The Network.
The detail of the image is astonishing. More threads than Sarya could count in a lifetime swirl and dive and connect in a field of glowing junctions. It’s denser than woven cloth, a solid mass of light and shadow. There are outliers here and there, single gossamer filaments that reach glowing dots almost at the surrounding bridges—Sarya can see a minuscule figure reaching up to touch one, goddess knows how far above Eleven’s trundling figure. And at one edge, a single dot glows a brilliant green. Beside it, in characters that must be many times the size of Riptide, floats a single sentence.
You are here.
“Goddess,” she whispers.
[There are over a million Visitors’ Galleries like this on this station], says Eleven. [And this is one of the smallest Blackstars.]
For once, the suit seems to be completely missing her distress. “Okay,” she says, and swallows. “That doesn’t really…help.”
[And there are, what, over a million Blackstars? So really, there are trillions of rooms like this. You could give a few hundred thousand Visitors’ Galleries to every single legal intelligence in this Visitors’ Gallery, I’d bet. In fact, if you made it your goal to visit every single one of them, and you had Ol’ Ernie to get you through the lines—hold on, let’s measure this in thousands of Human lifespans—]
There is more to the message, but Sarya has stopped reading. “Seriously,” she says. “Stop. This is…impossible.”
A small [laughter] tag appears on Eleven’s holo. [Just because it’s too big for you doesn’t mean it’s too big for everyone.]
Sarya drops her eyes from the monster display of the Network. Her gaze crosses hundreds of floors of balconies on its way down, each one of which probably contains the population of Watertower Station. In the time her line of sight takes to transition from vertical to horizontal, more people have entered or exited this space than she will meet in a lifetime. She has never been this overwhelmed. And worse: when her gaze reaches the floor, she is startled to realize that it has not in fact reached the floor. Eleven is now far out onto a bridge; when Sarya peers over the edge, she can see that there is even more Gallery below her than above. She swallows and averts her eyes before she ever sees bottom.
“Um,” she says, suddenly aware that the individuals pressing against the suit’s armored sides are both less synthetic and less furry than she expected. “Where are Mer and Roche?”
[They left], says Eleven. [I wasn’t tracking them.]
“Can we, um…leave too?”
[Who’s afraid of the Network now?]
“Seriously, Eleven. Please.”
[How about over there?]
A highlight flashes around a platform jutting out from this bridge. Its suspended location is not the most reassuring, but at least it has a domed roof. As soon as she sees it, Sarya wants nothing more than to be under it.
“Yes,” she says, and then again: “Please.”
[Feeling overwhelmed?]
“There is no word for what I’m feeling right now,” she says quietly.
Eleven approaches the platform, which of course looks even larger up close. It’s a park, maybe twice the size of Watertower’s largest arboretum, but Sarya doesn’t point out this fact because Eleven will just tell her that there are a trillion trillion more of these things, and that she’s even smaller than she thought. Around her, life continues. Two transports pass Eleven, carrying a variety of flora and digging tools. Above, a flock of flying somethings-or-others spiral and dive up near the top of the dome. Half a dozen maintenance drones cheerfully water and trim the plants, while a recycler follows close behind in case of waste. Sarya watches these various activities play out in a billionth of a trillionth of the Network and realizes that never before in her life has she known how insignificant she is. She is lost in a system vaster and more intricate than she could understand in a million lifetimes—and she is at the bottom of it.
And she is alone.
She is startled by the feeling of something on her face and raises her hand to feel wetness. Her body remembers tears, apparently. “So,” she says softly. “Um.”
A strap squeezes her shoulder.
“I just…” She swallows. “I’m lost, Eleven.”
[I’m guessing you don’t mean you need a map.]
Sarya would laugh if she could remember how. “You mean like that map?” she says, pointing straight up to where the gigantic image of the Network looms through the park’s translucent ceiling. “That thing the size of the station I grew up on, that monstrosity that shows me just how lost I am? When I say I’m lost, Eleven, I mean I’m lost lost. I…I can’t even tell you how lost.” She is trembling, and she can’t stop. “You know, for like five minutes I thought the universe was sort of on my side. Fate. Destiny. Whatever you want to call it. I spent years obsessed with my people and then right when I resign myself to a boring life—boom, somebody shows up and says hey, I might have a future for you. Do you know what that feels like?”
[I have no idea.]
“For that few minutes I had this feeling that it was inevitable, that I was being swept toward something…and then it exploded. I mean it literally did. And now I’m here because where else can I go and I’m lost and alone and there are no more steps to take and…I’m just—” Her voice breaks in half. “I’m such an idiot,” she whispers, wiping her cheeks furiously.
Eleven says nothing.
“I thought I was doing something,” she says, and hiccups. “I thought I was, I don’t know, accomplishing something. Like I was getting closer. But look at that thing. I am on one dot of that mess up there, and that dot is bigger than anything I ever imagined. And that’s just civilization. If the Humans were on one of those dots, somebody would have found them. They’re not even on that map, Eleven. They’re in the empty parts between Networked solar systems, those gigantic voids up there that would take centuries to cross—and how many centuries do you think I have?” She throws off the strap that is reaching for her shoulder. “Don’t touch me,” she says, her voice rising. “This isn’t something you can just…just encourage me through. I’m being realistic, okay? I am a literal speck of fucking dust and I cannot do it.”
Sarya hangs in the suit in silence, her body trembling with sobs that she would rather die than release. Her jaw is locked shut and she can feel the hot wetness around her burning eyes, and she refuses to address it. She stares out into the arboretum, into one of countless spaces on countless stations across a Network whose immensity she can’t comprehend, let alone search. She feels the break coming, like she’s unraveling, like the Widow and Human inside her are coming apart, like her mind is strained to a point it cannot withstand—