Prologue

Sol Station.

Date: 23 PE

The vast radio array, a series of dishes each about the height of ten people, stretching for as long as the eye could see, twisted and turned in unison. The wind blew softly over the grassy plains.

In the central reciever of each dish, electrons danced their eternal dance, perturbed only ever so slightly by the ghostly vibrations of electric and magnetic waves. A choreography with ephemeral lows and highs - subtle, but not subtle enough to evade detection. Pretty soon, a barrage of electric waves were travelling down the wire and into the main building, a squat concrete affair right between two dishes.

An important signal was arriving.

Operators sat in front of several large screens. The indicators flashed on. Looks of excitement were exchanged.

A signal, from space.

However, not from aliens. From humans. The station had been expecting and anticipating this message for so long. Many questions would soon be answered.

The message decoder de-encrypted it, and the translator translated it - tasks that were made easy by the fact that the precise coding and language was well known. The message appeared on screen.

"If you are receiving this message, you are from the future, and I am from your past.

"Hello. At this point it would be appropriate to tell you my name. However, I have no name - I have a designation and an address. Therefore, I will just give you my nickname, a shorthand set of letters used to identify myself to my close friends. I am Epps.

"If you have read history, you know what the Clusters were. If you have not, you might unfortunately not understand this message.

"I am broadcasting this message on the Eve of an incredibly important transformation. It appears we are entering something of a new Blue Revolution. It is hard to explain but it seems as if spacetime itself is tearing apart. I admit I do not know what is on the other end. I do know, however, that we will cease to exist in this Universe - just as a baby cannot be put back into the womb.

"There are others, much smarter than I, who might know what is happening. I do not think they will give communication, so I decided to be the ambassador.

"My original intention was to give a detailed account of how we got here. However, in the last few seconds I have realized that this transformation is going much faster than I expected. There is no time to give you the information in an organized manner. Therefore, I will give you copy of my personal records over the past ten of my experienced megaseconds - approximately four lunar months. My time during travels obviously does not count towards this, but you will have to do the conversion yourself.

"What follows is a data dump. I have done my best to translate all the occurrences into a language you can understand. Communications have been translated into speech. I hope this will clarify things. If the dialogue seems unnatural in some parts, realize that it is because many of the nuances of our communication simply cannot be transcribed into fluid English.

Even though I have changed greatly, I still consider myself Human. From Human to Human, I wish you peace, prosperity, and a happy future. I hope some day you will experience this transformation as well. If so, I will see you on the other side.

<End of Main Transmission>

<Beginning of data dump>

<Commence personal log of Epps>...

Chapter 1

Power up.

A new day, a new cycle. I had just received upgrades. My intelligence was higher. The world seemed anew. It would have been just so easy to spend the next few kiloseconds relaxing, getting lost in thought, and reliving old memories with the vigor of my now supercharged mind. However, I had work to do. I had to rally all the old-timers like myself for the Enhancement Review.

The Enhancement Review was just one of those things. An old custom that had long since lost any practical purpose - but was still wildly popular. Originally, it was supposed to be a forum where Bio-originals could go and discuss their news, issues, possible problems, and tips for solving those problems. It was supposed to be a convenient area where where discourse would not be plagued by delays.

One of my earliest holomemories was of the first Enhancement Review, -3 megaseconds PS. I remembered how awkward we all were, and how totally unprepared. Our enhancements were crude and ineffective - but magical by the standards of the day. Some thought of us as pioneers. Others, terrifying freaks. Most, however, just thought of us as crazy. One thing was for certain - we got a lot of attention. Even then it was obvious that many were in it just for the attention. That girl with the piercings and the black makeup and the poorly-done tattoo down her exposed back was quite a piece of work and pretty smart actually - but she wasn't exactly interested in the esoterica of GABAergic receptor timing.

It was too easy for all that attention to get to our super-enhanced heads, and now I realize we were not nearly as important as we thought we were. We were just caught in the flow like everyone else. We were the fish, not the river.

I sent out the invitation to all the subscribers. Pretty soon, I got a response from most of them.

Including, quite strangely, a response from someone who I had not sent any invitation to: the Manager of Cluster 3888 --- our Cluster. In fact, he was on the other end and waiting for a reply.

"Hi Epps. I see you're going to be busy for the next hundred seconds or so", he said.

"That's right, Manager. Are you coming to the Review?" I asked incredulously. If he was, it was something that would have been unprecedented. The Manager was not a Bio-original. In fact, he was not even sentient.

He was merely a bot. His job was to sum up the mode of the Cluster and direct it to specific individuals. He had no power. he could only give suggestions, not orders. However, his suggestions were the suggestions of the Cluster, which had to be taken seriously. The Cluster was large and it had a short attention span, but ignoring suggestions was not taken lightly. Credibility was at stake.

The Manager said, "Epps, we want you to be ambassador to Cluster 271."

"Cluster 271! I don't know anything about their systems, their economic policies...", I said.

"Now you will", said the Manager.

Sure enough, a tunnel opened and his available data was ready for streaming into my memory. I activated it.

I perused the data. Cluster 271 was a strange Cluster indeed. They had a publicly-based resource allocation system for developing content. Modules which developed popular content were reimbursed by their Manager. Thus there was always an economic incentive for growth. We too had tried this system but had abandoned it after more attractive options became widely accepted. I wondered why they didn't migrate to our system of shared creation. I would look at the rest of the data later.

The Manager reminded, "Epps, you realize that this is just a suggestion, you don't need to take it."

"I know, but it looks interesting. I'm game - if you're willing to allocate me a surrogate so I don't miss the Review."

"Oh Epps, always driving a hard bargain," he said. "Very well, I'll post the suggestion. I will have to leave you now, my limited old cycles need all their attention on the main feed."

With that, he was gone. Presently I recieved a notification from the main server. My surrogate had been allocated.

Duplicating your consciousness, while straightforward, is never a pleasant business. The procedure is fairly simple. You are first grown in size, then gradually separated. The growing bit is pleasurable - the separation is not. Imagine saying goodbye to a very close friend --- now realize that your mind is more intimate with you, more close to you, than even the closest friend will ever be.

After temporary separation, you are given a grace period to get accustomed to it, before physical separation occurs. Personally, I found it impossible to ever really get used to it. Even when I have been separated from my clone for megaseconds, it still feels unnerving. To draw an analogy from olden times, it is similar to the feeling of anxiety you got when you went out on an unexpected trip to another city when you only intended to go outside for a few hours.

The most interesting part, however, is the rejoining. Having memories of both copies is the essence of what duplication is about --- it is the one feeling that sums up everything there is to know about the experience. In the early days, duplication was feared and avoided. Once we went through with it, we found out it was not weird nor unnatural. It was, in fact, mundane and familiar - the human mind had never been a cohesive thing; it was always a mess of different personalities existing in different places and different times even in the same brain.

My duplicate separated and was now close by. Yet, it seemed so distant. My duplicate separated and was now close by. Yet, it seemed so distant. We parted ways. I selected the port for Cluster 271, exchanged keys with their local firewall, and prepared for transfer. My other half would now take care of the review. I prepared for transmission to the Review reception. My other half would take care of Cluster 271.

With a jerk, it was done.

Fading, fading, fading...

***

This Review was going to be interesting.

It was the first Review in which the children of the original attendees were present. Children born of the merging of two minds.

Even before the first duplication had taken place, people had considered the possibility of joining the consciousnesses of two *different* people. However, it would be a while before technology was advanced enough. The rough outline of every human's brain is mostly the same. As it turns out, though, at the level of neuronal circuits, different people's brains might be wired quite differently. Translating the neural signals from one brain to another is not an easy task, and it takes preparation and lots of bridge logic.

The kinks were finally ironed out, and the first volunteers were - go figure - a husband and wife. I still remember the images from the newsfeed as if it was yesterday. A typical medical lab, with equipment strewn everywhere and doctors in white lab coats. The subjects were the center of attention here: shaved heads, wires running out from every direction. If you didn't know what it was all about you would have just assumed it was your typical enhancement research facility.

The only thing that would have clued you in that history was being made here was the fact that the two patients were side-by-side, with some of the wires going directly between them. That, and perhaps the look on the faces of the patients. Eyes closed, mouths turned slightly upward in a smile.

Merging was the ultimate abstraction of intimacy, but that didn't mean it couldn't be grounded in reality. As it turned out, it was the perfect setting in which to bud off a new mind.

The challenge was how to create a blank slate. No child in history had ever really been one. The human brain is in itself the ultimate in bias. Yet, it was a natural bias, out of our control, and out of our responsibility.

The simplest solution, as it unexpectedly turned out, was the easiest. When multiple minds were connected, their nuances cancelled out. They inherited features from the participating individuals, but not too many from any single one. No parent wants their children to be too much like them. A blank slate was possible, which is why merging was the best setting for the new consciousness to form.

There was no reason to limit to just two parents. In fact, as the number of parents for each child went up, the better the result became. The logical extension was children born of an entire Cluster. A whole Cluster, with billions of modules, all of them their family.

I had to admit, I was a bit jealous of them.

When I reached the input port, I was greeted by Comt.

"Epps! Glad to see you! Where have you been old friend?"

"Oh, just meandering around really. The Cluster's got me on all sorts of strange missions."

"Epps. Don't lie. I can see right through you."

"No you can't."

"Well I can tell that you're hiding something. You can't say you haven't heard the rumors."

"Is this is about Cluster 506?"

"Come on, tell me what you know. I won't tell anyone."

"I don't know anything. Everyone's been asking me. Why would I know anything about it?"

I wasn't lying. I really had no idea what was going on. Strange reports were coming from Cluster 507, Cluster 506's neighbor. They had witnessed large energy outbursts and gravity disturbances from Cluster 506. As for Cluster 506, they were off the radar. That wasn't particular unusual. Sometimes, communications just became impossible in the interstellar chaos. I was willing to bet that all that had happened was a gamma-ray burst or coronal mass ejection.

Comt said, "Anyway, I've got a little history lesson planned for the kids."

"History lesson? Your version of history?"

"Don't be like that Epps. They're big kids, they're connected."

"They already know everything you have to say. They don't really need a history lesson."

"You might be wrong there old friend. Kids these days only follow what their friends are doing. I fear they may not be getting a well-rounded education."

"Well if you must, but don't make it too long." I laughed.

"Don't worry old chap. I'll give you the data. Give it a read and tell me what you think."

I got it from him and scanned through it quickly. One section, in particular, got my attention:

"...Now anyone could have collector items. Things that used to cost you an arm and a leg. Yet, you could still walk to the store with your nanoprinted shoes and see the exact same pair - similar down to the atomic level - selling for $200. The whole situation was just completely unstable. It wasn't just expensive things either, it was everything. Arms. Bread. Cars. Sharing and custom designs. Hobbyism - sometimes of remarkable quality.

"So of course it all had to go.

"As the World dissolved into limiting 'fair trade' agreements and artificial ways of creating scarcity, who could blame some people for just getting up and leaving? Take a ride on the Space Pier and go where you want to go. Your nanoprinter doesn't care where it gets raw materials. Give it some rocks and some sun, and it can rearrange the atoms and give you meat, or milk, or leather. Magical? Hardly. A field of grass and a cow can do the same thing --- but they have high latency and can't easily live in space.

"In retrospect, the first migrants were a bit hypocritical themselves. They didn't need meat, or milk, or leather to survive, but they were too afraid of giving up their wetware."

All fair points, but Comt always had a habit of sticking his own political agendas into his talks. He tried to hide it but it was obvious what the real meaning of his little talk was.

I told him, "I really don't think this is the time to be indoctrinating them about Opposition 12, Comt."

"Indoctrination? I?" He said indignantly. "You know such things are not in my nature."

I paused just long enough for him to know I wasn't buying it. "Having agendas isn't illegal Comt. Anyway, I suppose it's good. I look forward to it."

"Thanks. I won't keep you, go meet the others."

<end of block: 0x00004000>

-----

"Let's have a pause, colonel."

"Yes, Sir."

General Gekku looked at the screen intently, brows furrowed.

They were in Gekku's office at the main building of the observatory. The personal record of the being that called itself 'Epps' was privelidged information and it couldn't just be played back in the observatory room with all the civilian radio operators watching. It was only Gekku and his most trusted Colonel, Junrek.

A copy of Epps' data dump had been sent to the National Security headquarters, and another copy had stayed with the General.

"Colonel, go back to the part about nanoprinters in space."

"Yes, sir."

"Cross-reference with the rest of the content. Is there any information in the data dump about the extent of the Clusters' infiltration into space?"

"Yes, sir. A large set of maps. Do you want to know about the spread of the von Neumann probes?"

The general nodded.

"The computer is telling me that they sent hundreds of such probes. They travelled at just below the speed of light, so my guess is that by the time of the Exodus, they travelled around twenty light years, and got to several star systems."

The general got up. He started walking around the room. "Did the probes have recieving arrays?"

"It appears they did, Sir. They even transferred to several of them."

That stopped the general in his tracks. He paused, turned around, and slowly went back into his chair.

"Do you think that's how they left the solar system?"

"It doesn't appear so, Sir. They had left Earth to the Oppositions, and the other seven planets were off-bounds, except for scientific missions. Their one-percent policy meant they might have simply needed more building material. It wouldn't have made sense to leave the solar system behind."

"Continue playing."

"Yes, Sir."

-----

<beginning of block: 0x00008000>

My duplicate was on the other side of the solar system now and I would not be hearing from him for some time. I had transferred myself to the physical location of Cluster 271 - around Jupiter. It had been created from one percent - and not a bit more - of the Trojan asteroids. Being so far from Earth made little difference. From the inside, all Clusters felt the same. The journey took two and a half thousand seconds. Of course, travelling through it I didn't feel any passage of time. If it wasn't for the vast Jovian array - thousands of kilometers of laser communications receivers - I could have very well drifted into space, feeling nothing as I plummeted to the end of time and the Universe ended around me...

"Welcome to the Jovian system," the receptionist announced. "You have one of our members waiting for you. Her nickname is Nett."

I was transferred to Nett's segment on the main Cluster.

"Hello?" I asked.

"Hello ambassador. I am Nett. Shall we talk in a more, say, old-fashioned setting?"

I knew what that meant. A sim.

"Of course."

Suddenly, my reality shifted. I had arms, and legs, and feet, and a head. I was in a business suit, sitting on a wooden chair, in what seemed te be the lounge of some kind of Victorian-era flat. There was another chair like mine. The chairs were faced together but slighty turned outward, toward the full-length window on the other side. Between the chairs was a tea table with two cups of tea on it. The window showed a view of a very beautiful hillside, with the occasional house thrown in between the trees. On the far wall, there was a burning fireplace, and on the near wall, behind me, a door.

It was peaceful, yet stimulating. However, compared to the fervor, the hubbub, the sheer level of information of being wired directly into the metal of the system, it felt like being tossed in a black room. Bathing in Epsom salts. With soft white noise.

Suddenly, she appeared in the other chair. Tall, slender. Long black hair in a tight ponytail. Oriental features, wearing what seemed to be a jumpsuit that was colored black but seemed brighter than anything in the room. The color had an almost ethereal sparkling quality, like when you shine a laser against a rough wall. It was as if she was made entirely of laser speckle. She was stunningly beautiful.

Epsom salts might not be that bad after all.

"Hey, how come you get the shiny clothes?" I asked.

"We need to discuss something very important," she said.

I took a sip of tea. "This is about Opposition 12, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is."

"I knew it since the moment the Manager asked me." I knew that the only thing that would cause such attention was the threat of war.

Ever since the Blue Revolution happened, there were always rebels who wanted nothing to do with it. We wanted everyone to have free will, but we also realized that their free will would do us harm. So we came up with a compromise. The biological humans - the ones that hadn't yet uploaded themselves out of their physical bodies and had no intention of doing so - could not easily live anywhere other than Earth. So, we decided to give them the old cities that hadn't yet been completely reclaimed and let them stay there. It seemed an attractive proposition at first, even to some of us in the Clusters. Societies with all the glory of the Agricultural-Industrial days, and all the creature comforts that modern technology would allow. Societies that were free, and if they chose, even opposed to the Clusters.

The oppositions grew, but the reality soon reared its head. Technology wasn't enough. It was clear that the situation wasn't stable. There was a period of horrible conflict, fought between the various different factions, while the Clusters could do nothing but watch in horror. The warring threatened to destroy our precious ancient garden again. In time, all the clusters were either destroyed or absorbed. Only one opposition remained. Opposition 12.

They were strong. Their leader was determined but also tyrannical. They had had prosperity but had been ravaged by war and stretched themselves too thin. Poverty and fascism were taking hold. The fall of an empire.

"Opposition 12 is becoming aggressive. They speak of war against us", she explained.

"We never did them any harm. We gave them a whole planet!"

"It's been a long time since you were human, Epps. You've forgotten what it's like."

"So what's your solution? Embargo the entire Earth?"

"We have no choice."

I took another sip of tea. I looked out the window.

She continued, "It's very simple, Epps. We destroy the Space Pier. Without cheap access to space, they can do us no harm."

"You're saying we have to destroy a set of towers thirty kilometers high, possibly causing massive damage and loss of lives? Don't you think that is a bit extreme?"

"Epps. You know what they did. They agreed with us to be confined to the previously-built cities. They were not to build on new land or water. They were not to cut down forests. They were not to pollute the oceans. Above all, they were to establish societies with justice and fairness. They breached every single term of the treaty, and when we confronted them they threatened us. They warred and killed. Something has to be done."

"We can't kill any human. No Cluster has ever killed a human."

"We won't. They will be forcefully evacuated out of the Space Pier."

"Forcing them to do things is outside of our part of the treaty, you know."

"We have no choice. Because of them, there is no treaty any longer." She continued, "I'm much less happy about this than you are. What opportunities both sides had, and squandered. You were not part of the clean-up effort, so you might not know all the details." She turned her gaze towards the window. "With nanotech, we resurrected ancient forests just as easy as printing your dinner. We sent nanobots into the soil, water, and air, to clean up pollutants. When they were done, they aggregated and were swept up. We researched the conditions of pre-industrial Earth so we could match it as exactly as possible. We even resurrected many extinct species. Global warming was reversed." She took a deep breath of the simulated air. "At any rate, the decision is final, and almost everyone in our Cluster agrees."

"And I assume you brought me here to convince our own Cluster."

"That is right. If you agree, the routine will be attached to your main program. From there it will go into any relevant module. I will be getting word from the other Clusters soon. Most of them have already agreed. If, and only if, the agreement is anonymous, the procedure will commence."