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| BACK to contents: Chapter nine | A brief introduction to J. Staute |
THE STORY SO FAR: Just as doom descended upon the crew from several different directions simultaneously, they were miraculously snatched away into entirely different circumstances! Or were they? An all new player entered the scene, thereby setting the stage for a clash between fantastic mental titans from opposing future eras: with Staute's own all too frail human mind serving as the battleground.
Exquisite ecstasy flowed into intense agonies. Hellish, sadistic demons danced upon my soul.
I felt suddenly cold. And woke up to an unusual sight.
A glowing white body floating near to me!
I jumped up and away from the thing.
It seemed startled.
It was shaped like a woman. At least superficially. But it didn't look human.
At first I thought it was naked and hairless. But upon further consideration I figured it was wearing a skintight suit which covered it from head to toe.
It was as shapely as a human fashion model. Very pleasing in that respect.
But everything else was strange. Not right at all.
Everything about the woman-thing's covering was a glowing white color. A soft glowing white. Like the sheen of a pearl, I realized. A silvery, shining white.
Even the eyes were that same all silvery color. That part was the scariest. I could see no pupils, but could tell the eyes were looking at me anyway, somehow. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Where the hell was I now?
The surroundings showed I was still in the same great room I remembered from before. But there was no sign of the big floating knot. The only thing different was I was no longer alone. The white figure now floating a few yards away from me was at least human-shaped.
I heard something like a bird singing. But not a bird. The music was oddly familiar.
Turned out it was laughter.
Laughter coming from the bald white woman-thing. Audible laughter. Not an effect communicated over the net.
"Who are you?" my voice rasped out, almost too quiet to be heard. I was losing my voice from disuse, it seemed. Saying the words caused me to cough.
The musical laughter continued a moment, then changed to something else.
Love, my love, do you not see?
I am you, and you are me.
Living and dead, here and there,
Destiny calls us, for this to share.
The music carrying the words was beautiful. It pulled at me.
The woman looked familiar.
And I remembered my dream.
I'd dreamed of Sue Anne, while in reality this...thing had been with me. I trembled in a confused mix of emotion. Anger, loss, humiliation, fear.
As the seconds mounted, I also became aware of a shroud of exhaustion and dark depression settling over me. Despair approached in ever broader steps, signaling the coming of a monster headache and worse.
Come come, my love,
there is nothing to fear,
I am your beloved,
and you my most dear.
There was something about the thing which strongly attracted me. But I knew better.
I tried focusing on my shush net node through the mounting pain, to call for help from the Pagnew.
And inadvertently ran smack into the waiting mind of the white witch.
It was a searing, white hot thing.
For just the briefest instant, it burned like the fires of hell.
But that only lasted until I'd revved up enough to synchronize with it. You might say the experience was something like suddenly realizing your clothing had snagged onto a moving train and if you didn't manage to jump on you'd be dragged under the wheels.
Yep, I'd say that pretty much sums up the feeling of initial link up.
Too, when my own rhythms matched pace with the other, my pains, sorrows and fears all fell away as if by magic.
I began to realize what had been happening to me over the past couple of hours.
Symantici and I were in Sol direct link again. We had been before, but my conscious mind had been only partially engaged then, and so was stunned upon awakening. It didn't understand what was going on. Now I was consciously in the link, and everything was crystal clear.
Symantici and I were one. Our united identity spun lazily about its axis, joyous in its completeness and contentment.
Symantici had never meant to harm me. And in fact was incapable of it, in any voluntary fashion. As I was with her.
Neither had Symantici meant to unnecessarily deceive me. The original projection of Sue Anne had been a desperate bid for survival on her part. And had pulled me back from a deathwish that could easily have been otherwise realized, since I'd been drowning in trauma from the mental conflagration going on in my skull at the time.
Sym admitted to me her original goal had been to scan my memories and experiences of the past as part of an investigation into what the whole Pagnew-related mess was about. All sorts of strange and conflicting data had streamed in from the Sol fleet we'd hung out with previously. And part of Sym's job was to make sense of such things for the local inhabitants. But when she invaded my head she found someone else had gotten there first.
Being that Sym and I were one in the link, I didn't hesitate to believe her, for I could see and recall everything which had happened from her perspective, much as she could herself. In the link I was Sym and she was me. So Sym had a ringside seat on the experience from my side of the aisle as well.
[There is a very strange sense of inevitability and acceptance here, on the part of my supposed younger self. The memory conveys the same to me. It's like we've subconsciously known someone else was in our head for a while now. Plus, the wild trip aboard the Pagnew has so broadened our horizons that we're now taking even the most extraordinary and potentially alarming events in stride-- almost treating them as routine.
Too, there's a deep calming effect flowing from the link with the Sol. Indeed, this may be having the greatest influence of all on our respective attitudes towards these matters.
I wonder though if my younger self could remain this calm outside of the Sol's mental influence?
The link with the Sol also reveals Symantici had considered and rejected certain possible explanations for the mysterious entity which had thrown her together with my younger self. Possibilities like the entity being an artifact of the mental illness which was common during the 20th century. That it might even be related to the initial creation of the Signposts document itself.
But regardless of the true origin of the seemingly separate intelligence, my primitive self's possible contribution to history made it far too risky for the Sol to make any attempt to remove or modify-- or even closely examine-- the unexplained presence in my young self's mind.
My younger self picks up on all this of course-- otherwise I wouldn't recall it here. But he's curiously nonchalant about it. Again, perhaps because of the Sol's influence. Too, I see no way to determine how much (if any) the separate...personality...may itself be affecting my younger version's behavior.
At the moment it's like younger me doesn't realize or care that this anomalous presence may greatly increase the chance of he-- and I-- truly being the Staute revered by various parties here.]
We knew what had happened to us, and how. But we didn't know why. Or where this Ovizatataron character could have come from.
Together over time we would try to find the missing pieces of the puzzle.
But the mystery of Ovizatataron would have to wait. For it wasn't the only thing missing a section or two. There was also Sym herself.
At this time Symantici was relatively crippled so far as Sol entities go. So I had to serve as a missing piece of her Triad until a replacement module could be fitted into place. I helped her set the repair into motion by enabling her to contact some of her Sol friends about the matter. It didn't take long to get what we needed to re-integrate her psyche.
Basically all I had to do to help was be with her in the link. It was that easy.
The thought of contacting other Sol didn't bother me in the least, since I knew through Sym that her Sol associates were vastly different from the male Sol we'd been dealing with before.
As the direct link gave me virtually the same access to Sym I had while replacing Redbywar in the triad, I felt no loss once repairs made my triad role no longer necessary. Instead, I felt the same relief as Sym that she was now whole again. As well as some pangs of regret for how both our lives were now permanently changed in ways we could not have anticipated before.
Naturally a great hub bub was threatening to erupt over what had happened to Sym, and our link up-- and of course, the whole matter of the misplaced Pagnew itself. There were way too many Sol in the know about much of this to keep the lid on it for long.
It wasn't that the whole Sol public now knew everything which had taken place-- but there was an inkling out there. The elite Sol and Colonists were the ones who knew the most. And Jerrera's crowd too, of course.
But despite the fact Sym now had to relinquish the high office she'd previously held, she still had friends in high places. One of these friends I was surprised to discover was her ship. At least, I'd thought it was her ship. But it wasn't. It was actually a High Sol by the name of Thantia. One of the top few dozen Sol in this local area of Realtime, my Sym memories informed me. We'd been inside her the whole time we were being mentally bludgeoned or whatever by Ovizatataron-- and she hadn't lifted a finger (or a tendril?) to help! Apparently because the way the conflict played out Thantia herself had little indication of what was happening at the time.
Anyway, the Sol political theater which followed was quite confusing-- to put it mildly. Even with the benefit of being privy to Sym's thoughts I found it hard to fully grasp just what was going on. There was just too much about every matter it seemed, to all fit in my head at once-- and so I couldn't comprehend the forest because I couldn't cram all the trees into my skull simultaneously.
Unfortunately, even with a Sol direct link both partners tend to retain certain restrictions stemming from their basic physiology and education. Sym trying to explain her Sol conversations with me was like me trying to explain the differences between TV movies, TV news, and TV commercials to a three year old. Just plain old insufficient data in that young head, ma'am. Sorry.
My (and the Pagnew's) legal status were one holy mess. So was Sym's too, now. There was immense pressure to separate the crew from the ship and each other, disassemble the ship immediately, then begin a massive investigation into everything remotely related to us. Thankfully Thantia had the clout and the inclination to save us from all that-- at least for a while.
It turned out Thantia wanted the same things Sym and I did-- one, to spend some time recovering from our forced link up and its ramifications-- two, figure out where Ovizatataron came from, and why he'd orchestrated our union-- three, try to discover what the Pagnew was doing here, and why-- and four, correlate all this other stuff with the possibility that I was the Signposts Staute, and see where that led us.
It was a tall order, but the entity that was both Sym and I was hopeful over our chances for success.
One of the first things Sym and I had to do was consolidate our unity-- rearrange our psyches a bit to make our integration more comfortable and functional. We needed to restructure our relationship now that Redbywar had been replaced with the aid of the Sol medical facilities. Part of the job was simply exploring who we were, both now and before.
During a link I satisfied my own curiosity about why Sym couldn't replace Redbywar on her own. Turned out that capacity had been present in the earliest Sol-type beings, but proven dangerous. Think about it: if people could readily perform radical brain surgery on themselves in a painless and easy manner, pretty soon a sizable portion of the population would almost certainly drive themselves wacko with it. In the proto-Sol beings that's exactly what had happened. But there were other flaws too besides that one, leading to an even larger proportion of crazy super-beings than the one would have generated on its own. Yikes! So of course all these things were fixed. Hence, Sym's inability in the present.
Sym was not a single person but a conglomeration of hundreds of sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating micro-personalities and/or drives or priorities. At least from my perspective. For I could easily distinguish hundreds of different voices, different minor intellects, if I cared to look past the facade of her single topmost face, single loudest voice, single most over-riding consciousness. At lower levels I perceived Sym to be a crowd of people conscientiously going about their business in a nice and orderly fashion, just behind the Sym I saw when I looked into her eyes.
When I say she was the equivalent of hundreds of people, I use the term 'people' to mean the partial intellects which populated much of the twentieth century experience. For it always seemed to me many of us hid away and left unused and unengaged much of ourselves in our jobs, our relationships, and our other activities on a regular basis, for a variety of reasons. Partly we did this to hide away parts of ourselves we didn't think others would like or be interested in. Partly we did it to make it easier to disguise ourselves, to look like something we weren't, either in search of acceptance or simply to survive various adverse circumstances. Partly we did it because we ourselves simply didn't know how or didn't want to cope with certain aspects of our own personalities or intellects. Whatever the reason, many of us traveled through life displaying only fragments of ourselves to others, using only some of our abilities. With the result that advanced aliens scooping up a random sampling of us from a street corner would probably notice few of us were really 'all there'. That is, most of us consisted of only partial human beings, due to our conscious or unconscious restraint on big parts of our abilities and sensibilities.
The hundreds of different voices which made up the total Symantici I knew and loved were like that bunch of twentieth century folks scooped up by aliens. Each individual voice was a person, but not a whole person. Many were superb experts or specialists in a certain area, but became jabbering idiots if confronted with something that didn't belong to their particular domain. They were all 'niche' personalities, which somehow worked in concert to form the totality which was my Sym.
After a while in my relationship with Sym I became aware something was different about me. Something more than the changes made necessary by our merger.
It turned out my interaction with Sym was subtlely rearranging my own neural network!
My neuron linkages were no longer exactly as they'd been prior to the merger. Sym had found problems in my connections, she said. Problems like bits of damage here and there, from my past. Damage caused by bouts with physical violence and minor malnutrition, fever associated with sickness, and excesses of alcohol and other mind altering substances.
But some of the worst items I'd caused myself with bad habits in processing, according to Sym. It turned out that for humn from my time most all this stuff was normal. But the habitual abuse of my brain with largely self-inflicted overdoses of depression, loneliness and self-loathing had warped my psyche, leaving me significantly disabled mentally in some important ways.
In direct link a shared personality always fixes any problems uncovered in any component automatically (if possible). In one way this exercise was just a very advanced form of the grooming practices hominids had performed for one another millions of years ago. Physical grooming had evolved to mental grooming. That's just how it was. And Sym had performed these alterations on me in pretty much an unconscious fashion-- it was basic instinct for the Sol. And it was quick. Only after the deal was done did Sym realize her normal link behavior may have jeopardized my essential historic nature and role. But she just couldn't help it. Improving my cognitive functions in our initial merger was for Sym like it would have been for me in the 20th century correcting a mispronounced word by a child learning to read. It was that easy, that quick, that automatic and unthinking for Sym.
[Hmmmm. 'The information must flow.' A hacker's dictum for the nineties. Looks like it caught on big time in millennia to come. According to this recollection anyway. To paraphrase an anti-drunk driving ad, "Friends don't let friends process inefficiently."]
But of course there were some spots inside me Sym dared not go or attempt to repair, even subconsciously. Because that was where Ovizatataron lived.
Ovizatataron was strong. And scary. He'd consumed Redbywar and injured Sym. But when Ovizatataron started to go further and kill her, I'd stopped him somehow. I had to admit I liked the hero part of the story. And the whole thing did seem vaguely familiar, in a weird kind of way. But familiar like a fading dream, was all.
Fortunately, although Sym remained wary of Ovizatataron, she didn't fear him anymore. The reasons included my apparent ability to protect her from him, the fact he hadn't shown himself to us again in our links, and certain precautions Sym had since added to our unity state which would automatically call in help from Thantia and other Sol resources if needed. Sym and her associates also harbored an intense fascination with both me and my apparent inner demon. And Sym herself in direct link with me seemed the safest and most thorough way to investigate the matter.
Which of course meant more lovin' for yours truly. Yay!
Sym was an old hand at Sol direct links. But encountering vivid memories of human hormone fed passions and undergoing actual personality modification at Ovizatataron's unseen hand had made our own direct link practically a religious experience for her. Not to mention the fact that I'd made her into the woman she was today! Ha, ha. I loved that!
Symantici, Sue Anne, Sol.
Woman.
The transition was unlike any other in memory. Not even the Matux Trials had so drastically changed the fabric of this id.
Symantici noted intriguing new depths in her persona. But she also perceived new limits.
The change was at once both liberating and constraining. A paradox unlike anything in the persona's prior experience.
She.
She.
She!
This new aspect of her persona was bittersweet. From a purely logical perspective it was abhorrent and degrading. And yet something within her welcomed the change. Celebrated it, as if a new season of growth and opportunity had come upon a once desolate wasteland.
I knew all Sym's memories now, just as she knew mine. I could see how both our paths had converged.
And I could see the tracks of Ovizatataron in our psyches.
Our combined intelligence and integration of observations showed us that he'd manipulated us both into the present accord.
But we forgave him. For we were now more than either had been alone.
And happier.
Ovizatataron had not re-emerged from his hiding place since the merger. Somehow he was able to hide himself well within the framework of my own neural network. Symantici informed me that though she'd been unable to inspect that region of my mind for flaws to correct, she was sure Ovizatataron had already done so. For such a being could not be comfortable in an environment limited by old damage.
Symantici was fascinated by her newfound sexuality.
I was amazed at what the mental link added to the mix.
We played for a long time with our new toys-- each other.
The changes which had occurred in the human race since my time were astounding. In my tour with Ling I'd been able to observe our posterity more than 500 years into the future.
Now with Sym I was given a look at the race another 340 years beyond Ling's time.
Some of the trends at Ling's origin had crystallized into policies and tradition by Sym's, while others had taken bizzare and unexpected paths.
The government itself generated new people-- at least in most cases where the Sol were concerned. By this time the Sol were but one branch of the humn. There were many other completely different races now, all descended directly or indirectly from the same humanity as the Sol. Depending on who you asked, the child races humanity had boosted to sentience from other species such as chimpanzees and dolphins were or were not members of the humn.
The government process which produced new Sol citizens was called Issuance.
It took a while for my euphoric afterglow to retreat sufficiently that I thought about Ling and the Pagnew. But any concern I had for them was instantly assuaged by my connection with Sym. She had perfect knowledge of their whereabouts and status, and so I did too.
Symantici had rescued us from her fellow Sol. It had been she-- having temporarily assumed Jerrera's looks-- who had appeared after his capture and worried Arbitur and I so much.
Arbitur had taken over the synthesized Sol body I'd previously controlled to grapple directly with the new apparent threat. Symantici had easily overcome him and downloaded everything he knew.
And then she'd come for me.
I sure was a popular fellow with these future folks! Ha, ha.
I now felt a lot different about myself than when I'd begun this trip.
In the twentieth century I was a down and out college kid with an uncertain future, precious few friends, and even fewer prospects for female companionship.
Now my future was supposedly something important, I lived among undreamt of wealth and technology where things were driven literally by imagination, and I had two-- count'em! Two girlfriends!
At once!
I so wished Steve could see this!
Symantici was amused by my perspective. As far back as my own twentieth century, multiple-- even simultaneous-- intimate relationships were not uncommon for either sex.
Maybe she was right. But they'd sure been uncommon for me!
Of course, they'd been just the opposite for Steve.
I realized then that maybe I should be glad Steve wasn't here after all.
My friend Steve would have fit in a lot better than I with these classes of people. Hell, knowing Steve he might even had taught Ling and Sym something they didn't know about many things, like sex and mind games: those were two of his favorite pastimes!
He likely would've stolen both Ling and Sym from me, had he been here.
And then set out to conquer the entire female side of the Sol race!
Symantici mentally chuckled at these thoughts. And marveled at my seeming ability to sidestep the anti-deception measures in the link to provide her with such a deliciously absurd vision.
She thought I was joking!
Anyway, Symantici had transported us and the Pagnew out of harm's way and to her own 'backyard', as it were.
I could see in her memory pools that we were indeed safe here. The male Sol would not dare approach uninvited.
We had Thantia to thank for much of this of course. She'd so far managed to keep a lid on the discontent of the community about me and the Pagnew's unexpected appearance in this Realtime, and its implications. Also our ruining of their perfectly good Tribunal.
But what of the renegade tech enemy we'd faced beside the male Sol? Weren't we in danger from them here?
No. Sym knew much about the enemy. She assured me that the entity was seeking only unimpeded development in that corner of space, similar to a wasp nest on Old Earth.
They were more a pest than anything else, I was amazed to learn. The male Sol had primarily been dispatched in their direction simply to keep them (the male Sol) busy and out of everyone's hair in the local colonies and vicinity. This was a common practice here.
From the perspective of Sym and possibly the colonists as well, the male Sol seemed to be little more than trouble-making vigilantes who-- like children-- had to be kept corralled and/or distracted via various measures for the safety of both themselves and others.
I kind of felt bad for my gender among the Sol-- I mean, it sort of made all men across all time look bad, the way the male Sol acted (Sym gave me all the examples of their past mis-adventures I could stand-- it wasn't pretty). Fortunately, there were plenty of males among the rest of the humn who were just as civilized as the female Sol-- so the male Sol mostly appeared just a notable aberration-- and NOT representative of all males everywhere.
But what about the Pagnew? Weren't Ling and the crew worried about me? No. Sym had informed them I was being 'interviewed' as part of an investigation and would be back in contact later. And I could 'see' through Sym's resources that everyone aboard the Pagnew were being very well treated, and been engaged with opportunities to learn about this Realtime that made even Ling too happy to worry much about me. I did touch base with Ling briefly a couple times since merger to confirm what Sym had told her. It turned out I could still get to Ling over the shush net-- to do so I just had to avoid the default option which now was basically the Sym channel.
Did I reveal to Ling how Sym and I had bonded? Nope. Not to deceive her. Basically I just didn't know where to begin in describing the experience to her. One thing I was certain of though was that doing that would require plenty of time. And at the moment both Ling and I were happily pursuing other ventures...
Sym herself was a full fledged inorganic by many measures. But her core was decidedly human, unlike that of Riki or Arbitur. And yet that core was organic only in terms of its blueprints. It was an inorganic version of Symantici's original biological neural net.
Sym was a typical example of her Sol generation in some ways. I.e., she'd had no parents. In other ways she differed somewhat. Her core brain's DNA pattern for instance was roughly one one thousandth of a percentage point different from her peers. Most modern Sol were more homogenous than this in their intellectual base patterns.
Most of the individualization of the Sol by far was performed via variations in their initialization (read: raising) rather than their legacy genetic coding.
There was a ceiling on how much information could be coded into the DNA chain. The ceiling was reasonably high, but not infinite. So when it was desired to upgrade the genetic pool the specialists eventually hit the ceiling, and began to edit out non-essentials to gain more 'elbow room' in the resulting code.
This was one of the reasons such a low percentage was available for the randomness of individuality.
So what new things did they write into the fresh script?
Great genius, for one. Or at least as much of the infrastructure as was known to be necessary for the process.
They'd been disappointed to find that works of genius did not automatically follow from such arrangements. That the percentage of actualized geniuses within the population actually declined from earlier centuries (this is in adjusted figures of course: for ancient populations often killed geniuses when they appeared, or else restrained them so heavily that they did not often reproduce).
So within the last century or so the Sol had raised the percentage of randomness allowed with a small portion of the new beings in hopes of reversing the trend. Sym was an example of such a test batch.
Unfortunately that meant Sym had lost out on a few other 'goodies' most of her generation had.
But anyway, besides generous support synapses for genius brainstorming, what else did the Sol geneticists do?
They hardwired in support for massive interfaces to nano-tech equipment and related software protocols. They also heavily beefed up the visual centers. And developed an extensive synthesis between the logical brain half and its inorganic support.
Early on some extremists had caused the more nebulous and dreamy side of the brain to become isolated from much of the enhancement process. The logical, linear working sections had gotten the lion's share of the developmental efforts. Two reasons for this had been that the dream side was much more complex and hard to understand, and hard to interface to concrete functions. Another had been the great difficulty encountered in getting quantifiable results from any improvements made to that hemisphere.
So the analytical side had enjoyed the greatest development, to the detriment of the creative side.
The creative side had been further diminished by the complete removal of biological hormonal tides from its environment. These factors had played a key role in its overall workings, being as they were essential to much of the emotional interplay the right side used to sift through possibilities.
Beyond this, they'd even stripped that hemisphere of a major responsibility: memory.
Memory storage was a natural function of the creative half. But the Sol had felt it too unreliable and incomplete in this duty. So they'd built special inorganic support hardware for that too, and put it mainly under the control of the analytical side.
The end result was that the dreamy, emotional, creative hemisphere of the human brain was left behind in the Sol's pursuit of perfection.
Sym's creative emotional half was lethargic and dilapidated when we met.
When she'd direct linked with fellow Sols in the past, few of those encounters had warranted much action on the part of that little used wing of her consciousness.
But I was a primitive. And my dominant half was my creative side (At least, that's what Sym told me after she'd done an analysis of me).
So when we came together in the link I naturally clicked with her starved half.
The resulting fusion was explosive. Maybe unexpectedly so even by Ovizatataron himself.
Though Symantici had welcomed me as an emergency replacement for her Redbywar node, and been aware she was giving me a brief but enormous role in her consciousness by the move, what she hadn't realized was the powerful magnetic attraction which would occur in direct link between an analytically dominated awareness and a creatively dominant.
So we'd fused with far greater force than she'd expected.
Most anyone reading this account in the twentieth through twenty-fourth centuries surely knows full well the seductive power of passion. Indeed, we 'primitives' must often fight it off so that we can maintain some semblance of logic and reason in our actions.
But Sym had never tasted this before. She hadn't even known it'd ever existed, except for the dry and lifeless historical accounts she'd studied in her sexless youth.
There's just nothing like the real thing.
Sym was starved for emotion, for illogic, for freedom. She just didn't know it.
Passion is to a certain degree what life is all about. Right? Right!
Of course, for all its wonderful qualities and potential, there was one big problem regarding direct link with Sym: I could never maintain it for very long.
I soon discovered why.
The experience, though wonderful and ecstatic, was also exhausting-- damn near to the point of being fatal. It was so stimulating that very rapidly you began to feel 'burnt up', as if your brain itself was beginning to smoke and on the verge of bursting into flame. This, despite the fact that Sym for my benefit was operating purposely at the slowest extreme of her processing range in such connections.
Needless to say, this was perhaps more frustrating for Sym than I.
Some sort of Sol 'fail-safe' would typically kick me out of direct link with very little warning when I appeared to be on the verge of suffering something like a brain seizure.
It was a jarring experience to go from unbridled ecstasy one second to the comparative vacuum of cold hard reality the next.
And too, my organic brain would automatically try to 'balance out' things by giving me a taste of hell to make up for the previous pleasures. On emerging from the link I'd be immediately struck with the king of all headaches, and a devastating sense of depression and loneliness. Depression and loneliness even worse than what I'd experienced in the 20th century. And that's saying something!
Direct link also did things like severely dehydrate and starve me. The normal maintenance functions of my second skin too even seemed disrupted.
For example, after one early direct link session I noticed on emergence that my hair was matted, my muscles had all gone slack, and my body exuded a strange odor the likes of which I'd never smelled before. My virtual trysts with Sym had some pretty devastating effects on my body chemistry, early on.
Even though I'd be in critical need of nourishment after the link, my appetite would be nonexistent due to the headaches, weird mix of muscle soreness and exhaustion, and black depression of the aftermath.
Fortunately Symantici was able to compensate for many of these things as she became aware of them. Her advanced Sol technologies were wonderful in this respect.
But eventually it began to dawn on me that this whole direct link thing seemed uncomfortably similar to a crippling drug addiction.
However, once link time came again I'd be so happy I'd forget all about the darker aspect of the experience.
In the ensuing sessions I encountered other strange and unexpected problems with regards to my Sol mate.
For one thing, Symantici was afraid of doing the 'real thing'. Even though we'd by that time done it hundreds of times in simulation.
I discovered Sym was unaccustomed to actual physical contact.
Of any kind. Whatsoever.
She'd not been physically touched since Issuance!
I was surprised to learn that despite what I thought, I'd never touched her either up to this point. Rather, I'd only touched a buffer field that fit her like a nano-tech glove over 100% of her body. Sym's buffer layer had been around an inch thick when I'd first met her. Which was why I got that weird impression the first time I'd physically touched her. Or thought I touched her.
Even Jerrera I was surprised to learn never dropped his own version of this field. Not even in his most amorous moments with the ladies. Those of us still primarily organic in nature couldn't detect any trace of this field on our own (unless the Sol involved wished us to). It was far too thin and close fitting to the Sol bodies at its finest settings-- thinner even than the second skin I now wore.
The Sol field was literally impregnable. Mainly because the Sol would automatically shift a zillion miles away if there was the slightest chance something might get through it. In the case that Sym's auto-shift didn't work, something greater than a nuclear blast at point blank range was required to bust her buffer field. Anything less could at most hurl her away at a few hundred miles per hour, unharmed. For her field would instantly turn to a mirror bright reflective, multi-layered hard shell all around her. Nothing of a four dimensional nature could penetrate such a shield. It was based on a variation of shifting technology, and essentially encased Sym in several super thin layers of six-dimensional space which exactly fit over the outer surface of her body. Realtime physical laws simply could not apply to the 6D layers, and therefore could not pass through them to affect Sym herself.
Since Sym could not physically move inside the ultimate version of her shield once encased, and the shield required practically every photon of energy she could generate to maintain, Sym herself would shut down. Not see, not hear, not think, not move, until the case reopened.
In effect, Sym's shield could make her a tiny little sleeping universe in her own right.
The shells would re-open again in a staggered, monitored sequence, to provide still more protection. Whenever one shell opened, a sacrificial layer of hardy instrumentality underneath it would gauge and judge the surrounding environment as to risk, and transmit the results via Heplinger Bridge past the second layer, to the third.
Intelligence built into the next layer would decide how much time to wait before it itself opened, exposing the next sacrificial shell.
Sym's normal internal energy sources could maintain full shielding of this magnitude for up to 36 hours, and no more.
But remember one thing: even if her auto shift and her 6D shell failed, Sym herself was made of very sturdy stuff. Something at least as tough as the fourth skins of Ling's origin. So she could still survive radiation levels equivalent to that existing very near the explosion at Hiroshima in WW II, temperature extremes of 5000 to 6000 degrees, at least several dozen gravities of acceleration (compared to old humn limits of about nine), and more.
So Sym was one tough cookie.
Learning all this made me wonder how come the male Sol had appeared to be vulnerable to the weapons of the enemy fleet earlier-- and then I understood. According to Sym's knowledge of things, the male Sol technology was consistently inferior to that of the female Sol, and even to that of many of the Colonists! Why? Again, it could be attributed to the males' predilection towards more primitive ways in general. They mostly avoided technology upgrades, and also the virtual realities like Fance where most all the information for such matters was stored. It wasn't that the males couldn't access the technology, so much as wouldn't. Because doing so would have required them (at least to some degree) to end their self-styled isolation.
Sym's primary tactile experience within her normal buffer shield was a sort of radar, which actually did give her a really wild form of perception. She could literally feel each pore in my skin with it (I know because the link let me feel through her senses).
It wasn't a human sense of touch, with different areas possessing different levels of sensitivity. Or the possibility of both pain and pleasure sensations.
To Sym, practically all physical sensations were the same. And she really had no erogenous zones-- except for her mind.
She just didn't have any physical comprehension of the subject beyond the implied elements she'd learned in the link from me.
It seemed that I learned a lot myself about sex, from experiencing Sym's curious lack of knowledge on the subject.
Once I became aware we weren't really doing anything, but just thinking it, I became very dis-satisfied with the status quo.
This mind sex was great, but it wasn't right somehow to do it to the exclusion of the real thing. Where I came from the closest thing to mind sex was your own imagination, and that was heavily frowned upon, to put it mildly.
I don't think any red-blooded 20th century American boy would feel differently about it.
But there were substantial obstacles to achieving such an event with Sym.
For one thing, it was amazingly difficult to persuade Symantici into having real sex. She'd been trained and/or programmed since Issuance to avoid 'physical collisions' and contact of all kinds.
Physical contact was one of the few real dangers the Sol still faced. So most all aspects of their existence (especially Sol like Symantici) were grouped about virtual experiences.
Heck, I learned that any physicality at all was fast becoming unusual for Sym's people as a whole-- except for the male Sol. And even they often spent time in pure data form, as Jerrera had been prior to our encounter.
It seemed the Sol were over time all turning into permanent machine ghosts like our own Will, Jorgon, and Yamal onboard the Pagnew. But those crew members had at least lived in physical form for many decades or longer before moving into their virtual digs. Many Sol never left Fance at all these days.
Owning a physical body was for Sol like Sym something like a rich 20th century person owning an expensive restored antique car (which had all its internals updated to the latest and greatest technologies available of course). Like that 20th century aficionado, Sym rarely actually got into her body and drove it anywhere. Usually she stayed in Fance like all good modern Sol. But to pose effectively as Jerrera in the remote location aboard the Pagnew, facing possibly unexpected challenges, she'd put on her body, shape-changed it for disguise, and made her foray. Once she'd dealt with Arbitur and retrieved me, she'd elected to pump me for information before 'changing' back out of her physical form. And that's the only reason she'd been corporeal when I met her.
And it seemed Sym's self-containment in her physical form may also have played a part in the isolation which left her vulnerable to Ovizatataron's designs.
Since our merger Sym had spent a far greater proportion of her time ensconced in her physical form than normal for her kind. And she'd also spent considerable effort re-configuring her body to something closer to what my own preferences for a human mate were like-- basically using my memories of Sue Anne for her template.
As I personally had always considered Sue Anne to be stunningly, achingly beautiful, I didn't put up much overt argument with Sym over her choice [cue wolfish howl here].
In direct link Sym had started out virtually identical to Sue Anne, but over time was subtlely changing herself to better express her own individuality while at the same time remaining pleasing to my own sensibilities.
After all, neither Sym or I wished for her to be a clone of Sue Anne. That wouldn't have been fair to anyone-- especially Sue Anne herself. I was certain Sue Anne wouldn't have liked any arrangement here which included a resemblance too near to her own likeness.
But of course as Sue Anne almost certainly had been dead now for centuries (and I personally hadn't had much conscious input on Sym's initial selection), I didn't worry too much about it. I resolved to try to be as good and honorable a fellow as I could in the circumstances though, so if somehow Sue Anne could see all this she might not mind so much after all.
So Symantici's looks rapidly diverged from Sue Anne's identical likeness in our link visions. Partly because I didn't feel it right for her to keep Sue Anne's exact appearance, and partly because like any woman Sym wanted her own style of appearance.
All the above concerned Sym's virtual look within the shared illusion of our direct link. Her physical appearance had been starkly different in the early hours and days of our relationship.
In cold hard reality Sym's utterly inhuman great loose knot look had first transformed into a near-featureless female humanoid shaped pearl-complexioned animated form (kind of a live but creepy-looking store mannikin or statue). Since then her body had been steadily becoming more human-like, both internally and externally-- at least in terms of my perception of it, and Sym's own project to learn more about the experiences of the primitive human females of my time.
But despite all this, Sym had no plans to actually let me touch her.
As far as the Sol were concerned, all physical action was to be avoided and everything done in Fance where possible (Fance is one name for the virtual side of their civilization, in case I didn't make that clear before).
If Realtime movement was necessary, it was well planned, and then executed at the highest possible speed for efficiency. This allowed those involved to return as quickly as possible to the proper state of being, which was virtual. Note here that the recommended high velocities of movement made collisions potentially an even more devastating possibility for the Sol. This 'need for speed' apparently stemmed mostly from the Sol's abhorrence of Realtime and its snail's pace of progress, compared to Fance.
There also was the recurring incidence of renegade technology to consider. This included criminally programmed buffer fields, virus programs, and others. The Sol were vulnerable to such things, even in this far future. Direct link supposedly automatically filtered out such threats via the most advanced protection agents known to Sol science. Somehow though Ovizatataron had managed to defeat or bypass those safeguards-- perhaps with a little help from Sym's own negligence.
So the Sol tended to consider their greatest vulnerability by far to be physical proximity to any threat; ergo, actual contact was considered the greatest danger of all to their well being.
As a result of this, Sym's whole existence revolved around not actually touching anything. Can you believe it? That the human race had become like gods, and in the process become terrified of touching anything? Including each other?
This reasoning had been one of the driving forces behind the development of the Sol probability triggered auto shifts. It had grown out of a measure originally designed to prevent actual contact or collision with other physical objects!
So if Sym could be persuaded to do so, we had to defuse her auto shift, disable her tight little buffer field, grow her a synthetic human-style nervous system through which to feel differing tactile sensations, and defeat her strong instinctual prohibitions against much of the above to give her just a portion of the capacity for love-making a standard 20th century female had as standard equipment.
It helped a lot that I had been, however briefly, a member of Sym's Triad. The fact that her analytical nature was so fascinated by my paradoxical dreamy side didn't hurt either. Despite my primitive nature and her total access to my consciousness, I defied her ability to understand me, much as her complexity defied my own attempts to grasp her. Naturally though, her algorithms looped furiously trying to figure me out, even as I just accepted the fact I couldn't do the same with her. Indeed, it was finally this aspect that put me over the top in convincing her.
For she couldn't resist compiling more empirical data with which to analyze me.
We would turn off her probability defense mechanism first. I felt in her mind at the time a sense of 'nakedness' that someone in the twentieth century would feel if they were considering removing their clothes in a public place.
She grew herself a nervous system to approximate that of a human female from my own time, based upon examination of historical data and the anatomy of both Ling and I (I didn't know about the anatomical examinations of Ling and myself until after they were fait accompli; the Sol could easily do this at a distance with subjects like ourselves completely unaware of the invasion). Other details were involved as well, such as applying special disabling programs upon her physical behavior and personal defense systems so that Sym couldn't accidentally disintegrate me any number of ways as a reflex action on her part-- if and when we ever actually touched.
Yes, physical contact with a Sol female was definitely lots more trouble than the link kind.
But even after all the preparation, when it came down to actually doing it, Sym discovered within herself a towering wall of reluctance.
Though frustrated by Sym's reluctance to physically 'go all the way', I also experienced a certain delight in the irony. For here was this beautiful goddess of a woman (with her continuing transformations both virtual and physical, she looked better every day)-- powerful enough to burn me to a cinder in a second-- as timid as a twentieth century virgin her first time out!
It was a bit of a shock to me to realize that Sym truly was a virgin. Indeed, she was technically more a virgin than any girl from my own time. Because twentieth century virgins in the teenage social circles had usually been female since birth; possessed at least fourteen to sixteen years of experience of being feminine, and of possessing a sexual identity (even if only an immature one). Sym on the other hand had only turned physically female a matter of days before.
Too, twentieth century females had experienced physical contact all their lives, long before their first sexual escapades. They'd floated in their mother's womb for nine months. Doctors had delivered and examined them. Parents had hugged and carried them. Siblings and friends had fought and played and slept alongside them.
Sym though had never physically touched another being in her life.
How much stranger and more alien this experience must seem to her, in anticipation, than to a typical twentieth century innocent.
And yet Symantici was regarded as fully matured in her own culture-- though not as mature and developed as High Sol like Thantia, of course.
Even after she was prepared physically, we still ended up going several more sessions before I could persuade her to go the rest of the way.
The clincher came when I had the bright idea to have her do a projection of the risk I myself faced from the encounter too, if Sym were to somehow lose the precise control she had over her body.
Remember that Symantici was a Sol. With a nano technology body. Literally super strong and super tough.
It would be all too easy for Symantici's dazzling form to become a gorgeous meat grinder for me-- a poor, frail human male from the ancient past.
Though the probability of this happening was extremely low, still it existed. And so could be examined in virtual reality by Symantici herself.
This contingency showed her that I too would face a risk similar to her own. A higher risk in fact. For there was negligible risk of me harboring something which might do comparable damage to her. Even Ovizatataron could not pose a risk in physical encounters anywhere near that he'd presented in the link. Since the merger Ovizatataron had remained pleasingly dormant. Plus, if Ovizatataron was an infection, Sym had already suffered through him. She now was 'inoculated' with a formidable array of specially designed programs and other resources to shield her from any more of his shenanigans. And all that was atop her one already proven defense of having me in the link too. After all, I'd already chased him off once (somehow).
Indeed, Sym now welcomed the thought of Ovizatataron attacking her again. For the moment he emerged from hiding in my neural net he'd be vulnerable, and Sym might could force him out entirely.
I must admit there remained some sensitive territory here about what would be done with or to Ovizatataron, if a handy opportunity did arise. For we really couldn't say for sure that he didn't belong there; he might be important to me someday doing the Signposts document. Maybe the Sol outside our little local circle would eventually override this uncertainty: but it didn't appear Ovizatataron faced much of a threat from Sym, Thantia, and I so long as he didn't threaten us first.
When Sym finally did relent to my desires, she managed to put things off yet another session by insisting we do things in the ancient manner, if we were to do them at all. I didn't quite understand what she meant, but had to go along with it.
After all, it was the only choice she gave me.
Next came a very different session indeed.
For one thing, we didn't go immediately into direct link, but instead stayed entirely in Realtime, and in our own heads.
We even spoke aloud instead of communicating over the net!
I was stunned. And pretty rusty, verbal-wise. I needed help several times from floating medicinal buffer fields to keep my voice box working correctly after such a lengthy period of disuse. And just like Arbitur had earlier predicted, I'd begun forgetting how to pronounce many words at all. Ack!
But Sym and Sol technology helped me surmount many of the obstacles which faced me after my prolonged mute period of past weeks.
Sym had apparently accelerated her human transformation since our last meeting. Though her skin retained its pearly gleam from before, in every other way she seemed much more human. Warmer.
She was also wearing clothes.
Clothing for her physical form hadn't really been necessary before, as Sym had only gradually been taking on human features, beginning with her face and head. The rest of her had remained much like the body of a living clothes mannikin from the 20th century. A pleasing shape, but devoid of the details and pliability you'd expect in a truly human body.
But maybe that had changed now.
For a rank amateur in wardrobe selection, Sym had sure done a great job.
The vision before me was breathtaking.
She positively glowed. And not from some sort of contrivance. It was her skin itself that was alight.
If she'd been more traditionally human-- and not glowing-- and dressed more conservatively, she'd have been rated as a solid knockout by any twentieth century male, I'm sure.
But as she was, she was beyond description.
She smiled a Mona Lisa smile at me as she drew nearer. Closed-mouthed and reserved.
She was wearing a heavy looking black robe with tiny gray lines running through it. The lines seemed to be moving, but I wasn't sure. The robe was wide open down the front, and so long it dragged the floor behind her.
Revealed in the open front of her robe was a bare shouldered, skin tight vest that looked to be made of the thinnest, finest leather I'd ever seen. I'm not kidding. It was a lacy looking leather that looked as thin as a nylon stocking.
Imagine a fine quality, wrinkled type of leather, so thin that almost only the wrinkles showed.
At least the leather appeared that fine. But when I looked hard for signs of nipples, I was disappointed.
Apparently the leather wasn't see through, though it sure looked it. Not even a telltale bump gave anything away.
The vest must have fastened in the back, I figured. I could see no buttons up front.
She was wearing pants. They weren't leather though. They appeared to made of the same thick stuff as the robe. The legs tapered to match her form, and ended in tight little cuffs at the very top of her feet.
When my eyes followed the pant legs down, I saw her shoes.
Well, they weren't shoes exactly. Her feet were enclosed in extremely thin and delicate looking, skin tight...coatings. That's the best term for them. They almost looked sprayed on.
Each toe had its own little section. Sym now had toes! She hadn't before.
Her skin, where exposed, was gleaming white. Shining like the surface of a pearl.
As remarkable as her shining flesh was, her new hair was even more so.
It was very long. Of a material and done in a pattern I'd never seen before. To either side of her head her hair billowed into a glorious mane which framed her face. The mane funnelled into lengths that ran down both arms to her wrists, attached and guided via multiple delicate leather laces which matched her vest.
The hair was translucent. Filmy. Where it fell towards her bare shoulders, it tended to be transparent. But as you followed its body nearer her head it trended towards the opaque.
The color was unique. Her hair shimmered with a multitude of them, but only subtly. The main tint seemed to be none at all. And her hair wasn't in strands, but instead seemed of a single piece.
Her entire body of hair looked like a soft, cloudy lense, rather than filamentary-style human hair.
I sat stock still transfixed by the sight of her, as she came closer. Then she spoke, breaking the current spell while weaving another. Her new voice was lilting.
"Do you approve of my experiment in primitive ritual dress?"
There was a look of amusement on Sym's face. I was sitting on one of two couch-like gizmos that'd sponstaneously formed out of the floating sculptures in this place. Both were floating a few inches above the floor. Sym sat down in the one across from me about three feet away, and the most amazing thing happened.
I mean, I know it was a simple parlor trick for a Sol woman, but believe you me I'm sure it would have impressed any red-blooded American male who saw it.
As Sym sat down, her tight black pants literally flew apart. The leg parts, I mean. The pant legs had an intelligence all their own. They were downright graceful as they performed their maneuvers, seemingly anticipating Sym's every move. And they were fast. But not so fast as to lose their elegance of motion.
They separated into animated flaps and reformed into two long tuxedo type lengths, one behind each leg, displaying both Sym's legs in all their glory. And that's what they were all right-- glorious.
Now her black pants more resembled hot pants with tuxedo tails. Wow.
Sym's facial expression changed only the slightest bit. And only at the corners of her eyes. She still had that amused look on her face.
"That was quite a feat you and Arbitur managed," Sym said.
"Feat?" I croaked aloud.
"Capturing Jerrera the way you did."
"The plan was Arbitur's," I replied in an almost comical half squeaking and half grating sound.
What was going on? We hadn't mind linked here yet, even at a conversational level. Sym had known for quite a while now everything I did about Jerrera's capture. Why were we discussing it now?
Was this another delaying tactic on Sym's part?
If not for the loneliness of non-linking (and the burden of speaking aloud), I might have welcomed the circumstance. After all, there was only so much pleasure a fellow could withstand, anyway. And the post-link therapy Sym had devised for me did not wash away all the effects. I'd partly wanted the physical linkup as a way for us to better gauge and control the effects that breaking the link had on me. Though I loved direct link, it affected me way too much like heroin or something. I had to have an alternative means of intimacy with Sym, and old fashioned sex seemed like it'd not only be safer and easier but maybe in a similar league of fun with the link as well. Hopefully anyway. Sym continued our strange little verbal conversation.
"Yes. But he told me he came up with it using new algorithms he'd learned from observing you."
What? Oh yeah, Arbitur.
"I wouldn't underestimate him. Arbitur is quite capable in his own right."
Evidently her reluctance for contact had returned. But didn't she realize that by dolling herself up this way she'd made herself even more attractive to me?
The memory of direct link was almost as painful when you didn't have it as it was pleasurable when you did. The two-as-one state was...well...literally too good to be. At least for us 20th century folk. Coming down off that stuff was hard indeed! But maybe some real, physical sex could make both coming down and the time in-between links a little easier.
It seemed Sym was postponing things again. But the lack of link too really made it a bummer. Well, though it literally hurt to be shut out this way (not even Sol tech could completely obliterate the low level pounding of my headaches in-between links), I figured I'd just have to take it. Sym was after all a Sol.
And a woman too now, I remembered.
This surprise rejection of me makes her a fully qualified female at last, I thought bitterly. At least according to many of my previous experiences. Of course, this was partly my headache speaking.
"You are too modest. Arbitur has fully informed me of your time aboard the Pagnew, Mr. Staute. I now know everything. Including your historical role upline."
'Mr. Staute'? Why was she being so formal all of the sudden? And bringing up the Signposts thing like it's fresh news? Has making herself more human rattled Sym's brain? I was starting to get worried here.
"As you know one of my interests is the field of shifting technology. I belong to one of the few corporations in this day and age still permitted access to that technology. I have studied your works, among others, rather extensively."
"Well, I hope you liked them," I figured I might as well play along. I had nothing better to do.
"I know the crew of the Pagnew has provided you with in-depth instruction on this subject."
"Yeah. I needed to get up to speed as fast as possible on shifting in order to help them."
"Perhaps," she responded.
What did she mean by that?
"Are you aware that some of your works were lost at one time?"
"No. Um-- what works are you talking about?" Yikes! Something new was coming up! The only thing I for sure knew the title of was the Signposts. So now there were others?
"Some very disturbing items. Most were unpublished script. Others were simply among those titles misplaced over the centuries. They were somehow missed in the first comprehensive scanning passes in the twenty-first century."
It helped that I was likely thinking about some other guy's life and death, rather than my own.
I didn't immediately reply. I didn't know what to say. I hoped she'd just throw out some more book titles or something.
But she didn't.
"Mr. Staute, do I disturb you?" Sym continued to baffle me with her latest behavior.
"No. Why?" No use on speaking aloud my concerns just yet. I needed to see where this boat was headed.
"I note distress in your manner."
Well, yes. Sym was acting strangely towards me-- almost as if she were a different person. I wasn't sure what to say or do under the circumstances.
Sym suddenly realtime-shifted from her position on the couch opposite me to immediately beside me on mine. The instant change jarred me just a bit. I was used to this shifting thing by now, but still there was an instinctive wariness about a method of travel which prohibited any warning at all of someone's approach.
Now I was really confused. I thought she had been distancing herself from me. Now all of a sudden she was within inches of me!
Wait a minute...wasn't she sitting on the chair with me? Didn't that violate her 'contact' rule?
I twisted my head to catch her indiscretion. But was disappointed to see she wasn't actually touching anything after all. Instead, her buffer field floated every part of her a fraction of an inch above the depressed surface of the couch.
She scooted towards me until we were touching-- or rather, her clothing was touching me.
Sym's buffer field was acting inconsistently. It seemed relatively thick where her synthetic skin appeared exposed, but did not seem to enclose her clothing. I could feel her robe brushed up against me. It didn't feel as heavy and thick as it looked. In fact, it felt downright flimsy.
Sym was smiling at me. Her smile-- well, she didn't quite have the teeth thing down yet, in terms of mimicking old human characteristics. But her unbroken dental rims were the correct color, size, and proportion. No gaps signifying individual teeth-- but still I appreciated the evident effort.
Like the teeth, Sym's eyes weren't quite human yet either. But today's eyes were a vast improvement over yesterday's. Sym's appearance seemed to be improving by the day. At least in 20th century terms.
When she'd first taken on her female humanoid shape Sym had neglected to add any pupils or irises to her eyeballs, leaving herself looking blinded. Soon after though she'd installed some circular disk shapes in the right spots to approximate human eyes. Though the approximation helped in close views the colorless nature of the additions still left her looking blind from a distance. This was so only in terms of her physical body though-- and we'd spent most our time together so far in the link, where she'd virtually been a perfect human facsimile.
Now Sym had tweaked her physical form's eyes a bit more. Her pupils were a distinct shade of dark gray, which seemed to contrast nicely with her pearl complexion.
The new gray color seemed to darken the more you stared into her eyes...and it also seemed her pupils might have enlarged a bit too. Hmmm. I wasn't sure, but it seemed she had enlarged her eyes overall, compared to before. Not too much, but a noticeable amount. Sym's eyes now seemed a bit bigger than Sue Anne's had been. I wasn't entirely sure what I thought of this change. Had her eyes been like this a few minutes ago? Or were they changing even now?
But something about her new eyes did seem very appealing.
Being a Sol, Sym could instantly change her shape in either the most subtle of ways or otherwise. I liked this aspect of her. Usually.
"Mr. Staute-- may I call you Jerry? I would like very much to learn more about you..."
Hey! I think I realized what was going on, now! Sym was trying to act like a 20th century female on the make! Yeah! That was it! My scrumptious little goddess had studied up on the subject and determined this was the closest she could get to being a woman from my own time!
Actually, she was doing a damn good job of it too, now that I thought about it. After all, I'd often been confused by 20th century women too under such circumstances as these.
Sym by then had one arm stretched around my shoulders. She seemed to be touching me, from the feel of things. But wherever I could see the expected points of contact between she and I there was always the dimness of an intervening buffer field. Thin and near invisible, but still there.
Did I mention how fabulous her legs looked in those hot pants? Sue Anne had possessed some great legs of her own, but just like with the eyes, it appeared Sym had performed some tweaks to try to improve on things.
"Yes, I guess you can call me Jerry if you want..." I played along.
"Yes, I want, Jerry." Her voice had lowered just a bit. God, she was cute! And setting off a four alarm hormone fire inside of me, all of a sudden. I realized she was wearing perfume! And it was heady stuff. Every time I inhaled her scent it brought on a fresh pulse of lust inside me. I seemed to remember something about Ling using a similar trick on me on Earth...but heck, that had turned out OK, right?
"Umm...what do you want to know exactly?"
"Everything. Everything about you..."
"Well, ah, that sounds good..."
"May I?" She looked at me expectantly as she placed her hand on the tab that would pull my jumpsuit apart.
"Well sure! If you're willing to touch it, you can have it!" I said, with some sarcasm. A dim, thin film of buffer field separated her fingers from the tab. Something in me rebelled against the deception and misdirection I perceived going on here.
"Don't you feel my touch?" She still hadn't pulled on the tag.
"I feel the touch of your buffer field Sym. Is the reason we're not in direct link right now because you wanted to fool me into thinking we were touching, when we weren't?" Sym took her hand away.
"Why are you so difficult? I have studied the problem in the Store, and theoretically we could receive more than 99% of all the tactile sensations generated in a sexual act through the medium of my field."
"Ahh--" I held up a finger in narrative"-- but we wouldn't get 100%. And more importantly, we wouldn't be risking anything in the contact. Real sex must entail the real anxieties of mortal beings. Call up the fear of death and rejection and loneliness and the feeling of separateness. Collect up and bring to the party all the bad things about consciousness, to meet with all the good.
"If we don't do that, how can we really compare and contrast our individuality with our unity?
"The risk of death-- of discontinuity, or disruption, no matter how slight-- brings about an instability. An unpredictability, that can allow the movement to a different energy state. It opens the way to reaching and passing through our next bifurcation point." I found myself spouting.
'Bifurcation point'? My voice seemed to be taking on an intelligence of its own. Drawing on knowledge I didn't recall having, even from the pools I'd plumbed within Sym. Something in me was struggling to persuade the analytical Symantici to risk a totally illogical exercise.
Surprisingly, I found in my head the very information I was talking about, after a bit of sifting.
But Sym was now responding to my last statement.
"Your proposal is intriguing, Jerry. And the dissipative structures of mind, both organic and inorganic, can indeed benefit from periodic events of instability to allow the formation of new matrices. However, you leave out the fact that such newfound states tend towards the chaotic; the psychotic. There are no guarantees we would make gains from such an experiment. Indeed, the probabilities point towards a negative outcome rather than positive."
Sym's words inspired a robust response of my own.
"But that's the element of risk involved! It's a necessary factor to open up the possibility of advancement in the first place. To remove the risk, you must remove the instability. If you remove the instability, you close the window of opportunity for any jump in energy state or increased complexity at all. Ergo, if there is no risk, there is no chance of transcendence. No chance of jumping to a higher state of consciousness.
"And the potential rewards can be so great, Sym! Great enough to make the risk seem very cheap indeed.
"And the risk itself is not nearly so great as you postulate, anyway. You are assuming the worst possible scenario for risk, while here we are actually close to the best possible scenario; to the lowest possible risk. We have both already joined in direct link; therefore we know that neither of us would purposely harm the other. It seems well established that Ovizatataron can't or won't hurt you now. Or me. We're deep inside Thantia, your home, in the Sildurian sector; probably the safest place in this universe for either of us at this moment. And your friends and allies, both Sol and Colonists, neither of them insignificant in resources themselves, are nearby. I too have friends aboard the Pagnew we could call to for aid if need be."
I wondered how she'd respond to that? I felt like I was doing a decent job here, against such a mega-mind as I knew Sym to be. Of course, this was almost the ideal forum for my meager capabilities: me, a primitive 20th century male, highly motivated to persuade a beautiful girl into the sack-- AND already having been heavily tutored by TWO separate sets of advanced future folks in many of the very concepts and jargon required to sweet talk an intellectual like Sym. Plus, I'd even been inside and all around Sym's mind itself, so I was practically unbeatable! Yay!
Heck: under conditions that favorable in the good old 20th century, I might even have won over the real Sue Anne herself!
"You might someday make an adequate prosecutor, Jerry." Sym said with a frown of concentration on her face.
It tickled me to see her practicing her newly acquired art of human expression. She had a wonderful face for it. It'd been wasted before, in stoicism. So I'd urged her to examine facial expressions from my era, and apply them as appropriate. It was gratifying to see them in use. They made her seem much less alien.
"So...does that mean you're willing to try again Sym?" I asked hopefully.
"You forget that I am unaccustomed to purposely seeking personal risk of cessation, Jerry. While you accept it as a basic premise of consciousness, being from a backward time, I am the product of an origin wherein such concepts are...considered perversions."
I couldn't help it. I laughed out loud.
"Well actually, sex was considered fairly perverted even in my own time, Sym. At least by a lot of the people I personally knew. They couldn't understand how such a sweaty, clumsy, inelegant thing could have been conceived by the same God which created all the rest of the world too.
"Now that I think of it, I guess the grittiness and messiness of the act has something to do with making its level of intimacy go off the scale. I mean, if it's a bit clumsy and awkward neither partner, no matter how high falutin' they may think they are, can fool themselves into thinking that they've achieved perfection. It's sort of an admission of imperfection, between partners. An admission that, 'yes, I'm human like you, and feel the same need for union.' And 'yes, I feel exposed and vulnerable too in this venture'. And 'yes, sometimes I make mistakes and am uncertain, even where mistakes and uncertainty may present the greatest potential for adverse consequences--"
"Yes," Sym said.
"Does that mean what I hope it means?"
Sym hesitated. Then nodded. "Yes"
"Whoopee!" I said, then cocked my head to one side as it struck me how appropriate the term was.
"The thought of discontinuity-- it frightens me, Jerry."
"Sym, have you forgotten?
"Love, my love, do you not see?
I am you, and you are me.
Living and dead, here and there,
Destiny calls us, for this to share.
"Come come, my love,
there is nothing to fear,
I am your beloved,
and you my most dear."
Sym's eyes softened as I reprised her original, desperate plea to me.
I wished I could think of something slick to add to it, but I was no poet. Or singer either, for that matter.
It sounded bad enough just coming out in my voice, as compared to Sym's sparkling musical tones.
"I-- trust you, Jerry. And entrust the deactivation of my field to your node."
"To my node? How would I work it?"
"It-- it is easy. The trigger is visual. Think of me as you first found me, in my neuter form. And audibly say the phrase 'Urrut-berri-sund'. My field will then instantly dissipate," she told me with an involuntary shudder. Wow! Her newly grown human-style nervous system must be more developed than I thought!
At last! I'd have her out of her bubble! But Sym had had a reason for doing things this way. Perhaps she couldn't bear to collapse the field herself, having enjoyed its protection all of her life. Or maybe making the trigger be the disgusting sight of her original shape was calculated to make me not want to crack her shell. No matter. If she hoped disgust would hold me back, she'd greatly erred indeed. For no male could resist her as she was now.
Sym's eyes were narrowed in apprehension. I closed mine and brought forth her original visage. The great floating gray knot. "Urrut-berri-sund," I uttered.
I heard a gasp, and felt the slightest sag on the couch next to me. I opened my eyes.
Sym immediately jumped off the couch and fell in a heap on the floor.
She looked up at me from the rumpled splendor of her Sol clothing, and I realized she hadn't fell purposely.
"Sym, what's the matter? Why can't you walk?" I asked as I bent to help her.
"No! Don't touch me! Please don't touch me!"
I recoiled at her words.
"I-- I wasn't going to hurt you Sym, just--"
"Please Jerry, please give me back my field," Sym was shaking, quivering in fear. I couldn't believe her over-reaction.
"OK, but how?"
Amazingly, Sym seemed about to go into 20th century human-style shock. For a moment she couldn't answer me, and her eyes threatened to glaze over. But then she got hold of herself again and told me what I needed-- but via direct link rather than verbally.
*The same way you deactivated it-- it's a simple toggle mechanism. Please hurry!*
I returned her field to her, and a wave of relief became visible throughout her entire body.
Immediately she arose to float in mid-air. And closed her eyes in a meditative look.
A few seconds later she reopened her eyes.
"I am undamaged!" She said, with some surprise.
"You mean you thought you were hurt by the fall?" I asked naively.
"No, I feared the contacts of you, the chair, the floor, and the atmosphere."
"But I never touched you!" I complained. For I hadn't!
"You did not touch me purposely, but when I fell onto the couch-- I grazed against you--" she shuddered again "-- and then I fell to the floor."
"But-- but you're OK now?" I was disappointed. Was this as far as things were going to go?
"Yes. I am undamaged. Un-infected."
"Well then, doesn't this prove it?"
"Prove what?"
"Prove that it's safe for us to touch?"
"No...it proves only that it was safe for us to touch at that moment and location."
"But it's still that moment! It was only a minute ago!" I raised my open hands in exasperation.
"Correction: it was thirty-three thousand nine hundred and seventy point fourteen milliseconds ago; innumerable changes could have come about in the current environment over that time."
"What? You've got to be joking!"
"No. I would not joke about a matter as serious as discontinuity."
I was stymied. So I changed the subject.
"How come you fell in the floor?"
"You deactivated my bubble!" Sym responded accusingly.
"What? That shouldn't have dumped you in the floor!"
"I-- my bubble is my means of local mobility."
"You mean...you mean you can't walk?"
"Of course I can walk. But not without my bubble."
"Well-- you've got legs, don't you?"
"Yes. But they are an inefficient means of mobility."
"Well, that's what I use! I don't have a bubble, only legs. And evidently I can walk better than you can!"
"Of course you may walk better than I. It is your primary means of locomotion, and you have practiced it your entire life. For me on the other hand, walking is as alien a means of motion as wiggling flagella to move about would be to you."
"Wiggling flagella? What are you talking about?"
"Flagella are the primary motive mechanisms of bacteria. If you were forced to use such a method of locomotion you would doubtless find it difficult in the early going."
It was at that moment it hit me.
"Sym, how about a compromise? I mean, I've already established that there is almost negligible risk here, and all that. But what if we do try it your way first? With your bubble still intact? And then proceed without it later, if you like what happens?"
"Yes!" Sym seemed overjoyed by this. It made me happy to see her happy. But guilty too, as I was planning a typical male subterfuge that was thousands of years old. And poor, sweet, naive super genius, superhuman Symantici, had no idea. Then I remembered she could barbecue me if she took offense.
But damn she was beautiful. It'd be worth it to be barbecued, I thought. Hell, what did I have to look forward to anyway? Returning home to wash restaurant dishes and study engineering? Seeking out odd jobs in free moments to plug the gaping holes in my bank account? Better to burn inside a gorgeous Sol frying pan.
Sym was enthusiastic now.
"Sym, just how thin can you make your bubble?"
*Forty-one nanometers!* She beamed over the net, in her glee. Whoops! Can't have that.
"Uhh Sym, let's stick to voice communications on this first run, OK? Like your original plan?"
"Oh yes! That was my original vector, Jerry. I just seemed to have...jumped a track in my thoughts...this is most unusual for me..."
Sym looked embarrassed and concerned.
"No no, Sym, that's just fine! Your reawakening creative side is just displaying some of its random effects on your behavior. That's good!" I lied. I didn't know why she'd 'skipped a track'. But heck, I did that all the time! Surely it was nothing. But I had to feed her analytical mind something to chew on, else it might derail the whole thing.
"OK Sym, make your field as thin as you can..."
"But that parameter..."
"Please Sym! We've already compromised! You can at least pare down your field as low as it will go."
The next moment was intensely frustrating. And stupid. Of me.
Sym's field contracted in the blink of an eye. Sym and the vague dimness of the field surrounding her instantly transformed into a hard, cold, metallic chrome statue. With a mirror finish which gave me a fun house reflection of myself staring in dismay.
Then the entire process reversed again, leaving me with the normal Sym as before.
"My field at maximum density is a level two spacetime shield, Jerry. Impervious to virtually all Realtime phenomena. It would present difficulties in interaction between us-- unless you are a much more powerful being than I believe you to be..." Sym explained with a slight smile.
Arggh! Maybe my compromise hadn't been such a good idea after all.
"Well, how thin can you make it to get that 99% plus sensitivity you mentioned before?"
"Half a micrometer should provide greater tactile resolution than your biological senses can fully read."
"Great!"
This time it was a lot better. I could still plainly see Symantici. And actually feel her pretty well too. But it still seemed not quite the same as real person-to-person contact. Although this may have been mainly an imaginary prejudice of mine.
I decided to go for it, regardless. I'd get the real thing soon enough. Unless Sym had taken back the control she'd given me over her shield.
Sym's buffer field was stretched to its max over her now. Most of it was sort of floating lazily above us in the air, and towards the side of Sym that was opposite to me at the moment. I could faintly see the envelope stretching over to her, but it was so thin now between her and I that it was invisible there.
When I touched her and she touched me, it felt very much like there was nothing at all between us. But if one pressed hard it became slick to the touch, and fingers would slide on it as upon some really good lubricant which left no residue whatsoever. Like a mutated teflon coating I guess.
I bent closer to her, and kissed her lightly on the mouth. She responded hungrily, if clumsily. Seemingly freed from inhibitions by the security of her intact if tenuous bubble.
For all her sophistication and knowledge, and simulations in link, this was her first real kiss. I loved every mistake she made.
My resolve was melting in a firestorm of hormones.
Symantici mischievously fell away from me, onto the couch. Her robe very conveniently vanished. Gotta love that Sol tech!
Evidently as long as Sym had her buffer field her other barriers didn't matter to her.
I followed, and soon lay atop her. She'd moved her legs onto the couch beneath me, then to my sides.
One surprise was french kissing. We'd done plenty of it in direct link. But now in physical interaction it seemed like something completely new to Sym. For a moment she resisted me with closed mouth, but then relented to my insistent tongue.
Maybe there were some differences in the way we each perceived things in the link. Or else Sym's lack of real world make out sessions hadn't allowed her to fully relate her virtual world experiences with real world ones.
Delightfully her bubble seemed capable of giving me slack in the french kissing department too.
The analogy came to mind of Sym being wrapped in a plastic bag as I made love to her. And increased my discomfort.
I really liked how she was looking now. But I really wanted rid of her buffer field too.
Soon, I promised myself. Soon. I'd kill her bubble if I could get her to the point that it didn't matter to her. Or that she wouldn't notice it.
For now I figured I'd just get whatever enjoyment I could out of this sterile make out routine, and treat it as an 'appetizer' before the main course.
I could after all see her below me, sort of feel her there, and definitely smell her perfume. Thank God the bubble allowed that! The sight and smell and almost-feel of her alone-- even without actual touch-- was pretty damn fine.
And it was fun to be on one side of her first experiences in kissing and caressing, even it was for now just a very near thing, and not true.
My hands found their way to her breasts-- or rather the leather vest covering them.
It was then I realized I hadn't asked Sym if her bubble would permit removal of her clothes. I'd seen her cloak disappear, but I hadn't myself removed it. If I couldn't actually touch her, maybe I could still have the enjoyment of undressing her.
So far it felt like it was possible.
I decided to try it.
I reached around her, digging underneath for the telltale seam that would reveal how the vest came off.
I was surprised to find the garment was backless! But if it was backless, how the hell did it stay on her?
I chalked it up to weird future woman stuff and continued on my way, testing the garment to find its fasteners by gently pulling on it.
It fell apart as I pulled on it.
Whoa! Sym withdrew from our little kissing game and started another one. She was kissing and nipping at my throat. Emulating some of the behavior I'd performed on her earlier. I really liked that.
Sym didn't seem to notice the damage to her vest. She was going to town on the other side of my neck now, and occasionally nibbling at my ear. Even through the filmy bubble it felt good.
I noted that just the thought of Sym on the other side of her bubble trying to be intimate with me was exciting. Maybe thoughts were a bigger part of sex than people gave them credit for.
I proceeded to tear the flimsy vest off of her. It came away in pleasingly large pieces, and was completely gone in only a few tugs.
Sym's breasts were just as beautifully silvery as her arms and legs. Her body seemed absolutely perfect, with no blemishes of any kind anywhere.
But she had no nipples!
I was taken aback by this new development. This was a really big reminder that Sym wasn't human. But hey! She was supposed to have fixed this stuff!
Was it possible she was still wearing a body covering of some sort? As another layer of protection underneath her bubble?
Maybe she still had only the shape of a woman. Maybe she hadn't fully grasped the details of the sexual transformation we'd discussed at length in the link.
Maybe she had no sexual equipment at all.
Did her pants conceal only the smooth contours of a mock woman, unbroken by sexual cleavage?
Sym noticed my reaction as I pulled away.
"What is it, Jerry?" She whispered with a smile.
"I-- Sym--" I stammered. "You have no nipples!"
Sym regarded my statement for a moment. Then giggled. Actually giggled! Sym had definitely been studying ancient human ways.
"Of course I do! You will see. Kiss me here," she ordered with a smile, indicating the blank pinnacle of her left breast.
Her lighthearted response calmed my momentary discomfort. And her numerous charms renewed their pull on me.
Who could resist such an invitation?
I lowered my head to where she'd indicated. Her breast too was intoxicatingly sweet with scent. I mouthed it hungrily through her bubble barrier. The presence of the buffer field seemed to make it ever more urgent for me to break through, to make actual contact.
I detected a change in her flesh. I pulled away again to have a look.
Something was forming, where before had been only featureless synthetic flesh. There was a bluish tinge to it, so that it was darker than the surrounding pearly-white skin. And it was gradually attaining a different texture from the surrounding pearlescent terrain, too.
"Please don't stop Jerry," Sym urged.
I could see the first nipple's counterpart appearing on her other breast too. Though there it was fainter.
I was greatly encouraged. Sym was sexual after all!
I threw myself into the task at hand.
Sym was now pulling on my jumpsuit tab. My suit was trying to fly apart as it was supposed to, but my laying atop Sym had it caught so that it couldn't.
That didn't stop Sym from sliding her hand into one of the new openings in the tangle of flaps my suit had become.
Her bubble insulated fingers sure felt weird in there. But good weird.
The long tuxedo tails of Sym's hot pants had evaporated entirely at some point.
"Jerry..." Sym whispered.
"What, Sym?" I whispered back.
"Do I please you?"
I grinned hugely.
"Yes, Sym. You please me alright."
I moved to a better position, and encountered a new sensation. My jumpsuit-- which had been trying to wiggle free ever since Sym had pulled its tab-- took advantage of my shift in position to slide out from between us. And suddenly I was naked atop her, with she only half so.
I laughed at the spectacle of my suit collapsing in a heap onto the floor. It looked like it was relieved to be out from between us.
I pulled away from Sym's glowing form in order to correct her current state of excess covering.
She watched with interest as I pulled her hot pants over and off her long legs. In that moment I appreciated her shorts being made of sturdier stuff than her vest had been. Her bubble didn't seem to be interfering at all.
I made a mental note to myself not to forget the buffer field. I wanted to switch it off at an opportune moment.
Sym's underwear seemed to be made of the finest silk I'd ever seen or felt. It was graduated shades of purple. So dark at the waist line as to look nearly black. But rapidly lightening in shade as the fabric neared the crotch, to something like bright white, with just the slightest purple tinge.
The sight of her laying there threatened to paralyze me. To hold me in place, spellbound.
She seemed so much like an honest-to-goodness angel laying there, about to be desecrated by a mortal, that I felt an odd pang of regret. Like I was somehow considering committing a grave sin of the highest order.
It felt like God himself might strike me down at any moment to prevent me from carrying out my dastardly intentions.
But I summoned forth all the bravado of my male ancestors, cast off my moral restraints, and pressed on.
I'd show'em some history all right!
Savoring what was to come, I for the moment left her last bit of true clothing in place and moved to her side, kneeling on the floor.
Her thin leather bindings still held her hair in streams down the length of her arms.
They were surprisingly fragile, just as the vest had been. I tore them off easily, and the silken, fluid lengths fell free.
I stood up and leaned over her to reach the other arm, and parts of me touched her prone form.
Or felt like it anyway. It was getting harder and harder to remember there was an ultra-thin protective film between us. It felt like we were indeed in contact. More so with each passing moment.
Little tremors of thrill reverberated through me.
After the arm bands, I moved to her feet, and her little black spray on boots. I wasn't sure how to remove them.
But they seemed to peel off as I pulled at them. So I basically peeled her shoes off her feet as if they were the skins on bananas.
Sure enough Sym had installed a human-like nervous system. For she writhed a bit as I removed her black shoe things, somewhat inadvertently caressing her feet as I proceeded.
Little squeals of protest emanated from her over her feet. She threatened to thicken her shield in that vicinity, but I ridiculed her for suggesting it. Pointing out that this had been regularly tolerated by primitive humans, and that if a Sol couldn't take it, what did that say for progress of the species?
So she withstood the torture. Long enough to learn it could be fun. Yeah, that's right. She had to learn to enjoy it.
I later discovered that this had been a critical point in opening her up to physical sensuality. For she'd remained removed and distant from the previous actions, analyzing and reflecting things back at me without really letting any of the sensations get through to her personally.
In her mind she'd been maintaining a much more formidable shield against physical intimacy than her bubble outside represented.
But like I said, I didn't discover this until later in direct link.
It was difficult to joke with her-- to tease her, to enhance our little adventure. For our worlds were so different! Even in those memories I now shared with her from previous direct links, I could find little that was easy to manipulate into playful digs of the kind commonly bandied back and forth on Earth between lovers.
It seemed our relationship had layers of plexiglass both above and below it that were very difficult to get through.
After discovering a reaction from her through her feet, I purposely focused on that area for a while, milking it for all it was worth. For it had brought forth the most intense reaction I'd seen in her so far. Even if at first it was irritation.
One had to start with what one could find.
To lessen the irritation I lightened my touch after all her footwear was long gone.
"Close your eyes, Sym. Concentrate on the feeling," I instructed.
She did so, but still seemed to not quite get the message. I remembered my own stimulation at the thought of Sym trying to please me before, despite the buffer barrier.
"Sym, do you realize that I'm trying to give you something here?"
Sym opened her eyes.
"I do not understand. I thought you wanted physical contact between us to alleviate your discomfort stemming from our links."
"Well, yeah, I do. I need that. Otherwise I just won't be able to stand many more links. But it's more than that. I want to give you something you've never had..."
I didn't know exactly how to phrase what I meant. But I realized now something was missing here. Sym thought I wanted all this only for my own benefit. She didn't realize it would ruin it for me if she got nothing out of it.
"You have already given me what I have never experienced, Jerry," Sym said, as she ran her unnaturally slick fingers through my hair. I'd left her feet and moved nearer to her head and shoulders so we could talk.
"No. I don't mean the link," I replied. "I know we share a lot there. But it's...it's too cerebral. Or not too cerebral...but too limited. I'd like there to be more. Because we are more. More than just thoughts, I mean.
"Actually we are far less than thoughts, Jerry. Our existence hinges on the interference patterns among many fluctuations in the medium of the superverse--"
"Yeah Sym, I know that theoretically we're vibrations in nothingness at some level, but that's not how we feel, is it? We don't feel like we're only waves of nothing, do we? Don't we feel like-- like-- like more than that?"
"But feelings are irrelevant, Jerry--"
"No! That's just my point, Sym! Feelings aren't irrelevant! In one way, they're all we've got! Don't you see? If we see ourselves only as hapless waves in a media of nothingness, that's all we are. But if we decide that our feelings have meaning, a meaning beyond the quantum mechanics or whatever that randomly produced them, we raise ourselves to a higher level. 'We think, therefore we are.' Descartes, I believe. A paraphrase," I shrugged. Thank God I was reasonably well read for a young 1972 AD American.
"Anyway, it's a trap to allow ourselves no greater value than that of our constituent elements. We're more than just a random mixture of quarks! We think! We're aware! We examine ourselves, and know we're made of quarks, but do quarks themselves do that?"
Sym responded. "Priori elementary particles, and even their larger clusters the subatomics, communicate amongst themselves. Certain evidence suggests that these matrices are the basis for many forms of consciousness, matter organizations, and gravitics flow. Some of which may only be fully manifested in a range of universes which excludes our own."
Eh? Sym was telling me things that were beyond the physics I'd learned aboard the Pagnew. Quarks had consciousness? Oh shit.
"You mean quarks do know themselves? That they are self aware, like we are?"
"After a fashion. It is a different form of awareness, however. Suited to a much different reality. Or perhaps to a wider spectrum of realities, than our own. Not all universes are as complex as ours. The majority in fact probably are much simpler. Ninety-nine percent of the superverse may well be so simple as to contain only the equivalent of one or two elements in composition."
"So you're saying that quarks are even more self aware than we are?" I winced. Sym had ruined my little spiel.
"Not necessarily. It appears that only a few of the prioris are more complex than the majority of their brethren. But those few appear to be entire universes in their own right. Or more specifically, to be windows on other universes near to or related to our own."
"So some of these-- particles, I guess you'd call them-- look like holes into other universes?"
"Yes. In a manner of speaking."
"But there's only a few of them?"
"I was speaking proportionally. In actual numbers priori particles are infinite; therefore any fraction of their number also represents an infinity."
"But wait! I thought there was only a few hundred quark gizmos-- and most of them were just variations or attributes or something!"
"Your estimate seems based on knowledge from the Pagnew store. That value was widened significantly in research after the Pagnew's departure from origin. And itself expanded into the priori elementaries. Infinite numbers were eventually estimated at the priori level, given the open-ended range of their possible parameters."
Symantici may have looked like a sexual goddess, but inside she was still the brainy gray knot. Only now with arms and legs attached.
I was laying here naked with the most beautiful woman-thing in existence-- stripped down to her bare essentials-- and still somehow gotten all tangled up in cosmic truths and quantum physics.
My own analytical side had been enormously strengthened by Sym in the link, just as Sym's creative side had been affected by mine. So I was now inordinately susceptible to logical arguments and new scientific information.
My original excitement was gone.
I'd been robbed!
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