Meru, p.1
Meru, page 1
PRAISE FOR S.B. DIVYA
“This stunning near-future thriller from Divya (Runtime) tackles issues of economic inequality, workers’ rights, privacy, and the nature of intelligence . . . Crack worldbuilding and vivid characters make for a memorable, page-turning adventure, while the thematic inquiries into human and AI labor rights offer plenty to chew on for fans of big-idea sci-fi. Readers will be blown away.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Divya has created a richly imagined and eerily familiar world . . . confronting urgent questions about humans’ place in a society increasingly run by AIs.”
—Kirkus Reviews
ALSO BY S.B. DIVYA
Machinehood
Runtime
Contingency Plans For the Apocalypse and Other Possible Situations
“Microbiota and the Masses: A Love Story”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2023 by Divya Srinivasan Breed
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781662505096 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781662505089 (digital)
Cover design by Mike Heath
Cover image: © Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg 5+ / Alamy Stock Photo / Alamy
To the pursuers of dreams who are told they can’t but try anyway;
to my parents for their love and support (and for buying me all those Amar Chitra Kathas).
CONTENTS
The Axioms of Life:
The Principles of Conscious Beings:
AUTHOR’S NOTE
GURU—TEACHER
VAIMAANIKA—PILOT
AKSHA—PIVOT
VRITHA—CHOSEN
PRAHUTHI—SACRIFICE
VYAVASTHAA—AGREEMENT
YAATHRAA—JOURNEY
MAAYAA—ILLUSION
UPAKRAMA—ARRIVAL
JANMA—BIRTH
AVIYUKTHA—INSEPARABLE
VIRUDDHA—CONTRARY
SANUTHARA—CLANDESTINE
JEEVANTHEE—ALIVE
VIKRAANTHA—BOLD
THYAKTHAVYA—ABANDONED
LAGATHI—CONTACT
NASHTA—LOST
MANDALA—CIRCULAR
RITHU—SEASON
YAANA—VESSEL
PIPARTHI—REFRESH
THYAAGA—SACRIFICE
PAREEVARTHA—TURNAROUND
GAVESHANA—SEEKING
SURAKSHAA—RECOVERY
SKAMBHA—FULCRUM
PRATHYAAGATHI—THE WAY HOME
NYAASA—DEPOSIT
NIRAASHAA—HOPELESS
VAIDHURYA—DESPERATION
SATHYA—TRUTH
SAMYOJANA—INTEGRATION
SAKHYA—ALLIANCE
VIVEKA—JUDGMENT
APAKARSHA—ANNULMENT
ANUKAMPAA—COMPASSION
AKSHAYA—ETERNAL
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Axioms of Life:
A life-form has a boundary, perceptible using its own sensory capabilities, that separates it from the environment.
A life-form has a built-in drive to live and reproduce, which implies that it must have a nonliving state.
A life-form is capable of accruing information about its environment and storing this information within its own structure.
A life-form can communicate information to other life-forms that share some or all of its sensory modalities.
A life-form can adapt to its environment and/or alter its environment over time and/or successive generations of itself.
The Principles of Conscious Beings:
All matter possesses some level of consciousness.
All forms of consciousness have equal value in the universe.
Possession of consciousness is necessary but not sufficient for life-forms.
A Being is a structure with sufficient consciousness that it has the ability to reshape matter.
An Evolved Being is a Being that is also a life-form.
All Beings should minimize harm to other forms of consciousness, with priority given to other Beings.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The chapter titles in this book are words from classical Sanskrit using the Devanagari script. Translations into English are taken primarily from the website learnsanskrit.cc, with some creative license. Transliterations (i.e., writing the words using the English alphabet) are entirely nonstandard. I’ve attempted a phonetic transliteration that I hope will be easier for readers who are unfamiliar with Harvard-Kyoto or IAST formatting. Any errors are mine.
GURU—TEACHER
Jayanthi stood atop the hill, her legs protesting less than usual from the climb. Ahead of her, the land settled into a wide plain followed by a series of hills marching up to graceful mountains. To her right, the town of Vaksana blended into the terrain, with low buildings topped by plant-covered roofs. Where teeming masses of humanity had once dumped their excess garbage, megaconstructs now tore down ancient concrete and steel structures with their metal appendages. They towered over sluglike alloys, themselves as tall as trees, who crawled through the rubble, consuming and digesting it, leaving behind fertile organic waste.
A temperate breeze dried Jayanthi’s sweat. After catching her breath, she continued along a path that wound down to the base of the hill. Red and tan grasses covered the gentle slope. Insects swarmed to patches of sedate flowers, and microconstructs glittered in their midst, filling the ecological niches that had lain empty for centuries. For part of the way, she could pretend like she was the only human around. Feathery seed pods tickled her palms, and she resisted the instinct to break off a stem. Only a child would harm a plant for no reason, and at twenty-two years old, she was well into adulthood. Instead, she slackened her pace, letting her breath slow, and clasped her hands behind her back.
She entered her family home from the rear, passing under the ancient banyan tree and through the privacy curtain. Art produced by human hands lined the hallway: a quantum-interpretive painting by Charan, a figurine carved from regen-redwood, a painted earthen jug. In the front room, late-morning sunlight filtered through vine-covered windows and painted green shadows over everything, including her alloy father, who reclined in a sling chair.
He peeked over the top of a print book and said, “Share your bodym.”
Out of respect for Jayanthi’s privacy, her parents had withdrawn their access to her body’s information network after she reached the age of sixteen. Alloys did that with their children, relinquishing all oversight and control upon their offspring’s maturity. Jayanthi was entirely human and shouldn’t have had a bodym at all. The technological enhancement had been a concession—one of many—to her more-than-human parents.
“I’m fine,” she grumbled. “Stop worrying.”
But she sent her vital metrics over to her father anyway. Telling a parent not to worry was like asking the sun to dim its light.
Vidhar nodded. “Your oxygen and hemoglobin counts are good.”
Jayanthi shot him an I told you so look. “Have you heard from Hamsa?”
“He’ll be here soon. Did your walk not cure your nervousness?”
“I’m not nervous,” she said. She sat and put her feet up to prove it.
Hamsa had visited her parents every other year for as long as Jayanthi could remember. He and her parents had completed a fifteen-year course on human studies at the same time, and they’d remained close friends ever since. She’d never heard Hamsa criticize them for taking permanent residence on Earth. Most of the alloys who lived planet-side did so because of forced community service. The ones who did it by choice got branded as human lovers or wellers. Her parents claimed that the epithets didn’t bother them, but for Jayanthi, their oh-so-human child, the labels delivered a sting.
When Jayanthi was young, Hamsa would bring her gifts: intricate filigree balls that flattened into plates after months in Earth’s gravity, stick-on chromatophores that changed color with the temperature of her skin. In later years, he’d nurtured her growing interest in studying genetic engineering. Her own DNA contained HbSS—sickle cell anemia, a disease long since eradicated from Earth—and in learning about it, she’d become fascinated with genetics. Her existence was an anomaly, a conscious choice to revive an old genome, but historically, there had been many people like her, and the more she’d learned at Hamsa’s knee, the more convinced she’d become that other extinct genes deserved renewed exploration. Alloys had an incredible variety of genes that spanned all kinds of life-forms. Humanity, on the other hand, had narrowed their options over time, choosing security and comfort over risk and diversity.
Hamsa had been a tarawan before he’d gotten involved in politics. His skills in producing alloy offspring were widely recognized. Under his tutelage, she’d learned to combine chromosomes, introduce mutations, and strategically edit genes—to access knowledge that was available only to alloys. Since his previous visit, she’d been working on a new genetic design, something innovative that she hoped would impress him . .
“Hello,” called a singsong voice from beyond the entrance curtain.
Jayanthi leaped from her chair and pulled the front entry curtain aside. Hamsa spread his feathered arms and smiled wide and close-mouthed, in the alloy style, though his incarn—the temporary body that he used on Earth—could breathe air. She flung her arms about his waist. He wrapped her in a downy embrace. A sleeveless tunic, white like his feathers, covered his torso. She inhaled his scent and reveled in its earthy, animal quality.
He pulled back and ushered her inside. “How are you, my dear?” The bird genes gave his voice a scratchy quality.
“I’m very well,” she said.
“Does that mean you opted for the gene therapy?”
Jayanthi shook her head. “No. I had a blood exchange recently, and I’ve started a new type of medicine.”
Vidhar came forward and flashed a greeting to his friend. Her parents’ incarns had a more humanlike appearance, except for being hairless, but as with all alloys, they had chromatophores along their arms, cheeks, and neck. Vidhar’s traced delicate spirals across his dark skin, like the ancient symbols for air.
“Where’s Kundhina?” Hamsa asked aloud, after responding with his own phores.
“In Paris, but she’ll return tomorrow,” her father replied. “She’s working on a theory about human interment methodologies, and she’s in the catacombs there.”
“Sounds fascinating,” Hamsa said.
Jayanthi left them to catch each other up and busied herself in the kitchen. Alloys—and their incarns—had ways to get energy other than via food, but Hamsa and her father would eat, and her own stomach rumbled for lunch. Keeping her hands busy kept her thoughts occupied rather than fretting over pleasantries until she and Hamsa could get to work.
Their voices stopped as soon as she exited the room. Her parents had insisted on using speech with each other, both for Jayanthi’s sake and to keep themselves in practice, which meant she could understand only the simplest phoric. When other alloys came to visit, they would switch back to their natural mode of communication. At least they’d given her the use of an emchannel. As with her bodym, most human beings didn’t have the ability, typically conferred by an alloy’s extra chromosome. The molecular devices could be installed after birth, as they were for alloys whose emtalk or bodym didn’t take in the womb, but that didn’t always work on humans. She was grateful that hers had. Not only did it allow her to communicate nonverbally with alloys, it let her interface to devices with her thoughts.
Jayanthi sliced a Black Beauty tomato and placed it on a hot grill next to three slabs of tofu. As they warmed, she ground walnuts and figs in a mortar and pestle, then spread the paste on slices of bread that Vidhar had baked the day before. She topped that with the tomato and tofu and carried it out on a tray. Her best friend, Mina, would have scoffed at the lack of seasoning, but Jayanthi didn’t share their interest in cuisine, and her father wouldn’t care.
Hamsa made a show of inhaling and said, “That smells wonderful.”
She gave him a sideways glance. “You don’t have to pretend. I’m an adult now. I won’t take offense.”
Hamsa honked with laughter. “Compared to my two hundred and eighty-seven years, you are very much a child. I appreciate the offer to drop old pretenses, but I’ll attempt to eat. Where else would I get to taste such a . . . a . . .” He looked at Vidhar for help.
Her father’s phores flashed.
“Sandwich,” Hamsa finished, as if he’d known all along.
Jayanthi laughed. “If you stayed longer, you’d learn more food names.”
“If a womb could grow my incarn faster, I might consider it, but one month on Earth is all I can afford with my other responsibilities.”
After lunch, Vidhar resumed his work. Hamsa and Jayanthi moved outside and sat under the shade of the banyan tree.
“You said you had a surprise for me,” Hamsa said. “Let’s see it!”
Six months earlier, Hamsa had assigned Jayanthi a thesis-level project: one that involved design changes to her own chromosomal DNA.
“Pretend you’re making your child in the alloy way,” he’d said. “You decide what portions of yourself to pass on, what to take from other human beings, and what to mutate randomly, all within the allowed proportions as defined by the Genetic Review Board.”
She’d worked on nothing else in the interval, but she’d added her own twist: rather than using genes from another human being’s chromosomes, she’d taken some from an alloy’s Z chromosome and worked it into her design. It was as if she’d had sex with a humanoid incarn, like those that her parents inhabited. The two were entirely different species and couldn’t reproduce naturally, but making such a person possible was exactly what tarawans did. Alloys didn’t have children in the traditional sexual way. They designed theirs. A tarawan would take the maker’s genes and combine them with any other genetic information from a central data bank. They’d introduce random mutations as well as epigenetic tweaks to produce a new being whose biology would add to the diversity of the population.
She handed Hamsa the data cube with her genomic solution and tried not to fidget as he pulled a simulator from his pocket. With only one meeting per year, her progress was far slower than she would have liked, but only someone licensed by the Tarawan Ethics and Standards Council could operate a simulator.
Hamsa placed the cube in the device and set it on the ground. “I haven’t had a chance to review your latest notes. Tell me about your parameters.”
Jayanthi thought-asked to share her visual overlay data with him, then showed him the choices she’d made. “For the epigenetic edits to my half, I increased the expression of sickle cell, since it has protective effects against certain tropical diseases, and boosted melanin levels for skin protection. I emphasized lean muscle mass and metabolic efficiency to balance the hypoxic effects.” She talked him through another thirty specific edits and her reasons for them.
Hamsa nodded along until she finished, then said, “And mutations?”
“A 0.03 percent chance of mutations, and an additional 0.01 percent on the epigenetic factors.”
“That’s very conservative. If you play it too safe, you reduce the chance of novelty. Tarawans have to embrace risk. What is the primary axiom?”
Jayanthi swallowed a protest. She’d memorized the axioms in her teens. “There’s no such thing as a bad gene,” she recited. “Only one that’s ill-suited to its environment.”
“Good. Now, think hard about what those words mean. If you want to be a tarawan, you have to get comfortable with risks and mortality. Every life-form must have a nonliving state. There’s no shame in giving birth to one that moves quickly into the latter. Greatness finds those—”
“—who work without fear. I know.” She hesitated, then said, “Here’s where I took the risk.”
She revealed the complete set of her new being’s DNA to Hamsa. She’d used a rare human condition called genome-wide uniparental disomy as her basis. It meant that the child’s genes came primarily from one parent. In nature, it usually happened to females, who would inherit the majority of their DNA from their father’s sperm. For Jayanthi’s experimental design, she’d taken that foundation and used an alloy’s Z chromosome for the mother and her own X chromosome for the father. She selected for genes that produced chromatophores, that allowed alloys to subsist on a liquid diet, and—her boldest move—to grow solar wings and replace one air-based lung with a version that held water.
Hamsa’s phores stayed neutral. Jayanthi’s phoric was terrible, but she had learned to interpret the colored glows around the edges that substituted for facial expressions. A lack of color was the equivalent to a blank face.
“Do you expect this to be a viable person?” he asked.
She quoted the fourth axiom. “Information can be gained from nonviable outcomes as often as it can from the viable.”
“And do you think this is a novel idea, to design a being who can survive in both an atmosphere and in the vacuum of space?”
“I . . . hoped so,” she admitted.
“This type of being was tried again and again in the first century of the human era. It was one of the causes of the directed mutation catastrophe.”
