fallslikesnow

Anne had found that there was a point where the complexities of a plan and the events it tried to influence collapsed to a short lived node of potential. All that could be done was to hope for the go signal before the node evaporated and a secondary plan had to be used. The go signal arrived two hours before the Earth viewing in 4Dome, the optimal time for plan one. *** Over the years on standby in Cylinder3 John and Sarah accreted bits of personality like an old ship accreted barnacles. They interacted with their co-workers, a group of social misfits themselves on the verge of forcible personality surgery. They went out eating and drinking, went to gaming parlors loud with the clatter of steel balls and the shimmering noise of sub3Dome strings. Their monitors allowed this, approvingly watching shallow cover become deep. Potentially useful roots were put down in a disaffected community. "Simon, Erica, we need your help." "Sure, what do you need?" Different g...

Anne and Thomas transited from Jovian to Lunar orbit in a years long slow sleep. Their weaponry and other dubious tech was removed or downgraded. Their brain augments were present but still empty. However, the mesh of Holes within their skulls, between them and across the system, allowed them to restore what had been taken from the last back-up. The Holes were the reason for their traveling as cargo, rather than simply stepping across to Luna. Pass a hole though another Hole and both would disappear in a cloud of hard radiation. Pass Anne or Thomas through a Hole and their entirely artificial mentalities would vanish, followed shortly by their biological brains. It was probable that their soul-spheres would survive. The question was, how far would their soul-sphere back-ups even make sense, given the highly distributed and non-local nature of their psyches. Jenkins was drip-feeding them the original contents of their optical networks. However, by the time they boarded the Slowship Bulk...

On Cylinder1 Anne and Thomas had their appointment at 1902 Spinward, Three Outward. A largish piece of real-estate mostly taken up with ceremonial hedges, low hills topped by wooden gazebos, winding gravel paths and the omnipresent water features. Gentle rippling light from the sea on the other side of the cylinder lent the scene a sense of peace. They both felt appreciation of an artfully reconstructed piece of Earth style total defense. Especially one that originally contained a very large, very dirty nuclear device as its centerpiece. The central house consisted of plates of creamy white fake limestone hanging from an umbrella of compacted Lunarian dust. Their new employer, Mike Jenkins, knelt on a cushion, a circle of important looking icons slowly circling him. He made a stylized gesture to Anne and Thomas who obediently knelt, dropped into Jenkins personal lagoon in Ocean and immediately drowned. *** John and Sarah reflexively started to destroy the terrible image and eve...

Mid Twenty-Third Century Later, when they could think of the boat trip dispassionately, it would be clear to both of them that the whole vacation had been set up as R&R before the task ahead. They looked over the side into the startlingly deep water, depth upon depth, shading to turquoise or jade depending on how far the river bed had been burned. They easily caught a nearly tame trout and cooked it whole in the sand box, leaving the sand to produce something edible out of the fish. Before they could eat, however, they were summoned by 3Council4Dome for reassignment. The boat stopped pretending to sail and the pretty blue tiller rattled loosely as they pulled alongside a narrow pier. It was Johns’ turn to be chivalrous so he got out first and helped Sarah onto the fake limestone slab. They were met by a small wheeled drone that called itself 4HumanCompliant1028Drone3Council4dome. “And for short?” asked Sarah. “No,” said the drone, leading them up the slope towards the edge of 4Dome...

We dug back into the shoreline according to some plan dictated by Constancy. As far as we could tell, we and the other crews were were making complex the simple, beautiful curve of our coastline. Curves were becoming irregular fractals once the high basalt dams came down. The serious questions were, "Why do this?" and, "Why do it so inefficiently?" *** I had a feeling I'd find Neil getting drunk somewhere on the Sea of Tranquility seafront. He always liked high class bars with nice views, when he was sane and presentable enough to get served. Sure enough I found him at a table looking out over the Sea of Tranquility, kept company by a G&T. I sat opposite him and ordered a coffee from a sullen looking waiter. "So what's going on Neil? Why was I brain-screwed by Constancy then bugged by her?" "A black dog and a white dog fight, which one . . . ." "No Neil, no more of that shit. Answers please" "Loo...

Owning an unusable gun gave me the itch to own a usable one. Being in my early twenties and also being a barely functioning addict of several substances I found this to be difficult but possible. The gun itself was a simple magnetic projectile device and came with a solid block that could produce 100 slugs. I was picked up inside an hour, the motes having reported me to Constancy. The sheriffs who brought me in laughed all the way back to the station, telling me that the gun would be back on the streets the next day. Another gullible fool would follow me into the mines. *** Joes' Neuro and Optosurgery Shack was, by common consent, the best in the Ship. Belying the North Pole style name it was actually on the shallow part of the South Pole end-cap. Normally I could never afford even an eye colour change here, let alone the extensive implants I had in mid. "So what exactly did you have in mind Mr. Stone?" the reception functionary sneered. To be fair, I had stopped at a cou...

I have visions of a world of ice, two dogs slipping on a frozen lake, chewing on a human corpse. I staggered out of an AA meeting on 76 North, 42 Spinward. I say stagger because I had been drunk going in and was drunk coming out. It's wonderful how the traditions insist that even someone like I be allowed in: stinking; dirty; interrupting everyone with foul mouthed war stories. Truth be told I'd chosen the Sea of Tranquility group for my re-entry to the rooms out of spite. It was a high end group: lawyers, engineers, politicians. Dressed well with the clear wrinkle-less complexions of regular anti-senescence treatments. They deserved a taste of life in North. Once outside I began to hurry to the metro station. I was sure that after my performance in the meeting some perfect alcoholic would call the sheriffs. I didn't need getting picked up for vagrancy so I scuttled down the middle of the cobbled street, saluting the Highlands with a bottle of vodka. I n...

"Are you listening to me?" said the sheriff. "Are you under their influence still?" "I'm fine," said Jon. "Still woozy from what they hit me with. "And what was that exactly?" Jon had the sense that he was negotiating with a composite entity, the figures riding the sherrif (human and AI) communicating with each other through back-channels and summing themselves in the blank face before him. And he was going to have to negotiate, he now realized. There would be little trust for anyone touched by the Tessellation, let alone someone who had been as unstable as Jon had been. On an impulse he decided to not use his implants to control his easily read physical responses and then lie. He would tell the truth. "They did something to my memory. Made it larger, more inter-connected. Like the memory surgery we do only orders of magnitude more refined." He decided not to mention the fact that the Tessellation had implied that he had...

Jon briefly lost himself in the new labyrinths of his mind - all these pristine empty spaces aching to be filled, this theater of memory with a stage recently expanded to the size of a river plain. How could he ever integrate this shimmering structure with the hovel he had previously inhabited? Then, of a sudden, his aimless search, a seamless flow through a multidimensional phase space of remembrance, came to a halt. In what he visualized as a room of blue tinted glass atop a high tower was an object that must have come at the same time as the structure itself. It was, of course, a torus of off-white plates floating in mid-air. Without thinking he reached out with hands made of pure desire and touched it. The new memory unpacked itself, rolling over his psyche with smells and tastes designed to root it deep within him. It fell upon him in an instant but his nervous system, scrambling to keep up, presented it's contents linearly, as though experienced by the tick of the clo...

It was as though his mind, a familiar, run-down house, stuffed with miscellaneous bric-a-brac, had suddenly revealed itself to have rooms, entire wings, of which he had been unaware. Doors appeared where none had been before, windows that had previously opened on the gentle hills of the body now showed dusty warehouse spaces. What made it awful, unbearable, was the emptiness of the rooms. For a moment he saw himself wandering these places, overcome by an urge to weep as the rush of blood in his ears reverberated, layered upon itself to produce a mighty roar. He felt his consciousness grind to a halt, unable to process such a sudden vastening. *** He woke, minutes later, lying on the ground with blood streaming from his nose. The bush robot, fully expanded into a shimmering cloud a meter and a half across, was beside his head and producing a strange warbling cry. There was no sign of the Tessellation artifact. "Do not attempt to move. You have been subject to an unmediated Tes...