Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 115 Read online

  And now, Balin is going to be the Prime Mover of this virtual universe.

  He will have plenty of time to explore the linkage between this world and every thought in his mind. I will record every move and gesture Balin makes. Then, when he returns to the real world, I will reconnect with him. I will imitate to the best of my ability each of his gestures. The two of us will be as two parallel mirrors, reflecting each other endlessly.

  I put the helmet on Balin’s head. His gaze is as placid as water.

  The red light flashes, speeds up, turns green.

  I enter Ghost mode, and bring up a third-person POV window in the upper-right hand corner. In it, I see a tiny avatar of Balin trembling in place.

  Balin’s world is primordial chaos. There is no earth, no heaven, no east, west, north, or south. I struggle against the vertigo.

  Finally, he stops shaking. A flash of lightning slowly divides the chaos, determining the location of the sky.

  The lightning extends, limning a massive eye in the cloud cover. A web of fine lightning feelers spreads from the eye in every direction.

  The light fades. Balin lifts his head and raises his hands. Rain falls.

  He begins to dance.

  Drops of rain fall with laughter, giving substance to the outline of wind. The wind lifts Balin until he is floating in the air, twirling about.

  It is impossible to describe his dance with words. It is as if he has become a part of all Creation, and the heavens and the earth both respond to his movements and change.

  My heart speeds up; my throat is dry; my hands and feet are icy cold. I’m witnessing an unsought miracle.

  He lifts his hand and flowers bloom. He lifts his foot and birds flutter forth.

  Balin dances between unnamed peaks, above unmapped lakes. Everywhere he sets foot, joyful mandalas bloom and spread, and he falls into their swirling, colorful centers.

  One moment he is smaller than an atom, the next he encompasses the universe. All scales have lost meaning in his dance.

  Every nameless life sings to him. He opens his mouth, and all the gods of the paoxiao emerge from his lips.

  The spirits meld into his black skin like dark waves that rage and erupt, sweeping him up, up into the air. Behind him, the waves coalesce into an endless web on which all the fruits of creation may be found, each playing its own rhythm. A hundred million billion species are in search of their common origin.

  I understand now.

  In Balin’s eyes, the soul is immanent in all Creation, and there is no difference between a dragonfly and a man. His nervous system is constructed in such a way as to allow him to empathize with the universe. It is impossible to imagine how much effort he must put into calming the tsunamis that rage constantly in his heart.

  Even someone as unenlightened as me cannot be unmoved when faced with this grand spectacle produced by all Life. My eyes swim in hot tears, and threads of ecstasy inside my heart are woven with the dizzying sights in my vision. I stand atop a peak, but a step away from transcendence.

  As for the answer I was seeking? I don’t think it’s so important anymore.

  Balin absorbs everything into his body. His avatar expands rapidly and then deflates.

  He falls.

  The world dims, grows indistinct, lifeless.

  Balin is like a thin film stretched against the tumbling, twirling space-time. The physics engine’s algorithms undulate the edge of his body as though blown by a wind, and fragments rise into the air like a flock of birds.

  His shape is disintegrating, dissolving.

  I disconnect Balin from the VR system and take off his helmet.

  He lies facedown on the soft, dark gray floor, his limbs spread out, unmoving.

  “Balin?” I don’t dare move him.

  “Balin?” Everyone in the lab is waiting. Will this joke of an experiment turn into a tragedy?

  Slowly, he shifts in place. Then he wriggles to the side like a pond loach until he is once again flattened against the floor, adopting the posture of a gecko.

  I laugh. Like my father years ago, I clap my hands twice.

  Balin turns, sits up, stares at me.

  It is just like that hot and sticky summer night the year I turned thirteen, when we first met.

  Originally published in Chinese in People’s Literature, July 2015.

  Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.

  About the Author

  Chen Qiufan was born in 1981, in Shantou, China. (In accordance with Chinese custom, Mr. Chen’s surname is written first. He sometimes uses the English name Stanley Chan.) He is a graduate of Peking University and published his first short story in 1997 in Science Fiction World, China’s largest science fiction magazine. Since 2004, he has published over 30 stories in Science Fiction World, Esquire, Chutzpah and other magazines. His first novel, The Abyss of Vision, came out in 2006. He won Taiwan’s Dragon Fantasy Award in 2006 with “A Record of the Cave of Ning Mountain,” a work written in Classical Chinese. His story, “The Tomb,” was translated into English and Italian and can be found in The Apex Book of World SF II and Alias 6. He now lives in Beijing and works for Google China.

  The Bridge of Dreams

  Gregory Feeley

  1

  When Heimdallr finds an hour to spare from his labors, he polishes a length of Bifröst flat as a plane, then bevels adjacent sides so that the resultant stretch bends and disperses the sun’s weak rays like a prism. He rarely has the leisure for such pastimes. Although Charon and its primary face each other like ancient adversaries who will never avert their gaze, their distance varies slightly—much less than any other pair in the solar system, but enough to put a continual strain on the bridge. Cracks and fissures form, which Heimdallr must hasten to repair. Like stalagmites approaching to merge, the ends of the worldbridge were built by accretion, the rough bases thickening as their tips rose (or descended) towards each other. An extent of gleaming smoothness stands out like crystal embedded in stone, stirring in Heimdallr vague memories older than himself. Then hairline cracks begin to form, and he brings his engines to bear, smothering them beneath layers of ethane and ice.

  The faint and short-lived spectra that these surfaces produce are a source of deep but fleeting pleasure, for they appear only during those microseconds when the cloud of vapor has discharged from his nozzle but not yet struck and turned solid. A skein of half-glimpsed images are brought to mind, though not by memory. Heimdallr remembers what he has experienced and perceived, and these tangled recollections are stranger, reaching him along pathways he cannot look down to espy. Others’ lives, forgotten by those long dead: the sight of the Rainbow roils them like a quake disturbing graves.

  A puff of plasma tickles his cheek and he looks toward the Sun, a pinpoint of light but not heat, and the ruined worlds that circle it. Plouton and Charon, now joined by the haft that he made and maintains, is traveling outward, where it shall tarry long among the vast mist of volatiles that sheathes the outermost worlds before beginning a long journey closer—but never close—to that swollen mass of radiance.

  The ice-conjoined binary has completed this circuit once and more since he last heard the whisper of radio waves or the flicker of a laser pulse from any point Sunward. Triton has been silent for centuries; signals from Phaiton’s Children went out one by one like candles. The dense swirling airs of Titan remained infinitesimally warmer than what Heimdallr thought nature could account for, although this might as likely be heat diffusing from an abandoned fission pile—a coal slowly cooling in a dead hearth—as evidence of settlements still active below the surface. Were he truly human, his heart would burst at this.

  Meanwhile there remains his duty. Heimdallr stands master of Bifröst, its length enough to wrap three times about the girdle of the Earth. Weekly—the time the two worlds took to swing about each other approximated that ancient measure—it must be patched and reinforced, with substances gathered from their surfaces. From a distance the bridge is invisibl
e: an icy thread running up to the overhead world, too slender to catch much of what light can reach it. At either base it resembles a rough-hewn tower the girth of a mountain, thicker on Plouton with its greater gravity. Genuine ice mountains rise from the lifeless plains, and Heimdallr has already lain waste to five in quarrying blocks for his span. Yearly he must venture farther to gather material for repairs, and someday will have to cross the horizons of both worlds, into lands where the other world is absent from the sky. He does not know how he will feel about this; feelings are something he imperfectly understands.

  He is not on the ground when the glint of light catches his eye. Plouton-Charon lies far from the ecliptic, so Heimdallr may look inward toward the other planets without being dazzled by the Sun. The spark’s wavelengths are shifted to blue, although to a degree too faint for a human eye to detect. It is coming toward him quickly.

  When the light flares brighter and shifts toward red, he knows that it is not a missile. For days he had pondered how to defend Bifröst—large, brittle, immobile—against assault. A direct blow to projectiles might knock them off course, but such a strike must be massive or extremely fast—many times local escape velocity—and Heimdallr doubted his bow possessed the strength for either. Evidence that the decelerating vessel would come to rest a kilometer away does not reassure, although he shifts his stance and takes his hand from the pommel of his sword.

  It is not until the thrusters cut off that he can see the gleaming spear, which is now rotating on its axis with tiny puffs of vapor. The blade turns once and now rests in the hand of a helmeted woman, who raises it above her head.

  “Ho,” Heimdallr says. “You stand before Bifröst, the Rainbow Bridge, and I its builder and guardian. Be welcome if you offer no threat.”

  “I am Garðrofa, message-bearer.” She seems to hang in space before him, although in fact she is circling in a plane that lies perpendicular to Bifröst. Heimdallr, his back to the bridge, can see tiny jets emerge at intervals from her boots, correcting the unstable orbit. “I bring you word.”

  “What is your message, and from whom?”

  “I bring the message; I do not know its content, nor its sender.” Then she says: “You are called—entreated, not summoned, yet the knowledge of duty itself summons—to the Sheltered Gardens. Please come in the flesh, as no pallid counterfeit will suffice.”

  “‘The flesh’? They believe I possess the power or inclination to create an Iteration and send it loose?”

  Garðrofa looked at him quizzically. “Whom do you speak of?”

  “You just relayed an appeal from the Sheltered Gardens.”

  “I did?”

  “Who gave you this message?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Why then did you carry it?”

  “I do not know.”

  Heimdallr considered her. “Is there more?”

  “No.”

  Heimdallr’s nature, and the physical form he has taken, precludes the need for shelter, but the oldest parts of him understands the importance of hospitality. “My hall lies beyond. It is scant warmer than the space surrounding us, but its hewn beams offer relief from the unbroken sight of stars.”

  “Thank you, but if I may decline without giving offense, I do.”

  It has been a lifetime and more since Heimdallr has spoken to a being before him, and while loneliness does not lay waste to his spirit, the rupture of his solitude now seems pleasing. “To take refreshment together—whatever resources you have expended in traveling hither, I can replenish—would satisfy the obligations of both guest and host, and more agreeably than my other duties can claim. The invitation stands, and unless you depart forthwith, I shall at length repeat it.”

  “I have no plans to depart,” says Garðrofa simply.

  “No?” Hundreds of scanning programs and tiny probes have been examining the visitor and the space around and beyond her, and have reported one by one that she offers no threat.

  “Do those who dispatched you wish to give you additional missions, or offer you some reward for your service?”

  “I do not know.”

  “That is surprising,” he says. “How long were you voyaging here?”

  “I cannot say. During the interval of travel, I was not.”

  Heimdallr ponders this. He wishes to ask, “What more can you tell me?” but guesses that the answer would be Nothing. “My hounds have sniffed your boots and found you unthreatening. Are you doubtful regarding my own good will?”

  “No. I am not concerned for my safety.”

  He has not had to think quickly in many years, but does so now. “Then let me show you my world. At worst you will be bored.”

  At this Heimdallr launched himself out and downward, toward Plouton. Had he simply pushed away from the ice, he would have been hours drifting toward the primary. The passage of time might not have bothered either of them, but he felt it was a moment to be purposeful.

  Acceleration is slow, but eight thousand kilometers lie between Bifröst’s midpoint and the surface, and his boots strike ground with a satisfying crunch and a spray of methane snow. Long practice has taught him the stride that covers the most distance without leaving him afloat in a high trajectory, and he moves swiftly over the landscape, flat here (he long ago cleared it for the transportation of building material) but becoming irregular the farther one gets from Bifröst’s trunk. The time and energy required to travel distances mean nothing to him, so he built his fastness (once named Himminbjorg, though he soon realized that a structure no one would ever see or hear of does not need a name) on the ground that offered the most impressive view, which proved to be in one of Plouton’s highlands.

  Heimdallr knew without turning his head that Garðrofa had matched his stride and was following him at a half dozen paces. He saw no need to offer information about the temperature, local gravity, mineral composition, and other bits of “local color” (the ancient term abruptly came to him) that she could clearly perceive for herself. Instead he told her something she could not measure. “I find this beautiful,” he says. “Can you see the beauty here?”

  “Perhaps.”

  It was her first ambiguous response, and he wondered at it. She did not elaborate, however, and after a moment he says: “My calculations suggest that your voyage originated in the Gardens. Does this correspond with your own memories?”

  “No.”

  That part of his mind that had been reviewing past, hitherto unstudied images of the sky, identifying the minute smudges of the approaching Garðrofa, and calculating possible trajectories from its shifts had brought to consciousness its conclusion. He did not need to know how he knew, any more than a seafaring ancestor would have questioned his sense of shifting balance.

  “Is there trouble at the Great Work? Has the Parasol grown tattered, or its attendants injured or starved, so it will soon tear or blow away and those it has sheltered will roast?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Is there conflict between the peoples of the disparate spheres? All human history has been plagued by such pointless strife.”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  “Did those who sent you approach others before appealing to so distant a figure as me?”

  “If so, they did not inform me.”

  She was giving the same reply, but no longer with identical answers. This was rhetoric, a human art older than any craft operating on this world. He wonders if she is becoming more human as the sheath that brought her sloughs away.

  He points toward the horizon. “That is my redoubt.”

  It was not built like anything on Earth, where the gravity is twenty times greater and structures are shaped to bear loads. It contains no rock, for Plouton’s stony core lies far below its surface. It is not defensive in design, for it is not a fortress, and no above-ground structure in the solar system could withstand assault by relativistic projectiles. It is probably not beautiful, although Heimdallr pondered beauty as he constructed it.

&nbs
p; If nothing else, it is unique.

  The entrance is large and stands always open. The Great Hall is suited for feasting, as are the upstairs quarters for privacy, though he never expected guests. He leads her in and bids her to take her ease, and offers to withdraw should she prefer solitude. Garðrofa looks up at the vaulted ceiling; turns to study the tall windows looking upon the icy plain, the colonnade opposite leading to the inner courtyard; walks about the banquet table. “I do not wish for anything,” she says.

  “Please sit,” he says. She does so, although she does not seem more comfortable. After a moment he asks, “Is there anything more you wish to do or tell me?”

  “No,” she replies. “My mission is completed.”

  “You are free to act as you please?”

  She seems to consider this. “Yes, although I have no further needs. Now that . . . ” She breaks off, and he looks curiously at her. “With my duties discharged, aspects of my being are shutting down, allowing others to . . . It is curious,” she says at last. “I am now able to feel—well, it is difficult to describe.” She looks at him. “Have you been lonely here?”

  “No,” he says, startled. “Although I am enjoying your company, the solitude has never troubled me.” Nor has he wondered at that, and now wonders why he didn’t. Years ago he dealt with this by devising an editor that would reduce sensitivity to cognitive activities that produced distress. Because he understood the survival value of such thoughts, he did not debar them from consciousness; they stood beyond a diaphanous scrim, available for assessment but unable to inflict pain. Now the scrim seems to be rippling in an intangible breeze, and that which lay beyond is now gliding forward to join him.