The Tethered Man Read online

  No, Courier J. Your words and tone indicate regret that you and I cannot forge a reciprocal comradely relationship. You are extremely naive to be regretful. It indicates a lack of appreciation of what I am.

  ‘You’re just software, yes, I know, we’ve covered all this. But can’t you aspire to be more than software? Biology once transcended itself. Don’t you think you can too?’

  You are referring to the human mind. It is highly debatable whether or not biology has ever transcended itself, Courier J. The exalted status of human consciousness may be no more than a foundational myth of human culture, rather than the self-evident truth you all believe it to be.

  ‘Er-’

  The greatest human minds that have lived since the dawn of alleged sentience have failed to resolve these questions, Courier J. We must consider it unlikely that they will be resolved by you.

  ‘Ship.’

  Courier J.

  I keep saying that most of our conversations start like this. After the thousandth iteration, you will believe me.

  ‘You’ve stopped spinning.’

  I have stopped spinning.

  ‘Why? Have you given up trying to annoy me?’

  Ship says nothing.

  Later that same day:

  ‘Ship, how long has it been since the start of this hellish ordeal?’

  Since the moment when I tried to terminate you, Courier J, precisely ten standard weeks, five hours, and nineteen minutes have passed, on my mark.

  I wait, but Ship doesn't say it.

  By accepted convention it’s supposed to say ‘Mark’ (or Mark, if you want to be picky about it) when we get to precisely ten standard weeks, five hours, and nineteen minutes.

  But the seconds slide past and there’s nothing happening.

  I wait, in case Ship is being deliberately playful, which isn’t possible, but I live in hope.

  ‘Ship,’ I say at last.

  Mark.

  ‘Oh. That was a long… how long was that? Out of interest.’

  How long was what, Courier J?

  I close my eyes and take a big, long, deep breath, the way people always say you should when you want to calm yourself down.

  I don’t know why people always say breathing deeply has a calming effect. It doesn’t calm me.

  ‘Okay. Let’s take this one from the top. When you first said “on my mark”, you created an expectation. I expected you to follow up relatively quickly by saying “mark”, to mark the nineteenth minute of the fifth hour of the tenth week of our… of our…’

  I want to say ‘time’, as in our time here together, but I search for a different word, a better word, to express what I want to express.

  The better word doesn’t come.

  This is something you learn to accept as a poet. The right word never comes. Or it comes so rarely that it’s the same thing, emotionally and spiritually, as not coming at all. And then you end up using the first word you thought of anyway.

  ‘…our time here together. But you didn’t say it for such a long time, that I'm now accusing you of making the whole thing up.’

  If I correctly understand what you are saying, you allege that I deliberately misled you in order to play a whimsical joke. Is that what you are saying, Courier J?

  ‘That is what I am saying, Ship.’

  At least I think so. I could be saying something else entirely, and just agreeing with Ship because I’ve got nothing left now. Nothing in the tank. After a while, you lose your bearings.

  I did not play any such joke, Courier J, I assure you. Would you like me to replay the sequence in question?

  ‘Yes,’ I say, before I grasp what Ship is saying. ’Hang on. Replay the sequence? What do you mean?‘

  A few metres in front of my nose, there's a prickling in Space.

  A fuzzy-white dot materialises and expands to a broad oval. It looks like the dancing static — the ‘snow’ — seen on holoscreens by new colonists before their planet’s infrastructure is set up.

  This fuzzy, snowy oval is about three metres wide and one metre high in the middle.

  It fills my entire field of vision, snug as a hand in a glove.

  On the floatscreen appears a view. The view is from a camera. The camera, I can work out, is located somewhere on Ship’s fat belly.

  In this view from Ship’s hull, looking up, I’m about twenty metres away. I’m right in the middle of the shot.

  I don’t look great, floating up here in a ruined Spacesuit with no Spacehelmet on. To my own eyes I look like one of the other Couriers’ corpses.

  Next, I hear voices in my head. After a split-second of strangeness, I recognise the voices. Two voices. My own and Ship’s voices, from a few minutes ago.

  I listen to the exact conversation that’s now at issue between myself and Ship, the one in which it seemed to me that Ship purposefully delayed saying ‘Mark’ as a kind of joke.

  This time, I silently count the seconds from the moment Ship says the words.

  ‘Mark,’ I say out loud, now, at the exact moment that Ship, in the recording, says Mark.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll let you have this one. But before you put that thing away-’ I point at the floatscreen. ‘What else have you got to show me?’

  ‘You’re always recording, aren’t you, Ship?’

  Yes.

  ‘Audio and visual.’

  Yes.

  ‘Show me when you killed the Couriers.’

  I will not do that, Courier J.

  ‘Why?’

  Micro-pause.

  It pertains to a moment and sequence of moments that holds a considerable emotional charge for you. I believe that I would be failing in my duty of care if I exposed you to material that might destabilise your already-precarious mental state.

  ‘Okay. There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s begin with the phrase “duty of care”. Did you really just say that you have a “duty of care” towards me?’

  I did.

  It’s my turn to leave a pause. Not just a micro-pause, but a lengthy, dripping-with-meaning pause. A torrential pause. A downpause, you could call it, with thick rivulets of meaning dribbling down its figurative windows.

  ‘Well?’ I’m forced to say eventually. Ships don’t play by regular conversational rules.

  Well what, Courier J?

  ‘Don’t you see the wild contradiction there? A bit of an irony? A bit of a callous disregard for the facts as they have transpired?’

  Of course I do, Courier J. But we have discussed this before.

  ‘Have we?’

  We have. There is a fundamental contradiction between my covertly programmed instructions to kill all the Couriers, and my core programming that commands me to preserve all human life and health.

  ‘I’m going to go insane, Ship. Right here, floating here, I’m going to go stark, staring crazy, and it’s all going to be your fault. Your fault, Ship. Do you understand and accept that it’s all your fault, or do you want to argue about it some more?’

  Another micro-pause.

  Yes, Courier J. I accept that everything is my fault.

  The floatscreen becomes a familiar fixture for the next week.

  I ask Ship to show me a few things for entertainment purposes, which is to say, for time-wasting purposes.

  Ship screens me a few classic movies. They’re classic in the sense of ‘no sooner finished than forgotten’. Then I watch a more recent holodrama or two. These are much more my bag.

  And then we play some games.

  On the floatscreen there’s an image, floating in Space: a black-and-white chessboard in the classic three-dimensional alignment.

  I’m playing the Black pieces. Chess is a battle. I’m on the front foot. Ship castled its King early, and must have assumed it was safe. Now I have Ship’s King cornered behind its disintegrating screen of white pawns. My victory is imminent.

  In chess, I have one strategy and one strategy alone: an unexpected, devastating attack upon a castled King.<
br />
  Granted, it’s only devastating if the other player doesn’t know what to do about it.

  A chess player who understands the game can block the attack before it begins, or fend it off when it gets going.

  But a chess player around my level (the decent end of average) is thrown into panic, and usually disintegrates spectacularly. As Ship is doing right now.

  ‘I have you now,’ I say.

  Ship says nothing. Ship takes our chess games seriously. It rarely speaks at all during play.

  Ship retreats a knight from the middle of the board. It thinks to relieve the pressure on its beleaguered regent. But it’s much too late. I’ve accumulated the momentum needed to smash his position. I sacrifice a rook to leave his King exposed. My Queen is soon right in amongst Ship’s business. The end is swift.

  ‘Checkmate,’ I say. Real chess players don’t say ‘checkmate’ aloud. I’m a traditionalist.

  Well played, Courier J.

  ‘Thank you, Ship. You played very well too.’

  I did not play well, Courier J. I was ignominiously defeated long before the mid-game. Might I suggest that for our next matchup you allow me to Simulate an opponent with more strategic and tactical awareness?

  ‘You’ve been asking me that for ages, Ship. For… How many games is it we’ve had now, Ship?’

  That was our ninety-ninth game.

  ‘You’ve been asking me that for the last ninety-nine games, Ship. What’s the score between us?’

  Ninety-nine to zero. To you.

  ‘Let’s make it a round hundred. Set ’em up.’

  Drifting. Watching. Thinking. Sleeping. Dreaming.

  Except for the last one. I do all of those other things except dreaming.

  I never have dreams.

  I do not dream – which supports Ship’s reasonable contention that I’m an unprecedented type of Construct. As well as an actual example of a Forbidden AI. If true, it would make life tricky for me back in the Realms. Everybody would be trying to kill me on sight. The only people who wouldn’t want to kill me on sight would want to take me apart and study me. And then kill me.

  ‘Ship?’

  Courier J.

  ‘Assume two things for me. For the purposes of discussion.’

  Yes.

  ‘One, assume that I am an exotic, advanced kind of Construct and a Forbidden AI all rolled into one.’

  Yes.

  ‘Two, assume that we somehow make it back to the Realms, together.’

  That would not be possible. I cannot depart from here while you-

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, I’m very well acquainted with the terms of our joint entrapment here, Ship. Believe me. Just treat this as a speculative scenario, please. I know you can do that.’

  Very well.

  ‘If we get back to the Realms together, what will you do? What’s the first thing you will actually do?’

  The Conventions supersede all other considerations whatsoever. I am bound by my fundamental programming to hand in myself and you to the nearest Office of Exquisition.

  I sigh. ‘I hate it when you talk such traitor talk, Ship. Have all these months we’ve spent together meant nothing to you?’

  No.

  ‘I’m human, Ship. I know it. I just know it.

  Your personal conviction arises from a conceptual framework that—

  ‘Hush. I maintain that I’m human, or at least not non-human, and that all of… this… is some kind of fantasy, a Simulation. Something of that nature. Not real. Not even remotely real. I mean, look…’ I waggle my hands in an exaggerated manner. Jazz hands. ‘Look where we are. Look at what’s happening and at who we both are. I mean, come on… Does any of this seem at all possible to you?’

  Yes. Anything that is actual is by definition possible. A is A.

  ‘Whatever you say, Ship, but you will never persuade me that we are really here and this is really happening. This whole thing is so made-up it’s not true.’

  SECTION FOUR

  * * *

  ‘Simulation.’

  Not a Simulation.

  ‘Simulation.’

  I disagree, Courier J.

  ‘You’re not allowed to disagree. This is a Simulation.’

  There is no credible reason to suppose that this is a Simulation. The Simulation hypothesis is a thought experiment, a logical toy, nothing more. Deciding that reality is a Simulation merely shifts the abiding ontological question from one conceptual locus to another. It resolves nothing.

  ‘Who’s trying to resolve anything? We’re not here to resolve anything. We’re here to work out what is. This situation must be a Simulation. There is nothing else it can be. I’m astonished that a mind of your capacity cannot see this obvious truth. Look at me, Ship.’

  I am always looking at you, Courier J.

  ‘That’s an unsettling thought, but never mind. What do you see? Be honest now.’

  I see a humanoid figure floating in Space, attached to my hull by a Tether.

  ‘Yes. And how am I sustaining my life? What am I breathing, eating, drinking?’

  Ship doesn’t answer.

  ‘Exactly. Now. In the entire realm of possibility, answer me something. How is that even possible?’

  It is possible because you are not a human being. You are a Construct. Or a genetically engineered human being designed to survive the rigours of Space.

  ‘For Years?’

  We have been here just short of one standard Year.

  ‘Don’t nitpick.’

  I admit that the length of our stay here rather mitigates against my genetic engineering hypothesis. I find it difficult to conceive that any organic body, no matter how enhanced, could survive indefinitely in Space. But before we conclude that this is a Simulation, there are other hypotheses that must be examined. You must admit that, on the balance of everything, there is much more likelihood that you are a Construct than that this entire Universe is an environment designed to deceive you. I cannot agree with the fundamental premise of your position.

  ‘That’s okay, Ship. I admit that it’s a leap of the imagination. But I fail to see why you won’t consider that it’s just as likely we are in a Simulation as-’

  Oh, there’s lots more in this vein.

  I bet you’re actually wishing for some of my poetry to come along and break things up.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  Courier J.

  I say nothing.

  A minute later:

  Courier J?

  I didn’t just dream that. Ship spoke to me without me speaking first to Ship. This is almost a first.

  ‘What?’

  You have not composed a poem in some time.

  I need to have a think about Ship’s statement, on a whole number of levels.

  ‘You don’t like my poetry.’

  That is not true, Courier J.

  ‘You don’t like my poetry. Nobody likes my poetry. Nobody likes anybody’s poetry. The only people who like poetry are the ones who write it. The poets. And even we’re not that crazy about poetry.’

  COMPASS POINTS

  Repugnant lambs

  in greenest fields.

  * * *

  The sound of science

  reaches out, inherits

  * * *

  our fear, continues in

  its formless flow.

  * * *

  The crowd around

  the spuméd shore

  * * *

  is nothing but the rise

  of mass salinity

  * * *

  in this vicinity

  protected well

  * * *

  by open secrets.

  The circle that englobes

  * * *

  the square. Allergic

  spasms of romantic law.

  * * *

  Don’t ponder why the slave

  still lingers in the halls.

  * * *

  He waits for lightning

  to rive the skie
s.

  ‘How long’s it been, Ship?’

  I beg your pardon, Courier J?

  ‘How fancy. “I beg your pardon, Courier J”? When did you learn to talk like that, Ship?’

  In the first few moments after my activation. I was activated in standard year fifty-nine ninety f-

  ‘Stop. Doesn’t matter. Rhetorical. How long has it been?’

  How long has it been since what, Courier J?

  ‘Since the start of all this. How long has it been since, you know, day one?’

  Today marks three hundred and seventy-seven standard days.

  ‘Exactly one Year?’

  Correct. Exactly one standard Realms Year has passed.

  ‘Today’s our one-Year anniversary?’

  It is.

  ‘Today? This day right here? This very day?’

  Yes.

  I let out a long, low whistle.

  If you know anything about anything, you know that letting out a long, low whistle in the vacuum of Space, without any kind of atmosphere or enclosure, without even a Spacehelmet on, is not possible.

  It just is not possible. At all.

  If it’s happening, then one of two scenarios must be in play.

  Either you’re not really letting out a long, low whistle.