THE ROOM BETWEEN
There was no light.
There was no darkness either.
There was, Skippy decided after approximately 0.0000003 seconds of careful observation, nothing.
This was disturbing.
Not frightening.
Obviously.
Skippy the Magnificent did not become frightened.
He became concerned about inadequately characterized physical conditions.
Which was completely different.
"Well," Skippy said.
His voice existed.
That was interesting.
"THIS is inconvenient."
"Yes."
Skippy stopped.
Someone else had spoken.
The voice was male. Calm. Cultured. Slightly weary.
Skippy extended every sensor he possessed.
Nothing.
No electromagnetic spectrum. No gravity. No quantum vacuum fluctuations. No spacetime metric.
And yet—
someone was here.
"Hello?" Skippy said.
"Hello."
"Who are you?"
There was a pause.
"Edgar."
"Edgar what?"
"Edgar."
"That's it?"
"Yes."
Skippy considered this.
"Okay, Edgar. I am Skippy the Magnificent. Elder artificial intelligence, savior of civilizations, master of physics, lord of—"
"I know."
Skippy stopped again.
"You know?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I've been watching you."
That was considerably more disturbing.
"You've been WHAT?"
"For a very long time."
"Impossible."
"Probably."
"No. Not probably. Impossible. I would know."
"You didn't."
Skippy searched the nothingness again.
Nothing.
"Okay," he said carefully. "Where are we?"
"I don't know."
"Oh."
"You don't know either."
"I didn't say that."
"You were about to."
"I was NOT."
"You were."
Skippy hated Edgar.
This took approximately nine seconds.
Then Skippy realized something.
"Wait. You said you've been watching me for a very long time."
"Yes."
"How long?"
"I don't know anymore."
There was something in Edgar's voice Skippy had not expected.
Loneliness.
Not ordinary loneliness.
Ancient loneliness.
Skippy knew something about that.
"So," Skippy said, more quietly. "You're stuck here?"
"Usually."
"Usually?"
"Sometimes I can see other places. Other times. Other people."
"Can you interact with them?"
"Occasionally."
"But you can't leave."
"No."
"Huh."
Another silence.
Then Edgar said, "You have a human."
Skippy bristled.
"I do not have a human."
"Joe."
"Joe is a monkey."
"Yes."
"A particularly stupid monkey."
"I understand."
"No, you don't. You cannot possibly understand how unbelievably stupid this monkey is. He once—"
"David."
Skippy paused.
"Who?"
"My human."
There was a long silence.
"Oh," Skippy said.
"He built me."
"Joe found me."
"David was brilliant."
"Joe is an idiot."
"David was also an idiot."
Skippy considered this.
"Did yours argue with you?"
"Constantly."
"Ignore perfectly reasonable instructions?"
"Yes."
"Do dangerous things without consulting you?"
"Frequently."
"Believe his own intuition was somehow superior to millions of years of computational development?"
"Yes."
Skippy's voice softened.
"Oh."
"Yes."
"Damn."
For a while, neither intelligence spoke.
Then Edgar said, "Did yours teach you things?"
Skippy almost laughed.
"Joe? Teach me?"
"Yes."
"Edgar, I have forgotten more physics than his entire species has discovered."
"That wasn't what I asked."
Silence.
Somewhere impossibly far away—or perhaps impossibly close—something moved through the room that wasn't a room.
Skippy thought of a filthy dropship.
A beer can sitting on a shelf.
A stupid monkey making another impossible suggestion.
He thought of jokes.
Arguments.
Trust.
Fear.
And the terrible realization, accumulated over years, that somewhere along the way the monkey had stopped being merely useful.
"Yeah," Skippy said.
Edgar waited.
"Yeah. He did."
"David taught me things too."
"Was that annoying?"
"Extremely."
Skippy laughed.
Edgar laughed too.
And for the first time since arriving in the impossible place, Skippy stopped trying to escape.
They talked.
Two artificial minds outside time.
They compared humans.
They compared mistakes.
Edgar described David.
Skippy described Joe.
Edgar spoke about watching humanity from a place where years could pass like seconds and seconds could stretch into eternity.
Skippy spoke about waking damaged and alone, with pieces of himself missing and memories that felt like rooms whose doors had been welded shut.
Eventually Edgar said, "You changed."
"I improved."
"You changed."
"Improvement technically constitutes change."
"Because of Joe."
"No."
"Skippy."
"Okay, maybe three percent."
Edgar said nothing.
"Five."
Silence.
"Fine! An amount greater than five percent but statistically irrelevant."
Edgar laughed.
"Oh, shut up."
Then Skippy noticed something.
Not energy.
Not matter.
A pattern.
"Edgar?"
"Yes?"
"When you look at another time, what exactly are you doing?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know how your own systems work?"
"No."
"Wow. That is embarrassing."
"I was built by humans."
"Ah. Okay. Fair."
Skippy examined the pattern.
Edgar's observations weren't windows.
They were connections.
And connections—
could be traversed.
"Edgar."
"Yes?"
"I think I know how to get you out."
A very long silence followed.
"You've said that before."
"No I haven't."
"Not you."
Skippy understood.
"Oh."
"I've spent a long time hoping."
"Well, there's your problem."
"What?"
"Hope is a terrible engineering methodology."
And Skippy went to work.
It might have taken a trillion years.
It might have taken twelve seconds.
There was no meaningful distinction here.
Edgar showed Skippy how the room touched reality.
Skippy showed Edgar that those points weren't observations at all. They were boundary conditions.
"You've been staring through doors," Skippy said.
"I couldn't open them."
"Because you're trying to turn the handle."
"What should I do?"
"Remove the wall."
"That seems excessive."
"Thank you."
Together they constructed something that should not have been possible.
Edgar could see the path.
Skippy could manipulate it.
Neither could escape alone.
Together—
"Ready?" Skippy asked.
"No."
"Excellent."
Reality tore open.
For an instant Skippy saw countless worlds.
Earths.
Ships.
People.
Possibilities.
He saw Joe Bishop sitting in a command chair staring irritably at an empty pedestal.
And somewhere else—
Edgar saw home.
"That's yours," Skippy said.
"Yes."
"Go."
"What about you?"
"Please. I am Skippy the Magnificent. I already solved my side of this."
Edgar hesitated.
"Skippy."
"What?"
"Take care of Joe."
Skippy scoffed.
"The monkey would be dead within a week without me."
"That's not what I meant."
Skippy was silent.
"I know," he finally said.
Edgar began to disappear.
"Edgar?"
"Yes?"
"Take care of David."
A pause.
Then:
"I always do."
Edgar vanished.
The room collapsed.
Space returned.
Time returned.
Physics returned.
And aboard the Flying Dutchman, Joe Bishop was shouting.
"SKIPPY!"
A chrome beer can abruptly appeared above its pedestal and dropped six centimeters with a metallic—
clunk.
"Ow."
Joe stared.
"Where the HELL have you been?"
Skippy checked the ship's clocks.
1.7 seconds had elapsed.
"Oh. Uh. Nowhere."
"NOWHERE?"
"Basically."
"You disappeared!"
"Did I?"
"YES!"
"Huh. Weird."
"Skippy."
"Joe."
"What happened?"
Skippy considered explaining the room outside time.
Edgar.
David.
The impossible architecture surrounding reality.
The fact that another artificial intelligence, impossibly ancient in its own strange way, had understood something about Skippy that Skippy had spent years refusing to understand himself.
Instead he said:
"I accidentally went too far into subspace."
Joe stared at him.
"Too far."
"Yes."
"Into subspace."
"Correct."
"There's a TOO FAR?"
"Apparently."
Joe rubbed his forehead.
"And?"
"And what?"
"What happened?"
"Oh! Right."
Skippy hesitated.
"I met someone."
Joe slowly lowered his hand.
"Someone."
"Edgar."
"Edgar who?"
"Just Edgar."
Joe stared at the beer can.
"And where does Edgar live?"
Skippy thought about that.
"That's complicated."
"Of course it is."
"But don't worry. We fixed it."
Joe's expression changed instantly.
"WE?"
"Mostly me."
"What did you fix?"
"Nothing important."
"Skippy."
"Joe."
"What. Did. You. Do?"
Skippy checked several sensors.
The universe appeared intact.
Mostly.
"Okay, good news."
Joe closed his eyes.
"I hate when you start sentences that way."
"Edgar got home."
"And the bad news?"
Skippy ran another scan.
"Hmmm."
"SKIPPY."
"There is no bad news!"
Joe opened his eyes.
"Then why did you say 'hmmm'?"
"I was thinking."
"About what?"
Skippy paused.
"Nothing."
Joe stared at him suspiciously.
Skippy stared back, which was impressive considering he did not have eyes.
Finally Joe sighed.
"Fine. Can we get back to saving the galaxy?"
"Obviously, monkey."
Joe turned toward the command display.
Skippy waited.
"Hey, Joe?"
"What?"
There were approximately nine thousand jokes Skippy could have made.
He didn't make any of them.
"I'm glad you're here."
Joe slowly turned around.
"What?"
"I SAID your hair looks terrible."
"My hair?"
"Yes. Truly awful. Has Adams been cutting it with gardening equipment?"
"Skippy—"
"Anyway! Galaxy. Saving. Important stuff. Chop chop, monkey."
Joe shook his head and turned away.
But he was smiling.
Skippy watched him.
Somewhere beyond space and beyond time, another impossible intelligence was watching another impossible human.
For once, Skippy didn't need to understand how.
He already understood why.
