Miller held up his finger. “Seem. Good verb. You ever wondered why I leave as soon as anyone else shows up?”
“I’m special?”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Fine,” Holden said. “I’ll bite. Why doesn’t anyone else see you?”
“I’m not sure we’ve got time for this, but…” Miller took off his hat and scratched his head. “So your brain has a hundred billion brain cells and about five hundred trillion synapses.”
“Will this be on the test?”
“Don’t be an ass**le,” Miller said conversationally, and put his hat back on. “And that shit is custom grown. No two brains are exactly alike. Guess how much processing power it takes to really model even one human brain? More than every human computer ever built put together, and that’s before we even start getting to the crap that goes on inside the cells.”
“Okay.”
“Now picture those synapses as buttons on a keyboard. Five hundred trillion buttons. And say that a brain looking at something and thinking, ‘That’s a flower’ punches a couple billion of those keys in just the right pattern. Except it ain’t near that easy. It isn’t just a flower, it’s a pile of associations. Smells, the way a stem feels in your fingers, the flower you gave your mom once, the flower you gave your girl. A flower you stepped on by accident and it made you sad. And being sad brings on a whole pile of other associations.”
“I get it,” Holden said, holding up his hands in surrender. “It’s complicated.”
“Now picture you need to push exactly the right buttons to make someone think of a person, hear them speaking, remember the clothes they wore and the way they smelled and how they would sometimes take off their hat to scratch their head.”
“Wait,” Holden said. “Are there bits of protomolecule in my brain?”
“Not exactly. You may have noticed I’m non-local.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“Well,” Miller said. “Now you’re asking me to explain microwaves to a monkey.”
“That’s a metaphor I’ve never actually spoken aloud. If you’re aiming for not creeping me the hell out, you need more practice.”
“So, yeah. The most complex simulation in the history of your solar system is running right now so that we can pretend I’m here in the same room with you. The correct response is being flattered. Also, doing what the f**k I need you to do.”
“That would be?”
“Touching that big thing in the middle of the room.”
Holden looked at the construct again, felt the almost subliminal pressure coming off of it. “Why?”
“Because,” said Miller, lecturing to a stupid child. “The place is in lockdown. It’s not accepting remote connections without a level of authorization I don’t have.”
“And I do?”
“You’re not making a remote connection. You’re actually here. In the substrate. In some quarters, that’s kind of a big deal.”
“But I just walked in here.”
“You had some help. I calmed some of the security down to get you this far.”
“So you let the marines in too?”
“Unlocked is unlocked. C’mon.”
The closer Holden got to the octagon, the harder it was to approach. It wasn’t just fear, though the dread swam at the back of his throat and all down his spine. It was physically difficult, like pushing against a magnetic field.
The shape was chipped at the edges, marked with hair-thin lines in patterns that might have been ideograms or patterns of fungal growth or both. He reached out his hand, and his teeth itched.
“What will happen?” he asked.
“How much do you know about quantum mechanics?”
“How much do you?” Holden replied.
“A lot, turns out,” Miller said with a lopsided grin. “Do now, anyway.”
“I’m not going to burst into flames or something, right?”
Miller gave a small Belter shrug with his hands. “Don’t think so. I’m not up on all the defense systems. But I don’t think so.”
“So,” Holden said. “Maybe?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Holden sighed and started to reach for the surface. He paused. “You didn’t really answer the question, you know.”
“You’re stalling,” Miller said. And then, “Which question was that?”
“I get why no one else sees you. But the real question is ‘why me’ at all? I mean, okay, you’re screwing with my brain and that’s hard work, and if there’s other people for me to interact with it’s too hard and all like that. But why me? Why not Naomi or the UN secretary-general or something?”
Miller nodded, understanding the question. He frowned, sighed.
“Miller kind of liked you. Thought you were a decent guy.”
“That’s it?”
“You need more?”
Holden placed his palm flat against the closest surface. He didn’t burst into flames. Through the gloves of his EVA suit, he felt a short electric tingle and then nothing, because he was floating in space. He tried to scream and failed.
Sorry, a voice said in his head. It sounded like Miller. Didn’t mean to drag you in here. Just try and relax, all right?
Holden tried to nod, but failed at that too. He didn’t have a head.
His sense of his own body had changed, shifted, expanded past anything he’d imagined before. The simple extent of it was numbing. He felt the stars within him, the vast expanses of space contained by him. With a thought, he could pull his attention to a sun surrounded by unfamiliar planets like he was attending to his finger or the back of his neck. The lights all tasted different, smelled different. He wanted to close his eyes against the flood of sensation, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have anything so simple as eyes. He had become immeasurably large, and rich, and strange. Thousands of voices, millions, billions, lifted in chorus and he was their song. And at his center, a place where all the threads of his being came together. He recognized the station not by how it looked, but by the deep throb of its heartbeat. The power of a million suns contained, channeled. Here was the nexus that sat between the worlds, the miracle of knowledge and power that gave him heaven. His Babel.
And a star went out.
It wasn’t especially unique. It wasn’t beautiful. A few voices out of quadrillions went silent, and if the great chorus of his being was lessened by them, it wasn’t perceptible. Still, a ripple passed through him. The colors of his consciousness swirled and darkened. Concern, curiosity, alarm. Even delight. Something new had happened for the first time in millennia.