The Lowest Heaven by Alastair Reynolds, Adam Roberts, Sophia McDougall, Kaaron Warren, E.J. Swift, Kameron Hurley Read Free Book Online Page A

Totality. The meat’s pathetic last twitch! But you have been the spur I needed. For that alone, Oleg, you have my undying gratitude.”
    “I’ve done nothing!”
    “You have come, and now you may observe. Suffer one useful moment in your miserable existence. Are you prepared?”
    “For what?”
    “To bear witness. To document my becoming. In a moment, the last traces of my living neural tissue will cease to serve any useful function. And I will have transcended myself.” But when he thought she might be done, Rhawn added: “You may thank your masters, Oleg, for their kind offer. I spit it back at them, all the same. They were much too late, of course, but it would have made no difference if they had sent you years ago. I have been on this path for much too long for that. I have always felt the pull of Totality, even before I knew it in my self. The more I move from the meat, the more the meat repulses me.”
    “And one day,” Oleg said, “you’ll feel the need to go beyond this as well. It’s in your nature.”
    “What could possibly lie beyond the perfection of robotic embodiment?”
    “The greater perfection of non-embodiment. The flawless condition of non-existence.”
    “You mean that I would kill myself.”
    “I’m sure you will. You can’t ever accept what you are, Rhawn. It’s just not in your nature.”
    A new light came on in the robot’s head. It was a pale green, rising and falling in brightness without ever quite dimming completely. Oleg was quite sure it had not been activated earlier on.
    “Even now?” she asked.
    “Even now.”
    “Well, you’re mistaken. But then, you are only human. And now that I have completed my second crossing, I feel my conviction more forcefully than ever before. We shall have to see who is wrong, won’t we? I hope you have a great deal of patience, not to mention a solid medical plan. You are a bag of cells with an expiration date. Parts of you are already starting to rot. It will take me centuries to begin to exhaust the possibilities of Totality.”
    “You’ll burn through then quickly enough. And then what?”
    “Something beyond this. But not death. There is no art in death, Oleg. Only art’s supreme negation.”
    He smiled thinly. “The world will await your next masterpiece with interest, Rhawn. Even if it never leaves Mercury.”
    “Well, something shall. Does this surprise you? And you shall be its custodian.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “It is… traditional… among the Totalists. At the time of our second crossing, we concieve of a new piece. A celebration of transition, if you will. The work is initiated before the crossing’s start, and not fully completed until the crossing is done. I have … planned such a work. I call it A Map of Mercury . It is a minor piece, in the scheme of things. Almost beneath me. But since you have gone to such pains to find me, I should consider it fitting if it should fall upon you, the great and glorious Oleg, to bring the work to public attention.”
    “A new piece by Rhawn?”
    “Exactly that,” she said proudly. “A new piece by Rhawn. And, as far as the outside world is concerned, the last. No, I shan’t be abandoning art. But the realms into which I expect to push… these will shortly lie beyond your conceptual horizon. You would not only fail to recognise my art as art, you would fail to recognise that it was anything at all. But this last piece will be my gift to you – and your meat cousins. You will find it comprehensible. Take it to your masters. Fight over it like dogs. I will enjoy watching the overheated spasms of your Jovian economy.”
    “It’s not what they asked for,” Oleg said.
    “But they won’t be displeased with you?”
    “No,” he supposed. “I came for you, but never with much expectation that you’d agree to the offer. They’ll hand that moon over to someone else, I suppose. But to return with a new piece by Rhawn … that was never in my plans. They’ll be