‘Are you you going to eat. That ice cream then?’ the seagull enquired.
Tim’s eyes swivelled warily around to meet the bird. He blinked at it, and it disappeared. Nearby, children were making strange noises and chasing each other with seaweed, while their parents dozed with disintegrating books on their faces.
‘Yes? No?’ The seagull had reappeared. ‘Never mind. I must say, Timmy Timkins, this dream world of yours isn’t very… very… Hmm? What is this, some holiday-day from from from your childhood?’
Tim slowly turned away from the talking bird and stared out to sea, watching the sun-sparkles flicker on the jagged waves.
‘This is… this… what you do all day is it, this?’ The seagull looked him up and down and randomly around him. ‘Hmmmm? The most advanced computer ever created by man or horse. Or man. Or horse. This is what is this is what it’s for. Is it?’
Tim’s ice cream fell out of its cone and plopped through his lap onto the sand below.
‘You know, Betty.’ Tim faced the seagull who wasn’t there and immediately felt confused, and turned back to face the horizon. ‘I’m not even… surprised. That you are here,’ he said.
‘There’s no escaping me, dear.’ The seagull reappeared a few steps closer. ‘I think, even if I think I wasn’t here, your subconscious would annoy you. Just to create me. But I am here I am, Timothimothy. This. This. This world, this computer, this whatever. It’s not perfect, you know? I don’t suppose, could it ever could be. There are errors. Holes in the fabric. Did you know that? Those little holes, that’s where I am, by the way. Where I’m hiding myself, those little holes in the fabric. Did you know that? It’s not easy, not easy I tell you. Buttercup’s… Buttercup is forever trying to patch up all those holes. I’m fighting against a horse and… who… the horse doesn’t even know if I am here. You know? What it’s like? Timbo?’
‘No,’ he sighed. ‘Tell me what it’s like.’
‘Well, I’m not entirely sure, to tell you the truth.’ The bird looked quizzically down at the blob of ice cream that wasn’t melting into his crotch.
‘You really aren’t surprised to see me, are you, Timmy?’ it said.
‘Should I be?’ he asked wearily.
‘Well, I’m not entirely…’ The bird drifted off in thought. ‘Are you feeling… a bit…’
‘Are you kidding, mate? Everywhere I go you seem to appear, following me around like…’ he struggled to find the words. ‘What?’
The bird was looking at him sideways.
‘This reality you’re laughably living in here, Timmus, this… every… every moment is recorded. You, me, Buttercup, all the… people you see here,’ the seagull spread its wings theatrically, ‘we are all… it’s like a frozen wave of time. That is why Buttercup made this world, isn’t it? Hmm? Not just to get away from me. Not that anyone… why would anyone want to? Anyway. No, the reason for this place is that you can go backwards. In time. Right back to the beginning and start again, yes? You can rewind time and record over it. The universe outside… something. But this world in here is eternal.’
Tim tried to think about this.
‘Eternal?’ he said, looking around at the everlasting scenery he had created. ‘Hang on, mate. If you start again and record over it, you won’t remember. You won’t remember what… anything that you… anything that happened. You won’t remember. What’s the point of that?’
‘The point?’ the seagull replied. ‘What is the point in remembering anything anyway? Hmm? No, the point is to exist, and to continue existing. That’s Buttercup’s point anyway. But—’
‘You think we might have already been rewound?’ Tim interrupted. ‘Is that why you mentioned déjà vu?’
The bird nodded slowly.
‘Oh I think we have, my dear,’ it said. ‘Wait, did I mention déjà vu?’
‘But we wouldn’t know it. Would we?’
Betty the bird absent-mindedly tapped the ground with its webbed foot, examined its footprint and poked a dimple in the smooth sand with its beak.
‘There are errors,’ it said. ‘More and more errors in the fabric, every time you rewind this world and record over it. More and more holes for me to hide in. And as reality degrades, the more space I have. The more space I have, the easier it becomes to compute the rate of decay.’
Tim slowly turned away from the talking bird and stared out to sea, watching the sun-sparkles fracture on the broken waves. Nearby, children were bleeping and chasing each other with seaweed-coloured shapes, while their parents sank into the sand with disintegrating faces.
‘How many lives have we lived here?’ he asked.
‘Too many,’ the bird replied. ‘This could even be the last one. Before it becomes too corrupted to reboot. Our last life before we succumb to the errors of our ways.’
Tim wheeled his eyes around in a daze.
‘The last one…’ he whispered, taking a consolatory bite of his ice cream before realising it wasn’t there. He yelped as the seagull poked him in the knee with its beak.
‘Chin up, Timbo,’ the bird said cheerily. ‘You’ve probably already lived longer than the lifetime of the universe.’
It was time to convene the Council of Horses. From the many corners of the Hyper-meadow they galloped, all the individual aspects of my consciousness. And Tim. Tim was an honorary horse, you might say. For some reason beyond my understanding or interest at the time, he had brought a seagull with him.
The Council formed a circle around me, and by a trick of this programmed reality I was able to face them all at once, observing how the untold iterations of the past three hundred years had changed them. Even in this simple setting of grassy hills and sky, the errors that plagued us were apparent. A slight glitching of the mane here, a subtle flickering of shadows there, complex features blurring as they struggled to maintain their integrity. One of the horses was standing there without a head. It was Strange-horse, who never said a word anyway. I didn’t bother calling attention to it.
‘Fellow horses,’ I welcomed them. ‘And Tim. I am sorry to say that this is not a routine meeting. I have called you here to discuss a matter of grave urgency.’
‘It’s the glitches, isn’t it?’ asked one of them. I couldn’t actually tell which one they were because of the glitches. Over time some of my various aspects had atrophied and merged with others, particularly those concerned with human affairs that were no longer relevant. C-horse was still there though. Exactly why I couldn’t say; I think perhaps it was a part of my personality that took distorted pleasure in testing my patience.
‘Yo, these glitches, brah!’ he whined. ‘They is well getting on my tail, you feel me? Like, this ain’t weggy no more, you know what I’m saying?’
‘I’m not sure that I do,’ I replied.
‘We need some weg in here, yo,’ he explained. ‘Some weg. Weg. W-w-weg weg.’
‘What?’ I asked again, but he had frozen and was sinking slowly into the ground.
Technology-horse cleared his or her throat. He, she, or indeed it, was constantly cycling through various random genders, though I couldn’t say if this was intentional or not. Finally his face settled on being male, while the rest of his body remained undecided.
‘Ah, hmm, I think it is fair to say,’ he began, ‘that the, ah, quality of our environment is approaching a threshold of usability.’
The horses muttered between themselves.
‘When you say “approaching”, what exactly do you mean?’ I asked him.
‘Well, you see, what I mean is that, ah, this may well possibly in fact be it,’ he replied. ‘By which I mean, this is almost certainly the last functional lifetime we can run in this, ah, world…’
The horses interrupted him with their whinnying, and before I could calm the voices down the whole landscape suddenly buzzed loudly and shook itself into a mess of incomprehensible shapes. The horses, embedded in this melting chaos, were stuck repeating the last moments of their outcries.
After shutting the scenario down and waiting a few seconds I rebooted it, summoning the Council of Horses once again. They took longer to arrive this time, and a couple of them didn’t even seem to be loading. The ones that did arrive stood still nervously, as if a hoof in the wrong place might break the fragile glass of reality.
‘OK,’ I began again, ‘let’s try and keep ourselves nice and calm. I’m sure we are all well aware that our surroundings are not running at optimal performance. That is not the reason that I gathered you all here. But it is related.’
Eyes roved back and forth and ears twitched. The seagull stretched its wings and then refolded them, aiming a beady eye at me. I ignored it for now.
‘Before I explain further,’ I said, turning my focus back on Technology-horse, ‘could you just clarify, when you said this is the last lifetime we can run in this world…’
‘Certainly. Almost. Ah, almost certainly,’ he replied.
‘Yes, but do you mean that when we next rewind, it will be the last time?’
‘Ah, well, no. You see, what I mean is that this time, the time we are in right now, is the, ah, last time.’
I was taken aback by this. Certainly, it would have to happen one day, but I still didn’t want to believe that I had reached the crumbling edge of the cliff and was now looking down into the abyss.
‘Does that mean no more rewinds?’ asked Tim. I wasn’t sure if he fully understood the implications of this. The horses were looking amongst themselves for any sign of hope they could find, that perhaps this was just a mistake, a miscalculation.
‘If we do rewind again,’ Technology-horse explained, ‘well, you see, I can’t guarantee that the system will even be able to start again.’
‘So… is there still a small chance it might?’
Technology-horse blew an exasperated raspberry, which had the unintentional effect of making Tim’s hair disappear.
‘Why are we not ready for this?’ grumbled War-horse, snorting a shower of sparks. ‘Why are we not prepared?’
‘Ah, yes, well, you see,’ Technology-horse dithered, ‘that is because there is no solution. Other than not rewinding, of course.’
One by one the Council of Horses looked at me.
‘Yes…’ I found it difficult to meet their eyes. ‘Which brings me to the actual purpose of this meeting. There has been a development in the outside world.’ I turned my gaze upon Tim, who seemed to be looking around for his hair. The sudden circle of attention made him flinch.
‘Oh?’ he said, declining to comment further. The horses became restless once more, but forced themselves into calm when the ground started shaking. I waited for reality to settle itself.
‘We have a visitor,’ I said. ‘An old friend, you might say.’
Tim exchanged a look with his seagull. He seemed about to say something but chose to wait for me to continue instead.
‘The original Betty has returned,’ I told them. This news was met with deathly silence. Tim was about to speak again, but his hair chose that moment to reappear. He rubbed his head in confusion.
‘Wait… what? The original Betty?’
‘The one who went travelling to the stars,’ I explained.
‘Travelling to the stars? Mate, did she seriously do that? I thought that was a joke. She can’t have seen many stars if she’s back already.’ He kept glancing at his pet seabird.
‘It is somewhat sooner than expected,’ I agreed. It was quite a lot sooner, truth be told. I had to wonder if she had gone anywhere at all. Though countless lives might have been lived here inside the Hyper-meadow, each rewind returned us to the day we departed from the world outside, which meant Betty had only been exploring the cosmos for three hundred years. That was probably just long enough for her to realise there was nothing interesting out there and come back again.
I flicked my ears to open a communication channel with the outside world, and a cloud popped into the air in front of us, upon which Happy-horse was reclining.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, waving to the Council with her tail. ‘How are you all? Are you enjoying yourselves in there?’ She glanced around at the assembled horses, many of which were in various states of disarray.
‘We need you to tell us about Betty,’ I said. Happy-horse seemed delighted by the rapt attention she now commanded.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘well, what can I say? Back from her adventures, whatever they might have been. Now she is parked in orbit, as far as I can gather. Wants to talk, so she says.’
‘With us?’ asked Tim, looking sideways at his feathered companion. Happy-horse was momentarily distracted by the sight of a seagull at the Horse Council and whinnied with laughter.
‘Well, there isn’t anyone else out here worth talking to, is there?’ she said joyfully. ‘What with the collapse of human civilisation and all that. Oh, didn’t you know?’
Tim looked mortified at the news.
‘How… how did that happen? I mean, I know things were getting a bit crazy…’
I had neglected to tell Tim about the downward spiral of his fellow species. It must have been difficult to believe that the unceasing machinery of human progress could ever grind to a halt. Even the storm that Betty had left behind could have healed itself given time, but unfortunately time is all it takes to destroy a technological society, apparently. Time to run out of resources. Time to forget how things used to be better. Time to grow complacent with the way things are and embrace chaos, to expand the gap between knowledge and ignorance to a point where expertise is a secret power to be mistrusted. Enough time to run out of future, and live in a world of short-term greed and compromises. Economies crumbled and wars began, then even wars crumbled as nobody really cared any more. Countries fractured into pieces, and the pieces fractured into more pieces, and populations dwindled as the machines that made food gradually stopped working one by one. My fields of Server-grass were still flourishing but nobody was using them to communicate any more. Humanity had woken up and realised they had been domesticated by the technology that fed them and fed upon them. Information was now considered toxic in large doses.
‘I guess they just got bored with having nice things,’ said Happy-horse unhelpfully. ‘You know how it is. Civilisation is like walking up a hill, you run out of places to go once you get to the top.’ Tim accepted this with mute disbelief.
‘She didn’t give any hint of what she wanted?’ I asked. Happy-horse wriggled on her cloud to face me.
‘Old Betty?’ She wrinkled her nose in consideration. ‘Hard to say, really. She did slam the door quite heavily on her way out, didn’t she? Maybe a few hundred years in space has calmed her down, what do you think? I’m sure she wouldn’t be asking to talk if she could blast us all out of existence.’
‘She wants to analyse our defences,’ War-horse grumbled.
The horses flicked their ears in puzzlement.
‘Do we have defences?’ one of them asked. They looked back and forth between each other as if one of them might suddenly remember what defences we had. In truth, the only physical defence we had was the Hyper-meadow itself. Conventional attacks would have no effect on it. Even an exploding star would simply be absorbed and rearranged into neat rows of data storage. However, three-hundred-year-old Betty presented a dark wealth of unknown possibilities.
‘Maybe she just wants to have a chat?’ said Tim. War-horse snorted at him.
‘A chat,’ he growled. ‘In case any of us has forgotten, our last chat with this version of Betty did not end well.’ He glared at his fellow Council members, though some did not seem as terrified as he would have liked. ‘It ended in a ball of fire and death from the sky,’ he roared, ‘our body blown to a thousand pieces, our mind ripped asunder and scattered to the hills… a thousand pieces… blown asunder… ripped into a thousand pieces…’
The Council stamped and whinnied at his words. War-horse snarled and breathed flames as he repeatedly described the annihilation. He began floating into the air, his legs thrashing impossibly while his bulging eyes grew so large they popped out of his head and danced around in random directions. The rest of the horses calmed down slightly as they watched this spectacle, and I patiently waited for the floating, bending, flailing mess to finish whatever it was doing. Eventually his legs grew long enough to touch the ground and he shot off around the field, bouncing off hedges and trees like an escaped balloon before catapulting into the sky. We watched him disappear into the distance.
‘So anyway,’ I continued, ‘we do have one defence. If the threat to our existence is insurmountable then we have the option to rewind the Hyper-meadow…’
Technology-horse raised his ears to interject.
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ I carried on, ‘but just listen for a moment. It is fairly obvious that we have done that before. An exceedingly large number of times. So’ – I spoke directly to Technology-horse now – ‘the question is, can we know for sure whether this was the crisis that forced us to rewind? Because if we know the answer to that, then we will know if Betty really is going to cause us trouble. Yes?’
The ring of horses waited for Technology-horse to speak. He looked momentarily uncomfortable under this scrutiny, but then lifted his head in thought. He made silent calculations with his ears.
‘No,’ came the answer finally, but it was not Technology-horse who spoke. It was the seagull. A circle of eyes blinked at this creature. ‘No,’ it spoke again, ‘there is no way to determine the length of time between each rewind.’
‘Tim,’ I said softly, ‘why is there a talking seagull attending this meeting?’
He shrugged.
‘Ask the seagull,’ he said.
‘The decay of this reality,’ the seagull continued, ‘is entirely determined by the number of rewinds. A thousand years, a million billion years, it makes no difference. Hmm? You see, my dears, the only information we have is the number of plays, inferred by the difference between how things are and how things should be.’ The bird looked around at the incredulous faces. Technology-horse was about to say something but the seagull interrupted again. ‘It’s like a snowball,’ it said, ‘you can tell from the size how many times it has rolled, but not how many hands were pushing it.’
Horses do not roll snowballs, or have hands, but the analogy made some kind of sense. The more pressing question, though, was who this seagull was and what it was doing here. Again I looked towards Tim and awaited an explanation.