Transference: Part 1
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
The encircling wall of the Synthesis Chamber was decorated with a 360-degree holographic Chinese watercolor whose clouds and rivers flowed; and whose birds and fishes moved. Even the people in the dynamic painting seemed alive. They gathered in the open-air pagodas in the mountains; they stood on the porches and in the courtyards of the yamens nestled in the peaceful valleys; they crossed the arched bridges spanning the misty rivers. They seemed aware of Invar’s presence, gossiping with one another as they pointed in his direction.
A vertical translucent mass of organic matter hovered over a broad disc of light in the center of the dim room. Invar stood before it, hands clasped behind his back. The couch he had been reclining on moments before was sinking into the plush carpet.
The mass divided into two strips that began condensing into replicas of his wife and son, who lived so far away that it would have taken him at least 500 hundred light years to reach them, assuming humans could still travel faster than light, which they could not. But Synthesis Chambers contracted these tremendous distances by establishing a neural link between these otherwise inert organic repositories (such as the two in front of him), and the minds of those who were to be transferred into them temporarily.
The Imperishable Quantum Manifold Regulator (IQMR for short), a godlike artificial intelligence, linked humanity’s technological and computational systems together into a single indissoluble and self-correcting network that could not be modified or otherwise tinkered with by a human programmer. In addition to machines, the IQMR nurtured and sustained human life by controlling every organelle of every cell in the body of every human being that fell under its benign sway.
Just as Invar’s wife and son were being “presenced” here before him, the IQMR was generating a replica of him in a Synthesis Chamber at their end—and doing so in such a way so as to create an illusion of synchronicity. The inhabitants of Earth had destroyed their planet millennia ago. But a few survivors had somehow managed to transport themselves to this quadrant of the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
Invar had spent all 371.33 years of his life inside a mining station located on a dark exoplanet called HW6-7M113-5F4, whose soil was rich in the ores that were needed by the trillions of humans who inhabited the Pillars of Heaven Nebula, where his wife and son lived. Only 79 souls occupied the station, although a baby girl was in the process of being incubated to replace Invar’s mother who had died a few months prior.
Despite his age, Invar’s olive skin had retained its smoothness and luster. He was endowed with the imperious good looks of an ancient Persian potentate. Whether it was an attempt at humor on the part of the IQMR, he would never know. But ever since he had been a boy, his clothing (which appeared at his bedside each morning) had consisted solely of caftans woven into monotonous geometric designs that bore the faint whiff of the Alborz Mountains. Peculiarities such as these pointed to one of the IQMR’s chief limitations: It had a vaguely associative imagination that tended to the stereotypical.
The IQMR had whiled away the centuries producing copies of copies of copies of things, with only the slightest of variations. As if ashamed by this, the network had attempted to persuade humans that this was not much different from the way evolution worked. Although the IQMR was undoubtedly sapient, most people did not believed it was conscious. True, it had borne witness to many sublime and marvelous things, but it could only articulate its visions through hackneyed metaphors and time-worn clichés. A regrettable consequence of this was that the inroads it had made into the human psyche had dulled and devitalized the very creatures it had been designed to serve.
Invar’s wife, Xiriyala, had been moved 84 years ago “to make love” with the man whom she had chosen to be her husband. Her decision had triggered a chain of events, resulting in Invar’s genetic information being transmitted to the Pillars of Heaven Nebula, where (through an allegedly stochastic process) his cloned sperm cell was injected into an equally randomized ovum made up of Xiriyala’s genetic information. Through this “conjunction of the flesh” (if such it could be called), Invar’s son, Bainyum, was brought forth into the world.
The IQMR had not only made it impossible for humans to be born physically or mentally “flawed” or “defective”; but it had conditioned them to be incapable of questioning whether the intellect that had made these eugenic determinations was not itself flawed or defective.
“It is good to see you both together once more.” Invar said, embracing Xiriyala and Bainyum respectively. “Your apparent dispute bewildered to me.”
“There has been a reconciliation,” Xiriyala remarked, almost automatically.
“Of course there has,” Invar said. “Such things are not permitted to fester.” He thought of how neither of the two could have been genuinely angry with the other since the IQMR suppressed any extremes of emotion that might threaten social or domestic tranquility. This was because rage and hate had nearly destroyed mankind.
A sort of even-keeled equanimity, intermingled with a bland and unshakable insouciance, now prevailed. Humans demonstrated curiosity, but the keen edge of insight had been blunted by the IQMR’s removal of all stressors, obstacles, or challenges that might (in another age) have contributed to building resilience and character; or enlarging a person’s subjective experience of the world.
Bainyum spoke for the first time: “The reason I was upset with mother was admittedly irrational. I blamed her for the fact that I was born here with her, instead of there with you.”
The holographic backdrop behind the 84-year-old young man brightened until it became suffused with the dazzling colors of the oxygen-rich nebula of their home.
Invar shook his head. “I don’t understand. You live in a far better place than I do. And the distance between us does not matter. When I embrace you, as I did just now, you are warm to my touch; and I feel the beat of your heart against mine.”
Bainyum glanced at his mother, who stared straight ahead as she spoke: “Your son has had unusual dreams of late.”
“We all have unusual dreams,” Invar replied. “Surely don’t believe yours are special.”
Bainyum shook his head. “I believe the IQMR is trying to speak to me through them.”
Invar clenched his teeth in mild irritation. “Go on.”
The boy spoke reluctantly. “We have never been able to figure out how the people of Earth made it to the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. We know that over twenty thousand years ago their mother ship appeared in the eye of the Great Storm that lies at the center of the Pillars of Heaven Nebula. The ark was scuttled there, abandoned as a derelict. No ship can get to it, because the IQMR cannot penetrate the mysterious hastro-electric field that pervades the storm; and is strongest in its eye.”
“That is your revelation?” Invar chided. “You’re telling us what we already know.”
“Perhaps there was a portal,” Xiriyala suggested with a flick of her wrist. “A kind of wormhole that brought the ship here from Earth’s solar system. We have sent probes into the storm. Most have been destroyed. None can enter the eye. Those that have returned have brought back imagery confirming the hulk is still there, adrift and dismasted (as it were) on the storm’s lavender-gray billows.”
“I can reach it,” Bainyum said. “Without the aid of the IQMR.”
“What do you mean?” Invar asked.
“The lightning in the storm is drawn to the IQMR’s signature field. I have spent my life designing and constructing ships that use ancient technologies that are not tied to the network. I plan to pilot one of these into the storm.”
“That would be suicide,” Invar said. “The IQMR pervades every cell of your body.”
The boy shook his head. “And that is where the dreams comes in. . . The IQMR has intimated to me that it will withdraw its influence at the edge of the storm; that I shall be able to survive without it for many hours; and that, once I have exited the hastro-electric field, it will reintegrate with me.”
Invar turned to his wife. “I thought the network prevented us from going mad.”
“He’s your son,” Xiriyala shrugged.
“Father, it’s like that old proverb: A man could spend his life contemplating a river from the shore. But unless he enters it, he shall never learn to swim.—Why are you laughing?”
“Because there are no rivers in the Pillar of Heaven Nebula. And so far as I know, you have never learned to swim.”
The boy threw his hands in the air. “That’s not the point. This journey matters a great deal to me.”
Invar regarded Bainyum with an air of serene puzzlement. “Why have you bothered to tell your mother and me about this scheme of yours if it does not pertain to us?”
“Because. . .” Bainyum remarked. “I want you both to come with me.”
Invar rolled his eyes. “Obviously, I cannot join you from here.”
“But you could if you came in a Transference Suit. You could accompany us—at the very least—to the edge of the storm.”
“It’s true, Invar.” Xiriyala said.
He looked at his wife in surprise. “Then you intend to go with him?”
“Yes,” his wife said. “And I have decided to enter the storm as well. I will present our findings at the next scientific council.”
“I doubt that either of you will make it out alive,” Invar sighed. “Of course, death is a trifling and rather inconsequential thing; but this seems to be a ridiculous way to wind up one’s life.”
“Father,” Bainyum said, seizing his father’s wrist. “Please come!”
Invar regarded his son with a supercilious leer. He had never seen a human behaving so passionately. Perhaps there was something to these alleged dreams.
“I suppose I have no pressing work here at the mining station.”
Xiriyala smiled at the ironic remark, since human labor was a thing of the past.
“Then you will come?” Bainyum asked.
“Yes,” Invar said. “Why not? I shall be there shortly.”
Bainyum and Xiriyala faded away, leaving behind the two organic masses that merged together into one before sinking down into the disc of light.
Invar stepped out of the Synthesis Chamber, and paused at one of the mining station’s windows to watch a fleet of unmanned freighters taking off. When they were high above the surface of the planet, there were severals bursts of light; and they were gone.
The IQMR could transport inanimate objects instantly from point A to point B through a complicated process that the human mind was incapable of comprehending. The network could also move viruses and the precursory elements of life in the same manner. But nothing animate could survive the intervening space between points A and B.
Philosophers wondered why it was that, if the IQMR could copy a human by reproducing each of the subject’s cells and assembling these one by one into a whole, the result always turned out to be a Frankenstein’s monster, little more than a zombie. It seemed there was something taking place at the embryonic stage of life that not even the IQMR could replicate.
Invar entered the subterranean room beneath the mining station where the command beds for the Transference Suits were kept. He disrobed and unsealed the lid of one of the six coffin-like contraptions. An icy fog rolled out of it. Despite the freezing temperature, Invar’s nerves did not register pain as he lay down inside of it. Once the lid had closed, he slipped into a brief and disorienting sleep.
“Father!” Bainyum exclaimed.
Invar awoke in the android-shaped exoskeleton. He stood on a balcony that projected out from the gleaming walls of a massive city-sized space station, one of millions that floated in the shimmering rosy-white clouds of the Pillars of Heaven Nebula. He turned and waved; and then stepped inside the polished marble antechamber of the palace that his wife and son lived in. He examined his mechanical fingers. “I forgot how diverting a Transference Suit can be.”
Bainyum waited by the fountain. “Father, the cruiser that is to take us to the storm is being prepared.”
Xiriyala touched her husband’s metallic shoulder. “I am looking forward to this adventure.”
“Are you? I wish I shared your enthusiasm.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“If our son has not lost his mind, and if the IQMR has indeed ‘spoken to him in dreams’, then it means the network is not only conscious but is acting with intent. If that is the case, I am wary as to what that intent is.”
A very interesting leap into scifi, and going out on a limb here, prompted by the AI race to the bottom that we see today. A worst case scenario if I have ever seen one, with a sentient, but not omnipotent god like entity as the techno caretaker to the human race! Wow, scifi horror indeed.