But it had to be fake didnt it?
It was all third-rate space opera, as cartoonish as the garden on Excelsioror the continents and cities of the Gaean restoration.
Its just a show , I told myself, insistently, as Child of Fortune hurtled helplessly into that awesome pit. Its all just pretend, to cover up Niamh Hornes snatch plan, to put one over on poor Adam Zimmerman . But that short-lived conviction had already begun to fade into uncertainty again and the fear that had always
been fear, even while I had insisted on construing it as ire, was working away at the base of my brain.
Some scenarios, I thought, are surely so preposterous that no one would bother to pretend them, even before an audience as ill prepared for contemporary life as Adam Zimmerman. Some lies are so unbelievable that their very absurdity defies scepticism.
While I was trying to weigh that paradox, the Titanian ship was falling into that huge dark mouth. Child of Fortune still urged on by the three spitting babies, which still drifted into the periphery of the visual field on occasion, their whips of virtual light licking out again and again.
The tentacles within the array were moving, groping as if in parody of the microworlds similarly hungry mouth-parts.
If this is real , I thought, it has nothing to do with Adam Zimmerman. If this is real, it has to be the start of something much bigger and much weirder. Humankind wont have to wait for the Afterlife; something else is taking over .
There was no way to tell how big that mouth was. For all I knew, it could swallow planets as easily as spaceships. It seemed incredible but I couldnt be sure that my standards of credibility were still applicable.
Are we shooting back yet? I asked.
I am unarmed, said the AI, in a sudden burst of confidentiality. I could almost have imagined that it was as over-awed by possibility as I was, and that intimidation was making it plaintive.
Is there nothing you can do? I asked.
Nothing, it admitted.
Its a show, isnt it? I said, firmly. Its just a silly melodrama, intended to confuse us. Where are we going, really? Titan? Earth?
I knew that the AI wasnt going to admit anything, no matter how accurate my guesses were, but I was hoping that it might somehow give itself away.
In the event, all it said was: I dont know.
It sounded just about pathetic enough to be true, although I told myself sternly that it was still unbelievable.
The stars in the background became suddenly brighter again, but it was too late. The void was closing around us, and the stars were confined within a shrinking circle. The utter darkness of that vile mouth was swallowing us up, as if it were indeed some kind of space warp that could take us farther away from home than we could ever imagine.
I know whats going on, I said to the AI, defiantly. I may be a mere mortal, but Im not an idiot. You cant make me
That was it. I didnt feel dizzy and I had no other plausible indication of being anasthetized. It was as if I were simply switched off, like a program interrupted in the running by a sudden power cut but I had already given up my suspicion that I really was nothing but a sim runing in cyberspace. Perhaps paradoxically, the harder I had tried to insist that everything else was fake, the more securely I had fallen into the trap of believing that I, at least, was real.
Part Two
Worlds In Parallel
Twenty-One
Normal Conditions
Iwoke up again lying on my back in pitch darkness. My awakening was troubled by the uncatchable fragments of decaying dreams and the harassment of many discomforts. My head was throbbing; my kidneys were aching; my stomach was queasy.
I had had worse hangovers, but not for a thousand years. I felt awful. I knew that I shouldnt feel as awful as I felt, because I knew that I shouldnt be able to feel as awful as I felt, and that made the fact doubly disturbing. I felt as if my insides had gone to war to settle their positional disputes, and that the conflict had inflicted considerable damage on all of its participants. It might not have been so bad had I still been weightless, but gravity had returned with a vengeance. I weighed more now than I had before I stepped into the pod that had carried me to the Titanian spaceship.
If a pod had carried me to the Titanian spaceship.
If, in fact, I had ever been in Excelsior at all.
Now that I weighed the same as I had throughout my first lifetime I had to ask myself whether it was believable that Id ever left Earth at all. I had to wonder whether Excelsior, Davida Berenike Columella, Christine Caine, and Adam Zimmerman might have been aspects of an improbable illusion, and whether I might now be waking
up for real. I had to face the possibility that all the necessary questions were going to have to be asked all over again.
Paranoia assured me that I could only feel as bad as I did if this were real, and everything else had been false.
The darkness didnt become any less absolute as the bleary eyes I had forced open attempted vainly to adjust to it. I reached up to touch my face with my right hand. My fingertips and my chin felt familiar far too familiar, in fact. I didnt seem to be wearing a smartsuit and I had a weeks worth of beard growth.