Capacity by Tony Ballantyne Page A

Bairn,” he said, pulling her down to a crouch beside him. She leaned close, feeling safe to be so close to his strong, gentle body. He had this power over women, she knew it. She had seen him use it, time and time again, all through the virtual worlds.
    A young blackbird lay in the dust of the path, wings stretched outwards for warmth. The cat was nothing more than a suggestion of a shape amongst the shrubs that had taken root in the still growing, smoke-blackened ruins. Its yellow eyes fixed on the bird.
    Bairn bit her lip and looked from the cat to Kevin.
    “Oh, Kevin, can’t you stop it?” she whispered, knowing the answer even as she spoke.
    Kevin tightened his big hand around hers. “You know the answer to that, Bairn. If I save this little bird, the cat will only find another creature to kill. It’s hungry. It needs to eat. Just look around you.” He waved his hand around to indicate the black stumps of buildings, the new VNM growth bursting forth from the tops of the broken walls, like teeth from gums. “DIANA is dead as a commercial organization, but
something
is born anew. Life springs forth from death.”
    Bairn shook her head. “The cat doesn’t have to eat meat. It could be fed a vegan diet. It wouldn’t know the difference.”
    Kevin gently patted her hand. “It’s feral, Bairn. Look at it. Am I to spend my time rescuing birds until this cat dies of starvation?”
    As he spoke the cat pounced, one tabby paw pushing the bird’s head down onto the ground, the other slicing through feathers to the flesh underneath in one fluid movement. There was a brief fluttering, then, stillness.
    Bairn looked away, and Kevin continued in his deep, matter-of-fact voice. The terms he used were anachronisms. “It’s basic economics, Bairn. Where there is limited supply, a decision has to be made on how resources are to be distributed. Sometimes that decision must be to simply let nature take its course.”
    Bairn stood up, a pale morning sky showing above the blackened edges of the living building around her. She felt sick.
    “Food is not in limited supply,” she said.
    Kevin smiled tolerantly up at her and then slowly, deliberately, rose up so that he towered over her. He looked down into her eyes; there was an edge of amusement to the low rumble of his voice.
    “I wasn’t talking about food. I was talking about lifestyle.”
    He paused, glanced down at the console on his wrist.
    “Ah, and speaking of lifestyles, I see that our black-and-white friend has located yet another of our lifestyle zones.”
    Bairn looked at Kevin questioningly. “She seems to pop up everywhere lately,” she said carefully.
    Kevin smiled. “True, true—still, the processing space she has so rudely invaded is now sealed off completely. It is being shut down even as we speak. In five minutes time may well have reduced our Judy problem by ninety percent.” He brushed a black strand of hair from Bairn’s brow. “That could turn out to be a shame, really.”
             
    The EA ran several public processing spaces that supposedly replicated atomic space exactly. Those who still spoke out for digital rights claimed that this was a subtle form of discrimination. There was only one atomic world, and its uniqueness placed it in a favored position. Those who inhabited it could claim they were unique themselves, that their digital copies were therefore in some way inferior. It was a view that the atomic Judy secretly subscribed to. Well, it wasn’t much of a secret, not when she and the twelve digital Judys shared the same memories up to the point of
their
separation into the digital world.
    Out in the unique world of atoms, the atomic Judy dreamed that her bedroom was falling towards Earth. The first bright flicker of plasma haze could be seen through the window and, in her dream, she realized with heart-pounding horror that somehow she had got her dates wrong and had stayed on in the apartment a night too long. The floor was