Hours ago. And closer than you might imagine.
∞
Neat. Didn’t see a damn thing. Exemplary encasement management. Awfully glad we’re on the same side. Close to over-straining our design maxima envelope, are we?
∞
That’d be telling. Anyway, I must return to the land of the lichen-slow.
∞
Yeah, you have fun now.
∞
Unlikely.
∞
“I appreciate the Sublime would appear to be involved,” the Zoologist said eventually, sounding like it was making an effort to be patient.
“Indeed. All I’m asking is that you think about this, and if there is anything you can do, any help you can give, please let me know.”
The Zoologist looked pained, shook its head. “But none of it matters.”
“Not to you, perhaps. Just indulge me.”
“But to what end?”
“It will seem to matter to me, to us. The sum of fairness in our existence — however mean and shoddy compared to the Sublime — may be increased, and some suffering prevented.”
Another shrug. “It still won’t matter, doesn’t matter.”
“Pretend it does; game it that way,” the Caconym suggested. “As a favour to me, in return for my forbearance regarding whatever tying-sheets-into-a-rope and escaping-the-dorm shenaniganeering it is you get up to via the frayed edges of filament-foamed nano-reality and the divine nether-world of the blissfully Enfolded.”
“Still no difference, still not mattering.”
The Caconym looked around the lair/laboratory. “Does what you do here matter?”
“Not really,” the Zoologist admitted. “It passes the time, keeps me involved.” It looked at the rack of multi-coloured test-tubes. “Currently I am, and for the next few centuries, probably will be, experimenting with a variety of virtual chemistries, usually involving many hundreds or even thousands of elements and often branching into some requiring new varieties of fundamental particles.” It smiled. “There is much more: I play many games in other virtualities, all fascinating and unpredictable, and I still explore the Mathematical Irreal, as opposed to the Ultimate Irreal of the Sublime.”
“And in all of this, to what end?”
“No end save itself: I pass the time to pass the time, and stay involved to stay involved.”
“Yes, but why?”
“Why not?”
“Uh-huh. So it’s still worth doing.”
“To some extent.”
“Well, I — we all — do the same in the Real. To rather more significant effect, as we see it.”
“I know. I understand.”
Did it though? the Caconym found itself wondering. Did this abstracted creature, this sketch, really understand? How far removed from reality — from the Real — was it, even though in theory it was back within it?
From the little the Caconym had been able to glean from its fellow Mind — basically rumours that it had, ambiguously, confirmed — to exist within the Sublime was to expand in perception and understanding for ever, in a space that could never fill up. No matter how any transitioned, translated civilisation or flourishing individual entity expanded its scope and reach and expression, there was always more room, and more room within a whole new set of dimensions that were, conversely, full, that were thick with possibility.
The Real — with its vast volumes of nothing between the planets, stars, systems and galaxies — was basically mostly vacuum; an averaged near-nothing incapable of true complexity due to its inescapable impoverishment of structure and the sheer overwhelming majority of nothingness over substance. The Sublime was utterly different: packed with existence, constantly immanentising context, endlessly unfolding being-scape.
Like many a Culture Mind, the Caconym had tried simulating the experience of being in the Sublime; there were various easily available and tweakable packages which Minds passed from one to another, each the result of centuries of study, analysis, thought, imagination and effort. All claimed to give a glimpse of what it must be like to exist in the Sublime, though of course none could prove it.
And all were unsatisfactory, though each had its adherents and some even had what were in effect — shocking this, for the Culture’s Minds — their addicts.
The Caconym had tried a few and found them all wanting: frustrating, inadequate, even oddly demeaning.
“Well,” it said, “will you at least promise you’ll think about finding a way to help?”
The Zoologist smiled. “That I can do. I duly promise.”
The Caconym’s avatoid looked down, plucked the tiny insect from the bench and held it trapped between two fingers. It held it up, antennae waving, towards the upside-down avatoid. “You always say that nothing matters. Would it matter if I crushed this, now?”
The Zoologist shrugged. “Cac, it’s just a package of code.”
“It’s alive, in some sense. It has a set of programmed reactions, responses, so on. A tiny fraction of this environment’s richness would be snuffed out if I reduced it to its virtual components.”
“All this, and all you imply by it, is known. Thought about, allowed for, included. Still.”
The Caconym’s avatoid sighed. It put the insect back on the bench, right on the corner it appeared to have been heading for. “No matter. Thank you for agreeing to think about it.”
“Least I can do.”
The Caconym stood, then paused. “I said that I trust you,” it said to the upside-down avatoid hanging a few metres away. “And, right now, I believe that you will do as you say, and think about this, because you have promised to.” It paused. “Am I being foolish? Outside of an enforceable legal framework — something that is manifestly not present here — trust only operates where beings have the concept of honour, and, generally, a reputation — a standing — they want to protect. Do such considerations affect you at all? Do even these things… matter to you?”
The Zoologist looked troubled. Eventually it said, “When you come back from the Sublime, it is as though you leave all but one of your senses behind, as though you have all the rest removed, torn away — and you have become used to having hundreds.” It paused. “Imagine you,” it said, nodding at the Caconym, “being a human — a basic human, even, without augmentation or amendment: slow, limited, fragile, with no more than a couple of handfuls of very restricted senses. Then imagine that you have all your senses but — say — touch taken away, and most of your memories as well, including all those to do with language, save for the sort of simple stuff spoken by toddlers. Then you are exiled, blind and deaf and with no sense of smell or taste or cold or warmth, to a temperate water world inhabited only by gel fish, sponges and sea-feathers, to swim and make your way as best you can, in a world with no sharp edges and almost nothing solid at all.” The Zoologist paused. “That is what it is to return from the Sublime to the Real.”
The Caconym nodded slowly. “So, why did you?”
The Zoologist shrugged. “To experience a kind of extreme asceticism,” it said, “and to provide a greater contrast, when I return.”
“Well,” the Caconym observed, “that’s possibly the most unambiguous information on Subliming you’ve ever imparted. To me, at least. However, you haven’t answered the question I actually asked.”