Darwinia

“A singularity, matter so compacted that nothing can escape from it, not even light. What you see is secondary radiation.”

Guilford said nothing. He felt a great fear battering at this envelope of calm which contained him. If what the picket had told him was true then this mass in the sky contained both his past and his future; time all fragile, tentative, vulnerable to attack. That smoldering cinder was a slate on which the gods had written worlds. Misplace an atom and planets collide.

And on that slate they had written Lily and Caroline and Abby and Nicholas… and Guilford. He had been extracted from it, temporarily, a number fluctuating between zero and one.

Souls like chalk dust, Guilford thought. He looked at the picket. “What do you want from me?”

“We talked about this once before.”

“You want me to fight your battle. To be a soldier.”

“Strange as it may seem, there are things you can do in the ontosphere that I can’t. I’m asking for your help.”

“My help!” He stared at the dully radiant image of the Archive. “I’m not a god! Even if I do what you want, what difference can it possibly make?”

“None, if you were the only one. But there are millions of others, on millions of other worlds, and millions more to come.”

“Why waste time on me, then?”

“You’re no more or less important than any of the rest. You matter, Guilford, because every life matters.”

“Then take me home and let me look after Abby and Nick.”

They were all right, weren’t they? He struggled with vague, disquieting shards of memory. Memory like broken glass…

“I can’t do that,” the picket said. “I’m not omnipotent. Don’t make the mistake of thinking so.”

“What kind of a god are you, then?”

“Not a god. I was born of mortal parents, Guilford, just like you.”

“A million years ago.”

“Far more than that. But I can’t manipulate the ontosphere the way you suggest. I can’t rewrite the past… and only you can influence the future.” He stood up. The picket carried himself with a dignity Guilford didn’t recognize as his own. For a moment Guilford seemed to see past him… not through him, but beyond the humble appearance into something as hot and immense as the sun.

This isn’t a human being, Guilford thought. Maybe it used to be a human being; maybe it even used to be Guilford Law. But it was some other kind of creature now. It walks between stars, Guilford thought, the way I might walk into Fayetteville on a sunny day.

“Consider the stakes. If this battle is lost, your daughter will be enslaved and your grandchildren will be used as incubators for something utterly soulless. In a very real sense, Guilford, they will be eaten. It’s a form of death from which there is no resurrection.”

Nick, Guilford thought. Something about Nick. Nick hiding behind the big living room sofa…

“And if all the battles are lost,” the picket said, “then all of this, all past, all future, everything you loved or might have loved, will be food for locusts.”

“Tell me something,” Guilford said. “Just one thing. Please explain why all this depends on me. I’m nothing special — you know that, if you’re what you say you are. Why don’t you go find somebody else? Somebody smarter? Somebody with the strength to watch his kids grow old and die? All I ever wanted — Christ! — is a life, the kind of life people have, fall in love, make babies, have a family that cares enough to give me a decent burial…”

“You have a foot in two worlds. Part of you is identical to part of me, the Guilford Law who died in France. And part of you is unique: the Guilford Law who witnessed the Miracle. That’s what makes this conversation possible.”

Guilford put his head down. “We were alike for what, nineteen or twenty years out of a hundred million? That’s hardly a significant fraction.”

“I’m immensely older than you are. But I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to carry a gun into a muddy trench. And fear for my life, and doubt the sanity of the enterprise, and feel the bullet, feel the pain, feel the dying. I don’t like asking you to walk into an even uglier war. But the choice is forced on us both.” He bowed his head. “I didn’t make the Enemy.”

Nick behind the sofa. Abby curled over him, protecting him. Horsehair and stitched cotton and the smell of gunpowder and — and -

Blood.

“I have nothing to offer you,” the picket said grimly, “but more pain. I’m sorry. If you go back, you take me with you. My memories. Bouresches, the trenches, the fear.”

“I want something,” Guilford said. He felt grief rising in him like a hot balloon. “If I do what you say—”

“I have nothing to offer.”

“I want to die. Not live forever. Grow old and die like a human being. Is that so much to ask?”

The picket was silent for a time.

Turing packets worked tirelessly to shore up the crumbling substructures of the Archive. Psilife advanced, retreated, advanced again on a thousand fronts.