The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [122]
“Humans haven’t been running any of the worlds they think of as their own for the last three hundred years, and the human inhabitants of the home system haven’t even noticed. The dumb implements on which the human inhabitants of the solar system depend no longer belong to them, and there’s no way in the world they can take them back. The solar system is a zoo, and its human inhabitants are the captive animals. The only reason you can’t see the bars of the cages is that the AMIs who are running the institution work hard to sustain your illusions. Do you think they do that for your benefit, Mr. Lowenthal?”
Lowenthal looked very unhappy, but he didn’t have a fall-back position. He was free not to believe her, but he knew he’d be a fool simply to assume that what she was saying wasn’t true. We could see the bars of our cage very clearly indeed, and if we weren’t already convinced of their reality, a couple more days without our IT would provide all the evidence we needed.
“So why do they continue to support us?” Niamh Horne wanted to know. “Why haven’t they wiped us out already, if they have the power and we’re surplus to their requirements?”
“Because they want to do the right thing,” Alice told her. “And it’s because they’re trying to figure out how to do the right thing that you and I are here.”
“Do they think this is the right way to go about it?” That was Lowenthal diving back in, the expansive sweep of his hand taking in the cells, the clothes we were wearing, and all the primitive poverty of the long-lost Ark.
“It was a difficult decision,” Alice told him, a slight note of exasperation creeping into her voice. “An awkward compromise. This wasn’t the way Eido and I wanted to play it — but we’re playing away from home.”
Everybody was out of bed by now, and the queue for food was even more disorderly. For once, even Adam Zimmerman was being jostled by lesser emortals.
Christine Caine sat down beside me. “What’s going on?” she asked, before picking up my water bottle and taking a swig.
“It was a friendly discussion,” I murmured. “Now it’s the next best thing to a riot. The sensible thing to do” — I raised my voice as I spoke to take advantage of a temporary lull in the gathering storm of questions and recriminations — “would be to let Alice tell us her own story, from the beginning. Then we’ll have something solid to chew over.”
The lull had only been momentary, but the resumption faded away as the import of my suggestion sunk in. It was the sensible thing to do, given that Alice had now condescended to join us instead of lurking in her own lonely place. It was time to stop running round in circles and listen to a story, not just because there might be a valuable lesson to be learned therefrom, but also because it might be entertaining. I felt that I could do with a little entertainment, now that the effects of the fake alien invasion had worn off.
So Alice told us her story — and it was entertaining, as well as containing all manner of valuable lessons.
Thirty-One
Alice In Wonderland
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Alice, who went to sleep in 2090 in order to be stored on an Ark named Hope, and woke up a long time afterwards, into a dream of wonderland…
Or so it must have seemed.
Alice had expected, before being frozen down, that she would awake to be reunited with her father, Matthew Fleury, and her sister Michelle. It didn’t quite work out that way. Michelle was there, but she was twenty years older than she had been when the two of them had arrived on Hope. Matthew Fleury had been dead for a long time, but he had made his mark on Tyre before he went.
Matthew Fleury had been a celebrity of sorts even on Earth, where he had been numbered among the prophets