Godlike Machines by Jonathan Strahan [Editor] Page A

minutes of each other, or there might be a ten hour wait before the next one. The window was tight—the Progress would have to begin its run within seconds of the window opening, if it had a chance of slipping through in time. I didn’t envy Galenka sitting there with her finger on the trigger, like a gunslinger waiting for her opponent to twitch.
    In the event, a useful window—one that she could reach, in the allowed time-opened within 40 minutes of our conversation. Looking over her shoulder at the screens, I could hardly make out any change in Shell 3. Only when the Progress was already committed-moving too quickly to stop or change course—did a glimmer of blue-green light reassure me that the window was indeed opening. Even then, it hardly seemed possible that the Progress would have time to pass through the winking eye.
    Of course, that was exactly what happened. Only a slight easing of the crease on the side of Galenka’s mouth indicated that she was, for now, breathing easier. We both knew that this triumph could well be very short-lived, since the Progress would now find it even more difficult to remain in contact with the Tereshkova. Since no man-made signal could penetrate Shell 3, comms could only squirt through when a window was open, in whatever direction that happened to be. The swarm of relay microsats placed around the Machine were intended to intercept these burst transmissions and relay them back to the Tereshkova. Its puppet-strings all but severed, the robotic spacecraft would be relying more and more on the autonomous decision-making of its onboard computers.
    I knew that the mission planners had subjected the Progress to every eventuality, ever scenario, they could dream up. I also knew that none of those planners seriously expected the secrets of the Matryoshka to bear the slightest resemblance to their imaginings. If it did, they’d be brutally disappointed.
    The rear-looking camera showed the window sealing behind the Progress. The inside surface of Shell 3 was as pitilessly dark as its outer skin, yet all else was aglow. I shivered with an almost religious ecstasy: soon the secrets revealed here would be in the hands of the entire human species, but for now—for a delicious and precious interval—the only two souls given this privilege were Galenka and I. No other thinking creature had seen this far.
    Beneath Shell 3 was another empty volume-Gap 3. Then there was another sphere. We were looking at the central 60 kilometers of the Matryoshka, three quarters of the way to whatever lay at its heart. Shell 4 looked nothing like the dark machinery we had already passed through. This was more like a prickly fruit, a nastily evolved bacterium or some fantastically complex coral formation. The surface of the sphere was barely visible, lost under a spiky, spiny accretion of spokes and barbs and twisted unicorn horns, pushing out into the otherwise empty band gap for many kilometers. There were lacy webs of matter bridging one spike to the next. There were muscular structures like the roots of enormous trees, winding and entwining around the bases of the largest outgrowths. It was all ablaze with blue-green light, like a glass sculpture lit from within. The light wavered and pulsed. Shell 3 did not look like something which had been designed and built, but rather something which had grown, wildly and unpredictably. It was wonderful and terrifying.
    Then the signal ended. The Progress was on its own now, relying on its hardwired wits.
    “You did well,” I told Galenka.
    She said nothing. She was already asleep. Her head did not loll in zero gravity, her jaw did not droop open, but her eyes were closed and her hand had slackened on the joystick. Only then did I realise how utterly exhausted she must have been. But I imagined her dreams were peaceful ones.
    She had not failed the mission. She had not failed Mother Russia and the Second Soviet.
    I left her sleeping, then spent two hours attending to