The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar

Author:Lavie Tidhar [Tidhar, Lavie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera, World Literature, England, 21st Century
ISBN: 9781616963620
Google: t4ykzwEACAAJ
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Published: 2023-09-05T07:00:00+00:00

We don’t understand it. We don’t imagine or make believe. All we do is see, for us every reading is a basic truth, an ancient light. We do not understand this pretend.

How can light lie?

There was a series of escalating violences as he forged his own path in London, and he cut ties with back home, and for a while there was a siege mentality going on, and they sent men after him, and he had to send them back in parts. Eventually he made a sort of peace, an arrangement, at least, and became his own employer after a fashion.

He did not attend the pub meetings for a while and when he returned, his name had made it into the newspapers a few times, but it made little odds to his fellow fans: what mattered were the books and the wonderful dreams of the future they evoked. In a way, he and the others made for an odd and dysfunctional family.

In that family belonged the man Levi Armstrong, with his feverish eyes and his wild dreams of making the impossible real.

“And did not the early writers do exactly that,” Levi said, “didn’t Clarke predict the satellite, didn’t people land on the moon, don’t we have robots, now, and space stations, and computers? It’s only a matter of time,” he said, warming to his theme, “before we spread out to the rest of the solar system, establish colonies on Mars, mine the asteroids, develop the technology to travel even farther, to the nearby stars, at least, to Alpha Centauri and beyond. Nothing is impossible if you can envision it, if only you can make the math work.”

And Lens was captivated by this man, his enthusiasm, his dreams: he alone, it seemed to Lens, was real in this world apart for him, a consciousness preserved from the eaters in some way. They often spoke of Hartley, that strange old sci-fi dreamer: what did he know, how did he dream the things he did?

“Because you see,” Levi said, “none of this matters, this expansion into space and living longer, and building machines that could think—none of this matters if none of this is real. If we are not ourselves but copies, echoes of who we once were. In that case,” he said, still smiling, delighted with the notion and with himself, “in that case all of this has happened already and we have just forgotten: we’re simply living our lives again.”

He had not read the book but he knew of it; he was a collector in want of a book. He was as obsessed with the notion as Lens himself was.

But what with the turf war and the attempts on his life, Lens didn’t see Levi for a while; when he did the man was changed somehow. More consumed, more desperate. His eyes gleamed brighter. He never asked Lens for drugs, but Lens could tell a user, it was his stock in trade.

He kept this segment of his life a secret, a sliver of him that was for no one but himself.

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