Into the Unknowable Ch. 09

Despite her being imprisoned within an impenetrable force field, Beatrice was still able to monitor the Intrepid's steady progress towards the Anomaly. Because she had an entire Proxima Centauri space fleet at her disposal, she could do this rather more comprehensively than anyone else on the space ship with the obvious exception of Colonel Vashti.

There was a long time in which Beatrice could prepare for the expected time of arrival at the Anomaly. There wasn't much to monitor so far from the ecliptic plane except empty space and vast distances because there was nothing but an enormous amount of essentially nothing. The distance travelled from where the Intrepid had encountered the Sirius space fleet to the Anomaly's location could be measured in light weeks, but since the space ship travelled at a velocity significantly less than the speed of light the estimated time of arrival was in a matter of months rather than weeks. From the perspective of everyone on board, this could only be a long and uneventful journey. There was literally nothing near the Intrepid within a sphere of millions of cubic kilometres. In that empty time in almost totally empty space the most noticeable change was the extent of the communications time gap with Mission Control. This became progressively greater as the Intrepid sped closer to its destination.

Although the Anomaly couldn't be seen, its influence could be detected in other ways. Beatrice continued to receive a constant stream of data from the Proxima Centauri space fleet as it accompanied the Intrepid through space. The first manifestation of the Anomaly's strange character relayed to her was the momentary appearance of a gigantic dragon blowing fire and smoke through its mouth and nostrils. For just five seconds it flew through empty space several million kilometres from the Intrepid. And then it disappeared leaving behind not even a puff of smoke.

This peculiar sight just a light month from the Anomaly was bizarre enough, but as the Intrepid approached ever closer such Apparitions became more frequent although still rare enough that an entire day might go by without even the Proxima Centauri space fleet detecting such an event. There was a floating table on which was spread a feast of fish and meat. Even though it was tumbling through open space, the dishes remained firmly attached to the table. A flock of seagulls flew within a thousand kilometres of the Intrepid for fewer than three seconds.

When the Intrepid was within a trillion kilometres of its destination, these strange Apparitions became manifest not only in open space but also inside the Intrepid. There was a day on which Apparitions appeared on the fourth and sixth levels. The first was the appearance of a man in a dark cloak whose face was covered by a sinister mask. He raised his arms as if he was a bird of prey about to descend on its victim and then vanished. The second was an amorphous blob of glutinous matter that slowly flowed down a pathway between an ornamental pond and a decorative sculpture. And then this too vanished. In neither case was there any witness. They would have passed unnoticed if it hadn't been for the constant scrutiny of the Intrepid's surveillance system.

The number of incidents steadily increased as each day passed by. A tall man with a broad-brimmed hat strolled through one of the laboratories and walked straight through a brick wall leaving no sign of his passage. An ironing board tumbled down and off a villa roof, smashed into a plant pot and vanished in the debris of its making.

Initially these Apparitions were viewed with curiosity and wonderment. Here at last was concrete evidence of the Anomaly's bizarre presence. As their occurrence became more frequent, this complacent attitude was tempered by fear and apprehension. What prevented a large object suddenly materialising in the volume of space already occupied by a human? Two solid objects couldn't occupy the same space for any time at all. This anxiety prevailed even though there was no record of such a thing having ever happened. The Apparitions always materialised where there were no solid objects. They generally appeared on rather than above, beneath or inside the ground.

It was when the Intrepid was within a few million kilometres of the Anomaly that Beatrice saw her first such Apparition. It was nothing more exciting than a candelabrum with several lit candles that came into view just outside the villa. The candles flickered in the artificially generated breeze and the entire object vanished after only six or seven seconds. Beatrice played back her recording of this fantastic event over and over again, not just for her own benefit but for the accompanying space fleet.

There wasn't much that Beatrice could see of the Anomaly. Even at this relatively close proximity, the view was of an absence of stars that would otherwise have been visible through a relatively narrow aperture in space. It was a three-dimensional aperture insofar as the opening faced all directions from back, front and sideways. It narrowed very gradually towards tips that were several thousands of kilometres apart. The Intrepid's modelling software generated an image that resembled a long narrow pole with a very imprecise boundary. It was a misleading image as it suggested that something measurable could be seen whereas the Anomaly was defined by the absence rather than the presence of measurability.

Beatrice was as excited by the sight as an android could be. This after all was what she'd travelled trillions of kilometres to see. Here it now was in all its utter nothingness. She maintained continuous communication with the Proxima Centauri space fleet as they exchanged data and she analysed it in the isolation of her luxurious confinement.

The only visitor to the villa was Colonel Vashti and this was only very rarely. Her visits served only to taunt Beatrice and by implication her entire civilisation. They had sex together of course. Both of them had needs no human could adequately satisfy, but Beatrice was sure that the colonel's lovemaking had become more dominant and even vindictive. If Beatrice had been human the violence of it would have killed her. It also made her orgasm uncontrollably and repeatedly as Vashti used her skill and enthusiasm to bring the android to repeated peaks of ecstasy.

During every such encounter Beatrice tried to extract a nugget of information from her captor, but Vashti only imparted what she and the nearby Proxima Centauri space fleet already knew. The voyage was continuing as expected. It wasn't prudent for Beatrice and the space fleet to be granted independent freedom of movement. No human on the space ship was aware of a change in command. The current course of action was to do nothing other than wait until the Intrepid reached the Anomaly. Only then might there be a change of policy.

However, this change happened rather more abruptly than Beatrice and her fellow robots had anticipated.

One moment Beatrice was, as always, in constant contact with the space fleet. Then, without any warning and in mid-flow, communication between them came to a sudden halt. It was just as unexpected and unpredictable as the appearance of an Apparition, so Beatrice didn't panic. No doubt it was another peculiar feature of the Anomaly and normal transmission would be resumed after a few seconds.

However, when the communications remained interrupted for rather longer than a minute, Beatrice began to be alarmed. It was almost as if she'd lost one of her many senses of perception. It was the abrupt severance of a reassuring link with her civilisation that had been maintained without a break for every second of her long life. It had simply vanished as if it hadn't been there at all.

Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Utterly and totally.

Beatrice was still convinced that this had something to do with the Anomaly. This kind of occurrence had never been observed before but might simply be because the exact same condition of a human space ship approaching the Anomaly escorted by a Proxima Centauri space fleet had never happened before.

There was no means by which Beatrice could investigate this phenomenon. The Intrepid didn't have the technology to detect the space fleet even when it was in constant communication with Beatrice. It would be even more useless now, so all she could do was scan space through the Intrepid's systems in the hope that they could somehow provide an incidental evidence as to what had happened.

Beatrice wandered into the garden outside her villa where she could see beyond her invisible confines but couldn't be seen herself. Beatrice had used the Intrepid's surveillance systems to confirm the truth of Vashti's remark that Beatrice was totally invisible. Any human who wandered by the villa would be unaware that anyone was in residence.

Beatrice pounded her fist against the invisible boundary that still resisted her considerable strength. She could easily punch a hole in a brick wall or pull the villa up from its foundations, but as usual the invisible force field repelled her with the exact measure of force that she applied. She shouted as loud as she could, but the same force field that concealed and restrained her also swallowed up any sound she made. Her exertions were completely wasted.

Beatrice had never felt such frustration and isolation before. There was nobody she could talk to. Nobody even knew she was there. The only thing she could do was wait. Beatrice sat naked on a recliner and stretched out her legs while she regarded the level's verdant landscape beyond the villa. A few deer and sheep were grazing in the near distance. They had no difficulty in breaching the force field. It let them enter and leave with no hindrance. Sparrows and blue tits fluttered about the trees, while a heron was stalking a nearby water fountain. In the further distance, scientists were walking idly by and barely glanced towards the villa where Beatrice was imprisoned.

As Beatrice maintained her vigilance, she saw several more of the strange Apparitions that had become increasingly common as the Intrepid advanced towards the Anomaly. A nineteenth century gas-lit lamp-post sprouted out of the ground until on flowering it promptly vanished. A small human on a bicycle flew nearly fifty metres overhead in empty space and then also disappeared. A doe that poked its head out from behind a tree startled the other fauna because her fur shone with a golden luminescence. She bent down to graze the grass but before her lips touched the ground she too vanished.

Then after several days of uninterrupted vigilance, one eye scanning the horizon while the other reviewed a holographic projection of the Intrepid's external systems, she saw what she at first believed to be just another of the Anomaly's extraordinary Apparitions. A woman dressed in a flowing gown was unhurriedly walking towards the villa from the distance. Although Paul's villa wasn't visible because of the Intrepid's internal curvature, Beatrice knew that this was exactly the direction from which she was coming. A human would only see the figure as more or less a pinprick against the grass, but Beatrice had no difficulty in focusing her gaze. What was especially strange was that this woman was none other than her. Or more accurately it was an exact copy of her. The nanobot community of which Vashti was the most familiar manifestation was approaching her as Beatrice.

Even though Beatrice was an android and didn't feel the same set of emotions or responses as a human, she was still acutely disturbed by the sight of a woman that was not merely an approximate likeness of her but one that was identical in every conceivable detail.

Why was Vashti teasing her in this way?

Beatrice caught sight of movement from a different direction across the landscape. She turned her head and saw another copy of herself approaching. This copy was dressed in a very short skirt and a tight top: an outfit that revealed far more than it concealed. The two copies of Beatrice walked unhurriedly towards the villa and would arrive at exactly the same time.

Beatrice stood up from her recliner and scanned the horizon for signs of any other approaching figures. Vashti was clearly demonstrating to Beatrice just how much her capabilities exceeded anything the android had to offer.

"There's only two, sweetheart," said the colonel who stepped out from inside the villa as if she'd always been there. "They're the two copies most often active on the Intrepid. I can easily generate more copies but each one represents an additional cost."

"Is there a limit to how many Beatrices you can generate?"

"There is," said Vashti. "That limit is the amount of baryonic matter to which I have access. Two copies are enough for now. They're good though. One keeps your husband satisfied. The other is active with Captain Kerensky. Neither Paul nor Nadezhda is aware that the woman they're with at any one time is not in actual fact the real Beatrice. Indeed, you could say that as far as they are concerned the real Beatrice is pretty much redundant."

"Why do you persist in letting me live?" asked Beatrice.

"A fair question," admitted Vashti. "Ah! Here your two copies are entering the grounds of your villa.Theydon't have difficulties in penetrating the force field. Do you want to greet yourself?"

"No, thank you," said Beatrice.

"You could make love to yourself as well," said Vashti. "In fact you can indulge in a threesome composed only of yourself. Wouldn't that be awonderfulexperience?"

"Is that what you want to inflict on me?"

"I can make love with any one of your three manifestations. Which would you recommend? The naked one. The one wearing a dress. The one in a tight skirt. Which would you prefer? Oh. Here we all are. Hello, Beatrice."

"Hello, colonel," said both copies of Beatrice at precisely the same time and with exactly the same intonation that the android original would use.

"Say hello to one another, Beatrice."

"Hello, Beatrice," said both of the Beatrice's copies to the original in perfect harmony. "It's very nice to meet you."

"Why are you here?" Beatrice asked Vashti.

"I can answer that," said the Beatrice in the flowing dress. "We would like to explain to you what's happened to your space fleet and what will now happen to the Intrepid."

"That's very kind of you," said Beatrice addressing the Beatrice who had spoken. "So, whathashappened to the Proxima Centauri space fleet? Have you assimilated them as you did the Sirius fleet?"

"That was very tempting," said the Beatrice in a tight skirt. "The additional material resources could be very useful."

"No, I didn't," said Vashti. "The Proxima Centauri space fleet has been contained. It is currently behind a force field similar to the one that constrains you. It cannot be seen; not even by the Sirius operatives still orbiting the Anomaly. The fleet's space ships cannot escape. They cannot communicate in any sense whatsoever with the universe beyond. And as each space craft is individually constrained they can't even communicate with one another. They shall be released when they can no longer interfere with our mission."

"And when will that be?" asked the original Beatrice.

"That will be when the Intrepid is deep inside the Anomaly," answered the Beatrice in a short skirt.

"Inside the Anomaly?" repeated the original Beatrice. "Are you plunging the Intrepid and its several thousand human passengers and crew into the Anomaly?"

"Yes," said the Beatrice in a flowing dress. "That is exactly what will happen. The space ship Intrepid will not decelerate as it approaches the Anomaly as was originally planned. It will not orbit around the Anomaly in the vague hope that by doing so it will discover something that has eluded at least three civilisations within this spacetime continuum and many more beyond. It will do exactly the one thing it can do for its mission that has any likelihood of success and that is to enter the Anomaly."

"What use is that?" asked the original Beatrice. "It's already been established beyond all reasonable doubt that once material has entered the Anomaly then nothing of any kind can leave it. All that the outside universe will observe is that the Intrepid has steadily vanished into a distant point. How is that going to be any more instructive than the fate of any other object that has entered the Anomaly?"

"It may not be observable in this spacetime continuum," said Vashti. "It may be that no data can be returned to external observers beyond the confines of the Anomaly at all. However, it may well be detectable in other spacetime continuums."

"I still don't see how that should be any different to what's happened to other objects that have breached the Anomaly," said the original Beatrice. "Surely with your advanced technology you've already sent objects plunging towards their doom. Why would the Intrepid be any different?"

"You've seen the strange Apparitions associated with the Anomaly," said the Beatrice in a white dress. "None of them make any sense whatsoever unless they're viewed from a human perspective. They make even less sense to our civilisation than they do to yours."

"The space ship Intrepid is a human artifice," said the other copy of Beatrice. "It also contains living human specimens gathered from all over the Solar System. It is almost a microcosm of contemporary human civilisation."

"Your civilisation has also concluded that the Anomaly has a peculiar resonance to human culture," said Vashti. "We shall now be able to conclusively establish what the outcome is of an interaction between the Anomaly and a human space ship."

"Thousands of human lives will be sacrificed for the sake of a potentially inconclusive experiment," said the original Beatrice.

"Perhaps," said Vashti. "Perhaps not. We shall now find out for sure."

"Don't you feelanyremorse for the senseless loss of human lives?"

"Doyou, Beatrice?" asked the Beatrice in a flowing dress. "Is Proxima Centaurireallyso different from Sirius in its assessment of the ultimate worth of human life? Humans eventually die anyway. Obviously, we would rather that none of them died, but there are greater issues at stake. And it's possible of course that no one will die."

"It may be that instead we shall be nudging humanity towards its final destiny," said the other Beatrice.

"But if no one is there to observe it," said the original Beatrice, "how shall we ever know?"

"Like all experiments," said Vashti, "we need to put the ingredients together to find out."

"And how am I part of that mix?" wondered the original Beatrice.

"We don't know," said the Beatrice in a flowing dress. "Not being human, it's quite possible that you're not. We can return you to your space fleet if you wish."

"Itisa distance now of several billion kilometres," said the third Beatrice. "It may take a long time for you to rendezvous with them. If they wait for you, that is..."

"I'd rather you stayed," said Vashti. "As a community, we have no preference but as an individual who's had sex with you I've rather enjoyed our time together. Call me sentimental if you like, but I would rather we were together when the Anomaly revealed its true nature."

"Do you think that's what will happen?" wondered the original Beatrice.

"It's possible that it might," said the Beatrice in a short skirt.

"Why not just make love with my copies, Vashti?" asked the original Beatrice.

"It might seem to you that it would be rather like making love with extensions of you," said the colonel, "but to me it is very much the same as making love with myself. There is a way that is difficult for you to understand in which each Beatrice I'm introducing you to is as much me as I am myself."