Hands? Jim tried to say, but there was so much to him now, he was so wide and bright and full it was hard to know whether he’d managed.
It’s a metaphor, Miller said. Don’t get too stuck on it.
Jim pressed out, and this time he was able to push everywhere at once. The pressure was terrible. The enemy was stronger than he was—than they were—but the structure of the rings and the space and the lines of subtle force were like a construction mech, amplifying his strength, protecting him. Slowly, achingly, he moved back. The crushing pressure outside the ring space was a furnace, an engine, a source of unimaginable energy. Like a judo master, the ring station took the near-infinite power of an entire universe trying to crush it and pivoted, turning its strength against it. The other, older universe just outside the sphere of rings moved past him, and he could feel the pain he caused it. He could feel its hatred. The wound in its flesh that he was.
It pushed, but he could hold it. The lines were in their places now, stable in a way that took less effort to hold in place until the ancient enemy rallied again. He felt it slithering against the slow zone, a black snake larger than suns.
All the energy we can use is from one thing that wants to be something else, Miller said. Water behind a dam that wants to get to an ocean. Coal that wants to be ash and smoke. Air that wants to equalize pressure. This structure is stealing energy from another place like a turbine slows down the wind just a little. And the things from the other place will never stop hating us for it.
Jim pulled back, extracting himself from mind after mind after mind. Making himself smaller, lesser, and weaker with each one. Making himself only himself.
“So,” Miller continued, “they announced their let’s-call-it-displeasure by finding ways to slaughter us. When by ‘us’ I mean the other things that grew up in our universe. Our galactic photo-jellyfish cousins or whatever. The bad guys took out a system here, a system there. We shut down the gates to try to keep them from killing us, but it didn’t work. We tried to build tools that would stop them.”
“But nothing could,” Jim said.
“Nothing until now. See, now we’ve got a few billion murder-primates we can slot in where the airy-fairy angels of light used to be. I’m going to give us a better chance at that point.”
“That was Duarte’s plan.”
“It was.”
“I didn’t go through all of this just to be him.”
“Maybe you came through all this to understand why he did what he did. To get your head around it,” Miller said, taking his hat off and scratching the back of one ear. “You do what you have to do to fight back, or you get slaughtered. Either way, you lose what being human used to be.”
All through the ring space, people rushed. Fear and relief and the focused concentration of repair work being done while emergency klaxons sounded.
And beyond the rings, the systems. Billions of lives. Billions of nodes waiting to be strung together into a single, vast, beautiful mind. From here, Jim could see the great unity that humanity could become, and more than that, he could do it. He could finish the work Duarte had started, and bring something new and grand and strong into the universe.
It would be beautiful.
Miller nodded like he was agreeing with something. Which maybe he was. “Nerving yourself up to kiss your big crush for the first time? Or getting pissed off because the apartment one over has a nicer view than yours? Playing with your grandbabies, or drinking beer with the assholes from work because going back to an empty house is too depressing? All the grimy, grubby bullshit that comes with being locked in your own head for a lifetime. That’s the sacrifice. That’s what you give up to get a place among the stars.”
For a moment, Jim let himself look forward through epochs to see the brightness that humanity could become spread through the universe, discovering and creating and growing in its chorus. Reaching beyond anything a single human mind could conceive. A blanket of light that rivaled the stars themselves. Back in the bright chamber, his physical body wept with awe.
And he sighed.
“It’s not worth it.”
“Yeah,” Miller said. “I know. But what can you do?”
“They shut the rings down,” Jim said, “but they kept the station. The slow zone. They left it all here so that they could come back to it. The Sol ring couldn’t have worked if the station hadn’t been here for it to connect with. They put a bandage over it without getting the splinter out first.”
Miller frowned thoughtfully, but there was a glimmer in his eyes. Somewhere, Teresa was screaming Jim’s name. He’d need to take care of that. There was another thing first.