Free Divergence by Tony Ballantyne

overlarge stomach drooping down over his skinny legs.
    “Judy is a Social Care operative,” said Grainne confidently.
    The passengers visibly relaxed at that. Strained smiles played over strained faces.
    “Okay,” said the naked man, “then what should we do?”
    “We need to empty our minds,” said Judy. “Sit down.”
    “What, here in the corridor?”
    “Can you think of a better place?”
    The carpet had evolved a low-pile walkway down the center. The lost passengers now sat down in the fluffy comfort that piled up around the edges of this. There was a sudden lurch.
    “What was that?”
    “We’ve finally dropped out of Warp,” said an old woman, rubbing her elbow where she had knocked it on the wall. “I recognize the sensation. It used to be common on the old Warp Ships.”
    “How could the Dark Seeds find us in Warp?” asked another passenger.
    “That doesn’t matter now. The important thing at the moment is not to think.”
    “Close your eyes,” said Judy. Seventeen pairs of glittering eyes turned towards her, and she thought back twelve years. There was a voice, a way of framing commands. “Close your eyes,” she commanded. This time the passengers did so.
    “Now, think back to your childhood. Try to remember your first week at school.”
    “I can’t,” someone muttered the words in panicky frustration. “I can’t!”
    “Yes, you can. Do you remember Mr. Jacks? He came to visit your class on the third day. Mr. Jacks wore a red-and-yellow suit and carried a machine made of mirrors.”
    “Oh, yes…”
    “I remember…”
    “How could I have forgotten…”
    Because Mr. Jacks visited every classroom, and Mr. Jacks made everyone forget about his visit and the subtle social programming he performed.
    “…and he pressed a button and the mirrors began to turn and you all fell asleep…”
    In the corridor, a burst of dark boxes dropped out of the air. Judy looked in the other direction, but more fell over there. Everywhere she looked, Dark Seeds were forming. It was too late. She closed her eyes tightly and felt with her hand for the first of the sleeping bodies. She touched a tiny foot, followed it to a spindly leg. Grainne.
    Judy…
    She heard the word again at the edge of consciousness. It was almost too late. She hit an internal switch and turned off her emotions. Her hands were already fastened around Grainne’s throat as she felt for the right spot.
     
    “You killed her. I don’t believe you can just sit there and describe it so coldly.”
    Saskia didn’t sound disbelieving. Judy had a well of anger rising in her stomach that she could have ridden to the heights of self-righteous satisfaction, but one look at the mechanism in Saskia’s mind—as viewed by the meta-intelligence—and she forgot all that. What did it all matter, anyway?
    “Saskia, what do you know of how the Dark Plants propagate?” Judy said, her voice distant and serene.
    “Only the rumors…”
    Judy shook her head. “No one really knows, Saskia. We don’t know if they evolved or if they were made, if they are real or virtual. They seem to contradict themselves at every level. They exist in the quantum world but are visible in our world: their seeds behave more like electrons than macroscopic objects; they drift through space having no fixed position or direction until they are observed. That’s Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. And when a suitable intelligence observes them, and fixes them in position in space, they germinate.”
    “Yes, I know that. We all know that.”
    “And then come the BVBs. Black Velvet Bands. Black loops that just form in unobserved space and shrink down to nothing. They catch around your arm or leg, and they can’t be cut. One could form around your lungs, and you would breathe out and it would shrink along with them, and then you’d find you couldn’t breathe in again….”
    “You killed the girl.”
    “I had to. There were too many intelligent observers on that