Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [26]
If you listened very carefully to certain bandwidths of the electromagnetic spectrum and were capable of picosecond data-processing speeds, you could have heard the ships talking.
Mostly it was gossip, who's been where, done what and to whom. The GPSs had a crew complement, although population would be a better word, of sixty thousand each and that gave them a lot to gossip about. One of the VLRs, the A-Lain, was complaining because it had been asked to do a run to one of the lesser clouds. The detached front end of the TSH !C-Mel was bitching because God wouldn't build it a new rear section. Two of the VASs, S-Lioness and !X-Press, were analysing an interesting engagement from the war.
Underneath the normal chit-chat a current of unease ran through the ship to ship channels.
Although it was considered bad manners to extend active probes into the interior of the sphere all of the ships were aware that an unprecedented amount of God appeared to be concentrating on a single problem. Given God's limitless mental resources this was slightly unnerving.
The front section of the TSH the !C-Mel, who was at that time associated with the Interpersonal Dynamics Interest Group, persuaded two of its crew to travel into the sphere and find out what was going on. The third VAS, the T Di!x, used its supralight communications rig to contact some friends and get their advice. This set off a chain reaction as other ships called their friends until an ever-expanding volume of space was criss-crossed by supralight communications, all of them racing to develop probability projections that could handle the non-data they were receiving from each other.
To make matters worse God wasn't answering their calls.
3
Party Games
Night time is falling, the good times begin
I don't want to discuss philosophy, baby
I just wanna see your fins. Reptile Beach by Third Eye From the HvLP: Outta My Way Monkey-boy
(2327)
Night falls.
Darkness advances across the interior of the worldsphere as God adjusts the opacity of the forcefield that englobes the sun. The line of occultation is irregular, some of the battalions of the evening outrunning the army of the night. Six kilometres up the coast from iSanti Jeni darkness is premature, a bridgehead of twilight that occupies a small cove and the hinterland downwind of the great waterfall.
It amuses God to give this microclimate a matching short tropical day.
The drone has been watching the woman all day, as it has watched her for the last three months. She has been roasting fish this afternoon, skewering them on straight green twigs and placing them over a fire outside her hut. She ate them during the short simulated twilight, white teeth ripping flesh off the bones with small economical movements. The drone's sensors are precise enough to determine the exact quantity of protein she has ingested. The drone has kept a micrometer accurate log of all her activities since the first day.
Now it is night and the light from Whynot is smeared across the water. The chatter in the rain forest alters in intensity as the nocturnal shift of insect life and small mammals clock on for the night.
The drone glides across the cove in total silence, a little oval patch of black against the broken shadows of the forest. It flies to the entrance of the hut and hovers for a moment to ensure that the woman is asleep. Satisfied that she is, the drone enters the hut and takes its accustomed place near the roof.
The drone has the capability to monitor the woman from the opposite side of the sphere but finds the close physical proximity agreeable, possibly comforting. It is aware that this behaviour is not entirely rational but rationality has never been its primary operating principle.
Later this night the woman will cry out in her sleep. Five words, the first the drone has been able to understand. They will come at sleep plus five hours and twenty-six minutes, at the peak of her third REM sleep cycle. The drone will register a level of neurological activity