He reminds himself he has a few things left to do.
He looks out into the net, finds Cromwell’s estate going into probate, the lawsuits just getting started. The flux of conflicting writs and contested jurisdictions creates openings that make it easy to slip into one of Cromwell’s accounts in Iceland and channel a fraction of his net worth first to the orbital bank that’s the sole relict of the Cayman Islands, then to a technically stateless financial services company hosted on servers in a strip mall in New Jersey and finally to the seventeen investors who hold the paper on Masamune’s forge.
He emails the smith:
Dear Sir:
I am a stranger, but I’ve just taken the liberty of paying off all your debts.
In exchange, I’d like you to take on my protégé as an assistant. He’ll appear on your doorstep in a few days. His work ethic defies description, but I ask only that you try him.
I regret all the mystery, but I must remain …
Anonymous
He imagines the smith’s consternation, relief, wonder.
He turns his attention to the shipping on the seas around the space elevator. The AIs’ fleet seems to have vanished, and traffic is sparse in the equatorial waters, but among the handful of freighters and research subs he finds an Australian naval search-and-rescue drone. He slips past its security and reroutes it toward the island of the elevator, reprogramming its navigation system to send Canberra a steady stream of lies.
With that, his obligations are fulfilled.
Before him is the mountain that was also a tower, the wind foaming the wood on its lower slopes where Akemi is now sleeping. When she wakes she’ll believe she’s on an indefinite hiatus but that happiness is waiting for her whenever she goes back to her old life.
His attention settles briefly on the wall Irina raised on the mountain’s heights—it’s intact, and its gate is locked, but what’s beyond is hidden.
Now what?
He could join Akemi in her manicured delusion, and let eternity slip by.
He closes his eyes again, and now he’s aware of Irina’s glimpses of the future, the spiking temperatures, the storms, the wars, the floods, the dying cities, how different the Earth will look from space. Better to be here than in the world, and to have all the time he wants to read and to think. Maybe he and Akemi will become friends. He can choose to forget his circumstances, maybe let himself remember the truth for an hour every year, or every century.
And yet.
No one else knows what’s going to happen, except possibly Irina, who is in problematic health, and no one else is in a position to intervene.
It’s not clear that this is his problem, but he thinks of his family, still out there, and exposed, and of Kern, who has no other protector.
It occurs to him he’s sitting in the midst of most of the computational power in the world, all idle now.
It would be a simple matter to shape it to his will.
69
Island in the Past
Kern dreams of nothing, is dimly aware of the nothing in his mind, as though his history had dissipated, leaving no one’s consciousness, a mind like an empty blue sky.
Somewhere, a phone is ringing. He dismisses it as a figment from a dream but it keeps on ringing and eventually he opens his eyes and his circumstances return to him.
He sits up, brushes the gravel from his palms and back. His plan for the rest of the day was to make a water distiller like the laptop’s game taught him, scavenge for supplies and try to teach himself to fish. With a sigh, he picks up the sat-phone.
“Is that you, babe?” asks Akemi.
“Akemi!” he says. “I didn’t think I’d hear from you. Where are you?”
“I’m in Bel Air, I think. Actually I’m not sure, but it’s not important. I called because Thales tells me your ride is almost there.”
“Thales?”
“A friend of mine. A very technical friend, making arrangements on your behalf.”
“Did it work out? Whatever you were trying to do?”
“I think so. If it hadn’t I don’t think I’d be here. I don’t remember very much about it, and to be honest I don’t care. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy. But you should head for the docks now—Thales says it’s best if you’re there to meet the ship.”
“What ship?”
“The H.M.A.S. Nukunu, an Australian naval drone. Thales found a place for you, and the drone will take you there. Sat-phones aren’t secure, so he won’t let me tell you the specifics, but it’s going to be great. Okay?”
It occurs to him to unplug the phone, let the Nukunu come and go and live like the ancient masters training in seclusion, but he suspects the isolation would destroy him, and the self-annihilating pursuit of perfection seems less interesting than it did. On the other hand, he’s tired of being led, but supposes he can tolerate it one last time.
“Should I bring the sat-phone?” he asks.
“Leave it, but you should head out now. Do you know where you’re going?”
“Sure,” he says.
*
From the edge of the roof he sees what must be the Nukunu, tiny in the distance, coasting in toward the piers like a gunmetal shark.
It’s a long hike through the ruins to the docks and he gets lost twice. By the time he arrives the Nukunu is waiting, looking strangely out of place, the only unblemished manufactured thing. It’s about fifty feet long, all angles and flat surfaces, which he thinks has to do with radar invisibility. It holds position a few feet from the dock, emitting a deep thrum. “Permission to come aboard,” he says, a phrase remembered from a book, then drops onto the deck.
There isn’t much ship to explore, though at least this one has a railing and is clearly meant to accommodate people. There’s nothing much to find except toward the back where there’s a grey-painted module the size of a shipping container marked K-2 VIALIFE locked onto tracks on the hull.
The module’s door is unlocked. When he opens it, red lights come on in the ceiling, showing the chemical toilet set into the wall, a small steel sink and bunk beds that fill half the space and remind him of medical stretchers. On both beds there’s a green sleeping bag rolled into a tight cylinder and a small pillow, both sealed in plastic and strapped down.
The ship peels smoothly away. He watches the dock recede—while the distance is swimmable he can still change his mind, and it’s a sort of relief when it’s too far and the island is officially in the past.
He won’t let himself look back at the black line in the sky.
70
History Lacks a Story
Hot air blowing over her face. Her back is sore from the hard concrete. She’s lying on the floor in the tunnel with the servers, has been for some time. The tower is gone, and even in her other memory the experience survives only as fragments and abstractions.