The Lord of the Sands of Time by Jim Hubbert Page A

Sayaka was real. Of that he was certain.
    “If you feel anything at all for me, let me share your suffering. And of course, your joy,” he said.
    With a tearful smile, Sayaka dried her eyes and murmured, “‘In sickness and in health.’ How long has it been since anyone said that?”
    She filled two glasses with wine and pushed one toward Orville. Her makeup was streaked with tears, but her smile was open and warm. She lifted her glass high. “All right. I’ll be your lover. We’ll share the good and the bad, fifty-fifty. But…let’s make it fun.”
    “Cheers,” said Orville.
    The clink of their glasses rose above the din of the bar.

    For the next four months, Orville loved a human female. Their days together were full of contentment—in the city, together at home, sometimes in a shuttle they’d take into orbit when they both had time. It was also a heady time for humanity, a golden age of the counteroffensive. Each day brought news of another ET nest destroyed, another colony reclaimed. Everyone threw their hearts into the work, every production facility ran flat out. The birthrate skyrocketed. Nurseries and schools rose one after another.
    Orville and Sayaka exchanged wry smiles whenever conversation turned to the merits of doing one’s bit for population growth. Messengers lacked the ability to reproduce. Even if Orville were fully functional, as it were, Sayaka’s position (officially, at least) was that she had no time to bear a child, yet. But to close friends she half-joked, “You don’t have to look nine months into the future to have fun in bed.”
    Though Orville never mentioned it to Sayaka, fertility was a topic of debate even among other Messengers. Opinion ran the gamut. Some wanted the ability to reproduce, some said it was not critical, others thought it should be forbidden. Alexandr believed in platonic relationships and emphasized the tie between soulmates. But when he dragged the concept of Original Sin into the discussion, Orville gave him a friendly warning: “No one doubts the nature of your relationship with Shumina. Just leave it at that.”
    On this point, Sandrocottos was unyielding. The ability to reproduce sexually was the critical distinction between humans and AIs. It was a line that must not be crossed.
    The importance of leaving descendants often came up when Orville and Sayaka discussed the value of resurgent humanity. For Sayaka, humanity meant not only the several hundred million people alive today. It meant a vast continuity, flowing from the past into the future—an ocean of more than five hundred billion individual lives. Orville liked that majestic image.
    Sayaka had been born aboard Pluto Convoy, at the height of humanity’s withdrawal to the far reaches of the solar system. Her mother had died in combat when Sayaka was small, and so she was raised by her historian father. As she moved with him from base to base, she developed an understanding of the flow of people and goods. When she reached adulthood and began searching for work, she realized her place was in the Supply Section.
    By nature, Sayaka yearned for a return to something bigger than just community. Orville surmised that this desire had crystallized when she was a young girl. She was inclined to agree. That, she said, was why it was important to hold on to that idea from her childhood and turn it into something nobler, something bigger.
    “These are strange days. A person can give their all to society, without a trace of misgiving.” Sayaka sprawled languidly across her bed beneath the skylight. “No worries about being duped into serving tyranny or corruption. The results, the effects of all our actions will be made clear to us. Armies of virtuous AIs, and an almost too perfectly despicable enemy, will rectify all our mistakes with mild punishment or a defeat so clear anyone will be able to recognize it. Even the most cynical person and the biggest anarchist can believe in the rightness of their