“There is great excitement at AXIS Control on Lunar farside, in Australia and in California, where the AXIS simulation is overseen by Roger Atkins. We have no direct interviews available at this moment; everybody is very busy. But we do have transcriptions of AXIS’s commentary and these are available on your Lit text band…”
AXIS (Band 4)> This migration of organic material began three hours ago. I have delayed transmission to allow all my mobile explorers and nickel children to move into ideal positions. Three explorers have in fact come too close and been bowled over by organic material; one may be completely out of action. The other two report they will recover. Roger, this is a remarkable phenomenon but not completely unexpected. I have been analyzing the possible internal structures of the rings of towers and have concluded that periodic deposition is a probable explanation. I could only assume that any living thing or things responsible for such structures would come out of the oceans. Now we see the beginning of a possible phase of gathering and deposition. There is no way of knowing whether or not new formations will be constructed.
The towers vary in individual width. Some towers have almost joined together, forming solid circles; many of these seem to have fallen into decay, as if abandoned. It seems there may be a connection between the decayed circles and the completion of a ring, that is, when all towers have fused together to form a squat cylinder.
The motile forms of the organic material rising from Meso are fascinating. My explorers and children have seen worms moving like terrestrial annelids, other forms moving like snakes, and large flat mats or masses of material crawling on what may be newly grown cilia or thousands of tiny feet. The entire region surrounding the Meso ocean to a distance of three kilometers is covered with millions of lumps, extrusions and motile forms. My orbiter reports that the paths of these migrating bodies point in ninety percent of cases toward a ring of circular towers.
If this is in fact a suitable explanation for the towers, I have certainly erred in suggesting they might have been created by intelligent beings. What my different extensions witness here is primordial, betraying no more culture or intelligence than the crawling of a terrestrial slime mold.
David Shine: “This is a truly remarkable development, and so sudden that it has taken all our experts by surprise. The general impression is that all of AXIS’s designers and programmers are busy reassessing AXIS’s mission in light of the possibility that the towers are completely natural not artificial…”
!Roger Atkins> Jill. I have a squeeze burst band two self diagnostic of AXIS separated from the realtime flow. Why did AXIS send this to us? It’s not scheduled.
!JILL> I am analyzing. Analysis complete. AXIS is reevaluating the character of its mission in light of new information.
!Roger Atkins> Do I have any reason to be concerned?
!JILL> AXIS Simulation is now conducting such a reevaluation. There are several responses that seem to be anomalous in primary AXIS.
I am investigating these anomalies.———
Roger, these anomalies are within expected variation of model versus primary. They may be the result of the only circumstance we cannot model in AXIS Simulation as it is currently designed; AXIS Simulation is aware that it is not in AXIS primary’s exact circumstance.
!Roger Atkins> What does that mean, Jill?
!JILL> It is here, and not out there.
!Roger Atkins> Well, for Christ’s sake, that’s obvious.
!JILL> Very obvious. But perhaps significant. AXIS primary is experiencing some disturbance while it reevaluates its mission. AXIS Simulation does not replicate these disturbances.
!Roger Atkins> Jill, I think it’s time I sent a few tracers and confirmation routines through AXIS Simulation. I did not know that AXIS Simulation realized there was a difference.
!JILL> I apologize for not reporting this eventuality earlier.
!Roger Atkins> No apologies necessary. I’ve been slipping up, obviously.
53
Imagine somebody else being allowed to lucidly dream within you; to be awake yet explore your dreams. That’s part of what the Country of the Mind experience is like; but of course, our personal memories of dreams are confused. It is even possible for two or more agents to dream separate dreams at the same time—further adding to the confusion. When a dream intersects the Country at all, it does so like an arrow shot through a layer-cake, picking up impressions from as many as a dozen levels of territory. When I go into your Country I can see each territory clearly and study it for what it is, not for what your personal dream-interpreter wants it to be.
Martin examined Goldsmith critically.
Goldsmith’s couch rhythmically massaged his back, legs and arms; his head and neck were cushioned on a gently undulating pillow.
Carol hummed as she marked off their procedures on her slate. They were alone in the theater with the sleeping man, surrounded by the busy quiet of electronic equipment and the subdued murmur of air from the theater blowers. The rest of the team was resting or eating dinner.
“How are the connections?” Carol asked, walking around the cot to join him. Martin bent to look at a spot on Goldsmith’s neck two inches below the corner of the jawbone. A few bristles of beard then a smooth shaved circle; within the circle a fine pattern of silvery lines. The nano within Goldsmith had created direct circuitry running from the brain to the skin’s surface at the neck; a connector would link this circuit to similar circuits from their own brains, through the mediating computer, which would clean up and interpret the flow of information from Goldsmith, Neuman and Burke. No buffer. That still concerned Martin.
“They look very good,” Martin said. “I think we’ve done about as much fussing as we should. Time for our own dose.”
Carol called in the team. David and Karl would help them prepare; then Margery and Erwin would prepare David and Karl for their role as backups. When the full investigation was on there would be five people lying on couches in the theater, apparently asleep.
Carol and Martin retired to their couches. Nano was fed into their arms and necks, as with Goldsmith. Margery turned on the inducers that would lull them into sleep; they would stay asleep for several hours while the nanomachines found their loci, grew the appropriate circuitry and emerged on their own necks; then they would be brought to a state of neutral awareness, suspended above bodily sensations but wide awake and capable of opening and moving their eyes. For the first level of investigation, they would also be capable of talking out loud.
Martin thought about his boyhood bedroom. The robots he had made, big and small; his grandfather buying him books, bound paper items becoming rare even then. His first infatuation with a young girl who called herself Trix.