That was where they lived. That was their home. When they weren’t running ships, meddling with alien civilisations or planning the future course of the Culture itself, the Minds existed in those fantastic virtual realities, sojourning beyondward into the multi-dimensioned geographies of their unleashed imaginations, vanishingly far away from the single limited point that was reality.
The Minds had long ago come up with a proper name for it; they called it the Irreal, but they thought of it as Infinite Fun. That was what they really knew it as. The Land of Infinite Fun.
It did the experience pathetically little justice.
… The Sleeper Service promenaded metaphysically amongst the lush creates of its splendid disposition, an expanding shell of awareness in a dreamscape of staggering extent and complexity, like a gravity-free sun built by a jeweller of infinite patience and skill. It is absolutely the case, it said to itself, it is absolutely the case…
There was only one problem with the Land of Infinite Fun, and that was that if you ever did lose yourself in it completely — as Minds occasionally did, just as humans sometimes surrendered utterly to some AI environment — you could forget that there was a base reality at all. In a way, this didn’t really matter, as long as there was somebody back where you came from minding the hearth. The problem came when there was nobody left or inclined to tend the fire, mind the store, look after the housekeeping (or however you wanted to express it), or if somebody or something else — somebody or something from outside, the sort of entity that came under the general heading of an Outside Context Problem, for example — decided they wanted to meddle with the fire in that hearth, the stock in the store, the contents and running of the house; if you’d spent all your time having Fun, with no way back to reality, or just no idea what to do to protect yourself when you did get back there, then you were vulnerable. In fact, you were probably dead, or enslaved.
It didn’t matter that base reality was petty and grey and mean and demeaning and quite empty of meaning compared to the glorious majesty of the multi-hued life you’d been living through metamathics; it didn’t matter that base reality was of no consequence aesthetically, hedonistically, metamathically, intellectually and philosophically; if that was the single foundation-stone that all your higher-level comfort and joy rested upon, and it was kicked away from underneath you, you fell, and your limitless pleasure realms fell with you.
It was just like some ancient electricity-powered computer; it didn’t matter how fast, error-free and tireless it was, it didn’t matter how great a labour-saving boon it was, it didn’t matter what it could do or how many different ways it could amaze; if you pulled its plug out, or just hit the Off button, all it became was a lump of matter; all its programs became just settings, dead instructions, and all its computations vanished as quickly as they’d moved.
It was, also, like the dependency of the human-basic brain on the human-basic body; no matter how intelligent, perceptive and gifted you were, no matter how entirely you lived for the ascetic rewards of the intellect and eschewed the material world and the ignobility of the flesh, if your heart just gave out…
That was the Dependency Principle; that you could never forget where your Off switches were located, even if it was somewhere tiresome. It was the problem that Subliming dispensed with, of course, and it was one of the (usually more minor) reasons that civilisations chose Elderhood; if your course was set in that direction in the first place then eventually that reliance on the material universe came to seem vestigial, untidy, pointless, and even embarrassing.
It wasn’t the course the Culture had fully embarked upon, at least not yet, but as a society it was well aware of both the difficulties presented by remaining in base reality and the attractions of the Sublime. In the meantime, it compromised, busying itself in the macrocosmic clumsiness and petty, messy profanity of the real galaxy while at the same time exploring the transcendental possibilities of the sacred Irreal.
It is absolutely the—
A single signal flicked the great ship’s attention entirely back to base reality:
xRock End In Tears
oGSV Sleeper Service.
Done.
The ship contemplated the one-word message for what was, for it, a very long time, and wondered at the mixture of emotions it felt. It set its newly manufactured drone-fleet to work in the external environments and re-checked the evacuation schedule.
Then it located Amorphia — the avatar was wandering bemused through kilometres of tableaux exhibition space that had once been accommodation sections — and instructed it to re-visit the woman Dajeil Gelian.
IV
Genar-Hofoen was distinctly unimpressed with his quarters aboard the Battle-Cruiser Kiss The Blade. For one thing, they smelled.
— What is that? he asked, his nose wrinkling. ~ Methane?
— Methane is odourless, Genar-Hofoen, the suit said. ~ I believe the smell you find objectionable may be a mixture of methanal and methylamine.
— Fucking horrible smell, whatever it is.
— I’m sure your mucous membrane receptors will cease to react to it before long.
— I certainly hope so.
He was standing in what was supposed to be his bedroom. It was cold. It was very big; a ten-metre square — plenty of headroom — but it was cold; he could see his breath. He still wore most of the gelfield suit but he’d detached all but the nape-part of the neck and let the head of the suit flop down over his back so that he could get a fresher impression of his quarters, which consisted of a vestibule, a lounge, a frighteningly industrial-looking kitchen-diner, an equally intimidatingly mechanical bathroom and this so-called bedroom. He was starting to wish he hadn’t bothered. The walls, floor and ceiling of the room were some sort of white plastic; the floor bulged up to create a sort of platform on which a huge white thing lay spread, like a cloud made solid. ~ What, he asked, pointing at the bed, ~ is that?
— I think it is your bed.
— I’d guessed. But what is that… thing lying on it?
— Quilt? Duvet? Bed-covering.
— What do you want to cover it for? he asked, genuinely confused.
— Well, it’s more to cover you, I think, when you’re asleep, the suit said, sounding uncertain.
The man dropped his hold-all onto the shiny plastic floor and went forward to heft the white cloudy thing. It felt quite light. Possibly a little damp, unless the suit’s tactiles were getting confused. He pulled a glove-section back and touched the bed-cover thing with his bare skin. Cold. Maybe damp. ~ Module? Genar-Hofoen said. He’d get its opinion on all this.
— You can’t talk to Scopell-Afranqui directly, remember? the suit said politely.
— Shit, Genar-Hofoen said. He rubbed the material of the bedcover between his fingers. ~ This feel damp to you, suit?
— A little. Do you want me to ask the ship to patch you through to the module?
— Eh? Oh, no; don’t bother. We moving yet?