Author's Note

The last time I updated this project was years ago. At the time, I had one vision of this project that, while reasonably well-formed, didn't really tell everything I wanted to tell of this story. In the intervening years, I've continued to think about and experiment with my writing, and late in 2020 finally hit upon a conceptual framework that can support the story I want to put across. I've also taken steps to cultivate a stronger, more distinctive style in that time, as style is of a piece with substance. I have also set in place a rigid writing schedule to which I can reliably adhere; the real chokepoint is time for editing the prose that is written.

In any case, I apologize for the long delay and hope you enjoy Instantiation.

1986

The vodka-reek of the soldier next to him conspired with the bumps in the road to force Sergei Sidaikhmanra awake. Being a Somewhat Important Person in the Soviet Union, it was hardly his first time being loaded into the back of an armored truck in the dead of night, nor the first time the men with guns couldn't or wouldn't explain why. Likely what awaited him was an Actually Important Person who would tell him how he could advance the glory of the state, though he couldn't rule out a hole in the ground roughly described by his measurements.

The latter seemed more and more probable as the ride stretched past an hour, two hours of country road. As the sun reached rose glories through the window, he stopped trying to guess his fate. Eventually the truck drew to a halt, the driver exchanged words with someone; they passed onto a surface both unusually uniform and gently sloping downward. Morningglow was traded for merciless white halogen.

When next they stopped, the doors flung open and a strong grip was either trying to hurry him off the truck or tear his arm from his socket. He let his feet carry him out and winced under the sterile lights.

"Which one is this?" A voice like scratching old leather. A sound of papers rustling.

"Sergei Sidaikhmanra."

"Sidawhat? Oh, right. So you're this 'Doctor Cossack' I've heard about."

Sergei could finally open his eyes enough: a short man whose neck filled his shirt-collar, a charcoal suit, a well-worn look of indifference. The minister of somesuch, then.

"Some people do call me that, Comrade . . . ?"

"No need to trouble yourself with my name, Comrade Cossack. This is likely the only time you'll see me."

Sergei scanned his surroundings: a vast concrete bunker, grey hulking and vault ribbed, the sort of place one wasn't brought for the short term. At least a hundred people busied themselves with some machines he recognized, others he didn't. A single tent held pride of place in the furthest recess, cathedral-white.

"What can I do for our Republic, Comrade?" he asked. The minister turned on heel and made for the tent; a rifle butt urged him forward and the soldier attached to it made what somebody must have told him was an intimidating grunt.

"In case this wasn't clear yet, everything you see, hear, say, do, and think is now a state secret," the minister said, drawing back the tent flap and ushering Sergei in.

"Officially, the impact outside Yakutsk has been attributed to a meteor. What we actually found was this."

This lay on a steel pallet. It had a head, torso, two arms, and two legs roughly positioned and proportioned like those of men. End familiarity. Floodlights glared down on it but their rays fell, irretrievable, into most of its surfaces so that detail was hard to discern. Except for the face: cracked yellow glass eyes, grate forming a rictus grin. Sergei was grateful of the excuse to look back at the minister when he cleared his throat.

"What we know about it so far is that it's a machine, it's not from Earth, and this isn't the only one."

"It isn't?"

"Remember the meteor that fell off the coast of Japan that same night?"

"So the Japanese—"

"Meaning, really, the Americans have it. That makes finding out everything we can about this thing and putting that to work for us a matter of national security," the minister said. "Along with the other scientists and engineers here, you were identified as a leading expert in a relevant field."

It wasn't immediately apparent to Sergei what business a computer networking researcher had with what appeared to be an alien robot demon, but presumably figuring that out was also his responsibility.

"You're the last addition to the research team, so you've got some catching up to do. Get to it."

Fear had not won out over Sergei's curiosity since he was a child; children are often surprisingly wise, he reminded himself. Better to leave now than risk another look into those riven eyes and find something looking back.

2049

First sleep, then horror. A billion pairs of eyes opened to find seven billion others never would again. Some rotted in untouched cities, gleaming glass-and-steel necropoles; others left scorch-black bones in charnel fields. People, thoughts, years before the waking stood on the other side of a fogged window. Those few gifted with sharp fragments of memory were made—or made themselves—sages and the sages gave these fragments a name: Cataclysm.

The first years were of trepidation, sifting through the ruins for understanding but not too much; each survivor was held by a shapeless fear that all this had been done to them of someone's will. People ringing craters where millions smoldered looked up at the night sky dancing with pale blue light and saw ghosts warning them of . . . what? They hoarded any scrap of book or newspaper still intact, any machine that still worked; they found no truth.

Yet mankind persists. Taboo became tradition as years turned to decades; the dead were given their sacred places free from the touch of the living and people organized into hundreds of small polities around cities, towns, and villages and most accepted their wish to know would stay a wish. Only when the wrecks were found did a story coalesce, for they had the flesh of men hung from metal rods encasing organs of wire and flickering light. Each survivor who saw them knew that this was what had waited for them in the dark, that had reached for them through their sudden cold sweats. Memories of sages snapped further into focus, and names sprung forth.

Light. Wily. Rock. To speak these names was to call up years of war and suffering for many. They remembered a devil in the body of a frail old man who nearly held the world in his hand, a saint who built a machine to stop him.

These robots were the great sin that had brought the Cataclysm about, on that the sages agreed. Some believed the machines themselves were evil, others that mankind had made them so; still others that the machines were innocent but man, Promethean, had offended God by presuming to create intelligence. This last gave rise to the Church of the Remnant.

Truth bows to instinct; those who'd survived clung to their fear of the thinking machine as infant to mother and gifted this fear to their children, armor and sword. The Remnant's call to reject the thinking machine, reaffirm the primacy of humanity, and cede to God the creation of minds spoke to many, and thus their influence grew. In time, the Church took for itself sole right to delve the ruins of the old world, recover what they deemed safe, and leave forgotten what they didn't. They called the scars left by the Cataclysm "Exclusion Zones," and enforced their boundaries by penalty of law where they could, by penalty of Sicario where they could not.

Fear bows to curiosity, in time; the scripture-vivid nightmares of the old lost color each generation. A child takes up a shovel and digs for something more than they have been given.

2062

Crushed velvet reached up to embrace Xavier as he fell back into the chair, drained from wiggling with all due politeness out of the Minister of State's job offer. He let his gaze drift up from the hotel lobby to admire the octahedral glass chandelier, champagne-lit. Its hard, certain lines were reassuring after a long day of conventioneering.

"Try not to hate me, but I could have rescued you back there," a man said, forcing a thin chuckle.

"I'll try, but no promises," Xavier said, closing his eyes. "I'll be with you in a sec, Otto." Long, slow exhalations. "Okay, I'm here. What's up?"

"Y'mind?" Otto pointed a thick finger to the chair at Xavier's left, didn't wait for his response. He reached in his coat pocket for a pack of cigarettes, remembered where they were, withdrew his hand with a grunt. He threw Xavier a smile, one without teeth.

"That's a bad sign," Xavier said. "Is this about the Karoyan insurge—"

Otto held up a hand. "You're not gonna guess this one, kiddo."

Anxiety didn't come easy to Xavier, but the broad-built man's forward lean—head-in-hand and elbow-on-thigh—was an unsettling novelty. In how many decision rooms had Otto been the steady hand? How many crises had turned on his composure, even when Xavier's own had failed?

"What do you know about the simulation hypothesis?"

Xavier blinked. No hints in Otto's face. "Uh, that's the idea that our universe is a simulation on some hyper-advanced computer, right?"

Otto massaged the bridge of his nose, pausing to study his hand strangely. "Yeah, you've got the gist."

"And?"

"It's true."

"Excuse me?"

"The simulation hypothesis is true. Or, it is for you, anyway."

How to make sense of this—what, strange joke, nervous breakdown?—apropos of nothing, Xavier wondered.

"Is something bothering you? We can talk—"

"This is what's bothering me, damn it!" Otto roared, his heavy hand jostling Xavier by the shoulder. Nobody had turned to stare, though. Nobody was turning, or moving, or speaking. The lobby was still, peopled by statues.

"What the hell is going on?" Xavier said, jumping to his feet. Otto slowly gathered himself out of the chair, sorrow-bent neck and funeral eyes.

"Sorry it has to be like this, kiddo," he said, walking over to a waiter stuck mid-step nearby, swinging his arm as though to slap the young man in the face. His open hand passed through the head as through air. "See, none of this—the place, the people—none of it is real."

Xavier was silent, motionless.

"All right. In for a penny," Otto said, snapping his fingers. The world gave way to nothingness in an instant. From Otto's hand came a window of light, opening on a ruin seen through the cataract of a failing camera. The ruin was laboratory and data-center, all the equipment entangled with a metal capsule embedded into a wall. A glass aperture opened onto the capsule's interior near the top, reflecting the dark.

"This is where we are in the real world, one of the secret laboratories of Doctor Touma Javier Hikari. Your physical body has been in that capsule for at least 13 years," Otto said.

Xavier's heart should have been pounding apace his mind's racing; his body felt nothing. With all his will, he managed to tell his hand to smack himself across the face, but the impact produced no pain, did not wake him.

"Still not buying it? Sorry kiddo, don't hate me for this."

Another snap of Otto's fingers and Xavier found himself looking through the glass aperture of the capsule into the lab, and all at once a deafening energy hum and blinding spark light and a thousand eddies in the air created by a twitch of his fingers and smell of nitrogen, oxygen—and as soon as these sensations overwhelmed him his world shrank and he was back in his hotel room with Otto standing at the window. Xavier nearly threw up, but settled for falling to his knees.

"Why?" The word came as a croak.

"Because when Doctor Hikari created you, he decided that you needed—"

"Wait, created me? What, you're telling me I'm some sort of robot?"

A half-smile crept over Otto's face. "Nothing so simple. You're an android. Far more sophisticated, far more powerful."

Each thing Otto said gave rise to a tapestry of questions Xavier wanted answered; which thread to pull on first?

"Let's say I believe that—"

"Have I ever lied to you?" Xavier waved his arms to sweep the question aside.

"That still doesn't tell me why."

"Doctor Hikari would have wanted to raise you and guide you himself if he could have, but he was old and dying by the time he finished building you. He'd seen that coming, so he and I developed a simulation where you could gain some experience with moral problems in a safe, constrained environment before you had to venture out into the world."

"So, what, you decided I've passed the test and now's a good time to tell me everything I've done, everywhere I've been, and all the people I've cared about were fake?"

"It wasn't supposed to end like this. The plan was that you'd experience a hundred years of subjective time in about twenty-eight years of real time, then two more years of real time would be spent gradually introducing you to the real world as your simulated life wound down. Something wrecked the lab, though," Otto said. "It was about thirteen years ago. Destroyed a lot of my hardware and corrupted a lot of data, so I have no idea what it was. But it damaged most of the generators in the lab, too. I'm running out of juice."

"Either way, it's like programming."

"I don't blame you for seeing it that way. All I can say is that Doctor Hikari thought he needed to take every precaution to encourage you to grow into a good man. For what it's worth, I think you have."

"Hell if I know what it's worth! Our friendship is fake too, isn't it?" Xavier asked. No reply: that had cut deep. "I'm sorry, this is just—"

"Don't blame you for that either."

"So . . . what, are you a robot?"

"Was. Gave up my body to put my program into the mainframe and oversee the simulation."

"Then what happens to you when the power gives out in the lab?"

"Most of what makes me 'me' only exists in volatile memory anymore. So I'm gone," Otto said. Whatever look Xavier gave him elicited a helpless shrug befitting some mundane disappointment.

"I can give you about a month more of simulated time to help you adjust before—"

"Don't. Save your power. You can make this up to me by answering my questions," Xavier said, sitting down on the floor. A hearty laugh ripped out of Otto, and he sent the world back into darkness with another finger-snap.

"That's very you, kiddo," he said, sidling up to Xavier and sitting next to him in the void.

"Any idea what's outside the lab?"

"Wish I could tell you."

Silence.

"Otto?"

"Yeah?"

"What's my real name?"

"The Doctor wanted to let you pick when you woke up."

"Was Xavier your idea?"

"Of course. I was there when you were born. Er, both times.

Xavier surprised himself with his laughter.

"Then I want to keep a piece of it with me."

"Heh. You know, mess aside, I think you'll come out of this all right, kiddo."

2108

Anselmo's nose and throat were assailed by the disinfectant fumes and his gaze met by a bored receptionist when he threw open the hospital doors. The young woman—all slouch and smacking of gum and half-open eyes—was inviting him to surprise her.

"My wife just had a baby, where—"

She blew and popped a pink bubble and looked back down to the newspaper on her desk. Too predictable, real shame. "Name?"

"Cain. Anita Cain."

"Second floor, room two-oh-eight."

Anselmo thanked her, remembering only halfway up the stairs to doff his cap. He raced along the hall, dodging a nurse pushing a trolley and coming to a halt right before door two-oh-eight. He adjusted his tie, fiddled with his blazer, and gathered himself for an heroic entrance.

"Finally here," said the ancient, creaking voice he should have expected. He prided himself in not wincing at the sight of Anita's mother, Roxanna.

"Mama," he said, bending low to kiss her cheek.

"You didn't shave, eh?" she said, rubbing her cheek as though her parchment skin had any feeling left. "He didn't shave, Anita."

"That's okay, mama. He's here." Anselmo's body turned to his wife's voice before his mind had registered it, and the knot Roxanna made of his guts unwound at the sight of Anita tired, sweat-glistening, hair matted, beaming at the baby so plump in her arms. "Say hello to your son, Anselmo."

He took to her bedside and stroked her cheek; the boy gurgled and kicked, reaching up with his tiny hands for his father's forearm. A jolt of warmth ran through him when he surrendered a sun-worn finger to his son.

"He's perfect, Anita."

"Oh, he is. What should we name him?"

"Gustavo, after your father, of course!" Roxanna said. "Isn't that what we discussed?"

Anselmo grit his teeth, looked around for anything to tape over the old bat's mouth.

"Mama, this is our son, mine and Anselmo's," Anita said. Anselmo didn't need to look back to know that Roxanna was scandalized to have her daughter talk back. He leaned close to her ear.

"I think I fell in love with you again."

"I heard that!" Roxanna said, muttering about disrespect and young people.

Anita covered her giggle with a curled index finger; the baby let out a short laugh as he rose and fell with her chest.

"What about Eusebio?" Anselmo asked.

"No, no, ridiculous name. That won't do," said Roxanna.

"I think it's a fine name. Would you like that, my little one?" Anita rocked the baby. "Little Eusebio?"

The boy consented by inserting as much of his father's thumb into his mouth as possible. A nurse stepped into the room, folding his hands behind his back and dipping his head in apology.

"Sorry about the timing, but I need to check Mrs. Cain's condition and then she needs to try to sleep. Tomorrow you should be able to visit her more freely."

"Of course we understand," Roxanna said, rising from the chair. "Don't worry dear, mama will be with you again tomorrow as soon as possible. Anselmo, come."

Anselmo ran his fingers through his wife's hair and kissed her forehead. "I'm so proud of you, baby. Rest now, both of you, and I'll see you again soon." He rose, thanked the nurse, and let the door close behind him. Roxanna already at the stairs, made a show of waiting for him there.

"They said earlier that it'll be a week before she can leave the hospital," she said.

Anselmo was sighing before the next word left her mouth.

"She will, of course, stay with her family until she is fully recovered."

"We—"

"Your family's obviously out of the question, scattered everywhere like that. Isn't your mother all the way in Chinandega?"

"But—"

"And you can't expect her to get any rest in that tiny apartment—that reminds me, you can't ask my daughter to raise her child in such a small place."

"Our children, and anyway—"

"And this name? Eusebio? Name him Gustavo, give him something to be proud of. Who even is Eusebio?"

"Mama." Anselmo snapped his fingers. She'd be livid later; for now, stunned as Eusebio'd hoped. "You want to take care of her while she recovers. I thank you. But Anita and I agreed from the moment we knew that we'd pick a name together. We did. That's all."

He left her sputtering and gasping at the top of the stair and stepped back into the balm of a Chimaltenango afternoon, strolling through town. Older men had told him that every color would be richer, every sound clearer on this day. He'd been a fool to doubt them.

A man sat on the rim of the fountain in the square waved at him.

"Let me guess, you just had your first son?"

"How'd you know?"

"I've got three kids myself, you've got the look."

The man stood up and dusted himself off, walking over and shoving his hand at Anselmo.

"Gustavo," he said. He took a step back when Anselmo chuckled. "Oy, something in my hair?"

"No, don't worry about it." The man had to be a hustler to just call out a stranger; he had to be a good one to come off so natural; Anselmo knew that much.

"You know, life in places like this is hard for families," Gustavo said. "Once my second boy was born, my wife and I decided to move out to the country. Have you heard of Arcadia?"

Anselmo held up a hand. "I'm Catholic."

"Great, we're all Christian t—"

"Not just Christian. Catholic. Thanks for the laugh." Gustavo tried to reach for a pamphlet of some sort, but Anselmo was already dissolving back into an oncoming crowd.

Something more dangerous than a hustler; a nut. It wasn't like he didn't see the appeal in the whole 'return to nature' thing, it was a question of tradition. They had no church, no rituals, no history. What was the whole point of God sending the Cataclysm if it wasn't to show folks how much they needed history?

Still, Arcadia was a grass-green-sky-blue folly. Even if everyone broke that way, they wouldn't hurt his boy.

The Church of the Remnant, on the other hand, had their preachers on half the corners in town, looking and sounding like folk gone mad from staring God or the Devil in the face too long.

2122

A boy of twelve was engulfed in the flood of people, grey masses swaying, shuffling, raising cries and prayers to the sky. His own gaze fixed on his tattered boots, nearly sucked from his feet by the churned morass of earth and filth with each step. The press of bodies at his back and the tug of his mother's delicate hand on his finished the job, momentum prying his left foot free so that bare sole met cold muck.

"Come, Sigmund, we're nearly there," mother said, as much for her own benefit as his. Father held fast to both of them, craning his neck this way and that to see past the crowds.

Sigmund was tall for his age, but had given up trying to observe the scenery only two days out of Vienna. Other things demanded immediate attention: hunger's gnawing, thirst's scratching; a damp cold seemed to drip from the people around him, their faces hard and acid-etched with suspicion; and now the guards guiding the refugees into single file at gunpoint. Passing one of them, Sigmund noticed the steady twitching of his right eye, his pupil gaping then tightening over and over.

"Sigmund. The papers," his father said. Papers? With the crowd much thinned they were but a few people from a checkpoint kiosk. Yes, that's right. The unsmiling man in the kiosk and his two friends with guns would want to see papers and quickly. Sigmund drew crumpled sheets from his jacket's inner pocket and handed them to his father. "You may have to speak to that man, can you do that?"

"Yes, father."

"That's a good boy."

Then they were next, and the man in the kiosk bellowed something in Romanian that drew them forward. More unintelligible words, then a scrutinizing glance. He tried in a different language that they still couldn't understand.

"Vienna," father said, hopeful. "Ah, these," he brandished the papers.

"Thank you," the official said, snatching the papers from father's hands. Sigmund wondered whether father's forced chuckle was because of the official's rough demeanor, or the clarity of his Hochdeutsch. "Dispensation for Sigmund Doppler, is that right?"

"Yes. Ah, but, Sigmund is my son."

The official arched a brow, then paged through the papers more carefully.

"He'll be attending the Renaissance Academy," father added. "On a scholarship."

"I can see that, Herr Doppler." The official reached for a phone under the kiosk window and had a brief call in Romanian. "Right. You're clear. When you reach the city, go straight to the Renaissance Academy campus and present the boy. Their personnel will take care of the rest." He rolled up the papers and thrust them back into father's hand, spared a moment to frown at Sigmund's one bare foot, then waved them along. The border fence was neither high nor thick, but didn't need to be; the men who guarded it were made of steel and their weapons sprang from their bodies.

The skyline of Bucharest came into view and the smell and whimpered fear fell away, the sudden firmness of the earth like hope itself. Though the sky still hung low and cloud-laden, tall buildings rose from the bustling squares of the world before Cataclysm to hold it at bay. Only the proud old churches gave him pause; despite their beauty and ancientry, they reminded him most of Remnant preachers—of sturm und drang, of screams at night, of people missing come morning. Mother wrapped an arm around his shoulder and held him close.

Father asked directions of everyone they met until an aging Münchner pointed them to the Renaissance Academy. The grandiose marble facades mingled with humbler residence and business for blocks, and at each doorway they were turned away for being too dirty. Sigmund became increasingly self-conscious of his bare foot and wiped the muddied sole on the stone walkways until it peeled and bled. He sat on the steps of yet another forbidding, majestic building and cried.

Father whispered to mother and left Sigmund in her charge as he stormed back up the steps to give the doorman a piece of his mind. A few minutes later, a small mouse-like man appeared a step above them.

"Sigmund Doppler?" he said. Sigmund sniffled, wiped his tears onto his jacket-sleeve and nodded.

"Come," he said, stretching out a hand. "Shower in gymnasium. I show you." His plodding German was like a secret promise to Sigmund, proof against the unapproachable majesty of the city. The man didn't smile except with faint self-deprecation each time he shoved his ill-fitting spectacles back up his nose. Whoever he was, his presence was enough to secure the silence of the rubbernecks. He also, in the time it took the Family Doppler to clean themselves, produced well-worn but clean clothes and shoes for them, and a younger man who spoke German and Romanian.

"Well. Good day," the mouse-like man said, hurrying off.

"Who was that?" Father asked.

"The chair of the electrical engineering department, Doctor Balan," the young man said. "You will be seeing him a fair bit, Herr Doppler." It took Sigmund a moment to register that 'Herr Doppler' was him in this case. "Well, let's get you to the registrar's office and get you squared away, then we can show you around. So, you're the wunderkind people are talking about, eh?"

Sigmund didn't dignify that with response or thought. He was trying to square his surroundings with the world just beyond the fence; who he was in these clean clothes from the boy of not even five hours ago. Most of all, his thoughts were crowded with the guard's twitching eye and the men of metal. Words like 'robot' that had only lived on those scraps of paper he had scarred his hands digging from Viennese ruins were now the truth of his world.