The platform slowed its ascent as it approached the lowest layers of the artificial cloud, and Jaysn realized they were still assuming, or possibly guessing, that this would be a waypoint. They’d seen the lattice tower continue into low orbit. He wondered now how he would react if the disk kept rising until he slowly ran out of air and froze to death.
For that matter, they also assumed there was something of value in the cloud layer. Perhaps the notion had been programmed into them somehow when their bodies were changed. Perhaps Solvig knew something she wasn’t revealing.
The platform came to a halt in a billow of white fog that slowly dissipated, revealing the general outline of a circular chamber approximately twenty meters across. A second disk, dais, and lattice tower, seemingly identical to the one they arrived on, sat a few meters away, leading upward from the cloud layer.
The air was different at this level, more natural, but thinner than in either the city or the valley. Still, there was a warmth and dampness to it that felt somehow comforting to Jaysn.
Solvig stepped confidently off the disk onto the vaporous floor, paused, and took a deep breath. The others watched her expectantly.
She turned and looked at them. “It’s a liminal zone. It adapts to each individual’s biology. It’s like a diplomatic zone where they can all coexist without assistance or orthopedic enhancements. Even the gravity around you will adjust locally for your comfort.”
Momentarily taken aback, the others tentatively stepped off the disk and onto the vaporous floor. Clarc instantly knelt and examined it. “It’s like compressed gas stabilized in some sort of field. It’s not quite solid, more like a very thick gel.”
“Their entire technology is based on a compression of elements. We saw the same technology in the city structures. I just didn’t understand it yet.” Solvig nodded.
Novik was cautious. “We are to presume you do now?”
Solvig stared dreamily at the three of them. “Not all of it, but I’m starting to grasp it. It’s going to take years to record what I’ve learned about their species and its history. As an archaeologist and an oxygen breather, I don’t even have a frame of reference for their science. I’ll have to pick up a physics degree when I get back just so I can begin to comprehend and explain what I’ve seen.”
Jaysn chuckled slightly, drawing a look of concern from Clarc that he waved off. He was certain he wasn’t losing his mind. Though her behavior was a bit atypical, he was pretty sure he was finally seeing the true Anita Solvig, the seeker of knowledge, not the overwhelmed archaeologist of the past day or so.
Solvig led them out of the chamber and down a straight pathway. For once, Jaysn was relieved that the low-contrast, monochrome whites and grays of the cloud layer played havoc with his depth perception. While he generally felt he was walking down a narrow corridor in single file with his friends, there were other times when he was almost certain he was walking on a narrow pathway over a vast chasm of clouds without so much as a handrail.
“Dr. Solvig,” Novik asked with his usual curiosity, “when you said this was a diplomatic zone, do you know who used it?”
“All of them,” Solvig said. “This world, this entire solar system, is one of hundreds that they colonized. Only, where we spend decades terraforming environments to fit our biology, they alter their biology to fit their environment – gravity, air pressure, atmospheric composition, weather, and so forth. Almost all of their worlds had a zone like this where visitors and travelers could gather.”
“Fascinating,” Novik said. Jaysn noted his almost curious tone, which Clarc still appeared unconvinced and mildly concerned at Solvig’s transformation.
They continued through what could easily have been a city made out of mist. In places, the material coalesced to form walls, chambers, buildings, and streets. At other times, he was merely walking down a hallway as before.
Solvig’s pace began to slow as they passed through an archway into a chamber unlike any they had ever seen. It was a domed room, far larger than the ones they had encountered thus far, though still paling in comparison to the cathedrals of the city that felt like a lifetime ago, but in reality, could not be much more than a day back.
The air shimmered with life. Thousands of points of golden light seem to swim around them, most randomly, but some in patterns. Their density and movement immediately reminded Jaysn of gentle snowfall that he’d seen on multiple worlds, but the light and patterns were somehow wrong. Insects, he decided. They were more like lazy bees than a uniform snow.
In the center of the room, surrounded by a column of indigo light, was a figure, possibly a sculpture, though given everything else they had seen, it could only be a living being. Jaysn thought that its most basic description, when he wrote about it later, would have to be “squid-like with a mushroom head.” He quickly decided he was jumping to conclusions by suggesting that the species oriented itself “head over shoulders,” though most he encountered conformed to this convention.
He looked over at Clarc, who was slowly circling the creature, jaw dropped. Occasionally, she rubbed her face in amazement as she took everything in. “Solvig,” she murmured, her voice shaking noticeably, “is this…”
“This is our Overseer,” Solvig said confidently, stepping forward to stand directly in front of the creature. She extended her arms, and two lines of light bees formed, slowly moving toward her open palms like a vine, entangling her arms and swimming around her.
Jaysn moved toward her. “Anita, what are you doing?”
“Interfacing,” she said calmly. “Don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe now.”
Clarc shook her head. “I’m not so certain. His biology is nothing like ours.” She thought for a moment. “Hell, his biology is nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. He may have a better handle on communicating with you now than he did last time, but I think we’ve clearly established he is not infallible, even in his own simulation.”
“Biology is insignificant, especially to them. His metabolism and thought processes are generally far slower than ours, but these,” she shook her fingers, causing the light bees to scatter momentarily and reform, “can bridge the gap.”
“It’s more than that, though, isn’t it?” Novik asked. “I’m not an expert on their biology, but that chamber he’s in has a higher concentration of oxygen than anything we’ve seen on this world thus far. His metabolism should be based on the slow incorporation of oxygen. He’s dangerously altering his chemistry, practically burning himself up to make this connection.”
“That’s not why he’s doing it, Doctor.”
There was a brief pause. “The humanoids,” Novik said at last. “That’s what he meant when he said it was noisy and chaotic. As a biological entity linked to it, he can maintain everything as long as it stays within parameters. When Tamana collapsed his link to the humanoids, he was forced to follow the natural pattern the same way he had to model the comet striking.”
Jaysn followed the train of thought. “The comet strike was a lot easier to model within the simulation than several thousand independent minds, however. So why is he wiping them and the comet strike out now?”
“He wanted to save them, but a threshold has been crossed,” Solvig said. “He cannot break the laws of the simulation. He must maintain fidelity with the model of nature. He couldn’t divert the comet or prevent the humanoids from evolving, but the simulation’s ultimate preservation is a higher-order law. He could bend the simulation’s laws to prevent Tamana from destroying the obelisk, because in those few seconds, none of them realized what was happening. He cannot undo what is done and witnessed.”
“Doesn’t he understand that it’s been hundreds of millions of years?” Jaysn half-laughed at the incredulity. “I hate to break it to him, but if his invited guests are this late, then they aren’t coming.”
Novik held up a hand. “I don’t think it’s that simple. Dr. Solvig, what was to become of the Overseer after his people arrived?”
“He would hand over control of the simulation to the makers and join his people below in the city.”
“And these ‘makers…’, they are a machine intelligence capable of running the full simulation when populated by the informational presence of so many free minds?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly.”
“Jaysn, don’t you see? He’s the last of his kind, and his species is very long-lived, very advanced, and very adaptable. He can’t give up hope on the chance that he’s the last one.”
“If he’s that advanced, he can’t inhumanely wipe out an emerging species to protect one that has likely been extinct for millennia. You saw the destruction below. If he was capable of breaking the rules of the simulation to serve his own kind, then he was certainly capable of doing it to stop Tamana and save the humanoids.”
“Whether he could or could not is immaterial. Omnipotence does not guarantee empathy. Is God not allowed to favor one facet of his domain over another?”
“Lev, you’re talking about thousands of lives,” Jaysn protested.
Solvig spoke calmly. “They are part of the simulation now. They cannot be contained. They threaten the entire design.”
“The design is flawed, then.”
“What is the flaw, though?” Novik asked. “They exist because the Overseer was bound to allow their creation. They must be removed because we changed their nature. The flaw is ours. We are the ones who bear the responsibility.”
Jaysn deflated. “Lev, you can’t—”
Novik turned to Solvig. “Would it work?”
Clarc eyed both of them suspiciously. “Would what work?”
Solvig nodded. “You are of a different order than the makers, but your capacity is far beyond the Overseer’s. There is no time for debate, however.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Clarc held her hands up. “Are you seriously talking about taking over?”
“I am talking about assuming the functions of the Overseer to regulate the simulation. As the only member of the party who has a similar architecture to the makers, I am the only one of us capable of processing the entirety of the environmental matrix as well as the potentiality of the free minds within it.”
Clarc scowled. “So, I was right. You’re taking over.”
Novik turned toward her. Though his mechanical face was expressionless, his voice showed genuine concern. “I can maintain ecological balance.”
Clarc glared at Solvig and the Overseer. “Can he really?”
“The Overseer doesn’t know,” Solvig said, her tone low. “The simulation is far more advanced than Novik’s, but Novik is capable of adapting. The system should be able to translate, but yes, he could be overwhelmed, he could lose himself, he could become corrupted.”
Clarc threw up her hands in frustration. “Then what do we do? This place is dangerous enough with a crippled Overseer reigning down matter-erasing nanoparticles. What are we going to do if we end up with a corrupt SI behind the controls?”
“You are going to terminate my existence,” Novik said.
“What?!”
“You have Wolff’s sidearm. I say to you now: My intent is not to control, not to run this simulation. My purpose as Overseer is to maintain the conditions under which humanoids exist. I am to be a steward, not a ruler. If I give you cause to believe otherwise, then I also give you permission to stop me.”
“What about the owners of this simulation? What about the laws the old Overseer was forced to obey?”
“Creation is not an interruption of natural law. It is the ground upon which natural law operates. The old Overseer could not make that leap. I can.”
Clarc laughed to herself. “So, the SI becomes God after all.”
“The SI becomes a sustaining intellect, not God.”
“You think freewill requires your supervision?”
“It requires conditions. It requires order to thrive in. Otherwise, it becomes entropy. The Overseer controlled them. Tamana freed them. I will limit the damages.”
“That’s still control, Dr. Novik.”
“It is restraint. It is the means to drive them towards intelligibility; to allow them to flourish.”
“With you as the one who defines what flourishing means?”
“No,” Novik said. “As the one who defines constraints. I will guide, not rule. I will constrain annihilation. I will not script their destiny.”
“Sounds like what every mad computer says before it optimizes people out of the equation.” Clarc scoffed.
Novik inclined his head in a gesture that resembled a bow. “That is why you have the gun.”
Clarc’s expression went blank. She pulled the sidearm from her jacket pocket and studied it. She looked at Jaysn, who was searching for words, eyes darting around the room in desperation, looking for answers he had missed somewhere in the misty structure. She looked at Solvig, surrounded by the light bees, a look of desperation in her eyes. She looked at Novik, an expressionless drone made to look almost human, but not quite close enough to be called a copy. She nodded once in agreement.
Novik stepped back and raised his arms. Almost instantly, a swarm of the light bees began circling him. The ambient light in the room turned from white to gray and began to flicker. The Overseer’s tentacles retracted inward under the hulk of his body. Solvig closed her eyes and squinted with discomfort.
“Dr. Novik?” Clarc looked worriedly at Jaysn, who was staring intently at Novik.
A low-pitched tone, similar to the one Jaysn initially heard in the city sounded, then gradually began rising in pitch and volume. The light continued to dim in the chamber, but through the passages, Jaysn could see it strobing in the city outside, like lightning through sheer curtains.
“Lev, talk to be ol’ buddy.”
The pitch grew louder and higher still. Solvig’s hands went to her ears. Clarc kept the sidearm pointed squarely at the drone, but winced in pain. Jaysn stepped in closer. The Overseer was visibly trembling in his containment bubble. The light bees surrounding Solvig began to move from her to the Overseer, then in greater numbers from the Overseer to Novik’s drone.
“I’m sorry, Jaysn, there is a lot of data … being transferred. It’s a lot … to process … at once,” Novik said as his form was gradually swarmed with more light bees to the point that he almost couldn’t be seen through them.
Solvig screamed in pain as the last of the swirling mass flew from her to the Overseer. She fell to her knees, still clutching her ears, and collapsed limply near Clarc’s feet. Clarc steeled herself and steadied the sidearm with both hands, its barrel pointing squarely at the swirling lightshow around where Novik stood.
“Doctor, I’m beginning to lose patience. You need to show me it’s still you,” Clarc screamed. Jaysn could barely hear her above the high-pitched tone.
The last of the light bees finally left the Overseer, who instantly went limp and faded into darkness. One tentacle slowly raised, extending itself toward the form of Novik. Inside the swirling mass of light, a new form appeared and slowly stepped out. Jaysn saw it was human — the human form of Novik he inhabited in the city. His eyes regarded the two of them with curiosity and frowned at the fallen form of Solvig. “She’ll be fine. They both will. It’s just sensory overload from the interface breaking.” He held up a hand to Clarc. “It’s okay, I’m fine.”
Lights strobed again, and Jaysn noted the breeze beginning to blow inside the chamber. The noise grew louder, and the strobing lights outside became more frequent.
“This in no way feels like fine to me, Novik!” Clarc shouted, the plazer shaking in her hand.
Novik turned to Jaysn. “You always wanted to know the secret ingredient to my jambalaya,” he yelled over the din.
Jaysn nodded.
Novik gave him a sinister grin. “Sassafras.”
Jaysn glared at Clarc and held up a hand, knowing she could not have heard the conversation over the noise. Clarc studied him for a moment, then slowly lowered the sidearm.
“You said you’d never divulge that. That you’d keep it to the end.”
Novik frowned. “Finally, I can do one thing I’ve always wanted to do.” He held out his arms, stepped forward, and embraced Jaysn. “I know you’ve never been able to say goodbye. So, let me do it for you,” he said softly, directly into Jaysn’s ear. “Goodbye, dear friend.” He paused, holding the moment, then stepped back, letting the light engulf him again.
Jaysn was stunned. “Now wait a minute! You don’t just get to—”
His world went white.
