Sentients in the Maze Read online

  She surveyed herself in the mirror then made a mental adjustment to try to see what a human would see. She straightened her spring heels to match human posture and checked her height by the marks on the doorframe. Standing like this, she was seventy-one inches tall—three inches taller than her previous body. That would make her stand out, but it wasn’t an unheard of height for a human female. Her skin was her native swirl of dark chocolate and deep red; she admired it for a moment before resigning herself to a paler, more uniform future. It would be so much easier to pass as a negro, she could probably make the changes to her facial skin to match that shade in a matter of weeks, but unless society had changed drastically, she would eventually have to assume a white identity to wield any kind of influence. It would take a year of painstaking work. It was frustrating that skin color was so much harder to influence than changes to features and musculature. She vowed again, for the first time in her new body… I will not let this injustice continue. She owed that to justice alone if not to Edward’s dream.

  Head, legs and arms were all in alignment with the human phenotype, but then, she could name dozens of species conforming to that shape in the history of encounters with her people—even without including the other primates on this planet. Her prehensile tail peeking over her shoulder though, that was a major difference. She swished it back and forth; it was a bit longer than her last one. A loose dress would be enough to hide the tell-tale difference. She smirked; thinking how Edward would have groaned at the pun then caught herself.

  Edward was dead, of course.

  She pushed on, devising a plan for concealing the non-human traits. Her face was the main problem. The body could be covered with clothing. The extra joints in her hands could be concealed with gloves. Her gait and arm motion from different muscle and joint structure could be disguised with her long practice in human mimicry, but the current state of her face and eyes was all wrong. Unfortunately, she would have to settle for makeup and a veil or the concealing shadows of the evening for now.

  Her internal nutrient supply would be depleted soon. She didn’t have enough time to make any major changes, but after she fed, she might do something about the nose. The hunger was distracting. She glanced at the pod to see if it was finished breaking down into its consumable form

  The pod case had fallen in on itself, shrunken to a gourd-shaped container the size of a gallon milk bottle. She walked to the crèche, took the pod and swirled the liquid inside, all the nutrient value left in the system. She lay down and spread her legs—moving the pod to her life orifice—and took the spout inside her, letting its nourishment flowed into her bagua for quicker absorption.

  Bagua was Edward’s name for the life orifice.

  The circle of eternal giving and receiving, he had called it, making it sound like a joke, but he had meant it too. Edward had been an information sponge and something of a philosopher, unusual traits for a man of his time and place, even if—or perhaps ‘especially since’—he was as rich as a Rockefeller.

  She doubted anyone else in the county would have ever heard the word before. She supposed it was better than “cloaca” or any of the terms for what a human woman held between her legs.

  But Edward was dead. She would think of it as her bagua to honor his memory.

  She drew the nutrient solution deep inside herself using the shaft and filaments of her inner bagua. The proteins and building block chemicals in the soup would have poisoned a human, but for her they meant life. The sensation of strength pouring into her body relaxed her.

  When the pod was empty, she pushed it all the way inside and caressed the last bit of sustenance from it with her filaments while enzymes finished breaking it down, turning it into energy and raw material for her transformation.

  When finished, she stood and returned to the mirror.

  First, the nose.

  It performed the same general functions that a human’s would, but her sense of smell was much more developed, even more efficient than a bloodhound’s and able to detect a far wider spectrum of information. The trick would be to change the shape and not lose any of the effectiveness. In her mind, she flipped through characteristics that would be a match for her current coloring. It couldn’t be too flat without losing efficiency because of the special scent and pheromone receptors she needed.

  These fashion statements were important.

  Her current nose wrinkled as she smiled.

  At last, she settled on a North African variant for now, long and pronounced a touch aquiline with enough width to provide plenty of room for all the needed equipment. Now, she would have plenty of strength left to change her other facial features to match.

  Sculpting from within, she made the changes. Her face broadened and her cheekbones rose as her new nose took on human shape. She plumped her lips and adjusted the lines of them. All the rearrangements took time. The long almond-shaped eyes would have to stay pretty much as they were for now.

  Finished with the changes, she broke the vacuum seal on the ‘widow’s weeds’ outfit and slipped into it. The container of makeup was still unspoiled, and she considered applying it, but then slipped it into a pocket instead. She put on the hat, leaving the veil on top, and hooked the smoked glasses into a loop on her bodice.

  Briefly, she inspected two kukri knives, popping them out of their sheaths to make sure the oiled and sealed leather had not dried out and then strapped them to her legs. She considered taking the Borchardt automatic pistol, but decided against it because of the bulk. She would have needed to check it out more thoroughly before firing it as well, the custom powder would probably be fine, but 100 years could have caused havoc with the recoil spring.

  A few minutes before the generator ran down, she finished dressing and pulled the chain to halt the weight’s downward progress and save a few minutes of light.

  Inside the wardrobe, she found, as she had expected, a sturdy handbag with five pounds of twenty-dollar gold coins. Along with a few other items, she transferred them to the bag then lifted it experimentally. Her body found the weight more of a nuisance than her old one would have. She frowned but hefted the bag and took one last look at her reflection.

  It was time to emerge.

  She walked to the sealed door, savoring the feeling of anticipation and curiosity. What would she find out there? A century of change would mean a lot of catching up to do. Uneasily, she glanced at the mattock, shovel and wheelbarrow in the corner, and hoped she would not need them. The grease-coated, steel locking rods came away with a yank, and she pulled the release and stepped back as three tons of reinforced concrete slid down into the room on the high-chromium steel rails.

  When the inevitable grinding ceased, she paused and listened, sliding a hand though the slit in her dress to loosen the longer kukri knife in its sheath. The steel outer door with its veneer of stone would pivot inward. She unlocked it and pulled it open an inch. No fresh smells came from the other side, just a faint, old odor of a dog. Someone had been here a short time about a week ago.

  She stuck her head out and looked around the unfinished stonewalled basement.

  Good.

  There would be no digging today; it looked pretty much as it had 100 years before. The boiler for the heating system had been replaced, but many of the original pipes for the hot water radiators still snaked through the air and up to the house above. The knob and tube wiring was now a network of coated strands, and the fuse board she had made for Edison fuses had been replaced with a gray metal box.

  Though curious about the technology, she set it aside for another time; there wasn’t that much you could do with electrical wires anyway. She stepped into the room and pulled the door closed behind her. The locks snicked into place. The stone veneer meshed with the wall around it, making the joints almost disappear. She could reopen it with the combination on the keystones, but the crèche had to stay a secret, so she ran her finger filaments over the masonry joints to hide the seam. There could be no retreating here if disc
overed.

  Still no sounds in the house.

  She walked to the stairs and climbed to the door of the main floor. Noises drifted in from outside: far-away voices, dogs barking, birds calling, yet no horses—no sound of hooves on cobblestones or smell of manure. Some engine noises passed by the house, dopplering off in ranges that suggested speeds around thirty miles an hour.

  Horseless carriages?

  The door to the main floor was closed, but when she tried the knob—still the original glass—it turned easily. She reviewed the layout of the house in her mind. It would probably be essentially the same; she’d designed it with interior brick walls and timber-frame supports. The driving notion being that if you built something to last, no one would be quick to tear it down, make changes or start over. An excavation down to the level of her crèche would have ended the life of this branch before it started. Behind this door should be a hall adjoining a wide foyer and a circling stair to the second floor.

  She stuck her head through the door and glanced around quickly then pulled back and closed the door silently to process what she had seen. The hall and foyer had been empty, no people or furniture, but her body’s fight response had triggered and she was processing nutrients into quickly available energy packages at an alarming rate. She was ready to go to war and, though the reason for her reaction amused her at one level, she realized she was going to need to reevaluate her approach to her identity. The whole fiction that she was born today was obviously inadequate. She would have to reconnect her identity to her memories. All because someone, some ERRANT, WAYWARD. . . FOOL had come into HER house and taken all the lovely woods, the walnut, the teak, the ebony and rosewood inlays that she had painstakingly designed and helped craft into the staircase and wainscoting of HER foyer and had FUCKING PAINTED IT WHITE!

  She snarled, raising her lips to expose her teeth, unable to help it.

  Dribbling… Clumpy… PAINT… layer after layer.

  She could almost hear Edward’s dry, humorous voice commenting,

  Protective instincts operating at full capacity.

  Focus. Math. . .

  She latched on to a mental grid to hunt for a prime number larger than she had yet discovered. With some of her mental energy pushed into safe channels, she embraced HER memories, HER life. It had all happened to HER.

  Those humans and nii had been HER friends and family. This house had been HERS. This branch was still part of the trunk. She would sit here on the step and process the loss, the sadness, all the anger and fear of this lonely situation. She had been Tiana and she would never deny that connection again. She would even retake the name, for now, but she would move on…. In a while.

  Tiana sat on the stair for over an hour as emotions stormed through her and at the end of that time, she knew three things. First, no one else was currently in HER house. Second, she wasn’t going to process this all at once. Branching in the past had always come as a final step in a life stage; a passing on of all memories before the body’s final shut down, followed by stepping back into her life the next day in a new body. Third, she wasn’t going to find a larger prime without reinventing some version of galactic computing technology. So, unless someone had surpassed her own unreported 44-digit prime, it was going to have to wait. The nii had always neglected number theory, considering it mostly impractical and most other species kept their mathematics safe from outside discovery—like human females guarding their favorite dessert recipes.

  Tiana stood and walked through the door to the foyer. A tour of her house came first. She turned right and walked down the hall to the kitchen, avoiding looking at the painted woodwork, and paused in the doorway.

  Late afternoon light from the wall of windows on the north wall bathed the large breakfast area. The windows looked out on the trees, rose bushes and ivied walls that surrounded the grounds. At least that much hadn’t changed, though the trees were bigger. More paint on the oak and walnut moldings, of course. Her lip rose to show her teeth again.

  The kitchen had changed... drastically. Elegant cherry cabinets hovered above some sort of seamless red synthetic stone counters that blended artfully into a huge, recessed, white-ceramic triple sink. An electric icebox clad in a shiny metal—probably a high-chromium steel alloy—was set flush to the cabinets. She could hear its quiet compressor running; not a jump in technology, just the adaptation for home use. She opened it to see a row of Coca Cola bottles. That much hadn’t changed.

  There was a smooth stovetop set flush into the counters. Its calligraphic black and red lettering proclaimed it an induction cooktop; that was a bit more of an advance. The principles were known in the 1890s, but no patents had been filed. She turned to the sink and lifted the handle built into the spigot. Clear water, chlorinated, with traces of other chemicals, poured from the faucet. Grudgingly, she considered thinking less harshly about the unknown persons responsible for painting her woodwork, but decided there was not enough evidence they were the same ones who had designed the kitchen.

  A stack of papers on the counter caught her eye and she turned to them. They were all identical, consisting of a table grid that listed the rooms in the house and their measurements. There was a gushing description at the bottom:

  A beautifully restored brick and stone Queen Anne Victorian mansion with Eastlake influences completed in 1881…

  A real estate company name and logo along with a picture—in color—of a young woman with a great deal of facial paint stared at Tiana across from the asking price for the home—650,000 dollars. Even though Tiana was prepared for inflation, she wasn’t expecting twenty-five times the cost of building it.

  At the very bottom of the paper was a disclaimer,

  Information offered in good faith, as far as is known as of 6/20/2015

  Tiana did not gasp, it was not a natural physiological reaction for her, but her fingers tightened on the page convulsively and ripped a corner off the paper.

  2015

  It had been over 119 years since her memories ended, not 100. The earlier Tiana must have reset the crèche for a longer period after starting the branching cycle, but why would she have done that? It accounted for the extra three inches in her current height, but she could not imagine doing such a thing without updating the memory. . . . unless?

  Unless, she had been rushed and unable to return. It made Tiana uneasy again. Had the earlier her tracked down the niiaH, or was it the other way around?

  Though concerned, she stored the question away for when she had more time to think about it, with more information.

  She wandered through the rest of the house taking in changes, the upgrades to systems and the senseless installation of permanent rugs that trapped dust and dirt on the upper floors. On the top floor, the door leading out to the ‘widow’s walk’ led her outside where she could get a view of the world.

  By the looks of the plants and trees around the house, it was late summer. It was a beautiful hot evening. The breeze wafted smells to her, and she spent several minutes cataloging new ones and noting the absence of others. Strong tangs of petroleum-based combustion engine exhaust from the horseless carriages that passed the house going up and down the side street lingered in the air. Some seemed to barely whisper by, so quiet were their motors, but others rattled or clanked, and some moved by making a rhythmic thumping so loud and low that it rattled the windowpanes. Surely, that was a public nuisance. What kind of society would put up with such an anti-social mechanism? It was obviously not needed for motor performance.

  A few people walked by in the streets, some whites, but mostly coloreds, calling to each other and joking while others shouted abuse. Both seemed to get about equal attention.

  Color barriers had certainly relaxed. Edward would have been pleased.

  She sighed.

  No one looked up. Tiana had always thought it odd that humans seldom did; some things didn’t change. The state of undress of many of those walking on the streets and sidewalks would have scandalized the town in
1895, but no one was paying any attention to it.

  Would people think it odd that she wore more clothes than they? Then, she noted a group of women on Main Street, a few blocks away. They wore flowing silk saris as they walked into a café that sported outside tables with umbrellas in the Parisian fashion.

  Hmm.

  Perhaps even Lynchburg was becoming cosmopolitan after 119 years. She would have thought it would have taken longer than that. The thought made her smile. Edward would have found the thought amusing too, and she wished he were here to laugh with her. At any rate, it was clear she could get away with unconventional garb for a while. Although, given her tail, it would not do for her to be seen in underwear like the young girls walking down 12th street right now.

  From what she could see from here, the town had not changed its layout at all. The streets were smoother; rather than being surfaced with cobblestone or brick they were now some variety of macadam. More buildings, but some had been standing in 1895. It looked like Lynchburg had avoided any catastrophes for the last twelve decades the way it had avoided the destruction of the War Between the States.

  Tiana had noted a droning noise growing louder for a few seconds and started to scan for its source. It was coming from above her. Looking east, she spotted a gray, fixed-wing aeroplane moving from north to south five hundred feet above her. She held up her hand to block the sun so she could watch as it passed.

  It appeared that more progress had been made than she would have thought; a propeller-driven flying machine that fast was a solid advancement for twelve decades.

  Now that she was looking up, she spotted a long, white streak across the sky. As she followed it with her gaze, she noticed that it was getting narrower and less diffuse. Then she came to the end of the streak and the bright silver dot pulling it across the sky. Something was moving up there at a high altitude. Now that she focused on it, she could hear a far-off sound like ocean surf. She couldn’t tell how high the object was, so it was impossible to guess its speed, but then she heard the sound of thunder—even though the sky held only cirrus clouds and the contrail—and she knew exactly how fast it was traveling. Humanity was moving fast too. She sat on the wooden bench and closed her eyes.