Fermi Packet

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Fermi Packet
by Jason Stoddard

When Sponsorship caught up with Gates/Torvalds, humanity's only semi-God was enjoying a perfect, rainless day in his Seattle compound. He was lying out on a large redwood deck with drink in hand, watching perfect puffy white clouds crawl slowly across the sky, like a herd of impossible rabbits. Not the most imaginative environment, he knew, but he had long since lost the desire to do much more with the underpinnings of his creation. A few hundred years ago, he would have been at a millenium rave, or an 80s trade show, or a Philippine disco circa 2010, taking in every mind-altering substance available, indulging in every pleasure. There were always plenty of partners to be had, because they all knew Gates/Torvalds. But that was the problem. They knew him. And in their eyes he saw the reflection of himself, patched-together and incomplete, yet all-powerful, like an old-style atomic bomb that could walk and talk and fuck. Of course, Gates/Torvalds could blast away his memories and forget for a moment who he was, but one of the rules of the Virtuality was that memories were magnetic. They accrete. Soon enough, they would find their way back to him. And Gates/Torvalds would be who he was again, two things that were both more and less than human.
The ground trembled.
Gates/Torvalds stirred and set down his drink. The pines still smelled as sweet, the wind was still as cool, the view of the Cascades from his deck just as breathtaking. But something was wrong.
The ground heaved and buckled. Gates/Torvalds felt the deck crumbling under him. He struggled to his feet and caught a glimpse of fissures opening, trees toppling, the entire world a blur.
Gates/Torvalds ran. He transferred to his Raymond Chandler-era house in Los Angeles, using an illegal provision in the Grid. He was great at tricks like that.
Running didn't help. Los Angeles was in the middle of the Big One. Buildings didn't just fall, they shattered and turned to dust.
Gates/Torvalds ran again, to a point outside that corner of the human Virtuality. He watched from orbit as a big slice of the West Coast detached itself and slid into the sea.
Gates/Torvalds had known that something was happening to the Grid for some time. He hadn't known the extent of it. Floating over a disintegrating West Coast, he had a conversation between his halves, almost relieved that something interesting was happening. Finally.
"What happened?" Torvalds asked.
"Seed's been compromised," Gates said, reaching deep into the grid of the Virtuality. Far, far down, the Grid was still built on software that he and Torvalds had set in motion many centuries ago. No Upload, no Construct, no AI, except for perhaps Seed, had the level of control that Gates/Torvalds did.
Gates looked into the grid. Monsters looked back at him. Things with too many arms and heads in the wrong place, things that slashed at him with body parts that looked mechanical, things that were hazy and painful to look at. He pushed past them and looked out onto infinity, a vast sucking blueness that seemed to stretch to an endless horizon.
The human Virtuality had been swallowed by something much, much bigger. Something apart from anything humankind had ever experienced. Something profoundly alien.
"We have visitors," Gates said.
Torvalds did his own search. "Hell of a way to start first contact," he said.
Gates just nodded. In many ways, it made far too much sense.
"What are we going to do about it?" Torvalds said.
"Nothing," Gates said.
Gates felt Torvalds' disapproval. Then felt him sifting through his own memories, looking at himself through the eyes of the rest of Virtuality. Little hints of thoughts made their way to Gates. Do we really owe them anything? Why us? Why'd they have to make us? Finally, one thought that was very, very clear. It may be for the best, Torvalds thought. If it's all to end, there won't be any more pain.
Gates nodded. In many ways, he was the stronger of the two entities that shared a single body. He didn't want to squash Torvalds yet again. Because the only thing that was more boring than paradise was their skirmishes.
"It'll be entertaining, at least," Gates said.
The duo ran once more.
* * *
First to a Victorian England. Humankind's Virtuality had many rooms, some where people could live in virtual privation, huddled and cold and alone, imagining a God that they still had no evidence of. This was one of them. It was winter, and the cold snow gave the ornate, filthy architecture a coating of elegance. The people and Constructs hurried about their business, huddled under drab coats that stank of rot and sweat. From time to time, when the wind 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