Filling in the Blank

Chapter 9

What is it they say about war? Terror and boredom in unequal measures? First things went fast, then they went slow.

We made them wait, though for the most part it felt like the other way around. A week spent in futile attempts to engage with our reticent minders (they would smile and counsel patience), of being confined to the virtual worlds of the lander or to the inside of our dune buggy, taking tours around the island. Beautiful as it was, it wasn't a very big island. Blue sky, blue ocean, brown rock and black sand. You see it once...

It was on the sixth day that God created man, so an old story goes. Our fabricator, being mortal, took one day longer. On the seventh day I became flesh. Synth-flesh, with skin and bones of kinetic polymer, veins of optic fibre and organs of computronium. As I emerged from this delayed genesis, a seaplane appeared in our sky, found a landing place in the narrow cove that abutted the base of our dune. I was to be taken to another island, the ground crew explained. Would this at last be my chance to speak to someone who would answer back? They merely nodded without commitment. I had learned by now to expect no more.

It wasn't a very fast seaplane. I could have retreated into my virtuality to pass the time in comfort. Or used my new body as a one-way time machine, speeding up the trip by slowing myself down – I was still coming to terms with all that my new simulated existence made possible. I did none of these things. What I did was brave the claustrophobia of our huddled cabin, enjoyed the hospitality of my headphone-clad pilot – who smiled and nodded, but was otherwise no more communicative than our minders on the island – and experienced a sensation that my ten-minute interstellar spaceship ride had failed to deliver: a smallness in the face of enormity brought on by gazing out over Genardy's vast but empty ocean. I imagined that by doing these things I was re-connecting with the physical world, relishing being a walking-talking human again. A chance to come down from my extended interlude of unreality, to restore my humanity and boost my empathy for what I assumed was to come. No, I didn't think this made much sense, but I did it anyway.

Several hours over ocean then a brief sprint over land, ending when we put down on a small lake.

I was met on the shore by a woman. We shook hands and she identified herself as Gwyneth, would admit to no more than that. My queries as to her job title were shrugged off, nor did she exhibit any indicators of status. I didn't press the point. Dark haired and dressed with considerably more flair than I had encountered so far: wrapped, shoulders to knees, in a bolt of a very light fabric – imagine a clingy toga – with headgear that was more a beret than a sunhat; something in her demeanour told me that here was a person with the authority to speak for her world. From the jetty, she escorted me across a jungle-rimmed lawn, up a short incline toward a substantial but solitary building wedged into the hillside.

Reaching the edge of the jungle, I rebelled. A very small rebellion: I just stopped in my tracks, suddenly conscious of the absurdity of all this silence – or perhaps just the effrontery of it. I turned around to take in the scenery of the lake, the foreground forest and the far hills. If she wouldn't speak to me, perhaps the landscape could tell me something. Behind me, I was aware that she too had halted and turned, a few steps further up the hill, was now observing me as I observed her world (among the advantages of a robot body: eyes in the back of your head).

This was an act of petulance, hardly diplomatic – I was aware of that even as I was doing it. And yet, after a week of confinement, after all the frustrations of information withheld, I felt a need to complete that process of connection to this world that the cramped aircraft cabin had left unfinished. Here I was, walking upon another planet, bathing in the light of another sun. That's a thing you want to feel. The peculiar blue of the lake, the green of the surrounding vegetation, variegated with other less conventional colours, the vivid sky – the otherworldliness of the place was finally making itself known.

"It's beautiful." As I spoke these words, I recalled something that Brian had said about his survey results: how life on this planet became more alien the closer you looked. From this distance the verdant growth that clung to the hills could as easily have been Earthly forest. Look at it through a microscope, though, and no doubt you would find monsters.