Read Online Further: Beyond the Threshold by Chris Roberson - Free Book Online
Authors: Chris Roberson
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change of clothing, is there?”
The sleeping quarters were the size of a small hangar, and the closet larger than the cargo hold of the Cutter 972 .
“The Plenum,” the escort said as I surveyed the options, “took the liberty of fabricating a wardrobe for your disposal.”
I pulled out a suit coat made of something like leather, but as light and supple as silk. The cut was elaborate and baroque, though, the fashion of some other era than mine. “It’s…well, thanks, I suppose.”
“Am I correct in assuming that the choices are not satisfactory? I am still gaining valuable experience, and while I have the data at my disposal, my interpretations may sometimes be in error.”
“No, I’m sorry, I’m sure it’ll be fine. And how old are you, by the way?” I shook out a pair of pants and held them to my waist. Like the rest of the clothing in the wardrobe, it was tailored precisely to my measurements, but these pants had exaggerated flares at the ankles, the waist coming higher than my naval. Many of the options presented to me appeared to have been based on cartoons and caricatures, exaggerations of real-world examples. I could scarcely fault them, though. If historians in my day tried to present a traveler from the tenth millennia BCE with period fashion choices, I doubt they’d have done a fraction as well. “Didn’t you say that you were ‘born’ while I was talking with the man-lion and the Amazon and the chimp?”
“With the Voice of the Plenum, Chief Executive Zel, and Maruti Sun Ghekre the Ninth,” the escort corrected. “Yes. I first gained sentience approximately .0208 standard days ago, or roughly a half hour in your method of timekeeping. My subjective experience has been considerably longer, though, as AI nurseries run at highly accelerated clock speeds, and I share the memories of the intelligence from which I was calved, and so my personal recollections extend back far further than my objective age would suggest.”
I managed to find the simplest and most practical of the options, a featureless and unornamented jumpsuit of dark fabric, similar to the flight suit I’d worn on board Wayfarer One , and completed the ensemble with a pair of soft-soled shoes. When I’d dressed, I stepped back out of the closet and regarded myself in a full-length mirror that dominated one corner of the sleeping chamber.
An old man looked back at me: hair white and thin against dark skin, a straggle of beard on my chin, ears and nose larger than I remembered, shoulders slumped and knees slightly bent. I appeared to be a man in his late seventies, if not older. Much older than the thirty-one years of life I remembered living. But then, the years can pile on quickly when you sleep for twelve millennia.
Still, I was the lucky one, wasn’t I? The others had moldered to dust in their sleeper coffins. All but one of the women, the chimpanzee had said, who’d died recently enough to leave a decaying corpse. Who had it been? Beatriz? Eija-Liisa? Amelia?
Just thinking of the names stung, the last especially.
The escort must have seen the pain that spread quickly across my features as he waddled up to me, wings folded, and regarded me with a steady metal gaze. “Is there some distress, sir?”
I straightened, took a deep breath, and cast one last glance at the old man in the mirror.
“At the moment,” I said, “my principal difficulty is that I haven’t had anything to eat in more than a hundred and twenty centuries, and I’m very, very hungry.”
THIRTEEN
There was a kitchen of sorts, but it seemed entirely a dining area, a large table surrounded by straight-backed chairs, with no room for food preparation. It hardly mattered, though, since there didn’t appear to be any food on hand.
“What would you care to eat, sir?” the silver eagle said, alighting on a countertop beside a box that was roughly a third of a meter tall. “The fabricant can provide you with any food you desire.”
I pulled out
The sleeping quarters were the size of a small hangar, and the closet larger than the cargo hold of the Cutter 972 .
“The Plenum,” the escort said as I surveyed the options, “took the liberty of fabricating a wardrobe for your disposal.”
I pulled out a suit coat made of something like leather, but as light and supple as silk. The cut was elaborate and baroque, though, the fashion of some other era than mine. “It’s…well, thanks, I suppose.”
“Am I correct in assuming that the choices are not satisfactory? I am still gaining valuable experience, and while I have the data at my disposal, my interpretations may sometimes be in error.”
“No, I’m sorry, I’m sure it’ll be fine. And how old are you, by the way?” I shook out a pair of pants and held them to my waist. Like the rest of the clothing in the wardrobe, it was tailored precisely to my measurements, but these pants had exaggerated flares at the ankles, the waist coming higher than my naval. Many of the options presented to me appeared to have been based on cartoons and caricatures, exaggerations of real-world examples. I could scarcely fault them, though. If historians in my day tried to present a traveler from the tenth millennia BCE with period fashion choices, I doubt they’d have done a fraction as well. “Didn’t you say that you were ‘born’ while I was talking with the man-lion and the Amazon and the chimp?”
“With the Voice of the Plenum, Chief Executive Zel, and Maruti Sun Ghekre the Ninth,” the escort corrected. “Yes. I first gained sentience approximately .0208 standard days ago, or roughly a half hour in your method of timekeeping. My subjective experience has been considerably longer, though, as AI nurseries run at highly accelerated clock speeds, and I share the memories of the intelligence from which I was calved, and so my personal recollections extend back far further than my objective age would suggest.”
I managed to find the simplest and most practical of the options, a featureless and unornamented jumpsuit of dark fabric, similar to the flight suit I’d worn on board Wayfarer One , and completed the ensemble with a pair of soft-soled shoes. When I’d dressed, I stepped back out of the closet and regarded myself in a full-length mirror that dominated one corner of the sleeping chamber.
An old man looked back at me: hair white and thin against dark skin, a straggle of beard on my chin, ears and nose larger than I remembered, shoulders slumped and knees slightly bent. I appeared to be a man in his late seventies, if not older. Much older than the thirty-one years of life I remembered living. But then, the years can pile on quickly when you sleep for twelve millennia.
Still, I was the lucky one, wasn’t I? The others had moldered to dust in their sleeper coffins. All but one of the women, the chimpanzee had said, who’d died recently enough to leave a decaying corpse. Who had it been? Beatriz? Eija-Liisa? Amelia?
Just thinking of the names stung, the last especially.
The escort must have seen the pain that spread quickly across my features as he waddled up to me, wings folded, and regarded me with a steady metal gaze. “Is there some distress, sir?”
I straightened, took a deep breath, and cast one last glance at the old man in the mirror.
“At the moment,” I said, “my principal difficulty is that I haven’t had anything to eat in more than a hundred and twenty centuries, and I’m very, very hungry.”
THIRTEEN
There was a kitchen of sorts, but it seemed entirely a dining area, a large table surrounded by straight-backed chairs, with no room for food preparation. It hardly mattered, though, since there didn’t appear to be any food on hand.
“What would you care to eat, sir?” the silver eagle said, alighting on a countertop beside a box that was roughly a third of a meter tall. “The fabricant can provide you with any food you desire.”
I pulled out
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