Implied Spaces is a 2008 space opera novel by American author Walter Jon Williams. It explores themes of transhumanism, artificial intelligence and ontology.
Setting
Implied Spaces takes place approximately 1,500 to 2,000 years in the future. Humanity has entered a period of technological singularity fueled by a series of massive supercomputers orbiting the Sun (Dyson Sphere). These computers act as giant solar collectors and computational machine for running human society. While humanity numbers in the hundreds of billions, only perhaps a few million live in the solar system. Some have gone on slower than light journeys to establish colonies around other stars, such as Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and Epsilon Eridani, a colony lost after a stellar event known as "The Big Belch".
Most humans live in artificially created pocket universes. These universes are connected to our own via wormholes maintained on the dark side of the eleven supercomputers orbiting the Sun. These artificial universes can be designed to cater to individual populaces and some have different physical laws than our universe. These pocket universes include the technologically advanced world of Topaz, the medieval fantasy themed world of Midgarth, the hunter gatherer world Olduvia, and the aquatic paradise of Hawaiki, among many others.
Various advancements in biotechnology have effectively rendered mankind immortal. Humans no longer age normally, and even death has been overcome by means of resurrection facilities which will download a backed up copy of a personality and memories into a reformed body. Genetic manipulation has allowed people to obtain designer bodies with different, even nonhuman, features.
The sole dark spot seems to be the long dormant fear of an episode from the distant past: the Control Alt Delete War. In this first truly worldwide war, a revolutionary political faction known as the Seraphim used a bio-engineered virus to attack humanity. Rather than killing its victims, this virus rewrote their brains so that they were loyal to the Seraphim. As other groups discovered this new weapon they re-engineered it for their own purposes, including one version of the virus which created "zombies", people with an uncontrollable violent rage toward others. While this technology was ultimately suppressed and all but the oldest humans seem to have put it behind them, it remains as a black spot on an otherwise perfect society.
Plot
The plot begins with a man named Aristide, adventuring in the world of Midgarth. Midgarth was created as a medieval fantasy world and has physical laws which prevent artificial electrical charges or chemical reactions which occur fast enough to create a gun. Through genetic engineering it has been populated with various fantasy races such as orcs and trolls. Aristide is the current nom de guerre of Pablo Monagas Perez, one of the most important figures in human society. Over a thousand years ago Perez had been part of the team which created artificial intelligence, thus launching humanity along its path to paradise.
Accompanied by his cat Bitsy, who is really an avatar of the supercomputer Endora, he is now dedicated to studying the "implied spaces" of the human constructed pocket universes: the places which were created as the byproduct of desired features. While working in Midgarth, Aristide learns of a series of particularly successful bandits preying on a local trade route. They are apparently led by a band of mysterious priests and kidnap their victims, who are never seen again.
Aristide and a group of travelers confront these bandits. During the confrontation, Aristide discovers that the priests who lead the bandits are able to create wormholes which transport their opponents to an unknown location. Worried by the advanced technology that these priests have, he takes some of their remains to his friend and former lover Daljit to be analyzed. When it is determined that the priests were in fact "pod people", illegal artificial lifeforms, they become worried that someone is engaged in a plot to bring down civilization.
