Gregory Benford by Eater (v5)

Author:Eater (v5)
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Black holes (Astronomy), Fiction
ISBN: 9780380790562
Publisher: a cognizant original v5 release november 12 2010
Published: 2001-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

I DESIRE CONVERSE WITH A TRUE VARIETY OF YOU.

2

Benjamin did not want to go for even a short walk on the beach, but she insisted. The day’s events had been unsettling, as usual, and he felt the old island softness creep into him as they made their way through palms and onto the broad, warm sand. The sunset was a spectacular streaked composition in purple and orange. She could barely manage making her way in the white sand.

“When will we be able to see it as a naked eye object?” she asked, gazing up.

“Inside a week, I believe, if its deceleration continues as is.”

“Should be pretty.”

He turned to her suddenly, back to the sunset. “Look, I can step down from running things, spend these days together. Here on the beach, as much as we can.”

“Your heart wins out over your head,” she said abstractly, gazing at the fading fingers of deepening red that arced over them.

“Sure, sure, for you.” They embraced and he felt a warm wave of relief. “I’ll see Arno tomorrow, quit—”

“No, I need you to talk to him, but not about that.”

He blinked, seeing something strange come into her face. “But…”

Fervently she grasped his arms, hugged him, stepped back. “I want to go.”

“‘Go’? Where? What—” Then he saw it.

“Upload me.”

“That’s…that’s—” His throat tightened painfully.

“Crazy, as crazy as what’s already happening.”

He scrambled for rational reasons. “It’s untried, chancy—”

“It’s not to evade death,” she said in a straightforward, businesslike voice. “I know that a copy is not the original. I’ll be gone, as far as the little ‘me’ that rides around behind my eyes. And I’m not going to discuss whether an uploaded ‘person’ has free will, either—philosophy doesn’t ring my chimes, not now. I’ve got another reason, one you can argue for with Arno and the others.”

“If you think I’ll—”

“Hear me out, lover. I want to control a Searcher spacecraft, fly it into the Eater. They need onboard guidance to do that. I can be uploaded into a control module.”

“Not like those bastards in the tropics.” He was trying to see what drove her to this, but his mind didn’t seem to be working very well. Did she think some digital replica was like becoming one of those sculptures, the alien ones?

She abandoned the business voice and pleaded nakedly. “I can help, even after I’m gone.”

“And you are an astronaut,” he said lamely. “You’ll get back into space, sort of.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She hugged him.

He recoiled from her grasp, confused. “You’re saying, ‘Kill me early’? No.”

“It is my life.”

“No!”

She reached out with a soft, tentative hand. “Something of me will come through. Maybe.”

He looked at her trembling lips and kissed them. It was wrenchingly hard to resist her. “But I want every remaining moment with the real you, damn it.”

Channing picked up a handful of sand and let it run through her hands, trickling into the passing breeze like an hourglass. “Time runs out for all of us. I just want to control my end.

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