CAPACITY

Chris was right. How could she lie to a robot that could, for all intents and purposes, read her mind? Without hesitation, Judy ran. The door to the central section of the Shawl was made of paper. She dived straight through it. Something smacked on the back of her hand as she did so. She landed on the branch outside, rolled to a standing position, and then froze in horror.

She had been expecting help. She had been expecting other people, someone, anyone who would see her distress and come and save her. Someone who could call for Social Care or the Watcher.

There was no one. The central section was deserted. The branches of the World Tree were bare, the only movement the limp swaying of the black ba

“Run!”

It was her own voice. Enough to break the spell. White robes flapping, Judy ran for her life.

“Judy, it’s me-Judy 11. Run downwards. Run for the exit.”

Judy ran along the branch, conscious of the huge drop on either side of her. It was a kilometer to the bottom, and there was nobody to catch her if she fell.

“Where?”

“Don’t talk,” Judy 11 called. “Save your breath for ru

Judy reached the grey spiral ramp that wound down to the bottom of the tree and to the airlock, her only possible route to safety. She charged down it, her feet grazed by the abrasive gripping surface, never moving as fast as she would like. Constantly having to run in a curve…

Judy 11’s voice rose above the sound of her feet, of her frantic gasping breath. “We’ve all been tricked. Chris stuck a security net in your apartment, good enough to fool the Watcher. He kept your lounge in stasis for two days, had you and Frances sleeping in slow time while that same security net had something leave your apartment, something Judy-shaped enough to fool Social Care. Chris wanted his privacy while he had his conversation with you. No one knows we’re here!”

Judy ran on and on. She had developed a stitch. Her long white sleeves trailed behind her, flapping in the wind.

“The section has been released. It has already begun to fall…”

“Judy, dive!”

The voice this time was Frances’. Judy dived and rolled, and something ricocheted off the ramp behind her. She looked up, back up the vertiginous wall of the Shawl interior, to the doorway of her apartment. Tentacles writhed up there, and for just a moment, the blue skeleton of a robot was visible before it was snatched backwards. Frances!

“Don’t look back. Just run!” Judy 11 called.

Judy rolled back onto her feet and resumed ru

“Chris has some sort of nano-virus infecting this section,” Judy 11 called. “He’s taken control of nearly all of the materials in here. Frances can’t work on them; she can’t get them to reproduce for her own benefit. Chris has total control: he’s blocking signals to the outside world. Get to the airlock, Judy. Get me through, and I can call for help.”

“I’m trying,” Judy gasped, still ru

“Frances,” said Judy 11. “I was hiding in her all along, where else? Oh, shit.”

There was a screeching, tearing noise, and a sudden breeze. Something gold dropped towards Judy.

“What?” Judy called, looking around. Something glinted on the back of her hand. Something metal, a flat speaker-that was how Judy 11 was speaking to her-fired by Frances. The breeze suddenly became a wind. The wind was increasing; it began to howl…

“…d…w…” Judy 11 called, the tiny voice from the speaker lost in the gale. Up above, Judy could see the material of the section folding apart, puckering and sliding over itself. Chris was rearranging its structure, opening it to space. The atmosphere was exploding away.

“Damn,” Judy said to herself. “He’s won. He’s got me.” She couldn’t believe it, that she would die here. Then the grey material of the ramp itself was breaking up, ru

“A spacesuit!” Judy 11 said in her ear. “Yes! Just like the one Kevin used. It’s the same code! Only applied to materials in atomic space. That’s neat. Atomic or digital, the code works in both worlds.”

The gold shape was still dropping towards Judy. She gave a laugh as she recognized it, then it dropped onto her, enfolded her, reshaped itself.

“Now,” Judy 11 said, confidence returning to her voice. “Run. We can make it.”

Wrapped in the skin of her best friend, filled with renewed hope, Judy ran down the disintegrating ramp, through the thi

“Hurry,” urged Judy 11…

…Except Judy 11 was already dead. She had died before Judy had ever left her apartment, scrambled as Frances had prepared her attack in the atomic Judy’s bedroom. The metal starfish that had come whirling through the door had sent interference patterns across the electromagnetic spectrum, the thrashing patterns of its legs distorting space and time and reshaping the relationship between entities in the room. Judy 11 stood apart from Frances in the processing space that made up the robot’s mind. She didn’t stand a chance against the attack. Frances was having enough trouble preserving her own integrity; the metal starfish seemed to operate on levels of physics she hadn’t known existed. Not a moment too soon, the starfish fell to the floor and twitched and died. It looked so pathetic lying there, a coil of material that had once been part of the wall of Judy’s lounge.

“Why did you make her run?” Chris had asked, as the glacial war of attrition that was the battle ground on around them. “I only wanted to talk with her.”

“You were reprogramming her. I can’t allow you to do that.”

“You’ve condemned her to death.”

“It was better than the alternative.”

“You’re wrong.”

Complex shapes unfolded in five dimensions. Frances fought to understand this latest attack as she strove to protect Judy.

“Why are you doing that?”

“Doing what?” Frances asked.

“Struggling to preserve a pattern of bits that you can easily recreate. You know this battle is already decided. Judy is going to die. What difference does it make if she lives another thirty seconds?”

“Thirty more seconds or forty more years, she’s always going to die, Chris. I’m going to help her hold on to every moment.”

Frances sought to gain a purchase on something, worked to find a way around the nano-virus that made every object in the section strangely slippery to her touch. It was hopeless.

“Okay. I know that she is going to die today,” snapped Frances, as she saw her position rapidly weakening. “But, Chris, live in a body like I have done, and you would understand why I’m trying to give her these last few seconds.”

She felt black despair. She could see how Chris was manipulating magnetic fields, cha