5
Pamir knew that nobody was clever enough or worthy enough, much less lucky enough to truly disappear.
The tiniest body still possessed mass and volume, shadow and energy.
And a brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest.
The wise fugitive always kept several new lives at the ready.
But every ready-made existence carried risks of its own, including the chance that someone would notice the locker jammed with money and clothes, the spare face and a respectable name never used.
Like real lives, each false life had its perfect length, and there was no way to be sure how long that was.
No matter how compromised the current face, transitions always brought the most perilous days.
Paranoia was a fugitive's first tool.
But panic could make the man break from cover at the worst possible moment.
Love meant trust, which meant that no face should be loved.
Most of all, the wanted man should be acutely suspicious of the face in the mirror.
Patterns defined each life, and old patterns were trouble.
Except acquiring the new walk and voice, pleasures and hates was the most cumbersome work possible. And even worse, fine old strategies could be left behind, and the best instincts were corroded by the blur of everything new.
In a crowd of ten million strangers, nobody cared about the human who used to be many things, including a captain. And among the millions were four exceptions, or perhaps one hundred and four, or just that one inquisitive soul standing very close.
Now look into that sea of faces, stare at humans and aliens, machines and the hybrids between. Look hard at everything while pointing one finger—a finger that has been worn for some little while—and now against some very long odds, pick out which of those souls should be feared.
Humans found the derelict machine drifting outside the Milky Way, and after claiming the Great Ship as their own, loyal robots proceeded to map the interior. Each cavern was named using elaborate codes. Even excluding small caves and holes, there were billions of caverns on the captains' maps. Positions and volumes were included each name, but there was also quite a lot of AI free verse poetry. Then as the Great Ship entered the galaxy, one paronomasiainspired AI savant was ordered to give a million caverns better designations— words that any human mouth could manage—and one unremarkable hole was named: Where-Peace-Rains.
Peace ruled inside the dark emptiness, but there was no rain. Remote and unspectacular, the cavern remained silent for long millennia. Communities of archaic humans were established in other locations. Some failed, others found ways to prosper. Mortal passengers had one clear advantage; being sure to die, they paid relatively small sums to ride the Great Ship. And unlike their eternal neighbors, they could pay a minimal fee to have one child. Three trifling payments meant growth, and the captains soon had to control populations through laws and taxes as well as limiting the places where those very odd people could live.
Forty-five thousand years ago, human squatters claimed Where-PeaceRains, setting up the first lights and a hundred rough little homes in the middle of the bare granite floor. They told themselves they were clever. They assured each other that they were invisible, stealing just a trickle of power from the Ship. But an AI watchdog noticed the theft, and once alerted to the crime, the Master Captain sent one of her more obstinate officers to deal with the ongoing mess.
Pamir was still a captain—an entity full of authority and the ready willingness to deploy his enormous powers.
Wearing a mirrored uniform, he walked every street inside the village, telling the strangers that they were criminals and he wasn't happy. He warned that he could order any punishment that could be imagined, short of genocide. Then he demanded that the Luddites meet him in the round at the village's heart, bags packed, and ready for the worst.
Three hundred people, grown and young, assembled on the polished red granite.
"Explain your selves," the captain demanded.
A leader stepped forward. "We require almost nothing," the old/young man began, his voice breaking at the margins. "We are simple and small, and we ask nothing from the captains or the sacred Ship."
"Shut up," said Pamir.
Those words came out hard, but what scared everyone was the captain's expression. Executions weren't possible, but a lot of grim misery lay between slaughter and salvation, and while these people believed in mortality, they weren't fanatics chasing martyrdom or some ill-drawn afterlife.
Nobody spoke.
Then once again, the captain's voice boomed.
"Before anything else, I want you to explain your minds to me. Do it now, in this place, before your arbitrary day comes to an end."
Nobody was allowed to leave and reset the sun. With little time left, a pretty young woman was pressed into service. Perhaps the other squatters thought she would look appealing to the glowering male officer. Or maybe she was the best, bravest voice available. Either way, she spoke about the limits of life and the magic of physics and the blessings of the eternal, boundless multiverse. Pamir appeared to pay attention, which heartened some. When she paused, he nodded. Could they have found an unlikely ally? But then with a low snort, he said, "I like numbers. Give me mathematics."
The woman responded with intricate, massive numbers wrapped around quantum wonders, invoking the many worlds as well as the ease with which fresh new universes sprang out of the old.
But the longer she spoke, the less impressed he seemed to be. Acting disgusted, then enraged, Pamir told the frightened community, "I know these theories. I can even believe the crazy-shit science. But if you want this to go anywhere good, you have to make me believe what you believe. You have to make me trust the madness that we aren't just here. There are an infinite number of caves exactly like this stone rectum, and infinite examples of you, and there is no measurable end of me. And all of us have assembled in these endless places, and this meeting is happening everywhere exactly as it is here.
"Convince me of that bullshit," he shouted.
The woman's infinite future depended on this single performance. Tears seemed like a worthy strategy. She wept and begged, dropping to her knees. Her skin split and the mortal blood flowed against the smooth stony ground, and every time she looked up she saw an ugly immortal dressed in that shiny garb, and every time she looked down again, the world seemed lost. No words could make this blunt, brute of a man accept her mind. No action or inaction would accomplish any good. Suddenly she was trying only to make herself worthy in the eyes of the other doomed souls, and that was the only reason she stood again, filling her body with pride, actively considering the merits of rushing the captain to see if she could bruise that awful face, if only for a moment or two.
Yet all that while, Pamir had a secret: He had no intention of hurting anyone.
This was a tiny group. A captain of his rank had the clout to give each of them whatever he wished to give them. And later, if pressed by his superiors, Pamir could blame one or two colleagues for not adequately defending this useless wilderness. Really, the scope of this crime was laughably, pathetically tiny—a mild burden more than an epic mess, regardless what these bright terrified eyes believed.
Out of fear or born from wisdom, the woman didn't assault him.
Then the captain reached into a pocket on his uniform.
The object hadn't been brought by chance. Pamir came with a plan and options, and eons later, novice captains would stand in their classroom, examining all the aspects of the captain's scheme.
Out from the pocket came his big hand, holding what resembled a sphere.
He explained, "This is a one hundred-and-forty-four faced die, diamond construction, tear-shaped weights for a rapid settling, each number carrying its own unique odds."
Luddite faces stared at the object.
Nobody spoke.
"I'm going to toss it high," said Pamir. "And then you, baby lady . . . you call out any number. And no, I won't let you look at the die first. You'll make your guess, and you will almost certainly lose. But then again, as you understand full well, any fraction of the endless is endless. And regardless of my toss, an infinite number of you are going to win this game."
Swallowing, the woman discovered a thin smile.
"And if I am right?" she asked.
"You stay here. And your people stay here. The entire cavern is granted to you, under my authority. But you aren't allowed to steal power from our reactors, and your water has to be bought on the common markets, and you will be responsible for your food and your mouths, and if you overpopulate this space, the famines and plagues will rest on your little shoulders.
"Is that understood?" he asked.
Everybody nodded, and everybody had hope.
But when Pamir threw the die, the girl offered the most unlikely number.
"One," she shouted.
One was riding on the equator, opposite 144—the smallest facets on the diamond face.
Up went the die.
And then was down, rattling softly as it struck, bouncing and rolling, slowing as sandals and boots and urgent voices pulled out of the way.
Looking at the number was a formality.
The cave would soon be empty and dark.
Yet odd as it seemed, Pamir wasn't particularly surprised to find the simplest number on top, in plain view: As inevitable as every result must be.