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be, we would encounter realms without matter, perhaps without form or order;
it is highly douhtful we would find anything familiar.
There are an infinite number of alternatives to the Way, each originating in
an alternative world-line, yet reaching beyond that world-line. Until now,
Way researchers have not known quite how the alternate Ways were stacked or
arranged, or indeed whether they could even be considered real. Since the Way
intersects a large group of alternate world-lines--perhaps all--could there be
more than one Way?
But by traveling close to the light-Speed within the Way, we have answered
these questions and found new ones to ask. We have distorted
Way geometry in more than the requisite four dimensions; we have also
contracted the fifth dimension, drawing the alternate Ways together.
The Way boundaries have become transparent in a wide variety of frequencies,
and we can perceive the shape of other Ways. We can select which Way we wish
to inspect, using devices similar to the gate-opening clavicles. It is in
observing these alternate Ways that
Beryl Wallace is now occupied.
We can even see (and in some instances, communicate with) beings in other
Ways.
So there are an infinite number of world-lines, and because of this one human
artifact, an infinite number of connections between them. Our researchers
devise schemes to allow us to cross over to other Ways, other super-sets of
world-lines, but even with implants I have difficulty understanding what they
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are discussing.
This much I do know. There are. Ways where the beings of thousands of
completely different universes hold commerce, exchanging in some cases only
information, in other cases actually exchanging different types of space-time.
Is it possible to conceive of the potential that would exist between two
universes of differing qualities? Would that potential be called energy?
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Rirnskaya, morose as he is, has continued working, and has even made some
significant contributions to the researches.
He believes he has found a definition of information: the potential that
exists between all time-like dimensions (time itself, and the fifth dimension
separating world-lines, for instance) and space,like
'dimensions. Wherever space and time interact, there is information, and
where information can be ordered into knowledge, and knowledge can be applied,
there is intelligence.
Lest anyone reading this journal of a primitive man should think we spend our
time mired in abstractions, let me also say that I am discovering the richness
available to those who are willing to alter their major characteristics. The
variety of emotions available to a reconfigured human mind, thinking thoughts
impossible to its ancestors
. . .
The emotion of-*-, describable only as something between sexual love and the
joy of intellectionmaking love to a
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file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Eon.txt thought? Or &&, the
true reverse of pain, not "pleasure" but a "warning" of healing, growth and
change. Or (A+), the most complex emotion yet discovered, felt by those who
consciously endure the change between mind configurations, and experience the
broad spectrum of possibilities inherent in thinking and being.
I have barely begun to taste the varieties of human love.
Personalities are not necessarily isolated here; I can belong to a wide
spectrum of personality aggregates, and yet still retain my individuality....
I lose nothing and gain a thousand new tastes of human affection.
What use is it to try to measure the distances we have traveled?
What use is the personality of the old Pavel Mirsky to comprehend them?
Soon, I firmly resolve, I will gather up my courage and join with the extended
personalities in City Memory.
And yet with all this to occupy me, I still mourn. I still weep for the lost
part of myself, still feel sad for a land I cannot return to, a land doubly
inaccessible now. But the weeping is buried deeply, where even Talsit
sessions have dificulty reaching . . . perhaps lodged in the one area it is
illegal to modify, known as Mystery. How ironic, that in this way i still
feel like a Russian, and that so long as any part of me exists, it will be
Russian.t Because I share'the same
Mystery with the old Pavel Mirsky, I feel continuity. I feel . . .
An urge for the stars, yes, but more than that.
When I was a child in Kiev (or so a few dim portions of my memory inform me) I
once asked my stepfather how long people would live when the Worker's Paradise
was achieved.
He was a computer technician, very imaginative, and he said, "Perhaps as long
as they wish. Perhaps a billion years."
"How long is a billion years?" I asked him.
"It is a very long time," he said. "An age, an eternity, time enough for all
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life to rise and all life to end. Some people call it an eon."
In geological terms, I learned later, an aeon is indeed a billion years. But
the Greeks who coined the word were not so specific. They used it as a
pointer to eternity, the lifetime of a universe, far more than a billion
years. It was also the personification of a god's cycle of time.
I have survived the Worker's Paradise. I have survived the end of my
universe, and may survive countless others.
Dear stepfather, it looks as if I will outlive the gods themselves
....
A true eon.
So much to learn, and so much change to look forward to.
Each day I breathe deeply, count my choices and realize how lucky we
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file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Eon.txt are. (If only I can
convince Rimskaya.t Sad man.) lam free.
Four/ Aigypto8, Year of Alexandro8 2323
Young queen Kleopatra the 21st had just spent a long and drowsy four hours
listening to the complicated testimony of five ostracized congressmen from the
Oxyrrhynkhos Nome's Boule. Their complaints, her most trusted counselor [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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