Central Station

by Lavie Tidhar

Boris was in the ur-space. In the nulliverse. A profound darkness had settled over Boris. He floated in a space that had no dimensions, no Conversation. He flailed and fought but there was nothing to fight against. Where was he? What was he? Light gradually resolved. He found himself floating in solar space. There were stars everywhere. Ahead of him, rising before his eyes like an enormous mirage, was Saturn. The planet rose ahead like a magnificent flying saucer from an old film. The rings shone like diamonds. Boris heard a sound that wasn’t sound. Suddenly the Conversation washed over him, a full-torrent of feeds converging from everywhere, overwhelming his sensory capacity. He blinked and he was on Mars, walking through the streets of Tong Yun; he blinked and was in MarsThat-Never-Was, where the canals were filled with water and four-armed warriors walked in the grasslands with their giant animals; he blinked and was in the GoA in the midst of a guild war, giant impossible spacecraft hovering in game-space, firing laser cannons at each other; blinked and he was on Jettisoned, with wildtech scavengers picking at a dead mecha’s body, stripping it apart; blinked and he was outside the dome of Lunar Port watching Earthrise; blinked and he was in the humid urban sprawl of Polyport, on Titan, with the storms raging beyond the dome; blinked and he was everywhere at once, his mind split and skewered, blinked and—