Instantiation by Greg Egan

Author:Greg Egan [Egan, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Greg Egan
Published: 2020-01-22T23:00:00+00:00

2

The “village” of Owl’s Rest was a small network of caves that linked up with the one in which Sagreda had woken. Gerther led her through a dark passage to a sunlit alcove where a reception party was waiting: half a dozen people, and a blanket bearing some meager portions of food.

“Is she the One?” a young man asked Gerther.

“No, Mathis.”

Sagreda frowned. “The One?”

“The Holy Fool with the power to believe that this is real,” Mathis replied. “Long have we prophesied the coming of a stranger who could teach us how to pull the wool over our eyes.”

“It took me a while to tear my own blindfold off,” Sagreda admitted.

“You did well,” Gerther assured her. “Some people take a whole day, they’re so disoriented by the arrival.”

Gerther made the introductions. “Sagreda, this is Mathis, Sethis, and Jethis,” she said, pointing to the three disheveled men in turn. The women seemed to have made more of an effort with their appearance, if not their choice of names. “Cissher, Gissher and Tissher.”

“Really?” Sagreda winced. “Where are Pissher and Tossher?”

“You gotta go with the gimmicks,” Mathis reproved her sternly. “If you think you’re hanging on to ‘Sagreda’ with the customers, forget it.”

“Can’t I be a foreigner with a more … classical inflection?” Sagreda pleaded.

“Do you want to try that and see what happens?” Cissher asked ominously.

Sagreda was starving. At Gerther’s invitation she sat cross-legged by the blanket and tried a piece of cheese. The texture was odd, but it wasn’t too bad. “So we have to go through the whole charade of making this ourselves? Milking a simulated cow…?”

“Goat,” Tissher corrected her. “You can’t smell it?”

Sagreda looked around for signs of the animal, but instead her eyes were caught by a kind of sundial on the wall: a wooden peg jammed into a crevice in the rock, beside which was etched a series of calibrated curves for its shadow. She hadn’t yet dared ask anyone how long they’d been here, but the curves looked as if they’d been constructed and refined over at least two full journeys through the seasons.

“So whose idea was the Calamity?” she asked. It was as if someone had tried to invent an exotic new world, but knew so little about the way the real one worked that all they could come up with was a dog’s breakfast of contrivances and inconsistencies.

“When the customers come through in groups,” Mathis said, “we sometimes overhear them going meta. The consensus seems to be that this world is based on an obscure pulp novel called East, by a man named William Tush.”

Sagreda laughed weakly. “Why? Why would anyone go to so much trouble to bring a book like that to life?”

“They wouldn’t, unless it was no trouble at all,” Gerther replied. “The computing costs must have come down by orders of magnitude since the times we’re familiar with, and most of the steps must have been automated. This wouldn’t have taken a Lord of the Rings-sized crew and budget. More likely, someone

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.