Widow of Opportunity

NB:

This synopsis was written in January of 1998, immediately prior to the final edit of The Resurrected Man. My intention was to formally pitch it to HarperCollins Australia, but in the end all I did was show it a friend of mine who worked there, and a couple of other people, looking for feedback. I've barely touched it since, nervous of grappling with its more confusing aspects before deciding first if I really want to write it and/or finding it a home. Ultimately, I might not be able to pull it off. But here it is anyway, for those keen to know what might have happened to Jonah and Marylin next ...

But first, the title. I was originally going to call it Widow of Opportunity — and referred to it as such in the afterword to the A View Before Dying chapbook — but I eventually lifted that for another, quite different book. Here it appears under a name Peter McNamara coined, intending it as a warning as much as a joke.

22^nd January 2000

"The Resurrected Plot"

(Synopsis)

“The greater the complexity of systems, the more danger of something going wrong, and the less chance individual will has of operating on the systems for good. First the systems become impersonal. Then they seem to take on a mind of their own, then they become positively malignant!”

Brian Aldiss, Frankenstein Unbound, Jonathan Cape Ltd., UK, 1973

Forty-five years after the events contained in The Resurrected Man, the story continues.

BACKWARD

The year is 2114. Earth's first interstellar colony — Tarsus, on a small but highly active world in the Eta Boötis system — has declared its independence in protest against ideology and population forcibly imposed upon it by the World Council of Earth. One of these imports is a serial killer whose signature bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the Twinmaker — who 'killed' 18 women almost half a century earlier, and who, it was thought, had committed suicide, twice, before he could be brought to trial.

Now, with the body-count mounting, Marylin Blaylock (POV) has been brought out of cold memory to investigate the so-called Latecomer (POV) murders. Having emigrated from Earth at light-speed before the development of ftl d-mat travel, and been archived along with other Latecomer colonists until either sufficient resources are available to integrate them or their unique skills are needed, she is confronted by the double-whammy of a society decades in advance of the one she left behind plus this gruesome horror she has only recently (from her point of view) escaped. With the help of two sophisticated AIs — CAVE, a nag (from Central American nagual, a personal tutelary spirit) designed to monitor her and to instruct her when she makes mistakes, and TRINITY, descendant of QUALIA, former linchpin of the now-defunct KTI network — she is doing her best to piece together a puzzle even more complex than before.

Meanwhile, on an Earth bloated by population growth as a result of increased longevity, Jonah McEwen (POV) has been doing his best to ensure that his late father, Lindsay Carlaw, keeps his promise: to offer virtual immortality to every human by the year 2114. But the Watchers are resisting him, protesting that their initial projections were too optimistic. Annoyed by threats to reveal the truth about them, they have cast him into a form of Coventry, rendering him unable to communicate by electronic means. He has become a pariah on his home planet and throughout Sol System. Everywhere he goes, whoever he tries to talk to, the Watchers are one step ahead of him. In desperation, he turns to the underground economy for help.

Before he can make any progress, however, he is diverted in the middle of a d-mat jump and confronted by the decidedly non-human and unidentifiable persona of a Watcher. The Watcher gives him a cryptic message: "When e asks, tell er: 'Mu Gong and Xi-Wang-mu — the twain — meet at last.'" Before Jonah can demand an explanation, his d-mat voyage resumes.

Instead of arriving at his expected destination, however, he ends up on the far side of the data-blockade separating Sol and Eta Boötis — on Tarsus. He has landed literally in the middle of the investigation of the Latecomer's latest murder. The moment Jonah realises this, and that Marylin is involved in the investigation, he knows that events and issues he has tried to bury in the past must be confronted again before they can finally be put to rest.

The prime suspect of the Latecomer murders is Jonah's estranged son, Jeremy Carlaw (referred to in third gender pronouns). E is also the son of Marylin Blaylock — the version copied by the Twinmaker, who stayed behind on Earth when her original emigrated to Tarsus. Jeremy followed es mother's copy in 2112, although e hasn't tried to contact her since her awakening. She was obviously unaware of es existence prior to the investigation, and is reluctant to explore es past in any great detail, having closed off that part of her life. (To her, only a month has passed since she decided to leave Jonah.) Jeremy's presence has not been directly recorded on Tarsus, apart from the samples matching es genetic profile that have been found on the bodies. His whereabouts, therefore, are unknown.

Trapped on Tarsus by political crisis, Jonah has little choice but to assist in the investigation. Caught in a web of conflicting emotions, Marylin has no choice but to work with him. Both Jonah and Marylin intuit that Herold Verstegen, the original Twinmaker, is behind this new wave of crimes — having possibly escaped to Tarsus at lightspeed in a similar way to the Latecomer colonists. Together they have the best chance at defeating him in a second round — and possibly working out what the Watchers are up to into the bargain, given Verstegen's predilection for thwarting the plans of Lindsay Carlaw.

There's only one problem: the Domestic Bureau of Criminal Intelligence won't allow it. Marylin's superior, Bureau Chief Miloš Cescato, prefers a different theory: that the Latecomer colonists are being framed; that the murders can be pinned to a recent arrival, such as Jeremy Carlaw.

Although motivated primarily by political considerations (the first elected leader of Tarsus Colony, President Tašmetu Rosevear, is much in favour of keeping anti-Earth sentiments high) Cescato does have evidence to back him up. The Latecomer's MO is different to the Twinmaker's: not all of his victims resemble Blaylock; some are even male; and not all of them have been tortured or dismembered prior to disposal. Also, the security flaws in KTI exploited by Verstegen have been sealed in the Tarsus branch of the d-mat network — the Off-Earth D-mat Provider, or OEDP — so the Latecomer must be getting in some other way.

Regardless of these discrepancies, Marylin employs Jonah to investigate the matter privately while she follows official channels. He, who retired from private investigation twenty years earlier, after the failure of his relationship with the other Marylin Blaylock, reluctantly agrees.

INWARD

Initially Jonah — assisted by Donald Schievenin, a conspiracy theorist employed by the Bureau to do 'odd jobs' — intends to look at the victims, amassing and collating data that might reveal a pattern to the murders, while Marylin continues the search for Jeremy, either in person or as ghosts, the latter by assuming voluntary control of a person or automaton at another location and using their senses (similar to VTC but more invasive). Jonah also, privately, researches the Watcher's message: Mu Gong and Xi-Wang-mu are ancient Chinese deities representing the principles of Yin and Yang, of East and West, and of immortality, but they seem to have no specific bearing to the case. As for whom the message was intended, no clues are evident.

During the course of the investigation, Jonah experiences a series of flashbacks that only occur while in transit between d-mat booths. They are usually followed by disorienting bouts of incoherence — now a rarity, and usually an indication of some sort of problem or interference during transmission. Although theoretically frozen in time while in transit, Jonah nevertheless receives visions of the Twinmaker investigation and of the Marylin on Earth, who chose to end her life in 2111 in accordance with the Lifespan Self-Determination Laws, after Jeremy severed all relations with es parents and took up with the virtual persona of es paternal grandfather — Lindsay Carlaw. Although the last time Jonah saw her she didn't seemed bitter or angry with him, he still feels guilt over her decision and has avoided telling the Marylin on Tarsus anything about her fate. Why he should be receiving these visions now and how they are occurring cannot be investigated without him detailing their content, so he chooses not to mention them at all, even though he is certain the Latecomer is involved.

Upon learning that Jeremy might be the same person as JAIR (POV), the enigmatic leader of EGH (Earthers Go Home), an anti-Earth resistance movement, Jonah changes the focus of his investigation to search for his son. Marylin is aware of this development, but cannot officially follow it herself, since the incumbent government is unwilling to provoke EGH in the highly volatile political climate. She continues to investigate the latest murder, to see how or if it connects to the previous eleven.

The most recent victim, Sayed Kartinyeri, is a seemingly unremarkable technician who has lived in Eta Boötis system since the colony's founding. When interviewed in person, however, he reveals that, early in the colonisation of the system, he was once contracted to work on a station of unprecedented size and complexity that he has never seen since. In his spare time, he searches for it, but after 25 years he doubts he'll ever find it again. Other eyewitness accounts have earned this mystery station a certain notoriety, and a name: the Tierney Object.

Jonah and Marylin's searches lead them from high orbit, through archived records, deep into the crust to a subterranean neutrino detector, to blister communities scattered across the planet, where colonists have chosen to risk the relatively violent elements by living permanently on the surface. Odd discrepancies and omissions point to a massive cover-up of some sort: conflicting dates of the discovery and development of SQURT, the ftl d-mat technology used to colonise Tarsus; the complete and unexplained absence of the Watchers on Tarsus; rumours of a hidden, Earth-owned and -run station, the Tierney Object, somewhere in Eta Boötis system; the dispatch of probes for nearby Gamma Serpens, which all evidence suggests is an empty system; a mismatch of solar observations taken from Tarsus and Earth; a geological record that indicates a tumultuous past, with deserts fused into glass every few thousand years or so, coinciding with changes in the direction of the planet's normally strong magnetic field and increased concentrations of nitrous oxides during these periods; and the apocalyptic predictions of a local astronomer, Hue-Lan Milosevic, who insists that Eta Boötis is decades overdue for a solar storm so massive it could wipe out all life in the system.

But what truth could the conspiracy be concealing? The most popular, if extreme, theory is that the entire Tarsus colony is nothing more than a hot-wired illusion (aka Real-Time Active Model, RTAM, or, when referring more to the contents of the illusion, eicohabitat) created to allow the World Council and/or the Copernicus Foundation to save face (and to alleviate population pressure) when the probes sent to Eta Boötis discovered that the system had already been sterilised by a solar storm. The odd thing is that, outlandish though this theory is, nothing Jonah learns actually contradicts it, and much seems to support it. Indeed, recent astronomical data from Sol System does indicate that Eta Boötis flared at the time the conspiracy theorists believed, but there is no way to tell how much damage resulted.

The test of the theory will come in just days time, when the Stage 6 refitters of Saul-2 return to Earth. The three Saul probes that first arrived in Eta Boötis were maintained and resupplied at regular points during their 37-year journey by technicians d-matted from Earth. Saul-1 failed in transit for unknown reasons, so its refitters have been lost. Travelling by d-mat at light-speed, the penultimate refit crew from Saul-2 is due to return to Earth on September 24, 57 years after they left Earth. These two women and one man — Larine Wehbe, Ania Oks & Seth Frazis — were the first people to see the third planet of Eta Boötis system from a point close enough to discern whether it could support life — and they observed it in 2086, three years before humans reached the system. Their testimony should end the mystery once and for all.

Before that can happen, however, there is another Latecomer murder — another male victim. The body is that of Jeremy Carlaw erself, and the cause of death is unknown. At the same time, President Rosevear declares a security emergency in response to the arrival of nanotech breeder-bombs via d-mat within Tarsus' two major orbital defence installations, We-to and Wuotan, and the two government administration centres, Gao Yao and Ganapati, also in orbit. Suspecting that Earth is behind these acts of tactical terrorism, and fearing more to come, Bureau resources are recalled to assist in the investigation. In response to the increased tension, EGH activist take over the DPO (Drop Point One) Memorial, on the site where the first lander touched down on Tarsus. Despite the illegality of their actions, the Bureau is instructed to let them be; as always, and especially now, displays of defiance against Earth are openly encouraged.

REWARD

Facing a severe staff and resource shortage, Marylin and Jonah do the best they can. They look into the most recent murder together, in person. The body appears to have been copied from templates retained after Jeremy's last d-mat journey — to Tarsus three years earlier. How the Latecomer obtained this record is unknown, as are his designs for it: the body appears inert, as though it was never alive. The placement alone seems to be the important factor.

While searching the location in more detail, Jonah finds a note addressed to him in a d-mat booth. The note instructs him to travel to a particular location in order to rendezvous with Jeremy. Although suspicious, he is also curious, and with Marylin's approval he does as instructed, monitored by CAVE, Marylin's attendant AI. Upon arriving at the specific location, he finds only another note, giving him another d-mat address. By accessing electronic records and using TRINITY's know-how, he ascertains that the person who left the note — not Jeremy — is leading him on a paperchase: placing a note then jumping to the next destination, barely one step ahead of him, thereby leading him on a wild goose chase across the planet. Forgoing a third note, Jonah goes into an open-ended jump. As the note-leaver leaves the next location and heads to another, TRINITY redirects Jonah there, so he will arrive slightly ahead, and notifies Bureau employees in the area.

When Jonah arrives, he is disoriented by incoherence, having suffered another vision in transit. Before he can recover, the woman he has been chasing leaves her booth and attempts to flee. At first, Jonah is confused, thinking she is Jeremy, but then his head clears. Jonah pursues her and manages to restrain her. Before he can interrogate her, however, he receives an urgent message from Donald Schievenin. While Jonah was distracted by the paperchase and CAVE was busy looking after him, Marylin has been kidnapped.

He hands the woman he has captured — who was nothing more than an EGH pawn controlled from higher up — over to local Bureau officers and goes to see what has happened.

Abducted at gunpoint from the disposal scene, Marylin is now the prisoner of JAIR, leader of the EGH movement. She is kept in the back of a shielded vehicle, unable to call for help or to see where she is going. But any similarity to her previous kidnapping, while investigating the Twinmaker murders, ends there. JAIR seems almost eager to talk to her, ghosting through the body of an EGH activist and assuming the appearance of Jeremy Carlaw — although e avoids committing erself when asked to confirm if e and JAIR are one and the same person. (When ghosting, conSense, the virtual overlay employed as a matter of course in the early 22nd Century, allows the ghoster's appearance to appear instead of the ghostee's: e.g., when Jonah ghosts through Marylin, say, the people around them see his features and not hers. This is how Jonah was led to believe that the woman he was chasing was Jeremy.)

JAIR explains that e has kidnapped her in order to prevent her from using d-mat, which, e claims, will allow the Latecomer to copy her and to extract by torture information she has recently discovered. (When she expresses disbelief that such a thing would happen, e doesn't answer.) The information she supposedly has is critical, but she doesn't know what it is, and JAIR isn't, in this instance, giving her any clues. All she can do is think through the great deal she has learned in previous days — in particular since her last d-mat jump, and which Jonah might not also know (otherwise he would've been kidnapped too) — while being lugged across the alien countryside by the ghost of her copy's adult son.

Along the way, JAIR tells her about Jeremy's mother's relationship with Jonah and Jeremy, and Jeremy's relationship with Jonah, and why Jeremy left es parents in favour of Lindsay Carlaw — who, e says, "changed er forever". Exactly what that means, JAIR doesn't say. Likewise regarding a message e is apparently waiting for — a subject e drops as soon as Marylin indicates that she has no idea what e's talking about. She has more luck when discussing the conspiracy theories — together they come to the conclusion that the sort of installation required to fake a whole world would have to be of a similar size and complexity to that the Tierney Object is rumoured to be — but he is still maddeningly vague.

At this point the relevance of the fourth point of view, JAIR's, becomes apparent. Es persona is highly fractured, increasingly divided between that of being created by the Watchers for some unknown purpose on Tarsus and es original self, who agreed to the change years ago but now finds erself losing control over what e is becoming. Es use of third gender pronouns (e/er/es) when referring to erself plus transsingular pronouns (ey/em/eir) when referring to the Watchers highlights this confusion. E is no longer human, but what e might be instead is unknown as yet. It is also unclear, when e refers to es "father", whether e is talking about Jonah McEwen or Lindsay Carlaw. Indeed, it could be said that they are both es fathers, having each played pivotal roles in es creation. One e has rejected already; the other e is bound to by more than loyalty.

By the time Jonah arrives at the disposal site, several hours have passed (stolen by d-mat delays during the paperchase) and the trail has cooled. Marylin has not used d-mat, so her template can't be traced, and her identifying UGI has been masked somehow. That they were tricked into letting their guard down becomes increasingly obvious as the facts roll in. TRINITY has managed to trace both the theft of data and the way it was fed back into the system — not the Latecomer's MO at all. Clearly someone else was behind the murder (which can hardly be called that, since the body was never truly alive). The same someone, Jonah assumes, now has Marylin.

He feels as though he has betrayed her again, even though the decision to follow the note was made by both of them. Jonah's quest thus becomes to find her before something terrible happens to her.

And she is found, in a sense, sooner than he expected. Her body is dumped in a d-mat booth on the far side of the planet, brutally murdered. Barely has the body been recovered — and its age determined to be the same as when she was brought out of cold memory — when another dead Marylin is dumped. And a third. Each has been copied and killed at irregular intervals over the previous years, then put back into storage. Their numbers grow steadily the longer Marylin is missing.

When this is explained to Marylin herself, by JAIR, she reacts with understandable horror. This is why JAIR seemed so certain when e hinted that the Latecomer might torture her: the killer had already done so, many times. JAIR explains the Latecomer's latest display of cruelty as an attempt to force the Bureau to get her back. This sort of calculated savagery far overshadows the apparently war-like actions from Earth — which were faked by JAIR in order to ensure that Marylin came to the latest disposal scene in person. Marylin begins to realise that the true battle in Eta Boötis System is not between Earth and Tarsus, but between the Latecomer and JAIR. What is at stake, however, remains unknown.

STEWARD

When she arrives at her destination, she is finally brought out into the open. She is in some sort of museum complex — a place her implants recognises as the DPO Memorial, which EGH took over just days earlier. Moments later, her UGI is detected by the local equivalent of GLITCH and her overseer is inundated with input. Before she can even consider replying, JAIR has her shielded again and moved elsewhere in the building. When she asks for an explanation, confused by what seems like irrational behaviour, e (via es ghost) explains that e is having her brought to er so they can meet in person. Then, e says, e will receive the message from es father.

Marylin's brief appearance has been enough for her location to be pinned down. She is deep in the mountainous, heavily rain-forested province of Chuang Tzu. Although the glimpse was fleeting, the fact that the province lies on the planet's prime meridian (0º longitude, "where East meets West") is suggestive. It is also where the EGH activists are known to be taking shelter.

Although he suspects a trap, Jonah d-mats as close as he can to the DPO Memorial. "Close" in this case isn't very: due to the rugged, hostile environment, settlements are few and far between; the nearest d-mat point outside the DPO centre is ten kilometres away. For once, however, Bureau Chief Cescato is working on his side, and they arrange a direct assault on the Memorial if EGH refuses to negotiate.

JAIR calls before their plans progress too far. E wishes to talk to Jonah face to face. Jonah refuses, suspecting another trap. Instead of threatening Marylin, JAIR suggests a compromise: Jonah will ghost through her — a guaranteed safe medium — while she in turn uses one of JAIR's activists to view the confrontation. Jonah is again sceptical about the value of such a dialogue, but Marylin talks him into it. She explains that JAIR/Jeremy is expecting a message from es father. When Jonah protests that he has nothing to say to er, she says that she doesn't think JAIR/Jeremy is talking about him.

Marylin has, by this point, met the leader of EGH, and is shocked by es appearance. JAIR is huge, bigger than a prize giant (22nd century analogues of Sumo wrestlers maintained by d-med) and completely immobile, like a giant foetus, forced to ghost in order to express erself physically. E is being modified by nanotech as she watches, accreting mass from the environment around er and turning it into strange organs that appear and disappear unpredictably beneath es skin.

JAIR is ghosting (in es Jeremy Carlaw persona) through one of es armed underlings when the meeting takes place. The three talk in the shadow of JAIR's enormous bulk. Together at last — in a sense: it's hardly a family reunion.

The message from the Watcher (who might be Lindsay Carlaw, JAIR's conceptual father) is, of course, what JAIR is wanting from Jonah. Jeremy and es natal father, however, have unfinished business to settle, and the message is a bargaining chip Jonah is loathe to discard until Marylin is safe. Her release, however, JAIR declares to be irrelevant, as is the identity of the Latecomer. E refuses to confirm or deny any of the conspiracy theories that have built up around the case, but acknowledges that this indeed is what the murders have all been pointing towards. If Jonah hands over the message, he will find out soon enough.

Because the message comes from the Watchers, and JAIR was sent and modified by Carlaw, the hot-wired immortals seem to be inextricably linked to the case — again. And because handing over the message seems to be the only way Jonah is going to get any sense out of the situation, in the end he does so.

The words evoke a dramatic response from JAIR's enormous body. E shudders and breathes two words, the only words Jonah hears er speak in person: "Ah, yes." Then Jonah is suddenly elsewhere, and everything is black.

Marylin sees Jonah freeze — like a recording halted in mid-frame — and doesn't know why. JAIR isn't much help, either. E — the real JAIR — seems to be in the throes of an ecstatic fit. The persona of Jeremy, on the other hand, now seems completely independent, and able to talk to her freely — although e is more concerned about resolving emotional issues, while there's time, rather than discussing what is happening on Tarsus. E does say that Jonah has been taken elsewhere and is talking to someone else — "finding resolutions of his own, perhaps" — but that it would soon be time for him to return, "before it is too late. But don't worry," e says. "You will be taken care of."

When a radiation alarm suddenly sounds in Marylin's overseer, Jeremy stops talking and raises a pistol.

"It's time," e says, and shoots Jonah through the head. Marylin instantly blacks out.

Jonah, meanwhile, has been talking to Herold Verstegen in the interstices of the metaprogram governing the Tarsus RTAM. He has been brought there by the killer not just to have the conspiracy theories verified but to be gloated at. The killer has been lifting his victims by accessing the metaprogram directly, rather than interfering with the d-mat chain; in fact, the d-mat process itself is irrelevant in the illusion, hence Verstegen's ability to stimulate hallucinations while Jonah is in transit. But there is more at stake than just the murders. Delivering the message from the Watchers to JAIR triggered some sort of chain reaction, a final program designed to shut down the illusion for good. "I didn't start it," Verstegen says, "but you finished it." He adds: "I just wanted you to know that in the end your father is a greater sociopath than I could ever be."

Underlying Verstegen's obvious glee at having out-manoeuvred Jonah, however, is a suspicion that maybe things even now aren't quite what they seem. To make sure that Jonah can survive what is to come and act as a witness, Verstegen gives him a ripcord — a software option normally used to break out of CREs or conSense.

Before Verstegen can explain any more, Jonah is pulled out of the interstices and back to reality, where he is confronted by a shocked Chief Cescato. JAIR/Jeremy has just shot Jonah's ghost through the head — which means that e actually shot Marylin. UGI data confirm that she is dead. And to top it all off, a major solar storm has just been detected erupting on Eta Boötis. The proton shockwave will soon slam into the atmosphere on the far side of the planet, provoking severe bursts of X-rays that will disrupt electrical systems everywhere — killing AIs, knocking out networks, disabling such conventions as conSense maintained by bioimplants, etc. Off the surface, it will knock out the stations not sheltered by the planet's shadow, and is heading for mining stations in the asteroid belt and elsewhere.

There is nothing Jonah can do. Within minutes, everyone in Eta Boötis System will be dead and Tarsus will be rendered uninhabitable for years to come, if not decades. Within seconds, the SQURT network could fail, if it hasn't already. The Tarsus RTAM is being wiped clean, at the cost of millions of lives, so the Watchers can assume control of the massive installation in the real Eta Boötis system that maintains the false Tarsus (Piet Base, aka the Tierney Object). Once they have control of that enormous processing power, and have ceased running the Tarsus RTAM, they will no longer be limited by available resources on Earth. They will be free to do whatever they want.

Marylin is dead. Verstegen is out of reach. Jonah has no choice. He pulls the ripcord.

JAIR watches him leave. E is increasingly embroiled in the metaprogram, and has a unique overview of the simulation. E can watch everything — including Verstegen squirming like a bug on a slide now he knows how he's been manipulated. As Jonah leaves, JAIR feels something like sadness — a feeling emanating from the increasingly small part of er that was Jeremy Carlaw. Then the flood from Earth begins — the Influx of active Watchers, first, and cold memory copies of other people destined to join the project. There is a gathering throng around er, and e feels enlivened, invigorated, like e has found es destiny. They are waiting for er to activate the final stage of the program, to cut free completely from Earth. The decision is in es hands.

The voice of Marylin Blaylock tells er to do it, so e does. When the last colonist of Eta Boötis System dies, the Tarsus RTAM closes forever.

AFTERWARD

Some ten days later, Jonah is heading back to Eta Boötis. Being the last person to leave the colony prior to its destruction, he has attained some notoriety. He could tell the world anything he wants, now; the Watchers appear to have gone for good, so his time in Coventry is over. But he says nothing about the truth, and avoids publicity as much as he can.

Before he could go into hiding, he was contacted by a representative of the World Council and invited to join the salvage team that would be heading to Eta Boötis as soon as automated systems confirmed the SQURT receivers were still working. Initially he declined, but then, intrigued by a hint of familiarity and suspecting that the woman knows more about the truth than she's saying, changed his mind.

They arrive in a shielded station orbiting Tarsus. The planet is initially hidden from view. The woman talks to him privately while the rest of the salvage team studies instrument readings and so on. The conversation covers the reasons why the Watchers did what they did, and what they expect to gain from it. (Much of this will have been revealed in stages earlier, to prevent infodumping at the end.)[*]

Ultimately, the Watchers have gained an opportunity to grow, unfettered by the petty affairs of humanity. Although the Tarsus RTAM would have been no great burden to maintain, the Watchers had long decided to cut free of Earth — and vice versa. They need to shed their skin, to evolve, and Earth needs to find its own destiny. The emergent group-mind mentality of the Watchers will continue to develop until, ultimately, all human minds are incorporated into one massive superstructure, the nature of which cannot be guessed in advance.

The loss of life throughout the Tarsus RTAM was regrettable but unavoidable. On one level, though, they are not actually dead at all. Every one was copied an instant before destruction and archived in Piet Base's extensive cold memory facility, in order to be wakened when the time has come to form the McMillan Gestalt (the group mind that is the Watchers' goal). Marylin Blaylock is one of these.

But there is more. Jonah has already guessed what to expect when the salvage team is finally granted a clear view of the planet. The testimony of the refitters, which seemed to refute the conspiracy theory, was the final clue. (This is the information Marylin received prior to her kidnap, to which JAIR did not want Verstegen to gain access.) Instead of a world ravaged by solar storms, the salvage team — just like the refitters did decades ago — see a planet prime for colonisation, untouched even by devastating solar storms or humanity. Not only was the Tarsus everyone knew a fake, but the so-called "real" Tarsus, supposedly laid waste before the arrival of the probes, was also a fake, one created by the Watchers (when they took over Saul 1 and used it to corrupt the data transmitted by Sauls 2 and 3) to generate the conditions required for needing the RTAM in the first place. For the first time, humanity is seeing the real Eta Boötis system.

Humanity has gained a second chance — after a disappointing failure — to demonstrate that colonisation can be accomplished and maintained peacefully, although how the World Council will explain it away is hard to tell. Evidence of the conspiracy consists mainly of Jonah's testimony. Piet Base itself is already on the way to Gamma Serpens, which probes have confirmed to be an empty system. There the Watchers can continue their work without interference.

The woman who tells him this is the elder Marylin Blaylock, who joined the Watchers when she chose to end her physical life. The body she inhabits is only a temporary one, created from nothing to allow her to interact with ordinary humans; it will return to nothing when she rejoins JAIR in the new eicohabitat maintained by Piet Base. She it was who sent Jonah on the mission to Tarsus, and who instructed JAIR to activate the final stage of the program. She has incarnated to say farewell, again, and to offer him a place in the eicohabitat. He permits them to take a copy, if they haven't already. She indicates (deliberately vague) that they may well have. Their intention is to integrate every living human into the Gestalt; they do not wish to disadvantage the final result by censoring the ingredients, when who knows what effect even a single individual might have on the final outcome?

"Even someone like Herold Verstegen?" Jonah asks.

"Even someone like him," she confirms with a smile.

When he returns to Earth, she is gone.

[*]

In brief: data from Saul 2 received in 2073-9 suggested that Eta Boötis had been ravaged by a solar storm. With no other likely systems found, and longevity placing pressures on society that would soon require an outlet, the Copernicus Foundation (responsible for extra-solar colonisation) was in trouble. Learning of this, the Watchers offered the World Council technical assistance in creating an RTAM based on real data obtained from the system. The "solar flares" were originally intended by the World Council to wipe out the colony when the eicohabitat could no longer be maintained, or was no longer economical to maintain. Although the Tarsus plan could never have got off the ground without the Watchers' help, the World Council placed strict controls on them, knowing they might well try to wrest control of Piet Base from the 'fabs' (flesh and blood humans) in order to further their own ends; basically, Watchers were barred from Tarsus completely once the simulation was up and running. But Carlaw and co. weren't stupid. They obeyed the embargo only until it suited them to wrest control of the base from Earth — i.e. when they needed the resources. As the time neared, they sent in Jeremy Carlaw, who had been modified in such a way that would allow er to infiltrate the metaprogram governing the Tarsus RTAM without setting off any alarms. This facility was to have been activated by codewords transmitted directly from Earth, but the data blockade prevented that. In the end, it was decided to allow Verstegen to kidnap Jonah McEwen — as he had tried to do several times previously, without success — and have Jonah carry the codewords directly to JAIR/ Jeremy. The trigger set JAIR's transformation in motion, and activated the solar flare self-destruct program. The lag between the delivery of the words and the arrival of the shockwave is accounted for by the several minutes it takes light from Eta Boötis to reach Tarsus. Even when destroying it, the Watchers were compelled to obey the internal laws of the eicohabitat they created. The beauty of the plan is that the World Council are left in a double bind: it can't blame the Watchers of anything without first admitting its own complicity in the scheme.