Quarantine

by Greg Egan

It's just after midnight when I get back to the flat. Karen says, 'Tell me: are you in love? Or have you got religion?'

  I send her away.

  Lying in the dark, though, I can't help trying to think it all through one more time:

  Loyalty mods are obscene - but the Ensemble is doing important work, they had to protect themselves, and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

  Why do I think that their work is important, when I don't even know what it is? Because of the loyalty mod, of course.

  Knowing that my feelings have been physically imposed makes them no less powerful. Part of me finds this paradoxical, part of me finds it obvious. I can

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  contemplate this contradiction until it drives me mad - or begins to seem utterly mundane - but there's nothing I can do to change it.

  And I don't believe I'll go mad. I've lived with P3. I've lived with Karen. I've never had a mod forced on me, but the principle is the same. Deep down, I must have swallowed the fact, long ago, that my emotions, my desires, my values, are the most anatomical of things. On that level, there are no paradoxes, no contradictions, no problems at all. The meat in my skull has been rearranged; that explains everything.

  And in the world of desires and values? I want to serve the Ensemble, more than I've ever wanted anything before. All I have to do is find a way to reconcile this with my sense of who I am.

  Huang returns in the morning, to help me get organized. With BDI as my sponsors, immigration is a mere formality. I arrange for removalists to pack and ship the contents of my flat in Perth. It takes only seconds to alter the nationality of my bank accounts, and the primary physical address of my communications number.

  My client is due to call me on the twelfth, for a fortnightly status report. I load The Night Switchboard with a message - to be triggered by the password which was allocated at our first contact (and which the mod knows, but I don't) - stating that I've dropped the case for reasons of ill health, and requesting an account number to which I can refund my fee.

  As I tidy up each loose end from my old life, it grows clear how much more sense it makes to have recruited me, rather than killing me. This way, there is no corpse to be disposed of, no data trail to be erased, no police investigation to be led astray. The only deception required consists of a few white lies - and what more could anyone hope for in the perfect crime than the victim's sincere collaboration?

  In the afternoon, Huang shows me around BDI.

  There are about a hundred employees, mostly scientists

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  and technicians, but only a small part of the organization's structure is explained to me. Chen Ya-ping (the woman who interrogated me) is in charge of security, but she also has administrative and scientific duties; her official title is Support Services Manager. She questions me again - with no gun at my head, this time - and seems disappointed that my story is virtually unchanged. All I can confess to having lied about is my speculation on the reasons behind the kidnapping - and when I describe the two theories I previously kept to myself, she gives no indication of how close I might be to the truth. I swallow my disappointment; the Ensemble is everything to me, and I want to know everything about them -but I understand that I'm going to have to earn their trust, loyalty mod notwithstanding.

  Later, she shows me some glossy promotional material for state-of-the-art upgrades which will supposedly chameleon-proof their security system. I break the news, as tactfully as I can, that the latest model chameleons, due for release at the end of the month, will render any such expensive improvements obsolete. And although I can't offer to put her directly on the chameleon makers' advertising list - they vet applicants very thoroughly - I promise to pass on all further information as it reaches me.

  Security itself is just four people, all of whom I've met before. Besides Huang Qing, there's Lee Soh Lung (who drugged me in the basement), and Yang Wenli and Liu Hua (who guarded me in my flat). Lee, the most senior, is responsible for the details of day-to-day operations; she formally explains the job to me. There are always two guards on duty, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; with five of us now, each shift is to be nine hours and thirty-six minutes. I'm rostered from 19:12 to 04:48, starting tonight.

  In the early evening, I call my parents, who are travelling in Europe; I catch them in Potsdam. They seem relieved that I've finally taken up stable employment. As for moving north, well, why not? 'NHK is full of

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  opportunities, isn't it?' says my mother, vaguely. Germany, they tell me, is becoming unpleasant - the Saxony Independence Front is blowing up trains again.

  Huang is on duty with me until midnight. I spend the shift primed; my four colleagues all have Sentinel, which is basically a commercial equivalent of P3. (I pry no further; curious as I am, I assume it would be indelicate to ask if anyone else has loyalty mods.) Apart from random patrols through the building and grounds - stepped up, says Huang, since my incursion - there's little for us to do; even the images from the surveillance cameras are monitored by software. Our presence is far from redundant -no computer alone could have kept me from fleeing the building with Laura that night - but being potentially indispensable does nothing to keep you busy. We pass the time when we're not patrolling by playing cards or chess; there's no need for this, since our mods preclude boredom, but Huang - fifteen years younger than me - has some old-fashioned ideas. 'You're more alert if you're doing something. Besides, spending half your life in a stake-out trance is like living half as long.'

  Other staff work at night, but we don't have much contact with them. I was right about one thing: Laura's room is monitored separately, and members of the team studying her are on duty round the clock. They have half a floor to themselves, packed with computing equipment. A few people greet Huang as we walk through, but most ignore us. I glance at the workstation screens; some show neural maps, some are densely covered with formulae; one shows a schematic of the basement room - briefly, before the user flicks to another task. I start wondering how things would have turned out, if Culex had caught that image - but there's no point thinking about it.

  At midnight, Lee takes Huang's place. She's taciturn by comparison, and P3 responds by pushing me further into stake-out mode. I don't lose track of the passage of time; it just doesn't touch me. When Yang arrives to take over from me, I'm not surprised, or relieved; I don't feel anything at all.

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  I deprime on my way to the station. As P3's constraints dissolve, I'm momentarily disoriented, and I pause to take in my surroundings: the empty, twisted street; the squat, concrete labs and factories; the grey pre-dawn sky. The air is cool and sweet. I find myself trembling with joy.

  My client calls on the twelfth, as expected, but leaves no message in reply; perhaps he or she is too paranoid to want the money returned, for fear of the transaction being traced - even if the risk is only marginally greater than that involved in paying me in the first place.

  My furniture arrives. My residency status is confirmed. In my free time, I begin to explore the city - with Deja Vu's map to guide me, but the tourist spiel disabled. I'm not interested in seeking out temples or museums; I pick a direction at random, and wander past apartment blocks and office towers, department stores and flea markets. The heat and the crowds remain oppressive, and the monsoon rain always seems to catch me unprepared - but I start to feel like I'm cursing the weather out of familiarity, rather than a mere failure to acclimatize.

  Huang Qing lives a couple of kilometres to the west of me, sharing a flat with his girlfriend, Teo Chu, a sound engineer and musician. They invite me over one morning, and we listen to Chu's latest ROM - hypnotically beautiful, full of strange, broken rhythms, sudden sweeping ascents of pitch, measured silences. She tells me the work was inspired by traditional Cambodian music.

  Both came here as refugees, but neither are from old Hong Kong. Huang was born in Taiwan. Nearly all of his family had been in the Nationalist government's civil service; eleven years afte
r the invasion, they were still barred from most jobs. Huang was five when they came south. Pirates boarded the ship; several people were killed. 'We were lucky,' he says. 'They stole the navigation equipment, and wrecked the engines, but they didn't find all the fresh water. A few days later, we ran into a patrol boat off Mindanao, and they towed us in for

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  repairs. The Philippines were anti-PRC back then; we were treated like heroes.'

  Chu was born in Singapore. Her mother, a journalist, has been in prison there for the past eight years; nobody's ever told her precisely why. Chu was at university in Seoul when the arrest took place. She hasn't been allowed back into Singapore since. She has no father; she was conceived parthenogenetically. She sends money to her grandparents for her mother's legal battle, but so far, every eighteen months like clockwork, the courts have renewed the detention order.

  I doubt that Chu knows that BDI is involved in kidnapping, so I discuss my own route to NHK circumspectly. Huang stares at the carpet while I spin out a mundane lie about my six years as a prison officer, before being retrenched in the RehabCorp takeover. Without Sentinel, he often seems ill at ease in my presence, which is understandable: I'm quite sure, now, that he doesn't have the loyalty mod, and he wouldn't be human if he didn't find my devotion to the Ensemble a little unsettling - knowing its cause, but not knowing, as I do, just how right it is. I'm fairly certain, too, that he's been instructed to befriend me, which must make things even harder for him.

  In the weeks that follow, my new life begins to seem less and less extraordinary. My curiosity about Laura - and the Ensemble's work in general - doesn't fade, but I have to accept that my ignorance is in the Ensemble's best interest. Even so, I wish I could contribute more than spending nine-and-a-half hours a day as a zombie night-watchman. I don't even know who we're supposed to be guarding BDI against - surely I was the only person on the planet seriously looking for Laura? Even if my ex-client has hired someone new, it's unlikely that my successor would have as much luck as I did; the pharmaceutical-purchases trail has been erased. So, who isthe enemy?

  I soon learn not to invoke Karen; her sarcastic comments only make me angry and confused. I try to take control, to fantasize her happily sharing this life with me,

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  but it seems that my memories can only be twisted so far; I literally can't imagine her approving of what I've become. Even without using the mod, though, I find myself dreaming of her; I wake from nightmares of heresy, with the force - if not the sense - of her diatribe pounding in my skull. I intruct Boss to keep her from my dreams. It hurts to be without her, but the Ensemble gives me strength.

  Every now and then - as I try to psych myself into choosing sleep in the noise and heat of the morning - I unwrap the contradiction that lies at the heart of who I am, and I stare at it one more time. It never fades, it never changes. I understand, as clearly as ever, that I 'should' be horrified by my fate - and I know that, in all honesty, I'm not. I don't feel trapped. I don't feel violated. I understand that my contentment is bizarre, irrational, inconsistent - but then, my reasons for happiness in the past were never exactly founded on an elaborate logical position, a carefully formulated philosophy.

  There are times when I'm dispirited, lonely, perplexed; the loyalty mod doesn't bliss me out - it doesn't intervene, directly, in my moods at all. I listen to music, I watch HV -there's no shortage of anaesthetic.

  In the end, though, when the sweetest music fades, when the most diverting image disintegrates, there's nothing left to do but look inside myself and ask what it is that I'm living for. And I have an answer, like never before.

  I'm serving the Ensemble.

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  6

  When Chen Ya-ping summons me to her office for the first time in six months, I can't help being nervous. My daily routine has become so ingrained that merely riding the familiar underground line at an unfamiliar time leaves me ill at ease. I scour my conscience for failures in my duty to the Ensemble, and find so many that I can hardly believe that I've been allowed to go unpunished for so long. So what will it be? A reprimand? Demotion? Dimissal?

  Chen is curt. 'You're being moved to a new job. On other premises. You'll be helping to guard one of the volunteers.'

  Volunteers? For a moment, I wonder if this is a euphemism - if there are more brain-damaged abductees like Laura on their way - but then Chen shows me a picture of Chung Po-kwai, taken at a university graduation ceremony, and it's clear that the word means something else entirely.

  'You'll be working at a place called ASR - Advanced Systems Research. Not everyone there is familiar with our side of things, and there are good reasons for that; it's in the best interests of the Ensemble as a whole that the project remains . . . partitioned. So under no circumstances are you to discuss BDI, or anything you've learnt here, with anyone at ASR. Nor are you to discuss ASR's work with any of the staff here, other than myself. Is that clear?'

  'Yes.'

  And I realize, with an almost dizzying rush, that I'm not being punished, or even just shuffled sideways. This is a position of trust. I'm being promoted.

  Why me? Why not Lee Soh Lung? Why not Huang Qing?

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  The loyalty mod, of course. I'm unworthy - but the mod redeems me. 'Do you have any questions?' 'What exactly will I be guarding Ms Chung against?' Chen hesitates, then says drily, 'Contingencies.'

  I resign from BDI. Chen provides me with a glowing reference, and the number of an employment agency specializing in security staff. I call them; they happen to have a position on their files which would suit me perfectly. They interview me by videophone; I upload my reference and CV. Forty-eight hours later, I'm hired.

  Advanced Systems Research occupies a jet-black tower with a facade like crumbling charcoal, wrapped in a five-metre layer of microfine silver cobwebs - all but invisible, except for the dazzling points of light where the burnished strands reflect the sun. The ostentatious architecture worries me at first, as if it somehow invites scrutiny, but that's absurd; in this part of the city, anything less would be out of place. In any case, it may be that ASR has nothing to fear from scrutiny; they have no formal links with BDI, and for all I know, they may not be directly involved in anything illegal whatsoever.

  The security leaves BDI for dead. There are guards stationed on every level, and access control as tight as that of most prisons. Chung Po-kwai and the other volunteers are housed in apartments on the thirtieth floor. Personal bodyguards on top of everything else seems like overkill, but there has to be a reason - and this reminder that the Ensemble must have enemies fills me with a sense of rage, and a determination to carry out my responsibilities with the utmost diligence. Primed, of course, I feel no anger, but the priorities set by my outer self endure.

  Tong Hoi-man, the Security Manager, briefs me on my duties, and arranges for some new mods which I'll need, to enable me to interface with ASR's elaborate security protocols. I'll be working twelve-hour shifts, six p.m. to six a.m. Ms Chung's schedule will vary; sometimes she'll

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  be in the labs until late in the evening, sometimes she'll spend a day or two resting. She'll remain within the building at all times, though - simplifying my job immensely.

  The day before I'm due to start, I'm nervous but elated. I'm moving one step closer to the mystery at the heart of the Ensemble. Perhaps it's arrogant to think that I'll ever be trusted with the whole truth - but Chen knows the whole truth, doesn't she? And Chen has no loyalty mod, I'm sure of that.

  Hesitantly, I dredge up my old theories about Laura's abduction. After months of letting my image of the Ensemble grow more and more abstract, it's a little unsettling to start imagining concrete, specific, mundane possibilities. But what am I afraid of? That the truth will somehow devalue the ideal? I know that's impossible. Whatever it is the Ensemble is doing, however worldly it might seem, it will still be their work - and by virtue of that, the most important activity on the planet.

  Most of m
y original ideas now seem absurd. I can't believe that an international, multidisciplinary research group.was created solely to investigate the congenital brain damage caused by some obscure pharmaceutical. Even if the manufacturer's potential liability ran into the billions, it's hard to see why they'd sink a comparable amount into merely studying the problem, when there'd be cheaper, and more reliable, ways of sabotaging prospective litigation.

  Only one theory still makes any sense at all: Laura the escapologist. And if I still can't imagine how her hypothetical talent might work, I might just have to swallow the fact that I'm too stupid to figure it out. She escaped from the Hilgemann. She escaped from the inner room in the basement. There are alternative explanations, but they're all massively contrived. What do I think happened, the night I broke into BDI? Someone accidentally left the door unlocked, and she wandered out, locking it behind her? Given the lock's design, to do that without a key would have been as much of a feat as breaking out.

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  One thing's clear: if there is such a thing as telekinesis, then investigating and exploiting that could be a project worthy of an alliance on the scale of the Ensemble.

  And if BDI have succeeded in capturing Laura's skills in a mod? Then that mod will need to be tested.

  By volunteers.

  Up. Down. Up. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Down. Down. Up. Down. Up. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Up.'

  The voice that fills Room 619 is calm and even, but almost certainly human; for all the anthropomorphic embellishments added to speech systems lately, I've yet to hear a scientific instrument grow hoarse from overuse.

  The room is crammed with rack-mounted modules of electronic equipment; a fibre-optic control bus snakes from box to box. Amidst all the clutter, there's an elderly woman seated at a central console, staring at a large screen covered in multicoloured histograms; two young men stand beside her, looking on. Meta-Dossier (Mind-vaults, $3,950) instantly identifies all three, from its list of authorized personnel: Leung Lai-shan, Lui Kiu-chung, Tse Yeung-hon. All to be addressed as Doctor. Dr Lui glances my way briefly, then turns back to the screen; his colleagues ignore me completely. Chung Po-kwai is nowhere to be seen but I presume it's her voice coming over the speaker.