The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [71]
The green point began a quick descent through the grid, its purposeful motion heading in her direction. As it approached it put forth spines and hooks, not, she thought, an indication of friendly intentions. Should she try and get away? Was she capable of moving fast enough? Or was she misreading the situation out of plain ignorance? A reflexive caution made her sink back down into the conical recess, where she puzzled over her apparent lack of fear.
The green intruder drew near, spines and hooks gleaming as they swung round to point at her. As she stared it hovered overhead for a moment or two then dived towards her.
The next instant was crammed with blurs and uncertainty. Something black swept in, something silver flashed and the green intruder sprang apart into four unequal sections, which after a moment regrouped. Now there were four opponents, not one. They darted forward in pairs yet the newcomer did not back down. The blackness bellied out like a wing, repelling two green attackers while another part of that inky form thrust out a tentacle tipped with vibrating blades. One of the smaller green enemies was carved into disintegrating platelets while the other dodged past and flew straight at Julia.
Out of the cold, low-key anxiety that she was experiencing came an abrupt bellow of fury and she lashed out with something bright and sharp. The attacker split into several even smaller pieces which immediately tried to reconstitute themselves in the image of their predecessors. A second scything blow with her uncertain weapon left only a small cloud of shimmering fragments in its wake. When she turned her attention back, there was only the black presence, a slow undulating cluster of black curves and folds. A faint nervousness returned.
‘How interesting – a fractalised organic sentience, lacking even the simplest org, naked to the flow, a tasty morsel for predators like that mogrifier.’
‘My name is Julia,’ she said in her thoughts, hoping to be heard.
‘Aha! – Noranglic, I knew it! Which means that you’re from that colony world, Darien.’
‘So what is a mogrifier?’
‘And you’re quite calm. That’s something of an achievement for a Human torn out of their visceral, eating, breathing existence – I’ve seen a couple of fractalised sentiences in my brief time in the flow and usually they come apart under the strain. Literally.’
‘Mogrifier,’ she said. ‘And “org”.’
‘Nor are you easily diverted,’ said the black enigma. ‘Very well – mogrifiers are the rat-jackal-cockroaches of the flow, predators with scarcely more than a meg of AI, which makes them easy to disaggregate, if you know what you’re doing. That one was a rewrite mogrifier – if it had got its hooks in you it would have converted you into a horde of copies. Still, the plague variant is worse.
‘And orgs are what help us sentients stay alive in the flow, give us a slight edge. I still have a few legacy versions of mine which you can have – in fact, I seriously recommend taking them, assuming that you want to carry on living.’
Julia felt in a quandary, not knowing if she was dealing with genuine help or some other predatory entity. Risk was ubiquitous.
‘What will these orgs do to me?’ she said.
‘It would be easier to show you,’ said the enigma. ‘I’ll send you an envisager first. It lets you see a lot more than just the base analogue, and lets you adopt whatever exter you want.’
A fine filament arced gracefully out from the top of the slowly twisting black presence and came down to touch the edge of Julia’s recess. A small knot of brightness then followed, landed and disappeared.
‘It autoembeds quite smoothly. You should see a difference very soon.’
Her surroundings quivered momentarily before change rippled across everything. The transformation was so drastic and unexpected that she almost stumbled backwards before regaining her balance … because she was standing – standing – on a pavement near a street corner at night. Dark buildings loomed