Fermi Packet | Page 2

was right, they could get a
whiff of the Thames at its industrial peak, a sour rotten-egg chemical
tang that belied description. Gates/Torvalds 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