Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

brooding supermassive black hole at the centre of everything. The
Core itself was the Galaxy’s central bulge, a fat ellipsoid of stars
and shining nebulae set at the centre of the disc of spiral arms.
Embedded within the Core was the still denser knot of the Central
Star Mass. As well as millions of stars crammed into a few light
years, the Mass contained relics of immense astrophysical violence,
expanding blisters left over from supernovas, and tremendous fronts
of roiling gas and dust thrown off from greater detonations at the
Galaxy’s heart. Stranger yet was the Baby Spiral, a fat comma shape
embedded deep in the Mass, like a miniature galaxy with its own arms
of young stars and hot gases.
    And at the centre of it all was Chandra itself, the black hole, a
single object with the mass of millions of stars. The Galaxy centre
was a place of immense violence, where stars were born and torn apart
in great bursts. But Chandra itself was massive and immovable, the
pivot of vast astrophysical machineries, pinned fast to
spacetime.
    Poole was intrigued by Futurity’s rough-and-ready knowledge of the
Core’s geography, even though the acolyte had never before travelled
away from 478. ’You know it the way I knew the shapes of Earth’s
continents from school maps,’ he said. But he was dismayed by the
brusque labels Futurity and the crew had for the features of the
centre. The Core, the Mass, the Baby: they were soldiers’ names,
irreverent and familiar. In the immense glare of the Core there was
no trace of mankind’s three-thousand-year war to be seen, but those
names, Poole said, marked out this place as a battlefield - just as
much as the traces of complex organic molecules that had once been
human beings, hordes of them slaughtered and vaporised, sometimes
still detectable as pollutants in those shining clouds.
    Something about the location’s complexity made Poole open up,
tentatively, about his own experience: the Virtual’s, not the
original.
    ’When I was made fully conscious the first time, it felt like
waking up. But I had none of the usual baggage in my head you carry
through sleep: no clear memory of where I had been when I fell
asleep, what I had done the day before - even how old I was. The
priests quizzed me, and I slowly figured out where I was, and even
what I was. I was shocked to find out when I was. Let me tell you,’
said Poole grimly, ’that was tougher to take than being told I was
worshipped as a god.’
    ’You can remember your past life? I mean, Poole’s.’
    ’Oh, yes. I remember it as if I lived it myself. I’m told they
didn’t so much programme me,’ said Poole wistfully, ’as grow me. They
put together as much as they could about my life, and then
fast-forwarded me through it all.’
    ’So you lived out a computer-memory life.’
    Poole said, ’My memory is sharp up to a point. I remember my
father Harry, who, long after he was dead, came back to haunt me as a
Virtual. I remember Miriam - somebody I loved,’ he said gruffly. ’I
lost her in time long before I lost myself. But it’s all a fake. I
remember having free will and making choices. But I was a rat in a
maze; the truth was I never had such freedom.
    ’And the trouble is the records go fuzzy just at the point where
my, or rather his, biography gets interesting to you theologians.
What happened after I lost Miriam isn’t like a memory, it’s like a
dream - a guess, a fiction somebody wrote out for me. Even to think
about it blurs my sense of self. Anyhow I don’t believe any of
it!
    ’So I was a big disappointment, I think. Oh, the priests kept on
developing me. They would download upgrades; I would wake up
refreshed, rebooted. Of course I always wondered if I was still the
same me as when I went to sleep. But I was never able to answer the
theologians’ questions about the Ultimate Observer, or my jaunt
through the wormholes, or about what I saw or didn’t see at Timelike
Infinity. I wish I could! I’d like to know myself.
    ’In the end they shut me down one last time. They promised me I’d
wake up soon, as I always had. But I was left in my Virtual casket
for a thousand years. The bastards. The next thing I saw was the ugly
face of your Hierocrat, leaning over me.’
    ’Perhaps they did crucify you, in the end.’
    Poole looked at him sharply. ’You’ve got depths, despite your
silly name, kid. Perhaps they did. What I really don’t understand is
why they didn’t just wipe me off the data