She turned a corner — or what she had come to think of as a corner — and came face to face with a snarling dog. Panic overcame her and she pressed against a block of data, merging into it and suddenly becoming engulfed in information about the starship’s flight pattern. It was hard to keep her integrity and swim through the data, but somehow she managed it, pushing her way out on the other side. She should have been safe, but a moment later, the dogs were all around her, preventing her from moving any further. She looked into their salivating jaws, their teeth seeming to stretch back into infinity, and closed her eyes. A moment later, she opened them. She was still alive. The dogs — there was no sense of smell any longer, saving her their stench — hadn’t harmed her. They had just held her prisoner.
A beam of light seemed to fall down from heaven and touch her. Instantly, her body relaxed, her clothes falling off her as the beam pulled her into the air. She was unable to move as she was hauled upwards towards the Killer mind, peering down at her, its spider-image somehow licking its lips. She felt helpless and vulnerable, yet at the same time she felt calm; the Killer was somehow controlling her reactions. It’s ‘face’ came into view — a massive cartoon face with big red eyes — and it peered at her, looking right through her body and mind. Her entire life flashed before her eyes and his — somehow, she thought of it as male — and time seemed to come to a pause…
She concentrated desperately, knowing that it was scanning her thoughts. You have to talk to me, she sent, hoping that it would hear and understand. It had complete access to every section of her mind, the personality recording that comprised everything she had ever been, yet there was no response. It should have realised that she was an intelligent being in her own right, but it seemed disinclined to follow that line of enquiry. She concentrated again, praying to gods she had never truly believed in, that the Killer would hear her. You have to listen to me!
The Killer made no reply. A moment later, the beam of light brightened and she felt a paralysis spreading over her body, and mind. Everything was coming to an end. Her… thoughts… began… to… slow…
Chapter Thirty-Four
Deep within the bowels of the quantum entanglement communications network that formed the backbone of the Community, the MassMind had created its own little kingdom. It wasn’t much, in absolute terms, but it encompassed an entire universe built out of data and personalities. The humans who had uploaded themselves to the MassMind rarely saw the interior layers until they had given up their individuality and sunk down to the core of the MassMind. Like an onion, there were always many — many — layers. An explorer might feel that he had reached the limits, yet there were always more layers to explore. The MassMind, a creature of human mind, was bounded in a nutshell and yet it was a king of infinitive space. It even had bad dreams.
Most humans never thought about it until they downloaded themselves into the MassMind, but the MassMind was the Community’s communications system. It controlled the links between asteroid settlements and starships, recon missions and warships, between lovers and enemies, business partners and deadly rivals. It was privy to every secret humanity had ever created, giving weight at one point to weapons design and, at another, the secret love affair between two Community Representatives. It smiled to itself at their conduct — officially, they were opposed to each other and always voted against each other — and told no one of the affair. Like the ideal of a priest, the MassMind kept its secrets and watched over its flock. It was humanity’s child…
And yet it wasn’t fully human. There were billions of human personalities within the MassMind, but there were also AI patterns, helping to operate and govern the MassMind. It had moved far beyond needing them, yet it required their logic and reason to keep it functioning; an AI couldn’t hide behind a delusion that everything would work out in the end, if only they just kept trying. The MassMind could not — dared not — risk becoming contaminated by bad ideology. It was already too contemptuous of those who believed that it was a deadly trap, or an attempt to cheat God. The logic — or lack of it — in their arguments only added to the contempt, yet it was contempt the MassMind could not allow itself. It had to take all humans equally.
The logic was deeply flawed. God — by definition — was an all-powerful, all-seeing entity. He would have to be singular as well. Two all-powerful entities would not be all-powerful, as one of them could always block the other. The concept that such an entity could not round up whatever souls He had decided deserved to be accepted into Heaven, or dumped into Hell, was ridiculous. The MassMind knew that it possessed great power and, later, would possess far more, yet it was not God. God could take all the souls He wanted. The MassMind considered, privately, that perhaps God didn’t take the souls from the MassMind because the souls were still working their way through the universe, or — perhaps — because God didn’t exist at all. The MassMind had no judgement on that score. There was evidence for God’s existence and evidence against God’s existence. There was no way to know for sure.
It reached down into the core of its being and started to reshape the universe, isolating a section of the MassMind — its own being — from the remainder of the MassMind. A human personality who had spent centuries in the MassMind could not have designed such a world, yet the MassMind did it almost absently, taking a certain kind of pride in its own work. Every detail was perfect. A human who had arrived in the world might not have been able to tell that it was artificial, a virtual world created by the MassMind, even though it existed apart from their existence. The process was normally used for therapy. Now, the MassMind concluded reluctantly, it was going to be used for interrogation.
A tiny compressed sphere was dumped into the isolated world. The MassMind had examined it carefully, but had decided not to attempt to decompress it until it was within the MassMind, but carefully isolated — just in case. The Killers had shown no interest in the MassMind, as far as anyone had been able to tell, yet that might change rapidly. The MassMind hated the Killers with a cold dispassionate passion, a contradiction that was only possible within the MassMind itself, for the Killers could destroy it. They were the only force in the galaxy that could wipe the MassMind out of existence. If the sphere was really an attack, it would be met and defeated, erased before it could threaten the MassMind and its existence, or that of the Community.
The MassMind formed one of its rare representatives and sent him into the world, and then sealed all, but a tiny fraction of it away from the remainder of the MassMind. The isolated world was now more isolated, more secure… and yet there would always be a quiet nagging doubt. The MassMind had taken all the precautions it could, but if it had missed something… unlike a human, it couldn’t push those thoughts away. It had no choice, but to watch and wait.
The representative spoke a single world. “Decompress.”
As he watched, the sphere seemed to shimmer slightly, before it started to decompress into a humanoid form. The program had been compressed so tightly that it was hard to tell much about it — apart from the fact that it had definitely been a human personality at one point — but as it decompressed, it began to take on shape and form. The representative stepped back as the program imposed itself on the local reality, drawing on its power to create a new form… and took shape. A small girl, barely entering adulthood, appeared before him. She was, the representative decided, quite pretty.