There was frosty silence from Gillian. When she spoke, it was with hurt dignity. “And? Do I pass your test?”

Constantine quickly polled his intelligences.

– I think so, said Red.-Except…

Constantine paused.

– Nothing, said Red.-Leave it.

– No opinion, said White.

– I’m pretty sure she’s clean, said Blue.

Grey remained silent.

“We think that you do,” said Constantine “Although, how can we ever be sure?” he added hurriedly.

“We always return to this same argument,” interrupted Masaharu. “The AIs are admittedly more intelligent than we are. If they are really that much more intelligent, then we cannot hope to outwit them. If we are to achieve anything, we have no choice but to hope that they’re not.”

Constantine nodded. “He’s right. I’ve lived the last two years of my life believing that.”

Gillian looked from Constantine to Masaharu and back again. She appeared to relax, leaning back in her chair. She spoke softly. “Okay. I understand that. So if you already know everything that I’ve told you, why am I here?”

Marion spoke. “Because we need your knowledge. You won’t be able to return to the Oort cloud, you know. We can’t take the risk of those AIs finding out anything that you hear at this meeting.”

“But what about my work?”

“Your work here is far more important now.” Marion turned to Constantine. “Would you like to explain?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry, Gillian. It’s true. The reason that I am here…”

He paused as a strange lightheadedness washed over him. For a moment, the table had seemed to flicker. Looking up he saw two Gillians…No, that wasn’t right, he saw one Gillian sitting inside another. One Gillian seemed frozen in place, her hand paused in the motion of scratching herself behind the ear. The second Gillian seemed to sit inside her and overlap the first, a normal young woman; she looked at Constantine with an expression of interest, shifting in her chair as she did so.

Constantine blinked hard. He reached out and placed a hand on the table’s surface. Cool and solid, it seemed reassuringly real.

“Are you feeling okay, Constantine?” asked Jay.

“Fine.” Constantine rubbed his hand back and forth for a moment, and then picked up his glass and took a sip of water. When he blinked again, the second Gillian had gone.

“Okay,” he continued. “I’m here to set in motion a train of events I have been leading toward for the past two years. We are here to safeguard against a possible future that has been increasingly apparent to humankind for at least two centuries. It seems to me that everything is finally in place. It is our duty to decide if we are right to take the course of action that is before us.”

There was a slight pause at this announcement.

– Look at Jay smiling, said Red.-She’s taken a shine to you. She likes a man with spirit.

Constantine coughed, then continued. “Okay. So, the order of events is as follows. First, we need to decide if we believe the AIs are working for or against us. Second, and this may or may not be relevant to the first point, do we go ahead with the plan?”

He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of Jay-Jay who sat motionless, a frozen expression on her face, while a second Jay leaned forward to pour herself a glass of water.

Damn, he thought. Not now. I’m going mad. Right here at the end, I’m finally going mad. All the effort, all the drive suddenly just left him. Weak and exhausted, he slumped in his chair.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think this is such a good idea anymore,” he mumbled. Jay and the rest stared at him with expressions that ranged from shock to concern to faint scorn.

He didn’t care. Something seemed to be stirring in his mind, a little tickle, a tiny little feeling so small that it could barely be grasped. He thought about hugging a tree and rubbing a matchstick between his fingers at the same time. It made him feel uncomfortable. What was all that about?

“Excuse me,” he said. “I don’t feel…”

The tickling increased.

“Red, what is it?” he mumbled.

– I don’t know. It’s like one of the other personae…

“Red? Are you there? Blue? What’s happening?”

He held the glass of water close to his lips, hiding their movement. He was fooling nobody: the rest of the group looked on in concern.

He could feel something inside him waking up, something beginning to speak. Dizzily, he put the glass down. He heard a voice deep inside him, old and dry and incredibly strange. It was Grey, he realized. The grey pill was having an effect at last.

– Act normally, you fool. Don’t let them know you’ve noticed anything wrong.

“But…What…Can’t you see…?”

The others watched him mumbling to himself.

Grey spoke again, and his voice was petulant.-What’s up with Red? Why hasn’t he noticed? Gillian just got off a shuttle this morning that came from the edge of the solar system. Where did she get the white dress and the bangles? That’s this month’s fashion.

“Oh…I don’t know…It’s all too…” Constantine was still reeling. Punch-drunk…

– That’s it. I’m taking over, said Grey.

Suddenly Constantine began to speak: it was his voice, but the words weren’t his.

“I’m sorry, but I think I need a drink. It must have been hotter out there than I thought. I’m feeling a little dehydrated.”

His hand reached out for the glass of water of its own accord, adding supporting evidence to the words he was now being forced to speak.

It was Grey; Grey was controlling him. But that was impossible.

He was still reeling from the shock when Grey made him pass out.

…into darkness.

Darkness and silence.

Herb could touch, smell, taste, feel nothing.

A set of memories and no more.

He could remember their long climb up the tower into space, flickering from room to room and then, without warning, they had stopped. Robert Johnston had paused just long enough to announce that they could go no further with certainty, that they must now jump into the unknown-and they had jumped.

That was when the memories of a world ended. Memories of touch and sight and taste. Now there was…nothing.

So where was he? Robert had said that Herb’s consciousness had existed in the processors remaining after the VNMs of the Necropolis had failed to commit suicide correctly. He had therefore viewed the world through the senses of those machines. What if he had now jumped to a place where those senses no longer existed? What if his consciousness now existed in a processor with no connection to the outside world? How long would he remain here? Forever? To spend eternity without any senses, cut off from everyone and everything: the thought was enough to send his nonexistent pulse racing in panic. And then a second, more sinister, thought occurred to him.

Robert had said that many copies of his personality had been dispersed throughout the Enemy Domain to seek out the secret of its origin. What if other copies of Herb Kirkham were even now trapped in eternal darkness? Tiny bubbles of consciousness glittering unnoticed, suspended in endless silence throughout the dark ocean of the Enemy Domain.

Nothing, still nothing. A scream was building in Herb’s imaginary throat…

“Hey, buddy. What’s the matter?”

Robert Johnston thrust his face over Herb’s left shoulder, his features illuminated from below by some invisible light source. Herb blinked as his imaginary eyes adjusted to the darkness: his senses had switched on again. He felt the weak pull of gravity, smelled the cold, tinny air. Stretching away beneath his feet was a regular pattern of shadows, picking out the edges of a triangular grid. Around and above him, nothing. Only gloom.

“Where are we? What happened?” Herb’s voice was hoarse with emotion. Robert stepped before him. Am I imagining it, or does he look shaken too?