CODA
The walls around him shone with crystal data, passages and alternatives spread out with a complexity no single human mind could ever comprehend, not in a million years.
Now, though, Eduard might actually have that much time.
He found himself unfolding, flowing, exploring. COM must have its limits—somewhere—but it seemed to him that all of infinity awaited him, now that he was inside.
Her form shimmering and indistinct, yet still perfectly recognizable, Soft Stone came to greet him as soon as the upload was completed. “Welcome, Eduard. Join me, join us—all of us.”
He had felt no pain, no sense of dying. It had been just like hopscotching into another body, another mind. A boundless one. Never before had he experienced something so vast.
The monk’s luminous shadow reached out, beckoning him. His guide. He didn’t see the pastoral images or hear the heavenly chorus he remembered from when she had uploaded herself in the Falling Leaves library. But even without the trappings, he couldn’t imagine anything more wondrous.
“There are many inside here, and we’re all part of the same overall mind woven through an organic matrix and computer network. At least it started out that way. Now COM has evolved into something else.”
“Am I trapped in this place?” he asked tentatively.
“The same way you’re trapped in the whole universe, little Swan.”
COM was like a hive mind filled with people he had known, everything he had imagined learning or experiencing. Another step in evolution, a new group consciousness, which now watched over the childlike remnants of humanity.
“You’ll like it here,” Soft Stone said.
Eduard looked around himself with new eyes, absorbing the possibilities, seeing the city, the world, all the lives on the outside from a fresh perspective. He could be like Club Masquerade’s cybernetic bartender, except with options and abilities increased a billionfold.
Yes, there would be people to watch out there—people like Garth and Teresa . . . and, yes, Daragon, too. But he also imagined so much more.
It would be easy to get lost here, but Soft Stone took his hand.