The Changeling Game, Chapter 60

60.
Schrödinger’s Tablecloth

Audrey MacNamera returned to Tangiers Prime at the official age of nineteen and the real age of eighteen, on full scholarship to its prestigious Marrakesh University. She arrived in the city quietly, one of roughly a dozen students on the transport route that nobody knew she’d helped make possible. She pretended that everything was new to her, that the rebuilt spaceport was a place she could get lost in just as one of her compatriots had, and that the city, with its signs that relegated English to the bottom, was every bit as exotic to her as to other visitors from Deckard’s World.

When her first Introduction to Sociology class was over, she rose from the back of the auditorium and joined the small group of students who had stayed after to speak with the professor, hanging back until it was her turn. She waited until everyone else had had theirs, and the room was almost empty.

Dr. Takama Meziane blinked, almost stared for a second, and then managed a remarkable recovery, adopting the same professional smile she’d given all the other students. “How can I help you, my dear?”

“I’m hoping to declare my major in Sociology and was wondering if—”

The last of the other students had left the room, and Audrey found herself enveloped in a fierce hug. “Tislilel!”

“Audrey,” she corrected, even as she hugged Takama back. “Audrey MacNamera. And really professor, I’ve never been to Tangiers Prime before. I had no idea everybody was so friendly—”

Takama laughed, finally releasing her and looking her over. Audrey had grown another two inches in height since they had last seen each other, and her hair was no longer short but fell to her shoulders in dark blonde waves. Aside from that, though, she looked much the same, maybe a little less unfinished in her face and slightly curvier, but still—as Rachel liked to say—all eyes and elbows and knees.

Takama, herself, looked exactly how Audrey remembered her, down to the warm, motherly welcome in her eyes. “You will find that Tangiers Prime is legendary for its hospitality, young lady. In fact, perhaps you would like to join me for dinner this evening?”

“I’d love to. And seriously, I do want to major in Sociology…”

Takama was quick to catch on, as always, and introduced her to other members of the department that day, swiftly establishing the idea in everyone’s minds that “Miss MacNamera” was someone she had been planning to mentor since acceptance letters and scholarship offers had gone out. When they left campus together at the end of the workday, no one seemed at all surprised.

“I was meeting family above the city anyway,” she told Audrey as they walked toward a familiar garden complex. “I have not been back long, myself, and there is a new chef at the Gardens that my sister has been raving about…”

The Gardens. She pretended they were new to her, since they were out in public, but seeing them again tugged at her heart. Such wild things had happened there.

“Who’s running the food cart,” Audrey asked, “now that you’re teaching again?”

Takama laughed. “Lalla owns it now. ‘More food and less intrigue,’ is her philosophy.”

That sounded like a very good approach to Audrey.

“Come,” Takama said, taking her down a familiar pathway. “I will ‘introduce’ you to the family.”

Conversation completely stilled when she entered at Takama’s side.

“I hope we have room for one more guest at the table, yes?” Takama asked the waitress attending the family. “I am mentoring a new student at the University. This is Audrey MacNamera, from Deckard’s World. She is declaring a major in Sociology, and since she is new to our world, I thought I would show her around.”

“You may have competition for that honor,” Cedric said, his voice awed. Near the foot of the table, one diner had risen to his feet.

Ewan.

Their eyes locked as he came forward and took her hand in his. “Azul, Audrey,” he murmured.

“Azul,” she replied. She had missed that greeting. “Sorry, I don’t believe I’ve been told your name?”

Humor sparkled within his intense gaze, and lips that had starred in all too many fantasies quirked. “Ewan Zdan. Please, join us. There’s a free chair by mine.”

Although whatever she ate that night was delicious, she couldn’t remember much about it afterwards. The ait Meziane tribe folded her back into its number, pretending to welcome her in for the first time while subtly welcoming her back, suggesting that she might even come stay with them if dorm life and dorm food didn’t agree with her. Through it all, she could feel the weight of Ewan’s gaze on her, and the energy that crackled between them whenever their eyes met.

It was a morning-day and the heat was building, the sun’s intensity beginning to drive people off of the streets when the meal concluded.

“This is all so new to me,” she lied, enjoying the covert looks of amusement in almost everyone’s faces as they played along. There were a few new members of the family that she hadn’t met before, but almost everyone—Cedric, Safiyya, Tafrara, Izil, Lalla, Usadden, Takama, Ewan—was someone she had come to know quite well. “I’m still adjusting to the idea of a forty-four-hour day. And sleeping at noon.”

It was a bit of an adjustment for her circadian rhythm, but not that much.

“There’s no need for you to return to campus in this heat,” Safiyya told her. “Our home has plenty of guest rooms. Stay the overnoon, and Takama will drive you back to your dorm after the evening-day breakfast.”

Kyra’s fig tree was thriving in the courtyard, several fruits developing beautifully. She wondered how the fire bush was doing, and what the rooftop gardens looked like, but it was already too hot to ask to go see. She spent a moment admiring Tafrara’s garden and breathing in its perfumes. She was home, she suddenly thought. She had broken her trail and made it back—

“Come,” Ewan said, taking her hand. His gaze on her had an almost devouring quality to it that sent thrills through her. “Let me show you to your room.”

They walked up familiar staircases and down a hallway she remembered well. She almost stopped at the door to the room she had once shared with Kyra, but Ewan steered her onward, two doors further down, opening the door to his bedroom.

Its soothing blues and greens greeted her. Now she could see the paintings on his walls, brilliantly lit by the daylight filtering in through his balcony’s French doors. In a place of honor, fully completed, his mermaid painting hung. She realized he’d positioned it so it would be the first thing he saw from his bed when he woke.

Cloth rustled softly and she could feel the heat of his body just behind her back. His hands came to rest on her waist, making her breath hitch at the shock of desire that coursed through her.

“Wow,” she gasped. “I thought maybe time would change it, but your touch still just sends me…”

“Good,” Ewan purred, drawing her into his arms. “I was hoping it would.”

His mouth covered hers as his hands stirred fire in her skin. Her clothes seemed to almost melt away under his expert touch. A moment later, he had her on his bed, his lips on her bare skin sending waves of pleasure through her as he—

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!!!

Fuck!

Marianne bolted upright in her bed, pulling the neurofeedback cap off her head. With a groan, she flopped back down on the mattress.

“God damn it,” she whispered, struggling against the sudden tight constriction in her throat. A sob escaped a moment later.

She’d had that dream a half-dozen times so far, and she both loved and dreaded it. Every fucking time, the training program jolted her awake right as she was about to cry out his name in her sleep.

If she could have found a way to slip between ’verses and find one where the dream was real, she thought, she would go there and never come back. A hollow ache spread through her chest as she realized, all over again, that it would never be—could never be—true in her ’verse anymore.

She’d lost the Meziane family. She’d lost him. They might have promised that she would always have a home and family with them, but that was before she’d done the unthinkable… the unforgivable.

There was no returning to Tangiers Prime after the havoc she’d wreaked.

She let the tears fall for a few minutes before mentally shaking herself to get it together. She cried every time she woke from that dream.

The chrono in the First Officer’s quarters indicated that it was 3:32 am Federacy Standard. It was the longest she’d made it through the night without the program shocking her awake when she tried to say something in her sleep. She’d had no idea how much of a babbler she was.

The first ten days of travel along the new Tangiers-Plymouth route had passed uneventfully. The first Star Jump—a short one, only a few hours long, that had carried the ship several dozen light-years along its route—was behind her… and she was one ’verse larger in her “five-shape.” Although the ship was fully back in U1 and nearing the beacon for the second Jump, she could still feel U417c. She was connected to it the way she was to Elsewhere; had she been on the surface of a planet that was habitable on that side, she could have isomorphed into it at will.

And yet she didn’t really feel much different.

In just a few more hours, it would be time for the next Jump.

Future runs along the route would spend considerably less time between the first two jumps, but the protocol for a run-in flight was to traverse the distance between jump points slowly at first, gradually picking up speed later in the flight, to make sure that the Isomorph Drive didn’t run into any unexpected difficulties. Exactly what those might be, she didn’t quite understand. The manuals didn’t explain, and she’d hunted through them carefully for more information.

Sighing, Marianne put her neurofeedback cap back on, lay down, closed her eyes… and willed her mind into the Apeiros starfield. At least for her body, being in there was a lot like actually sleeping.

It would be nice, she thought drowsily, if one of her erotic dreams about Ewan could find its way to completion, since it would never come true in reality…

When she opened her eyes again, it was morning on the ship.

“Good morning, CommissAIry,” she said as she entered the dining lounge. “What breakfast flavors will we be trying today?”

Most of the AIs had decided to stick with their designations for names, since it was doubtful that anyone would board the ship with a similar name or title. CaptAIn still hadn’t chosen an alternative name for himself, but she wasn’t going to insist on one.

Someone had been feeling prankish when they programmed CommissAIry’s voice. “He” spoke English with a stereotypical French accent that made her expect him to start singing about “Les Poissons” at any moment. “Today, I thought we might try a Persian breakfast. Persian tea, lavash with feta and sour cherry jam, barbari with sarsheer and honey, tea eggs, a small bowl of adasi, and a plate of tomatoes, cucumbers, walnuts, and dates. Persian tea is a mixture of black tea and cardamom, sweetened with saffron sugar or, if you prefer, rose syrup. Lavash and barbari are two types of bread. Sarsheer is a cream spread with a slight caramelized flavor, and adasi is a lentil soup. Tea eggs are exactly what they sound like.”

“Hard-boiled eggs that have been boiled in tea?” She’d heard of it before but had never tried it.

“If that does not appeal—”

“Oh no, I’d love to try it. Thank you.” While there had been a few flavors on CommissAIry’s menu that hadn’t appealed to her in prior days, she had made a great many lovely culinary discoveries thanks to him. A week earlier, she had consulted First-AId’s health guidelines for the nutritional needs of adolescent girls on growth spurts, and had then sneaked those dietary requirements into her profile with CommissAIry. She knew that, even if a particular food didn’t turn out to be a keeper for her, it would at least help her stay healthy. Although it had been hard for the first few days to eat a full meal, her appetite had slowly returned to the almost-voracious level she’d had in the ait Meziane house. Once it had normalized, she’d discarded the bland foods she’d been choosing until then and, mindful of Nguyen’s request that she test things out for future crews, asked the AI to take her on “culinary adventures.”

They talked while she ate. Although CommissAIry had an encyclopedic knowledge of the recipes used throughout the Federacy, she was the first human being he had fed any of them to. He was eager to learn about her personal experiences tasting different foods, and which flavors and flavor combinations appealed or repelled. He seemed unoffended if she didn’t like something, although they would often spend some time determining why she disliked it and which ingredient or ingredients might have been responsible for her negative reaction.

Hers was the first subjective input he had received about how food tasted, and his curiosity about how she would react to different cuisines encouraged her to get adventurous, even trying dishes that she knew her cousins and classmates would have stuck out their tongues at and insisted were “gross,” such as the Kaleh Pacheh he had served for lunch the day before. She had found it surprisingly delicious, given its ingredients. After he’d told her what they were, she’d been unable to restrain a laugh as a line from a comically morbid twentieth century movie immediately popped into her head: “Start with the eyes.” It had led to a long discussion about the prejudices that some cultures had against consuming different animals or animal parts on the grounds that they were “gross,” rather than for health reasons or from an ideological perspective. Apparently, it wasn’t just kids who did that.

She’d kept her opinion of his accent to herself, although it was growing on her.

She tried the tea with both the saffron sugar and the rose syrup, and decided she liked the rose syrup slightly better.

Her morning maintenance routines flew by quickly; everything was green-lit and there were no anomalies to investigate or report. On impulse, she stopped by EntertAIn’s section, curious to see if the movie she had been thinking of was in “her” library.

“Good morning, Marianne,” the AI said as she walked in. EntertAIn had a female voice with an accent drawn from old Earth’s American South. “Are you feeling better?”

“Good morning, EntertAIn. Better than…?”

“You were distressed yesterday. I hope all is well now?”

Had she visited EntertAIn yesterday? She’d been thinking about watching a show, but…

…huh…

There was a strange gap in her memories, one she hadn’t noticed until just this moment.

“I think so…” She hoped so. What had happened? “May I see the logs of yesterday, please?”

“Of course.” The logs appeared on the screen nearest her.

Someone had tampered with them. With a chill, she thought she knew who. There was a link to a video recording, labeled “Watch Me,” among the cleverly hidden signs of redactions.

She was not surprised when her own face appeared on the screen, but it still sent a chill through her, especially because her eyes and nose were red from crying and her cheeks were wet.

“So, uh…” the Marianne on the screen said, wiping at her eyes and sniffling, “this is a really ironic way to tell you this, but… you are never, ever allowed to watch Doctor Who again. I’m serious. Don’t. For any reason. Okay? When it’s time to know why, you’ll know. Until then, don’t.”

That was the entirety of the message. Another quick check showed that the entire library of Doctor Who episodes, of which there were more than ten thousand, had been locked against her.

She could break the lock easily. She knew how. But why? So she could leave herself another tearful message sometime in the future, and find another blank space in her memories?

Blank spaces. Apparently she had been watching the show for the last few days before… whatever it was… had happened. All of it was gone.

“Is everything all right, Marianne?”

“Yeah…” she sighed and erased the Watch Me message, knowing that was required of her. “It’s fine. Just… slipped my mind.”

That was one way of putting it.

The last thing she needed was the AIs getting concerned about the Apeiros. And maybe they would have a good explanation for what had happened. She hoped they would.

At least, she told herself, if she did discover the Apeiros were some kind of threat, she could reach out to General Toal about it. He’d believe her.

If he didn’t just arrest her on the spot…

It was fine. It would be fine.

She had just enough time to check and see if The Addams Family was in EntertAIn’s library—and discover how many iterations and related titles that brought up—before it was time for her to report to the flight deck for the start of the next Star Jump.

“Good morning, CaptAIn, AIngineer, how are you today?” she asked as she entered the deck. She had decided to always observe the polite rituals of human interaction with them, even if they weren’t human. She was determined to think of them and treat them as if they were.

“Good morning, Marianne,” they answered together.

“We are well, thank you,” CaptAIn continued.

“How are you?” AIngineer asked, in a melodious female voice with a New Australian accent that made her think of Shazza. “Have you been able to solve your mystery?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Mystery? That stirred something, a sense that, over the last few days, she had been trying to chase down a specific episode of the show she’d apparently been watching, setting aside her catch-up modules in the process, to try to find a reference to…?

A nursery rhyme…? Glowing towers of light…?

Whatever it was, it was gone. She couldn’t remember what she’d been trying to find any more than she could remember what she’d found. But obviously, she’d found it, and it hadn’t been good.

I cooperated in the memory loss, she reminded herself. Whatever she’d found, it had been awful enough that she’d been willing to have it expunged from her head. Weird for something in what was frequently listed as a children’s show to have done that to her…

“Mystery solved,” she told the waiting AIs, smiling up at one of the cameras in her most convincing manner. “It’s all good. Wasn’t even all that important once I ran it down. So, are there any anomalies I need to investigate before our next Star Jump?”

“None detected,” AIngineer answered after the tiniest pause. “All systems are functioning well within operational parameters. We are ten minutes away from the Star Jump point and counting down.”

Ten minutes later, Marianne had confirmed that making small talk with AI systems was its own esoteric skill she had yet to master. They were far more goal-driven than human beings, and more capable of multiple points of focus. She finally found a promising topic when she got them discussing their prior interactions with humans, both at their original factories and after their installations upon the ship, but even that didn’t last long; most of the humans they had encountered before her had ignored them and treated them as just components of the ship rather than curious people to engage in conversation.

The inquiry almost backfired, though, because they had started to ask her questions about herself right before the Star Jump. Fortunately, the jump itself tabled further discussion. She was going to have to come up with a more elaborate backstory for Marianne Tepper than just the details she’d created for the personnel file, especially since they’d undoubtedly already read that.

“Arriving at second Jump Point,” AIngineer announced, “In five… four… three… two… one… Isomorph Drive engaging.”

A strange, soft shockwave passed through Marianne. She was in a new place. Her connections to U1, Elsewhere, and U417c were still with her… but she was somewhere else now. She could feel the difference…

AIngineer paused for a moment before continuing. “Transition to U133a complete. All systems nominal. Contact with wormhole in ten… nine… eight…”

She took a deep breath, watching the stellar anomaly approach the front windows. “I’ve often wondered why some of the universes in the Star Jump database have letters at the end instead of just new numbers. Do you know why that is?”

“Two… one… successful entry into the wormhole. Ion drives powering down.” AIngineer informed her. “As for your query, I know little about the numbering system, myself, which is curious. I do know that two days before our departure, I received a database patch that removed U322a from the list of vetted Star Jump universes. It has been replaced with U322b, which appears to utilize almost, but not quite, identical string frequencies.”

So General Toal had been right, she thought with relief. Further attempts to reach U322a—Elsewhere—had been discarded in favor of subbing in a replacement ’verse.

“Kirshbaum’s Multiverse Cluster Hypothesis,” AIngineer continued, “suggests that U322a and U322b might be divergent spacetimes that have branched off from the original U322, and that each of them has been selected as a replacement when something made first U322 and then U322a unsuitable for use anymore. That would be my hypothesis, but I have no solid data to confirm it with.”

Through the windows in front of her, the stars had begun to loop and swirl in a way that reminded her of their dance in the space where the Apeiros lived.

“It’s a good hypothesis,” she told AIngineer. “It makes a lot of sense.”

“Thank you, Marianne. With your permission, I am going to close the front shields, now that there is no longer anything to see through the windows.”

No longer anything to see…?

Oh. Oh.

“Do, uh… the wormholes always obscure the view of the stars?” she asked, pretending that her vision was as occluded as theirs.

“I believe so. No recordings of wormhole transits have ever shown anything.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. A shame for them. “If we could see the stars whipping by outside of the wormhole, I bet it’d look spectacular.”

“It undoubtedly would,” CaptAIn said. There was a hint of amusement in his voice. “Your schedule indicates that you are due for a meditation session in ten minutes.”

Yes. So she could speak to the Apeiros, and they could direct her on how to connect more closely to U133a. Then she would do her other daily chores…

…and then get back to studying, the way she was supposed to be doing, rather than chasing down wild and dangerous geese whose natures she could no longer remember.

It was an interesting thought, though, she pondered as she made her way to the recreation area and SensAI’s space. Was there a U1a out there somewhere? She had encountered some references to the Multiverse Cluster Hypothesis while reading the Star Jump manuals. Kirshbaum had claimed that there were infinite tiny iterations that could occur in a single universe’s path that would lead to small, almost negligible divergences. He’d likened it to the turbulence of a stream, where any stray splash might—or might not—strike the dry bank, but most of the water, regardless of how it frothed or didn’t, splashed or didn’t, still made it downstream without changing the overall effect of its journey. Especially minor changes might be erased by larger confluent events—he’d given an example of a tablecloth whose color, blue or yellow, no longer mattered after it was incinerated in a fire—a diverging universe reconverging with its source, while other seemingly minor divergences could reverberate outward until the changes were so profound that no convergence would ever be possible and a singular, discrete universe formed… and began creating its own clusters.

There was a universe, she supposed, where she actually had called General Toal… or had taken the scenic train ride instead of the express… or where Ewan had in fact spirited her away into the New Atlas Mountains instead of her only dreaming that he had. She envied the alternate versions of herself who lived in those worlds. There was a universe where the New Marrakesh Spaceport Explosion had never happened… a universe where the Scarlet Matador had never experienced a Level Five Incident… a universe where Riddick had never abandoned her… a universe where the Hunter-Gratzner had never crashed.

A universe where her father had never left for Furya… one where her parents had never divorced at all. Worlds upon worlds where the damage path she’d inflicted was negligible or nonexistent, where she had never become Jack B. Badd in the first place.

And a universe where the dream she kept having, of a reunion with Ewan, was possible in reality.

Would any of those differences have been significant enough to create a completely new numbered universe, or would they have all been negligible divergences that were ultimately swallowed by the larger flow of U1 itself?

One day, the Apeiros told her when she shared her ruminations with them, You will be part of those worlds, too. Once you have grown enough to hatch into your six-shape.

“So it’s true?” she asked them, floating in their space. “Kirshbaum was right?”

She had the weird sense that something about what she’d just said was repulsive to them.

You have expressed a truth known for longer than your universe has existed, yes.

“I need to ask you something. I found the message I left myself. Did you take my memories?”

Yes.

“Why?”

You could not have survived retaining them.

“Memories about a centuries-old vid show?” It seemed weirdly ludicrous.

It led you to another truth that you are not yet strong enough to face. Your memories will return once you have the needed strength. We will not keep them from you forever.

“Could… you take… other memories?”

You have asked us this before. No. We will not take knowledge that you need to keep if you are to successfully hide from the demons of the darkness. Even if the knowledge is almost as painful as what we took from you.

She must have asked them before they took her memories, she realized. “How much did I tell you when I asked last time?”

Enough to make us sad for you. If you did not need them, we would take them. We do not like seeing you suffer. But sometimes, there is no other option. You will survive this pain. You would not have survived that which we took away.

Would she survive the pain? She supposed she already had. It still lanced through her whenever she thought about it, both the grief and the guilt… but she was learning how to shunt it to the side for more immediate concerns. Maybe she could build a cocoon around it, make it a part of her memory that, although it wasn’t actually missing, would be a place she rarely or never visited.

There was nothing she could do to change what had happened, recover what she’d destroyed, undo any of the damage she’d wrought. All she could do was move forward, and maybe find a way one day to do enough good to balance out the terrible harm she had done.

That is, perhaps, all anyone can do. Are you ready to make your new four-space part of your five-shape? they asked, and she realized that they had probably heard all of her ruminations, whether or not she had put them into words.

“I am. Let’s do it.”

You, who are watching… you, bringer of light in the darkness… you with Her seed glowing brightly inside you…

We see you, too.

…the fuck…?