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"This way. We have to go around. Hurry."
He picked up Riema
Riema
They couldn't save him. This world had let them come and go -- on its own terms -- but to Riema
She went back and stepped over him, into Elysium. As the doorway retreated, Riema
Durham withdrew into Elysium, just as the doorway became opaque. A second later, they saw the outside wall of the house. The implosion -- or separation -- accelerated as the doorway flew through the air above the grounds; and then the whole scene was encircled by darkness, like a model in a glass paperweight, floating off into deep space.
Maria watched the bubble of light recede, the shapes within melting and reforming into something new, too far away to decipher. Was Riema
She said, "I don't understand -- but whatever the Lambertians are doing to us, it's not just random corruption . . . it's not just destroying the TVC rules. That world was holding together. As if its own logic had taken precedence over Elysium's. As if it no longer needed us."
Durham said flatly, "I don't believe that." He crouched beside the doorway, weighed down by defeat.
Maria touched his shoulder. He shrugged free. He said, "You'd better hurry up and launch yourself. The other Elysians will have been removed from the seed, but everything else -- all the infrastructure -- should still be there. Use it."
"Alone?"
"Make children, if you want to. It's easy; the utility programs are all in the central library."
"And -- what? You'll do the same?"
"No." He looked up at her and said grimly, "I've had enough. Twenty-five lives. I thought I'd finally discovered solid ground -- but now it's all crumbling into illusions and contradictions. I'll kill myself before the whole thing falls apart: die on my own terms, leaving nothing to be explained in another permutation."
Maria didn't know how to respond. She walked over to the interface window, to take stock of whatever was still functioning. After a while, she said, "The Autoverse spy software has stopped working -- and the entire hub has gone dead -- but there's some last-minute summary data in the copy of the central library you made for the seed." She hunted through Repetto's analysis and translation systems.
Durham came and stood beside her; he pointed out a highlighted icon, a stylized image of a swarm of Lambertians.
He said, "Activate that."
They read the analysis together. A team of Lambertians had found a set of field equations -- nothing to do with the Autoverse cellular automaton -- with thirty-two stable solutions. One for each of their atoms. And at high enough temperatures, the same equations predicted the spontaneous generation of matter -- in exactly the right proportions to explain the primordial cloud.
The dance had been judged successful. The theory was gaining ground.
Maria was torn between resentment and pride. "Very clever -- but how will they ever explain four humanoid robots abandoned in a meadow?"
Durham seemed bleakly amused. "They arrived in a spaceship, didn't they? Aliens must have sent them, as emissaries. There must be other stars out there -- concealed behind a suitable dust cloud."
"Why should aliens try to tell the Lambertians about the TVC cellular automaton?"
"Maybe they believed in it. Maybe they discovered the Autoverse rules . . . but since they still couldn't explain the origin of the elements, they decided to embed the whole thing in a larger system -- another cellular automaton -- complete with immortal beings to create the Autoverse, primordial cloud and all. But the Lambertians will put them straight: there's no need for such a convoluted hypothesis."
"And now the Autoverse is sloughing us off like dead skin." Maria gazed at the Lambertian field equations; they were far more complex than the Autoverse rules, but they had a strange elegance all their own. She could never have invented them herself; she was sure of that.
She said, "It's not just a matter of the Lambertians out-explaining us. The whole idea of a creator tears itself apart. A universe with conscious beings either finds itself in the dust . . . or it doesn't. It either makes sense of itself on its own terms, as a self-contained whole . . . or not at all. There never can, and never will be, Gods."
She displayed a map of Elysium. The dark stain marking processors which had ceased responding had spread out from the six public pyramids and swallowed most of the territories of Riema
She turned to Durham and pleaded, "Come with me!"
"No. What is there left for me to do? Descend into paranoia again? Wake up wondering if I'm really nothing but a discredited myth of Planet Lambert's humanoid alien visitors?"
Maria said angrily, "You can keep me company. Keep me sane. After all you've done to me, you owe me that much."
Durham was unmoved. "You don't need me for that. You'll find better ways."
She turned back to the map, her mind going blank with panic for a moment -- then she gestured at the growing void. "The TVC rules are dissolving, the Lambertians are destroying Elysium -- but what's controlling that process? There must be deeper rules, governing the clash of theories: deciding which explanations hold fast, and which dissolve. We can hunt for those rules. We can try to make sense of what went on here."
Durham said sardonically, "Onward and upward? In search of higher order?"
Maria was close to despair. He was her one link to the old world; without him, her memories would lose all meaning.
"Please! We can argue this out in the new Elysium. But there's no time now."
He shook his head sadly. "Maria, I'm sorry -- but I can't follow you. I'm seven thousand years old. Everything I've struggled to build is in ruins. All my certainties have evaporated. Do you know how that feels?"
Maria met his eyes and tried to understand, tried to gauge the depth of his weariness. Could she have persisted for as long as he had? Maybe the time came, for everyone, when there was no way forward, no other choice but death. Maybe the Lambertians were right, maybe "infinity" was meaningless . . . and "immortality" was a mirage no human should aspire to.
No human --
Maria turned on him angrily. "Do I know how it feels? However you want it to feel. Isn't that what you told me? You have the power to choose exactly who you are. The old human shackles are gone. If you don't want the weight of your past to crush you . . . then don't let it! If you really want to die, I can't stop you -- but don't tell me that you have no choice."