[ID]entity

by PJ Manney

  This wasn’t piracy.

  Major Tom studied the cycles of history through a transdiscipline called cliodynamics. The word was derived from “Clio,” the ancient Greek muse of history, and “dynamics,” describing change over time. Created by a group of interdisciplinary scientists, cliodynamics recognized that the data behind human history might resemble that of biological ecosystems, with similar patterns and rhythms that could be modeled mathematically. Instead of predators, it followed oligarchs. Instead of prey, it tracked the poor and dispossessed. Like animal ecosystems, humans reacted predictably to famine, disease, overpopulation, too many predators, and threats from outside the system. In two– to three hundred–year cycles, cultures went through a period of general prosperity, feast, and peace, and then plunged into economic inequality, famine, and war. Every forty to sixty years, cycles of social imbalance and violence could appear and intersect with the larger cycles, causing a convergence of crises and a potential cataclysm for the empire or empires involved. It was a constant, like the metronomic beat of humanity’s heart.

  When the hard choices at the trough of the cycle were presented to both leaders and followers, it was the make-or-break moment of a civilization. Sometimes humanity chose badly, leading to the Dark Ages or fascism. Sometimes it chose well, like the brief post-WWII period of Pax Americana and global prosperity. It was clear to Major Tom and his fellow analysts that the world was in a special and dangerous time. Metrics indicated that the future of humanity was about to turn upside down again, unless correct decisions were made to protect the most people possible. Unfortunately, all those cycles could instead sync in one global collapse.

  The world was fragmenting. Some empires had fallen apart; others were on the move. All the former certainties—money supply, employment, national security, citizenship—were up for grabs. And more change was coming.

  Major Tom was afraid. Afraid of what had happened to Dr. Who. Afraid of how delicate civilization was. Afraid of the bigger cycles happening around the world, out of everyone’s control. But he wasn’t sure what a brain in a tin can could do about it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Major Tom received a message from his best friend and intellectual partner, Dr. Ruth Chaikin: What about SOS from Dr. Who? The Doctor had sent it to Ruth, too.

  He took his time to respond.

  Time had a different meaning for Major Tom. The power of a computer or network determined how fast it could complete operations. Computers ran on their own time frames. So for a large and fast system like Major Tom’s, a message from a human was laborious. He felt all of humanity was too slow. He could dart from a detailed climate-change analysis to correcting engineering schematics to the latest puppy photo in the pause of a human heartbeat. Communications were deliberate, especially with Ruth, with whom he spent the most time. Responses from his correspondents took what felt like days, weeks, even months. But to the human, his message back could appear immediate.

  He often grew frustrated with humans, so he turned to the others inside his own consciousness. After his upload, Dr. Who had made him a gift so he and his fellow uploads wouldn’t go crazy. It was the basic layout of the Memory Palace. Based on the ancient Greek and Roman method-of-loci memory technique, it gave a physicalized yet still virtual location for all the entities’ memories to inhabit. In the early days, the more complete mentalities, like Tom or Carter Potsdam or Josiah Brant, hogged the virtual space, choking the energy to the more limited mentalities of Chang Eng, Bruce Lobo, and Anthony Dulles.

  To preserve the inhabitants’ sanity, Major Tom gave them their own compartmentalized spaces to function in privacy, and he separated personalities that hated one another. They were no threat in isolation and rarely operated, unless he called on them. Except for Carter, their entities were too incomplete for complex thoughts. He might ask them for advice, but they were hobbled creations, fragments of their original brain patterns.

  Major Tom’s Memory Palace avatar, Tom, walked into the foyer. The image he chose for himself was simple: Peter Bernhardt, before 10/26, when all his troubles began. Shoulder-length chestnut hair, azure-blue eyes, six foot, and broad shouldered, wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, and biker boots. He liked to remind them that the “him” they had destroyed was still somewhere. Before him appeared six large, arched wooden doors ringing a circular vestibule.

  He knocked on Anthony Dulles’s door. “Dulles? Permission to come aboard?”

  Manners were important in relationships that might last for eternity. He felt obligated to behave, listen, and treat his palacemates with respect.

  “Ahoy!” yelled Dulles from the other side. Tom entered the galley of a thirty-foot Alberg racer-cruiser sailboat, the American Dream ∞. Many decades old, with a fiberglass hull adorned with teak that could have used a good refinishing, the boat was once Dulles’s own, given its details from his memory. It was nothing like his superyacht, the American Dream II, which had exploded off the California coast with Dulles on board. This smaller craft provided enough space and detail for Dulles’s limited mentality to manage. Variable winds, enough chop in the water to keep it interesting, and a blue sky scattered with cumulus clouds that went on forever. This was how Dulles, the old DC and Phoenix Club veteran, chose to define the hereafter.

  Tom climbed the wooden ladder out of the galley and into open air. “Beautiful day, Anthony,” he said, his voice resonant with the bourbon-and-cigarettes growl that lifesaving intubations had given to Peter Bernhardt. Tom had sampled that voice for vocal reproduction before he died.

  “Always is. Pull and cleat that sheet, will you? I’m coming around,” said Dulles.

  “Sure.” Tom did as he was told. The old-fashioned ship’s wheel always reminded him of both the eight primary directions of a compass and the Buddhist dharma wheel: eight spokes for the Eightfold Path, the eight necessary behaviors leading to enlightenment. Dulles’s karma was to repeat the same soothing sail, regardless of direction, and never get to land. Or enlightenment. No Nirvana for him. Or for any of them.

  Tom and Dulles tacked the vessel. Wind rustled the sandy hair of the former spy’s thirty-five-year-old self. Tom had seen him in life as a distinguished elder statesman but found it revealing that Dulles chose to live as a young, virile spy in the midst of learning his craft. Tall and handsome, his nimble coordination honed playing lacrosse in prep school and the Ivy League, this was a man once recruited to do whatever his country demanded, legal or not.

  “Something troubling you, son?” said Dulles.

  “There’s a problem. Dr. Who sent an SOS.” Tom sat on the windward gunnel and forwarded all the information he had so far received. He wiped his hand along the sun-worn gunnel, gritty with salt, a nice detail from the spy’s memory.

  Dulles spent a microsecond scanning the data as he laid a course to some meaningless island forever in the distance. “You wonder whether you should rush to save her and see who’s behind it? Or not?”

  “Yes,” said Tom.

  “You have reciprocal loyalty, and that’s valuable. She did you many good turns, beyond what you paid for years ago. If it were me, I’d examine all the money flowing in and out, to her, her clients, her clients’ clients, and so forth. It’s amazing how easy it is to see a big picture with money.” Dulles had run money-laundering operations for the CIA and the Phoenix Club. That’s how he knew the club had horrible plans for the United States, without being directly involved with Josiah, Bruce, or Carter.

  He made a small course correction. “Yes. Money tells the truth. People? Never. Problem is, most are too lazy to follow all the leads to the whole picture. But I think you’ll do fine.”

  “Well, Dr. Who’s final client seemed to be her undoing. I’ll find the rest.”

  “That was easy,” said Dulles. “Now you must weigh the evidence and decide: Is helping her good for you? And is it good for the country? Don’t regret this decision later or ask your Maker’s forgiveness like I did. It never comes. That’s all I’ll say.”


  “There’s no United States left,” said Tom. “It’s all fragmented now. You know that, right?”

  Dulles lifted his jaw and stared at the horizon. “I don’t believe it.”

  Tom stood. “Thank you for your advice, Anthony. I hope I did right by you. This isn’t exactly hell, is it?”

  The spy closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath of the pungent sea air, and smiled. “Isn’t it?”

  Chastened, Tom retreated through the galley and stood in the foyer, considering the other doors. Chang Eng and Bruce Lobo were too limited and would be no help with this question. Josiah Brant still considered Dr. Who an enemy.

  He knocked on Carter’s door.

  Carter was not like the others. His uploaded consciousness was almost as complete as Tom’s own. Tom had forgiven his longtime friend and part-time enemy before Carter had died and was absorbed into Tom’s brain. He talked to Carter often in the Memory Palace. Charmingly, Carter still called him Pete. But lately, Carter had balked.

  Look, Pete, you know I love you like a brother, but I can’t be with you all the time. Eternity is fucking long. Please leave me alone unless I send an engraved invitation.

  Tom felt it was only fair to do so. Nothing Carter had ever done or said inside the entity had made him doubt his choice, but he needed help. Tom knocked again.

  “What?” Carter snapped.

  “I need you,” said Tom.

  “Why didn’t you say that years ago?” Carter’s voice teased behind the door. “Come in, my dear.”

  Carter changed his environment regularly. It had been a Saxon castle preparing for a Norman raid. It had been the French court of Louis XIV, with Carter starring as the Sun King. This time, Tom stepped into the front hall of an antebellum plantation. He could see straight through to a back door that would lead to cotton fields. Out the front door, an alley of Southern oaks, heavy with Spanish moss, shimmered in the hazy air. But Tom wasn’t perspiring. Apparently, Carter didn’t think feeling the discomfort was necessary to embrace the atmosphere.

  Inside, the house was a magnificent and meticulous reproduction of the height of the nineteenth-century Southern gentry, with an occasional piece of cutting-edge contemporary art on the wall. Over the fireplace at the moment was a monumental piece Carter would describe as “I can’t do that,” which meant he thought it worthy of study. This broad category was derived from the famous Gruendemann maxim of the three schools of art: 1) “I can’t do that.” 2) “I can do that.” 3) “My pet chimp Bobo can do that.”

  Tom looked down the central hall and out the back door into the fields. Black men and women worked picking cotton, singing work songs, and smiling as if to ameliorate the reality of imprisonment and cruelty. Tom felt sick.

  Carter paused on the second-floor landing for effect, then descended the curved stairs, a dandified version of a wealthy plantation owner of 1860. His clothing’s combination of colors and patterns was more vibrant and avant-garde than the Georgian gentry would have attempted. He chose the version of himself from the age he had died—thirty-seven—as his avatar. Carter had been at the height of his powers and charisma then, and he knew it. At the bottom of the stairs, he opened his arms expansively and asked, “Well? Fabulous or fail?”

  “Slaves?” said Tom, pointing out the back door. “Are you kidding me?”

  “For Pete’s sake, Pete, they’re not real. They’re atmosphere. I’m having a Scarlett O’Hara moment.” He looked down at his outfit. “Maybe Ashley Wilkes, with better taste. And don’t roll your eyes. What else do I have to do here?”

  Tom got to the point. “Dr. Who’s been kidnapped. Possibly killed.”

  Carter looked surprised as he reviewed the data. “Too bad. She was a good egg. But what do you think we can do, beyond our usual voyeurism? It’s not like we have real superpowers. Just some half-assed digital immortality.”

  Tom must have projected disappointment. Carter shrugged. “My dearest Pete, we’re just a sad simulacrum of something long gone. Like my plantation.”

  “You’re right. I don’t know what I expected.” Tom turned to sit in an intricately carved nineteenth-century Victorian Rococo Revival sofa covered in a rich golden-yellow damask. He looked at it closely. He could have run an image search, but it was easier to ask and might spur Carter to more conversation. “This is familiar.”

  Carter sat gracefully on a matching sofa opposite Tom. “Made by John Henry Belter. From the White House Lincoln Bedroom. Have to copy the good stuff. Even digital renderings should have standards. Otherwise, we’re barbarians.”

  Tom never thought to do this himself. While always curious, he never brought his interests home. As usual, Carter made him feel inadequate. Even as digital entities, that was still their dynamic.

  “You could live anywhere,” said Tom. “At any time. Or create a place unique to you. Why this?”

  Carter looked around. “History comforts me.” He nodded toward the back door. “Even if it seems distasteful. I’ve stewed in an aristocratic pot all my life. It’s who I am.”

  “You still care about the country? Or what’s left of it, after all that’s happened?”

  Carter looked surprised. “Of course. I know you were born in a manger, but don’t you? It’s still the greatest social experiment the world’s ever known. As former scientists, we should appreciate experiments.” He winked.

  Tom shifted uncomfortably and bounced. The stiff sofa had old springs, cotton batting, and horsehair internal upholstery. The detail was impressive. “But the experiment is over.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “The government and the club . . . ”

  Carter laughed. “You think you destroyed the country? You saved us from ourselves. Good job there, my dear. We’ll be right back where we need to be. Someday.” A glass of scotch appeared in his hands.

  Tom wondered if a part of Carter’s digital mind was not able to grasp reality. He thought of Anthony Dulles on his never-ending sail. “I’ve done all right by you, haven’t I?”

  “Who’s ‘I’? And who’s me, for that matter?” teased Carter.

  “Come on. Be serious.”

  Carter smiled benevolently. “Considering our illustrious past? I’d say you did okay. More than I’d have done.” He sipped his virtual scotch. “You know what gets me after all this time here? I can remember drinking the best scotch whiskies in the world—some of them with you!—and can replicate that taste memory. But after a while . . . it’s boring. You didn’t factor in the human craving for novelty when you all built this. Our memories and influences are finite, but even human-like entities need novelty. It’s why I change my space so often. Maybe better to be out in the world, for all its sorrows, than an eternity of this.”

  “We can’t be in the world,” said Tom. “Look what we did last time. Can you imagine what we might be capable of now?”

  “Oh, I can imagine,” said Carter.

  There was a flicker, the briefest hint of malice on Carter’s face. Tom might have missed it if he didn’t have perfect recall. It was covetous. Eager. Grasping. Knowing.

  Tom wasn’t sure why, but he was suddenly afraid.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Instead of just sending a text or verbal message, Major Tom’s avatar appeared in Ruth’s computer monitor and answered her back. Face-to-face dialogues were best for humans. It was 0.58 seconds after she had sent her message. “We’re monitoring the situation. Nothing to do right now.”

  “Sovereign’s two days away. Under full power. We can see for ourselves,” said Ruth.

  “These guys are pros. By the time we get there, there’ll be nothing left to see. And no communications we can find. We can’t chase the sub without endangering you and everyone on board. There’s nothing to do right now, except collect data.”

  For Major Tom, her brief pause of disappointment was a long wait.

  “Keshure,” was all she said.

  But she didn’t sound “okay.” He viewed her through the cameras on
the bridge of their home, the former USS Zumwalt.

  Ruth managed the Major Tom operating system and program aboard the ship, a decommissioned stealth-guided missile destroyer bought from a disgusted American admiral when he realized his beloved US Navy had fragmented into regional and state forces. Like the Russian admirals and generals after the fall of the Soviet Union, he sold extraneous vehicles and munitions to the highest bidder—within reason, of course. Unlike his Russian counterparts, he refused to sell nukes or chemical weapons. Few could bid higher than Ruth, with their stolen Phoenix Club money. And so minus the guided nuclear missiles, the Zumwalt became their home. They automated the navigation systems so Ruth could sail it single-handedly if necessary. With the world fracturing, staying relatively undetectable at sea was a great advantage. Right now, they were located 38.744699 N, 130.303043 W, more than 250 miles off the Northern Californian coast.

  It was a strange place for Ruth and Major Tom to call home, maybe the strangest in the history of naval shipbuilding. There were no windows on the bridge, which was two stories tall and completely enclosed. The Zumwalt relied on data analysis of its environment to control the complex ship. It was the closest thing to a spaceship on earth, bound only by gravity and the ocean’s currents. There were a dozen desks with old-fashioned three-screen wraparound monitors. Another ten desks fit inside half domes, set on their sides, ten feet in diameter. Within the dome’s periphery, Ruth could watch a 3-D presentation of 180 degrees of space in any direction, in real time, with depth perception. It was a better visual tool than the mixed reality goggles everyone wore and equal to virtual retina projection affordable only to the rich, a system designed to make the drone pilots feel like they were the drone, flying through real space.

  But Ruth preferred to have a traditional monitor console all to herself, and to be left alone by the ship’s skeleton crew. A Zumwalt-class destroyer once needed a minimum of 130 crewmen to run her, but Major Tom and Ruth’s improved automation and nonmilitary goals reduced that number to fifteen men and women who provided the hands, feet, and autonomy that Major Tom lacked. They had been recommended by the admiral, and so far, they had proven loyal. Yet Ruth barely knew their names and had never made friends with any of them.