He had not acquired precisely the right charge to assure neutral buoyancy, so there was some residual downward pull on his arms. Like silken fingers, tingling electrostatic waves washed over him. He could feel weak surges of current from the e-cell, adjusting charge to offset gravity. He thought of Dors and how he had gotten here, and it all surged past him in a strange, dreamlike rush.
He shook his head. He had to think.
Currents passed through him as though he were part of the conducting shell. The passengers inside felt nothing, for the net charge remained on the outside, each electron getting as far away from its repulsing neighbors as possible.
The passengers inside.
He switched hands again. They both hurt a lot now. Then he swung himself back and forth like a pendulum, into longer oscillations. On the fifth swing he kicked hard against the undercarriage. A solid thunk-it was massive. He smacked the hard metal several more times and then hung, listening. Ignoring the pain in his arm.
No response. He yelled hoarsely. Probably anything he did was inaudible inside.
These ancient e-cells were ornately decorated inside, he remembered, with an atmosphere of velvet comfort. Who would notice small sounds from below?
The e-cell was moving again, upward. He flexed his arms and swung his feet aimlessly above the shadowy abyss. It was an odd sensation as the fields sustained him, playing across his skin. His hair stood on end all over his body. That was when the realization struck him.
He had approximately the same buoyant charge as the e-cell-so he did not need the cell at all anymore.
A pleasant theory, anyway. Did he have the courage to try it?
He let go of the clasp rim. He fell. But slowly, slowly. A breeze swept by him as he drifted down a level, then two. Both arms shouted in relief.
Letting go, he still kept his charge. The shaft fields wrapped around him, absorbing his momentum, as though he were an e-cell himself.
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.)