Naked Singularities

Dark Skies

I remember the last time I saw my sister in the flesh. It was the day that she was uploaded to the Cloud, to join the billions of constructs already living in the computronium shell that circled the Earth. The process required the mapping of her body and nervous system; a process that created a digital duplicate of her memories and personality, but which left nothing behind but carbon dust.

The ceremony took place on a green hillside that overlooked the Irish Sea. Below us, to the east, were the remains of some long-abandoned town. A great horseshoe of limestone blocks stretched across the bay and had protected the town from the worst of the winter storms. Today there were no storms. Only an eerie stillness.

There were perhaps a dozen of us there to see my sister off - the only human inhabitants of this part of the world. The population of the world had declined to almost nothing in the decades following the creation of the matryoshka brain and the development of a virtual immortality. My sister made her way towards the place of her ascension, pausing to say a personal farewell to everyone attending. Of course, she left me - her only living relative - until last.

"Are you sure you won't join me, Liam?" she said to me. "Please?"

I shook my head. "No. I was born in this land. I want to die in this land."

My sister looked at me for a moment, then laughed. "Then will you at least stay here to see me go? I want my last memory of this existence to be of you."

"Alright. I will."

I followed my sister up the hill to the circle of standing stones. She looked beautiful in her woollen shift. There, waiting for her, was the psychopomp, an artificial being made of intelligent carbon dust. The psychopomp held up a hand to stop me. "No further," it said. "Today is not your day." I stopped. I was tempted to tell the psychopomp that it would never be my day; that even if the sun went out and hell grew cold, I would never become one of them. But I refrained.

My sister took her place between the ancient rocks, then turned to face us. The psychopomp glanced towards her. "Do you have any last words to say to those you are leaving behind?"

"Yes." My sister cleared her throat. "Thank you all for coming here. It is not the first time that we have seen one of us go to the Cloud. But, for me, it will be the last. I have had a good life here, but I have decided now that it must come to an end. I have decided to join those who have gone before me and who are waiting for me. To some of you," my sister looked straight at me, "it may seem that I am leaving you. But I will always remember you. Perfectly."

She looked up at the sky. Above her, the computronium clouds were changing from grey to black. Something was paying attention to us. "And now it is my time," my sister said. "Until we meet again."

The others turned to leave, making their way down the hill in twos and threes. My sister looked at me, imploring me. "Liam - please stay?"

I nodded and wiped a tear from my eye.

The psychopomp's head rotated towards my sister. "Martha Devlin. Do you, of your own free will, agree to have your personality and memories uploaded into the Cloud?

"I do."

"Then we shall begin."

The grass around the stone circle started to move, and there was the sound of sand being poured out. A dark figure rose up out of the soil: an exact duplicate of Martha, but dark and granular. It reached out towards my sister, and then -

As the avatar touched my sister, the black dust of its body rolled up her arm, coating like a slick of oil. Martha gasped; part in pain, part in ecstasy. I took a halting step towards her. But, once again, the psychopomp stopped me. "No," it said. "You may not interfere."