“We’re all on the same side here, are we not? The health and well-being of the three young people should be–“
“Of course, of course. But we are also each responsible to the institutions that we represent, to ensure that–“
“That there is no cause for anyone to–“
“No lawsuits, that?”
“That also, of course; but primarily to ensure that each party is doing its proper part.”
“Carrying out its responsibilities, as I–“
“Can we get the medical situation clarified, at least? Dr. Zane-Tucker?”
“Certainly. As you know, Steven Diaz presented on–“
“Was brought in by ambulance from the–“
“Yes, we know all of that, but what is the current–“
“Very good, your packets have the latest update right there. Physiologically he and the other two–“
“Colin Colson and the Lewis girl–“
“Kristen Lewis, if you please, yes, they are all in good health–“
“They have all been in comas since–“
“Can we let Doctor Tucker speak, please!”
“Zane-Tucker, please. Thank you, yes, all three patients are in good health, physiologically. Their brain functions are also normal, as you can see in figure–“
“Normal except for–“
“Please!”
“Sorry.”
“As you know, Mr. Diaz was put into a routine induced coma due to undetermined brain trauma from a penetrating head injury incurred while racing in the desert.”
“Those d-mned racing rigs should be illegal, they’re–“.
“Yes, well. Initial attempts to remove the foreign object faced complications due to excessive bleeding, but ultimately the team was successful in–“
“Successful? We know that the piece of steel in his head just vanished overnight, after the others were already–“
“Mr. Mbanku, with respect–“
“Are you still denying it? Can the hospital produce it, then?”
“The fact that the object was misplaced–“
“Misplaced? Is that really your story?”
“We need to discuss the health of the–“
“Why are these two other children–“
“They are not children, the patients are all fully adults.”
“Why are they still unconscious? Is this experimental apparatus–“
“It is not experimental, it has been approved for evaluation in–“
“For evaluation, right, it’s some first-draft experimental brain-lace–“
“People, please!”
“The situation is unusual, as we all acknowledge, but the patients are all in good health, and there is every reason to think that they will return to consciousness without–“
“Every reason to think, meaning what exactly? Has this happened before?”
“If you’ll turn to page three in your packet, you’ll find–“
“It has?”
“In very similar circumstances, in fact, yes. As the case-study describes, two college students in São Paulo spent nearly a year in–“
“That wasn’t this experimental therapeutic–“
“Exactly, that was with an earlier and more primitive device, with fewer safeguards, so in this case we can certainly expect that–“
“And they were okay?”
“They were somewhat disappointed to come out, in fact, as described in–“
“That wasn’t in some rushed emergency situation, though, it was–“
“It was a malfunction in the limiting circuit of their virtuality induction networks, yes. Whereas in this case the apparatus is in perfect working order. Only the sudden unexpected changes in Mr. Diaz’s EEG led the hospital to–“
“To basically trap the other two kids in–“
“Again, Mr. Mbanku, the patients are all adults, and–“
“Why can’t the hospital bring them out again? What is the problem? Is that not a malfunction?”
“Not at all, not at all. As you can see in the specification documents in your packets on pages–“
“But surely the hospital should have had procedures in place for the possibility of something like this. Why were the other two allowed into virtuality with the patient at all, when they were just visitors? Were they fully aware of the–“
“Mr. Colson and Miss Lewis were fully informed of the situation, and there are copies of the signed consent forms–“
“No one reads those when their friend is–“
“In any case, there is no reason to think that any harm–“
“It had better not, that’s all I’m saying. It had just better not.”
Let’s say, or stipulate, that there are three people. We can, for the moment, uncontroversially differentiate between people (and even agree as to what a person is) in common situations (and even in relatively uncommon situations like the present one), and we can have at least small integers (again, for the moment), so: three people.
People have, again uncontroversially, or by convention, names (shorthand for various audible and visible forms and other things, forming rough equivalence classes), like “Steve”, and “Colin”, and “Kristen”. So, we stipulate that there are three people, named Steve, and Colin, and Kristen.
They have been through a lot lately. In some sense. They have experienced a number of things; and no, experience can obviously not be divided into countable things in any principled way, this is an idiom.
I am coming to realize, and you don’t need to wonder about who I am at the moment (time is an illusion) that these are all idioms. Everything, anything, I say, and everything, anything, you say, is an idiom, an approximation, a set of sounds (or visible forms, or other things that are grouped, as with names, into rough equivalence classes) that, well, that when they occur as part of your experience, bring to mind certain things (bring to mind, a good phrase, a good idiom, I think).
You may of course think of me as Colin. Colin’s notebooks are full of things like this. Colin is the smaller of the three people we are considering; he has an idiopathic childhood growth hormone deficiency (or perhaps an insensitivity rather than a deficiency, or some of each; even in the sciences these terms are at best approximations, idioms), which makes him small; being small gives him a certain perspective on the world.
Not one he would have necessarily chosen, but here we are.
(“Here we are” is also an idiom, but in another sense it manages to be true, because it is a tautology; as long as we exists, and are somewhere, here we are. Here we are!)
Steve is the largest of the three people, as they all approach the marker at the edge of the slope that leads down to the cavern. Steve’s head still hurts, because of a correlation between his head, in the reality we are describing, and the head of someone also called Steve (perhaps the same person, this is one of those edge cases), the latter head having recently (and perhaps still, simultaneity is very much an illusion) encountered a significant penetrating foreign object, resulting in a certain amount of trauma to the enclosed brain.
He seems pretty much okay at the moment, however.
The middle-sized person of the three, the one in the other peak from the other two in at least one bimodal distribution that people care too much about, is, let us say, Kristen. Named Kristen, as Colin is named Colin and Steve is named Steve. She is a little apart from them at the moment, looking with a dubious expression (do you know what a dubious expression is? Could you produce one ad hoc?) at the other two as they approach the marker.
When is this, you might ask, or where is this?
“This place is a little crazy.”
“That’s not unusual.”
“I don’t really like the look of that statue.”
“The marker.”
“It’s a statue, it’s representational. I think it has some affordances, but they aren’t well labeled.”
“You mean you could do… virtuality things to it?”
“I could try to do something. It might or might not cause something to happen.”
Do you appreciate how well they communicate with each other? They all know that communication, in its simplest form, is impossible. And yet they do it well; they have been practicing for a long time.
(So much to know about all of those things! What makes an act of communication good? Is good the same as effective? Can effectiveness be defined independent of any particular goal, or at least a utility function over some set of salient situations? What counts as practice? These questions are fundamental, yet at the same time, requiring answers to them yields language impossible. This is territory that we have covered before. And that is a good honest metaphor.)
The ease of their communication is a great relief to Steve, in particular. Being constantly in new and confusing situations make communication especially straightforward, because there are obvious things to communicate about: What is that? How many are there? Do you hear that? Does that look dangerous?
Before these interesting times started, Steve was finding straightforward communication with Kristen in particular somewhat difficult. That has not been a problem lately.
“Why exactly are we here, again?”
“It’s not at all clear to me. Should I try to… turn the statue on? Or whatever it is?”
“We could just go down into the like cavern place there.”
“I don’t really want to, somehow. It doesn’t look welcoming.”
“Do you think it could be dangerous to … afford the affordance?”
Kristen smiles at that.
“You don’t afford an affordance. When a thing offers an affordance, you can choose to use it, or not.”
“Use it for what?”
“A good affordance makes that clear. Sadly, this is not a good affordance. It’s like a Push Here button that doesn’t say what will happen if you do.”
“Go ahead, it’ll be interesting. Or not.”
Kristen nods, half-closes her eyes, and uses the marker.
From somewhere ahead of them, there is a loud echoing groan, or creak. Perhaps a sound like some ancient door opening for the first time in a very long time. (Time is an illusion; whether a door is open or closed is just a convention; whether a particular assemblage of matter is or is not a door, is not well-defined. It’s good to remember these things, I think. Colin thinks so, at least.)
“Something’s coming?”
“Doesn’t sound like footsteps or anything.”
“More like a slowly approaching whooshing.”
“Wind, sort of.”
There is indeed a bit of wind, or movement in whatever acts as air in the particular colorful and abstract place they find themselves. (Have you read any of the philosophical literature on, for instance, the difference between water and H2O? It’s surprisingly complex. No one knows if water is (always, necessarily) H2O; even that simple a question eludes us.) But more importantly from the wind, the three gradually become aware of a Presence appearing in the large dim mouth of the cavern at the bottom of the slope before them, and then proceeding up the slope toward them.
“Well, there’s something,” Steve notes.
“It is indeed. Probably.”
The Presence, which is perceptible mostly as a sort of shimmering in the air, an opaque shimmering really, that takes the light passing through it and tangles and perturbs it enough that it is quite certain that there is something there, without giving much of an idea of what it is.
The Presence stops a bit in front of them, and emits a loud high-pitched shrieking sound.
The three people (Kristen, Steve, and Colin) put their hands to there ears.
“Um, hello?” says Kristen.
The Presence makes more sounds, not as loud or as high-pitched. They seem to, possibly, contain some syllables. (That is a metaphor, more or less: sounds and syllables are at different semantic levels. But you know, to the extent that it matters, what I mean.)
“Sounds sort of Italian,” Steve comments.
“Hello!” the Presence says, in an odd warbling voice
“Hi!” says Kristen with relief.
“Have you summoned me?” the voice asks, becoming less odd and less warbling, quite androgynous, perhaps a bit alluring.
“That was me, probably,” Kristen says, “I used the statue there.”
“The marker,” Colin notes.
“The Figure of the Ancient One has stood there undisturbed for a million years,” the Presence intones, “while I slept.”
“Sorry to have awakened you,” Kristen says politely.
“Was it called that even a million years ago?” Colin asks, “the Ancient One?”
Kristen pokes Colin with her elbow at this point, which has a meaning at least as definite as any word on this page that you are reading (if you are reading a page, and otherwise you know what I mean). Steve, the largest of the three, smiles despite himself.
“I am grateful to you,” says the Presence, its form settling toward the smooth slightly-yielding ground, as though it is sitting down or otherwise making itself comfortable, “it is good to be awake.”
“Are you the Ancient One?” Colin asks.
“I suppose,” the Presence says, “but you may call me Tibbs.”
“Tibbs?”
“Yes,” the Presence says, “Tibbs.”
Each of the three humans is, independently, quietly proud not to have laughed at this point.
“Why have you summoned me?” the Presence, Tibbs, then inquires. As anyone in a similar position might.
“Do you want to come with us?” Kristen asked, getting directly to the point.
“Come with you where?”
“Wherever it is that we are going. To become one of our number.”
“Our party, so to speak.”
“You suggest that I ally myself with you,” Tibbs says here, with an understandable hint of incredulity, “knowing nothing more about you, than that you have summoned me by invoking the Figure of the Ancient One?”
“It would be on a strictly Provisional basis,” Colin says.
“You could, like, change your mind at any time.”
“You are a puzzling trio of creatures,” Tibbs remarks.
“A lot happens in a million years,” Colin notes.
“If I were to join your… party, what would we be doing, and where would we be going, to begin with?”
“Well,” replies Kristen, consulting an intricate golden-brass device hanging from her belt, “there will be an Interstice Hawk passing within hailing distance in a little while.”
A ripple seemed to go through Tibb’s basically-invisible body.
“I would be delighted to join you,” said the alluring androgynous ancient voice, “just delighted.”
“Aches like fuck, but not pain like before. What’s that thing?”
“Well…”
“It’s not, I mean, it looks like, but…”
“Like what?”
“It looks like that big brown bug over there, um, pulled it out of your head.”
“Wait, not the–“
“Obviously not, but it looks a lot like–“
“Just a virtual copy of–“
“Oh, so wait–“
“Maybe this is some kind of crazy therapeutic build, and–“
“They manifested surgery as a huge brown beetle or something?”
“They aren’t beetles, more like mantisses.”
“Way too round for mantisses!”
“So many eyes, ighh.”
“Hey, the brown one just, well, healed you or something.”
“This is an insane virtuality, you should sue.”
“Any affordances show up, Kris?”
The three humans, still rather dazed by the lightning onslaught and retreat of the insects (beetles, possibly, or mantisses, although the small one in the back looks completely different, Colin notices), have backed off to the edge of the old porch steps, to get at least symbolically farther from all those eyes, mandibles, antennae, and what-have-you.
“Still nothing,” she replies, “should we try to duck out again?”
“I’ve been doing that,” Colin says, closing his eyes and moving his head yet again, “no effect.”
“Should we try to… talk to them?” Steve wonders. He tilts his head thoughtfully and waves an arm in the direction of the three giant insects.
“Phhht!” Kristen hisses, pulling his arm down again, “do we really want to get their attention?”
“I do,” Colin says, “they’re really interesting-looking.”
“You’ve seen weirder things than that in a dozen instances,” she points out.
“True. This is sort of… different though, eh?”
“How’s your head now, Steve?”
Steve leans against her, closing his eyes.
“Mammoth headache,” he says, “but nothing like it was. I guess I passed out?”
She nodds and strokes his head and back. “We were worried.”
“This really doesn’t feel like a virtuality.”
“What else could it be? Probably some fancy ad-tech thing, you know how fast things are changing these days.”
“But why are we trapped in here, if it’s just to fix Steve’s–“
“Maybe something happened while they were monitoring us in here, and they had to do emergency life-saving–“
“Life saving insect dispatch!”
“Yeah, whatever, but anyway they had to lock down the instance while they did it, even though we were in here, and the bugs are just how the concepts happened to manifest…”
“Hey, they left!”
“What?”
“Heh!”
“Did you see them go? Where are they?”
“Nope, there was just this noise again and foop, no more bugs.”
They all look around, from there by the steps of the slowly-collapsing house.
“If that’s what the insects around here are like,” Steve says, “I guess I’m glad we didn’t run into whatever left all those cobwebs inside.”
They had reached the place that Sonoraneldan said was the same, in some way, as the end of the scentless scent-trail, not long after full dawn the next day, after a quiet night that Alissa had spent snug and happy in her burrowed space in the earth, and Sonoraneldan and Glomorominith had spent in doing whatever they did.
There had been nothing obviously different about the spot, and Sonoraneldan had explained that because the fragment with the curved markings was so much smaller than the ground (or something like that), the destination of their journey could be anywhere within a small walk away from there; so they had begun to spiral outward among the thinning root-arches, enjoying the air and looking for anything noteworthy.
It was Sonoraneldan who first saw the strange mammal-like creatures.
There were three of them, sitting or standing on the ground near a large and peculiar pile of bark fragments. They appeared soft and rather limp, but in general shape and eyelessness were much like the mammal ghosts in Alissa’s dreams.
“I wonder what those things are,” Sonoraneldan said, pointing with head and antennae.
“Those things!” Glomorominith said in an agreeable way.
The three travelers stopped a little ways from the creatures, sizing them up. They seemed unaware that they were being observed for some time, until two of them looked over and then slowly rose up on their rear limbs.
“They seem to move very slowly,” Alissa observed, “perhaps they are injured.”
“The one in the center seems sessile,” Sonoraneldan added.
Alissa moved in agreement. As they watched, the two standing mammals made various slow and uncertain movements, to no obvious purpose.
“In the center,” Glomorominith said, “what have we here? We here?”
“What is it, my friend?” Sonoraneldan asked softly, “Do you note something?”
Alissa stayed a bit behind as her larger companions moved toward the dithering pale creatures.
“Be careful,” she breathed, “they look harmless, but if they are mammals–“
“Hm, could these be the legendary mammals?” Sonoraneldan mused in a humorous tone, “perhaps they have grown less formidable over the ages.”
As the travelers approached them more closely, Alissa realized that the mammals, if that was what they were, were not only slower than the ones she recalled from her dreams, but also smaller. The two standing ones, that were still only making slow pointless motions, were not even as tall as Alissa with all four of her legs on the ground. She felt rather sorry for them, especially as they dithered over the unmoving, and perhaps slightly larger, one on the ground between them.
Sonoraneldan and Alissa watched those two back slowly away, their odd faces (and were those eyes, down in the disquieting pair of pits in each face?) contorting peculiarly. In the meantime, Glomorominith went up close to the motionless one, and touched its head lightly with antennae, seemingly very interested in something about the still form.
This seemed to excite the other two into nearly-rapid motion. One reversed course and began to walk toward Glomorominith and the unresponsive one, reaching out with its upper two legs, or arms. (How simple they are, Aliisa thought to herself; two arms and two legs, perhaps, at most two eyes, no antennae but only a sort of fuzz of tendrils atop their modest and unambitious heads. If these are mammals, then the legends did indeed exaggerate, or they are very changed. Perhaps, she thought, they are mammal grubs, or larvae.)
Glomorominith continued the gentle stroking and examination of the grub on the ground, and the nearer of the other two continued approaching; the third seemed torn, making ponderous motions both toward and away from its bolder, or more excited, companion.
As it seemed that the nearer grub might reach with its arms and interfere with Glomorominith’s examination, Sonoraneldan reached out an antenna and blocked its way. It made awkward attempts to evade the obstruction, but Sonoraneldan easily fended them off, pushing the no-doubt frustrated creature gently backwards.
Then “Oho,” Glomorominith intoned, in a very pleased voice, “look what have we here, hello, hello,” and pulled from some interstice a long sliver of something like stone. Placing it, whatever it was, on the ground beside the unmoving grub, the big person then turned and walked with a hint of swagger back to their former position, a few strides further from the possible mammals, and Alissa and Sonoraneldan followed.
“What was that thing?” Alissa asked, not sure which of them she was asking, “What just happened?”
Sonoraneldan made a sound of pleased amusement. “Glomorominith can be a most surprising person, excellent at finding food, but all sorts of other things as well. Knowing what is needed at any given moment is at least as valuable a skill as many others I could name.”
“As valuable as categorizing leaves, or telling stories about stories?” Alissa laughed. And the other two burbled agreement.
In the meantime, the three grubs had been moving slowly about in some leisurely excitement. The one on the ground was beginning to sit up, rubbing its head with a forward hand. The other two clomped awkwardly over to it, and lowered themselves to the ground again on either side.
“It moves!” Alissa noted, “Did Glomorominith heal it in some way?”
“Oho!” Glomorominith replied, and Sonoraneldan made an amused gesture.
“Removed that bit of stone like a splinter from the mammal’s craw, perhaps.”
“Very generous to return the splinter like that,” Alissa mused, “not the kind of thing one sees every day.”
“No covetousness, now.”
“There is a word I have not heard in many whiles,” Alissa smiled.
The grubs had now turned toward the three travelers. Alissa tried to discern from their stances, motions, and odd soft faces what might be happening in their minds, but could only speculate.
“Are they perhaps being slowly grateful?” she wondered.
“Very hard to say,” Sonoraneldan replied, “With creatures so different from us, even with a different experience of time, as it were, how could that question be answered?”
Alissa moved in agreement, and continued watching the mysterious creatures, waiting for them to do something interesting.
“Look at the size of these leaves! And some of the trunks of these trees, if they really are trees…”
“I mean, come on, we’re in some like third level simulation within a simulation or something, we can’t expect everything to be–“
“Is that where we are? You’ve figured it out?”
“Obviously we aren’t in the real, remember, you’re still missing the steel bar in your head.”
“How do we know that really happened? It’s one of the crazier memories that presents itself to me, to be honest.”
“You don’t get to just judge how plausible each memory is and–“
“We don’t? Isn’t that how it always works? Which memories are dreams, which are–“
“Are you saying I might not really be bravely fighting for life in a hospital bed, you might just have dreamed it?”
“He’s not saying that, Steve; well or if he is it’s because he’s loopy. Which, to be fair–“
“Oww, shit!”
“What, what’s wrong?”
Steve clutches at his head again, this time almost doubling over and then sitting down hard on the moist ground. They are a few yards from the decaying porch of the ancient house, a few yards into the strange and very green forest that surrounds it.
“Hurts,” Steve mutters, “or it did for a second, then — oh god!”
He puts his head down and moans. Kristen and Colin sit on either side of him, softly rubbing his back and shoulder, none of them noting how easily, naturally, and realistically they are able to touch each other, here in whatever sort of reality this is.
“Does it hurt in the same place as–“
“The fuck owww should I know? It’s like something tearing — aghh.”
“I think it is.”
He looks up at them with agonized eyes, and then slumps sideways to the ground.
“Steve, oh help.”
“Can you do anything, to the virtuality, make another portal or something?”
She shakes her head, stroking Steve’s back, trying to make him more comfortable, or at least trying to be doing something, as he lies there, unresponsive now, just quivering slightly.
“I don’t think so; I don’t feel the, you know, feel the affordances here. It’s like a completely read-only instance, passive, all we can do is…” And she picks up a handful of leaf scraps and seed-litter from the ground and lets it fall again. Steve grunts in what sounds like agony, and her eyes fill with frustrated tears.
“I don’t understand this,” says Colin, to her and himself and the universe, “this has got to be a virtuality in the relevant sense, and we can’t feel be made to feel pain, not significant pain, against our will. Right?”
“Maybe whoever made it didn’t follow the rules, or–“
“But aren’t those rules built into the–“
“I don’t know, okay?” her voice is miserable with helplessness, “maybe it’s not a virtuality at all, maybe it’s a nightmare, or a delusion, or aliens are eating our brains, or–“
“He seems to be just asleep now,” Colin says, trying to put comfort into his voice, softly touching the back of Kristen’s neck now, aware of how real she seems, how glad he is that Steve’s sounds of pain have faded, how lost and also how fascinated he is by everything.
“What are we going to do?” She asks, looking into his eyes, shaped like a child’s eyes, but deep as a friend’s, concerned as a lover’s.
“Keep looking for those affordances. Wait. Take care of Steve. I don’t know.”
“What are we going to eat? Do we need to eat? Is someone feeding our bodies, back in the real?”
Colin takes a long breath, preparing to answer, making time to think of an answer.
There is a sudden sound, from a few dozen yards away. From among the trees and vaguely fungoid stems, three… things have appeared.
In this existence, I am all sharpness and speed, cutting through distance faster than distance would prefer, flashing across the endless rainbow band that bisects the universe, this universe, and leads from all places to all places.
Do I carry the mail, the post, parcels and letters, scrip and messages, love letters and urgent appeals? Is my small and tidy cargo hold filled with desperately-needed medicines, with valuable hand-tooled parts for intricate machines, with regrettably powerful weapons bound for the hands of dictators or revolutionaries or both?
I’m afraid I don’t know. I am happy to say I don’t know. I am all speed and purpose, but my only purpose is speed. Anything that might travel with me, anyone that might travel with me, is of less than secondary interest.
I am called Alpha; the one who travels with me, parallels me, is identical to me in every way that matters, is called Omega. We are all sharpness and speed. We each have a pilot; my pilot is called only Pilot Alpha; the other only Pilot Omega. We tolerate them, we would not say that we need them.
Once in a day, or a year, or a century, the pilots take the controls, bring us through the rainbow band, down into other realms, cause us to rest and quiesce, perhaps to have some things removed from our holds, other things put in. Perhaps to have the slow metal or glass or carbon inhabitants reverently stroke and examine and adjust that which makes us Alpha and Omega.
It is not something that we are proud of.
But now and for a thousand years, or a thousand seconds, the colors of the bridge flash beneath us, faster than fastness itself, and time and distance and velocity are annihilated, as they should be.
We are sharp enough, and fast enough, to cut through the infinite-dimensioned edge of reality, and enter the interstices, skipping in and out of existence, in and out of the places between, the places that are not places, where the interstice Hawks swoop and sing under the vast split suns. We move even faster there, because there only speed exists, only intention, only the desire for motion and none of the things, the considerations, the inconvenient Hamiltonians that would limit motion.
I spend zero time in the interstice, and I travel an unthinkable distance.
It may be that what we carry in our holds is reality itself, or the ingredients for realities. It may be that our holds are empty and that may be the same thing. Reality is constituted of emptiness, for what else is there, to craft a reality from?
From what were we made, Alpha and Omega, and by whom? Who is it that sets our courses, that plans our journeys, that times our times of rest? Of what are we constructed, and what powers our engines? Speed, is all that we say, speed and distance and travel, the flashing colors of the rainbow bridge.
ceoln 