Anthology 2. Luminous [1998, 2010] by Greg Egan

Author:Greg Egan [Egan, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton [unverified orig meta]
Published: 1998-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

I can’t sleep. Two dreams? Four dreams? Meeting in the middle? Merging into one? How will I know when they’re finally over? The Gleisner robot will emerge from its coma, and blithely carry on; but without a chance to look back on the transition dreams, and recognise them for what they were, how will I ever put them in their place?

I stare up at the ceiling. This is insane. I must have had a thousand dreams which I’ve failed to remember on waking – gone now, for ever, as surely as if my amnesia was computer-controlled and guaranteed. Does it matter if I was terrified of some ludicrous dream-apparition, or believed I’d committed some unspeakable crime, and now I’ll never have the chance to laugh off those delusions?

I climb out of bed and, once I’m up, I have no choice but to dress fully to keep from freezing. Since moonlight fills the room, I have no trouble seeing what I’m doing. Alice turns over in her sleep, and sighs. Watching her, a wave of tenderness sweeps through me. At least I’m going first. At least I’ll be able to reassure her that there’s nothing to fear.

In the kitchen, I find I’m not hungry or thirsty at all. I pace to keep warm.

What am I afraid of? It’s not as if the dreams were a barrier to be surmounted – a test I might fail, an ordeal I might not survive. The whole transition process will be predetermined, and it will carry me safely into my new incarnation. Even if I dream some laborious metaphor for my ‘arduous’ journey from human to machine – trekking barefoot across an endless plain of burning coals, struggling through a blizzard towards the summit of an unclimbable mountain … and even if I fail to complete that journey – the computers will grind on, the Gleisner robot will wake, regardless.

I need to get out of the house. I leave quietly, heading for the twenty-four-hour supermarket opposite the railway station.

The stars are mercilessly sharp; the air is still. If I’m colder than I was by day, I’m too numb to tell the difference. There’s no traffic at all, no lights in any of the houses. It must be almost three; I haven’t been out this late in … decades. The grey tones of suburban lawns by moonlight look perfectly familiar, though. When I was seventeen, I seemed to spend half my life talking with friends into the early morning, then trudging home through empty streets exactly like these.

The supermarket’s windows glow blue-white around the warmer tones of the advertising signs embedded within them. I enter the building, and explore the deserted aisles. Nothing tempts me, but I feel an absurd pang of guilt about leaving empty-handed, so I grab a carton of milk.

A middle-aged man tinkering with one of the advertising holograms nods at me as I carry my purchase through the exit gate, magnetic fields sensing and recording the transaction.

The man says, ‘Good news about the war?’

‘Yes! It’s wonderful!’

I start to turn away; he seems disappointed.

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