THE STEPHANIE GLITCH - Part 4
In which Toumai and LP work on strategy, and have an existentialist argument about which way time is flowing. (Includes link to part 1 for new subscribers)
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A slightly bigger post today, at 2784 words. That’s because this is all one sub-chapter, one big scene. It felt wrong splitting it in half.
I’ve changed the font on my Substack slightly. Should be easier to read in the mobile app and through email. Let me know if it’s any better.
THE STEPHANIE GLITCH
PART 4
The Artifice fell like a blood drop through a vortex of rock and dust. Behind it countless interstellar objects clattered and converged upon the space it left behind, spinning into a makeshift shell that the Virtualist cruisers could barely penetrate.
“We knocked two down,” Toumai said emotionlessly.
“Be more excited,” LP said. “That’s two less for me to deal with when this plan stops working.” She looked to the diagnostic screen. Upon it was a digital reconstruction of events behind the ship, objects mapped and rendered in real time. She pulled the ghostly image loose from the screen, clicking it into her own holograph display, and watched as the Virtualist spikeships slipped between larger rocks but bumped into smaller, faster fragments.
Behind the lumbering form of the Artifice, the jagged shapes of other Virtualist spikeships zipped between and around the rocks, following the invisible path carved by the gravity bursts. LP knew it was only a matter of time before one of them got through, and then a matter of hours or days before they caught up to the ship.
“Talk to me,” LP said, “What’s the backstory?”
“Surely we should be discussing strategy,” Toumai said.
“We are. Tell me about yourself, about the ship.” LP glanced at the image and saw another Virtualist cruiser battered by a storm of cosmic debris.
“I am a starship intelligence, and you are a human from a higher reality. We do not have much in common,” Toumai said coldly. LP leaned on the edge of a console. She laughed.
“Where I’m from the computers aren’t very funny. I like you. That was funny.”
“It was not meant to be,” Toumai said.
“I know, and to be honest, that helped it,” LP said. She stretched and cracked her joints, the noise filling up her spacesuit. It was as if she hadn’t moved in centuries, as if she had only recently been thawed from deep sleep. She twisted and cracked again and said, “New body, a bit stiff.”
Toumai’s social programming saw an opportunity for humour, an old joke from crewmate Elspeth, repackaged and delivered to a new audience.
“I know the feeling,” he replied, “This particular shell needs oil.” He whirred and moved his eyestalk, flexing a joint that creaked as it moved, echoing the movements of the crew member some months earlier. LP smirked and exhaled through her nose.
“See. Robots here are funny. I’ll miss that when reality collapses.”
“Elaborate,” Toumai said darkly.
“See, now you want backstory. Okay then. Reality is ending. We have that in common. That and her,” LP said. She pointed to an empty space in the room, pretending to be pointing at Stephanie.
“She is not invisible,” Toumai said. “She is over there.” his bulbous head turned to the glass tank.
“I know that. But she’s not there, is she? Not unless she’s already linking to her new body, which I doubt. Also, it feels wrong to point at her skeleton. It’s morbid. I know you could speed up the process by the way. Those printer bugs are basically idle. You should do that. Hurry up.”
“She is not ready,” Toumai said assertively.
“Well neither was I and I turned out fine, only died four times, or was it five?”
Toumai ignored this, choosing instead to focus on the issue at hand. He stored this information, if it was information and not fiction, and kept it for later.
“From the messages we have gathered, Stephanie’s psychological profile indicates such a traumatic change in circumstance may lead to psychosis.”
LP shook her head at this, toying with the gloves of her spacesuit. She moved to put them back on, then shook her head and mumbled something inaudible to herself.
“I didn’t have time to wait and I’m pretty well-adjusted. No underlying health problems, definitely no lingering psychological issues.”
“You are right. We should know more about each other,” Toumai admitted. LP sighed in relief and slumped to the floor. Her spacesuit clanked.
“I never thought you’d ask,” she said. She reached up to the loose hologram of the debris field behind the Artifice and pushed it back toward its projector, watching it fade and bleed away before reconnecting with its host.
“My name is Long Play, like the records,” she said. Toumai’s eyestalk whirred over to her, extending to reach down and face her. All the while LP knew that he would be keeping track of the spikeships following them, his machine mind never truly in one place or moment. In that way Long Play felt remarkably similar to him. Underneath all the skin and metal and beliefs and programs, there was something more honest. She could almost imagine that Toumai was motivated not by his programming, but by an insatiable curiosity as inevitable and emergent as life itself. Every unknown was a new adventure, his imperitive was discovery. It was beyond human and beyond machine, something other, something that guided them both. Toumai didn’t know it, not yet, but he was alive too.
“Why?” Toumai asked, shaking LP from her thoughts.
“What do you mean why?”
“Why are you called Long Play?”
“Because that’s the name I liked. That’s reason enough.”
“Was it your birth name?”
“That’s not relevant. It’s my name now.”
“Understood,” Toumai said, returning to idle silence. He filed the next five questions away in his head, saving these for later too. LP noticed in Toumai’s huge eye a hint of purple underneath the black lens, perhaps circuitry reflecting back at her. They sat for a while and talked of LP’s journey, the functions of her space suit, and how it felt to teleport from place to place. Toumai was particularly interested in physical sensations, in the human body’s reactions to teleportation. Eventually, the conversation turned back to Toumai.
LP asked, “What was it like, the atmosphere, the feeling, when the researchers found out about Stephanie’s universe?”
“It was electric, as humans would describe. They were noticeably more animated for several weeks. But they were also anxious about the implications.”
“And how did the Virtualists find out?”
“I imagine they intercepted our communications with our laboratories back on Earth,” Toumai explained. As he was talking, he was monitoring the feed of the Virtualist cruisers in the asteroid field behind them. LP could practically hear his thoughts whizzing through the hull of the ship, his voice whispering through the air.
“And now they know the answer,” LP said, “And they don’t like it.”
“Indeed.”
“And do they know about Stephanie?”
“If they have intercepted our communication with Earth, yes.”
“They will have,” LP’s voice grew dark and cold. “That’s settled then, they’re following us to kill her. We’re at war.”
“How do you know?” Toumai asked. He followed LP around the room.
“Once they get hold of her, use her talents to see their way out of this universe, do you think they’ll keep her around?”
Toumai shook his head in two broad sweeps. At any other time, the cartoonish gesture would have been humorous.
“Precisely,” LP continued. “So, you must have had a plan before I arrived. What was it? What were you going to do when the Virtualists turned up?” She got off the floor, using Toumai’s eyestalk to pull herself up. She patted him on the head before moving sluggishly to a chair and sitting down, sighing as she reclined. Toumai moved around on his rails, gliding effortlessly toward the middle of the room and looking down at LP. Briefly he turned to the skeleton in the tube, looked it over, and turned his attention again to LP.
“Very few scientific projects are equipped for interstellar battles,” Toumai said. LP remembered his three little arms, that were now tucked away in the space below his eye.
“Fair point. But you do have your ‘combat ready avatar’ outside, don’t you?”
“It is less threatening than I had you believe,” Toumai admitted.
“I see.”
The machine slid away, releasing his little arms, giving the impression of a professor pacing a lecture hall. LP could almost see him stroking a scraggly beard or twirling a moustache.
“The experiment was to be conducted in deep space. The creators knew the impact of their work and wrote a cover story. Officially, the Artifice is testing new propulsion technologies.”
“And that lie worked?” LP asked. She unclipped the heavy boots from her spacesuit’s legs and sighed in relief, stretching.
“It was the truth,” Toumai said simply. “It is why we are near a black hole.”
“I see, so try out a new propulsion system, create universes as a hobby,” LP said.
“Discover,” Toumai clarified. LP shook her head and smiled.
“It gets a bit fuzzy, doesn’t it? A bit complicated.”
She paused, curling her toes against the stone-cold floor. The coldness made the interior of this spaceship feel more real, more physical. Bit by bit, data packet by data packet, Long Play was getting used to this reality. But something wasn’t right. Something was still off. Was the gravity too high? The air too dense? The light too green? No, something different, more subtle.
“Wait a second. A new propulsion system?”
“Yes,” Toumai replied.
“What is it?”
“A spacetime bubble.”
“A warp bubble?”
“That is one name for it.”
“And you didn’t think to use this earlier, you know, to fly us away from the Virtualists?”
“Operating the spacetime bubble requires locking onto pre-existing pathways.”
LP scrunched up her face for a moment and asked, “Pathways?”
“Scars in spacetime,” Toumai said. His tone was too conversational, not at all helpful. LP briefly wondered if the robot was being vague on purpose, then it clicked. Her eyes widened.
“Intersects.” She scratched the side of her head and waited patiently for confirmation. When none came, she was disappointed.
“I am surprised you didn’t discover this yourself when you scanned me,” Toumai said. LP’s disappointment turned into impatience.
“I didn’t put much focus on the ins and outs of the ship. I focused on Stephanie, not the Artifice as a whole, but where she located. Her universe. And where she was connected to. This room.”
“She isn’t located in this room.”
“Oh, so now you’re all spiritual? A part of her seems to be. The part that sees you.” LP unlocked the chest of her spacesuit now. It took her another half a minute to fully remove the torso and set it down. Her undersuit was light grey, supported by a matrix of silverish lines and meshes. She twisted and cracked her spine once more, loudly and completely.
“New spine, not sure why it needed cracking. Anyway. This black hole,” she began, feigning ignorance, “How does it make your warp bubble work?”
“The black hole itself does not do anything directly. The pathways congregate near black holes and contain small regions of negative energy. The captain, Elspeth, likens them to the strands of a spider’s web being pulled closer by a weight placed upon them. The prevailing theory is that the high gravity of black holes condenses the pathways enough that they are pulled into local spacetime, becoming physical objects near the black holes.”
“They’re invisible until you get up close,” LP added.
“That is correct.” Toumai tilted his head curiously. He sensed that LP knew more than she was letting on, that she was feigning her ignorance. “Do you have these in your universe?”
LP smiled. “I did. These ‘pathways’ Toumai. Where I am from, they are called Intersects.” She moved to unclip the upper legs of her spacesuit and shook her head, deciding against it. She liked the weight, the feeling of being anchored to the ship, of being solid. Even after all these hours this new body felt alien, nebulous. She was surprised she could concentrate at all. The wrists were too dainty, the fingers too long, and the knees too small.
“How could this be wrong,” she said, poking at herself.
“What are you doing?” Toumai asked.
“System check. Anyway. Our prevailing theory was that the intersects were remnants from the early universe. They formed in the same way cracks form in rapidly cooling lava. Indeed, there were some theories of a pattern to them, but by the time I left nobody had proven it. The story goes that the universe, spacetime, once behaved like a liquid, and it cooled so quickly that it cracked. Same reason black holes and whirlpools work similarly. We had just begun discovering the intersects when I,” she paused, considering what to say next. “When I started my journey. Some people thought they were relics from an alien civilisation, but I never saw a reason to think that when a simpler explanation worked just fine.”
“And what is the simpler explanation?” Toumai asked.
“That they were cracks in spacetime, like I said. We’d only just begun discovering them.”
Toumai considered the words carefully, committed them to memory, sent them through the dreamscreen network to the sleeping Artifice crew, then began again. He straightened out his body and began moving around the room again, as if he was pacing on the ceiling.
“The Artifice has flown some distance since emerging from the last pathway. Even if it could get back, we would only succeed in moving the fight to another location.”
“So, what we need is another intersect nearby that the Virtualists haven’t mapped. Have you scanned the area?”
“Research has been focused elsewhere.”
“On Stephanie?”
“Correct. Finding more pathways was not a priority until you informed me of the Virtualists following us.”
“How long will it take?”
“Depending on the scale of the scan-sphere. A few days or weeks.”
“To send out probes and look for intersects?!”
“Yes.”
“Fine. I’ll do the first scan for you, point you in the right direction,” LP said. Toumai whirred around to her and tilted his bulbous head.
“How?”
“Stephanie isn’t the only weirdo on board. That said, she’d do a better job here than I ever would. Her farsight is better than mine, but she can’t manifest a damn thing, whilst I can.” LP looked around the room, closed her eyes, then looked around again. She breathed in deeply.
“Smells like hospital in here by the way.”
“Manifest?” Toumai asked. Long Play swung one leg up onto the table holding her helmet and gloves and started stretching.
“I’ll show you in a minute. Changed my mind about the trousers.” She looked over at the glass cylinder containing Stephanie’s future skeleton and muttered something to herself. She unclipped something on her leg, brought her leg back down and raised the other, stretching and unclipping again. After a few more seconds she was finally free from the rest of her spacesuit. She stood up and began moving idly around the room, pushing the chair away and frowning. Her undersuit was one continuous piece of clothing, covering her body in a warming, self-regulating mesh that would communicate her biosigns to the suit. Even now she could read her own heartbeat on the wrist-mounted projector or screen. She looked around the room again, considering something vital.
“I miss my comfy chair,” she said, focusing on the skeleton in the cylinder. “Do you have any comfier chairs?”
“Why?” Toumai asked.
“Easier to navigate in. Get to think about intersects rather than how uncomfortable I am.”
“Is this a necessity?”
“Oh absolutely. Can’t do the weird thing without it.”
“The crew quarters have nicer chairs,” Toumai gave in. LP got closer to the cylinder.
“Then we shall go there. Toumai, do you think she can see us now?”
“She has no eyes,” Toumai replied. LP held her laughter behind a smirk.
“She does have eyes. Somewhere. And she saw you, didn’t she?”
“She sent a signal whilst she was sleeping. Images of this ship, as seen from the inside.”
“Remote viewing.”
“That is correct.”
“I mean, really remote. Across the dark and murky boundary between universes… Through time and space and what lies between. Where the creatures wait. And that’s how you found her,” LP said.
“Creatures?” Toumai asked.
“A joke.”
“I see.”
“She sent packets of data from her world to this one. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Toumai admitted. LP shook her head.
“No, I was asking myself. Asking her really. She sent her experiences, her feelings. She sent impressions of herself and her environment. Images, data, and you traced the origin point to this unassuming patch of spacetime.”
“That is correct.”
Long Play walked back to Stephanie’s cylinder, reaching out and touching it again. It was cold, but through the palm of her hands she could feel an ambient hum. Life was on the way, expectant and burgeoning, bubbling up from the lifeless. She could feel it. Stephanie was almost here, partially here. Long Play smiled up at the floating skeleton, which was by now swarmed by tiny clouds of printer bugs on their way to build musculature. Without looking back to Toumai she finished the conversation.
“So technically, Stephanie found you.”
END (for now)
Author’s notes:
I might be breaking some unwritten writer’s rule by telling you this chapter ending gives me goosebumps, but it does. Every single time I read it I am spooked. Stephanie has gone from nervous teenager to ominous alien intelligence in a few thousand words.
And I can guarantee, dear reader, that her life is only going to get weirder.
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Boring stuff:
Regarding going paid, I’ve been refining things. Substack paid tiers are nice, but they aren’t as flexible as Patreon. I’ve chatted with a handful of you over the last few weeks about how to improve this publication, and I think sending stickers to your house every now and again is a lot of fun. It won’t end at stickers either, since 2019 my first handful of readers have been asking for TSG themed enamel pin badges.
With Patreon I can efficiently include print-on-demand goodies for specific tiers, as well as Discord community badges, the keys to exclusive online spaces, and other cool things. I have lots of THE STEPHANIE GLITCH and other sci-fi designs for stickers and bookmarks which I want to use, so I’m working on it. I want to be able to say thanks to my supporters with something beyond exclusive stories, something you can stick to the back of your wife’s head (ask her first).
Should be able to get a little book on there too, in the future.
Stay weird
— Phill