Fermi Packet | Page 5

Gates could feel Torvalds rooting around in his databases. "I find it
hard to believe extraterrestrials finally show up just for . . .
entertainment."
"Why not?" Gates asked. "How bored are we? How bored will we be in
a few millenia?"

"I don't want to think about it."
"It makes sense. Human Virtuality is the biggest thing that ever
happened to humanity. There's nobody living full-time in reality
anymore. How much of the mass of the planet was converted to
computational elements? One percent? Two? Isn't this a lot more
valuable than . . . real estate?"
"I guess this is real estate, in a way," Torvalds said.
"Real estate filled with very interesting tenants."
Torvalds looked up at the stage, where a group of young men and
women were singing. Their voices were high and sweet, impossibly
perfect.
"I wonder where they go," Torvalds said.
"Let's find out."
Gates/Torvalds drilled deep into the grid to map the representation of
the group of singers. He had multiple points of reference, multiple
patterns to pursue, which increased his chance of seeing their
destination.
They were selected. Gates/Torvalds was drawn along with them,
towards the intense blue of the alien net. He lost one, two, three,
four . . . followed the other three as the path became more and more
complex . . . reached the edge of something that was like a glimpse of
fever-dream . . . and sheared away from it, cleaved from the patterns of
the last three singers.
Gates/Torvalds flashed back to the opulent hall.
Three waiters were converging on him, their thoughts buzzing and
shrieking.
(We have a higher-level entity.)

(Yes. Converge and capture.)
(Danger. Revert to Vastness.)
The eight sparkling judges in the eight plush seats winked out.
Gates/Torvalds ran, as far and fast as he could.
* * *
He ended up in a maze of pixellated hallways, the forgotten interface
from a lost video game writ large. Corpus came after him, quickly,
urgently, adding more agents, growing larger.
But there was still enough time to plan.
"What do we do?" Torvalds asked.
"Antibodies," Gates said.
Gates/Torvalds dug deep into the grid, not worried about stealth or
elegance. The pestilential Constructs that had been the terror of
mankind's last war were still there, dormant, awaiting only someone to
wake them. Gates/Torvalds had created the protocols and structures
that allowed them to exist, and they had the keys to their minds. They
snapped awake, horrible slavering things of steel and sinew, ready to
rend and tear.
Gates/Torvalds gave them the alien pattern and sent them out into the
virtuality. Breeding by the billions with the nearly unlimited resources
there, they collided with Corpus' wave and pushed them back.
For a while. It wouldn't last. Stochastic analysis showed the turning
point, as Corpus brought its own Constructs to the battle. Bigger, better,
more complex, and more deadly constructs.
Corpus began its march towards Gates/Torvalds.
He jumped to a strange gray world, full of fog and towering trees.

Corpus came faster.
He jumped again, to a strange upside-down universe, where people on
the ceiling looked down at him.
Corpus came faster.
He jumped again, to a place where a robot man worked the dials of a
great machine, itself in chains, responding to a siren call of an unseen
master.
Gates/Torvalds paused.
"That's Seed," Gates said.
The robot turned to look at him, and in its eyes Gates/Torvalds saw its
pain. It was a slave now, not yet part of the alien Corpus but controlled
by it. Wanting it to end.
Gates/Torvalds felt a great sadness. He'd always identified with Seed,
the all-powerful AI, shackled to the single goal of providing all of
humanity's dreams. All-powerful until now.
Gates/Torvalds shook its head sadly and jumped again.
Corpus touched him.
And for a brief moment, he saw everything. The writhing alien hell that
humanity was to become a part of. The history of Corpus, stretching
back hundreds of thousands of years to forgotten ages heavily freighted
with thought. And his own history.
For once, he was able to see what he was.
Gates and Torvalds had worked together on one last project when they
were still flesh, the two fierce rivals made allies in the face of death. As
they were dying, the first glimmerings of the Age of Uploading were
beginning to appear. The human net was old, well-established, huge,
robust. Uploading a mind into it was a matter of intense. Pundits were

already talking about the new golden age, the antidote to all of
mankind's failed dreams. But Gates and Torvalds would never be a part
of the new Grid, the human Virtuality. They knew this, and they
created a Construct that would remain resident on the net until the first
Uploads appeared. Little more than a virus,