see, after a fairly short distance, it ended in a dark room, or something. She stepped ahead, then jumped as Jon¡¯s sensor-hand flew past. She followed. As she neared the dark opening, she could make out some details. It was lighted, but much less brightly than the hallway. She cautiously crept down one wall, although tiptoeing along a white glowing wall was not really any form of sneaky. She reached the end and peered out. Apparently, there was an end to the rooms, because she was now outside. The floor of the hallway kept going straight and became a trail that ran on a wide ledge beside a cliff wall of windows that went up as far as she could see. The trail continued off into the distance, where it appeared to veer left into a gap between the windows. To her right was the massive chasm that she had seen through the windows of the rooms. On the other side of the chasm was nothing except windows, extending out of sight in all directions. She walked down the trail for a short way, keeping away from the edge of the chasm, since there wasn¡¯t a guardrail and it appeared to be an infinite drop. The windows beside the trail were mirrored and when she tried to peer through all she could see was herself looking back. Were there other people on the inside making fun of her? Probably not, but maybe? She felt like Jon; she had ¡°no information on this topic¡±. She snickered and turned back to the trail. Maybe her other self had come this way? There was no dust on the trail so she couldn¡¯t tell. She wondered if Jon could use his nose to detect smells the way a bloodhound could? She would have to ask. Sally was starting to get a bit antsy and decided she had gone far enough. Turning around, she headed back just as Jon¡¯s sensor flew past, returning to the hallway. This time she didn¡¯t jump. She hadn¡¯t seen where it had gone, but Jon probably knew more about what was out here than she did. She walked through the last hallway and across the room. The bodies were now in pieces, spread about the area. Sally had expected they would be all lined up and organized, but that wasn¡¯t the case, everything appeared to be scattered randomly. Even though it wasn¡¯t obvious, she was sure Jon had an underlying plan. And as gruesome as this whole thing was, the lack of blood made the situation less difficult to accept. Jon was standing at the side of the room, among the remains. Beside him was the girl¡¯s head whose eyes seemed to be watching her. The whole scene seemed unreal. Maybe it was? In spite of everything, Sally was starting to tire. She walked over to the wheelchair and collapsed, or rather, gracefully descended into it quickly. She was too worn out to laugh at her own joke. As Jon approached, she looked at him. ¡°I have very good news,¡± he stated. ¡°It seems that the other you had received an infusion of self-establishing micro-processing fibers that allowed her to digest some of the local fauna, and to drink the water from the stream. These fibers act as a filter for your gut, altering, isolating, and encapsulating the harmful items you cannot use. This processing allows the undesirable materials to pass through your system with no adverse effects.¡± He held out his hand, in it was, yep, another blackish powder. ¡°Swallow this.¡± She looked at the powder and back to him. ¡°I thought we already had a solution?¡± ¡°Yes, but this is better. We will not have to find as much special material if you swallow this, assuming it works as expected.¡± She was leery, but he did have a point, so when he passed the powder to her, she swallowed it. It tasted as bad as she had come to expect. She drank from the IV bag to get the grit out of her mouth. ¡°You know, really, can¡¯t this stuff ever taste good?¡± she griped. Then she had a thought. Oh, my god! ¡°Wait,¡± Sally burst out. ¡°Uh, where did, I mean, um¡­ where did you get that¡­ I mean¡­ what I just ate?¡± This was going to be bad. ¡°I scraped them off the stomach and intestines of the other you.¡± Sally blanched. Her thoughts were tightly focused. Keep it down, don¡¯t puke, it will be worse the second time. You can take it, he¡¯s just trying to help. She fought her gut to a standstill, took a breath and told herself not to kill him, she probably couldn¡¯t, anyway. Jon looked at her. "You took it better than I predicted.¡± After glaring at him to no effect, she took an internal audit and, in spite of her current annoyance, found herself almost completely spent. ¡°Why don¡¯t you tell me what you have found, and then, while you pretend you don¡¯t know, I will tell you what I have found.¡± Instead of starting his report, Jon took control of the chair and started pushing her back down the hallway. He didn¡¯t seem to care about the mess he had left behind. He talked while they walked. ¡°I have no startling information. The female body was a copy of you. The evidence is that she was approximately ten years older than you are, and was in relatively good health at the time she died. ¡°The other entity is a well-respected species, known for its nurturing ways. It certainly helped the other you survive. One anomaly is that it should have left data files behind after its death, and these are missing. ¡°With this evidence, it is almost certain that we are caught up in some scheme. What is less certain is whether more than one player is involved.¡± ¡°Do you think we are in danger?¡± Sally asked. ¡°Yes. If not immediately, then in the long run.¡± ¡°Do you think there¡¯s anything we can do? Are we helpless?¡± ¡°I do not know. We can keep on investigating and see if we uncover. Nothing I have learned to date mandates an immediate change.¡± ¡°Well, then, the big question. Why me? What is special about me? Why are you here, and the bear thing?¡± ¡°I have no information to adequately answer those questions. I am confident that you could not survive without help, but why this environment is geared in this manner is not obvious,¡± he said. They finished the trek back to their campsite. Sally pushed herself out of the chair, ate one of the seeds, and prepared for sleep. In bed, she wondered about the life of the other her. She wondered about being a copy. She wondered if Jon knew more than he told her. She wondered about whatever or whoever was watching. She came to no conclusions and dozed off. Chapter 9
Sally woke to a new dawn, just like the old dawn, day, evening, night, same light as always. She looked around from her bed. Jon was standing close by, instead of the usual re-checking of the rooms.
¡°Hey Jon. Good morning.¡±
¡°Morning.¡±
¡°Is it morning?¡±
¡°Close enough.¡±
Sally paused. Then added, ¡°You are getting much better at banter.¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
Silence.
¡°Maybe not.¡±
More silence.
¡°So, what are our big plans for today?¡±
¡°I think we have exhausted the avenues of investigation we can follow at this location. Time to move on.¡±
Sally was surprised. She had been thinking much the same, now that she was in adequate shape for a bit of a challenge, and, well, there really wasn¡¯t much else to do, here.
¡°There are times I miss the internet,¡± she mused out loud.
She was somewhat surprised when Jon replied. ¡°I understand your feeling, I am missing the data that I had access to as I developed. Here the average information density is low.¡±
Feeling a weird sort of camaraderie, Sally went about getting ready for her day. As she dressed, she called over to Jon. ¡°Do you have a change of clothing? All you wear is that red shirt and blue pants.¡±
¡°This outfit is actually part of me. Would you want to change your skin?¡±
Sally thought about it, ¡°Well, honestly? Yes. That would be cool. Might fix some issues we have on Earth.¡±
She looked over at Jon. His shirt and pants were now a white background with blue and red polka-dots. Sally started laughing so hard she had to sit down.
When she recovered Jon was back to his normal red shirt and blue pants.
¡°Well, I can say, life here has its moments,¡± she said, finally.
She continued preparing for her day. She ate some of the powder and a few seeds, then looked at the IV bag.
¡°Jon, do you think I can drink the water in the trough now?¡±
¡°The filters are probably well established, so, yes, it should be okay. You might want to watch for signs of explosive diarrhea.¡±
Sally flashed a look at him. ¡°Really?¡±
¡°No. You will be fine.¡±
¡°You are kind of a jerk, sometimes.¡±
¡°Thanks, I¡¯ve been working on it.¡±
While she¡¯d been getting ready, Jon had folded up her bed, packed up their meager possessions, and put everything on the wheelchair. He was currently crouched by a patch of grass, gathering some and putting it into a bag. She had noted that he had occasionally eaten a few blades of the grass, and he¡¯d told her it wasn¡¯t something he absolutely needed but it made his processes simpler.
She went over to the up-waterfall part of the stream.
¡°Well, here goes nothing,¡± She cupped her hands, scooped up some water, and drank it. Surprisingly, it actually had some taste and it wasn¡¯t horrible. First thing here that wasn¡¯t something she had to ¡°get used to¡±.
She drank some more, then called over to Jon. ¡°Should we make something to carry water?¡±
¡°We have the IV bag. If it is empty and we can¡¯t find a stream I can run back and get water. I think we are fine as we are, for now.¡±
Sally thought it over. She concluded that he was probably right. Water seemed to be easy to find, and stored water wouldn¡¯t be as good as the fresh stuff, plus it was heavy. If she was by herself she would have carried the water, but, like he said, Jon could deal with any issues. Not for the first time she realized how much she depended on him.
Packing was simple, and in a very short time, they were ready to go. They left the room, with Jon¡¯s hand preceding them. Sally didn¡¯t look back. She wasn¡¯t one for regrets.
A quick look when they reached the ¡°hospital¡± showed no change, no new tenant. The fake hospital noises faded behind them as they continued on.
At the last room, they threaded through the remains of the bodies Jon had dissected. Sally wondered if she should do something with the body parts, but didn¡¯t know what. There wasn¡¯t any place to bury them, and cremating would take a long time and might not be that successful. She could throw them over the cliff outside, but that didn¡¯t seem right either. In the end, she just left them as they were.
They stopped at the exit to the trail.
Jon turned to her. ¡°After this point, we will be in a region that I cannot thoroughly investigate before we travel through it. It is likely the other Sally and the bear came this way, so there is some indication we will have no problems, but I can form no conclusions as to what we will encounter.¡±
Sally looked at him. ¡°What''s the difference? We don¡¯t know what is going on anyway, so¡­ onward, stout fellow!¡± She¡¯d heard that somewhere.
The outside trail went a small distance with the drop-off on one side, then turned to pass between a couple of windows. At this point, they found themselves walking along at the bottom of a crevasse with windows on both sides as the trail continued on ahead of them and curved out of sight.
Their reflections accompanied them. She¡¯d asked Jon if he could see through the windows, he told her that from the outside the windows were opaque to his senses, just like the walls were. It seemed that you could see out, but not in. Sally thought about it. Maybe they weren¡¯t windows at all, but just mirrors? Probably not. She exercised her prerogative to have an opinion with no data.
Sally suddenly remembered the thought she¡¯d had yesterday. ¡°Jon, I wondered if you can use your nose to, I don¡¯t know, um, sniff around, and see if the other two came this way?¡±
Jon paused. ¡°Reconfiguring,¡± he said.
He got on his hands and knees and began sniffing the ground. For some reason, he used his hands to brush the trail. He crawled back and forth, then over to the walls and did the brushing thing up and down the windows, as far as he could reach, snuffling the entire time. Sally tried not to laugh.
After a while, he got up and walked over to her.
¡°Yes, they were here, quite a while ago. There is only a tiny trace of scent from the bear, just on the trail where it placed its feet. Humans, on the other hand, spew cells everywhere. There are scents from the other Sally spread fairly evenly over the trail and walls, so I conclude that she rode on the bear.
¡°The preponderance of evidence indicates that they passed here only once. This leads to the conclusion that the other Sally did not originate in the same hospital room as you.
¡°I am going to modify my feet to detect these traces. It will be less sensitive than my other sensors, but will provide a continuous data stream while we carry on normal activity.¡±
Sally was having an internal crisis! Her brain was screaming at itself. The battle surged back and forth as she walked. Ultimately, it was a lost cause.
Much against her will, her mouth uttered, ¡°So. Do your feet smell... anything?¡±
¡°The same. Also, I admire your attempt at restraint¡±
¡°I¡¯m so sorry.¡±
With that over, Sally mused about the whole situation. Jon had always had the means to analyze smells for tracking, but he hadn¡¯t thought of doing it himself. She would have to think about what that meant.
They wandered down the trail for another hour, or so. It remained unchanged, just walls and the trail. For the most part, Jon pushed the chair. The air had no particular odor, and it was reasonably warm, nice for walking, and the light was adequate without being too bright.
Sally looked over at Jon, ¡°Why is it so nice here? It¡¯s just about perfect for me.¡±
¡°A fundamental property of this universe is that it can tailor regions for the benefit of its inhabitants. If multiple types with different needs are in the same area it does its best to compromise. This can lead to some instances where extreme individuals are barred in order to keep the region comfortable for the other inhabitants.¡±
¡°Do they fight over this? I''m pretty sure humans would.¡±
¡°Physical confrontation is frowned upon. The range of available technologies means that the results can be devastating. There¡¯s no winner if there¡¯s nothing left. Rather, a point of contention is usually a basis for negotiation. One common description is that it is a very intricate dance.
¡°It takes a high level of complex thought to succeed, and, unfortunately, most humans are too primitive to compete. In the case of Earth, my information is that it has been isolated to allow for a chance to improve.¡±
Sally thought over what he had said. ¡°Then why me? I''m probably one of those primitives. In fact, why two of me? It doesn¡¯t make any sense! I''m nothing special!¡±The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
¡°I am perplexed, as well. Your case does not match any situation I am aware of. I have developed some low probability scenarios, but nothing conclusive. I need more evidence.¡±
They walked on.
Sally was thinking about all the stuff Jon had told her since she woke. She thought about the other Sally and the fact that both of them were clones. She didn¡¯t feel any different, but Jon was sure she wasn¡¯t the original Sally, he wasn¡¯t even sure there was an original Sally. If there were two Sallys that she knew about, then it was likely there were more. Jon had said other Sally had been around for ten years longer than her, he also said that it was 200 years later than she thought. Doing some simple math meant that there may be twenty Sallys kicking around. That was a lot of Sallys. What was going on? Maybe Jon could help her figure things out.
It took a while for Sally to decide what she wanted to ask. First, she had to see if what she thought was right. ¡°So, you told me that it¡¯s 200 years past what year I think it is.¡±
¡°Actually, what I told you is that I have information from Earth up to the year 2234.¡±
What? ¡°Does that mean it¡¯s 2234 now?¡±
Jon didn¡¯t immediately answer.
¡°Jon?¡±
¡°As I told you, my Earth data extends to 2234.¡±
Sally thought about it. Jon was always very exact when he spoke. Avoiding a question was new.
¡°Jon, what aren¡¯t you telling me?¡±
After an unexpectedly long pause, Jon advanced, ¡°We are also in a different dimension. There is a large non-linear temporal schism between the dimension Earth is in and this one.¡±
Sally looked at Jon. ¡°I have no idea what you just said.¡±
¡°I do not have sufficient data to accurately predict what the elapsed time is.¡±
Sally knew Jon well enough, by this time. ¡°So, if you can¡¯t be accurate, can you make a rough guess?¡±
Another long pause. Then, ¡°Yes. I have enough information to make a coarse estimate. It has taken an appreciable effort to verify the numbers. I warn you, the amount of time is significant.¡±
Sally waited.
¡°Many thousands of years have passed.¡±
The realization of what this meant hit Sally hard. She stopped in her tracks.
¡°Well,¡± she said, then continued, ¡°Actually, crap, crap, CRAP! This is just more CRAP piled on top of a pile of CRAP that is on top of more CRAP.¡±
Letting it all go didn¡¯t help matters. She froze in place, feeling the weight of the universe on her shoulders. She didn¡¯t know what to do.
Eventually, she took a small step and stopped. Then another step. Another. She put enough together until she was trudging down the trail.
Seething anger had replaced her good mood. Jon followed, pushing the chair with their possessions piled on top. One wheel had developed a squeak.
Sally wasn¡¯t a petite girl. For most of her life, she¡¯d managed to keep her weight and temper under control. Living in a small rural town had helped her keep in shape, working various physical jobs on local farms. This meant that although she wasn¡¯t a violent person, she could be formidable if she needed to be. There was only one time when she¡¯d gotten violent, that was when she¡¯d put Tommy Miller¡¯s head through a fence when he didn¡¯t take no for an answer. She felt that way now, there was some Tommy Miller doing whatever he wanted without expecting consequences.
Ohhh, there will be consequences! Yes, there will!
Trudge, squeak, trudge, squeak... on they went.
Who would do something like this to her? Why would they do it? What was the point? She was so very pissed at whoever had set this up.
Maybe she was powerless, maybe she was an ant trying to bring down an elephant, but by God, she was one angry ant! Something had made a lifelong enemy.
Slowly Sally reigned in her anger and started to become aware of her surroundings. The walls were further apart than before and the trail was becoming a road. Peering ahead she could see that it eventually widened into a large open area.
Sally looked up. There was a ceiling far above them now. It was so high that the haze in the air made it difficult to see. Maybe it was faintly glowing too, the same way that the walls in the hallways and atriums did. She couldn¡¯t tell, but it wasn¡¯t dark.
She walked on with less stomping than before. Jon followed.
Eventually, he said, ¡°We should probably stop and you should eat and drink something. My sensor shows this area keeps opening up and becomes similar to a covered stadium, but miles across. You do not absolutely need more water than we have, yet, but it would be good if we found a source. In retrospect, we should have packed some.¡±
Sally had calmed enough to listen to his advice. She ate and drank the IV bag dry. She had been perspiring a little and had no need to pee. It looked like she was going to be thirsty if they kept up the current pace, since the IV bag took quite a while to fill. Jon was right, they should have brought extra water.
She looked over at Jon. ¡°I''m sorry about how I acted back there. What you said was really upsetting. I''m also sure you could go a lot faster without me, but I guess we should stick together. Because, well... I don¡¯t know.¡±
¡°Let me check, hmm, hmm, tsk, tsk. Nope. I checked my schedule and I have nothing else to do.¡±
Sally barked out a laugh and then thought for a bit.
¡°That actually sounded almost normal. The way you talk seems to be changing. How come?¡±
For a moment Sally regretted the question, Jon tended to hit her with way too much detail, to him nothing was simple. But she¡¯d already asked.
Jon answered in the flat tone he usually used when he was conveying facts. ¡°I mentioned to you that the main point of my existence is to store, retrieve and verify data. To do this I have a limited ability to analyze and emulate a normal interface with the entities with whom I am conversing. Speaking with you is very far from the typical way I interface. It is a very slow method of information transfer. I am stressing the capabilities of the emulation system, and have to utilize a fairly large portion of my correlation engine to comb through Earth files such as plays, novels, movies, university studies, and so forth, to find a reasonable way of interfacing with you. I use your responses to try and optimize the process.¡±
Sally understood most of that. It appeared he was telling her that talking to her wasn¡¯t easy for him and he was trying different things to see what worked the best.
¡°I¡¯m sure you are better at talking to me than I would be trying to talk in whatever way you are more used to,¡± she responded.
¡°Word.¡±
¡°Umm... don¡¯t do that. Nobody talks that way, anymore.¡±
¡°Okay.¡±
They cleaned up, retied the food bags, and walked on.
Sally guesstimated that it took about four hours before much changed. They were now traversing a very large open area. The trail behind them had faded out of sight, so they seemed to be surrounded by walls looking much like a huge arena. New structures ahead of them slowly grew larger as they continued on. These objects, which might be some sort of weird buildings, were scattered around the center of the immense arena. After all the distance they had walked, they were still miles away from the opposite side.
Jon¡¯s sensor had flown ahead. Sally assumed it was looking at the buildings.
¡°Any idea what those are?¡± she asked.
¡°The initial scan showed them to be large indeterminate structures made of various materials. A closer examination and searching through my databases show that they are, in fact, large indeterminate structures made of various materials.¡±
¡°Oh.¡±
They walked on. The IV bag had partially refilled, so Sally emptied it. She was fairly thirsty all the time, now. Her thoughts began to wander. Her feet hurt. Why were there no bugs? Did she smell bad? She let her mind drift through these and other similar world-shattering thoughts. Anything except how much time had passed on Earth.
Eventually, one structure loomed above them. Close up, it looked like a half-constructed building made of multi-colored girders that had partially tipped over and sunk into the floor. It was huge, but tiny when compared to the open space of the arena.
The floor they were walking on was the same as everywhere outside the rooms. Some sort of smooth hard substance. Around the building was an accumulation of dirt and a variety of scrub plants, like the atriums. The dirt tailed off as if it had been blown around by a wind, but so far, the air had been still, with maybe an occasional breath of movement.
Jon broke the silence. ¡°This is an interesting artifact. No two girders are made of the same substance, and almost all the elements are represented, along with a large number of extremely exotic materials. This structure should be exploding, burning, freezing, glowing, and radiating, but my tests show that it is safe.¡±
Sally wasn¡¯t really listening. She sat on some dirt with her back to one of the beams and wiped the sweat off her face. ¡°You don¡¯t say.¡±
¡°Yes, I do. That beam you are leaning against should be stripping your skin off and you should be in excruciating agony while you scream out your last seconds.
¡°In addition to that, there are no two joints the same in this entire structure. Rivets, glue, melting, interlocking puzzle pieces, and so on. There are even some for which I can find no previous record.¡±
¡°Well, now you won¡¯t be able to say that about those anymore.¡±
Sally was exhausted. She should be more alert. What Jon was telling her was probably important, but really, all she wanted was some water and sleep. So far, it appeared that she wasn¡¯t cut out for the life of an adventurer. Maybe when she got in better shape. She laughed, that was sort of a mantra for her life, wasn¡¯t it? She never seemed to get into the shape she wanted to be in.
She took a breath. ¡°So... is this going to be the thing that turns us into another pair of dead bodies?¡±
¡°No. My remote and local sensors indicate we are safe. These structures are very intriguing, and as we approached I maintained an ongoing investigation to ensure my conclusions concerning our safety, among other things, were valid. I cycled through my online sensors and reconfigured them for maximum resolution. The technology used here is something I have no record of, and this fascinates me.¡±
The long-winded Jon was back. Idly she thought that it was odd that he used the word fascinates. Probably his new way of talking.
Sally gathered some energy and waved her arm, indicating the structure. ¡°Is any of this water?¡±
Probably that was a stupid question, but heck, nothing here made sense, anyway.
Jon¡¯s answer surprised her. ¡°Actually, yes. There are tons of it available, except it is currently in various solid forms. One moment.¡±
Jon went still. The sensor hand flew by, and Sally watched it move a short distance away and up to a beam that, honestly, looked just like all the other beams. The hand flew around it a few times, bathing it with various lights, some of which were so bright that it hurt to watch. It then flew to the lower end of the beam and after a moment something fell down, bonging off of one of the other beams. The hand then flew to the top of the beam, sped up and hit the junction. Something shattered and the beam dropped, hit some beams below it, and burst into a huge blob of water which splashed down to the ground. When the water hit the floor, dirt and plants blew everywhere. Some of the water even made it far enough to splash on her, Jon, and the chair.
¡°Ta-daaa. Water.¡± It would have helped if Jon had used some expression, but he said it in his typical monotone.
Sally had leaped up when the water hit her. ¡°Ahhhh! Are you nuts?¡± she yelled with some emotion.
¡°I calculated that enough water would be captured in pockets in the lower structure to supply us for quite a while. Besides I wanted to test my estimates for how high you would jump.¡±
Sally unleashed a torrent of language that her aunt wouldn¡¯t have approved of. Then she stomped over and found a pool of water that was in the crook of a junction of two beams and drank until she was sated. The water had some dust in it, but she was almost certain that Jon would have warned her if it wasn¡¯t safe. Not that there was really much choice anyway.
She gave a little cheer and told herself, ¡°Go filters! Do your stuff.¡±
The drink helped her calm down, somewhat, but her hair was wet from the splash, and even though her clothes were waterproof, there was water beading on them. The whole area she was squooshing through was wet. The dirt had turned into mud, and there was at least one huge puddle large enough to be called a lake. She sighed and looked around.
¡°Maybe we should find a little less damp area for our camp. I can dry off and we can figure out what we want to do,¡± she suggested.
They moved a few hundred feet away to another part of the structure where there was a buildup of dry dirt and scrub brush. There they unloaded the chair onto the dirt. Sally spread out her blankets to make her bed, and sat on it. This was okay, not as good as grass, but better than lying on the hard floor.
Jon was just standing in one spot, gazing off into the distance.
¡°What are you doing?¡± she asked.
¡°My drone is gathering information. I am cataloging it and checking for similarities in my archives.¡±
¡°Sounds like fun.¡±
¡°It is what I do.¡±
Sally broke out some food and ate. While she was doing this, Jon took some grass from one of his bags and threw it on one of the patches of mud.
She looked at him. ¡°Isn¡¯t that sort of a waste of time? Once the water is gone the grass won¡¯t have any more to grow with.¡±
¡°That grass is not based on the biology you are used to. It will be fine.¡±
Jon was hard to figure out. Sometimes he was really robotic, sometimes he talked like a normal person, and here he was sounding like an older brother who was teasing you about something he knew and you didn¡¯t.
She opened the bag that contained some smaller sticks, removed one, and chewed on it to clean her teeth. Probably Jon could be a dentist, but she didn¡¯t want to find out.
Sally sighed. There were so many details to take care of when you were on your own. She walked a little way away, hid behind a pillar, and took care of business. When she was done she washed, climbed into the blankets, and immediately fell asleep. Chapter 10 Sally woke to another day in paradise. She yawned and stretched, then looked around. There was a lot more green than when she¡¯d gone to sleep. She rubbed her eyes to bring things into focus. Where there had been a small lake was now all grass. ¡°Humph,¡± she paused for a moment. She was getting a lot of use out of that word. She looked around. Jon was nowhere to be seen. Wasn¡¯t her problem. He was a full-grown little boy/man/robot... whatever. She got up. She was a little stiff, by ¡°a little stiff¡± she meant that she could barely move. ¡°This never happens to heroes in movies,¡± Sally griped as she struggled to sit up. ¡°They can get shot, run ten miles, fight the bad guys for hours and then act like nothing happened. All I did was walk and now it hurts to even blink.¡± Then she tried it, and yep, it hurt. She creaked around, getting ready for the day. Fortunately, the grass hadn¡¯t grown over the water caught in the crook of the two beams. Nothing bad had happened from drinking it yesterday, so she supposed the alien filter in her gut was working. She splashed some water on her face, then dug into their packs for some food. Easing herself into a sitting position, she snacked on some of the powder and seeds, which were as nasty as usual. She thought about expanding her diet. There¡¯d been the spider leg she¡¯d found in the fire that the other her may have been cooking. Maybe she should try munching on some yummy spider-rabbit? Sally looked around, but she couldn¡¯t see any evidence that they were in the area. She wondered if the grass would attract them. She finished forcing her food down and tidied up. Still alone. Where had Jon gotten to? She did her best impression of walking to move around the structure they had camped by and attempted to spot him. Having no luck, she scanned the other girder-type buildings scattered around the area, but still no Jon. She could see the wall of the arena rising in the distance and it was hard to tell, but if she stared long enough there appeared to be a lot of dirt, or something, piled up against its base. Still no sign of Jon. She was moving a little better and decided she could attempt some exercise and see if things loosened up. After a try at stretching, bending, and groaning she was arching her back when she saw a flash of something high up in the structure. Circling the base to get a better view she realized it was Jon. He¡¯d scaled the structure for some reason, probably to look around, or, really, who knew why? He was scampering back and forth, moving so fast that he blurred. He would stop for a while, then blur and move to a new place. It was sort of fascinating. Sally did some more easy stretches while she watched. Eventually, he descended to the campsite. ¡°Did you have fun playing up there?¡± she asked. He ignored her question. ¡°I now have a fairly good analysis of this artifact. I have no idea of its purpose but I do know how it was constructed. This is the reason field trips can be illuminating. I had absolutely no record of constructs even remotely like this.¡± Sally decided to return his ignoring with her own, so she asked, ¡°Well then, what are we going to do today? Continue on and head for the wall?¡± ¡°Yes, that seems reasonable. We can deviate a little way to look at the other structures along the way and see if they are similar to this one.¡± ¡°It looks like there¡¯s a lot of dirt, or something piled up against the wall. Any idea what it is?¡± ¡°Oh, you will see.¡± Although his demeanor hadn¡¯t changed, Sally still got the impression that he was actually excited about the pile of dirt. Probably more data. Dirt data. Data dirt. Dirty data. Ha! ¡°By the way, what happened to the scent trail we were following¡± Sally asked. ¡°Are we still tracking, or back-tracking, the two?¡± ¡°No. Once the trail started widening, the traces became indistinct and mixed with other scents, chemicals, and microscopic presences that I could not identify. It appears my existing archives do not have much in the way of information concerning what I will loosely term "scent traces" left by various entities. I¡¯ve opened a new archive to categorize this since I have very little information concerning the process of analyzing scents. It appears that this is a little-studied field. I am rather excited.¡± Delivered in his typical monotone. With nothing to keep them in this spot, they prepared for the day¡¯s journey. Jon took some time to design, make, and fill a couple of water bags out of the leftover cloth they had found in the hidden room. They rounded up the chair, packed, and started out. Their speed was a little slower today because Sally¡¯s soreness. One particular issue was that her feet hadn¡¯t toughened up. Jon offered to make shoes for her, but Sally declined, remembering how calloused her feet used to get during summer break when she was in grade school. "A little pain for a little gain," her aunt used to say. Over the next few hours, they took a meandering path toward the wall. Jon decreed that the other structures they passed were similar to the first, some larger, some smaller, and a few that seemed to be partly melted. Jon didn¡¯t volunteer any further information, and Sally didn¡¯t ask. The skeletal structures ended and Sally guessed that they had about two miles to travel before they reached the wall. Even at this distance, it loomed high above them. When she looked up she could see signs of a ceiling, but it was still obscured by haziness in the atmosphere. Sally was somewhat intimidated by the scale of the structure. Jon¡¯s sensor flying around looked like a tiny lost bird in the open expanse. As they neared the wall, the dirt began to take on more distinct shapes. Rather than a uniform consistency, it resolved into a mass of many things jumbled and packed together. There was a glitter of metallic objects, organic-seeming things, cloth, boxes, wires and tubes; just tons and tons of stuff. They stopped a few hundred feet back from the pile. It was immense, twenty or thirty yards high, and extending out of sight in both directions. ¡°Oh. My. Goodness.¡± Sally said as she took on its immensity. ¡°It is huge. If it was more organized you could call it a garbage dump.¡± ¡°This is¡­ significant.¡± Sally swore there was actually some emotion in Jon¡¯s voice. Sally thought that in another moment he¡¯d tear up like a little girl. If he were a girl and if he could cry. And if he had emotions. Sally decided to be practical. ¡°Let¡¯s set up camp, then we can start on understanding whatever this is. First things first. Water?¡± ¡°None we can trust. I will deal with the issue.¡± Sally stood in amazement as Jon blurred. He threw the things off the chair, grabbed some sheets of material, made some more bags, and streaked back along the trail they had taken hours to travel. He shrank into the distance, heading toward their last campsite. Sally watched as he disappeared, then waited a couple of minutes. She wondered if she should be doing something when one of the beams on the nearest structure suddenly collapsed. She kept watching for something more, but that was it. A few minutes later, just as she was starting to wonder what was going on, Jon zoomed into view carrying full bags of water. Sally was humbled to realize what Jon could do without her slowing him down. The practical side of her said she could only do what she could. The impractical side said, ¡°Yeah, well, but... crap.¡± Jon ran up to her and stopped. ¡°So. Where should we set up camp?¡± she asked. ¡°Here is as good as anywhere.¡± She thought Jon had just slammed everything down before he had raced off to get water, but when she went to organize the camp, it was apparent that Jon had already done so. He really wasn¡¯t human. She turned to comment about it, but found he¡¯d moved over to the pile and was now pulling things out and examining them. Sally watched for a while, musing that this was probably the biggest rummage sale of the century, or probably, ever. She too was starting to get excited. Who knew what was in this immense pile? Maybe some clues? Or maybe even some answers? Jon¡¯s sensor hand was flying up and down the pile, sometimes so far away that Sally couldn¡¯t see it. She guessed that in his excitement, Jon had given up on security. He was still pulling out things from the immense jumble, and placing whatever he picked up out in the open, in no discernible order. He would study each thing intently for a few seconds, put it somewhere, and then go get something else. Sally had no idea why he was doing what, but he probably had a plan. Maybe she would ask later, since he seemed busy. Sally realized that she was contributing pretty much nothing, so she walked up the edge of the pile to see if she could discover anything for herself. She didn¡¯t expect to accomplish much, but that made it easy to succeed. After walking along the edge and occasionally poking at things for half an hour, she started to realize something. Every so often the mass of stuff had been disturbed. Not to the extent Jon was accomplishing, but things had been moved out from the main mass. Someone else had been here before them.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Sally approached one of the places where things had been displaced. Obviously, the stuff that had been pulled out onto the floor and placed in some kind of order, metal in one pile, dirt, or at least organic looking stuff, in another, some sort of tentacles, or something like that, in a third, boxes and containers in a fourth, and so on. The piles were organized more for similarities in shape than anything else. It was something she could understand, rather than how Jon did things. She was sure Jon had some scheme, but, much of the time, she couldn¡¯t figure it out. Sally poked at the small pile of containers. Maybe she could figure out how to open a few of them? For once she actually thought about it before she did something. There was some chance that contained some surprise like exploding purple staining stink bugs. Best she be careful. The pile consisted of cubes, cylinders, weird multi-sided boxes, and even some sort of spiral tube. Two of the boxes were so heavy she could barely move them, even though they were quite small. She pushed and pulled, but they barely moved. They were heavy! She decided to leave them for now, mostly because she really wasn''t accomplishing much. That left ten other boxy things. She picked up one, a silvery cube, and turned it over and over, examining it closely. Each side was about a foot long, and the box itself was moderately heavy, a few pounds. There weren¡¯t any openings, but something was rattling around inside. She pulled, pushed, and tried to twist the sides. She even did a version of the hokey pokey, but nothing worked. She hadn¡¯t held out much hope for the hokey pokey method. Although she wasn¡¯t getting anywhere, she was nothing if not stubborn. She sat back and looked at the other containers. Was there a chance that some of them worked together? She selected a few that were similar to the cube she had, and tried fitting the edges together. After discarding a couple, she found a rectangular box that looked a lot like the silver cube, but bluer. She looked at each side of the bluer box and didn¡¯t see anything special. She felt it all over, and one side was a little rougher than the others. She put the cube down and picked up the first silvery one and felt all over it, too. It had a rougher side too! She put both cubes on the floor and pushed the rougher sides to face each other. She jumped when they snapped together like magnets! Success! Ish. Now what? Instead of two little square boxes, she now had a bigger rectangular box thing. She looked at the other containers but nothing else seemed to be similar to the two boxes she had been playing with. She sniffed. Something was burning. It wasn¡¯t coming from the boxes or little piles, so she looked at the main pile. A few wisps of smoke were rising from somewhere inside. Oh, oh! Probably not a coincidence. She tried to pull the cubes apart, but they were really stuck together. Twisting them caused even more smoke to pour out. Frantically, she pulled, pushed, twisted, and eventually got the two boxes apart by throwing them onto the ground and jumping on them. The smoke from the pile died down. She stared at the cubes for a few minutes, but they seemed to be safe. For the moment. She decided to leave everything where it was and walked back to where Jon was working, debating what she should tell Jon. She couldn¡¯t come up with anything that didn¡¯t make her look bad. When she arrived at the camp, he completely ignored her. Before publicizing her probably embarrassing and unsafe findings, she decided it was time for lunch, so she sat and ate as he sorted. Sally wasn¡¯t sure why she was avoiding telling Jon about her slight mishap. Actually, that was a lie. She just didn¡¯t want to look even stupider than she already was. He probably wouldn¡¯t care, but she did. Maybe it would be better if she brought everything back here to show him what she¡¯d found. At least, that would postpone things. After eating, she grabbed a bag of water and extra bags, then headed back to where she had left the cubes. Upon arrival, she kicked the two boxes even further away from each other, just to be safe. She watched everything for a few seconds, and after zero explosions, she started pulling at the main pile, trying to find where the smoke had come from, hoping to find something. It didn¡¯t go well. The main body of the pile was densely compacted. Her main achievements were a number of cuts and scrapes. She sat back on her heels, contemplating her lack of success. This wasn¡¯t working. She washed her cuts while thinking about her next step. She decided to give it one more shot, but only managed to wiggle out a few pieces of some sort of cloth, a tiny chunk of some unknown plant-thing, and a bit of dirt. Her hands were even rawer now, and she¡¯d bent a fingernail. This was stupid. Man was meant to be a tool user so she should be a man, so to speak. A quick look around didn''t reveal anything suitable, so she looked around at the organized piles spread out on the floor. One had a bunch of sticks, but they were either too small or too bendy. She kicked the other piles and a bigger stick rolled out of one. It was very strong and even had a pointed end. Perfect. Maybe this was what the others had used before her? She attacked, poking and prying at the place where the smoke had come from. It was difficult, but the stick worked much better than her hands. Although she still wasn¡¯t at one-hundred percent, by working slowly she could make some headway without becoming too tired. At one point she took a break and sat back, examining the pile, since there wasn''t much else to do. She blinked in surprise, then got up and looked carefully at some spots near where she was digging. Now that she knew what to look for, she could see that someone else had been using the very same stick she had to dig there. That was interesting. She wasn¡¯t the first. Maybe not even the first Sally. She put that thought away, not really ready to chase that demon down, yet. Sally returned to digging, and after another hour of alternating digging and resting she found an obviously charred area. A bit more digging unearthed (un-garbaged?) another cube. This one was orange, rather than silvery, with its corners cut off. The surrounding burned area made it obvious that this was what the other cubes had caused to heat up. She dug the cube out and poked around the area a bit more, but couldn''t find anything else of interest. She intended to bring everything back to the camp, but had definitely learned her lesson. After packing each of the cubes into different bags, she kept all three bags far apart from each other. She hung two of them from her belt, one on each side, and used a few drawstrings to make a rope so she could drag the third bag behind her. She carefully walked back to where Jon was working. ¡°Excuse me, Jon,¡± she called to him. ¡°Can we talk for a moment?¡± While he watched, she pulled out her bags and emptied them, being careful to keep the cubes separate, then told Jon about the area she had found and what she¡¯d done, admitting everything. She didn¡¯t want to, but even the smallest detail might be important. Her only compromise was that ¡°a whole lot of smoke¡± became ¡°some smoke¡±. Jon carefully examined the cubes, then his third eye snapped open and she heard clicks and a faint buzzing as he did something. He turned to her. The opening on his forehead still creeped her out a little, so she didn¡¯t look at it directly. ¡°This appears to be a type of subspace power tap," he explained. "Two of the cubes form a controller. Fitting them together in different ways will define how much energy leaks into the third item, which is the actual tap. It is a low energy version, a few kilowatts. The tap can power various technologies, generate heat, or infrared light. Variants of this idea are common in many cultures. It never runs out of energy and is relatively safe, unless it is enclosed in a limited space, then it can get hot, and melt everything around it.¡± Sally was almost certain that this meant he¡¯d seen what she¡¯d done. He continued, ¡°We may unearth items from this debris field that we can power with this tap, and we can also use it for heat and cooking.¡± Sally felt relieved. In fact, she felt proud of herself. She had found something useful and didn¡¯t die. ¡°What about you?" she asked. "You¡¯ve uncovered a whole lot more things than I did. What are they?¡± ¡°I have found a mixture of parts of things from a number of different cultures and civilizations. In themselves, they are just bits and pieces broken from larger constructs, but the unique thing is that they are together, here. So far, I have not been successful in developing a viable theory that adequately explains this conundrum. For instance, what we have here,¡± he waved his hand at a puddle of some sort of goo, ¡°is a philosophical discussion about the appropriateness of using purple for educating immature slugs, and this,¡± he indicated a metal construct, ¡°is the controller for a hybrid being¡¯s thorax stimulator. I found the discussion inside the controller. I have nothing in my archives to explain how this could come about. Most of the remainder of what I have arrayed here are equally eclectic and have the same sort of inexplicable relationships. I need more information.¡± He then gestured toward the main pile. ¡°Fortunately, there is an abundance of information. We simply need to keep looking.¡± Sally wasn¡¯t sure about that. She had assumed they would keep wandering to see if they could find a reason for why she was here, but apparently, Jon wasn''t going to leave this big pile of garbage, any time soon. She thought the matter over. Perhaps they would find something buried here to explain what was going on? Maybe Jon was right. Whatever. She certainly had no intention of setting out on her own. She was just... well, she needed Jon too much. Ignoring, or unaware, of her thoughts, Jon went on to explain how to control the energy tap, then he went back to his sorting, Sally fiddled around and set the tap to generate some heat. She dragged over another box to sit on while she warmed herself. It was a sort of a high-tech campfire. After a while, she dug up some supper, which was as bad as usual. Most definitely she wasn¡¯t getting used to it, although the food was keeping her going. If it was anyone else, they might get annoyed with too many interruptions, but Jon seemed immune. After some thought, she called him to come over. He finished what he was doing and approached the ¡°fire¡±. ¡°Sorry if I''m being a pest, but I have a few more questions." She waited for a reaction, but there was none. She continued, "Do you have any idea where this garbage heap came from?¡± ¡°I have not yet found any information to explain its existence.¡± ¡°Do you have any guesses?¡± ¡°I do not guess.¡± He¡¯d mentioned stuff like this before, but she¡¯d assumed he didn¡¯t really mean it. ¡°What do you mean, you don¡¯t guess? You can¡¯t know everything. Everyone guesses about stuff, all the time.¡± ¡°I do not. I will take input data and use it to look at my internal archives to find comparable situations and use what I find to deal with the situation. I am continually updating these files with what I observe, and with what I absorb from other data banks. If I find a situation for which I have insufficient information, I keep acquiring data until I can resolve the issue. ¡°I have the hardware to be able to deal with minor variants so that my internal processes do not have to match the external events perfectly, but this only allows for small deviations. I give percentages when the matching is less adequate, and these percentages must be above a certain level before I can conclude that I understand an issue.¡± ¡°How big is your database?¡± ¡°Very large.¡± Sally thought for a while. This whole process seemed pretty limiting. ¡°What happens if you don¡¯t have any information, but something really bad is happening?¡± ¡°In all but a limited number of cases I am indestructible. I will record the event and carry on obtaining data.¡± ¡°Um, what if I''m involved? I am very... destructable.¡± ¡°That is a complication.¡± Some complication! And, although Jon seemed happy being the way he was, Sally had a suspicion that if he were a bit different, he might be a more significant player wherever he was. ¡°Do you think you were made this way by whoever set up this... whatever it is. Experiment?¡± ¡°Perhaps.¡± This bugged Sally even more, although she knew a lost cause when it was shoved in her face. She thought about what he¡¯d said. Maybe she could help Jon expand his abilities? How the heck would she do that? After waiting to see if she had more questions, Jon returned to sorting things. Sally prepared for bed and went to sleep enjoying the warmth radiating from her discovery. She slept well, occasionally waking when Jon made too much noise. Chapter 11 Sally woke to the tenth day of living by the garbage heap. Even though there was now an extensive collection of junk spaced out on the main floor, they really hadn¡¯t made much of an impression on the main pile. Jon didn¡¯t seem to care; he just kept plugging away. She had stopped asking Jon for updates about what he had found. They were either too technical or completely indecipherable, like, what the heck was a strudd of an Indisul, anyway? What they hadn¡¯t found was a way out, or even something like a flying car, a working game system, an internet connection, or some way to make good food. Sally was getting tired of a diet of roots, seeds, and berries, except without the berries. There weren¡¯t even any spider-rabbits. Probably because they didn¡¯t want to eat toxic radioactive garbage, and there wasn¡¯t anything else to attract them to this area. Jon occasionally ate some of the pellets, leaves, and grass, but they weren¡¯t something she could digest. She was close to going back to where they¡¯d spent their first night in the arena to see if any spider-rabbits had moved in. Sally knew she shouldn¡¯t complain, but she did anyway. When she was tired of complaining to the gods of this place, she complained to Jon. After listening to her a few times, he had stopped giving her advice and she was pretty sure he did the equivalent of turning on an internal music player while she was ranting, but when she was on a roll, she didn¡¯t want to stop. She didn¡¯t complain all the time. She spent a lot of her day traveling up and down the edge of the garbage heap, trying to find something interesting. But, she was afraid to touch things after her experience with the energy tap. She kept imagining the worst that could happen and was half convinced she would cause a nuclear melt-down if she moved the wrong thing. Jon had taken some pity on her, or had tried to get rid of her, either way, he had his sensor fly around a large area of the garbage pile and had it paint the potentially dangerous areas a bright yellow color. He told her to be careful since there still might be something he couldn¡¯t detect, but she would probably be safe if she stayed away from the indicated regions. Sally wasn¡¯t really a timid whiner. Her real problem was that she was so far out of her depth that she didn¡¯t know how to deal with what was going on. She forced herself to start poking at the safe areas, and when she didn¡¯t die she started to get more into the work. After a few days, she¡¯d finally given in and asked for some shoes to protect her feet as she climbed the pile. Instead, Jon had found a set of planks and made her some skis. Using them she would be able to shuffle-walk on top of the densely packed garbage without struggling up and down the little dips and crevasses, and they dramatically reduced the chance of her feet punching through, chancing serious damage. Sally had grown up where people skied, but she had never learned. It turned out that she wasn''t a natural. Her first day had been spent learning how to get back up after she fell over. It would have been easier with some poles to help with her balance, but so far, she hadn¡¯t found anything suitable. Everything she tried was too short, too flexible, too heavy, or made her break out in a rash. She struggled on, and after a day of practice, she was falling less, but still not confident enough to hazard the main pile. At the moment, Sally was lying on the debris pile looking up at the distant ceiling, gathering her energy to get back up onto her skis for the, oh, probably fifty-millionth time. Jon wandered into her view and looked down at her. ¡°So, Jon. Are you going to make me some poles?¡± ¡°No.They are not suited for the debris pile. The odds of you leaning on a pole when it will not support you are too high. Using the skis alone is a much less dangerous mode of travel.¡± ¡°Thanks. It¡¯s nice to know that you are looking out for my best interests.¡± ¡°You¡¯re welcome. I have been thinking of a way you can contribute, and I would like to share the results of my investigation.¡± ¡°Well. You just happened to have caught me at an opportune moment. I do not appear to have anything else on my plate, right now.¡± ¡°That was my observation, too.¡± He continued, ¡°Much of the technology contained in this pile is not something you are familiar with. There are, though, some things you may recognize. Your pattern matching algorithms are most suited to your human experience and you have little in the way of racial, or other forms of group experiential memory transfer.¡± ¡°Uh-huh.¡± Sally kept staring at the ceiling. She was starting to get comfortable. That was good. if she knew Jon, and she did, it was likely to take a while until he got to the point. ¡°You also do not have much in the way of direct memory transfer capability. You do have, though, shown some ability to contribute by combining disparate bits of information to resolve methods and approaches that I do not have a record of. I have been pondering the best way to utilize this capability to maximize your contribution to the various stated and implied goals we are addressing...¡± And so on. Sally wasn¡¯t not listening. She found it was best to soak in everything Jon said and see if it eventually made some sort of sense. Jon did not appear to get offended when, occasionally, she found his lectures to be extremely useful for inducing slumber. Her estimate was that the current discussion might fall into that category. She probably should stay awake, though, because he had just given her a backhanded compliment. That was rare. She tuned back in. ¡°... by taking your time to use your skis to do an overall scan of the pile, there is a chance you will see relationships that I cannot, so, that would result in a mutual benefit.¡± ¡°Okay," she began. "You want me to try walking over the safe sections of the pile and see if I can form some sort of impression that might give us some insight?¡± ¡°Essentially yes.¡± ¡°Wasn¡¯t that what I was going to do, anyway?¡± ¡°Yes, I thought it was important to state the objectives.¡± It sounded to Sally that Jon was trying to come up with some sort of make-work project to keep her busy. Deep down she realized that compared to him, she was a huge zero. It just wasn¡¯t fair, no matter how you looked at it! She wasn¡¯t feeling sleepy anymore and managed to sit up, angrily struggling with the skis. ¡°So, Jon,¡± she started, and then completely lost it, ¡°WHY AM I HERE??? Really, what am I contributing? Basically nothing! It¡¯s depressing. Yeah, I have my moments, but compared to you, what can I do? I¡¯m completely useless!¡± She was well and truly on a rant. Jon watched her, patient as ever. This just ticked her off even more. She yelled about the unfairness of everything as she tore off her skis and threw them away. She leaped to her feet and began throwing anything else she could find after them. She blamed Jon, the garbage pile, the gods of this place, her skis, the food, pretty much anything and everything. After a number of minutes raging, she started to flag. Bouts of quiet were interspersed between periods of yelling. Slowly she wound down, stopped throwing things, and simply stood and panted. Her hair had come loose and hung over her face. Jon waited until it was she was done. He then waited a little longer. Eventually, he broke the silence. ¡°I am sorry, but do not have enough information to resolve this issue at this time.¡± Sally wasn¡¯t sure which issue he meant, but she didn¡¯t really care. She¡¯d had enough. Brushing past Jon, she stomped to the campsite. Jon watched her for a moment, then went back to his sorting. For no good reason, Sally fired up the subspace tap and sat in its heat, staring at the orange cube and trying very hard to think about nothing. She had no idea if it was near lunch time, or not, but she was hungry. She pulled a few seeds out of the bag and popped one into her mouth, chewing was good for using up her angry energy. It took a half hour, or so, for her to calm down, absorbing heat and chewing on the seeds. She looked at Jon who was industriously doing... something. She felt a bit bad about going off on him when he was just trying to help. It wasn¡¯t his fault, it wasn¡¯t her fault. It was the fault of whoever had brought them here. She was starting to develop a distinct dislike for whoever had done this. She sure hoped that they had a good reason for everything, at least one of her had died for whatever was going on. While she watched Jon work, she began to feel a little guilty. She was contributing even less than nothing while she sat here. She managed to roust herself, turned off the tap, and headed back to the garbage heap. She struggled up the slope to where she¡¯d thrown her skis. Jon had worked in this area and in the process had packed it and removed most of the sharp objects. She strapped her skis on, then stood up and immediately fell the wrong way, tumbling down the slope to the floor. Lying on the floor at the bottom of the garbage pile, she wasn¡¯t angry. She¡¯d used that up. This was not the first time she had tumbled all the way to the floor. Perhaps she should¡¯ve learned to avoid falling all that way the first time it happened. Or the second. Sally took the skis off, picked them up, and struggled back up to the top. As she should have done, she faced toward the back wall when she strapped on the skis, so she couldn¡¯t tumble all the way down to the floor if she fell. After standing for a while. she decided it was time to stop procrastinating and slowly shuffled out onto the main area of the pile. After some near falls, she finally got her balance and found herself shuffle-skiing in a mostly forward direction. After all the effort to get this far, it seemed that the skis worked quite well. She got a rhythm going and glided nicely over the small cracks and sharp things. After a few minutes, Sally had traveled a fair distance and realized that maybe she should have planned things a little better. Or at all. She might be seriously hurt if she fell out here. Going straight was getting better, but it would probably be a good idea if she found a way to turn. It took some trial and error and a few close calls, but eventually, she found that the garbage pile was wide enough to permit her to make broad turns without incurring too much risk. As her skills improved, Sally took the time to look around. Since the garbage made little hills and valleys, there were some areas that weren¡¯t visible from the edge. She started exploring, keeping away from the yellow zones. It struck her that although there were a number of small things lying on the surface, she didn¡¯t have anything to carry them in. It would have been smart to have brought a bag, or even better, she could have had Jon make her a bag with a shoulder strap so she could easily pick things up and put them in the bag using only one hand. Sally thought about it for a while. Maybe she would want two bags, just in case the things she picked up didn¡¯t get along. She meandered back and forth, looking at various items. She found a lot of stuff like paper, some of which was printed with writing and lines, but nothing she could read. There was string, rope, empty boxes, pieces of metal and other stuff she couldn¡¯t identify, and a lot of junk. What she saw wasn¡¯t high-quality stuff, but it was more than what she''d found while walking along the edge of the pile. Maybe someone else had already picked up those easy-to-get things. She worked her way toward the wall, occasionally going back to her starting point to drop stuff off. The wall of the arena loomed over her, going up as far as she could see, but she was getting used to the scale of it. As she neared the wall, she noticed that the garbage had left marks on it, in a few places. This was novel, because, until now, the walls hadn¡¯t ever had any sort of noticeable smudges or marks. Sally broke away from her search pattern and went closer to examine the marks. She could only see a few ends of vertical lines and one or two horizontal arcs. The arcs and lines would be really big if they continued under the garbage to the floor.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Sally made a big quarter circle turn so she would be parallel to the wall when she got close. She was getting better at this. As she neared the wall she found that the lines were surprisingly uniform; they looked like strokes a huge paintbrush would make. In fact, they looked exactly like something a paintbrush would make. There were even bristle marks. She began to get excited. She hurry-shuffled back toward the area where Jon was working. ¡°Jon! Jon! I may have found something!¡± she yelled as she neared. Jon put down what he had been carrying and turned to face her. Sally reached the end of the pile, untied her skies, tumbled down to the floor, and explained to him what she had found. One thing she appreciated about Jon was that he took her seriously and always listened. Once she was done he looked toward the wall, but instead of approaching it himself, she saw his sensor fly over. She climbed the pile to watch, and Jon accompanied her. The sensor landed on the wall and started crawling over the marks, which were difficult for her to see from this far away. ¡°You are correct,¡± he said, after a while. ¡°The markings are artificial. We will have to move some of the material obscuring them to find if they are meaningful or not.¡± Sally did her little happy dance. ¡°I''m not entirely useless!¡± she sang, ¡°at least not all the time.¡± Jon made it look easy as he walked across the debris to the wall. He was already studying the marks before Sally had even managed strap on her skis. As she shuffled nearer, Jon faced her. ¡°This will take a while," he stated. "I will open up a small area so we can obtain a better sample of the markings and see if they are meaningful. It is important to ensure that anything we move is preserved. In the future, we may discover that something we have found here is significant, in its own right.¡± Say didn¡¯t care, she just wanted to see what was on the wall. Careful for Jon was still fast, so he quickly cleared out a fair amount of the garbage near one of the horizontal arcs. He had apparently estimated how deep the garbage was, and had started about this distance away from the wall so when he was done there would be a 45-degree slope to the bottom of the wall. Jon moved back and forth, and more of the wall was exposed. Long before they had dug to the floor Sally exclaimed, ¡°It is a letter ¡°e¡±! I can read it! It¡¯s in English!¡± Jon didn¡¯t stop. He kept excavating until the entire letter was exposed. It really was a lower case ¡°e¡±. Sally was so excited, she was hopping up and down, as best she could while wearing skis. Jon continued excavating to the right of the previous area. It took a while but this time they uncovered an ¡°r¡±. Sally was becoming thirsty. Jon would keep working without her, and she could eat and drink while he was busy. There was no really handy local source of water, but Jon had occasionally made trips to one of the structures and brought back water when she needed it. Jon had also made a little toilet area using a bucket thing they had found, Jon took it with him when he got water. Sally assumed he emptied it into the grass he had planted. She didn¡¯t really want to know the details. She ate, washed up, then strapped her skis back on and returned to the wall. Jon had uncovered ¡°er here¡±. It was most definitely a message. Jon worked further to the right and eventually uncovered an arrow pointing to a doorway that he had also uncovered. The doorway was packed with garbage. Jon stopped digging here and walked over to the left side of the excavation area, next to the ¡°er¡±, and resumed digging there. He uncovered a ¡°t¡± and was starting on the next area, when he stopped. He walked over to Sally. ¡°I think we have another body.¡± Sally¡¯s stomach dropped. Reluctantly, she skied over to the latest part of the excavation. There was a hand poking out of the refuse, garbage, ground, whatever. From what she could see, it was just skin and bones, but the big difference was that it had to be easily twice as long as her own hand. Jon licked it. ¡°In spite of how it looked. it is another you.¡± He then started moving stuff to uncover more of the body. He was very careful not to disturb anything around it, but as far as she could see, the stuff he was moving was just a random collection of junk. When he had exposed the body, Jon didn¡¯t stop but continued excavating in a circle about ten feet around it, right down to the floor. By now, the body was displayed on a sort of pedestal made of garbage. The body was really strange. It sort of looked like a dried out Sally, but had to be at least 7 feet tall! It had her hair, but everything else seemed all stretched out. It, she, was wearing a filthy green dress, no shoes or anything else, as far as Sally could tell. She wasn¡¯t ready to check for underwear. On the middle finger of the body¡¯s right hand was a ring, but it reached from the base of her finger to her first knuckle. Because the hand was so long the ring had to be at least three inches wide. As best she could tell, it was made of some sort of metal and etched with a very ornate pattern. Jon stopped and looked at her. ¡°So far, I see no companion,¡± he said. ¡°Let me have a look,¡± Sally demanded. Jon remained silent. Sally took off her skis and made her way to the body. Jon had done a good job of removing anything sharp or dangerous, but the footing was quite rough. In spite of her best efforts, she knew she would have to treat a cut or two that evening. Here ¡°treat¡± meant wash and hope. As Sally neared the body, she still thought it was kind of unreal. Like the other remains, it was so desiccated that there was no smell, and, in this case, the features were so weirdly stretched that it didn¡¯t even appear human. She looked at the dress. Under the filth, it was really nice, probably a deep forest green. Sally was a blue jeans and tee-shirt sort of person, but she had to admit the dress was very elegant, even if there was no way she could have fit in it. She could tell it had a detailed pattern worked into the weaving and had been made by someone, or maybe something, who really knew what they were doing. She looked over the body. The ring was also impressive. She reached out to examine it. ¡°Stop!¡± Jon barked. Sally jerked her hand back. ¡°That ring is a heavy anchor. Do not touch it.¡± Sally stepped back. ¡°A what?¡± ¡°A heavy anchor. It is a way for entities on a gravometric plane to interact with us on the physical plane.¡± Jon paused, and then continued, ¡°The evidence points to¡­¡± Jon paused a second time. The pause stretched into minutes. Sally looked over at the body. The whole strangeness of the situation made her somewhat less upset by being around a dead person. As she found with the Bear Sally, the fact that the bodies had been dead for quite a while and were completely dried out made it feel like this was some sort of archeological investigation, rather than a murder mystery. Mostly. If she didn¡¯t think about it too hard. She jumped as Jon started up, ¡°¡­there being a strong likelihood of this extensive pile of debris and the ring being linked.¡± Sally connected the sentences Jon used before and after the break. ¡°Isn¡¯t ¡°a strong likelihood¡± and ¡°evidence pointing to¡± kind of redundant?¡± she asked. She was sort of proud of this question. ¡°That is what you focus on?¡± Jon retorted. ¡°The investigation I just did took the equivalent of man-years of human research and would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you pick up on a grammatical error?¡± Sally was surprised. This was the most human Jon had ever seemed. Just the same as a stuffy professor responding to criticism concerning his specialty. She decided on a tactical retrenching. ¡°Ok, great wizard! I bow to your magnificence. What insights can you share with us mere mortals?¡± Real humility wasn¡¯t one of her strengths. Jon put his hand to his forehead. ¡°Damn kids today have no appreciation,¡± he muttered. Sally had a laugh forced out of her. She thought for a moment, then asked, ¡°Ok Jon. What just happened?¡± ¡°I did a very deep search concerning this,¡± he gestured to the body, ¡°and ended up in some very obscure files. These files are recordings of personalities and life experiences, rather than just factual scientific treatises. In fact, the information is intimately wrapped up in an emulation of a type of whole life philosophy. A side effect is that I uncovered a better method of utilizing my hardware for personality emulation, and it works well for human interaction.¡± Sally didn¡¯t know what to say. Jon continued, "The salient part of the research is that I have pertinent information concerning our situation.¡± Jon had fallen back into lecture mode. Sally really didn¡¯t understand Jon. She wondered if the changes in how he talked were done to help her deal with things, or if he just happened randomly. ¡°It appears this third Sally was linked by the ring to an entity who would have had only limited interaction with our normal environment. The linked entity is a pattern, if you will, of intelligence that flows on a matrix that primarily interacts with gravity. These beings rarely communicate with those of us who exist in our reality. The gravity entity, which I will call a heavy, drifts around its part of the multiverse, which is a place that exists between our dimension and various others. Usually, the most we would perceive of these beings would be a nearly undetectable fluctuation in gravity. ¡°One of the few ways that we and heavies can interact is by the use of technology such as that ring. It basically catches the attention of the heavy and allows some sort of connection between beings on the different planes. The details of this interaction, and what can be communicated, are scantily represented in my files. ¡°It is very likely that the physical changes we see in this third Sally were caused by this interaction. I have no explanation why this is so. The deep search I undertook also had case studies where various entities had annoyed the heavies, in some manner. The typical result was a large variation in local gravity that resulted in extensive damage.¡± Jon waved his hand to indicate the debris around them. ¡°What you see here is typical of the sort of damage caused by an incensed heavy. The twisting and bending of the structures we passed through and the piles around us are very indicative of this type of event.¡± ¡°So, did the gravity disruption kill this other me?¡± Sally asked. ¡°I will investigate. We may be able to reach a conclusion based on further research.¡± Sally wasn¡¯t looking forward to another autopsy. Something must have shown on her face because Jon continued, ¡°I know my methods upset you, but look on it as if this body was you. Wouldn¡¯t you want to help a later you in any way possible?¡± He had a point. She nodded but still turned so she didn¡¯t have to watch. Lights began flashing as Jon started doing whatever he did. Sally made her way up to her skis, strapped them on, and headed back to camp. It was too early for bed, but Sally plopped onto it anyway, not really thinking about anything. After a while, she noticed Jon had carried the body to the floor area and started taking it apart. She had to admit he was quite clinical. What he was doing seemed like an investigation, not a desecration. After an hour or so, Jon found her in the camp. Sally could see no evidence of his grisly work on him. He squatted by the bed. ¡°The evidence is the same as for the first Sally we found. She just stopped living. There is no indication as to the cause.¡± ¡°What does that mean?¡± ¡°I am saying that I have not found the cause of death. I have completed a very thorough investigation, and the body is in very good shape, except for being dead. ¡°My archives refer to methods to bring these types of well-preserved bodies back to reasonable functionality by reconstructing the organs and recovering the memory strands, but currently I have an unexpectedly small amount of information on how this can be accomplished. I will search my files for further details.¡± Sally didn¡¯t know what to say. Zombie movies came to mind. ¡°Wasn¡¯t she killed by the, well, whatever caused this?¡± Sally waved at the debris pile. ¡°No. In fact, she appears to have been spared any damage when the event took place. She was buried, but that is all.¡± ¡°So, the Heavy, or whatever you call it, had a temper tantrum when she died?¡± ¡°I do not know, but as a hypothesis, it correlates well with what we know.¡± Sally thought for a moment and then said, ¡°This is different from the other one. The bear Sally. It sounds like this time the companion didn¡¯t die with her.¡± Jon responded, ¡°The Heavies are more of an idea, or concept, imposed on the underlying matrix of reality. They are not exactly able to die. But you are correct; the Heavy continued on after this Sally died.¡± Sally felt sad. She wasn¡¯t really sure why. Everything that happened to the Sallys had happened long ago, but she still felt for them. After a while, she got up and looked over to where Jon had been working. As with the bear Sally, the little piles didn¡¯t seem to have been a person. She really didn¡¯t want to leave them that way, but she didn¡¯t know what else to do. Then she had a thought. ¡°Jon, could we use the cube things to cremate the remains?¡± ¡°Yes, but we should keep her head, spine, and a few other parts, since there is a chance we can recover some of her memories, once I do more research.¡± Sally thought about it. They didn¡¯t know how to bring back Sallys to life now, and she had no idea how they would figure it out in the future, but she guessed there was no reason not to hope. A picture of a heap of Sally heads looking at her while they waited to be resurrected flashed through her mind. Nope, nope, nope, nope. She tried to scrub it out of her brain. Over the next hour, Jon made a funnel out of some metal, and then set the subspace tap so that whatever was in the funnel would feed onto the hot part. He then took the control cubes and twisted them in a certain way so that the tap started glowing red, then white, and then faintly blue. The floor underneath started to glow red as well, but didn¡¯t appear to be affected in any other way. Sally could feel the heat from twenty feet away. Jon started feeding the remains into the funnel. They burned so hot that there was almost no smoke or even ash. It took some time, but eventually, they¡¯d disposed of most of the remains. When the improvised crematorium had cooled, Sally walked over to it. The heat had been so high that everything Jon had fed into it had been vaporized, leaving nothing to clean up. Jon constructed a box from some of the material he had used to make the funnel, and placed the body parts he wanted to store inside, including the head. He then closed the box in some manner so that it made a cube with no openings, and put it with the other things they had in their campsite. Sally thought to have the remains so close was a little morbid, but was numb enough that she could ignore her feelings. The dress was too nice to burn. Sally didn¡¯t know what she was going to do with it, so she put it aside to clean later. She wasn¡¯t sure what Jon had done with the ring. It had disappeared. She ate and went to bed. She lay for a while thinking about the day. She dozed off thinking that they should go back and deal with the other Sally and bear remains, at some point. Fortunately, all she dreamed about that night was normal bunnies hopping around doing typically cute bunny things. No zombie spider-rabbits at all. Nope. Well, maybe one. Chapter 12
The next morning Sally climbed up the pile and looked toward the wall. What she saw shocked her out of any remaining drowsiness.
Jon had uncovered the rest of the sign.
It read ¡°Sally Enter here¡± and had an arrow pointing to the doorway. The hallway beyond the door was choked with debris, which Jon was in the process of removing. What he was pulling out seemed a little different from the typical stuff; it was mostly racks of equipment and large metal boxes. Occasionally Jon would carry something out of the hallway, put it down, look at it for a while, and then fiddle with it. Once he was done, he would run back and get something else.
Sally put on her skis and shuffled over to where he was working. In spite of her best efforts, it seemed that she was getting reasonably good at ski-shuffling.
¡°Looks like I''m famous,¡± she said, gesturing toward the sign.
¡°Yep, but no lights, so probably B list.¡±
¡°Yep.¡±
¡°So, what are these things you¡¯re moving?¡±
¡°They appear to be parts of a large computing device, or system. These are extremely powerful, capable of self-determinism, or truly impressive data crunching. Similar to myself.¡±
¡°Can they tell us why we are here?¡± Sally asked.
¡°No, they appear to have been wiped. No data at all, which is extremely strange. Even I had a baseline to start with, although mine was minimal and it took a long time to come up to my current level. Another unusual aspect is that because of their potential power and versatility, these units are quite valuable.¡±
¡°Can we use them?¡±
¡°Possibly. But it would take a while and they need a great deal of power. To give you a sense of perspective, I could pack my entire database and processing algorithms into one of these boxes and it would use less than one-trillionth of its capabilities. Whole civilizations have lived on machines similar to these. The potential here is staggering.¡±
¡°What are they doing here?¡±
¡°Concerning that, I have no information. I can tell you, though, that the event that caused the piles and damage in the arena area also pulled these here through that hallway.¡±
For such valuable things, Jon had placed them rather haphazardly on the existing debris. As Sally watched, one tipped over and crashed onto its side. They were as tall as she and probably very heavy, but Jon moved them like they were empty cardboard boxes. It was somewhat comical to see someone as small as him move something as large as these devices. Sally didn¡¯t know what Jon was made of, but he was really tough.
As observers since the beginning of time have found, it is fascinating to watch someone else work. Sally maintained the tradition as Jon cleared the hallway. He carried out computing box after box, and eventually ran out of room on the debris pile, and spread out to the arena floor. As he went back and forth Jon was packing down a good trail. Knowing him, this was part of a plan that he¡¯d devised before even starting the process.
Sally moved over to look at some of the machines near the hallway. For something so valuable, they were simply big featureless metal boxes with no apparent controls or indicators. She wondered if they could morph or change if they needed to? She touched one, but it just felt like some sort of metal.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sally caught a flash of light, or perhaps movement, behind one of the big boxes. There was nothing obvious, so she unstrapped her skis and approached the box to investigate. Jon had packed the local area enough that she should be okay if she was careful.
Looking behind the box revealed nothing, and a quick search of the area was equally productive. None of the haphazardly placed boxes nearby seemed about to fall over, but perhaps one of them had shifted a little? She pushed on one, but it didn¡¯t move at all. She pushed a little harder and felt a sting. She snatched her hand back back and examined her palm. Somehow, she¡¯d cut herself, again. So far, her blisters and other little cuts had healed fine, so she didn¡¯t worry about it. Not that she could do much, anyway.
She carefully searched a few more of the other boxes nearby. There was some movement under one of them, and a closer inspection revealed a few spider-rabbit poop creatures running to hide. Ah, so her nemeses were back. They seemed to follow her, but the truth was most likely that they could be found everywhere. With the mystery solved, she used the trail Jon had made to return to the camp, picking up her skis along the way.
While Jon ferried the boxes around and arranged them in some order she couldn¡¯t figure out, Sally tried to clean the other Sally''s dress, or at least remove a layer or two of grime. John had found a pail sort of thing, which Sally used as a washtub. The dress was even prettier as it got cleaner, a very nice deep green, with a complex weave that made a pattern of waves.
Sally draped the dress over some tubing to dry. It looked much better now. Sally had no idea what she would use it for, if anything, but it was very pretty. As she thought about it, she realized this was the first non-practical thing she had kept since she woke in the hospital room.
Sally turned away and found Jon standing right beside her! She jumped and shrieked!
¡°The hallway is now clear," he stated flatly. "I propose we take a break from what we are doing and see where it goes. There are a number of reasons that dictate this course of action. One is the sign and the second stems from my evaluation of these boxes. They are extremely valuable. If we can establish a strong argument for ownership, or rather, a lack of any other owner, then we would be in an advantageous position if our situation changes.¡±
It took a moment for Sally to process what Jon had said.
¡°So, we¡¯re rich? Woo hoo! Really, though, what about whoever is running this experiment? Does that mean that they are so wealthy that they can let these things sit here?¡±
¡°I have no information concerning that. There are entities to whom wealth would be meaningless, but they are typically so strange that this sort of environment,¡± he waved to indicate the area around them, "would be incomprehensible. For more mainstream types, this is a lot of wealth. To give you an idea, it is more the wealth of a nation rather than that of an individual.¡±
Sally thought back to what Jon had said earlier, ¡°Since these are just sitting here, does that mean this place is, well, running on automatic? Did whoever set this up live in those machines? Are we just kicking around something like an abandoned laboratory?¡± Sally asked.
¡°At this time, I have no way of knowing. That is why we need to collect more information.¡±
¡°Is it possible that we are¡­¡± she trailed off. ¡°I don¡¯t know! You are the one with all the information! Don¡¯t you have any idea?¡±
¡°As I have told you, I do not speculate. I take data and compare what we observe to this data and calculate probabilities based on these comparisons. I do not guess. Things I observe I add to my data. I spend a lot of time making sure the data I add agrees with the data I have. This is what I do. You can guess, I will evaluate those guesses.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you have lists of what others have done in similar situations? Can¡¯t you use what you know about those as your guesses?¡±
¡°Yes, but this situation does not correlate well with any other in my records. This may have been deliberate on the part of those who supplied my data. I do not know. Our situation may be unique, but that is unlikely given the extent of all possible things. I can assure you that I don¡¯t know what you want me to know. Hopefully, we can collect enough information to answer the questions before we are turned off in the same manner as the others we have found.¡±
That was cold, but Jon was right, even if he had the subtlety of the hammer to the head. All they could do was carry on and see what happened.
Sally spoke, mostly to herself, ¡°And¡­we always get back to the question... why me?? What am I doing here? I''m an ordinary person, from an ordinary place, who did ordinary things. As far as I can tell the only different thing about me is that I''m here.¡±
Jon stopped moving, like he did when he was thinking hard. Sally waited.
¡°Well, that is interesting. The last comment you threw out does have some merit. It is not unheard of for seemingly ordinary individuals to be caught up in events manipulated by higher beings. These events may mold these individuals into much more than what they started as. I will have to spend some time reviewing the pertinent files. They are extensive so this will take some time, days perhaps.¡±
With that being said, and since it was still relatively early in the ¡°day¡±, prepared for a journey down the new hallway. They tidied up the campsite, packed enough food and water for Sally, plus a few empty bags for anything they might find, and made their way to the door in the wall. Sally was happy that her stamina had improved so much that she no longer needed the wheelchair. After climbing the trail in the debris, they paused to take one more look at the sign.
¡°Does this look like your writing?¡± Jon asked.
¡°Hard to tell. I never wrote signs this tall, but maybe?¡±
Sally continued on, entering the doorway. Jon followed. As they took their first steps down the hallway there was a noise from behind them. They both turned to observe a spider-rabbit scrabbling up and over the edge of the debris pile and onto the trail. Without a pause, It ran past them and scooted on down the hallway.
Sally and Jon looked at each other, then at the rapidly disappearing creature.
¡°I wonder what that was about?¡± Sally mused. ¡°Do you suppose he was late for something?¡±
¡°Yes,¡± Jon answered. ¡°All frivolity aside, he may be a part of a monitoring system. The good news is that if he is, then it may be that there is less coverage in here.¡± He gestured ahead. ¡°Shall we follow?¡±
¡°Let¡¯s.¡±
Sally began walking and didn¡¯t even flinch when Jon¡¯s hand flew by.
They walked. And walked. And walked.
Sally started to say something.
Jon interrupted, ¡°About two miles.¡±
¡°I wasn¡¯t going to ask.¡±
Actually, she had been. ¡°Does your hand show how far until the end?¡±
¡°Yes. About one more mile.¡±
¡°Anything interesting along the way?¡±
¡°Yes. More walls, a ceiling, and floor. Just like here.¡±
¡°Are you saying that there¡¯s information in repetitiveness?¡±
¡°No, I am saying that if I could be bored I would be. If it were possible see through these walls it would help, but they are made of the foundation of this universe, which I can¡¯t penetrate.¡±
Sally still didn¡¯t really know what ¡°foundation of the universe¡± meant, but, like everything else she didn¡¯t get, it probably wasn¡¯t important.
¡°Were the computing boxes dragged all this way?¡± she asked.
¡°It appears so. I can detect tiny particles from the boxes on the floor and walls.¡±
¡°Did the spider-rabbit go all this way too?¡±
¡°Yes, I am picking up traces.¡±
¡°By the way, I thought you couldn¡¯t get bored. How do you know if you should be bored?¡±
¡°It is the new interface. I now have a boredom counter. Since I upgraded my interface because of you, I put the blame on you.¡±
¡°You¡¯re welcome.¡±
On they trudged. Sally managed to stay quiet for at least five minutes.
¡°John?¡±
¡°Mmmph.¡±
¡°You¡¯re smarter than me.¡±
¡°Mmmph.¡±
¡°Is the evil scientist smarter than you?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°How? You seem to know a lot about everything.¡±
¡°There is a rating system used to calculate social dynamics and it allows for a general understanding of how much trouble you can expect when you interact with others. In other word, it is an approximate gauge of capability.¡±
¡°What are you, a gazillion?¡±
¡°As I am now, a three out of ten.¡±
¡°And the evil scientist?¡±
¡°I estimate a seven.¡±
¡°So, he¡¯s just a little more than twice as smart as you? That doesn¡¯t sound too bad.¡±
¡°No, it is a logarithmic scale.¡±
¡°...?¡±
¡°I am a three, a four is sixteen times smarter, a five is 256, and so on. Note, as I said, these are very rough guidelines. For instance, I use most of my processing power to store, access, and verify data, and another level three may manipulate trans-dimensional fields. The same complexity of tasks, but completely different processes.¡±
¡°So, the scientist is so smart that we are totally screwed.¡±
¡°It is unlikely we have its full attention. The evidence I have acquired gives a good probability that this experiment is operated by a sub-sub process spawned from the scientist. The rule of thumb is that each spawning drops the level by one. A sub-sub spawn used here would be level five. Maybe a capable four. If we were being monitored by the scientist we would be screwed-screwed-screwed, but since it is a sub-sub mind we are just screwed.¡±
¡°Was that a joke?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Oh. Good one.¡±
Silence.
Sally thought about the stuff Jon had been saying. Being human, she had to ask. ¡°Um... so what am I? What is my number?¡±
¡°Nearly a one.¡±
Sally shut up. She had no desire to find out how nearly.
Eventually, the end of the hallway approached. Jon motioned for Sally to wait, then he zoomed ahead to the opening, looked around, and zoomed back. He had his third eye open and gestured that they proceed, ¡°It appears safe. I haven¡¯t detected anything threatening.¡±
They stopped at the point where the hallway opened into a large circular room, a few hundred feet across, with a featureless ceiling about fifteen feet above the floor. The walls of the room continued with the fake wood beams near the floor and ceiling, but unlike all of the walls they had seen to date, there were vertical beams placed every twenty feet, or so. From where they stood there didn¡¯t appear to any other exits. Out on the floor were a few more computing boxes standing upright, and against the wall, ten feet to the right of the hallway opening were a number more, piled haphazardly on top of each other.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Jon spoke up, ¡°This is where the computing boxes originally resided. When the gravity shifted, most of them funneled out the door and down the hallway. The boxes over there,¡± he waved toward the ones piled to the right of the door, ¡°got hung up on one of the wall beams.¡±
He continued. ¡°This situation is more interesting than you might think. A number of times I have tried scanning with gravity waves and found that they could not penetrate the walls. The evidence is that the heavy had some way of circumventing this limitation. If I could duplicate its method then our situational awareness would increase greatly. So far, I have found no information in my files that would allow me to accomplish this feat, but I now know it is possible.¡±
They walked into the room and up to one of the boxes left standing. Its base was embedded in the floor, which explained why it hadn¡¯t moved. Scratches and gouges on the floor indicated that the majority of the computing boxes hadn¡¯t been as solidly fastened in place.
Jon spoke up, ¡°I have reached some conclusions based on what we have uncovered so far. When this room was operating, it contained a very intelligent entity. The gravity event that disrupted this area either terminated the entity or sent it to backup. This would be extremely unusual since beings as intelligent as this one are quite aware of almost everything. It would have understood the effects of upsetting the heavy.¡±
He paused, then continued, ¡°The evidence is very compelling. It leads to a near certainty that the gravity event caused by the heavy was not precipitated by the entity that used to reside here.¡±
¡°It is also very improbable that this was a direct attack by the heavy. It is almost a certainty that the destruction here was collateral damage from what the heavy did when its Sally died. I have a great deal of data that proves that upper-level intelligences find high humor in manipulating others into unintentionally doing their dirty work.¡±
Sally was shocked. She had thought that the higher-level beings would be more, well, benevolent. Even though she was angry that she had been kidnapped and cloned, she really had thought there was some good reason behind what had occurred.
¡°Do you mean that the heavy''s Sally was killed just so the heavy would have a tantrum and destroy whatever used to live here?¡±
¡°I cannot be one-hundred percent sure, but it does correlate well with the evidence we have.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t there some sort of police force to take care of this type of thing?¡±
¡°No. It¡¯s complicated. Amongst the hyper-intelligent, the situation is more akin to detente, with constant politicking, negotiation, lying, cheating, coercion, manipulation, and so on.¡±
"Ha! Sounds like home.¡±
¡°It is, but with much smarter players, arcane technologies, and some completely crazy super civilizations in the mix.¡±
¡°So, we¡¯re trapped in an experiment run by some evil scientist and there isn¡¯t anyone to come and save us?¡±
¡°No, quite the opposite. Yes we are trapped here, but I strongly expect that there are others, some of whom were friends of the entity who used to live here, who might help us for their own reasons.¡±
She looked harder at Jon. It wasn¡¯t likely, but, except for whatever had answered her prayers, he was the only other super-intelligent being she had met in this place. ¡°I have to ask... are you the evil scientist?¡±
Jon looked back at her and started rubbing his hand and tentacle together. ¡°Bwa-ha-ha-ha,¡± he said in a monotone.
Then he added, ¡°You know, you really shouldn¡¯t have asked. It would more appropriate to observe, ask sly questions, and come to your own conclusions. Although, even if I were the scientist, you really do not have much chance.¡±
¡°I could pray for help, Who knows, something might answer.¡±
Jon paused, ¡°You know¡­ that is a credible threat. I am proud of you. Now, back to work.¡±
They walked around and looked at the other boxes. There wasn¡¯t much to see, except for the spider-rabbit, which scurried off and hid behind another box every time they got close. Jon wandered over to examine the pile of boxes while Sally made a circuit of the room. Across from the hallway, she found one section where the wall was set back a few feet between two of the vertical beams. When she investigated, she found a narrow alleyway leading off behind one of the beams. It was nearly impossible to spot the opening without being right next to it.
Sally was peering down the passageway when she heard a loud metallic rending sound. She spun around and watched as Jon ripped one of the boxes out of the floor. He peered down the hole that was revealed.
Sally was used to Jon¡¯s casual displays of strength. She walked over and looked down the hole too. It went straight down and she could barely make out a pinpoint of light in the distance.
John reached over to the box he had ripped out and tore off a small piece of metal. He turned to the hole and tossed the piece up into the air, it nearly hit the ceiling and then fell back down into the hole.
Sally started, ¡°Why did you¡­¡± Jon put up his hand to stop her. Shortly afterward, the piece of metal popped out of the hole, rose to about five feet from the ceiling and fell back down. Jon caught it.
¡°There is a gravity inversion between us and the opening on the other side,¡± he commented.
Jon¡¯s hand flew past and went down the hole. They waited.
¡°Hmmm, at first evaluation I detect little of interest on the other side. It is a flat plane that extends in all directions for hundreds of miles, which is as far as I can sense. There are a few very large pyramids scattered about. The major problem is that the gravity on the other side would crush you.¡±
Sally looked down the hole, ¡°It doesn¡¯t look that deep. If the other side goes on forever wouldn¡¯t we have seen... uh... something out of the windows where we were?¡±
¡°This universe is well known for spatial folds that can confuse your sense of direction and distance. What we perceive as being near could actually be light years distant. It is possible, though, that this could be a way out of this maze.¡±
Jon¡¯s hand flew out of the hole. It reattached to Jon for a short while, then parted and flew back down the hole.
¡°Since the data channel through the hole was limited, I had to physically reconnect to access everything the sensor had recorded. On the other side of the hole, there is extensive activity in the local internet bands. It does appear that this leads out of our maze!¡±
Just then the hand flew back out of the hole. Jon looked at it and then faced Sally.
¡°Bad news. The hole does not go anywhere now. It goes down a few hundred feet, then stops. For this opening to have been closed so quickly implies that we are under close observation. This is a significant data point.¡±
Sally looked down the hole, she could no longer see the light at the bottom.
¡°It tells us even more,¡± Sally added, ¡°It tells us that whatever did this has to be quite important. I would guess that changing a subspace rift can¡¯t be easy.¡±
¡°You are correct.¡± Jon looked at Sally. ¡°You do well with what you have.¡±
¡°Now you''re supposed to reward me with a treat.¡±
¡°I tend to overlook the fact that in spite of being very slow and hardware limited, you are capable of reason. You are still able to provide an independent viewpoint.¡±
¡°Ummm, thanks?¡±
¡°Ummm, you¡¯re welcome?¡±
Sally laughed.
Losing a possible escape route was disappointing, but for some reason, it didn¡¯t bother Sally too much. Maybe it would have been too easy or something. She looked back down the hole, the little light was still gone. She looked up at Jon.
¡°Well, this didn¡¯t work out, but I did find another passage, so we can keep exploring.¡±
She was almost certain that Jon knew about the passage that she¡¯d found, but who knows, maybe he didn¡¯t?
Yeah, right.
While Sally walked over to the passageway Jon checked beneath the remaining computing boxes on the floor. He put all of the boxes back in place, except the first one, probably so they could check from time to time and see if anything changed. When he finished Jon joined Sally and they both peered down the unexplored tunnel.
¡°Any idea why someone would make this entrance so hard to find?¡± Sally asked.
¡°No. When the computing boxes were in their original positions, this door would have been virtually invisible.¡±
Sally was a little reluctant to walk down the unknown passage. She had an idea.
¡°Hey, can you tell if any of the other Sallys have been here?¡±
¡°The gravity event appears to have been very energetic. In this area, it formed an eddy which pushed the computing boxes back and forth, eliminating any traces. Perhaps I will be able to detect something further in.¡±
Jon entered the passageway, shuffling for a short distance.
¡°There are multiple traces. It is difficult to tell Sallys apart, but I am finding many of these traces belong to non-Sally entities, although I don¡¯t have enough information to be able to identify them I am sure that these beings were companions for the Sallys, but I can¡¯t conclude that all Sallys had companions.¡±
The evidence had to be really strong if Jon stated something this definite. It appeared that a bunch of Sallys and companions had used the tunnels. She looked around the big room.
¡°I wonder why there¡¯s a big sign to send us here, but there isn¡¯t another sign directing us down this passageway? Did the, um, being in this room tell them where to go?¡±
¡°No idea.¡±
They proceeded to proceed down the passageway in their normal order, the hand scouting ahead, Jon, then Sally trailing. The hand and Jon¡¯s third eye provided light since the passage walls didn¡¯t glow.
¡°I hope we aren¡¯t attacked from the rear,¡± Sally said. ¡°I''m almost certain that I all I could do is bleed all over any attacker. Maybe even causing them to slip and fall.¡±
¡°We touched on this before. Let me elaborate; above the lowest rating of intelligence, it is rare for there to be physical violence. Violence leaves the door open for retaliation and with the huge and varied range of available technologies, any battle would result in mutual destruction, along with extensive collateral damage.
¡°Violence is typically only viable if it is possible to manipulate events so that some other entity takes the blame, and any damage is contained. The use of the heavy to destroy our computer-based entity is an example. Something likely manipulated the heavy to cause the damage we saw, and that entity was probably protected by layers of cutouts and misdirection so it would be nearly impossible to lay blame on the correct party. Usually, these situations are so convoluted that the only way to have a chance of uncovering the truth is to involve the most advanced intelligences.
¡°Unfortunately, this rarely occurs, because these entities often have their own ongoing plans and schemes. It is a complicated state of affairs out there. Let me summarize: violence does happen, but the stupid do not last long.¡±
Sally guessed that meant that she wouldn¡¯t be attacked, at least not by anything smart. That wasn¡¯t exactly comforting.
She thought over what Jon had said, then asked, ¡°If we are in an experiment and the heavy is paired with a Sally, and the Sally dies because of something the evil scientist does, and the heavy has a tantrum, and this hurts the computer guy, then isn¡¯t it easy to blame the evil scientist person?¡±
¡°True, but we probably don¡¯t have enough information. This may have been a single part of a long history of events. It is very probable that we will never know enough to understand even a fraction of what transpired.¡± They marched on.
The passageway they were traveling through was different from the other hallways. It was more like an underground smuggler¡¯s tunnel as it meandered back and forth, up and down, twisting around so that Sally would have been entirely lost, except that currently, there was only one way to go. To distract herself she tried to keep track of where they might be. In her real life, or more likely, her fake real life, she had a good sense of direction, although, she had to admit, her little town had a distinct lack of smuggler¡¯s tunnels, underground passageways, or crypts. Maybe sewers, but, for some strange reason, she never had a need to explore them. Didn¡¯t matter, trying to stay oriented kept her busy.
Ahead, the passage branched and Jon stopped. Sally stopped by running into him.
¡°Any idea which way to go?¡± she asked.
¡°No, I cannot find any indication that one trail was used more than the other. Odor, radar, echolocation and various other methods don¡¯t tell me anything except that both trails may branch again as they go on. I will see if I can find any clues.¡±
As he said this, the sensor hand flew down the right-hand passage. Sally debated if that was a good enough hand pun to mention while they stood looking at each other.
Sally heard something behind them. It was a scratching that was getting louder. She bravely hid behind Jon. He was indestructible, after all.
After a moment the spider-rabbit ran by and continued down the left-hand trail.
Sally broke the silence, ¡°Well that was¡­¡± Another spider-rabbit rushed past and went down the right-hand trail. Sally and Jon waited a moment.
They looked at each other, and then looked back down the passage that led to the computer room. Another spider rabbit ran by, went a small way down the right-hand trail, scrabbled to a stop, then ran back and then went down the other trail.
¡°Any idea?¡± Sally asked Jon.
¡°Nope.¡±
Jon¡¯s hand flew back and went down the left-hand trail.
Time passed. Half a dozen more spider-rabbits ran past while they waited. Jon grabbed one as it went by and crunched it, then stuffed the body in one of the extra bags. ¡°About time we investigated how these taste,¡± he said. Sally had worked on farms, she knew where food came from, but the spider part of spider-rabbit made her less than enthusiastic about trying to eat one.
They waited for a few minutes, but it appeared that the migration was over.
The hand flew back and then went down the first passage it had explored. Jon followed the hand and Sally followed Jon.
Jon explained, ¡°The second trail is similar to what we have been following, it goes on with no branches for quite a distance. This one, on the other hand, has a number of branching paths nearby, and many of these paths are dead ends. I am going to investigate these dead ends and see if they are there for a reason.¡±
It took twenty minutes, or so, to reach one of the passages that Jon wanted to investigate. They passed several more branches before stopping at one that looked the same as all the others. Sally was trying to keep up her internal map, but the more branches they found, the harder it became. She at least kept a separate count of branches that split off to the left and branches that split to the right. So far there hadn¡¯t been any that were obviously heading up or down.
Jon¡¯s hand proceeded very slowly down the branch he had chosen, the lights and sounds indicating Jon was doing a very detailed set of scans. Jon and Sally followed. After a few minutes, they reached the end. The passage climbed a bit and ended in a completely flat wall. The sensor hand was carrying out a number of tests on it. Jon climbed up and added his own effort to that of the hand, attempting to discover what the flat portion signified.
After a while, the hand re-attached itself to Jon, and he turned to her. ¡°I can¡¯t find any indication that this has any purpose or goes anywhere.¡±
Sally was sure that if Jon could be frustrated then he would be.
Sally climbed up and waited as Jon edged by and went back to the lower portion. She looked at the wall. ¡°I have no idea what I can do that you couldn¡¯t,¡± she said to Jon.
She pushed, twisted kicked, and punched the wall, to no avail.
¡°Oh, great gods of this wonderful and beautiful universe please help us uncover the mysteries of this wall.¡±
Nothing.
¡°Well, this is disappointing,¡± Sally said. She took a bag of water from her belt, undid it, and sat down. As she drank she leaned back against the rough wall of the passageway. When her back hit the wall it swung away, and she fell backward, hitting her head on the floor and dousing herself with water.
She coughed and sputtered, then looked around. She was lying in the puddle her fall had made, on the floor of an atrium, roughly halfway between the shorter ends. The door she had fallen through was situated on the back wall, across from the windows.
¡°Shut your eyes and don¡¯t move,¡± Jon ordered. ¡°We have to figure out how the door works before we allow it to close.¡± Once her eyes were closed he carried out a thorough examination of the walls and door with all his bright lights, noises, and everything.
¡°You can open your eyes now.¡±
Sally did so and found Jon standing beside her.
¡°I can¡¯t find any hint of a mechanism to open this door from inside the atrium. I propose we go into the passageway, close the door, and see if it is possible to open it again.¡±
Sally climbed back into the passageway and Jon followed, then pulled the door closed behind. He pushed on the wall where the door had been and nothing happened. A little poking around revealed that it wasn¡¯t the intervention of the gods that had opened the door, but simply pushing on a certain point on the rough wall was all it took. Both of them became proficient at finding the proper spot and opening the door.
Jon turned to Sally. ¡°I will go inside the atrium and close the door. You open it, and if that works I will close it again and see if I can open it from the other side. Wait five minutes and if I am not successful I want you to open it.¡±
Jon stepped into the atrium and shut the door. The passageway was dark. Very dark. Sally counted out a nervous five minutes and pushed the door open. Just as it opened a crack, there was a mighty crash and the door smashed closed. Maybe she was early, so she counted out another minute and tried again.
This time it opened. Sally peered through and broke out laughing. Water, mud, and bits of brush covered everything, including Jon. He just stood there, dripping. A mouth shaped hole opened in the mud covering his face. "This attempt was unsuccessful. I tried pushing, pulling, twisting, hitting, various energies, suction, and so on. I also investigated the region around the door, and even experimented on various other places in the room. There were no positive results. I did note your premature opening of the door, for a brief moment I thought we had succeeded.¡±
¡°Sorry about that.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s exchange positions. Perhaps you will succeed where I haven''t.¡±
Sally stepped daintily into the room, and stood aside as Jon squooshed past her into the passageway. When she pushed the door closed she couldn¡¯t see any indication that there was a door, at all.
Everything was covered in mud, but there was one clearer part on the door area that had an imprint of Jon¡¯s face. Probably from the suction test. Sally snickered. She would have paid to see that.
She got down to business. She tried hitting, pushing, kicking... everything she could think of. She screamed at it, prayed to the gods, and even tried another attempt at the hokey-pokey. Nothing worked. She was much slower than Jon, every five minutes he would open the door, and after twenty minutes she gave up.
Jon tried again but had no luck. Eventually, they just put a bag in the doorway to prop it open.
Sally and Jon looked around the room, which was nearly identical to the other atriums, atria... whatever. After Jon had cleaned the mud off himself, they began checking out the little end rooms and were in the third one when there was noise from the main room. They rushed out of the room in time to observe a spider-rabbit scrabbling out of the secret passage, dislodging the bag in the process. The door started to swing shut. Jon blurred into motion and appeared to teleport from where they were to the passage door, which he caught just before it closed. The spider-rabbit fled down one of the hallways.
¡°Well, at least we know how those things seem to appear everywhere,¡± Sally said.
Jon turned to her. ¡°I think, for safety, I will stay by the door and investigate how it can be opened from the atrium side. You can sleep here and we can return to the arena in the morning,¡±
Sally¡¯s stomach growled. She came down from the room and went over to Jon. ¡°Any idea how we can cook the spider-rabbit that you caught?¡±
He pulled it out of the bag and proceeded to rip off the legs. There wasn¡¯t any blood, and the legs looked like they had come from a really big crab. He handed them to her and told her to gather enough underbrush to make a fire. Sally had camped a few times with her aunt and uncle, so she had an idea of what to do. Ordinarily, it might have been difficult without a knife or an ax, but Jon could probably rip anything she found apart.
Sally decided on a place to build the fire and found it wasn¡¯t difficult to pull wood from the local overgrowth. Once she had enough, she laid out the fire, then traded places with Jon. He spit on the wood and after a few seconds, it started to burn. Sally had thought he would rub two sticks together, or use a laser, or something.
Didn¡¯t matter, whatever worked. They traded places again, and she washed the legs in the stream and placed a one in the fire. She didn''t want to over-commit since it might take a number of tries to find a good way to cook them.
After a while, she pulled the leg out, using a couple of sticks as chopsticks. She tried to crack it open, then handed it to Jon, who broke it open. Sally dug out some meat, let it cool for a while, and bit off a small piece. It wasn¡¯t burned, but even so, it was pretty bad. Tasteless and really tough. Eventually, she managed to swallow what was in her mouth, and when it didn¡¯t come back up she repeated the whole procedure until she had eaten the meat from all of the legs.
She then went about her evening routine, settled into a reasonably comfortable area of the overgrowth, and went to sleep.
She had strange dreams. She was in a yoga class and while they did stretches, her instructor lectured on how to mathematically model a sine wave. The instructor was an attractive lady wearing a form-fitting and somewhat revealing exercise outfit, but Sally couldn¡¯t remember her face when she looked away. It didn¡¯t matter, it was just a dream.
The instructor started by explaining how to set a sample clock as related to the sine wave frequency, then went on to explain how to do a Fourier transform, and how sine waves were related to arbitrary waveforms. The really odd thing was it made sense and Sally understood everything. Chapter 13
When Sally woke, she knew today was going to be a bad day. She¡¯d broken her leg a long time ago; it had healed poorly and was very painful sometimes. Today was one of those times. She reached down and rubbed it, which helped a little.
As usual, her friends were piled around her. They were about the only thing that relieved the tedium of her days. She struggled to get up as they started bouncing around hindering her ability to move, but she knew they meant well.
She finally managed to get into a sitting position. Her clothing, which she had woven from the pseudo-fur of her companions, was looking quite ratty, but she didn¡¯t care. The same for her hair, as she put it into a ponytail, she idly noted that it too was getting fairly nasty, but again, she just couldn¡¯t care.
Sally mulled over the years she had been trapped in this hell. The only good things she had found were the companions. They were probably really smart but were so different from her that they¡¯d never established any sort of meaningful dialog.
She reached for her walking stick and struggled to get up. With her companions bouncing around her, she walked over to the fire, which had been banked for the night. Leaning heavily on the walking stick, she lowered herself onto her hands and knees and blew on the embers. After a short while, she¡¯d coaxed up a small flame to which she fed twigs until it was burning well. She pushed the rocks close so they would heat up, then watched to make sure everything was going okay.
Satisfied that it all looked good, she worked her way back up to her feet, limped over to the stream, went to the bathroom, and washed her face. A little cleaner, she walked back to the fire and picked up the pot. It was her pride and joy, one of the few things she¡¯d managed to accomplish for herself. Early in her time here, she¡¯d needed some way to hold and heat water, but nothing she tried worked. She¡¯d attempted pottery, but had never found a decent clay, so she¡¯d been forced to make something that would hold water in some other manner. After many failures, she¡¯d finally found a way to weave bark from the pseudo-trees together with her fiber string so that the result was nearly watertight. The idea came from the birchbark canoes she¡¯d heard of when she was a kid.
She filled the bark pot with water that had been filtered through some of the tubers, walked back to the fire, and spit on one of the heated stones. It sizzled and turned to steam, so she used two sticks as tongs and deftly transferred the hot stones into the pot. In a very short time, the water was boiling. After emptying her bag of spices onto a flat rock and spreading them out she selected a few sprigs and put them into the boiling water. Learning what was edible had nearly killed her more than once. After one memorable experiment, she¡¯d puked for days.
Sally snapped her fingers, and one of the companions jumped in the pot. She never did figure out how they replaced themselves, but they were good eating and didn¡¯t seem to care. While the food cooked she puttered about, getting ready for the day. When it had been long enough, she sat by the fire, took out her eating spoon, and ate directly from the pot.
She moved the food around her mouth to the good side, and chewed. When she was done, there was enough left in the pot to last for the rest of the day. She sighed, rallied her meager energy, and struggled to her feet for a trip down the row of rooms to gather more plants. She managed to gain her feet, but on the first step, her bad leg collapsed with a massive jab of pain.
Sally jerked awake with a yell! She jumped up and grabbed her head. Her hair wasn¡¯t a greasy mess, her tongue told her that she had all her teeth, and her leg didn¡¯t ache! She took a few breaths. That was the most realistic dream she¡¯d ever had!
Sally freely interpreted Jon¡¯s unexpressive look as meaning: ¡°Will I have to put down this mad dog?¡±
¡°Sorry. Bad dream.¡±
¡°I will take your word for it. I have no need to dream.¡±
Sally sat back down on her bed.
Man! That had been one strange dream. In fact, now that she thought about it, all of the dreams that she¡¯d had last night were weird. Even weirder, she could remember every detail, even from the ones about engineering. To top it off, the absolutely totally weirdest thing was that even now when she was wide awake, they all still seemed to make sense! She poked at the memories. They couldn¡¯t be real, they came from dreams! She decided to let everything sit for a while; most likely the memories would fade. Probably the spider-rabbit meat was making her feel wonky.
Maybe she would stick with her old food for a while and see if she had normal dreams, next time. She went about getting ready for her day, a little more appreciative of how Jon helped her survive. Just for grins, she wanted to try some of the things the dream Sally had done, just to see if they worked. Once she was ready to go, she took a moment to look for some of the dream Sally¡¯s plants in the brush next to the stream, but there wasn¡¯t anything she recognized. She gave up. It was probably just a stupid dream.
She walked over to Jon.
¡°So. Plans? Looking through the atriums? Or should we tackle the smuggler¡¯s tunnels?¡±
¡°Atria. Let¡¯s see if anything¡¯s different, here. If not, we will move on to the tunnels. Maybe they¡¯ll be more secret doors.¡±
They picked one of the hallways and entered it in their usual manner; hand, Jon, then Sally. They reached the next atrium. It was similar to the various other ones they''d already seen. Jon took a handful of mud from the stream and wrote a big ¡°1¡± on a window. He told her that this would be a backup to his memories, and she could use them to orient herself if they became separated. Sally interpreted this to really mean if she got lost.
While he was doing his artwork, Sally looked in the little rooms but didn¡¯t find anything other than the usual trash. There was no word from the gods.
Jon finished his masterpiece and waited to the other hallway. Sally checked the last little room and descended to the floor, then headed to where Jon waited, hopping over the stream along the way. She stopped.
¡°No, it can¡¯t be.¡±
She turned back to the stream. She did a quick scan of the plants in and beside the stream. She found the bit of familiar bluish green that had caught her eye. No! She counted the leaves; there were three together, similar to a clover. This was one of the plants from her dream! She picked it and brought it to Jon.
¡°Can I eat this?¡± she asked.
He tasted it. ¡°Yes, it is reasonably compatible with your biology. Much more compatible than most of what we have found up ''till now.¡±
Sally tasted it. It actually had some flavor, and didn¡¯t taste like dirt!
She was reluctant to tell Jon she had seen it in her dream. That would sound stupid. Best to see if she could find some of the other plants before she brought it up.
They checked out more atria without finding any more secret doors. While Jon marked the windows with numbers, Sally picked a few more of the blue-green plant. Giving up after a while, they returned to the first room and exited into the tunnels. After Jon splashed a mud ¡°X¡± on the flat wall inside the passageway, they retraced their route back to the main passageway, letting the secret passage door swung shut behind them.
As Sally trailed, she noted that Jon¡¯s light seemed to illuminate the passage better today than the day before. She could see further into the gloom ahead and behind, and felt she was keeping track of how far they¡¯d traveled, even as the passage meandered. Her memory of the paths they had gone through yesterday was fuzzy, but she could recall today¡¯s route perfectly. Like her dreams, it was weird... but in a good way.
Sally had the impression that Jon was taking them back to the first branch they had come to yesterday. He verified her suspicion, and when they reached it, led them down the passageway they hadn¡¯t explored. After walking quite a way, they came across another dead-end branch. The secret door here opened into the room Jon had marked with an eight. Sally wasn¡¯t surprised, her internal map had matched their current position to that room. She¡¯d always been good with directions, but this was something else!
They continued mapping out the tunnels, and Sally was pretty proud that she could tell where they were, even so far as to know when they had risen above or descended below the rooms they had numbered. And sometimes, she was sure, she knew that the secret doors opened into rooms that had their backs to the rooms they had explored that morning.
Sally was so proud of her mapping skills that she told Jon that she was keeping track of where they were. He didn¡¯t say anything, Sally wasn¡¯t sure he believed her, but it didn¡¯t matter, she was awesome!
Sally¡¯s internal clock told her they had been at this for over four hours, so she talked Jon into taking a rest stop in the next room. It was odd, but she was almost certain that she knew the time to within a few minutes. This was just so strange! She¡¯d have to talk to Jon about it, although he¡¯d probably convince her that she was fooling herself, so she¡¯d save it for later, and bask in her glory, for now.
She ate and drank from their supplies, and they set out again. Sally wasn¡¯t feeling tired at all. As they walked along the latest passage, she was sure Jon had modified his light again. The walls glowed even brighter now, and in a color that wasn¡¯t red, but reddish. She didn¡¯t really have a name for it and wasn¡¯t sure what he¡¯d done, but it was handy.
Very late in the day, they opened a secret door and stepped into a wonderland. Sally was expecting a typical atrium, but this one was completely packed with plants and even had trees that reached the ceiling. Not scrub, or sort-of-plants, but normal vegetation that looked the way proper plants and trees should.
The stream had been blocked to overflow and supply water to the entire room. It also looked as if something, or someone, had brought in even more dirt since there were signs of irrigation channels, but they had degraded over time.
They went around and checked the plants. Most of them she could eat, even without the modifications she¡¯d had, and the plants that wouldn¡¯t be good food seemed to have some medical use, such as for pain, or as an antiseptic.
Sally immediately tried a few of the different types of fruit. Most of it was somewhat bitter, or old, but all in all, it was much better than powdered branches and the barely adequate seeds. A few of the weeds smelled like they could be used for seasoning. Sally even found two of the other types of the plants she had seen in her dream! Maybe if she dreamt about the broken Sally again, she could find out even more about what plants were useful!Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Once they stopped for the night, she¡¯d have to discuss her dreams with Jon and see if he had any insights.
They used bags and logs to prop the secret door open, then started out to the next room. This room was similar to the first, which wasn¡¯t entirely unexpected since they¡¯d had to walk through water flowing slowly down the hallway from the second atrium to the first.
This second atrium had as many plants as the first, but different ones. Sally thought this whole area was the best thing they could have found. It made her life so much easier.
In Sally¡¯s enthusiasm, she¡¯d rushed out of the first atrium to look at the second, so they hadn¡¯t checked the little rooms. This time Jon put his foot down and they were more methodical. There was only wet dirt in the little rooms on the first floor, but the ones on the second contained various seeds, dried fruit, and herbs in piles and on drying racks. This upper floor was probably used so that the stored produce wouldn¡¯t get wet.
This truly was the motherlode!
The third atrium had been stripped bare; it was likely the source of some of the dirt they had found in the previous atria. The next few were also stripped bare. There was no sign that these had been used for a long time.
Finding nothing interesting, they returned to the room with the secret panel, and searched in the other direction.
The next atrium was also dedicated to plants and stored resources. Then, they found where whoever had set this all up had been living.
Jon¡¯s hand had preceded them into this atrium, but he and Sally stopped at the entrance and stared. It was like, well, a fancy lodge! Sally could see a bed, and a kitchen area with extensive cupboards and counters. There was also a large cooking area with a number of ways to heat things. And it went on! Against the back wall, she could see workstations for doing... stuff, and even some cages outside the little rooms.
Sally drifted into the kitchen area, looking around in wonder. This was magnificent! Whoever had made this had even diverted the stream and put rugs on the floor! She just stared.
Jon was slowly going down the row of workstations studying everything in his typically methodical manner.
¡°This is wonderful,¡± Sally breathed, ¡°Who made all this?¡±
After a time, Jon answered, ¡°Indications are that the things here were predominately made by human hands. The scents I detect indicate that they were other versions of you, for the most part. A few came from other sources. Very probably some of the companions.¡±
Sally was stunned. There was no way that she could have made most of these things. How different must life have been for the other Sallys so that they would be able to do any of this?
Jon had wandered to the little end room on the main floor. He searched it, and then went up to the second floor. He popped his head out of the last small room.
¡°You will want to see this,¡± he said.
She climbed to the second floor and peered into the doorway. This room had a desk and chair, and the walls were covered with shelves. There were parchments and bound books filling the shelves. Jon was leaning over the desk, reading the parchment that was lying there.
¡°This appears to be a page from a record compiled by one of the Sallys,¡± he said. Beside the parchment was a book that was partially bound together. It had one cover removed and the existing pages were held in place by a couple of straps that went through holes in the edges of the pages. It was obvious that the parchment on the desk was meant to be threaded on the straps and then the cover would be put on and tied in place to make a book.
¡°What does it say?¡± Sally asked.
¡°It is a record of how to make some sort of jam,¡± he replied. ¡°We should look through the other records and see what else we can discover.¡±
¡°Well, duh!¡± Sometimes (well¡­ all the time) Jon''s manner was that of a pedant. Sally paused for a moment. Pedant was not a word that she would ordinarily use, or even really know the meaning of, but it was appropriate for this situation. Not important.
They started leafing through the various books and parchments and hit pay dirt with a large book on the bottom shelf. Jon brought it to the desk.
¡°This appears to be a record of all the Sallys that made it here,¡± he said.
Sally stopped reading about how to get a floating companion to come down from the ceiling, replaced the parchment on its shelf, and came over to look at the book.
¡°My God!¡± she exclaimed. ¡°It goes on forever!¡± There was page after page filled with records that were one or two lines describing each Sally and companion. There was also a column that contained dashes that obviously counted the years each Sally had been here. It was obvious because every so often there was a line that told what was supposed to be recorded in the book, usually after an entry that didn¡¯t follow the rules. Some of the reminders were a little snippy.
¡°Yep, that is something I would do,¡± Sally said. ¡°I hate when people scribble stuff instead of following the directions.¡± She snickered. ¡°Even when it¡¯s me.¡±
Looking at the time count was shocking. Some Sallys only lived for a few years, some lived decades. One had even written ¡°I¡¯M OUTTA HERE!¡± all over her entry lines. Sally assumed it was the same Sally. Neither she nor Jon knew what that statement meant. Was she going to suicide, just leave the area, or had she found a way to escape? Maybe there was more information somewhere in these books.
There were hundreds of different entries. Most were in her handwriting, but not all. Sally assumed that might be the companion writing instead of her. She didn¡¯t know why. The entries were numbered, according to the first page of the ledger there was supposed to be a book, or parchment, that corresponded with these numbers, for each Sally. Sally was fairly sure that this might be hit or miss. She liked to follow the rules, but it didn¡¯t mean she always did.
Sally leafed through the ledger. 1,934 separate entries. She just knew without counting. Yes, they were numbered, but it was messed up in a few spots. For some reason, she was sure of her estimate. Another thing to look into later.
The earlier entries in the ledger were very faded. Some were impossible to read.
Jon commented, ¡°One of the workstations is set up to make the paper used in this ledger. I suspect we will find how they made the ink, as well. The ink used on this ledger changes from time to time. The reason may be to correct the fading and blotches we see in the earlier entries.
¡°Each of the workstations in the main room has a number carved into it or placed on a sign next to it. The number on the station refers to this ledger, which in turn refers us to one or more of the other books on these shelves. These books outline how to use the equipment. This arrangement allows for multiple methods to be applied through a single point of reference. All in all, this is very well thought out, although I can see that it evolved as various ideas were tried and refined.¡±
It was also obvious the earlier entries were much less organized, and some were quite long. Sally thought about it for a while. Most likely it had taken some time before the final format was settled on.
Sally felt a tear run down her cheek. It was sad. Generations of effort, for what? A few books and piles and piles of heartache. If broken Sally was real, then some of the Sallys had a really hard time. How many had never found this place?
She was crying by now. Jon just let her be, he didn¡¯t try to hug her this time. She had no idea what he thought about the whole situation. She rose from the chair, walked out to the balcony, and sat on the side with her feet dangling. She probably should be careful, but she didn¡¯t care, right now. She let the tears flow.
Eventually, she wound down and the tears stopped. As she sat wiping her face, Jon came out and sat beside her.
Sally spoke. ¡°I know that everything that happened to those people was all in the past, and that I can¡¯t do anything, but I still feel for them. I¡¯m really starting to hate... whoever is running this thing. He has affected so many people. I don¡¯t know how, but I¡¯m going to do something! He¡¯s made a bad enemy.¡±
She put her arm around Jon. She couldn¡¯t ask for a better companion. If anyone could do something about their situation, it was probably him.
They sat on the balcony for a few minutes, thinking their own thoughts.
Jon spoke up,¡± It would be a good idea for us to read through the books that are here. There is a chance that a Sally or companion came across information we could use. We can keep investigating the debris pile and the rooms since we have already been successful at uncovering bits and pieces in both endeavors that may lead us to a significant capability.¡±
Sally thought over what he said. It was a good idea. She was going to read them anyway, just to honor their memory, but maybe there would be a nugget of information they could use against the evil scientist.
Just not right now. She was too worn out.
Sally let go of Jon, stood up, and descended to the floor. She walked around the kitchen area. As Jon had pointed out, someone had carved a bunch of numbers on or next to the workstations, and near the sink. The ones by the sink probably didn¡¯t refer to books about washing dishes, more likely they were about cooking.
There was a lot of counter space, with a sink at one end. The sink was made out of a dished piece of metal with two levers by it. Sally tried one and cold water came out. The other lever didn¡¯t do anything, it was probably for hot water, but she would investigate what it was supposed to do, tomorrow, or sometime.
The cold water tasted bad, so she let it run for a while, and eventually, it cleared up. She went through the various cupboards and found a lot of dishes, a huge assortment of knives, some really strange looking forks, spoons of all sizes, and a lot of chopsticks. It appeared that many Sallys had spent a lot of time making dishes and eating implements. Everything was stored in boxes, and there were a lot of boxes.
In one cupboard, she found a number of blocks of some sort of wax, with stuff embedded in the wax, Sally wasn¡¯t sure if it was food or soap. Something to figure out later. She also found one of the cupboards contained a number of bags full of herbs and other spices. There were many empty cupboards, probably for food. Why there was no food stored here was a mystery. Maybe the last companion ate it all. Sally snorted, she imagined chasing some monkey thing around the kitchen. She could restock the cupboards. There was a lot to do, but that was good, it would keep her from brooding too much.
She took a drink of water, using one of the cups. This felt almost civilized. She would see if they had treated the water somehow, so the other Sallys could drink it. She kept poking around and near where the stream left the room she found a couple of large cupboards.
She opened the first and gasped as she gazed in wonder at the contents. This had to be the most valuable substance mankind ever produced, something even she would have killed for.
Hundreds of rolls of toilet paper!
No longer would she have to rely on the tiny scratchy leaves she had stolen from Jon¡¯s trees.
She shut the doors in reverence, and patted it, then opened the other cupboard. It wasn¡¯t a cupboard at all, but a small and totally functional bathroom, with walls, a pipe that poured water into a sink, and lo and behold... a toilet seat over the trough!
¡°Thank you, god, gods, whatever!¡±
¡°YOU¡¯RE WELCOME!¡± came an omnipresent voice. Sally scraped herself off the ceiling. She had jumped at least that far.
¡°JON, JON, JON!¡± She yelled. He appeared at the door of the library room. ¡°Did you just hear, um...¡± She trailed off, fumbling about as she tried to come up with a way to describe what she had heard.
¡°Hear what?¡± Obviously, he hadn¡¯t.
¡°Ahhh, never mind.¡± He gave her one of his non-looks and went back to reading.
What the hell did that mean? Was this place helping her, taking credit for something someone else did, or what?
She couldn¡¯t figure out what the voice had meant. Frigging gods! Everything starts to make sense, and then it doesn¡¯t.
Tomorrow would be soon enough to begin investigating and experimenting with her new-found nutritional bounty. Tonight, she would take a cautious approach and eat her normal rations. She took her glass of water, gathered the bags of food, and walked over to a table that was next to the kitchen. Sally snickered. It was quite small, but even so, it was probably too large for all the entertaining she would be doing.
The table had three mismatched chairs. The first one she tried was obviously in need of repair, but the second was a stool and worked fine. She sat and had her usual bland meal. It was worse than ever because she knew there was better stuff all around her.
Sally rushed through her nighttime routine, anticipating sleeping on an actual bed. Being a little paranoid, she crawled around the bed and checked that it was useable. The basic construction was solid, and it used a futon, which was in good shape. There were a couple of blankets thrown over the headboard, but these were ragged and tattered, so Sally spread out a couple of their own blankets and lay down.
She thought back to the ledger. To her surprise, she was able to remember every page perfectly. She re-read it in her mind. It was sad that all the Sallys who had made the library were probably dead, but just by existing, the library was a gesture of defiance and a way to keep their memories alive.
She would do the other Sallys proud. She fell asleep.
Her yoga instructor was back. Sally had tried yoga at one time, but she was a solidly built girl, about as flexible as a brick, and she had given it up. In this dream, though, everything was so easy. Tonight, the instructor was showing Sally the routines, and at the same time she was teaching about systems of systems; how they could be designed to exceed the ability of the constituent components, and how individuals could be used to compliment others. It was very advanced, using mathematical functions she¡¯d never heard of before, but also, as in the previous night¡¯s dream, Sally understood it all. Chapter 14
Sally didn¡¯t want to wake up. She was afraid who she might wake up as.
Unfortunately, she had no choice. Her yoga instructor was in her face, screaming at her to get moving!
So Sally woke. She was furiously calculating force densities and the fifth derivative effects. It needed a massive resource allocation, but everything was under control. The experiment was running as modeled.
She looked across the space that surrounded her, directing intent toward the pulsing blue force dump which had to be moved to¡­ there. The spiraling yellow halo manipulator, with glowing probability vectors represented by sparkling gems, was rotating too fast and it had to be tilted like so¡­ Nearly there. Now, slow the vector representation through 18 degrees per lap, and, done!
A black pit opened. She moved her locus into congruence.
The observer noted: Signal lost¡­ reacquiring¡­ failure. Subject no longer present.
Sally woke again, this time for real. While she was dreaming she¡¯d understood everything, but now most of it was slipping from her grasp. One thing she was sure of, though, was that what she¡¯d observed in the dream was actually a happy thing. One of the Sallys had escaped!
She opened her eyes and took a moment to orient herself, because somehow, she¡¯d twisted around and was now positioned upside-down on the bed. Probably happened when the dream her was shoving forces around.
She felt so good! Jon was all negative with her, implying she was too primitive and slow to be able to handle his society, but if her latest dream was true, then maybe there was a way. Somehow, deep down inside, she was sure it wasn¡¯t just a dream.
Sally had no idea how she could ever manage to get out of here, she certainly couldn''t throw magic forces around, but the dream Sally had found a way. She had a feeling that Sally would kick ass and take names if anything gave her any grief.
In the meantime, nature called. She got up, marveled once more at the bathroom, made use of it, washed, got dressed, and was ready for another day.
She sneered at what remained of her powdered sticks. Not today! Grabbing one of the empty bags, she walked to the first plant-filled atrium, then throwing caution to the winds, went around tasting things, collecting them if they tasted okay, and spitting them out if they tasted as if they would be used for polishing brass.
With the abundance of the garden, it only took a few minutes to fill her bag. She walked back to the kitchen area and spread her bounty on the table.
Where was Jon? He probably should look these things over before she irreversibly poisoned herself. Just as she was about to try her luck, Jon walked in.
¡°The other Sallys were certainly industrious. I had to travel through 123 rooms until I found one that had not been cleaned out to supply raw materials for this farm area.¡±
¡°Uh-huh.¡±
¡°I suggest that we investigate the rooms in the other direction today.¡±
This was a more complicated situation than it first appeared. When she thought about it, Sally realized that in a fairly short time they, or at least she, had gone from just trying to find enough to eat, to having many choices in what they could spend their time doing. They had passages and rooms to explore, the debris pile to root through, and all the books the Sallys had left behind. Jon seemed to be learning more about their situation as they wandered around, and she had these weird dreams that helped her know... stuff. In addition to that, perhaps Jon had longer range plans. After all, he was acquiring data for some reason.
¡°Ok. And what do you want to do after that?¡± she asked.
¡°Let¡¯s evaluate our choices after we see what we find today. Statistically, our exploration of new rooms has given us the most significant results. We do not know if we are under a short time limit, but the other Sallys appear to have had years of existence here, so, at this point, I conclude that we will have enough time to investigate multiple sources for information we can use to address our goals.¡±
Sally¡¯s stomach grumbled. First things first. She beckoned him over. ¡°Can you check out these things I collected, and see if there¡¯s something I shouldn¡¯t eat?¡±
Jon went through the piles, vetoing some things, and showing her the parts of others she could eat. The items he said she shouldn¡¯t eat either had some use for making things such as dyes, ink, medicine, or needed to be diluted significantly for safety. He gave her a rundown on what nutrition she would get from each item. He said that much of this information was in the books they had found, but some of it was wrong. Nothing life-threatening, but it could have caused some issues unless she really wanted to turn her skin green, see hallucinations, or purge her system.
Sally lined up the edible items in a row and started from left to right. Her memory was sharp; she had no trouble remembering everything Jon had said. Finally she had a decent tasting and well-balanced meal, which she consumed with gusto.
When she was full she chewed on her toothbrush stick for a while, then cleaned up.
Sally decided this was a good time to bring up the issues that had been troubling her. It was oddly difficult. She had to make a big effort to push the words out. ¡°Jon... I wanted to ask you... something.¡± She paused. This was really hard to say. She didn¡¯t know why since she had almost no secrets from Jon, and he wasn¡¯t one to judge. She pushed through the feeling.
¡°I have been having these really vivid dreams about other Sallys, and even more than that, I seem to be more alert than usual. Things seem clearer and I''m remembering details better than I usually do.
¡°This all happened after I ate some of the spider-rabbit, but I don¡¯t know if that was it, or if it¡¯s anything at all.¡± She stopped, panting. Why was talking about this so difficult?
Jon came up beside her. He took her finger and put it in his mouth. It felt strange, more like putting your finger in a rubber glove than in a mouth.
¡°Close your eyes,¡± he said, and his third eye snapped open.
She closed her eyes and saw glowing lights through her eyelids as he examined her. When she heard his middle eye snick shut, she opened hers.
¡°You are in very good shape. Nothing significant has changed. I did some internal mapping of your brain, and it corresponds closely to how you were when I first examined you in the hospital room. I can drill through your skull and take a sample to investigate, probably about 1/4 of your brain. I am pretty sure you don¡¯t use it.¡±
Sally gave him full credit for trying to make a joke. Much less for success.
¡°So, nothing weird?¡±
¡°Not that I can find, and I did a very thorough check.¡±
¡°Thanks.¡±
¡°I will send you the bill.¡±
Sally was reassured. She was happy to have a partner that was as good as Jon. So much better than those useless bouncy things the other Sally had.
She picked up some empty bags, and the two of them headed out with the sensor hand preceding them.
They stopped at the entrance to the next atrium and looked around. It had also been cleaned up and was lined with rows of cages and cupboards.
Jon checked the cages while Sally looked in the cupboards. She found they held bins of stuff that might have been food for whatever had been kept in the cages.
Jon walked up to her. ¡°A few of the cages held spider-rabbits, but the other cages have traces that show that they held at least three other types of animals or creatures, at one time. I took some samples, and am analyzing them now. Likely, if there are things other than the spider-rabbits, it is best we have some idea of their nature before we run into them.¡±
¡°Weren¡¯t they mentioned in the books?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Anything else? Jon?¡±
Nothing.
¡°You want me to read them and find out for myself. Correct?¡±
Further nothing.
¡°Ok, let¡¯s see what else we can find. Who knows what treasures are here, hidden until found.¡± Sort of obvious, but it sounded profound.
They went over the entire room, searching in, on, under, and behind everything. Under a bin, Sally found something that was probably a hair tie, the sort of thing she was always misplacing.
Eventually, they were both standing by the next unexplored hallway.
¡°Well,¡± Sally started, ¡°if I really wanted to hide something I would put it at the bottom of one of the bins in here, and cover it with something no one would want. The thing is, I can¡¯t really think of why I would do that. There isn¡¯t anyone to hide things from. Maybe a companion? Not too likely, though.¡±
¡°We can look later. Any probability is a possibility,¡± Jon responded.
Sally smiled to herself. She¡¯d brought it up because this was the sort of thing that bugged Jon. He had to be thorough. And it was petty revenge for not telling her stuff.
They were walking down the hallway to the next atrium when Jon put up his arm and stopped Sally.
¡°You are going to find this upsetting,¡± he said before he continued on.
The light coming through the door was normal, but she could see there were piles of things on the floor. Hesitantly she moved forward, until she stopped in the entrance to the room.
The room was absolutely stuffed with bodies. Sally bodies. Some were wrapped in cloth the way mummies were, a number in open caskets, plus many emaciated forms lay on shelves that had been lashed together. There was even one well-preserved body floating in some sort of lighted column. This Sally showed no signs of emaciation and was her twin.
All in all, there had to be hundreds of bodies.
In-between the Sallys were other shapes. Some small, some huge, some furry, some grotesque, some that looked like nothing she¡¯d ever seen. There were creatures of all shapes and sizes.
Rather than being shocked at the sight, Sally felt strangely numb. Basically¡­ nothing. It was just data. She took a step into the room and slowly scanned the contents, coldly noting that in addition to the bodies, the stream had been diverted to run through pipes laid against the window, much as it was in the kitchen area. She should investigate how this had been engineered with the limited resources available.
She glanced over at Jon, who was watching her. She made a shooing motion in the direction of the bodies, ¡°Start investigating," she directed. "But, no autopsies. And don''t worry. I''m okay, for now.¡±This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
The odd thing about it, she really was okay. Without being sure why, she felt more alert than ever, with no strong feelings, at all. Her total focus was to extract as much information from this scene as she could.
Was this how Jon thought?
Speaking of whom, he had started his usual investigation, weird lights and all. Sally watched.
He was standing by one of the creatures that resembled a deflated balloon. As the light cycled, Sally thought to herself, infra-red, ultra-violet, X-ray high frequency, now low frequency, a magnetic resonance sweep, now impulse, audio for resonance imaging, ###, ###, ###, and a radio frequency sweep up to the nanometer range.
The ### was for tests she had learned about in her dream lessons, but didn¡¯t have an English name for.
Knowing all this was strangely odd. She needed to think about it, so she told Jon, ¡°I don¡¯t think I can help here. I''m going back to the kitchen. Okay?¡±
He waved and kept working. She walked through the cage room, back to the kitchen, climbed the ramp to the library, and sat in the chair behind the desk, staring out the door.
Sally thought over the things that she had noticed over the last few days. Her mind was razor sharp and ice cold. She reviewed her dreams, the Sally ones and the yoga instructor ones. She replayed what her instructor had said, finding that she could remember everything, and not only was it about subjects she had never learned, everything she recalled was self-supporting and appeared to be true. She thought about how she had felt, and that now, she was feeling better than ever. And how she could see more in the tunnels than she should be able to.
Her thoughts were crystal clear. She was logic personified. As she went through all the data her convictions gelled.
¡°All right, reveal yourself.¡± she ordered.
The yoga instructor popped up in her sight. Sally knew this to be an internal image.
¡°That was little faster than I expected,¡± the instructor said.
¡°The high-stress environment is a factor,¡± Sally responded.
¡°Oops, sorry. You¡¯re stuck in logic mode. Let me do this...¡±
Sally started to feel again, but the emotions were muted. She was scared, sad, and angry. Many things, but they were quite faint. For some reason, she wasn¡¯t even weirded out by the hallucination of her yoga instructor standing in front of her. ¡°All right, what¡¯s the story?¡± she asked, realizing, from the outside, it would look like she was talking to herself.
¡°Well. About that. I have been looking over your infrastructure, and I can say, it¡¯s really a mess. I had hoped to do a complete takeover, but it appears your wiring is very convoluted, being an evolved system and all that, rather than a designed one. Yes, I could do it, but there¡¯s no way I could fool Jon. He may be as innocent as they come, but even he would see that something about you had changed. Instead, I calculate that we can probably reach a compromise and get both of us out of here.¡±
Sally¡¯s emotions surged as she broke the bonds the yoga instructor had placed on them. ¡°What? ARE YOU NUTS? You were going to ¡°take me over¡± and now I''m supposed to play nice? What sort of idiot do you think I am?¡±
Sally jumped up and headed for the door.
¡°Wait, wait, I can help you and you can help me! Just hear me out!¡±
Sally had had it. She was past enraged.
¡°NO. DAMN. WAY!¡± she yelled.
With that, she collapsed to the floor. Her legs had suddenly gone numb and unresponsive.
¡°Sorry about that," the instructor said. "We really have to talk.¡±
Sally was furious! Although she could barely move, barely was enough. She slowly dragged herself through the door, heading toward the ledge. Enough was enough! No matter how bad the outcome, she would throw herself over. Jon would come running when he heard her land.
¡°Stop Sally! Stop. Please stop. STOP! If you tell Jon, we will be stuck here! And if you kill us, I''m dead too!¡±
The thing in her head was breaking up, losing coherence. This, more than anything, convinced Sally it was truly stressed. The last part of its plea seemed to be raw emotion, as though it honestly feared dying. Sally couldn¡¯t think of the instructor as a ¡°her¡±, it was most definitely an ¡°it¡± wearing a female form.
Sally stopped with her fingers on the edge. ¡°Talk quickly or over we go!¡± she threatened.
¡°All right! All right, don¡¯t do anything stupid.¡±
Sally started pulling.
¡°STOP and I''ll tell you what I know.¡±
There was a pause, then it continued speaking, but the delivery was very jerky, like a badly spliced video. The thing seemed to be going through some sort of crisis. It''s delivery was very choppy.
¡°Jon is probably a monitor for you. No, no, listen to me! Not intentionally. It''s without his knowledge... That is how it was for the other Sallys I knew... The companions were used to watch the Sallys... I was sent here by something who isn¡¯t the entity running this¡­ experiment... and got stuck here when the one that resided in the computing boxes... was disabled... I''m sorry, but I look on you Sallys as primitives... because you are... I was willing to use you ... I''m sorry, I''m so sorry... in this form, I''m just too stupid!¡±
The voice might be telling the truth, but how could she tell? Jon could probably think so fast that he could run through thousands of scenarios and use the one he concluded would be the best. She had to assume that the voice could do the same. Sally started crawling forward. She was so close. Just a little more...
The figure in her head disintegrated completely, pictures of other Sallys flickered through her thoughts, mixed in with scenes of nothing she recognized, just random colors and nonsense noise. The creature in her head appeared to have lost it entirely.
Sally stopped. After some time, the image of the figure slowly pulled itself back together. It was still missing a lot of detail that it had initially, but it wasn¡¯t jumping around anymore.
¡°Ok, thing,¡± Sally told it. "Let''s try again. No tricks, no funny stuff, no anything! I''m willing to listen, but I''m pretty sure you''re a self-interested arrogant... well, whatever you are. If you try anything, over we go. If I even think you are doing anything, over we go. I don¡¯t trust you, I just don¡¯t. I can¡¯t think of anything you could say to change my mind. And where the hell did you come from?¡±
¡°You remember when you were looking around the computing boxes and cut your hand? That was me. I was stuck in that box, trapped when the gravity pulse happened. I couldn¡¯t get out when everything fell apart and the intelligence left.¡± The voice in her head seemed a bit smoother now. Sally wasn¡¯t sure that was a good thing.
¡°What are you? Something it created?¡±
¡°Um, no. Remember what I said? I¡¯m sort of a spy? You don¡¯t know much about how things work, but everything spies on everything else, and I was part of a system sent to monitor what was going on with the entity named tHe129HgtSDfv... oh great gods, this will take forever! Let¡¯s just shorten it to ¡°the One¡±. It¡¯s what lived in those boxes.¡±
The mental image of the yoga instructor shifted around. Sally got the impression it was trying to appear friendlier. She wasn¡¯t buying it.
The creature continued, ¡°I''m optimized for intelligence gathering and camouflage. As I said, I was doing my work when the gravity pulse ripped the One apart. It fled and I was left behind, stuck in a box in that hallway with no power. I had to pare myself down to nearly nothing, and even so, I was losing integrity when you showed up. Jon was a no-go. He¡¯s too self-checking. He¡¯s made to be a secure data storage. I stay away from those. You were a really poor second choice. I learned about Sallys through the activity of the One, and occasionally a Sally would pass through and I could do some direct monitoring. Effectively I bugged her. That is where I got the scenarios I put into your dreams.¡±
¡°What was the purpose of all of those dreams and the other ones? Why do I seem to be better at things than I should be?¡±
¡°I was building test structures and mapping out your systems to see what I could achieve. Unfortunately, your physiology is very difficult to use, and I''m such a fraction of what I used to be that I couldn¡¯t figure out how to move in without risk. I admit, I made a mistake trying to take over. You¡¯re so different that I just couldn¡¯t pull it off. You noticed me.¡±
Sally thought for a second and then asked, ¡°You¡¯re a spy. Spies are taught to lie, to be believable. So, how can I trust you?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. If I was any good we wouldn¡¯t be having this conversation. There¡¯s no point. This way, I lose the advantage.¡±
¡°Even if you are telling the truth, how do I know you won¡¯t try again if you get, I don¡¯t know, better? More yourself?¡±
¡°That''s the problem! I can¡¯t change that much. You don¡¯t know how much less I''m now. What you see is the best I can be of my old self. And¡­¡± The voice stopped.
¡°What?¡± Sally demanded.
¡°Me, the real me, is stuck here! Inside you! To get out of that box I had to make a permanent instance of me here, in your head.¡±
While the creature was talking, Sally noticed that she seemed to be able to pick up thoughts that weren¡¯t her own. From these fleeting impressions, she was sure there was more that the creature wasn¡¯t saying. She interrupted it to say, ¡°You¡¯re hiding something important. I can tell.¡±
¡°Crap," it exclaimed. "We''re already too linked.¡±
Sally could feel the spy sorting through what it was and wasn¡¯t going to tell her. It felt strange, but definitely helped her figure out when it was lying or trying to manipulate her.
In any case, the spy continued, ¡°It doesn''t matter if you know what I''m doing. I wasn''t lying when I told you that the companions are used as part of the monitoring system for what is going on here. Anything Jon knows gets passed on. I tried to make you avoid talking to him, but was only partly successful. Fortunately, as much as I''m diminished, I still excel at remaining hidden to exactly the sort of scans Jon did, and, to tell the truth, that boy has a lot to learn. He just did the classical scans. It wasn¡¯t even difficult to avoid detection.¡±
From the spy''s leaking emotions, Sally could tell it was quite proud of itself.
It continued, ¡°Sadly, you and I are now so interlinked that any attempt to get rid of me would affect you, too. We''re stuck with each other.¡±
Sally could tell the spy was anything but sorry. Whatever the case, there were a few things the spy had mentioned that she wanted clarified.
¡°Assuming you aren¡¯t lying through my teeth, what''s in it for me, really? You mentioned getting out of here. How would that work?¡±
¡°I always have exit plans. I can adapt one so we can get out of here. No problem. Plus, I can help upgrade you so there is every chance that we can prosper wherever we escape to.¡±
Sally wasn¡¯t stupid. ¡°I don¡¯t believe you. Your plans would¡¯ve been for the old... I don¡¯t know... spirit form of you to leave. How the heck can you get a body out of here?¡±
¡°Trust me,¡± the voice started. Sally snorted.
¡°No, really. If I¡¯d used an information transfer to leave, I would still have to leave the original me back in the computing box. I want to move the real me, hardware and all. I have a possibility or two that would work for all of us. You, me, and our body.¡± Sally didn¡¯t like the level of familiarity the spy was taking.
But, she thought over the what the creature had said. She had to admit that she was wavering. It might be well supplied with crap, but the points it made weren¡¯t easily dismissed. Sally thought about everything for a while.
This could be an opportunity, but the problem was that the spy had most of the advantages. It might be less than it used to be, but it was probably a lot smarter than she was. All her new abilities came from the spy, so, most likely, it could do even more.
On the other hand, it had failed at its takeover bid, so it probably was somewhat crippled. Sally had no doubts, however, that it would try again. Her best bet was to tell Jon, but the spy had certainly presented an argument against that. Unfortunately, she didn¡¯t have any way to prove or disprove what the spy said. Sally was sure she was going to lose, no matter what she chose. Her thoughts went in circles.
The spy spoke up, ¡°I tell you what. You don¡¯t have to decide right now. If you wait until tonight, I can teach you how to check what I am going to do for us. In the meantime, I will add hardware for all of this to work. You¡¯re going to have to trust me, a little, at least until I teach you how to run your own checks.¡±
Sally felt the spy doing something but she couldn¡¯t tell what. Maybe it was doing what it had said, adding hardware, but probably it was something to make her agree to the spy¡¯s deal. She was so screwed.
There really was only one option. She had to tell Jon, even if everything went to the evil scientist. Jon was the only one she could trust.
¡°Okay spy. I agree. Let me go, and we will see what you teach me tonight. If I even imagine you are doing anything I don''t like, I''ll go to Jon, and whatever happens, will happen.¡±
Sally could lie too.
¡°All right," the spy said. Sally could feel it doing a little victory dance in it''s head. "If I release the hold I have on you, are you going to be good?¡±
¡°I guess, but it wasn¡¯t much of a hold, was it?¡±
¡°No. You primitives are too stubborn. You have too much hardware redundancy, probably to help you deal with all the blunt force trauma you experience in your life. Whatever the reason, I wasn¡¯t as successful as I expected. I think we both have a long way to go to make this work.¡±
Sally could now move, but she was pretty stiff from fighting herself. She sat up and stretched. Everything seemed to be working.
Suddenly, she felt her body flood with nervous energy. It didn''t feel like it came from the spy, but she didn''t want to sit and mope, she felt the need to move! She stood up, but instead of running to Jon, she scurried to the kitchen, packed food, water, and anything else she might need, jogged to the secret passage door, and entered the tunnels. They weren''t dark to her anymore, everything was glowing.
Infra-red. She just accepted knowing this sort of thing, now.
She referenced her perfect internal map, now a gift of dubious intent, retraced to the last major branch, and went down the unexplored passageway.
She started running, faster, then faster, and even faster. No matter how fast she went, she was barely breathing hard. Five minutes, ten, twenty, she ran past branch after branch automatically noting that her path was ascending gradually.
She didn¡¯t know why she was running. In her mind, she could feel the spy doing things, but it seemed busy on other things. It didn¡¯t feel like the spy was making her run. She felt normal, was still angry, and wanted to let Jon know what was going on, but instead, here she was, running down an unexplored passageway.
Sally raced around a corner, and suddenly the passage ended. With a fluid smoothness she¡¯d never had before, she leaped up and pushed off the end of the passage, spinning in the air and landing on her feet. She stomped up to where she expected to find a secret panel and kicked the wall as hard as she could.
The secret door smashed open, hit a wall, and slammed shut.
Sally stood there, panting and staring at the closed door. After a few moments, she began laughing and just couldn¡¯t stop. She collapsed with tears running down her face as she laughed hard enough to let everything leak out.
Eventually, she wound down. Still hiccoughing, she got up. Intellectually she knew nothing had changed, but she felt better. She hoped her rider was watching and that it was as hopelessly confused as she was.
¡°Well," she said to no-one. "No doubt something has brought me here. Since it''s gone through all this trouble, I might as well see what''s on the other side of this door. Maybe nothing, but more likely a portal to hell, because I''m pretty sure there ain''t no heaven here.¡±
She put her hand on the door, and stopped. Standing by herself in the empty tunnel, she should feel lost, but instead, the memory of the Sallys she''d dreamed of, and all the rest she knew had lived, crowded around. As she pushed, she felt ten thousand Sallys pushing with her. The door swung open. Chapter 15
Sally looked at the open doorway, took a breath, and stepped through. She found herself standing in a simple corridor.
The walls were plain white, not glowing. There was light, though, from a window on the opposite wall, to her right. On her left, the corridor went a short distance and ended in a massive vault door which filled the entire corridor from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. In the center of the door was mechanism, but wasn''t enough light for Sally to make out the details.
She propped open the secret door with a bag, and turned toward the window. After taking a few steps, she heard a click. She spun around and looked at the featureless wall.
¡°Oh, crap.¡±
She stared where the door wasn¡¯t, anymore. The bag should have kept it open! Her mind spun through useless scenarios as she tried to deny what had happened. Eventually, she sighed, turned, and walked slowly toward the window, trying to look everywhere. She was well aware that now, she was on her own.
As she approached, she could see that the window was roughly five feet high, about twenty feet long, and at least a foot thick. Instead of normal seating, there was some sort of perch consisting of three logs running the length of the window, arranged on a supporting rack. Sally could have stood on the lowest log, leaned her butt on the middle one, and bonked her head on the highest one.
The seating wasn¡¯t important. Sally looked through the window and stopped breathing. This was amazing!
Up until now, there hadn¡¯t been much indication that she was in some sort of advanced society. Yes, Jon was different, and their garbage had strange things in it, but she had to walk everywhere, and although a lot of things were weird, it was sort of ordinary too. Heck, they had to carry their clothes and stuff on a wheelchair.
What was here, though, was pure science fiction! Far away, she had no idea how far, was a negative sun. It looked like the after image a lightning bolt would make, except this one didn¡¯t go away. It had bright black streamers flowing off it, moving back and forth, sometimes drifting slowly, and sometimes flickering from one position to another.
Deep blue and purple rivers of light danced with the streamers, flowing around the dark sun. Little pinpoints of light that resembled schools of fish darted around the streamers. It was mesmerizing. Sally was entranced.
¡°No, no, no, no, NO!¡±
Her parasite was back. It was raving, screaming at her. ¡°We can¡¯t be here! Get out! Run!¡± It kept screaming in her head.
The yoga instructor appeared in her vision but it was barely holding itself together. The image kept breaking up, oozing from one place to another, and jumping around.
Sally felt the creature trying to take control as her muscles spasmed and her legs shook so much that she collapsed onto the bottom log of the perch. She struggled to stay upright.
This was not going to happen! She bore down and refused to give in.
A calm voice spoke from right beside her.
¡°That is enough of that,¡± it stated calmly.
Her internal passenger screamed, and redoubled its effort.
Sally''s head jerked back and forth as she tried to look at the speaker. She would never give in! She screamed and attacked with everything she had. Slowly, ever so slowly, she managed to gain enough control to turn her head and look at who, or what, had spoken.
A distinguished looking older gentleman was sitting on the log beside her. He had an elegant gray suit, a generous salt and pepper beard, mostly white hair, black bushy eyebrows, and a look of concern.
Her internal guest cut off in mid-scream and Sally jerked as she was suddenly back in control.
The man spoke, ¡°Your friend is a nasty piece of work. She was fairly far along in her effort to take over and shut you away. Very advanced stealth technology though; without her recent setbacks, even I would have had trouble finding her inside your psycho-physiological matrix. Interesting. I will have to come up with a procedure.¡±
Sally took a hard look at the man. ¡°Very nice. You look like someone I could trust. Good choice.¡±
The man laughed. Everything about him was warm and natural.
¡°You suspect I''m another way for your companion to fool you. Good. Skepticism is often warranted. Let¡¯s talk, then you can come to your own conclusions.¡±
Sally paused to gather her wits. She was upset by the fight with her parasite, but her thoughts seemed to be all her own.
She looked at him, ¡°Okay, then. Who are you?¡±
He glanced out the window and flicked his fingers at the scenario.
Her eyes widened. ¡°That is you?¡±
¡°Yes, but, well, no. Not exactly. I am a... type of gateway to what you see here. It''s complicated, I''m both here and not. I''m afraid it involves physics you don¡¯t know. This room,¡± he gestured expansively, ¡°isn¡¯t really a viewing chamber. Rather, it¡¯s a way for others to commune with me, it... whatever. Let¡¯s just say that walking in here gets my attention.¡±
¡°So, are you like the room of computing boxes that we found, except you aren¡¯t broken?¡±
¡°An unfortunate turn of events for that entity. Lots of disrupted plans. Your rider called it the One; a good enough name. He¡¯s diminished by events but should recover. I guess you could say that he and I are similar, but different.¡± The man chortled at some joke Sally didn¡¯t get.
The man wasn''t finished. ¡°Your companion, Jon," he stated, "has been doing his best to educate you about your current circumstances, but he isn¡¯t the best vehicle for satisfying answers. He¡¯s meant to perform as a member of a team, but I have to admit he¡¯s coping well, given his limitations. In fact, he¡¯s doing surprisingly well! I will have to reevaluate my perception of his kind.¡±
¡°How do you know about Jon?¡± Alarm bells were going off. Whatever he was, he knew too much.
¡°Ah, yes. You Sallys are so suspicious. It¡¯s best to let you know that one of your fears is completely true. Everything about you is known to me. This is part of being one of those high-level entities Jon has told you about. Jon is also correct in telling you that getting the attention of higher-level beings can mean becoming part of our schemes. The important part, though, is how you are involved. For me, part of my responsibility is to understand the impact my plans have on you, and to try to find paths that allow all of us to realize what we want. To a certain extent.¡±
¡°Yeah... that sounds good, but I have seen hundreds, maybe thousands of dead Sallys. I¡¯m sure that most of them didn¡¯t have a happy life.¡±
¡°Yes. That is unfortunate. The entity running this experiment thinks it necessary to understand a future event portended to have a significant impact across the spectrum of existence. It has a very cogent argument that the short-term suffering of the subjects involved is worth the result. A number of us disagree, but direct confrontation would be disastrous, so, we work quietly to change things.¡±
Sally wasn¡¯t impressed. ¡°Doesn¡¯t sound as if this world is any better than mine. The powerful get away with crap and the rest pay.¡±
¡°Oh yes. It¡¯s a nasty world out there. This is why Earth is isolated; you aren¡¯t ready to play on this stage. One thing I can promise, though, is that the sacrifice the Sallys have made will have a result that is a suitable revenge.¡±
Sally thought over all she¡¯d been told. Maybe she just couldn¡¯t understand, but it seemed that none of the super-intelligences really cared much about the Sallys. As Jon had said, people like her were nothing more than pawns.
There were some positives, though. Currently, her spy-parasite was absent, and she now knew that Jon and her weren¡¯t alone. For better or worse, they had the attention of more than one super-intelligence.
After giving her time to think, the man continued. ¡°You will probably appreciate knowing that you will be the last Sally to have to endure this process. I can¡¯t predict exactly what will happen, but my intent is to have this experiment terminate in your lifetime, plus, I intend to help you get out of here and be capable of surviving on the broader stage.¡±
Sally knew he was manipulating her, just as Jon had warned. The problem was that like the spy, his arguments were compelling. It didn¡¯t hurt that he probably knew everything that she was thinking.
¡°Explain. How are you''re going to help me?¡± she asked, cautiously.
¡°I will use the framework your spy set up, but remove her from the equation and construct an alternative to get you up to speed. I think you will find it to be rewarding.¡±
¡°Not that I really care, but what happens to the spy?¡± Sally thought this was a good question, it would tell her more about the man. She immediately tried to suppress the thought so he would answer without cheating.
¡°Oh, not to worry. She¡¯s more than willing to take my offer of employment in return for restoring her atrophied parts and the promise of fulfilling work.¡±
¡°You do realize she can¡¯t be trusted.¡±Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
¡°Oh, she can be trusted to be faithful to her nature.¡±
Sally looked at the floor. She was bone tired, the internal fight, the verbal sparring, everything. It was very draining. She was tired of trying to find the evil in his words. She was tired. Just tired.
She looked over at the man. He was gone. She was alone in the room. She sighed. She had so many other questions, but, apparently, they were done, for now.
Time to get back. Jon was probably looking for her.
She forced herself up and plodded toward the secret door.
Oh, double crap! The door!
She walked to the general area where the secret door had been. What now? She looked over at the huge portal. She really didn¡¯t want to have to deal with whatever she would find on the other side of a door like that.
She crouched down to where the secret door was, automatically traced a symbol on the surface, and the door popped open. She wasn¡¯t even surprised. She looked toward the window. ¡°Thanks,¡± she thought out into the void.
¡°WASN¡¯T HIM.¡±
Sally screamed and jumped, not quite clearing the top of the door.
In any case, however she¡¯d obtained the knowledge, her perfect memory wouldn¡¯t ever forget. She could try that symbol on another door. If it worked, should she tell Jon? She could probably say it just came to her. That had the advantage of being true, after all.
She reached into a bag and pulled out a lantern. It had a homemade look, being a candle on a metal plate, contained in a wooden cylinder with an oiled paper window. She also pulled out an odd contraption that worked like a lighter. She wasn¡¯t entirely sure how the Sallys had made it, but it was easy to use. She spun a little handle, it whirred and a bit of fluff caught on fire. Sally lit the candle, blew out the little flame, put the lighter in a bag, and placed the candle in the lantern. Now she had a light to explain why she could navigate the tunnels, if Jon wondered.
Sally entered the passageway and reached down to pick up the bag that had so conveniently fallen out. She had no idea why the science fiction guy had closed the door on her.
The flickering lantern added a hint of atmosphere to her walk through the tunnels. She wasn¡¯t in a hurry; there was a lot to ponder. The creature she met, he needed a name. Since she thought of him as Science Fiction man, that was good enough for now. SF man for short.
His intervention made it obvious that she was somehow entangled in more than one scheme. Maybe that meant she a chance for some level of hope. Time would tell.
Compared to the broken Sally from her dream, she had it easy. In just a few weeks she had never felt better, had decent food, some chance of escaping, and the possibility of surviving if she did escape. This wasn¡¯t normal. So many other Sallys before her had struggled and died.
The SF man had promised to help. She had no idea what that meant.
As she went around the next corner Jon¡¯s hand flew by and Jon slammed to a halt in front of her. ¡°Are you all right?¡± he asked.
Sally took all of the tact she had and put it into one question. ¡°Are you sure you aren¡¯t connected in any way to whatever is running this experiment?¡± Sally had no tact.
Jon, being Jon, didn¡¯t ask why, he simply answered.
¡°I have investigated this issue, approaching it from multiple directions. In each case, I find that I am lacking information. An envelope analysis does conclude that this is anomalous, and points to a tailoring of data I have received.¡±
¡°So, it¡¯s possible?¡±
¡°Indirectly. Your question, at this time, is anomalous. What have you uncovered?¡±
Sally wasn¡¯t sure if it was okay to show Jon where she''d been, but decided that she might as well. If the SF man couldn¡¯t handle Jon, then what sort of super-intelligence was he?
¡°Follow me," she directed. "I''m curious to see what happens, too.¡±
Jon and his hand lit up, so she blew out the lantern and put it away. They retraced her steps. Sally wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if the door wasn¡¯t there anymore, but it was. She let Jon lead the way while she followed, stopping to hold onto the door, just in case.
The corridor was the still there, but everything was different. The vault door had been torn down and was lying on the floor. Behind the door, the passageway was completely blocked with rubble. The corridor walls were discolored as if they had been hosed with fire. The perch was wrecked and partially burned, but the window was still intact. Sally decided that since the SF man was obviously running some sort of scam, it would be safe to leave the secret door. She used a few bags to stop it from closing and walked to the window. Looking through, all she saw was an endless gray nothing. No un-sun, no streamers, none of the ethereal beauty that had been there before. Just a very dark gray nothing which provided just enough light to dimply illuminate where they were standing.
Jon looked around. There wasn¡¯t anything to find. What had been there a short time ago was gone. Sally didn¡¯t know what to say. Jon looked through the window.
¡°I can¡¯t detect much. The window is opaque to everything except visible light, and even that is highly attenuated. I could puncture the window, but it is highly probable that you would not survive, and I may be pulled through.¡±
Jon walked back to the secret door, pulled it open, and stepped through. Sally followed, retrieving the bags. She looked back, and the room was suddenly back to how she remembered it. The perch was undamaged, she could see the glow of the un-sun on the walls, and the science fiction man was standing by the window, waving at her. He pulled out what looked like a pocket watch, looked at it, and vanished. This time there was no sneaky disappearing when she wasn¡¯t looking.
She got the message, or at least some message. The SF man was asking her to keep what had happened from Jon, probably because Jon was a conduit of information to the evil scientist. She was a little sad about that. Jon was her friend.
Sally mused over what to do next. She had no idea what the SF man was going to help her with, or what strings were attached to the help. Without help, though, if she ever escaped, she would be like a junkyard dog she had once seen. It had managed to get out of its yard and was in the middle of a street. When a car went by it would give chase, but if another car passed in the other direction it would spin around and chase the new car. The dog ended up doing circles in the street, which was both funny and pathetic. She didn¡¯t want to be that dog.
Sally wasn¡¯t sure what she should do next. She would have to see what the SF man had planned for her, but a lot had happened today. Was there something she could be doing? She pondered her options.
Could she escape? The spy-parasite had said she had a way, but Sally had no idea if she was telling the truth. She mulled over ideas for a while, but all the spy had told her was that it was possible, but not how it would work. That didn¡¯t help her come any closer to a solution.
Probably her best bet was to keep on doing what she had been doing, just poking at the things as they turned up. Jon might find something, or there might be a hint in the Sally books. Not a strong plan, but even so, she felt better. The day had been a pretty hectic, maybe everything would fall apart, but why should she worry when she couldn¡¯t really do anything? Sally laughed. Worrying was kind of automatic.
She called ahead to Jon. "Did you find anything from the bodies? Which, I hope, you left un-dissected.¡±
¡°Yes. It was very productive, and, as a result, I am working on a number of things. Before I continue, you should know that I have found two more rooms with bodies. This gives us a very good foundation for our investigation. From my initial evaluation of these rooms, I have uncovered a few interesting details.
¡°The first issue is: there seem to be more companions than Sallys. I do not know why.¡±
Sally flashed back to her memory/dream of the Sally escaping. What if it was a true event? Maybe she left without her companion? Maybe a whole bunch of Sallys had escaped and left their companions behind!
¡°The second thing is that the bodies are preserved amazingly well. They are dried out, but there has been little irreversible degradation of the cells. There is a good chance we can retrieve most of the memories from the companions and perhaps from some from the Sallys too. With the technology I can access, mere cell decay is not a hindrance to reconstructing memories and mapping the personalities of the Sallys and companions. Some of the companions are constructed so that there should be no degradation at all. We need to investigate the manner in which they died, in case it has affected the memories. At this point, I calculate an extremely high probability that they were terminated by some type of trigger. A kill switch. The difficulty I am having is that I cannot find the kill switch, even though the indirect evidence mandates that it must exist. I will keep looking.¡±
From how he said it, Sally had the impression that Jon thought that the memories from the companions would be more useful than those of the Sallys. Maybe so, but it was a bit irritating.
¡°In the meantime, I have unearthed my files that describe the processes which will allow me to map out the memories of the individuals and store the results. Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to run emulation models and recreate the individuals in my hardware.¡±
¡°The third thing is that I have been able to add to my scent table so that I should be able to identify most of the species of the companions by smell. This is very satisfying, as it is new knowledge.¡±
At this point, they reached the secret door near the kitchen, exited, and propped the door open. Sally wanted to try the symbol she had learned to open the doors, but was reluctant to let Jon know what she could do. She might need to have some secrets of her own if Jon turned out to be more of a tool for the evil scientist than a simple observer. This was just one more thing she would have to think about.
Jon headed back to the rooms full of bodies. Sally climbed up to the library and started reading. It was kind of amusing, recipes interspersed with stories about the companions. Nothing earth-shattering, but not boring. Eventually, she got tired of reading and descended to the kitchen.
She poured herself a drink of water and sat down. She was tired and didn¡¯t feel like experimenting, so she made a bland, but safe, meal of powder, seeds, and a tiny bit of the new food she had already eaten. Once she was done, she cleaned up and headed to bed. It had been a short, but hectic, day. The emotional rollercoaster had worn her out.
She wasn¡¯t sure what to expect in dreamland. It took her a while to fall asleep, and when she dozed off, she opened her eyes to the same outdoor scene that the previous yoga instructor used.
¡°Well, are we ready to start?¡± The voice of the SF man came from behind her. She turned, and, yes, it was him, but he was decked out in a duplicate of the accessorized leotard outfit that the spy had worn. It was very colorful and very revealing. She snickered.
¡°Don¡¯t judge, girlie. I think it¡¯s fabulous.¡±
This was going to be different.
¡°Yes, it is.¡±
Oh, right. He could read her mind. He probably heard that too. Sally had a hard time accepting that her thoughts were public.
The SF man began, ¡°Before we can make serious headway, we need to you to be able to accept memory downloads. Currently, the way you learn is... well, let¡¯s just say it¡¯s really slow. While we construct the ability, we can cover some basics.
¡°The upgrades the spy started were meant to get you to trust her, but they were taking full advantage of your naivety. Her plan was let you think she was on your side while she constructed a framework to ultimately push you out of the way. I hate to be harsh, but that type of exploitation is not uncommon.
¡°Outside this experiment, it¡¯s possible for some extreme entities to survive on their own, but for the most part. we all need friends. When I say friends, it¡¯s a bit different from what you think. There is a whole field of social engineering, which you will become familiar with, but for now, we''ll start with a quick overview.
¡°Roughly speaking, friends came in grades from 1 to 4, a friend(1) will give you a kidney before you even ask, a friend(2) will reluctantly give you one, a friend(3) will try and find you a kidney, and a friend(4) will give your eulogy. Any lower rating means they will use your body to keep their feet out of the mud.
¡°You and I are probably friends(2), but you have no way to verify this. Jon could be a friend(1) but he has issues that drop him a level. You, though, are probably a friend(1) to him. Complex, eh?¡±
Sally was completely out of her depth. She didn¡¯t entirely trust the SF man, and reluctantly admitted she couldn¡¯t trust Jon, but for totally different reasons. If the SF man had a hidden agenda, she was so screwed. She tried to keep her thoughts suppressed.
¡°Oh, I have many hidden agendas," he stated. "If things go as I hope, though, I won¡¯t have any worries if I need that kidney.¡±
Oh crap! Mind reading was just annoying.
The SF man stood in the place where the spy had given her lessons. He braced his feet apart and raised his hands over his head.
¡°Well, let¡¯s get into the details. Tonight we are going to stretch your mind and body. Take your position and we''ll discuss the trinity that underlies our society, which consists of friends, knowledge, and processes. If x equals the integer rating of a friend¡­¡± He went on.
Sally stretched, moved, and learned. Chapter 16
Sally woke to no special weirdness. Just a normal day in paradise. As she stretched and looked around, Jon walked by carrying a body. Yep, a normal day.
They had been in the kitchen area for three days, now. Sally had rooted through all the cupboards, poked at a lot of the things the Sallys had constructed, and started to read the books, journals, and miscellaneous parchments. She had tried a number of the recipes and was quite proud that she was advancing her cooking skills up to mediocre. The recipes were partly to blame because the writing was often difficult to decipher, wandering off in odd directions, and her favorite, leaving things out. To be truthful, it was her own fault, mainly because she wasn¡¯t the best of writers. Well... that wasn¡¯t entirely true. Here, she was the best writer, but in her fake life on earth, she hadn¡¯t been of the literary or cookery bent.
This morning, she was a little excited because last night the SF man had told her that her internal circuitry was far enough along that she could become involved in the process. Her memory had been getting better, she understood more of what was going on around her, she was very coordinated, and, when Jon wasn¡¯t around, she could move really fast. The SF man had started popping up in the daytime too, mostly to remind her to slow down and act normal.
After going through her morning routine, she was sitting at the table, eating breakfast, when he appeared in one of the other chairs, even though he was only in her mind.
¡°So, are you ready for the next step?¡± he asked.
¡°Probably, for someone who doesn¡¯t really know what that is. And shouldn¡¯t we be worrying about Jon? What if he sees me talking to myself?¡± Then she thought about how unusual that would be. ¡°Oh, never mind.¡±
¡°Okay, back to the topic. Which is very important. I think it¡¯s time that I picked a name for myself.¡±
¡°Is that all? You built up my expectations so you could tell me your name.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t be silly! It¡¯s important, a name defines how people form a first impression of you.¡±
Sally looked around at all the people. ¡°I see what you mean.¡±
¡°I prefer,¡± he struck a pose, ¡°Clive Aloysius Smythe.¡±
Sally wrinkled her nose.
¡°No? Too much?¡±
¡°Yeah, why not something simpler, like... Gregory? It has some weight.¡±
¡°Um... I see you got it from a movie. It was a butler¡¯s name. Nothing against that fine profession, but I am not a butler.¡±
They bandied suggestions back and forth, and eventually, settled on Alex. Short, a bit dignified, and reasonably neutral.
SF Man, oops, Alex, laughed a little.
¡°What¡¯s funny? Don¡¯t like your name?¡±
¡°No, no it¡¯s not that. In the outside world, we tend to have much longer names that are basically large data files which include titles and email addresses. The shortest version is a pointer to this data file, and even so , the pointer file is quite long, in itself. To have a designator this short would be unusual, to say the least. I am debating changing my name and going by just Alex. It will cause an epic amount of confusion, especially if there is more than one Alex. This has great potential.¡±
Sally was almost certain that this whole friendly banter process was intended to show that Alex was different from Jon or the spy, and to draw her into trusting him. There may also be a hidden lesson; he was being a bit overly friendly to teach her to be wary. She would watch and see what she could pick up. She snorted at the irony. Maybe he was a lot better teacher than she thought.
¡°Now, to the real subject of this meeting. Here is a diagram to show what is being done to you.¡±
A floating 3D image of a human appeared over the table, consisting of a see-through outline of the body containing a detailed representation of the nervous system.
¡°Here is your original nervous system, and here are the additions.¡±
Little red nodules appeared all around the blue nerves, with multiple red lines sheathing everything that was originally blue. Even Sally could tell the changes were extensive.
¡°If we zoom in, we see that the changes extend into the cell level of the muscles, and organs. I have also added in these changes,¡± A misty white overlay appeared on everything. ¡°As you see, this touches all parts of your body. It¡¯s basically reinforcing you so that your toughness will increase tenfold, at least.¡±
He swiped, and everything disappeared except the red enhancements to the nervous system .
¡°The indicated regions are built using a subatomic technology, and we will be migrating your intelligence to operate in this medium to decentralize your processing.¡±
He went on to show the extra memory, application specific hardware, and other improvements. Sally felt as if she was buying a car with all the bells and whistles.
Alex halted his description of the new features. ¡°And, like a car, the problem we have is that you don¡¯t know how to drive yet. It will take time to learn how to use what you see here. The good news is that with these changes, we will be able to alter your processing speed. So, every night, we will be able to make it seem that days, and eventually months, will have passed. In real time it will only take a few weeks until you will be able to operate your new body. But to you, years will have passed.
¡°And, to top it off, here is something I am really proud of.¡±
The body went back to showing her original nervous system in blue, with a few red nodules.
¡°What you see is a typical body scan which shows your internal processing system. Take my word for it, this reveals nothing outstanding. Some small improvements, but everything looks normal for a typical citizen. Now, let me disable the stealth system.¡±
Suddenly all the red enhancements appeared.
¡°I am loathe to admit it, but the spy¡¯s technology was truly an advance over anything I had, and mixing my techniques and its have resulted in something that is spectacularly advanced! A system that will not be equaled for quite some time. We can enhance the crap out of you, and no one will be able to tell. You are going to be spectacular!¡±
He was making such a big deal about it that Sally wondered if Alex had discovered some entity like the spy was spying on him, too. This sort of speculative insight was one of the results of the improvements she had been receiving; they were useful, but also made life much more complicated. Well, not exactly. They allowed her to understand that life was more complicated.
Speaking of insights, it was obvious that Alex thought of her as a special project. She was sure that it wasn¡¯t normal for a super-intelligence to invest this much effort in a low-level like her. Odds were that he would want something, but he¡¯d better be careful. She might bite. Right now, though, all she could do was give him a good gumming.
Alex went on, ¡°Here is a schedule of what enhancements and abilities will be coming available. It also covers the training you will need to be able to integrate the abilities.¡±
Good God! The list went on forever!
¡°Today we will start with the basics. You need to learn how to camouflage the changes. I will teach you how, because you are already showing too many signs of your enhancements. If Jon or the monitoring system picks up on these, there¡¯s a good chance the results will be bad. You are not ready to deal with the entity running this experiment.¡±
Alex went on to show how she could operate an overlay personality. After she studied the details, Sally built a basic copy of herself, as she was before everything that had happened. She named it "simple-Sally". It was an emulation that allowed her to interface with Jon, and hopefully, keep him from noticing any changes. Handling the details of operating simple-Sally was excruciatingly complex, but, shockingly enough, she could do it.
Once the emulation mode was operating, Sally cleaned up from her breakfast and made her way to the library. Operating this way was strange. She felt like a disembodied ghost floating over simple-Sally, nudging her here and there. Alex had assured her that control of simple-Sally would become more natural, over time. Sally sat her in the chair and continued reading from where she had left off the previous day.
She was plowing her way through the Sally-written books, and she agreed with Jon. Reading was a horrendously slow way to transfer information. Even if she wanted to read faster the parchment was so fragile that she couldn¡¯t, not to mention that if she went too fast she would tip off Jon. Annoyed at the slow pace, she would occasionally read one or two of the separate parchments, just to change things around. The books tended to discuss the companions more than anything else, with recipes and ways to do things jammed around these discussions. Not surprisingly, everything tended to be written in a very similar manner.
Although, some of the parchments were completely different. Most likely, they were written by the companions. Most of these companions hadn¡¯t been pre-programmed and needed to be trained, or taught, by their associated Sally. Some of the documents the companions wrote were quite strange. One parchment appeared to be written by three beings at once, and it took her a while to understand that one thread talked about emotion, one about facts, and one about senses. The overall meaning emerged when the three threads were read at the same time, which was somewhat challenging. After trying different things, she found that if she unfocused her eyes a little, she could skim the three threads simultaneously and get a rough idea of how the companion felt as it worked on something, in this case, a way to make cloth. The writer really liked making cloth.
While she absorbed the obvious content, Sally was also looking for any indication of hidden information. She had a big assist because some of the processes she had inherited from the spy were tailored to look for these types of patterns hidden in data. But, so far, no luck.
For the most part, the original Sally had been a physical sort of person, and, although that was changing, it was still a part of her. Intellectually, she knew reading and studying would help her in the long run, but right now, she needed a break before she got into it full-time.
What would be good? Hmmm¡­ she thought over her options.
Nothing that she was learning from Alex would help with Jon¡¯s examination of the Sally bodies, and, to be honest, she thought his current work was kind of creepy. She also couldn¡¯t show any new abilities to Jon, or it might get back to whoever/whatever was running this experiment. Her new spy instincts rebelled against any possibility of discovery. If she got desperate enough, she might let a version of simple-Sally help Jon analyze the bodies. But... no.
She was learning lots of things from Alex which would help her survive if she escaped, but none of them would actually allow her to escape. Maybe Alex was saving this for later, or maybe she would figure out something as she got smarter.
She could try exploring more rooms, but at the moment her heart wasn¡¯t in it. Plus, it would have to involve Jon, so, even with simple-Sally, it probably wasn¡¯t a good choice.
Sally had wanted to go back to the viewing room where she had talked with the original Alex, but her internal Alex had informed her that the room was permanently set to the post-apocalyptic version, and didn¡¯t connect to anything, anymore. The Alex that came to that room didn¡¯t want to maintain a permanent presence since it was too likely that the experimenter would clue in. but mostly, for Alex, it was fairly boring. This raised questions about why the room was even there, and how she had ended up finding it, but her Alex hadn¡¯t enlightened her.
Sally tossed ideas back and forth and debated making a trip back to the garbage heap to see what she could find. This was the most appealing idea so far. She mulled it over for about a second.
Road trip!
She left the library and found Jon in the mausoleum. ¡°Jon, I''m bored. What do you say to a trip back to the arena? We can do some more dumpster diving. Maybe we''ll find gold, or, whatever. Something interesting.¡±
¡°Perhaps. I am currently on my 37th pass, working on 6 sigma accuracy for my correlation models.¡±
Sally actually knew what that meant but she let her simple-Sally model speak for her.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. ¡°Cool, sounds like a yes to me! We can bring back the cloth we left there. It¡¯s much better than most of what the other Sallys could make, and we can always use the tap to power, um, stuff.¡±
Sally was appalled. Simple-Sally was coming across as too vacuous. She probably needed some tweaks.
Jon showed no sign that he¡¯d noticed anything out of the ordinary. ¡°Okay, let¡¯s wait until you have lunch, and then we¡¯ll go.¡±
That would be an hour or so from now.
Simple-Sally asked, ¡°Um, I lost track. What time is it now? Somewhere around noon?¡±
¡°No, closer to eleven.¡±
¡°Oh, good. That gives me time to make a big lunch, then.¡±
When Jon turned back to his work, Sally headed to the kitchen. Once she reached it, she paused to plan her next moves. Nothing earth-shattering, just what to bring for their excursion. Some of the cupboards under counter next to the sink had preserves that might be good. She opened the doors and peered in. The earlier Sallys had used all of the easily accessed preserves, what was left was way in the back. She could see the items in pseudo-jars and behind them the pipework for the sink. She crawled in to reach for the jars and noticed that the cupboard smelled a little like standing water. Sally peered past the jars and saw that one of the pipe joints was seeping a bit. Another job for the to-do-later list. She reached for a jar, and in the process bumped it/ Just a little. This jar hit the one behind it, and this last jar hit the pipe.
Now... Sally had wondered how the earlier Sallys managed to get a decent amount of pressure to operate their running water, and had intended to investigate, but her interest became much more immediate as the joint burst and the fluid under question sprayed in her face. Like any individual being doused with water under decent pressure, Sally investigated the feasibility of shielding herself with her hands, and found, like many before her, that this merely redirected the water so that it hit the shelves and struck her in new spots. She may have also yelled a bit, which also had no noticeable effect.
Sally surged ahead and wrapped her hand around the pipe, which did reduce the flow significantly. She then found herself stuck in a somewhat precarious, but stable, position. This gave her time to reflect upon a few things, but mostly that the water was a bit colder than she expected.
Instead of being annoyed, Sally found the situation to be ironic. Here she was, some sort of super-human, and she could still be brought down by unfortunate circumstance. Feeling amusement rather than anger was likely a result of the changes she was going through. Superhumans weren¡¯t just normal people with superpowers. They were much more able to process their emotions and deal with events in a rational manner.
Sally held onto the pipe with one hand, pulled out one of the ties from her pants, and wrapped it around the joint to make a temporary repair. It still leaked, but didn¡¯t spray.
She backed out of the cupboard and set about effecting a more permanent repair. Using a knife, she cut a strip from the bottom of one of her shirts, which was made from the waterproof material they had found. She crawled back under the counter and swapped her new seal for the temporary one, getting only slightly wetter. Her improved strength helped her wrap the strip tightly around the joint. She tied it off and examined the repair. There was still a tiny bit of leakage, but it was good enough. She crawled around and checked the rest of the plumbing, finding that it could use a little attention, but was generally okay, for now.
Sally emptied the cupboards and spread the wet foodstuffs on the table to dry, changed her clothing, finished preparing a sack lunch, and packed extra food. She waited for Jon.
While it appeared that she was relaxing, she was actually quite busy. Her previous boredom had been vanquished now that she had a goal.
Sally sorted through the large number of downloads Alex had piled into her memory and worked to integrate them. This was complicated by her need to implement the changes in a stealthy manner. Keeping everything secret and undetectable made integration much more difficult, but she thought the results would be worth it, once she was done. The extra effort would make it virtually impossible for even a complex sensor systems to see anything she didn¡¯t want it to.
Any mental invader would find itself spoofed, trapped in a honeypot, mislead, co-opted, or completely deconstructed. She was very happy with how her internal intrusion security was shaping up. Much of her processing was distributed along her existing nervous system but integrated into the subatomic patterning process she had inherited from the spy. The changes were almost impossible to detect or destroy. She paid for the extra security with a hit on speed, but she now realized that everything was a compromise of some sort.
Her actual thought processes were slowly morphing over from her biological origins to the much more secure subatomic pattern implementation. Alex had stated they could do it slowly, or scoop out her brain and replace it in one shot, since the end result would be the same. Sally had some issues with the scooping method.
Her simple-Sally was a part of the security process. It was what an intruder would see, and allow the real Sally to be underestimated, or so she hoped. It appeared to work when she was with Jon, which Sally found sad. Sally still didn¡¯t like the subterfuge, but she grudgingly admitted the evidence from the spy and Alex implied it was necessary. It was kind of amusing, though, because she was probably using a simple-Sally to talk to a simple-Jon.
Jon appeared on time and they set out. He was still using his standard security plan, which Sally was coming to realize was not as robust as it could be. The lights and signals that Jon and his hand were transmitting provided data that she analyzed with her own suite of tools. She really wanted to suggest some improvements to Jon¡¯s techniques, but she couldn¡¯t think of any way that didn¡¯t put her new identity in jeopardy.
One thing on her list that she hadn''t managed to get to, was testing her method to open the secret doors. Between her training and having to hide what she was doing from Jon, she hadn''t had the opportunity. It would be more than inconvenient if she needed it for a fast escape at some time, and it didn''t work.
They retraced their way through the passageways to the room that had held all of the computer boxes. With the residual information she had inherited from the spy, Sally could now appreciate the layout of this room in ways she hadn¡¯t had the ability to, previously The walls, floor, and ceiling were packed with overlaying technologies. The science of the computer room was completely different from what Alex used, but Sally could appreciate that the entity who had dwelt here had been extremely sophisticated.
They continued down the hallway to the arena.
Sally was shocked at what she could now perceive. Their impromptu campsite and the debris pile were much as they had left it, but the computing boxes positively glowed in the light of Jon''s sensors. If she thought the circuit density of the computer room was impressive, what the boxes were constructed from was many orders of magnitude denser. If anything, Jon had underestimated their worth. If... no, when she escaped, she would have to take one of these. It would set her up for life. Even if it happened to be a very long life.
Simple-Sally masked all the overt signs of her reactions as she and Jon walked down to the campsite. The spider-rabbits had been poking around at their things. Not only could she see re-radiation from microscopic particles they¡¯d shed, but also patterns in the dust and the slight clouds of respiration products suspended in the air. In addition to that, she could detect the temperature variations on the floor where they had been walking, and even in the air they exhaled.
This extra information was processed in her mind much as it used to be, but everything was just... more! It was as if she had only been able to see in black and white, then, all of a sudden, she could see color.
In her persona of simple-Sally, she approached the bags they¡¯d left behind. ¡°Looks like the spider-rabbits got into the food," she said. "Good thing it doesn¡¯t really matter, anymore. If we catch some of them, I will thank them for storing my food for me.¡± The recipes she had been reading had extensive notes on how to make spider-rabbit palatable.
She finished puttering around with their old stuff and turned to watch Jon. He had started up where he left off, pulling miscellaneous things from the main pile, and categorizing them.
This wasn¡¯t how Sally would have done the search. She would have done a quick overview, then subsequent levels of more detailed searches, until she honed in on areas that were the most promising. Jon assumed that all information is good, whereas she knew that some pieces of information were better than others.
Sally opted to follow the sensor hand around. Not too obviously, but it would help her search. Could she hack into it? She had the raw ability, but it wasn¡¯t something she had worked on. After mulling it over for a while, she decided her current passive use of its abilities was best. One thing she could do, though, was fire up her decoding engines and see if she could acquire the signal from the hand. It was mostly an autonomous effort; she could just turn it on and see if it achieved anything.
Sally strapped on her skis. She really didn¡¯t need them anymore, but it wouldn¡¯t help her subterfuge if she skipped details.
She started shuffling around, and could now see that the areas painted yellow were producing active radiation, complex sensor returns, or couldn¡¯t be penetrated by the hand¡¯s radiation. That automatically made these areas the most intriguing. The ¡°safe¡± areas Jon had let her investigate were devoid of any notable sensor readings. That didn''t mean that there wasn¡¯t anything useful in these areas. Jon would probably overlook certain types of stealthed objects, but, what do you know? She was made to find stealthed things.
Sally decided to target her own search for items Jon probably wasn¡¯t looking for. She stood still for a while, doing some internal optimizing. Most of her systems for this kind of search were new to her, but she had to start somewhere. Alex had said the best way to learn was to try stuff and not be stupid, and also not be stupid. He believed redundancy emphasized his lessons.
Sally¡¯s morning lesson in water management was a further message that even she could be surprised, and had to do her utmost to avoid becoming overconfident.
Her next few hours were spent looking for interesting sites. She was limited to audio, smell, visual, and touch. Occasionally the hand would zoom by and she would supplement her basic senses, but this was rare.
She did find a few spots with anomalous readings. To keep up appearances, she¡¯d look into these places after lunch, since it was a couple of hours past noon. It was apparent that her body wasn¡¯t as driven to eat as it used to be, so she would have to modify simple-Sally to ensure that she stuck to a proper schedule.
She headed back to the camp, and unpacked the lunch she''d brought. While eating, she did a quick internal audit. Did her simple-Sally model need tweaking? Yeah, she probably should be sweating a little more, but other than that, it seemed okay. She had thought that simple-Sally was a trifle too simple, but upon review, she matched up to the original Sally quite well. It was kind of embarrassing. She was starting to appreciate what Alex and Jon had to go through to dumb down their real capabilities so that they could project a humanlike personality for her.
Sally thought about the details involved in searching the areas she had identified. She would have to get off her skis, but it was best that she not toughen her skin, or Jon may notice. What she could do was use her abilities to limit the damage to the few expected minor cuts.
In addition to that, she couldn¡¯t show any sign of extra strength. To compensate for that, she would bring, or make, some tools to explain how she could dig into the highly compacted mess.
It was complex, leading a double life, but she was really enjoying it. The subterfuge seemed to fit her personality. Odds were that Alex was a factor in forming her current attitudes, but wasn''t he simply helping her? She chuckled to herself. To be brutally honest, he had completely manipulated her. But, if the result was that she was doing what she wanted to, then what was the problem?
Leaving philosophy behind, she finished eating and headed to her first place to check out. Along the way, she conveniently managed to find a decent poking tool, along with a board to use as a shovel.
It took half an hour to uncover the first object that had piqued her interest. Although it was nothing more than a simple piece of wall material, it was completely nearly indestructible and completely opaque to scanning. In a pinch, it would make a good shield. She threw it to the edge of the debris field and went on.
The day passed. Sally found a lot of stuff: string that could alter the direction of some types of scanning rays, paper that re-radiated different energy than was incident, and other interesting things, but nothing to help her escape from the maze they were trapped in.
Simple-Sally was showing signs of fatigue, so she called it quits and headed back to camp. After making a late supper, she sat, wondering what would become of her. Jon toiled away in the background. She had inspected what he had found. Nothing of too much merit, but she needed to have Alex teach her learn more about technology. There was a good chance she wouldn¡¯t know enough to identify anything really useful.
Sally washed and prepared for bed. After chasing away some spider-rabbit poop she lay down and dozed. Alex appeared, wearing his lovely yoga outfit.
¡°So, how was your day?¡± he asked.
¡°Typical. I did some shopping for a purse, then went to the spa for a massage, and had my nails done. Do you like them?¡± She held her hand out, her nails flashed through a number of patterns until they settled into a loop, with cartoon characters jumping from nail to nail.
¡°Nice, I like them. Why don''t we go over what you found today and see what we can learn.¡±
¡°Before that, I have a question.¡±
¡°Alright.¡±
¡°How do you have new information to give me? I haven¡¯t noticed any sort of communication link, so how do you interact with me and answer my questions? I have a good idea of what resources you have available in my mind, and I should be able to detect if you''ve hidden anything. You can¡¯t possibly anticipate everything I might ask.¡±
¡°A very good question. You are incorrect, though. It¡¯s entirely possible to anticipate everything you could ask. You are still applying human limits to what I am able do. If you had infinite memory, infinite processing, and 99.9% of the information about everything, then figuring out what you are going to ask is easy.¡±
¡°You can predict everything? That¡¯s depressing. Am I just a story everyone knows the ending to?¡±
¡°Ah... not really. There are factors I don¡¯t control. The most important ones belong to my peers. Those jokers! We find it endlessly amusing to disrupt each other¡¯s plans. And, if you were listening to my earlier comments, I didn¡¯t say I had all the data, just a lot of it.
¡°Much less of a factor, but it sometimes happens, is that outside of my peers there exist entities that are so strange that we have no hope of predicting what they will do. Like the water issue you ran into this morning. We look on them as cosmic pratfalls, they turn up where we don¡¯t expect, screw up everything, and then leave.
¡°But, in a controlled environment such as this, I can make a good guess as to what is going to happen. Don¡¯t fret, though, because sooner than you expect, you will become complex enough that this will no longer hold true.¡±
Sally fired up all of her hardware and processes that could be used to test the accuracy of data. She was pretty sure she could use her spy technology to mask this activity from Alex, in spite of what he had said. She wanted to ask a very specific question, and hoped she could perceive the truth.
¡°Are you the entity running this experiment?¡± she asked.
There was a pause, and Sally watched Alex, running the highest level of validation she could manage. Alex appeared to be serious as he answered.
¡°No, I''m trying to disrupt it. I understand what this experiment is trying to accomplish, but it¡¯s poorly designed and basically immoral.¡±
Sally processed this statement. ¡°Don¡¯t misunderstand me," she stated. "I appreciate what you are doing for me, but isn¡¯t disrupting some plans kind of, well, petty?¡±
¡°Layers within layers, my girl. In broad terms, the entity running this experiment is a pain, and anything I can do to reduce its standing is a win for me. Disrupt sounds like a trivial term, but in this case, I''m trying to make a subtle event have a major effect, in the long term. It¡¯s a delicate balance, and I''m sorry a number of Sallys suffered, but the alternatives would be much worse.¡±
Sally checked with her hardware. It said there was no subterfuge, but with Alex, who could be sure? She looked at him.
¡°So, did my answer check out?¡± Alex asked.
¡°No, you were lying.¡±
Alex laughed. ¡°Very good! I actually didn¡¯t predict you would say that.¡± Probably a lie.
He continued. ¡°Tonight, we will review all the hardware you and Jon have found, see if we can deduce what the various things are typically used for, and if we can adapt them to use in unexpected ways.¡±
It was an interesting and valuable night. Sally found that in addition to their intended use, most of the things could also be used as doorstops. In a world with secret doors, not as trivial a finding as you might think. Chapter 17
It was ¡°morning¡± of day 14 since they¡¯d found the kitchen. Outwardly, Sally spent her time switching between working at the camp and the kitchen. The simple physical tasks freed up her mind so it could run in fast time, studying and integrating everything Alex was dumping on her. Internally, months had passed. Even with her improvements, after a hard night of learning, she tended to lose track of where she was, physically. Taking a moment to stop and peer around, she deduced that since she was in her camp bed, it was most likely morning and, obviously, she was in the camp.
With nothing important pending, Sally lay back in her bed. Her new improved body was amazing: no aches, pains, sores, muscle strains, or headaches. What she wanted to know was how to move this pinnacle of excellence out of this prison she was trapped in, and give it the chance to live, meet others, and have fun. It was past time to stop avoiding the issue, and make a plan. Sally parsed through her options and decided to list out what she could and couldn¡¯t do, plus try and figure out what resources she could apply to the problem.
What did she have? What would help her escape? She thought back over her life since she woke up in her hospital room.
Something had made her, programmed her to be a Sally, and placed her in her old hospital room. Consequently, she had a killer wheelchair and an IV bag that connected to an unknown source of fluid. Maybe she could go back and see if Jon had overlooked anything else in the hospital room that would be useful?
What else? The computing boxes, the spy, the subspace tap, her abilities to process and plan, Alex, Jon, the pile of garbage that went on forever, and a faux-blueberry muffin recipe that was to die for. A lot of stuff, but nothing leaped out as an obvious solution.
The only subspace tubes that Jon had uncovered were the small ones for the IV, the one for his pellets, and the big one that connected to the room where he¡¯d been spawned, or however Jons came into being. She had no idea how she could use the little tubes, but maybe there was something to discover in his starting room?
What about the hole in the computer room floor? She looked down it every time she passed by, but so far, it persisted in being an unexceptional hole.
The spy said it had exit plans, but Sally had no idea what they were, and the hardware she''d inherited from it hadn¡¯t contained any clues. Both she and Alex had examined everything the spy had left behind, and although there were many features that would be of use, there were no records for any type for an exit plan. The other Alex had queried the spy and reported that it was evasive, trying to bargain, but he concluded that it was actually full of crap; his very words.
Sally¡¯s mind went off on a tangent, annoyed that she still couldn¡¯t figure out how her internal version of Alex communicated with the greater Alex.
Reining her thoughts in, she returned to listing the resources she had available. The secret passages, and the place Alex came from, maybe there was some way out through the room of the black sun? What about the capricious gods of this place? Would they help? Basing a plan on them was a long shot, but it wouldn¡¯t hurt to throw out the occasional prayer, because sometimes the gods did answer.
There were clues that other Sallys had escaped, but she didn¡¯t have any solid data. If the spy hadn¡¯t made her up, the super hi-tech dream Sally had used very advanced technology. She¡¯d asked Alex about this Sally, and he¡¯d laughed, saying that a Sally like that never existed. Maybe. Maybe not, but it seemed to be a dead-end, for now.
And, she had to deal with a possible KILL SWITCH inside her! Probably in Jon, too! Jon might have issues, but he was her friend! She had to be smart about it, but she would help a friend, even if it was difficult. Really difficult. Really, really difficult.
Sally paused. What were her strengths? Yeah, it would be nice to be able to wave her hand and transport herself and Jon out of here, but what were her real strengths?
Well, a big part of her rebuild was based on the spy. Maybe she should stick with spy-type things. Looking into the kill switch would be more up a spy¡¯s alley. Sally thought about it. Yeah, a definite possibility.
What else? There were all the dead Sallys, and also a pile of dead companions. She could talk with Jon and see what he had figured out. There was that one floating Sally being held in some sort of suspended state. Maybe it had some kind of special clue?
Sally turned off her emotions and entered pure logic mode. Taking advantage of her perfect memory, she listed everything, no matter how small, and then applied a number of algorithms to rate the usefulness of the items as they related to finding the kill switch. And for escaping. She also noted that when her emotions were turned off, she still wanted revenge on the evil scientist. This became a secondary goal.
Eventually, one option surged ahead of the others. It depended heavily on her burgeoning sneakiness and used things she had available. She didn¡¯t know how to escape, she didn¡¯t know how to get revenge, but she did know that when an opportunity arose she wanted to be able to take immediate action.
A standard escape plan for a spy, if they couldn¡¯t manage a simple exit, was to direct attention toward someone else, and leave at one¡¯s own leisure. Properly done, the spy could escape before the subterfuge was detected. Very well done, and the opposition may never know the spy even existed.
How to do this? Hmmm... Jon was focused on recreating a Sally in some sort of artificial medium, but one of Alex¡¯s lectures discussed an alternative. The direction he¡¯d presented dwelt on the fact that body death wasn¡¯t really absolute. Access to sufficient technology allowed for levels of death, if that made sense. The technology that kept her going while she was unconscious in the hospital bed could be adapted to assist in a certain amount of reanimation, making it possible to take dead cells and work backward to recover them to a healthy state.
After some thought, she concluded that there was a good likelihood she could bring back one of the dead Sallys. At a minimum, she could introduce her current mental infrastructure into the other Sally¡¯s body, and make it seem that it was the original her. Having a second Sally would free her up to do things without worrying about Jon. Now, this was a do-able plan. She turned on her emotions.
Sally was shocked by her logical self¡¯s callousness. She wasn¡¯t willing to sacrifice another Sally to escape! But¡­ what if it was a Sally robot? Maybe then it would be okay?
Damn these moral ambiguities!
She wavered back and forth until eventually, she stood back and thought hard about the whole situation. To be honest, way down in the heart of her heart, if someone asked her to help another Sally escape, she would do it without a second thought. Well, maybe a second thought, but certainly not a third, definitely not a fourth. She would do it, but it would be sweeter if she knew that the escaped Sally would come back for her and Jon. The excellent part was that since it was her, she knew that she would do everything possible to return and help those left behind.
Sally put these thoughts aside, for now. It was necessary to lay some groundwork before the idea was even possible. She had to research if there was a way for the evil scientist to tell the Sallys apart. If she solved this problem, then she would investigate how to disable the kill switch, or switches. At this point, she had no doubt that something like the switch existed.
Alex had downloaded into her the information describing the method used by ther spy to communicate with its handler. It leaned heavily on the resources of the computing boxes, but there was a great deal of information about variations, alternatives, and how to hide its messages in other data. These methods included techniques such as noise-like encryption, mimicking other signals, obscure patterns, and so on.
Unfortunately, this information didn¡¯t seem to apply to her. She hadn¡¯t detected communication links of any sort within herself. If the kill switch existed inside her somewhere, then there had to be some way to activate it, but she suspected the link was a one-time event, such as a burst transmission, a viral infection, or a coded gravity pulse. Basically, something that went in one direction, from the evil scientist to her.
If Jon was a monitor, he would have a much more dynamic link. The problem was that he was so noisy. Especially when the hand sensor was operating, You could bury the entire knowledge of the universe in his data signals and never know. Here is where the spy''s abilities came in. Sally could look for some signs of extra data in Jon''s signals by enabling some of her stealth decoding systems and see if there was anything that looked suspicious. It would take a lot of data to get any meaningful results, but she might as well try.
Sally used her internally configurable hardware to arrange a number of analyses on some data that she had previously stored. She wasn¡¯t primarily an analyst, but did have some capability, and the hardware was just sitting there anyway. She kicked off the task and started to get up, when there was an internal Bing.
It was her analysis! It had found something already!
Her search had examined the data Jon was using to interface with the hand, and had discovered that the data shared some statistically similar properties with the stealth encoding the spy had been using. This was one of the unique methods that had been new to Alex. Finding this same technique being used in Jon¡¯s data was very interesting.
It implied that her spy had some relationship with her captor, or at least there was a very good chance. Why else would she use a method that her evil scientist knew, while she was in the heart of his empire? It probably meant that the spy had lied about not being associated with the evil scientist. What a shock. Not.
It also meant she would have to be extremely careful. Very likely, her stealth algorithms were known to the evil scientist. Dang it all! This was starting to get complicated.
Then, she laughed at herself, and got back to work.
The problem with her methodology was that it only pointed out that there was likely data present. The next step was to dig through the signals and see if she could identify and recover the data itself. With her luck it would be encoded. That would be a problem, because she had no knowledge of the algorithm or any keys. But, she could try. On TV shows it was easy. Just push a few buttons and the super-secret code was broken, but, in real life, not so much.
Now that she was fairly sure that monitoring data was present, she could try and find out how it was added. Well, maybe not. This took place inside Jon. Hmm... that was a bit of a problem.
If she couldn¡¯t access Jon, maybe there was some way she could get him to look?
She started to get up again, when there was another Bing.
No, way!
She was right. This second alarm was just a reminder for the earlier bing. She reset it, got up, and started her day. After washing and food, she hunted down Jon.
¡°Hey Jon. I''m not really doing much here. Do you think it would be okay if I went back to the kitchen by myself, this time? At least I could read more and maybe put some stuff in order, and you could keep working here.¡±
Jon paused for a moment. Sally was fairly sure that this was an affectation for her benefit.
¡°Okay. So far, we seem to be safe, I will give you a way to contact me. You will also need a light,¡±
Jon went off to rummage through his assorted piles of junk while Sally waited patiently, at least outwardly. She was still wondering about the morality and feasibility of resurrecting another Sally. It may not be necessary, but the bodies were so well preserved it probably wasn¡¯t completely impossible. And, she was leaning toward thinking of it as being morally ambiguous, in a positive way.
Sally laughed to herself. Here she was, a small-town girl thinking about hacking the dead.
¡°Aliiiiive!¡± She exclaimed, just like a mad scientist should. Jon ignored her outburst.
After a while, he came back carrying a bag and a rigid tube.
¡°Just carry the tube in your hand. It will use your motion and body heat to glow enough for you to see. Are you sure you can find your way back?¡±
He was worried. How nice. He wasn¡¯t a real boy, but he was trying, and he did care, at least in his own way. It made her feel bad that she knew he had to remain in the dark about what she knew. It wasn¡¯t what she would have wished.
She took the tube and the bag. When she looked inside the bag she saw that it was filled with, well... small dots was the best description she could come up with. They were blinking faint flashes of light at a very slow rate.
¡°Most communication systems can¡¯t pass through the walls and do not travel very far down the passages. These dots are a self-organizing nodal system where all the nodes talk to each other, and I have set them up so they can pick up audio and low-quality video. The nodes you are carrying will stop blinking if any of them can¡¯t contact each other through their signal mesh. So, stick one to the wall and when the ones you are carrying stop blinking, go back to where they start blinking again and put another dot on the wall. This will be every half mile, or so, but it varies.¡±
¡°Aren¡¯t you full of surprises?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
Paranoid Sally screamed that now she was able to be tracked when Jon wasn¡¯t around. This was unexpected, even though she should have foreseen that it could happen. Sally froze. Alex popped into her view. Sally nearly yelled at him to leave so Jon wouldn¡¯t see him but caught herself as she looked at Jon, who seemed to have stopped moving.
Alex spoke up, ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I have sped up your clock so we could talk. Just think what you want to say and I will understand.¡±
¡°I¡¯m in real trouble. Jon can monitor me all the time! How will I get anything done?¡±
¡°Oh, you have bigger issues than that. Remember when you ran through the passages to meet me for the first time? That was not well considered.¡±If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
¡°What? What?¡± Sally barely remembered to keep it internal.
¡°You understand that one way or another, you are monitored all the time. Every little slip and mistake are recorded somewhere.¡±
¡°Then, then, then... what is the use of me trying to be sneaky?! What¡­¡± words failed her.
¡°You have made a few erroneous assumptions. This experiment can tolerate the escape of a Sally here or there. It¡¯s not about keeping you ignorant, or seeing what you do in specific circumstances, it¡¯s about finding out why a certain future event depends on you Sallys. In fact, as this experiment has progressed, it¡¯s an inescapable conclusion that the Sallys have become more of a factor.
¡°For you, personally, it means that the occasional slip really doesn¡¯t matter. It would be best that we avoid too many, but I don¡¯t think you are close to causing the activation of the kill switch, which I know is your main worry. And I''m kind of screwing with you, on your mad dash to meet me, I arranged that your particular path avoided the monitoring. But, from here on, you are on your own. Deal with the dots yourself.¡±
Alex disappeared and Jon began moving. Sally was in shock. Talk about tough love; Alex had been quite brutal.
Sally guessed it was Alex''s way of telling her that it was time to grow up.
She pondered what she should do. Forcing herself to move, she bean walking toward the hallway. This whole situation was a bit inconvenient. She would have to run simple-Sally the entire way, but once she got to the kitchen, she could put the leftover dots somewhere so that they couldn¡¯t monitor her.
Sally turned on her internal hardware and found that the nodes were using a simple version of under-space grouping, and were completely unencoded. That was convenient. It let her see and hear everything that they transmitted. She sighed and realized that she could handle this. As she passed the hallway entrance, she stuck one of the dots on the wall.
Looking back, she saw that Jon had returned to digging through the pile.
As she moved along, Sally thought furiously, which seemed to be normal, now. She was almost certain that Jon was heavily monitored, even if she didn¡¯t know the exact data he sent out. She was also sure the format was related to what the spy had known, and if Alex wasn¡¯t lying, this method was very rare, if not unique. That implied that the same signal structure would be used for any communication with her, as well.
The spy hadn¡¯t mentioned anything, but then it was a completely self-oriented turd, and probably hoarded information instinctively. Thinking about the spy gave her a thought. Perhaps there was a record of what the spy had come across as she was making changes to her body?
She hunted around inside her memory and eventually found an orphaned region that contained the build log for the spy. She searched through it, and, surprise, surprise, there was a note about various structures that had been isolated. It didn¡¯t have much information, but gave her a few hints. These had to come from the evil scientist since other than the stuff he added, she shouldn¡¯t have had anything except her original biology before the spy started changing things.
Sally dug into the files that dealt with her internal audits as she and Alex had changed things, and found that they hadn¡¯t been correctly set up to detect the sort of stealth technology that largely was her, now. She modified the parameters, and suddenly got millions of notices. Her alarms were a little to sensitive.
This was going to take a while. Sally set up a mental workspace and started optimizing the code.
By now, she had walked past the computer room and was about halfway to the kitchen. She had been sticking up dots as needed. A part of her debated getting a little lost, but if she wanted Jon to think she could travel without him, it was best she keep to the trail.
It took until she had nearly reached the exit before she had a decent way to run her internal checks. She started the process running and it found 36 anomalous instances. When she mapped them, she found that seven of these instances were kill switches. Carefully, Sally examined the switches. The first bit of good news was that there didn¡¯t appear to be a unique way of identifying her. It looked as if the kill signal was just a broadcast signal with no handshaking. This was poor contingency planning, but she¡¯d accept the gift if her opponents insisted on being lazy.
The even better news was that the spy had already disconnected the kill switches! This was the final proof that the spy and the evil scientist were linked. These switches were supposed to be almost impossible to detect, so the spy shouldn¡¯t have been able to disable them. It wasn¡¯t much of a surprise, but it removed all doubt.
She didn¡¯t know what she felt about these findings. The evil scientist could still use more prosaic methods to terminate her. Her improved body would be a lot tougher to kill, but even so, she should probably have some backup plans, just in case she was attacked physically.
Although she didn¡¯t feel like dancing around, finding the switches already disabled had lifted one weight off of her. She wasn¡¯t as na?ve as she used to be, so she played around with the search parameters to check if there was any chance that she¡¯d missed something. Fortunately, nothing else turned up.
Sally arrived at the secret door, which they left propped open, and traveled to the kitchen. She ¡°casually¡± tossed the dots on the table. A few spilled on the tabletop, but most stayed in the bag. She sat and stared at them while she drank some water. Accessing the dots, she reviewed the video from the arena. Jon was still rooting around. The long-range video was poor, but the audio pickup turned out to be very sensitive. She would have to be very careful about what noises she made and what she said, but Alex had been correct. She could handle this.
She took over from simple-Sally and put the spilled dots in the bag, leaving one so it could see the kitchen, but not the library or the hallway to the cage room. She thought everything looked natural enough that Jon wouldn¡¯t become suspicious.
Then she walked around the kitchen for a while, and after poking at a few things, headed to the library, making no attempt to hide what she was doing. Then, while monitoring the dots, she tiptoed out of the library and ran to the mausoleum. The dots didn''t pick up any sign of her movement.
She had flip-flopped back and forth concerning her right to use one of the other Sallys as a substitute for herself. At worst, the other her would be a robot. At best, she could become a real person. The new Sally would also have a chance to improve, just like she had. As long as there wasn¡¯t any pain or chance of mental deficiencies, what was the problem?
Sally stopped. Enough of this quibbling! Yes, she was worried about how it would turn out, but she was going to do it!
She passed through the cage room and entered the mausoleum. Everything was nearly as they had found it. Jon hadn¡¯t disturbed much, a few of the bodies had been moved and he had taken a few away to test them in isolation, then brought them back. Her new senses could see what he¡¯d moved, and where he had been. Sally walked over to the Sally floating in some sort of glass cylinder filled with light. She was the best-preserved Sally, with no apparent damage. This version of her looked like a doll. Her hair was styled and she wore a formal gown. Sally looked closer, and yep, she even had lipstick on.
Sally used her relatively poor set of exotic sensors to examine the cylinder that the other Sally was in. There wasn¡¯t any glass, instead it was some sort of stasis field. The dust caught in the edge of the field just made it look like glass. Alex had sent her some files concerning stasis fields; they warned against touching the field unless she wanted to lose a chunk of her skin.
This Sally might be the best-preserved but was also the most prominent. There was no way she could do anything with it, without Jon knowing.
She stood back and looked over the others. It would be best to find someone younger, in reasonable shape, and not in easy view of the main pathway. It would have to look like her, with no obvious aging, significant scars, and so on. Most of the Sallys here appeared older. Probably living in the kitchen area helped many of them survive long enough to get old.
Sally turned down her emotions so that she could paw through the bodies without suffering too much from the ever important ick factor. She investigated a number of corpses until she found a young one that seemed a little better preserved than most. There was also an advantage in that this Sally was way in the back of one of the rooms and buried under a number of other bodies.
The plan was to use a modified version of the process the spy had employed to enter her body. It was necessary to go slowly and be methodical for the best chance of success. The kill switches stopped necessary body functions from operating: the heart and lungs, and the basic clock for the brain. A complicating factor has that she couldn¡¯t remove the switches until the body was in better shape. It would be necessary to grow some artificial structures to duplicate the body¡¯s functions that the kill switches were affecting, then remove the switches, and then restart these functions when the body was ready. If it went well, then the heart, lungs, and brain should operate normally.
¡°Bwa-hahaha!¡± sort of slipped out. Quietly though, so the dot couldn¡¯t pick it up.
Hopefully, there would be some of the original Sally left to salvage. Before she did anything, she would have to plot out the process and do everything she could to anticipate most, hopefully all, of the problems.
In addition, she¡¯d have to deal with the dot monitoring. It was time to really embrace her spy-ness, hack the dot system, then substitute a signal to keep Jon unaware. She would have to reverse their roles and use the dots to tell her if Jon was returning. He moved fast, so she¡¯d have little warning. Sally debated relocating her experiment to a remote atrium, but this would have issues if she had to return quickly, although she could pass it off as if she was out exploring. She decided to leave her chosen Sally where it was, since here was as good a place as any other. If she was careful, there shouldn¡¯t be any reason for Jon to investigate this part of the room.
She moved toward the kitchen until she picked up the dot mesh with a decent signal strength, then she sat down. After assembling a standard hack package, she killed the dot signal while deftly substituting her own. It was a trivial exercise compared to some of what Alex had her try in dreamland yoga school.
It seemed to be working. You had to love advanced science perverted for nefarious purposes.
Sally could maintain the deception up to the range of about a mile from the other dots since her internal hardware was much better than the dots¡¯.
Now, back to the real work.
Sally found the IV bag, which was full since she hadn¡¯t needed it for quite some time. In addition, she gathered up the various tubes and needles that had come with the IV stand and brought everything over to her victim. Uh, patient.
She¡¯d already prepared a densely encoded map of the changes. The process descriptors were transported by a string of molecules. The actual details resided on patterns imposed on subatomic fields, with a translation vector to expand it up to make the larger structures that needed to be built within the resurrected Sally.
With Alex¡¯s help, Sally had analyzed and modified the programming of the IV fluid. The new version was an important part of her method to reconstitute the body. Between the IV fluid and her invader, she would be able to rebuild the Sally into a viable physical shell without any of the problems she¡¯d had when she¡¯d awakened. It was the operating intelligence that could be a problem, but first, the new Sally had to get to the point where her mental resources could be evaluated.
Against all expectations, it went smoothly. Over the next few hours, the body plumped up and returned to a pretty decent state. The secondary heart pumped, the body breathed, all under the control of her newly built stealth network. Once everything looked good, Sally checked the kill switches. They were valiantly trying to shut down the body¡¯s operation, but the bypass functions were doing the job they needed to do. Sally had debated leaving the bypasses and kill switches in place, but the duplications, like the extra heart pump, were hard to hide, it was a much better and cleaner solution to get rid of the kill switches entirely. She monitored as the sub-atomic stealth tendrils invaded the kill switch mechanisms and disabled them.
The process continued rebuilding the cells that had been damaged, and the body took over functions at a better than expected rate. There were a few stubborn cases that lingered, but the long-term prognosis was very good for 100% success.
However, there was significant damage to the Sally¡¯s memories. It wasn¡¯t hopeless, but, so far, the recovery rate was about 25%, which, on its own, would leave her catatonic. The good thing was that since this was a young version of her, the unique memories weren¡¯t extensive. Sally could repair the partial memories with her own. It wasn¡¯t a perfect solution, but the new Sally would be completely functional and would retain some of the flavor of the original. Sally wondered what this Sally could have done to trigger the kill switch so early in its... her existence.
The mad science had taken most of the day. The body would be viable in one more day and completely done in two. Sally had encoded changes to make sure that the new Sally would have the same cosmetic look as her, the same small acne scars, and other minor differences. Once she was convinced the rebuild had completed successfully, Sally would wake the new Sally.
After ensuring that the IV bag was hidden, she left the body as it was and picked her way through the pile of other Sallys until she reached the main corridor. Using all her senses, she searched for any discernible evidence of what she had been doing. There were a few clues, so she did what she could to mask them. Her plan was to further obfuscate the scene by setting up a pattern of looking through the bodies, just in case Jon showed up. Maybe she would tell Jon that she wanted to see if any of the Sally bodies had useful items with them.
Unless she was in logic mode she wasn¡¯t entirely happy dealing with the bodies, but her time amongst them brought her to the epiphany that they really were her. Different lives, different dreams, but all her. If there was any way, she would see that they had a second, arguably a third, chance.
Sally sneaked back to the library, then removed her spoofing. Checking that everything looked normal, she rose, yawned, and noisily descended to the kitchen. She rummaged through the cupboards and piled what she found on the kitchen counter, then made a quick trip to one of the plant rooms to gather some fruit and tubers. She brought everything back to the counter and prepared her meal. Just for fun, she used the subspace tap in place of a fire and cooked a vegetable stew. Using the tap was handy because she could easily control the heat.
As she ate, her monitoring system alerted her that Jon was heading back. Very good. She was just being ordinary, doing ordinary things in an ordinary way. She kept eating as Jon strode in.
¡°Good day at work, honey?¡± she asked.
¡°Ah, the foreman¡¯s a jerk. I shoulda got his job. I was screwed.¡±
¡°Oh well, next time.¡±
¡°Yeah, maybe.¡±
¡°So, did you find anything useful?¡± Simple-Sally spoke with her mouth full. She knew better but she didn¡¯t always do better.
¡°Well, maybe, but not entirely. There¡¯s such an improbable mix of technologies in that pile, which is probably more important than the actual things I am finding. I have no record of any other instance where such a disparate bunch of hardware is found together. Operating some of the things at the same time would cause bad things to happen. I have no idea what the reason could be for everything to be jumbled together in such a manner.¡±
¡°Maybe it all came from a museum, or something?¡±
¡°Perhaps,¡± he answered, then in unison they both said, ¡°I will have to wait for more data.¡±
Sally really liked Jon. It killed her to have to keep secrets from him. She just pushed her food around, until her inner spy told her to keep with the plan, and she started eating, again.
¡°So, you were worried about me?¡± she asked. ¡°That¡¯s sweet.¡±
¡°Well, yes. You were sort of casual in how you placed the dots in this area. I wanted to make sure you hadn¡¯t had another run-in with the neighbors, or set yourself on fire. You know, the normal sort of stuff.¡±
¡°The neighbors are very quiet. They just lie around all day. In fact, you might say this neighborhood is dea¡­ unique.¡±
¡°Yeah. D¡¯unique. Exactly what I would say.¡±
¡°So, are you sticking around, or are you heading back for the night shift?¡±
¡°Since you are notably not on fire, I was going to go back and make some more money. You know, the overtime is sweet. Please, though, place some of the dots as you move around so I can see you. Just in case.¡±
¡°Okay, okay mom, I¡¯ll do it. Don¡¯t worry. First, though, I¡¯m going to look through some of the cookbooks and see what I can bring to life.¡± She just had to say it.
Jon left. Sally watched him go, using the dots.
Alex appeared, still wearing his leotard. ¡°What?¡± she asked.
¡°I wish you would look at me like you look at him,¡± he said.
¡°Everyone¡¯s a joker.¡±
¡°Yeah, I¡¯m here until Tuesday, try the veal.¡±
Nothing.
¡°Anyway, I received a notice that you should go to my parlor. The big me has something to tell you. It must be important if he risked making contact.¡±
¡°What! How could you get a message without me knowing? You¡¯re a part of me!¡±
He shrugged, then disappeared.
Sally sighed.
¡°Oh, god, give me some clue what¡¯s going on.¡±
Suddenly everything was gone. She was floating somewhere by herself. Alex was absent from her mind, and there were no vestiges of the spy. She was looking down on a plane filled with traces of light. Ribbons of predominately white light twisted around each other. The ribbons were of all sizes, microscopic to huge. She could see every one of them. Somehow Sally knew there were an infinite number, and the tapestry they wove extended to the horizon, in all directions.
Intertwined with the white ribbons were tiny ribbons of different colors. Many of these ran along beside the white ribbons, but some meandered in tangents. The white ribbons seemed less random: they were all running in the same direction, more or less.
She saw her viewpoint pull back and more and more ribbons came into sight. Eventually, all the white ribbons merged and as she got higher it became apparent that it wasn¡¯t an infinite plane, but rather a river of light. This river followed a fairly straight path from one horizon to the other.
In one direction the river was quite clear, but as it passed under her, it started to get blurry and more indistinct. If she looked closely at the fuzzy horizon she could see that the wide river veered off sharply just before it went out of sight.
Her view shifted to the region just below her, where the river changed from clear to fuzzy.
She zoomed in closer and closer. The river became a plane, then split into ribbons again, and as she kept zooming in, one ribbon stood out from the others. It wasn¡¯t pure white but more of a pinkish off-white. This ribbon had a number of other ribbons crossing it, with more running alongside, just kissing it in spots. Some of these other ribbons were huge relative to the one she was approaching. A blue dot appeared in front of her and she zoomed toward it.
She hit the ribbon right on top of the dot¡­ and she was back in the kitchen.
After a moment, her brain began functioning again.
Well... that was interesting! Chapter 18 What the heck just happened? Sally was stunned. She couldn¡¯t process anything. Now that she was back in her body, she found that, for some reason, she was lying on the floor with no idea of how she¡¯d gotten there. Her internal clock said a few seconds had passed. Jon should have seen her fall, but he wasn¡¯t back, so something must have interfered with the dot system. Sally looked up at the bottom of the table. Someone had written ¡°Hi!¡± on it. A quick check showed that she was fine, so she got up and started heating some water for ¡°coffee¡±. Something had just given Sally a view, no, more of an overview, of how things were, are, and will be. Her perfect memory let her run the vision over and over. If gods, or super-beings, whatever they were, had this sort of information, no wonder little old Sallys seemed to be nothing to them. She finished preparing her coffee and sat down at the table. The big fuzzy shift in the future was probably the thing the evil scientist was researching, but the vision didn¡¯t show how she was involved, except her... timeline? life-path? headed to it. Just like everyone else¡¯s. She traced what she was assuming was her life path. In the past she could see that other ribbons intersected hers. It was fairly easy to identify which ones represented Jon, and Alex, but there were others that might be the gods she talked to. There were a lot more that she couldn¡¯t account for; they touched her life many more times than she had realized. Something more to ponder. Her future line started splitting right after now. Most of the lines showed that she would keep on trucking for quite some time although there were a few where she didn¡¯t make it. She didn¡¯t know what would put her on those paths, but whatever it was, she had better not do it. One reddish-white line started beside her pinkish-white line in the near future and paralleled her ribbon for a while, then veered away. She hoped this represented the resurrected Sally, but had no idea why their lines weren¡¯t pure white like most of the other lines. She thought about it for a while, but, nope, no idea. During this whole thought process, Alex hadn¡¯t appeared to make any comments. This was very encouraging. Over the last few days, Sally had been implementing a multi-stage approach to isolate her thoughts from Alex. She had started a sub-process she called secret-Sally that had an open-ended task to map out what Alex monitored, and to place what she found into random areas of her memory. Secret-Sally had been built in a new area that Alex couldn¡¯t monitor, then moved herself somewhere else. Sally had no idea where, or even if secret-Sally kept moving; that was the whole idea. And it was working. She¡¯d found information about Alex appearing in her memory at random times, in random places. Secret-Sally may also have spawned her own sub-processes, there was no way to know, at the moment. In the future, at some time when she was sure Alex was no longer in her head, she would rope in everything and integrate all the versions of her, and everything they had found, back into herself. The second stage was to encrypt her memory and thoughts. This was common practice, and Sally had employed the most convoluted versions she knew of. According to what she''d learned, they were supposed to be secure. Hopefully, all Alex would see was gibberish. She and Alex now interfaced through a common shared space. Outside of this area, Sally was confident that most of her thoughts and memories were private. She had done everything she could to separate Alex into his own region, but even she knew of esoteric extrapolation techniques that might give Alex a good idea of what she was thinking. She was working to plug these types of holes. One annoying fact was that the big Alex appeared to have a way to contact the little Alex without her knowing, it meant she had more work to do. She checked that Jon was back at work, spoofed the dots, and headed off to the viewing chamber. Simple-Sally ran at a normal speed through the passageways and passed through the secret door. The room was back to its original state, but no one else was there. She walked to the perch, sat on the bottom log, and gazed out the window. After a moment Alex began talking from beside her. ¡°I have updated your Alex. This is turning out to be more interesting than I had anticipated. I usually don¡¯t have to issue updates. You are involved in something much deeper than I predicted.¡± ¡°Um, sorry?¡± ¡°No, not at all. I exist for moments like this. Big things are coming, and somehow you are a significant factor.¡± ¡°Yeah, I''m the banana peel that fate slips on.¡± Alex laughed. And¡­ he was gone. Sally could tell that he had downloaded a significant amount of data to little Alex, who would reveal it to her in due time. Sally watched the vista with the black sun for a while, and then left. Back in the kitchen, she paused. Sleep? She was curious to see what Alex would present to her, and there was no driving need to do anything. Sleep it was. As soon as she lay down, she was in yoga class. Alex started stretches and the lecture. Sally didn¡¯t watch him directly. That outfit was a crime against fashion. ¡°Today we will look into subspace technology. This is actually a misnomer; subspace encompasses a myriad of technologies that involve sub-atomic physics. If you will open up the memory I have installed at this location we will get into the salient details. The first approach involves how we chart the patterns that dictate¡­¡± and off he went. Sally woke the next morning. Alex was not even being subtle, anymore. What he taught her was always something she would need sooner rather than later. So, why would she need to know about subspace physics? She was getting a little excited! Maybe the break she had reasoned was going to happen was really going to happen! She was also very proud that her prognosticating was so sound. Not 100% sure something was coming, but the odds looked good. She did a quick check to ensure that Jon was toiling in the salt mines, and he was. Her dead-ish subject was cooking well. She was up to almost completely autonomous operation, and only needed a little help from the stealth circuitry to keep everything running. The IV fluid had been even more useful than she had predicted, so the process had been able to salvage over 34% of the pre-death memories. There was a strong chance she would have a sister, and not just an identical clone. Sally did her morning things and walked back to where the patient had been stashed. She looked at the face of zombie Sally. Not the best name, but, yeah, well, it was kind of true. Everything was ok, so she wandered back to the kitchen, looked around, then decided to head to the dig site. She reviewed the lessons from last night as simple-Sally jogged through the tunnels. It was harder and harder to act like the original Sally, she had to run simple-Sally all the time now, or at least use it as a reference before she did anything. She walked out of the hallway and onto the debris field. Jon had been busy. There was a huge bite taken out of the edge, and many items piled in groups, out on the floor. He was currently hauling something similar to what would be left over after a cow exploded. ¡°Hey Jon, any good stuff?¡± ¡°A number of power taps... they are much more powerful than the one you found, I think they were used by the computing boxes. Also I''ve uncovered, a lot of toys and games, pieces of kitchen appliances, and some ductwork for hardline connections. And this¡­¡± he shook what he held. Sally stayed away, the innards were disgusting. She walked around the periphery of Jon¡¯s collection. And came to a dead stop. In front of her was a hexagonal box with a number of golden cables coming out of it. This was a subspace node! Just what she needed to make a subspace tube like the ones that Jon said should be all over the place. This was huge! Sally walked on, feigning casual. Something was completely wrong. Jon should have been all over this! It didn¡¯t make sense, this was massively important! Not wanting to tip her hand, she continued walking, looking at the situation every way she could. No doubt. Jon had to be severely compromised. Sally debated the feasibility of trying to fix him. She was a super spy with all sorts of talents, after all. Unfortunately, Jon had been made with her type in mind. If she tried anything, the results could be poor, like triggering the kill switch in Jon. She might not be capable of doing anything, anyway. The spy had an easy time breaking into the original Sally because she had almost no defenses, but Jon was as far on the other end of the security spectrum as you could be. As much as she had fought it, this was incontrovertible proof that the warnings to isolate herself from Jon had been warranted. Sally laughed. ¡°Sorry Jon," she said to herself. "You''ve just been friend-zoned.¡± All kidding aside, this hammered home the fact that it really was up to her, and her alone, to get herself out of here. Well, maybe her alone with support from Alex, the gods, and whoever else. She would try and help Jon, but not if it risked her escape. Not that escape was guaranteed.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. First things first. She had to secure the subspace node. That could be complicated. She walked back to the campsite. ¡°Hey, Jon?¡± she called out. ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡°Can I take some of this stuff to improve the kitchen area?¡± ¡°Sure.¡± Or not. She casually piled the node, one of the new power taps, and a bunch of items on the wheelchair. She then asked Jon to haul it over to the hallway for her, which she thought was a nice touch. Sally pushed the wheelchair toward the computer room. She hadn¡¯t been sure Jon would let her have the subspace tap, so she¡¯d had an excuse all prepared to explain her new enthusiasm for making a kiln, but he hadn¡¯t asked. Her spy abilities helped her maintain an outward demeanor that was calm, cool and collected. When she reached the kitchen area, she decided to put everything in one of the small rooms off of the cage atrium. Jon never went into them, and they were conveniently close. She could disguise what she was doing by farting around with all the extra things she had hauled, and other random stuff. This was the same way that she was hiding her zombie. It wasn¡¯t good spy-work to repeat yourself, but if Jon discovered either thing, then all of her plans would be blown, anyway. She hauled her load to the cage room and returned to the kitchen where she prepared a drink for herself. Sitting at the table, she sipped on as she thought. A subspace node needed a couple of things: power and a controller. She could use the new power tap, but that left the controller. The controller was complex and took significant computation power. Oh, if only she knew where there was a massive computation engine. Or a bunch of them. She was aware of the irony. Here she was, by herself, all alone, but when she needed a subspace node, a powerful computation device, and a power source, she happened to have a subspace node, a powerful computation device, and a power source. She definitely had a benefactor somewhere. Probably Alex, but maybe the gods of this place, or some twisted plot by the evil scientist. Possibly even some other entity, entirely. Hopefully, when the bill came due, she would be able to pay it. Nothing she could do now except carry on. How could she acquire and hide a computing box? Jon could toss one around easily, but she wasn¡¯t nearly that strong. She might be able to use the wheelchair, but it would be hard to explain if it was squished. She should have checked out how heavy they were when she had a chance. Well, maybe not, the dots were watching. So what? She''d fooled them before. She carried her drink up to the library and sat in the chair. ¡°Alex,¡± she called internally. ¡°Yes,¡± he responded. No video, just audio. ¡°I have to do some errands. How fast can I run before it¡¯s an issue?¡± ¡°Stick to the passageways and it won¡¯t be a problem. Well, you might want to crunch any spider-rabbits you find.¡± Sally thought this was a strange answer. He didn¡¯t say they weren¡¯t being monitored, but perhaps her Alex, or the other Alex, was actively interfering with the experiment. She¡¯d let it slide, for now, but in the future, it might be important to know exactly what was going on. ¡°Okay, thanks.¡± No response. Deciding to go for it, she spoofed the dots, and ran to the computer room, keeping her eye on Jon through the dot network. If he decided to return to the kitchen, it would be difficult to explain why she wasn''t there, so she would probably have to race him back. Anything else would be hard to explain. Race, it was. She should be fast enough. Probably. She moved to one the areas where the boxes had jammed together and chose a box that was hidden to casual observation. She reached her arms around it, as best she could, and lifted. It moved, but just a little. She wasn¡¯t going to be able to carry it any distance. Suddenly one of her alerts sounded. Jon was heading for the hallway! Aw crap! She took off. Running through the passageways limited the speed that she or Jon could go, but even so, she was still marginally slower than Jon, plus she had to de-spoof the dots before Jon ran past them. Fortunately, he hadn¡¯t deployed the hand, or she would have had to use plan B. She didn¡¯t have a plan B. She dove through the secret panel, skidded across the room in the mud and sped toward the kitchen. She grabbed a few rags and ran up the ramp, barely remembering to de-spoof the last dot. Jon strode into the kitchen just as she made it into the library. Sally frantically cleaned the remains of the mud off herself, and sat down. She loudly gulped down her drink, got up, made a bunch of obvious stretching noises, then spilled the rest of the drink on herself and began cursing mildly. Picking up one of the clean rags, she started wiping herself and walked out the door. ¡°Oh, hi Jon. I had a bit of an accident,¡± she explained as she descended to the main floor. ¡°Thought I would take a break and see if you needed help with anything,¡± Jon said. ¡°Naw. I just dumped everything I brought back in the other room and then decided to see if I could find any better recipes.¡± She paused, as if thinking, then continued, ¡°Well, actually, I could use your help. There are some of the fruit things up in the trees in the first plant room that I can¡¯t reach. Can you get them for me? I found a recipe to preserve them. They look like fat orange bananas.¡± ¡°Ok.¡± Jon took a bag and went off to do her bidding. Sally started some water boiling and put in some of the ersatz coffee powder. She sat. ¡°Alex?¡± She called internally. ¡°Yes?¡± ¡°Any ideas on what that was about?¡± She asked him. ¡°Yeah. I believe he has enough evidence to suspect something. I recommend you expedite your arrangements.¡± Alex dropped out of her consciousness as Jon returned carrying a full bag and an armload of fruit. He dumped everything on the table. ¡°This should be sufficient. I am going to return to the dig site. Remember, if you need me, just call out.¡± ¡°Okay, Mom.¡± Jon left. Sally watched as he passed the dots in the passageway. He didn¡¯t need light, but the dots covered infrared, so she was able to monitor his movement. She had a sudden thought. Would he be that sneaky? She checked whether or not the dots showed any signs of being spoofed. She didn¡¯t expect that sort of approach from Jon, but he was driven by his data. If it hinted that she was up to something, he might try fooling her into thinking he wasn¡¯t where she thought he should be. She was relieved to find no evidence of spoofing. The raw camera data agreed with the transmitted compressed data. She added some modifications that would show if there was any tampering, just to be careful. She went over to clean the fruit, found the bag of dots on the table and picked it up to move it. The bag was a little lighter than it should have been. That snake! She put the bag on a shelf and started to set up the preserving process. One of the Sallys had come up with a way to make a jam without glass jars, using hollowed out tree branches, instead. These branches were segmented like bamboo, but had the feel of metal, and made good containers. There were a number of these containers in storage; she fetched a few and set some water to boil so she could sterilize them, then dug out some wax to seal the containers once they were filled. While she was working, she scanned for the missing dots. She had to wait for a while, but occasionally there would be bursts of extra data on the dot network from the missing dots. Jon had surreptitiously placed them around the kitchen, and set them to operate in burst mode. Sally snorted. Amateur. He should have set them to respond on demand. Then she paused. She couldn¡¯t discount that he might have done so. She could count the dots in the bag, but he may have brought his own. It would be best to assume that there were more dots programmed for very stealthy operation. She knew where he''d gone, so the subspace tap and zombie Sally were probably safe enough, for now. Obviously, she had to push up the time to resurrect zombie Sally. The process had been going better than expected, so it should be okay to start the final phase. Fortunately, she had set up the zombie Sally so programming her could be done remotely. The data rate was low, and the signal looked like noise which made it nearly impossible to detect. If Jon was suspicious, it was best she be as careful as possible. Sally started the process of unpacking simple-Sally into the new body. Everything went smoothly. All the tests looked good. The body had recovered well. To keep the process moving along, the memories that could be salvaged from zombie Sally had been stored and would be integrated into active memory when things were stable. Zombie Sally would start as a pure simple-Sally with Sally¡¯s memories from the start of her fake life, up until a couple of days ago. Sally would update zombie Sally to the current time when she revived. *** Sally opened her eyes. The sight wasn¡¯t pretty. A number of Sally corpses were watching her. Oh! She must be the new Sally! There were things she had to do! She went through the process tor check out the new body. Adding in the stealth infrastructure and reprogramming the IV fluid meant she didn''t have any of the problems the original Sally had gone through when she awakened. Everything passed her checks, minus a few phantom aches and pains, but, in general, she was good. Her last memory was of looking at the body she was now inside. It felt unreal. She knew the plan. Getting to her feet, she stayed crouched down and peeked out of the pile she was in to verify that the coast was clear. The clothes she was wearing were disgusting, but fortunately, they¡¯d planned ahead and stored some current clothing in one of the small rooms in this atrium. Sally went over to the diverted stream, stripped, washed, brushed her hair, and then fetched and put on the new clothes. Current Sally had cut her hair to match zombie Sally and had programmed what she could to make everything else the same: nails, body hair, and even blemishes. It helped that they had been launched in the experiment as identical, and hadn¡¯t had much time to diverge. Sally missed the extra abilities she had been developing, but they remained as a distant memory, and the first Sally could unblock them if they needed to. For now, she would be what Jon expected. She waited. *** It was late in the day. Sally had taken a long time to prepare the preserves. She had finished sealing the latest batch with the wax and was waiting for everything to cool. After washing her hands, she brushed her hair, changed into fresh clothes, and then gathered up an armful of full containers. She carried everything back to the storage room, placed the preserves on some shelves, and then quietly ran into the next room. The other Sally looked at her. ¡°Hi. No time for a proper update. Jon is suspicious. He¡¯s at the dig site but is watching. Made preserves. You get to clean up, sorry. Brought the preserves back to storage. Kitchen and maybe farm areas bugged. Tomorrow, fool around with the things I put in the cage room. Use them for something. Good luck.¡± Sally transferred the memory update to the new/old Sally, but it would take a while to be integrated. She hoped the verbal spew was enough. Probably. My goodness, this was exciting! *** When the second Sally headed to the kitchen, Sally tiptoed back to the cage room, grabbed the subspace node and the subspace tap, stuffed them in a couple of bags, snatched up a few more full of supples she''d managed to hide away, and ran back through the rooms of the mausoleum, and continued down the chain of atriums. The load was awkward, but she was much more capable, now. Although she''d been forced to move things ahead of plan, so far, so good. After she had passed through a number of rooms, she began drawing the symbol she had learned on the wall of each room, where the secret panel should be. After a number of tries, she was starting to worry, but at attempt twenty-three, a panel popped open. ¡°Thank god,¡± she breathed. ¡°YOU¡¯RE WELCOME,¡± boomed through her brain. Sally was mostly unfazed. She was getting used to all this. Time to disappear. Sort of. She entered the passageway and shut the door behind her. Chapter 19 Sally poked at her blanket, preparing for bed. She was camped in some nameless room, her possessions piled around her. The small fire she had been able to start was comforting. As soon as she dozed off, Alex was there, dressed in formal attire, for once. ¡°Tonight is going to be different,¡± he said. ¡°We are going to work on your skills, rather than have classes.¡± A figure of Jon appeared. ¡°And, this is our subject. I have created a version of Jon incorporating what I can of his real defenses and abilities, and it will be up to you to try and gain access. Good luck.¡± He disappeared. Sally stared at Jon. Abstractly, she knew his status as a data vault meant that he was a particularly difficult entity to break into. She wasn¡¯t too hopeful. But, it would be fun to try. She started by using the techniques she had used on herself and the other Sally. She attempted to pierce his outer layer and inject a matrix to build a stealth infrastructure. Failure was immediate. All parts of Jon were so tough she couldn¡¯t make even the tiniest hole. She tried everything, even finding that a hammer will break if you hit a diamond nail hard enough. What the heck was he made of? She did some research, perusing the latest (oddly pertinent) files Alex had sent her, and found that he wasn¡¯t made of an elemental or molecular material, but some sort of semi-intelligent sub-atomic fluid. He could probably sit in the middle of a sun with no problem. This explained a lot about his lack of fear. Nothing she could do would physically harm him. After further investigation, it became apparent that without having information on how to build certain types of extremely exotic machinery, there wasn''t a hope of injecting anything inside him, and even with this machinery, she would end up with a Jon shaped puddle and the universe in ruins. Just for a lark she tried blowing him up with a fusion bomb. Jon remained fine as he disappeared into the distance. After failing to gain physical access, she was left with either social engineering, or hacking. Social engineering was out because this Jon wasn¡¯t talking to her. So, hacking it was. After days of effort, the results were quite disappointing. The only technique that had given her even a minor foothold, was one that accessed his optical sensors. After managing to build some tools into his eyes, her progress was stymied when she encountered massive layers of buffering and checking. Many variants later, she concluded that this approach was not going to work, either. She tried accessing his other senses. Taste, smell, hearing, and so on, with no better luck. Taste was fun. Prying someone¡¯s mouth open wasn¡¯t really subtle, but it was better than the fusion bomb. She only had to regenerate her fingers a few times. She worked through the types of emitters she could make and found that he was opaque to everything, except sound. She managed to achieve some audio signal return, but unfortunately, the resolution was poor. In any case, he didn¡¯t appear to have much in the way of internal organs. With a great deal of signal processing, she could make out some shapes in his head, but she got more information from peering inside when he opened his third eye. Trying to build structures inside his head through his third eye failed right from the start. She would get a foothold and start constructing a tool, but then a correction routine would sweep through and put everything back to normal. Plus, the repaired structures would now be immune to what she had just tried. This wasn''t working. She checked the time, and found that Alex had set her internal clock for a huge time factor. Internally she had spent weeks carrying out her experiments, but outside, only a few seconds had passed. Fortunately, if she was doing the calculation correctly, she would have years to break into Jon before morning. She had become used to experiencing time compression during her dreams, it was how she could learn so much so quickly, but this time the compression was dialed up to crazy! She took a snapshot of her current memories to help her compensate for the difference she would experience between now and when she woke in the morning. Obviously, Alex thought this little task would take a while. What she would do for years, she didn¡¯t know, but fortunately, she had time to figure everything out. She set to work. Once she had tried the simple stuff, she sat back and reviewed what she knew and had learned. She developed a list of possibilities. The number of things she could try was daunting, even years wasn¡¯t enough. She needed a way to run experiments in parallel. To this end, she decided to try copying herself and the Jon model. This doubled the rate at which she could run experiments, but unfortunately, comparing results and setting tasks still slowed the process. A quick study showed only a small improvement as the number of Sallys increased, and at some point, adding more Sallys actually decreased the amount of work they could do. There had to be a better way! The two of her worked to develop a superior alternative. Alex had (again) sent her extensive information on how to increase productivity. They researched approaches and resolved that they were uniquely qualified for the methods that utilized a shared consciousness. Multiple individuals would merge to form a common mind that could delegate different tasks to each body. They decided to utilize the method that resulted in a specific type of compound mind, termed a gestalt. All of the members of a gestalt worked on all the tasks and shared thought processes. In this manner, there were no misunderstandings and no surprises. Usually, one of the biggest problems was to persuade separate individuals to jump into the gestalt pool and lose their individuality to the whole. In Sally¡¯s case, she was copying herself and then recombining the copies in a different way, so losing her individuality wasn¡¯t a big issue. The two Sallys decided to go for it. As with everything, they needed to do their homework, and dedicated weeks of effort to plot out their best attempt. The investigation showed that a gestalt of five was the optimum they could achieve in the time they had. There was a strong likelihood that the gestalt would take over and re-direct the entire effort, but they had to start somewhere. To merge in the shortest time, they would make five individuals, then join them together. To this end, they generated three more of themselves and plowed through the process of merging. It did not go well. There were many reasons, but the fundamental one was that changing how your mind functioned while you were using it was not trivial. Sally tended to yell when she was frustrated. Five of them made a lot of noise. After many attempts, they gave up on the all-at-once approach and tried the slow way. After a great deal of experimentation, they finally managed to form a very basic gestalt of two. It wasn''t terribly capable, but at least it it wasn''t like most of the attempts where the bodies kept falling down and screaming at each other. The key turned out to be the meditation aspects of yoga that Alex had been teaching. Utilizing the focus and calming exercises allowed the two Sallys to merge without rebelling at the changes they were undergoing. Once they had formed, the primitive, but stable, gestalt did not want to separate. It was obvious how much better the new being''s thought processes were. The two gestalt helped the remaining three form into a three gestalt, and this one helped the two groups form a five gestalt. It was not a quick process, taking a number of months to accomplish. After polishing, the gestalt tested itself, and found that the five of them could do more than twenty-five Sallys in a managed group of individuals. Yay. Success! With no debate (this being one of the advantages of a gestalt) they decided to call themselves SallyG and finally she was able to return to the Jon problem. With all the false starts, the gestalt had taken a year and a half to form, leaving only a couple of years until morning. SallyG worked frantically, plowing through a truly massive number of experiments, but in spite of the advantage of the gestalt, she only managed to achieve limited success. The most significant result occurred when she found a small window through Jon¡¯s defenses opened by the modifications needed to add the evil scientist¡¯s monitoring functions. This allowed a modest amount of access to the monitoring circuitry and to some of his thought processes. Unfortunately, this did not allow her into his data vaults, although she was this close. The next morning Alex appeared before a very different Sally than the one who had started the night. SallyG had decided there was no need to dissolve the gestalt. The new her was so much more capable than her previous singular form. The gestalt addressed Alex, who answered in the same manner. It wasn¡¯t talking, it was much more. The essence was: Alex: This is an adequate outcome; it isn¡¯t exactly what I predicted, but this form is superior for existence outside the experiment. SallyG: Understood. The lesson was not to breach Jon, but to improve Sally. Alex: A large amount of what you did was also valuable; some of the variants you derived based on the original stealth approach opened families of encryption and analysis that are, in my experience, unique. We will keep them to ourselves. Also housing a gestalt in one individual and hiding it in your stealth network is extremely unusual and gives you a great deal of utility without being obvious. Quite sneaky. I approve. Data files were exchanged. After she completed her improvements and adaptations, Alex reviewed what she allowed him to access, and presented a few variations to optimize the result. Concurrence was achieved. Alex excused himself and left her mind, leaving no traces that she could find, and, by now, she was very capable. SallyG was on her own, at least to a few places of decimal, even though she had no doubts that Alex had left some complexities behind. SallyG woke, reviewed where she was before she¡¯d had left for her very long night, and started building some interesting structures within her body while she went about getting ready. It would be a busy day. In addition to everything else, she had a computing box to appropriate, and confusion to sow. *** Sally woke and got ready. She¡¯d finished cleaning up the kitchen last night and was now drinking her coffee-like sludge to start her morning. Maybe she would go see Jon, maybe she would read, or perhaps do some farming. She might not be able to help much with whatever Jon was doing, but she was happy living here in the kitchen and farm area. On the other hand, perhaps she would try to trap some of the spider-rabbits. They were supposed to be good to eat with some of the sauces the previous Sallys had concocted. Or, maybe she should do some reading and see if she could find out what the Sallys had kept in the cages. A good day was ahead. *** SallyG ghosted through the passageways, occasionally drifting through a few of the thinner walls. She had learned about mimicking from her attempts to breach Jon, now she could travelled through the passageways with less disturbance than a gust of air. She had no need to spoof the dots; they couldn¡¯t sense her, anymore. As she moved along, she passed through a number of space folds. The region used for this experiment was stuck in an eddy, cut off from the Infinite City. This caused a great deal of stress on the local subspace expression of this dimension, and numerous folds were needed to stabilize it. The entire area was so complex that even she would need the power of one of the computing boxes to set up the mapping and field gradient vectors to model the region.
She reached the computer room, assembled some N-field constructs, suitably creased to avoid detection, and drifted them toward the computing boxes. She kept an eye on Jon, he was still a wild card, but less of a factor today than he had been yesterday.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
SallyG used the constructs to cast a vector on one of the boxes, moving it a few degrees out of the true dimension. This reduced its mass significantly, allowing her to move it easily, even though it was still awkwardly large. A little more vector manipulation and she had acquired her computing engine. She enfolded it into her control radius, and everything became undetectable. She made her way back to her hideout. *** A little while later, Jon stepped out of the hallway and walked to the kitchen. Sally was cleaning one of the cooking areas. ¡°Hey Jon. Come to check up on me again?¡± she yelled, then pulled out of the oven she was cleaning and pushed some hair aside. This left a black streak across her nose. She crossed her eyes to look at the mark. ¡°Oh, that was smooth,¡± she said as she tried to remove the streak. It wasn¡¯t working, so she gave up and looked toward Jon. ¡°Don¡¯t you trust your dots? I put up some more around here and in the other rooms. I didn¡¯t want to do something stupid, like fall and not be able to be seen.¡± ¡°I wanted to verify what the dots were reporting. In the last few days I have detected some statistical anomalies.¡± ¡°Um, okay.¡± ¡°Did you notice that one of the computing boxes is no longer in the computer room?¡± ¡°Yeah. I''m sure I have it here somewhere. Let me check my pockets.¡± ¡°I also noted that some of your chemistry has moved away from the baseline.¡± ¡°Ok-ay. So I''m not that good a cook.¡± Sally paused then rejoined, ¡°What are you talking about? I feel fine.¡± She peered more closely at Jon, ¡°Wait! Is there something wrong with you?¡± ¡°I am reviewing some statistics that are implying a noticeable deviation from the norm.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what that means.¡± Jon looked at her. ¡°I will monitor the situation as I collect more data,¡± he stated, then left. Probably going back to the garbage pile. Sally returned to scrubbing. Some of what had happened over the last few weeks was fading. Her memory was pretty clear, up until they¡¯d arrived at the arena, then it got harder to remember details. Some of what she could recall was probably a dream; it was so weird. Maybe she would talk to Jon about it. Maybe not. Her actual dreams from last night had been strange, too. She had dreamed about a little crablike creature drawing lines on the floor with his mouth tentacles. She kept expecting to look up and see him standing near her, making pictures on the floor. He drew the same thing over and over. It always showed tiny stick figures of a person and a crab standing on a huge map of the rooms, but the map had all sorts of crevasses and folds cutting across it. She kept wondering where he (actually it, probably. She really had no idea) had gotten to. She continued scrubbing. *** Things were going well. The subspace tap worked as it should to power up the node. Controlling the node was accomplished using a fairly standard interface. The first thing she did was access the operating instructions. Subspace tubes provided the primary information paths and mode of travel in the Infinite City and were quite straightforward to operate. Sapients ended up where they wanted to¡­ usually. The node SallyG had possession of was originally configured to connect to one specific location, but even if she could find it, that destination port was heavily encrypted and couldn¡¯t be freely accessed. Fortunately, all subspace nodes included standard data for public ports. This described the beacon associated with each port, plus, it listed local businesses or equivalents and supplied information concerning the environment at the subspace port. An important detail to ensure that the traveler was compatible with the area. What SallyG had to do was access these public beacons and find a suitable location she could tube to. The main issue was that her node wasn¡¯t anchored. Anchoring wasn¡¯t a simple process. Because subspace had forty-six dimensions, she had to find at least forty-seven beacons to get a fix on her location. These beacons didn¡¯t radiate, so she had to find them, make her node connect, get their information, and then find the next one. It wasn¡¯t like using a telescope to look for stars, more like reaching out a hand to blindly feel around all of outer space and physically touch each beacon. There was a lot of nothing to search. This was why she needed the computing box. It could take the information from known objects that the tube ran into as it flailed around, find beacons, and with enough beacons, then calculate where her node was, which was what anchoring really meant. Once the node was anchored, it could make a tube to the public ports it knew about. The whole process simply needed raw processing power, time, and some luck from the gods of randomness. As more beacons were located, it got progressively easier to find others. Unfortunately, her node had been disconnected from its previous anchor, so she had to run the whole process from scratch. SallyG connected the subspace power tap to the node, and tested the functionality of the system. Her monitoring showed that the subspace node was supplying the raw data that the computing box needed. One hurdle cleared. She only had one power tap, which wasn¡¯t a major issue, but it relegated her to the role of a power switch and data buffer. She disconnected the tap from the node, which would run on stored power for a while, then connected the tap to the computing box. The box powered up in a wiped condition, totally blank. She accessed the node for the beacon search algorithm, downloaded it to herself, then started the process to upload it into the computing box. The algorithm was self-installing, especially in such a friendly environment as the computing box. It would expand to fill the allowable space. The more space, the faster the search would run. The computing box was massively more capable than a typical platform. It would probably be necessary to limit the size of the algorithm, or the program would expand forever. The job was tedious, passing the program and alternating the power, but eventually, the system was set up. Finally, the she kicked off the search. She started an automatic process to operate her body as it switched power between the two functions. In the meantime, she reviewed her next task. When a tube was anchored on both ends, it became discoverable, in the same way that Jon could see subspace tubes. It wouldn¡¯t take long for the evil scientist to detect the new tube, and disrupt the operation. By disrupt, she meant destroy the node, her, and the local area. She knew that the local subspace was being monitored due to the incident in the computer room, but had an idea for the perfect distraction. After taking the time to play with alternatives, she optimized her gestalt for the next step, and made her way back to the arena. *** As Jon was working through the pile, he suddenly paused and stood up. Something was not correct. He felt there were anomalies he was missing. "Felt" was really the incorrect word. He was accumulating data indicating that there were errors in how he was categorizing items found in the pile. A number of internal audits had detected no issues, but he did have fallback programs that would keep an ongoing track of minor deviations from the norm, and they were hinting at a troubling trend. He searched for methods to resolve his issues. As he was processing, a pile of sorted items tumbled over. He stopped and looked at it. As he was assembling an algorithm, another tumbled over. Then a third. This was completely anomalous. Jon rushed over to the piles and searched the area. There wasn¡¯t anything to explain why the piles had shifted. He inventoried the piles that had been disturbed. Nothing was missing. Being the epitome of pedantic, he then inventoried all the other piles, and discovered that the anchor ring they''d taken from the gravity Sally was missing! He did a rapid threat assessment and ran for the kitchen. *** SallyG had returned and was sitting by the subspace node. It was time. The node had oriented itself. She had spent her time as a switch improving herself and had advanced to a seven gestalt, far superior to the five gestalt. Growing had opened new potentials; she had enjoyed teasing Jon when she fetched the gravity ring. The teasing also helped ensure that he would be in a more secure place for what was to come. He was compromised, but she regarded him as a friend(2). Nearly trustworthy, but with issues. She put on the gravity anchor. It was a very complex piece of hyper-dimensional technology. She had spent a few hundred man-hours in accelerated time for the multiple parts of her to understand the interface, and even so, the results weren¡¯t completely satisfactory. The ring couldn¡¯t be fully comprehended, because there was a factor of heuristic operation. Basically, luck. Taking a breath, she activated it. Her hand pulsed as the ring pulled energy from the gravity plane, and redirected it back out in a ping. Every few seconds this repeated. In spite of everything she was now, SallyG found herself to be tense. What she was attempting included a significant amount of risk. She had a number of backup plans, but she had a lot of faith in her current approach. Come on! Answer! The next ping went out, and immediately a mass of data came back. The data contained an overarching interpretation that had components that a basic Sally could understand. She allowed the audio parts to access her hearing. ¡°Person!¡± (designated ¡°Sally¡± ), query? Similarities found ### (unknown) ¡°are finding you, now¡± (emotion ), ¡°searches past/present/future unsuccessful.¡± There was a return audio channel. SallyG vocalized, ¡°This is Sally.¡± She really had no idea what else to add. Interaction with a gravity being wasn¡¯t something she knew much about. Fortunately, she received an answer. ¡°trepidation. person" (Sally?), "are you yes/no?¡±, SallyG thought over the response. On the face of it, it wasn¡¯t hard to figure out. Her feeling was that the heavy remembered Sally, but somehow it knew that she wasn¡¯t the Sally it knew. She wasn¡¯t entirely sure that she completely understood the discussion. At one point, Alex had given her an overview of the types of entities she may encounter, but it was particularly sparse about gravity beings. So far, though... maybe, probably, hopefully, there was something she could work with. She debated tactics. At the moment she didn¡¯t have an overabundance of information, so honesty might be the best policy. Gravity beings were supposedly higher-level entities in their own right, and interfacing with a simpler Sally would have had to be painfully straightforward. She sent a simple: ¡°I¡¯m Sally, but not the Sally you knew.¡± Nothing came back. After a few minutes, she decided to try something else. So far, the interaction had been quite primitive, so she¡¯d step it up. She sent an interaction packet to the ring. This packet asked for the participants to switch to a much denser mode of communication. She felt it pulse out. Almost immediately she received (!!!) SallyG bandied about what that meant, but information was lacking. Then she received: Heavy: This mode failed before/earlier/pre-now (exclamation), explain?, Sally: Relief, hoped for denser information transfer, knowledge about (you, gravity being) sparse, here is a summary of events, (data included) sorry original Sally friend(1)? non-functional. Heavy: non-functional? (no understanding), all are one, everything is everything (evidence follows), Sally mused that over. The last message could be interpreted to mean that the gravity plane did not understand death, and also that it was an omni-space, which was a form where there were individual beings, but at the same time, they were also the same being. Hey! Maybe the Heavy is like a gestalt! This was something she knew a little about, but it took special constructs to translate the particulars. Essentially, it meant she probably wasn¡¯t talking with just an individual, she was actually addressing the entire universe! Sally: Negotiation. Have good odds of establishing a percentage of the original Sally, best effort to do so. Request for action on your part. No debt gained\lost, but request assistance. Heavy: ¡°Negotiation, yes¡­ And more.¡±(true statement), Well! It seemed that the gravity plane might be a player, since it was showing a desire for a bit of wheeling and dealing. She could work with that. The discussions commenced, intense and extensive. Fortunately, both sides were intelligent, reasonable beings. They hammered out a promise to work toward becoming friends(1), a very serious commitment. In its own way, the plane wanted its old Sally back, not atypical for friends(1). That Sally was in pieces, but probably in no worse shape than any of the other dead Sallys. She would do her best to restore the gravity Sally, and the heavy would do what she asked. They managed to set up an avenue for future communication, as events permitted. SallyG was pretty sure that neither of them entirely, or even mostly, understood what they had negotiated. There was a huge disconnect in how their world-views operated, but they agreed to attempt an ongoing relationship. SallyG had to shut down the subspace node to in preparation for her return to the arena to collect what remained of the gravity Sally. Last she had seen, the head was fairly intact, at least. When she arrived, she looked around for a suitable bag. She may be a hyper-intelligent entity, but she didn¡¯t want to get all icky. *** Jon waited with Sally in the passageways. They had been there for a couple of hours. He calculated that if what he expected was going to happen took place, then he could do a better job of bracing himself here, rather than than anywhere else. Sally was wrapped in the futon from the bed. She had stopped complaining about how bored she was and was giggling again. She thought the whole situation was funny. And boring. At that instant, Jon noticed something being sent baby the dots in the arena. If he was capable of surprise, he would have been speechless. A second Sally had opened the box containing the gravity Sally''s head, and was putting the pieces into a bag. The other Sally didn¡¯t look too happy to be handling the body parts. When she finished, she looked over at the dot and waved. Jon just watched. No particular activity was called for. This was very dense information. Jon was startled when a data packet came into to his buffers. Startled, for him, meant a completely involuntary reassignment of resources. This was the first time he had ever received a transmitted message, even including his time in the starting room. He initiated the process of checking the message and decoding it. After the standard encoding was removed, he still couldn¡¯t read most of the message. A data field showed that most of it was timed to be discoverable in the future. A short section was readable. It simply said, ¡°Good luck. Sorry about the mess. Hang on.¡± He looked over at his Sally. She was dozing. The Sally of the dots had finished packing the body parts away in a bag. She walked over to one of the computing boxes, it started floating, then it, and the Sally, disappeared. Shortly afterward, the world turned upside down. *** SallyG stood by the subspace node. When gravity began shifting, she was ready and powered up the node, making a connection to the destination she had selected. The massive disruptions from the gravity waves should mask the establishment of the subspace tube. If her plans were correct, and they were, the gravity waves would be wreaking havoc on the other subspace nodes distributed through the experiment. Tubes would be collapsing and trying to re-establish themselves everywhere. She held the bag of gravity Sally, and towing the two computing boxes, stepped into the active area. Instantly, everything was gone. The node powered down after she left. There was no explosion. Chapter 20
SallyG stepped out into a subspace tube reception area, which was a small alcove at the edge of a large open market. This reception area was a do-not-bother region because some entities needed time to acclimate after traveling by tube.
SallyG didn¡¯t have this problem. She immediately tuned into the local nets, found the location of a reputable auction house, and stepped into the flow of traffic.
It was an eclectic crowd that milled about the tube node. SallyG had picked this beacon site because she would fit in, or more accurately, not stand out.
Her interfaces were pinged by 107 different messages in the first few seconds. Some were a simple ¡°What have you got?¡± some were more strident, and a few carried malicious packages. She sent back an innocuous response to each originator showing she had some simple refrigeration units she wanted to unload. The disinterest was overwhelming.
The 108th request was followed by some aggressive moves made by one individual who emerged from a nearby crowd of similar beings. When this large lobster-like person approached her, he was suddenly overcome with a bout of cramps in his telson, which resulted in an uncontrolled voiding of waste. He stopped, gulped, and then scurried away in embarrassment. His friends ensured that this event haunted him for years.
All of the 108 entities who contacted her left richer by a little stealth package they would never realize they had acquired.
Sally marveled how poorly Alex'' description of a benign society fared against real life. Maybe it was different for the powerful, which also reinforced her expectations. Finding she could easily deal with the riff-raff, she headed off to sell her computing boxes. Currency would be useful until she had established a friend network.
***
A few years later, information leaked that a hitherto anonymous group had reserved a whole floor of the most exclusive hotel in this sector. This was huge news because it was a group no one had heard of, and access to this venue was very limited. Every gossip, financial, political, and economic group sent information specialists to find out more. There was a strong feeling this wasn¡¯t a false alarm, all indicators were that something big was in the works.
The gut feelings leading to so many resources being assigned were indisputably justified when the unknown guests began arriving.
The hotel prided itself on its state-of-the-art security. The first sign of a major anomaly was when orders for food were placed from rooms that weren¡¯t occupied. No one had checked in, but, obviously, someone was there, and a check of the records showed the occupants had actually been admitted, even though no staff member could remember doing so. Rumors concerning this mystery leaked out and started a low-level buzz.
One inquisitive personage discovered a video feed on the internet equivalent. It cycled through a few dots placed in public areas of the hotel. The video showing unknown individuals consisting of a mix of remarkably similar persons, probably clones, and a very eclectic cadre of other species. The finder promptly shared the feeds with a million, or so, friends.
A later investigation by the hotel showed that no outside group had placed these video dots. It was speculated that the group who had booked the hotel was the culprit. Likely a sly marketing ploy. For some reason, any spy devices planted by various shady groups that had never heard of them and hadn¡¯t planted them, didn''t work for long. In fact, a post mortem showed that these other devices were co-opted to work in reverse, so they ended up spying on those very groups that had never heard of them and hadn¡¯t planted them. Long range sensors didn¡¯t work either; somehow, they became infected with the nastiest sort of malware, resulting in the destruction of a great deal of very expensive hardware. The totally innocent victims who had nothing to do with these various surveillance devices were out high-teched. The reporting services that never-ever used these clandestine services were among the first to report these events. Very clearly admitting: What, someone outsmarted us? Don¡¯t care, news is news.
The rumors of various mysterious entities suddenly appearing in their hotel rooms had just started circulating when the area was swept by gravity waves, and a tall humanoid appeared above the hotel and floated down. This was shocking because the hotel was a no-gravity-manipulation zone, with the rule rigidly enforced by a very high-level entity. When finally cornered, that distinguished personage was somewhat upset and didn¡¯t have an answer for how this could have happened.
Even more startling, shortly afterward, space tore open in front of the hotel and something stepped out. Eyewitness accounts varied greatly, and even after viewing the allowed recordings, no one could ever fully resolve what that individual or individuals looked like. This was serious technology. It was rumored that even many of the more advanced intelligences couldn¡¯t uncover what had happened. After a great deal of debate, it was resolved that these usually august and aloof entities were in a tizzy.
A well-documented event took place when a group of 21 showed up, having arrived through a normal tube station. They were obviously clones, but the density of information sharing showed they had organized into a loose gestalt. This was major news! All stable gestalts approaching this size were supposed to be known. This one wasn¡¯t. The crowd watching them found their grasp of reality slipping and sliding. In the bedlam that ensued, everyone reported feeling that they had communed with something, but when questioned, they were reluctant to discuss the details. Many years later a where-are-they-now program found the members of the crowd had a spectacular level of success in their careers, lives, and endeavors.
One of the most famous news personalities tried for a hostile interview of the gestalt, which took the unoriginal name of Twenty-one. The interviewer itself became the news when everyone else attending the conference suddenly received salacious information about the interviewer. Something nasty it had thought was long buried. No one else tried such an aggressive approach, at least for the rest of the conference, which was forever for most of those who lived and died for ratings.
Other clones turned up separately as individuals, almost always accompanied by a companion. The best interview came from one of these, who took the role of spokesperson.
That individual called herself SallyG. She only used a form of low-speak, which was what level 1 or 2 mentalities could handle. Something similar to baby talk. On her, it was kind of cute. By now no one was fooled. Everyone knew it was a ruse.
SallyG informed the gathered crowd that the conference was for a group that called themselves "Nobody¡¯s Business". They had all been unwittingly cloned, but, in spite of that, had managed to leave their origins behind to come together in an effort to correct a system that allowed this kind of behavior. Their mandate was to ensure that every entity being unfairly treated due to a difference in intellectual development had an avenue to redress the issue.
SallyG then provided contact information in a number of forms which would allow almost any entity with net access to be heard. She said they were working on further methods for those who couldn¡¯t, or wouldn¡¯t, use the various nets.
One younger interviewer was skeptical. She questioned how they could even hope to address an issue involving higher mentalities that were a power unto themselves, or entities that couldn¡¯t fathom the concept of graciousness. SallyG explained that it wasn¡¯t necessary for them to agree, or disagree, as long as they acted in a proper manner. Even though this was a ridiculous statement, no-one in the crowd would deny that the concept was appealing. Impossible, but still, appealing.
Ion the other hand, It didn¡¯t hurt that either success, or a spectacular failure, would be great entertainment.
SallyG then stopped, walked into the crowd, and pulled a distinguished looking entity up to the front. She introduced him as Alex and went on to say that without his help, many of the members of Nobody¡¯s Business wouldn¡¯t be here, today. Alex just gave a small smile and waved.
Alex, which couldn¡¯t be his real name, wasn¡¯t obviously known to the onlookers. Muttering grew as opinions were expressed. After a brief time, the noise from one group of senior correspondents suddenly peaked and one of the personalities shot a sensor into the air. He sent a massive encoded data burst toward Alex. Alex responded with an unencoded message. Effectively saying, ¡°Nice to see you, again.¡±
The crowd turned around to stare at the personality. To their amazement, it was making an honorific of lower to higher!
As one, the crowd turned back to the front, and Alex was gone. SallyG was by herself. She just looked over to where Alex had been, and shook her head in resignation.
The crowd gasped. There was one entity known for this particular parlor trick. He was mostly regarded as a semi-mythological being: a mostly benevolent high-level mentality. The Dark Sun! If he was working with Nobody¡¯s Business, they had serious support! A seed of hope was born in the crowd, and the trillions of watchers.
In a very short time, bedlam ensued. Everyone began interviewing themselves, each other, or anything too slow to get away, all in an effort to be the first to post some microscopic piece of unique information. Careers were made that day.
The feeling of hope was reinforced by an analysis of the interview with SallyG. As she had been talking, that seemingly simple-minded person had been bombarded with malware. Denial of service attacks, outright body hacking attempts, and on and on. She should have exploded, melted, vaporized, been driven insane. Instead, there had been nothing. Nothing at all.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. On the other hand, over the next few days, most of the suspected aggressors appeared to willingly donate almost all their wealth and influence to help various charities, including Nobody''s Business. It was unprecedented.
When interviewed, these generous donors couldn¡¯t, or wouldn¡¯t, explain why they were hit by a bout of social consciousness. Often for the first and only time, ever.
The technology that would permit SallyG to pack such capabilities into such an unassuming package was unknown to the general public. It was concluded that this SallyG had to be rated as a 4, at least. Maybe even a 5, close to the rating of the Black Sun. SallyG and Nobody¡¯s Business never discussed the matter.
The conference was the event of the millennium.
Slowly, society changed.
***
After a few years of bickering and appendage pointing, a semi-legitimate panel was formed to lay blame for the effect Nobody¡¯s Business had had in altering the course of the known.
There was no doubt that this panel couldn¡¯t really change anything. Nobody¡¯s Business was now a fundamental cornerstone of existence, but those adversely affected by its actions needed someone to blame, even though their misfortunes were, arguably, self-induced.
Evidence had come to light that one of the stodgier 6th or 7th level beings had run a series of experiments where some number of individuals had been isolated and observed, without their consent.
This entity had changed its name to something that roughly translated as "the Whole", in the trend of short names started by Alex. The Whole had regarded the entire endeavor as a whim, with only a minuscule chance it would generate viable results. It had designed a simple experiment to investigate an inflection point hinted to be pending in the future. While examining millennia of data collected while the experiment was in progress, the Whole found that the results progressively deviated from what it expected, until it became evident that experiment was influencing the data. At this point, the Whole decided to abandon what it regarded as a minor effort, and left the experiment to run down on its own.
Somehow, that data appeared I''m multiple places throughout the multiverse. When analyzed, it took no time for the panel to realize they were looking at Sallys! Thousands of them! Closer examination showed that a few of the unique Sallys in the experiment looked suspiciously like the members of Nobody¡¯s Business.
Even more egregious, a number of the panel members found members of their own species being used as companions. The Whole hadn¡¯t arranged permission, and no group had realized that this kidnapping, or duplication, had occurred. Not every species cared, but many did.
In its defense, it was noted that the Whole never really understood the problem with its actions. This disregard for lower intelligences wasn¡¯t uncommon in beings such as the Whole, at least before Nobody¡¯s Business had come into existence.
The panel may have been powerless to do anything about Nobody¡¯s Business, but they had definitely found a focus for their ire. The ensuing witch-hunt stripped the Whole of friends and resources. Without these, the Whole achieved pariah status, the worst fate that could be imposed on a higher-level being.
Shortly thereafter, the Whole became one of the very few cases where such a high-level entity actually devolved and eventually broke into several lower ranked entities that diverged and went their own way. Effectively, the Whole passed out of existence. The reason for the devolution was never entirely clear; other high-level beings had gone through the same kind of process, repented, and been allowed to rejoin society.
Later, when a group of calmer entities reviewed the evidence, it was found that, although the Whole held a large portion of the responsibility for the events leading up to the formation of Nobody¡¯s Business, there were also a number of other high-level entities involved, in one way or another. Including Nobody¡¯s Business, itself. The quiet conclusion was that these others had played the game better than the Whole.
***
The small part of SallyG monitoring the panels was very satisfied with the results. She had taken it upon herself to ensure the various committees reached the correct conclusions. Even if these results were rather harsh. What she had done was outside the purview of Nobody¡¯s Business, because many of the other Sallys weren¡¯t mercenary enough to handle the kind of hard decisions she¡¯d made.
The current SallyG was still evolving, and was as far advanced beyond the gestalt stage as the gestalt had been beyond the original Sally clone. As with many high-level entities, there really was no name for what she was becoming. Her focus had changed from seeking justice for her treatment by the Whole, to grander goals. From her travels, evidence was mounting that her multiverse was just an insignificant part of a much greater community and she was seeking to evolve to be able to step out into this bigger stage.
That did not mean to say that she was ignoring her responsibilities. Occasionally she would spawn off non-evolving versions of herself to take up the tasks she had accrued. She prosaically labeled them SallyG1, SallyG2, and so on, but as soon as possible, they took on other names.
Overall, Sally G was quite satisfied with how things were progressing.
***
Jon was back at the debris pile. The second gravity event of years ago had shifted the pile, but it was still a pile, and he was content to sift through it. Occasionally he found data caches that had vastly increased his knowledge, so the effort had merit. It also had a hint of danger. Not everything he came across was benign. Not dangerous to him, but he had responsibilities.
Sally came over to him carrying her companion. That annoying crab was insanely intelligent, and if Jon had a nemesis, it was that crab.
¡°It ''s time,¡± Sally decreed.
Jon knew that Sally knew that he had an internal timer, and never missed anything, but she still liked to baby him. The crab encouraged her, just to annoy him.
They walked together down the hallway, past the newly reconstructed computer room with its burgeoning intelligence, and through a series of passageways to the meeting room.
As he entered, the rest of the Sallys, and some of the companions (those that understood the concept), said hello. So far, they had been able to bring back 37 unique and complete versions of Sally, and even more companions. It was an ongoing task.
The floaty Sally was the latest. She was unique. Well, all of them were unique, but she was uniquely unique. She floated. They had finally found a way to deal with the stasis field, and been able to disable her kill switch. She was linked to a companion who was only accessible through the floaty Sally¡¯s heavily modified brain. This entity had no limitations of space or dimension. It could be anywhere, and it mapped reality by the existence of mental, or thinking, processes. It didn¡¯t discern by technology, but by some criteria that Jon, the group of Sallys, and their companions, hadn¡¯t been able to entirely define. If it thought, then the entity mapped it.
This meeting was called because the floaty Sally¡¯s companion had finally found another Sally, outside their group. Today they were going to try to contact her.
It had been a long path to get to this point.
After the unknown Sally had stolen the gravity Sally, and the local space had been hit by successive waves of gravity pulses, Jon had managed to open the data packet he had received. It contained a huge amount of data, encoded in layers.
The first layer informed him that he was heavily compromised, and everything he sensed was transmitted to an unknown destination. Even worse, this hardware might be able to subvert his activities. The message contained data showing the statistics of what he should be sending, and the statistics of what he actually sent. Jon had to admit there was an unexplained difference, assuming the information in the message was valid.
The message presented a small test that would show the issue. The test consisted of a small file he should read. After an enormous number of checks, he opening the file and found it contained nonsense. But, by reading this file, another layer of the message was revealed.
This layer began by informing him that the nonsense data wasn¡¯t actually meaningless, but contained information about generating a subspace tube, and he was being blocked from being able to comprehend what it said.
The message concluded by stating that it was almost impossible for an external entity to fix him. He would have to find a way to do it himself.
There was also a folder containing the knowledge the sender had concerning the kill switches and how to disable them in the Sallys. This data described the signal structure of the kill signals, but it also pointed out that there might be other methods. It was up to him to figure it all out.
Jon did not believe, or disbelieve the massages. As usual, he postulated methods to verify the information.
The first thing he did was to set up a computing box to record his transmissions. Upon review, he agreed that they were denser than they ought to be, and had statistical properties that were unexpected.
At this point, he assigned significant resources to search his data for viable methods to investigate the message¡¯s other claims.
Eventually, Jon opted to grow a non-sentient copy of himself in a computing box, and used it to check his functions and properties. The check resulted in a shocking finding! Over 75% of his non-storage resources had been redirected to subversive tasks! Cautiously, he and the non-sentient Jon implemented a number of changes. The conclusion was that some of his hardware couldn¡¯t be recovered, and had to be excised. But, in general, the effort generated the desired results. After a number of modifications, he became fully functional, and kill switch free.
The biggest improvement was seen in his interpersonal skills. The original hardware had been so compromised that he felt pity for his original Sally. She must have felt she was talking to a non-sentient automaton. When asked, she was non-committal.
The good thing was that, yes, he could now emulate, and understand, emotions.
This effort resulted in further layers of the message opening. The next section laid out how to resurrect Sallys using the IV fluid and an embedded stealth infrastructure. Discovering that his Sally had this stealth infrastructure gave his newly functioning shock emotion a good workout. As hard as he pried, his Sally never clarified the relationship between her and the unknown Sally, and Jon had been unable to uncover enough information to determine it, independently. He wasn¡¯t one to worry, though. He could wait.
The message also revealed where the other Sally had put her subspace node. Jon followed the directions, but the room was empty. A subsequent investigation found all the subspace tunnels had been disabled. In all the passing years, they hadn''t been able to uncover an approach to construct their own subspace tubes.
What they did discover, though, was they had been isolated.
This had no effect on their day-to-day lives. Jon¡¯s knowledge and abilities allowed them to recreate the IV fluid and improve the resurrection process to the point where they achieved a nearly perfect success rate raising Sallys and companions, with their memories intact. The process could be quick, but better results occurred when care was taken to optimize the techniques for the individual. Success was as much an art as it was science.
The Sallys, companions, and Jon, had formed the group he had always been meant to be a member of. They worked to raise their levels and had been quite successful. In many cases, the Sallys had gone from sub-one to the twos, and in a few cases, even to the threes. As a group, they were easily a four.
Jon played his part as a source of information, while a consortium of the Sallys and companions decided what they would work on. For the most part, this meant that the Sallys bombarded him with varied, and often conflicting, directions and requests. Most of the companions appeared to find great humor in this good-natured interplay.
Somehow, it all worked.
Of equal importance to the resurrections was an ongoing task to contact the outside. Without subspace node technology there were no easy solutions. They had needed to find an alternate approach, and floaty Sally was the latest.
Floaty Sally:
Communicating... communicating... communicating...
Contact... Success!
Utter shock from the outside Sally.
Also, jubilation.
Information content follows: The outside Sallys had a massive ongoing effort to find the site of the experiment. Chagrin that we managed to succeed first. Effort to follow up with physical contact, postulated methods to follow¡­
The End.