I pressed my mind into the stone, but—as always—hit a block on the other side. I hadn’t expected to be able to escape this way though. I instead stepped back, now prepared for the way that the room around me started to fade, becoming ephemeral.
In the past, a structure with open sides and stone columns housed the portal. It was smaller than it now was, but still as tall as a person. The open-air nature of the building let me stare out at a medium-sized floating fragment, rocky, with some hills that would eventually be turned into quarries.
The lightburst had grown, and there were far more fragments hovering about nearby. “I think this set of memories is more recent than some of the others,” I said to Chet, pointing. “The lightburst is larger, see?” Not yet as big as a sun—more like a distant floodlight.
“Yes,” Chet said. “But the size of it is somewhat misleading. The true nowhere, inside that burst, is a place where space is immaterial. Distance doesn’t rightly exist. But it was forced into that shape as the leaks began around the rest of the nowhere—where time and space were sneaking in around the puncture holes. The lightburst is like a fortress, the place where the true nowhere can exist.”
“That breaks my brain a little to consider,” I said.
“It should,” he replied. “You are a being of the somewhere, Spensa—for all the fact that you’ve been exposed to the nowhere’s particular brand of radiation.”
In the vision, a human suddenly stepped through the portal. He wore a civilian suit with a lapel pin in the shape of a silvery bell. He was perhaps in his late fifties, and though he glanced around and could obviously see, there was something odd about the way his eyes focused. Or rather, the way they didn’t focus. Equally curious, a silvery sphere emerged from the portal and floated in the air alongside him.
I stepped closer as the human scanned the sky, then the various fragments.
“That sphere,” I said, pointing at the hovering ball. “It doesn’t have an acclivity ring. How does it fly?”
“Maybe it was before acclivity stone was widely used,” Chet said, stepping up beside me.
Huh. Also, there was something about the shape of that metal sphere. Something…familiar?
“So it’s real,” the man said in English.
I jumped. I hadn’t been expecting to be able to understand him. His stiff accent was odd, but intelligible.
“Analysis indicates you are correct,” a feminine voice said, coming from the sphere. “This simple structure is as the account related.”
The man glanced at the sphere, then sighed. He walked over and felt at a pillar. He seemed to have some need to touch it, to prove it existed. “And with what we found earlier, it seems even more likely that the records are true about ancient human cytonics,” he said softly. “I wasn’t the first. I was never the first. What do you think?”
“Insufficient data to perform an analysis,” the sphere said.
He turned back toward it. “Can’t you guess? Can’t you do more than think? I built you to do more…”
“I do as I am programmed.”
“If the accounts are true, then you can do more,” he said, stepping up to the sphere. “I’ve brought you here, to this place. Do you sense anything different? Do you…feel?”
“I can be programmed to simulate—”
“Don’t simulate!” the man shouted. “Be! It’s possible. They said it was possible…”
The sphere gave no response. I frowned at the odd interaction, and looked to Chet to get his opinion.
He was crying.
His face a mask of pain, he’d huddled back, scrunched down, trying to hide his eyes. I hurried over immediately, and he took my arm in his hands as if for support. He turned to me, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“He was wrong, you see,” Chet said, his voice hoarse. “Jason was wrong about one thing. It takes time. The change isn’t immediate. It takes months, sometimes years.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For the AI to start thinking for itself.”
“Is that what’s going on?” I asked. “You’re afraid of it, because it’s an AI? You’ve seen M-Bot. It’s all right, Chet.”
He shook his head. I mean, I knew he had a thing about AIs, but this was bizarre behavior.
In the vision, the man had turned away from the sphere, his shoulders slumped. The sphere, in turn, was inspecting the region. Its path brought it near us, and I got another good look at it. It was somewhat spiky—with little antennas coming off it in a multitude of directions. Its surface was pocked by cameras, like little holes. In fact, the construction did remind me of something.
Where had I seen a sphere, with those kinds of holes, like tunnels? Those spines coming off the outside…
“Memory of these must be buried deep within us,” Chet whispered. “When forced to build a body again, we unconsciously reach for the shape, perhaps…as a last memento…of something we once knew…something that once held our souls…before they were souls…”
We? Oh, scud. That sphere was a delver maze. At least that was what the shape reminded me of. A more technological, more rational, version of the giant sphere of stone the delvers made for their bodies when they were forced into the somewhere.
I looked to Chet, and his eyes were glowing. But I didn’t feel them. I didn’t sense the delvers. Instead I just sensed him. His mind…same as it always had been, though it was now expansive.
“You’re the delver,” I whispered. “The one I changed.”
“I…” he said. “I knew you’d need help. I had to send it. Somehow. But I…was the only help…I knew…”
I took a step backward by reflex. “Was there ever a Chet? It was all a lie?”
“There was,” he said, his voice drifting, soft. “I knew I could hide with you in the belt, where they couldn’t see. But…I needed a shape, a personality, someone to be. Don’t hate me, Spensa. Please don’t hate me! They have abandoned me. They want to destroy me. You’re…the only one…I have now.”
Scud. Scudscudscudscud. Saints, stars, and songs.
Chet was a delver.
Chet had always been a delver.
But I could feel his anguish. I’d caused him to separate from the others; I’d changed him. I’d shown him empathy. This was my fault. And damn it, I wasn’t going to turn my back on him. I’d made friends with a Krell. I could do this.
I stepped up and returned my hand to his shoulder. He grabbed it in a tight grip, smiling, still crying.
“I’m not going to leave you,” I said. “But I have to know what is going on.”
“I saw into your mind,” he said, “when we touched. I saw the name. Spears. And that man lived here, in the nowhere. He tried to escape through the lightburst some decades ago. He’d lived hundreds of years, using cytonics to expand his life! But the delvers destroyed him in the lightburst. He hadn’t practiced enough with his powers. He couldn’t hyperjump.”
“Right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “So you’re a monster from outside space and time. And you wanted to come into the belt and help me, so you made a homunculus…”
He nodded eagerly. “Like from Gran-Gran’s story about the alchemist! Yes, that’s a good analogy. I made a Chet homunculus.”
Okay, I could deal with this. I could accept this.
Deal with this, brain!