The Last Human Read online

  And she almost says it. She very nearly releases years of frustration in a single word. But her mother’s discipline—and the wish to avoid more of the same—stops her at the last possible second. She contains it. She stands there, trembling, Jobe’s oily face mask gripped in her Human fingers, glaring a hole into a randomly chosen glistening eye.

  [Please release this Citizen member!] says an overlay over Jobe’s face. It’s orange, danger-colored for attention, but Sarya knows from experience that she has several more seconds before this warning escalates to physical action. Plenty of time.

  “Sarya the Daughter,” says the voice of the nearest teacher. It is heavy with gentleness and meaning—irritatingly so. “Is there a problem?”

  Oh, yes, there’s most definitely a problem. There are so many problems that Sarya doesn’t even know where to start. It is a problem that everyone in this room—hell, everyone on the damn station—thinks she’s an idiot. It is a problem that she will never again be allowed in this room because of her intelligence tier. It is a problem that her registered tier isn’t even right because she’s not a damn Spaal, she’s a Human. And it is a problem that she can’t even say so without starting a riot. The list of problems is long; she could do this all day.

  But she doesn’t, mostly because she doesn’t particularly care to be escorted home by a cloud of anxious Network drones. “No,” she says, releasing Jobe’s mask and wiping her hands on her utility suit. “There’s no problem.”

  “May we continue?” asks the teacher.

  “You may,” says Sarya, layering on as much scorn as she can manage.

  “Thank you,” says another of the teacher’s bodies. “Students?” The word appears next to her face, brilliant in the darkness of the room. “If you have eyes, shield them.”

  [Radiation shields dropping in six seconds], says a virtual warning across the massive blank wall at the foot of the room. Individual shields appear in front of many of the workers’ faces, and several turn away. Sarya has no time to do anything but squeeze her eyes into a squint as, with a hum she can feel through the soles of her boots, the wall dissolves into blinding light.

  (“Welcome to Network!” revision 5600109c, intelligence Tier 1.8–2.5, F-type metaphors)

  WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD!

  Billions of years ago, in a stagnant pool of goo, something magical occurred: your species began a journey that would be long, noble, occasionally tragic, and always unpredictable. But if you had asked those original organic molecules what their descendants would accomplish, what would they have said? Surely they could not have guessed that their progeny would be so beautiful and complex. They could not have known that, without any outside help whatsoever,*1 you would one day leave your homeworld and make contact with the greater galaxy. And perhaps most of all: they could never have suspected that one day your species would consider the most auspicious step of its existence:

  Network Citizenship.

  WHAT IS THE NETWORK?

  The Network is the largest accumulation of intelligence in the history of the galaxy. For more than half a billion years, it has enabled communication and prevented conflict between millions of species. It has provided and regulated technology. To put it in a phrase you have likely heard before: the Network tends toward order. That is why, in all that time, it has maintained nearly perfect equilibrium.

  And if your species becomes a Citizen, this could all be yours.

  HOW BIG IS THE NETWORK?

  While it is difficult to express the true size of the Network in terms that your mind could comprehend, suffice it to say that it now connects almost every member of more than one point four million intelligent species, across more than one billion star systems. In addition, for every connected Citizen member, the Network contains a multitude of auxiliary intelligences whose primary motivation is to keep things working smoothly. Though most of these intelligences are sub-legal, they still add to the massive conglomeration of intelligence that makes up the Network.

  WHAT CAN THE NETWORK DO FOR MY SPECIES?

  For the average Citizen species, the list of conveniences is endless. Some species feel that the most important feature is Network Standard, the common language. Others say that its primary contribution is the faster-than-light travel and data transfer*2 available at any Network subspace tunnel. Still others appreciate the endless supply and variety of auxiliary intelligences available for every task and situation. But higher intelligences than you have concluded that the Network’s primary advantage is this:

  Stability.

  That’s right. The members of your species no longer need to worry about societal disruption, invasion, war, disease, and other such inconveniences. The Network has maintained technological equilibrium for longer than your people have possessed sapience, and it will be here when you are extinct. Joining the Network means joining something greater than your own species.

  You’re welcome.

  WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT?

  Your species has been granted a twelve-year trial of Citizenship, with all its accompanying rights and privileges. You have been granted a temporary tier (2.09), and your solar system has received a temporary Network subspace tunnel (six trillion ton/second capacity, coordinates attached). In addition, you will soon be receiving a shipment of approximately six billion Network prosthetics to distribute to your members. Though such a low tier does not open the entire galaxy to your species, you will find that the millions of available solar systems add up to far more space than you will be able to explore during your trial.

  So get out there! Visit the uncountable members of the Network! Make a friend or two. See what society can be like if it is allowed to flourish in a safe environment.

  Happy travels!

  *1 As you now know, this journey was undertaken in the strictest isolation that the Network can provide its potential future Citizens.

  *2 The Network offers the only safe and approved FTL solution in the galaxy.

  It’s one thing to understand, intellectually, that one lives in the rings of a giant gaseous planet. The thought is simple, self-contained, self-explanatory. Where do you live? Oh, I live on an orbital water-mining station. Here it is on a diagram of the solar system. It’s that tiny dot near that other dot.

  It is another thing entirely to see those tiny dots in person.

  Sarya is on one of them now, looking at the other, and her mind has malfunctioned. She is pressed face-first against a wall-sized window but she doesn’t remember how she got there. Her eyes are forced nearly shut against the glare, her whole body spread against the clear synthetic material. Her mouth may or may not be open. Before her, for the second time today, lies a reality-destroying, sense-overwhelming vision. This is…majesty. There is no other word to describe it. Goddess, it’s just so—

  All right, maybe there is a word. Gold. Gold everywhere, nothing but a dazzling blast furnace brimming with it. Sarya hangs, helpless, above a two-hundred-thousand-kilometer gilded inferno. Lightning bolts that could wrap a major moon stride through its atmosphere, each random flash casually releasing enough energy to power Watertower Station for centuries. Clouds roil, spiraling into pressure systems that dwarf the lightning storms. This is a seething killer of a planet, a furious sphere with her home in its gravitational grip, one that would like nothing more than to shred her and everything she loves into constituent atoms…and in her current mindset she might not even object because the planet would look so beautiful doing so.

  Slowly, Sarya’s mind pulls free of the savage magnificence down below. She finds, embarrassingly, that she is trembling. She is—oh, for the goddess’s sake, she is actually crying. There is actual liquid on her face. She wipes it away with the sleeve of her utility suit, throwing her Network unit out of focus for a moment. That’s one disadvantage of a Human body: the continual leakage.

  When the overlay returns,
it is filling with symbols. They highlight hundreds of silhouettes against the fire of the planet, each one cutting a black, perfect, sharp-edged hole in its brilliant surface. While she has been succumbing to her embarrassing Human nature, her unit has been busy cataloguing these shapes, comparing their outlines and positions with some public database or other, and attaching labels as it figures things out. The chunkier forms are mountains of ice from the rings, towed into nearby orbits and waiting to be harvested. Some are outstations, built for purposes she can’t guess at. Some are ships. Not that she has any kind of experience with ships, but even without her unit’s help she would have known their silhouettes from the icebergs. Now she squints against the fury of the planet and attempts to read their names. There’s the blocky outline of [Spearfisher]. That’s [Burst of Blossoms] drifting over there, next to the long thin shape of [Brand New Super Large Cargo II]. Farther out, she can see the tiny pebble shapes of [Riptide] and [Swiftness], the gleam of [Blazing Sunlight]…and there are hundreds more.

  Her eyes flick from one ship to the next as, behind her, one of the teacher’s bodies continues in her excruciatingly mundane voice. “…the largest water-mining operation in twelve lightyears,” says the end of the latest sentence. “And it has been so for nearly a millennium.”

  [When will we run out?] asks a student behind Sarya in brilliant white symbols. The words crowd into her periphery and block her view of the planet below, the first unwelcome appearance of the Network in her short experience.

  “That is a good question,” says the teacher’s voice. “I will have an answer for you in just a—”

  “It is an excellent question, Broca,” says a rich new voice. It is a kind voice, a warm voice, the type of voice that invites trust. “If we ship water at today’s rates,” says the voice, thrilling Sarya’s very soul, “we’ll be in business for the next nineteen thousand years.”

  Sarya would have thought nothing could pull her from the splendor outside, but she didn’t count on that voice. She turns, searching for a speaker. She’s heard the voice of Watertower before, ringing out over the concourse or giving announcements in the corridors, but always distant and impersonal. Now she is in its very heart, and she is embarrassed to find that her Human eyes are burning. Again.

  A silver glow hovers in the center of the room, between two of the teacher’s bodies. [Ellie (she family), species: Independent, Tier: 2.7], says the space beside the glow.

  “Hello, Ellie,” says one of the teacher’s bodies. In a bit of insight provided by Sarya’s new Network unit, a yellow [annoyance (slight)] is overlaid near the narrow face. “Perhaps you would like to give the rest of my presentation?”

  “I would love to,” says the silver glow, its voice rolling through the observation deck like a warm wave. “In fact I have already prepared a little something—just in case you needed my help again.”

  “That’s the station intelligence,” whispers an awe- and mucus-filled voice at Sarya’s elbow. “My dads say she’s super smart.”

  “Your fathers are sweet to say so, Jobe of Jonobo the Larger,” says Ellie, and Sarya feels a start beside her as Jobe hears his own name in that gorgeous voice. “And it’s true, relatively speaking. I am the only tier three intelligence on the station.”

  “To clarify, students,” says the teacher, “Ellie is a two-point-seven. There are no threes on Watertower.”

  “Exactly,” says Ellie smoothly. “An amusing fact: that’s approximately five and a half times the average intelligence of this class!”

  “And yet below average for a station this size,” says the teacher. The slight has disappeared from the annoyance on her yellow emotion tag.

  “Ah, but the station’s been growing for a long time,” says Ellie. “I have managed it quite well for nearly fifteen hundred years.”

  “Ah,” mocks the teacher, [polite interest] floating beside several of her faces. “And yet you’re leaving us now.”

  [Ellie is leaving?] ask several students, their messages fighting for room in Sarya’s overlay.

  “Where are you going?” blurts Jobe.

  “The truth is, students,” says Ellie, “your teacher is right—about this, at least. This station has just gotten too big for a little almost-three like myself, and I’ve decided not to renew my contract this century. Our current major shipment—the one we’re wrapping up right now—will close up my perfect run on Watertower.”

  “By perfect,” says the teacher, “Ellie means—”

  “Let’s not allow semantics to interrupt a perfectly timed presentation,” interrupts Ellie. “Students! Please look directly at the planet below. I think this will interest you more than whatever your teacher planned on sharing.”

  Sarya is once again crowded against the window as her peers—squinting and shading eyes and sensors with various limbs—join her in staring into the fire outside the station. Sarya ignores them and gazes out herself, wide-eyed, searching through spinning ice and drifting machinery for something new. A murmur begins from the students to her right and works its way toward her. She presses forward, forehead against the cool window, trying to widen her field of view.

  And there it is.

  From the lower edge of the window, something is growing like a crystal on a substrate. It is thin, wickedly sharp, and blacker than space itself. It slides across the planet, slicing it diagonally over long minutes, until there are now two blazing halves hanging in space.

  “Say hello to Long and Pointy,” says Ellie.

  “Such a thought-evoking name,” says the teacher. “One wonders what inspired it.”

  “Named by the client, actually,” says Ellie. “We typically like to christen them something more majestic, but you know how group minds are.”

  “Beg pardon?” chokes the teacher. [Shocked] is now floating beside her tapered face.

  “This little guy,” continues Ellie as if the teacher had not spoken, “is four hundred kilometers long. It’s part of the largest shipment we’ve ever done.”

  The blade of ice continues its endless passage, its dark edges splitting the planet still further. The scale is beyond comprehension. Four hundred kilometers. Measured in Watertower Stations, that’s…that’s the length of Sarya’s world, the size of everything she’s ever known, times eighty. She pictures them lined up side by side along the black razor edge, station after identical station. She would never have imagined there was this much ice in the entire solar system, let alone in one place.

  “It looks like a…starship,” she murmurs under her breath.

  “That’s exactly what it is, Sarya the Daughter,” says Ellie, and Sarya feels a rush of warmth at the acknowledgment. An almost-tier-three, speaking to her—not Jobe, not Rama—and by name! “A four-hundred-kilometer starship made of ice,” continues Ellie. “If you’re still watching a few hours from now you’ll see the engines pass by. And what’s more, we’ve spent the last few decades making ninety-nine more just like it!”

  Sarya’s jaw drops once again. A hundred of these things? Good goddess, that’s more ice than—

  [But how will it travel? By Network?] floats above Jobe’s glistening head. [Pride], Sarya’s unit inserts below that. He must have spent the last minute or so painstakingly composing that message on his arm display.

  “Oh no, Jobe,” says Ellie’s warm voice, somehow lending a majesty to his name. “Transferring that much mass via Network? It would cost more than the water is worth. No, this delivery will go the other way, away from this system’s Network corridor and into deep space. Sub-lightspeed, the trip will take decades—perhaps centuries. Fortunately, the client is a group mind—like your teacher, of course, except high-tier—and He doesn’t mind waiting a few centuries for his order.”

  The teacher’s emotions are hidden now, and for the first time in her life Sarya feels a twinge of pity for her. It’s not every day that Sarya has somethin
g in common with a group mind, but she knows exactly what’s going through the teacher’s many heads.

  “Peculiar fellow, the client,” cautions Ellie. “That’s a few thousand of Him out there right now, doing the test run. He’s the whole crew. We normally provide a few thousand sub-legal intelligences to crew each order—they are ideal for this sort of thing—but He insisted on piloting His own shipment.”

  “Where’s, um…He taking it?” asks Sarya.

  “Not our business,” says Ellie, “but you can imagine the end result will be spectacular. These are specially made for high-energy terraforming, after all.”

  Several of the teacher’s bodies raise a hand. “Students,” says one, “that means—”

  “It means the client will be ramming billions of tons of ice into a planet,” says Ellie. “At very high speeds. One hundred times.”

  “But a hundred of those,” says Jobe, looking [shocked]. “That would destroy a planet. Wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh, the kinetic energy in a single one of our ice ships would end a global civilization, dear,” says Ellie with a gentle chuckle. “Our client could clear intelligent life off a hundred planets, if He wanted to!”

  “But He would not, students,” interjects the teacher quickly as Network murmurs begin to arise. She sends disapproving looks toward Ellie’s glow from several directions. “Even if He wanted to—and I assure you He does not—the Network is very strict regarding terraforming.”