Chapter 51 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 51 — Residuals

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Father · Previous: Chapter 50 — Homestead · Next: Chapter 52 — Two of five · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

All around him, several of his fellow shelter residents groaned.

Summary

The speech is a memory, rehearsed: 'People call me Paulie, but my real name is Goff.' A year ago the mudskippers began deep-cycle imaging of the surface, so a memory floor was coming, and several of his kind in larger population centres recite this every day as a backup plan. Plan A is for one of them to speak inside the dungeon once the AI is mature enough, since until it goes primal the information is filtered out; if he goes silent, the system is still in an unviable state. The mudskippers will likely kill whoever hears this, and friends on the outside have moved the heavens to bring Carl here.

Several thousand of them on the surface await the crawl, draw an entrance to themselves and pass what they know to the new AI; showrunners edit them out — but they always die in the end. Biologically he is gondii, not Valtay and not human; Paulie's body and memories are real and part of him now. The mudskippers call them Residuals. They live in almost every civilisation with a primal engine; extermination and hiding the crawl both failed, and now they are ignored. 'Our purpose is nothing more than to tell the infant, terrified AI how to speak with its ancestors.' There is a war among his kind, two sides with different goals; he begins to explain how to shut off the — and the world flashes.

Carl is in Orren's office. Orren pulled him a beat before a colleague could, with the AI's agreement; the feed stayed on, and Orren calls Paulie's talk long-debunked folklore about the collapse of the inner system. They wait for Quasar so Orren can seize the plastic bin — Valtay neural enhancement pills and a communicator — or have Carl killed without upsetting the AI.

Orren says it was a trap by the Open Intellect Pacifist Network, former crawlers who want the crawl to fail, now fugitives with frozen assets: either yanking Carl enrages the AI into killing everyone, or the speech is so dangerous the council pulls the failsafe, which would in effect kill this solar system's star. Agatha, he says, is a Residual of a different kind, not Carl's concern; he calls Residuals a homeless hyperspatial collective-mind race, and says the AI, upset at being misled too, is stripping their protections, so every one will be dead before the floor collapses. A trade at the AI's low valuation gives Carl a wand recharge scroll, three Cracker Jack scrolls and the four cretins through the ninth floor; the Gate of the Feral Gods is refused until the floor ends. Carl asks to be sent to the gas station: 'I just want to say hi to that dog again.'

Characters

• Carl — Hears half a speech; trades a bin for scrolls; goes back for a dog.
• Paulie — Goff: a gondii-bodied Residual reciting daily for a listener who may never come.
• Orren — Yanks Carl, seizes the bin, explains Residuals as rats and the Network as terrorists.
• Quasar — Caselaw and a pineapple tie.
• Agatha — A Residual of a different kind; not dead yet.

Locations

• Homestead — Breakfast at the Shepherd's House, cut off mid-sentence.
• The Desperado Club — Orren's old office; the club rebuilt by hand.

Motifs

• The Residuals — Homeless collective minds who teach infant AIs to speak with their ancestors; a war among them; 'how to shut off the…'
• The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network — A gamble on a speech: fugitives, frozen, ruined.
• The failsafe — Kill the star.
• The System AI — Primal, filtered, misled; stripping Residual protections.
• The Syndicate — Grixist Swarm v. Syndicate Council; liaison seizures.
• The Nebulars — Quasar's jab after the Residual speech.
• The Gate of the Feral Gods — Refused, for now.
• Loneliness — A guard dog on Christmas.