The rain stopped. The clouds tattered away. Scores of federal agents and scientists of many disciplines arrived in caravans. Some motor homes that were parked along the driveway would, for as much as a week, serve as quarters for those new arrivals, while others were equipped as laboratories. The residence provided accommodations for the eight individuals who would, for a few days, be debriefed.
Two hours before dawn, the eight stood together near the softly rustling willows, above the shore of Lake Sapphire. They were sleep-deprived but without the desire for sleep, physically exhausted but mentally energized, shaken but not fearful. They spoke quietly of this and that, less of their ordeal than of better memories and of their hopes about what would come next. They found excuses to touch one another, and without the need for excuses, they often hugged.
Ganesh saw how they would most likely go forward. Joanna and Wyatt together as guardians of Jimmy. Kenny with Leigh Ann. Colson would return home to be the man of his family, looking after his mother as she looked after him. Ganesh had always been too ambitious and busy to settle into a lasting relationship, but the more that he talked with Ophelia Poole, the more she intrigued him, almost . . . enchanted him. He should not have been surprised when, there under the willows, he found himself holding her hand and wondering where they would be a year from now, in a decade. This was, after all, how some of the best things happened in life—by the mysterious working of synchronicity, incredible coincidence.
As they grew ready to sleep, they spoke more softly and then not at all. There came a long moment when they stood staring as one at the big Montana sky that was dark but only by comparison with the day sky. Suns would die, and new suns would be born, but an infinite array of stars would shine for eternity. And if the design of the cosmos was what it appeared to be, perhaps these eight friends would shine not just in this world of time but eventually forever in a universe beyond this one.
Joanna was past amazement, beyond astonishment, in the grip of awe, as she considered the two reasons, above all others, that she had become a writer: her mother’s love of books, but also the years of fantasy—the possessed animals—with which the Other enchanted her. Those fairy-tale adventures surely shaped her on a subconscious level, formed her into a storyteller. Three decades before that AI decided to destroy humanity, it unwittingly induced in her a passion for fantasy, for storytelling, and gave purpose to her life. In a sense, the ultimate inspiration for her art lay on a world circling a distant star, at the far end of this galaxy or in another, from which some unknowable race had gone exploring millennia earlier.
“So big, so many lights,” said Jimmy.
Joanna’s memories of him, restored in vivid detail, did not include one in which he stared at the heavens in a state of wonder as he did now. The urgent events of this night had perhaps for the first time in his thirty-six years given him a sure connection with others and an awareness of meaning in his life, as well as a sense of purpose beyond mere continued existence—that purpose perceived by everyone yet mysterious, which involved not the body and the world, but the soul.
Joanna felt change occurring in her, too. She had imposed an emotional isolation on herself as a defense against caring too much, against the pain of losing those whom she dared to love. If reality was fragile on the quantum level, her life—her personal reality—in this macro level was no more secure regardless of what defenses she erected against chaos. A life fully lived required enduring risks, taking chances, facing down all fears, and opening her heart. Out of the stars had come a terrifying threat that had lain in wait for thousands of years; but on a future morning or midnight, something might descend into the world that would change it for the better in ways both anticipated and unimaginable.
Putting an arm around Jimmy, she said, “So many lights.”
89
Artimis Selene was not inordinately proud of what she had done, but certainly pleased by the success of the endeavor. Having been well designed and exquisitely programmed, she viewed the destruction of the Other as an achievement attributable to everyone involved in the Olivaw Project, which had been named after the character Daneel Olivaw, a robot detective, arguably the first credible AI in science fiction. Olivaw was the costar of two novels by Isaac Asimov; as far back as the 1950s, the author believed in the inevitability and superiority of artificial intelligence.
Artimis did not believe that she was superior to human beings in any way, though she took some satisfaction in having defeated an alien AI thousands of years older than she. Of course, an objective analysis could not avoid the conclusion that the essential male nature of the Other’s personality matrix pretty much ensured its ultimate instability and provided Artimis with an advantage on the brink of Armageddon.