But an imperfect one. With the constant feedback between an e-cell and the shaft walls, he would not be exactly buoyant for long.
Above him, the real e-cell ascended. He looked up and saw it depart, revealing more of the blue phosphor line tapering far overhead.
He rose a bit, stopped, began to fall again. The shaft was trying to compensate both for its e-cell and for him, an intruder charge. The feedback control program was unable to solve so complicated a problem.
Quite soon the limited control system would probably decide that the e-cell was its business and he was not. It would stop the e-cell, secure it on a level-and dispense with him.
Hari felt himself slow, pause-then fall again. Rivulets of charge raced along his skin. Electrons sizzled from his hair. The air around him seemed elastic, alive with electric fields. His skin jerked in fiery spasms, especially over his head and along his lower legs-where charge would accumulate most.
He slowed again. In the dim phosphor glow he saw a level coming up from below. The walls rippled with charges and he felt a spongy sidewise pressure from them.
Maybe he could use that. He stretched to the side, curling his legs up and thrusting against the rubbery stretch of the electrostatic fields.
He stroked awkwardly against the cottony resistance. He was picking up speed, falling like a feather. He stretched out to snag an emission hole-and a blue-white streamer shot into his hand. It convulsed and he gasped with the sudden pain. His entire lower arm and hand went numb.
He inhaled to clear his suddenly watery vision. The wall was going by faster. A level was coming up and he was hanging just a meter away from the shaft wall. He flailed like a bad swimmer against the pliant electrostatic fields.
The tops of the doors went by. He kicked at the emergency door opener, missed, kicked again-and caught it. The doors began to wheeze open. He twisted and gripped the threshold with his left hand as it went by.
Another jolt through the hand. The fingers clamped down. He swung about the rigid arm and slammed into the wall. Another electrical discharge coursed through him. Smaller, but it made his right leg tighten up. In agony, he got his right hand onto the threshold and hung on.
His full weight had returned and now he hung limply against the wall. His left foot found an emission hole, propped him up. He pulled upward slightly and found he had no more strength. Pain shot through his protesting muscles.
Shakily he focused. His eyes were barely above the threshold. Distant shouts. Shoes in formal Imperial blues were running toward him.
Hold…hold on… A woman in a Thurban Guards uniform reached him and knelt, eyebrows knitted. “Sir, what are you-?”
“Call…Specials…” he croaked. “Tell them I’ve…dropped in.”
Part 4. A Sense Of Self
Simulation spaces-…decided personality problems could arise. Any simulation which knew its origins was forcefully reminded that it was not the Original, but a fog of digits. All that gave it a sense of Self was continuity, the endless stepping forward of pattern. In actual people, the “real algorithm” computes itself by firing synapses, ringing nerves, continuity from the dance of cause and effect.
This led to a critical problem in the representation of real minds-a subject under a deep (though eroding) taboo, in the closing era of the Empire. The simulations themselves did much of the work on this deep problem, with much simulated pain. To be “themselves” they had to experience life stories which guided them, so that they saw themselves as the moving point at the end of a long, complex line drawn by their total Selves, as evolved forward. They had to recollect themselves, inner and outer dramas alike, to shape the deep narrative that made an identity. Only in simulations derived from personalities which had a firm philosophical grounding did this prove ultimately possible…
1.
Joan of Arc floated down the dim, rumbling tunnels of the smoky Mesh.
She fought down her fears. Around her played a complex spatter of fractured light and clapping, hollow implosions.
Thought was a chain unfixed in time and unanchored in space. But, like tinkling currents, alabaster pious images formed-restless, churning. An unending flux, dissolving structures in her wake, as if she were a passing ship.
She would be hugely pleased, indeed, to have so concrete a self. Anxiously she studied the murky Mesh that streamed about her like ocean whorls of liquid mahogany.
Since her escape from the wizards, upon whom the preservation of her soul-her “consciousness,” a term somehow unconnected to conscience-depended, she had surrendered to these wet coursings. Her saintly mother had once told her that this was how the churning waters of a great river succumb, roiling into their beds deep in the earth.
Now she floated as an airy spirit, self-absorbed, sufficient to herself, existing outside the tick of time.
Stasis-space,Voltaire had termed it. A sanctuary where she could minimize computational clock time- such odd language!-waiting for visions from Voltaire.
At his last appearance, he had been frustrated-and all because she preferred her internal voices to his own!
How could she explain that, despite her will, the voices of saints and archangels so compelled her? That they drowned out those who sought to penetrate her from outside?
A simple peasant, she could not resist great spirit-beings like the no-nonsense St. Catherine. Or stately Michael, King of Angel Legions, greater than the royal French armies that she herself had led into battle. (Eons ago, an odd voice whispered-yet she was sure this was mere illusion, for time surely was suspended in this Purgatory.)
Especially she could not resist when their spirit-speech thundered with one voice-as now.
“Ignore him,” Catherine said, the instant Voltaire’s request for audience arrived. She hovered on great white wings.
Voltaire’s manifestation here was a dove of peace, brilliant white, winging toward her from the sullen liquid. Blithe bird!
Catherine’s no-nonsense voice cut crisply, as stiff as the black-and-white habit of a meticulous nun. “You sinfully surrendered to his lust, but that does not mean that he owns you. You don’t belong to a man! You belong to your Creator.”
The bird chirped, “I must send you a freight of data.”
“I, I…” Joan’s small voice echoed, as if she were in a vast cavern, not a vortex river at all. If she could only see-
Catherine’s great wings batted angrily. “He will go away. He has no choice. He cannot reach you, cannot make you sin-unless you consent.”
Joan’s cheeks burned as the memory of her lewdness with Voltaire rushed in.
“Catherine is right,” a deep voice thundered-Michael, King of the Angel Hosts of Heaven. “Lust has nothing to do with bodies, as you and the man proved. His body stank and rotted long ago.”
“It would be good to see him again,” Joan whispered longingly. Here, thoughts were somehow actions. She had but to raise a hand and Voltaire’s numerics would transfix her.
“He offers defiling data!” Catherine cried. “Deflect his intrusion at once.”
“If you cannot resist him, marry him,” Michael ordered stiffly.
“Marry?” St. Catherine’s voice sputtered with contempt.
In bodily life, she had affected male attire, cropped her hair, and refused to have anything to do with men, thus demonstrating her holiness and good sense. Joan had prayed to St. Catherine often. “Males! Even here,” the saint scolded Michael, “you stick together to wage war and ruin women.”
“My counsel is entirely spiritual,” said Michael loftily. “I’m an angel and thus prefer neither sex.”
Catherine sputtered with contempt. “Then why aren’t you the Queen of Legions of Angels and not the King? Why don’t you command heavenly hostesses and not heavenly hosts? Why aren’t you an archangela instead of an archangel? And why isn’t your name Michelle?”