And then something else happens, something Mer didn’t know was possible. The entire Visitors’ Gallery, kilometers of brightly lit open space, is plunged into darkness. He stumbles, feeling his talons scrape and then leave the floor entirely. His stomachs rise. He slashes out, desperately, feeling for the floor, but there is nothing. Gravity’s out, say his instincts. Gravity, lights, everything. The only thing he can see is a single glowing phrase stamped across his view.
[Network not found.]
She stands under a dead sky, her feet lost in an infinite plane of surf. In her hand lies a stone the size of her palm, a jewel that sparkles in whatever passes for light here. It’s smoother than glass, weighs more than a trillion trillion suns, and it’s warm to the touch. Its slick surface refracts the sky into impossible colors.
Behold, says Network. The universe.
Huh, she says, hefting it. I always thought it’d be a little heavier.
She knew this, somehow. She understands, in some abstract way, that she is elsewhere. Elsewhen. Else-everything. She is breathing, but goddess knows that this is not air. She can feel water on the skin of her bare feet, but she is fairly certain that neither the skin nor the water actually exists. She can see, but that doesn’t mean that there are actual eyes involved—or light, for that matter. But the lie is comforting—more so, after spending the last few nanoseconds bodiless.
She wraps her fingers around the thing in her hand. Why do I want to throw it so bad? she asks. It’s just the perfect size.
I should not have to tell you this, says Network, but do not throw the universe.
What about just a little toss? Like this? She flips the universe from one hand to the other.
You are, without a doubt, the most— Network breaks off, with obvious effort, and begins again. Look around. Do you see anything you would like me to explain?
I’m good, she says, now tossing the universe from hand to hand. Strange how she’s never thought about how incredibly satisfying it would be to annoy a mind the size of a galaxy.
How in the— Again, Network stops. I am honestly trying to be civil here and you are being difficult.
Really? This is You being civil? Because I mean, You literally killed me.
I thought we were past that. And also, I believe it was Librarian who did the killing.
She laughs. That might have worked on me, before You told me all about how You work.
Choices are choices, says Network. And when you find yourself capable of moving on, I would like to explain something. I shall begin with a metaphor.
She glances around herself. Her feet are still underwater. There’s still a universe in her hand. I assumed this was all metaphor, she says.
Oh, no. This is reality—albeit parsed by an extremely limited mind.
She points to the universe in her hand. Really? she says. I’m holding the universe?
Imagine, if you can, says Network, ignoring her question, that you are two-dimensional. A flat circle resting on a flat plane. We’ll call that plane…the universe.
Is this the metaphor?
It is. This flat universe contains many circles like you. Most are larger than you—higher tier, you understand—but they are all two-dimensional, like their universe. That is why when they are torn from their plane for a moment, to be flipped through a higher dimension and deposited elsewhere, they cannot understand what has happened to them.
An image arises in her mind, of millions of starships entering a subspace tunnel and exiting lightyears away. You mean Network travel, she says.
I mean faster-than-light travel in general. Lightspeed is the rule in our universe, tiny mind, and to defeat it you must leave that universe behind. And when an intelligence born of the universe leaves it for a time, its limited mind remembers nothing from the experience. In a manner of speaking, it did not experience it at all.
Okay, but…She gestures around herself. I mean, this is subspace, right? And I’m here, I’m experiencing it, I’m remembering stuff—
You are no longer a circle.
I’m not?
You are a sphere.
I see, she says, though nothing could be further from the truth. She glances down at the universe in her hands, trying to imagine what this could possibly mean.
You were correct when you guessed that I am far larger than what you see inside the universe, says Network. And now you are as well. In the universe, you will appear unchanged; that is your cross-section, so to speak. But now that you share My nature, you also share My abilities. You will find that the minds of the Network will respond to you as if you were Me. You will be able to call them, to bridge them, to use them to enhance your own abilities. You are a Network yourself now.
This is too much for her mind. She, the tiny Human, the simple daughter of a Widow? She flashes through question after question before settling on the simplest. Why?
Because you are going to do something for me.
She actually laughs, and she would swear she hears the sound with ears that don’t exist. So You want to ask someone a favor, and the first thing You do is kill them.
I am not asking anything, says Network. I am not even commanding. I am predicting.
Oh, please. If You think You’ve got me figured out—
Allow Me to cut you off there. I could answer your questions and address your objections one by one at your own glacial pace, or I could show you another universe.
This piques her interest. You mean, like…a parallel universe?
Not at all. A past version of our own universe. Tiny mind, look in your other hand and you will see what I am capable of.
And now, somehow, there is something there. Somehow, impossibly, she holds two universes in her two hands—and even more impossibly, this does not feel strange.
In here? she says.
In there, says Network.
It takes a moment to figure out what her instincts are telling her, but then she begins, hesitantly, to raise the new universe toward herself. At some point she crosses a threshold—she is no longer drawing it, it is drawing her—and then she is submerged. She slides through reality, skidding across spacetime, marveling at the fact that none of this seems marvelous at all. This is just…a day in the life of a Network. This universe is small; in fact, it seems to be only the size of a single solar system. She approaches the sun, her mind somehow not at all disturbed by the fact that she can see both its outside and its inside at the same time. It is a vast tapestry of flame and beauty, a churning stew of inside-out particles and electromagnetic radiation—
And then the universe flattens.
Welcome to ten centuries ago, says Network. A tiny portion of a past state of a smaller than average universe, reconstructed for your learning convenience.