Fermi Packet | Page 2

wondered idly how much work someone had put into recreating this place, and just how accurate it was.
"Just how accurate are we?" Torvalds asked, ripping open the old wound. Neither of them had truly lived to the Age of Uploading. What were they? They had continuous memories going back to birth, growing more fractal and fragmented as real human memories do. But who had created them? There were tiny, tantalizing hints buried deep within Seed, the AI that provided for the wishes of every virtual human. But no real answers. Why did they share a single body? Why couldn't they break out of it? Were they products of a postmortem brain scan, or were they Constructs writ large, avatars with the keys to the Virtuality in their minds?
Gates/Torvalds didn't have to wallow in the filth. Soon he was set up in a comfortable flat in the middle of London, with a cheery coal fire and ample gaslight.
Torvalds was still troubled by their decision. He rattled around within Gates/Torvalds, thinking. Gates could tell he was doing something, deep down within the Grid, but he never brought it up.
From time to time, Gates would reach deep into the grid himself. The alien presence was still there. Growing stronger. Getting closer. Single-minded and determined. So much like him, so long ago, at the dawn of computing. He remembered the fire and the energy, the certainty that he was building something important, something that mattered.
Or did he? Were those his memories at all?
The end came on a nice spring day when even London seemed clean and new. Ice sparkled off of a thousand rooftops, reflecting the dawn sun on a day that started unusually clear and bright. It also glinted off the brass legs and polished turrets of Well's tripod Martians, as they strode over the nearest hill and began applying their heat-rays. London was soon in flames. Gates/Torvalds watched it burn for a time. Then the squid-like Martians came out of their machines, and it was time to go.
Gates/Torvalds figured that they wouldn't succumb to the deus ex machina this time.
He ran again.
* * *
Gates/Torvalds went to one of the most primitive parts of the human Virtuality, where people enjoyed the twilight vision of Neanderthalism. Impossible rolling green hills under unrealistically blue skies, the air as cold and clean and refreshing as Humankind could imagine, like wind off a glacier. Gates/Torvalds sat on a log and watched the shy creatures in the distance. Gates remembered that one of his daughters, one that had lived to the Age of Uploading, had taken this route. He wondered if she was there. And if she remembered being human.
He found himself studying the little group on the next hill, trying to map Cara's features to the flat, Neanderthal faces. Looking deep into their representations on the Grid, trying to find a connection.
"I found something in London," Torvalds said.
"What?"
"What's happening to humanity."
Gates forgot his daughter for a moment. "Show me."
Torvalds fed him images from his Grid-diving, showing connections of the human uploads to their underpinnings, and the intersection of the alien Constructs with the virtual world. As would be expected, many uploads simply ceased to exist, erased, when they died. But a few were being harvested. They became part of the alien net. Gates zoomed in on selected visual representations. The man bravely fighting a single Martian to protect his family. A theater troupe in its entirety. A lonely man who sat alone on a rooftop, watching the Martians burn London.
"They're picking specific people," Gates said. "But for what?"
"And why?" Torvalds asked.
Gates looked deep into the Grid again. The alien presence was reaching for them, getting closer. Almost as if it was following Gates/Torvalds. But there didn't seem to be any awareness; it was not searching for his pattern. He widened his scope to get a picture of the entire human Virtuality. Less than 0.1% had been affected like 2020 Seattle and 1930 Los Angeles and 1880 London, but the alien infection was spreading.
"Our visitors are serving as a proxy for Seed requests," Gates said. "They've put second-level limiters to keep people where they are. They don't even think to ask what's happening."
"You still don't want to do anything?"
Gates paused. It was his creation. And Torvalds. That had to count for something.
"We may be the only mobile entity left in the Virtuality," Torvalds said. "The only one that can think."
"It would be nice not to think."
"The affected percentage is growing," said Torvalds.
"Of course. They're playing."
"Playing!"
"What we used to call a hostile takeover," Gates said.
"Monopolist!"
"Dreamer!"
"Mad scientist!"
"Jerk!"
Gates pulled away from the argument, old as the Grid and well-worn. He looked for his daughter again, moving on to the larger Neanderthal populations. Across the human Virtuality, thoughts slowed as he took more and more resources.
Torvalds noticed. "What are you doing?"
"Finding my