Beyond the Farthest Star: Chapter 24

Miles was not the least bit excited at the prospect of wearing orange shoes with bright pink shoelaces, but he knew it was useless to argue with Amy. Rather than scouring his cavernous warehouse for a more fashion-conscious pair of shoes, he decided to simply wear the one that Amy had found. He reluctantly dug the shoes out of the crate, removed their original shoelaces, and carefully laced them up with the ones that Amy had provided. “Why, they fit exactly,” Miles exclaimed. “It’s as if they were designed for these shoes.”

“Of course they were! There was no point in creating generic shoelaces, you know. When I created them I made sure that they would fit a pair of shoes that you actually had. That’s what I call attention to detail.”

“You know, color is an important detail too. There’s a lot to be said for coordinating your outfit.”

“Really? Then why are you wearing a pair of overalls and a straw hat?”

“Because they’re comfortable! Besides, they’re great for doing manual labor. You don’t want to wear a formal outfit if you’re going to be getting your hands dirty.”

“Then you are in luck! Those shoelaces are very comfortable and they’re stain-resistant. They are just the thing for working outside, which is where we’re about to be going.”

“If you say so,” Miles replied, sighing. He took one last look at the orange shoes, grimaced, and then put them on his feet. After they were on and the laces had been tied he stood up, and then looked back down at them and frowned. “That’s odd – I’m not feeling anything. Are you sure they’re working?”

“Oh yes – I just haven’t activated them yet. I’m going to turn them on right…now.”

Instantly Miles’ world changed. He was still in his warehouse, but he could now see far beyond it. With his mind he could view the planet’s surface, where the rain was still falling. He could see beyond the desert to the underground city of New Tikal, and he could see people going about their lives. He could peer inside the city and see what was going on inside the zero-point-energy plant. In fact, he was startled to discover that he could look inside the reactor itself.

That was when he realized that the nanites could do far more than simply look around. His environment – the very atoms and molecules that made up his world – was now fully customizable! All he had to do was think a certain sequence of thoughts and his bunker could be radically changed to whatever pattern he could conceive. A single thought could change the walls of his bunker from concrete into solid gold, and another thought could move the bunker to the opposite side of the planet. He suddenly understood how Amy had been able to transport them around so easily, and how she had been able to instantly create a pair of shoelaces. Why, there’s nothing to it at all! I feel like I’ve spent my entire life blind, and someone finally came along and opened my eyes. All this information – all these sciences – it’s just child’s play! No wonder Amy could terraform Mars. It’s so simple!

“So what do you think?” Amy asked.

Miles brought himself back to the room and looked at her. “It’s amazing. No, it’s unbelievable! This – this is a whole different way of living. With the network you can change the entire planet as easily as I can change the commands in a computer program. I knew the nanites were powerful but I never dreamed they were anything like this.”

Amy nodded. “It really is amazing. Still, though, you get used to it over time. Eventually it just becomes second nature.”

“You know, that’s a little frightening. This is an astonishing amount of power to get used to! I don’t know what I would have done if I had had nanites like these two thousand years ago. I might have conquered the planet.”

“There was no chance of that,” Amy replied. “Well, let me back up a bit. If you had built the nanites correctly – and there was no way you could have accomplished that – then you might have been capable of doing these things, but you wouldn’t have had the data you needed to actually do them. The reason this network is so powerful is because it has a huge library of commands that make it a simple matter to do almost anything you could imagine. Without that knowledge you would have had a fantastic toolset that was almost impossible to use. It would be like giving someone a hammer, but withholding all blueprints and construction tips.”

“Oh,” Miles said, disappointed. “So I wasn’t really that close, then. But still, this is amazing! Are you quite sure that my abilities are less powerful than yours?”

“Definitely. All you can do is control the matter on this one planet, and you can only do that as long as I permit it. Your vision is also restricted to Mars and you can’t teleport off this world. Oh – and your shoelaces also won’t extend your life indefinitely, the way my nanites will. Overall, the laces are really pretty restricted. I have a lot more possibilities open to me than you do. For example, I could teleport this entire planet into deep space, or shut down the Sun. There’s no way you could do either of those things.”

“That’s a little scary,” Miles replied. “Actually, that’s a lot scary! As much fun as this is, I think that’s far too much power to give to any one person. Why, a man could conquer the whole world with just what I have available to me! If what you’re telling me is true then you have more than enough power to conquer the entire galaxy and rule it with an iron fist – and you could rule it until the universe ended. No one could ever challenge you.”

“I guess,” Amy replied. “But why would I want to do that?”

“Well, if you controlled the galaxy then you could have anything you wanted. No one could stop you.”

“I can already have anything I want! All I have to do is materialize it and voila, there it is. My needs are all provided for, and I have the resources of 93 million stars to draw from. But what you don’t understand is that these nanites can’t give me what I really want. I don’t want power, or gold, or the ability to boss other people around. None of that stuff is worth having.”

“Then what do you want?” Miles asked.

“I want my life back. I want to go back to December 7, 1867, only this time I want the Sparrow to make it safely to Xanthe. I want to live out my life with my family, on a planet that doesn’t hate me and isn’t trying to kill me. I want to live in my own time, with my own people. I don’t like it here, Miles, and I don’t want to be here. My family is dead, and my friends are dead, and my whole world is gone. It’s like waking up in a nightmare. But, despite all this unimaginable power, I can’t go back. I can have anything I want expect for the one thing that I actually want.”

“I, for one, am very glad that you are here,” Miles replied. “If the Emperor had not planted that corrupted controller card on board the Sparrow then Mars would never have been terraformed. The people of Xanthe would still be in their pods, living out their corrupt dreams. Earth would never have received the help that she needed. The Artilect would have gone on forever, terraforming worlds that no one would ever visit.”

“They would have all gotten exactly what they deserved,” Amy replied firmly. “The last survivors on Xanthe would have died in their pods – the pods they had built. The last survivors on Mars would have died when their planet finally became totally uninhabitable – a fate they were aware of but were too lazy and self-centered to prevent. And the last sane people on Earth would have died as well, unable to produce any more children due to centuries of inbreeding.”

“Meaning all of humanity would be dead, save for the savages in the forests. But since they could not cure themselves, humanity itself would have eventually died. In other words, Amy, if you had been given your way then mankind itself would have perished. Was your dream really worth that?”

“But that’s not my fault! I didn’t make any of those things happen. People made their own choices, and that’s how things turned out. Why should my life have to be ruined just to save someone else from the consequences of their own stupidity?”

“Jesus could have asked the Father that same question, you know,” Miles replied. “Why should He have to die for our sins? After all, He wasn’t the guilty one. He never did anything wrong, and yet He was sent to die a torturous death so that we might be saved. Why not just let us suffer the consequences of our sins and send us all to Hell? It’s what we deserved.”

“I’m not Jesus,” Amy protested.

“But you’re His disciple. He bought you with His blood and you gave your life to Him. He gave you your marching orders – love your neighbor as yourself, even if your neighbor is your enemy. He has called you to do good to those who hate you, even if they never stop hating you. It’s not fun, it’s not easy, and it seems grossly unfair. But that is how God wants us to show His love to the world. You have a calling, Amy. You cannot run from it.”

“I guess,” Amy sighed. “It’s just really hard, and I want it to be over.”

“It will all be over soon enough,” Miles said. “Let’s just take it one step at a time. Speaking of which, where do we go from here? Are you going to design this new city of yours right here on Mars?”

“Oh no! No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’d much rather build it off-site so we can make sure all the details are correct. Then we’ll come here and have the nanites reconstruct it based on the design we’ve created. Building it here is too risky – I’d hate to have someone accidentally stumble across it before we were done with it.”

“That sounds good to me! So what planet did you have in mind?”

“I know just the place,” Amy said. “Here – come with me!”