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Fermi Packet
by Jason Stoddard
When Sponsorship caught up with Gates/Torvalds, humanity's only semi-God was enjoying a perfect, rainless day in his Seattle compound. He was lying out on a large redwood deck with drink in hand, watching perfect puffy white clouds crawl slowly across the sky, like a herd of impossible rabbits. Not the most imaginative environment, he knew, but he had long since lost the desire to do much more with the underpinnings of his creation. A few hundred years ago, he would have been at a millenium rave, or an 80s trade show, or a Philippine disco circa 2010, taking in every mind-altering substance available, indulging in every pleasure. There were always plenty of partners to be had, because they all knew Gates/Torvalds. But that was the problem. They knew him. And in their eyes he saw the reflection of himself, patched-together and incomplete, yet all-powerful, like an old-style atomic bomb that could walk and talk and fuck. Of course, Gates/Torvalds could blast away his memories and forget for a moment who he was, but one of the rules of the Virtuality was that memories were magnetic. They accrete. Soon enough, they would find their way back to him. And Gates/Torvalds would be who he was again, two things that were both more and less than human.
The ground trembled.
Gates/Torvalds stirred and set down his drink. The pines still smelled as sweet, the wind was still as cool, the view of the Cascades from his deck just as breathtaking. But something was wrong.
The ground heaved and buckled. Gates/Torvalds felt the deck crumbling under him. He struggled to his feet and caught a glimpse of fissures opening, trees toppling, the entire wor