Recursion by Tony Ballantyne Read Free Book Online

she could never have tried this at home. But a train? A three-hour journey wasn’t long enough to make sure. Maybe this journey would give her enough time. She just needed a reason to catch the stopping train. A reason that would seem plausible to the nannies in Social Care who watched over everyone in the city, doing what they thought was best.
    If only they wanted what was best for Eva.
    Eva didn’t want any part of her life in the city anymore. If only Social Care realized they had left her just one way to walk away from it.
    She pulled another Panacetamol from Brewster and swallowed it. She thought that she had read somewhere that thirty was enough, but she had never dared go back and check the reference for fear of signaling her intentions. Her mouth was increasingly dry and chalky. She felt the train begin its smooth acceleration as it entered the travel tubes, and for the first time in years Eva felt a little hope.
    Nuala gave a little cough.
    “I’m going to get a drink. Do you want anything?”
    Eva shook her head. “No, thank you. I think I’ll have my snooze now.”
    “A rest will do you the world of good.”
    Nuala edged her way out of the seat. Eva swallowed another pill, and another, and another, over and over again until her mouth was so dry she could swallow no more.
    She hugged her teddy bear and allowed the motion of the train to rock her gently to sleep.

 

    constantine 1: 2119
    Constantine rubbed his temples in an attempt to ease his headache. He felt as if his brain needed a reboot. It seemed as if it had been processing without break for four months now: it was no surprise he was seeing gaps beneath the sky.
    There was one outside the window of the I-train right now, just behind the three glass towers that marked the boundary between land and sea at the westernmost tip of the Great Australian Bight. It was a magnificent, though flawed, view. Red-lit streamers of cloud slid across the yellow sky, distorted and magnified as they moved behind the three enormous, transparent, fir-cone-shaped monuments. The towers themselves climbed into the evening sky at the edge of the steely grey sea flecked with the brightly colored sails of pleasure yachts that skipped and wove between the robotic cargo liners. It was a picture of both calm and motion, leisure and industry, the natural and the manufactured world. A tourist’s view of a famous scene marred by only one inconsistency.
    In between the sea and the sky: nothing—an untuned grey gap where the earth didn’t quite meet the heavens. Constantine looked away. He had been seeing things for the past three weeks now; he didn’t need further reminding how hard he had been working, nor how much he had allowed his brain to become overloaded by extra intelligences.
    The mineral water in the glass resting on the bentwood table before him shimmered. A standing wave had formed on its surface as the I-train braked, and one of the intelligences that shared his mind calculated the acceleration that took a train from mach seven to mach zero in a little under five minutes and idly modeled the way in which the forces that achieved this were reflected in the liquid in front of him. Constantine tried to ignore the endless stream of figures that filled his mind.
    “Not now, White,” he muttered.
    The train was entering Stonebreak. The checkerboard of green pasture and yellow cornfields that decorated the first level streamed past the windows of the car. This is how they displayed their wealth down here, Constantine reflected. Not in a crush of tall towers that sucked every last cent of value from the available land, but rather in an expansive and expensive display of space.
    —Not entirely true, said Red, another of the intelligences crowding his mind.—They also need the food.
    Constantine didn’t care. His head hurt. All he wanted was to get off the train and into his hotel room. The end was close. The tension was getting to them all.
    The train dipped underground