Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,304

psychotics? Because they see and hear things we don’t, and that’s just wrong. Why do prisoners in solitary confinement go nuts? Because they don’t have others to confirm their perceptions. So when I bust a move in this rig and stick the landing, it’s not enough just to simulate it and show me; others have to see it, and react. Ratifying the qualia, cross-linking the history into a social matrix.”

“Makes me wonder what it must have been like for my uncle, when he was first booted up, all alone, in a world with no qualia at all,” Zula remarked. “Was he in hell?”

“I’ve often thought about the same thing. And did Sophia put him there?”

“Knowingly? Intentionally? Of course not.”

“Sure,” C-plus said. “But innocently? Inadvertently? I think so. All in the hopes that he wasn’t really dead.”

“Well, if I hadn’t known you for seven decades, I’d say the drugs were going to your head—the wrong part of it, I mean,” Zula said. “As it is, it seems more and more like you’ve found what Dodge wanted for you when he put you in charge of Weird Stuff.”

“Thanks. I am. The drugs are going to my head, though, and so I hope you won’t find it off-putting if I leave this thing on. The visual field stuff gets really problematic if I suddenly take it off.”

“I don’t mind,” Zula said, “though I wish you’d look right at me.”

“I actually am doing so,” C-plus assured her, “it’s just that—”

“Crows have eyes in the sides of their heads,” she said.

“Do I repeat myself?”

“Yes. For my part, I’d come over and hug you, but—”

“You might crush me. It’s a design failing of your exo,” C-plus said. “See, you repeat yourself too.” He couldn’t see it, because the visual simulator shopped it out of the image, but Zula was wearing an exoskeleton—the latest incarnation of Fronk—that handled most of her physical dealings with the material world, and did so in a way that kept the frail nonagenarian body inside it safe from most hazards. “Did you have a nice walk down here?” he asked.

“I ran,” Zula corrected him.

“Why the hurry?”

“No hurry. I’m told I need more jarring impact. Helps the bones stay strong. Didn’t feel very jarring to me, frankly.” But they both knew that the exo had put all sorts of know-how into making the forces on her bones just enough to create beneficial microfractures without posing any real hazard.

“Just coming to say hi to an old man on his deathbed, then?” C-plus asked. “Or does the afterlife need any intervention from me?”

“The before-life, more like,” Zula said. “You have visitors. I’ll show them in.”

“You’re not staying?”

“I’m going for a brisk jog around Boeing Field. Thanks anyway.”

Corvallis took to the air and went for a spin on some tempting thermals while the visitors were shown in.

Enoch and Solly.

He had known them now for forty years and resigned himself to the fact that their appearance did not change over time. He wheeled around them anyway, peering down on them from all angles.

“Calling a meeting of the Societas Eruditorum?” C-plus asked.

“You’re the only member left,” Enoch said. “You’re a one-person meeting.”

“What about you guys?”

“Oh, we’re not actually members per se,” Enoch said. “More like the advisory board.”

“You’re not erudite?”

“Nope,” said Solly, “just wise.”

“Mm. What do I have to do to become wise?”

“Die,” said Enoch, “and go to the next place.”

“Seems like a stiff price to pay.”

“We paid it,” Solly said.

“You look alive to me.”

“We paid it,” Solly insisted, “where we came from.”

“So, to sum up, here I can only be erudite. To become wise I have to go on to Bitworld, and start a branch of the Societas Eruditorum there?”

“Frankly, we have no idea,” said Enoch, who was beginning to sound slightly impatient. “But that seems the most plausible outcome based on our understanding of how we came to be here. Which is flawed. We are cracked vessels.”

“All right. Since I’m the only member, I call the meeting to order,” C-plus announced. “Is there any new business?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Enoch said. “Your last hack. Or at least I’m guessing it will be your last hack based on your bio readouts. Who knows, maybe you’ll surprise me.”

“I haven’t written code in a quarter of a century. God, I miss it though.”

“This is not a code-writing sort of gig, exactly,” Enoch said.

“Well, that’s good. I don’t think human-written code exists anymore. It’s code written by code written by code—turtles all the way down.”

“Not all the way,”