[ID]entity

by PJ Manney

Major Tom did a cursory search of her home computer. She was the talented virtual world artist who had created much of TCoMT. She made a good deal of money with her digital art and programming services. More than enough to pay for the sizable medical bills that gender reassignment entailed. But was she as clever as she appeared? He also found well-disguised partitions hiding information. And he was sure of a good deal of offsite storage, too. Her system was too clean for a sophisticated digital denizen.

  He looked around her room through her monitor and headset webcams. Her TCoMT avatar was an elegant version of the young woman lounging here on a queen-sized bed, dressed all in black: slouchy, shapeless sweater; long cotton skirt; comfy socks. Long, straight blonde hair that could badly use a trim. A narrow, gaunt face and a delicate, almost scarecrow-like build, her knees and elbows sticking out like raw turnips from her branch-like limbs.

  Veronika lay on her black-sheeted bed, sheltered by black walls and a white ceiling. Her screensaver rotated a series of images familiar to anyone who had kept up with the news in the last few years. Photos of Peter Bernhardt, the bioengineer and falsely accused terrorist, and his alter ego, Thomas Paine, the mysterious billionaire who had brought down the most powerful and dangerous men in America. The repeating loop ended with the same face from the Veronika’s Veil banner: an avatar representing Major Tom. Todd Rundgren’s “Born to Synthesize” reverberated through her room. She clearly knew the savior solved problems with music and thought a song about thinking might help.

  Since she had invited him into her mixed reality glasses and headphones, he appeared in them for their conversation. “Why an MR headset? You seem state-of-the-art enough for contacts and eardrum sensors. Even the new brainjack’s in alpha.”

  “Earwigs fall out. Like, the last pair I found on my pillow, knotted in my hair.” She made a cat gagging sound. “Retinal projection contacts are too limiting so far. More toys than tools. One scratched my cornea. And forget about Essensse’s brainjacks. Gotta wait for, like, version 4.0, at least, for wetware on the market now.”

  Essensse Labs was a small and practical brain-computer-interface firm that competed with Prometheus Industries in the research, development, production, and sale of nano-scaled prostheses for the brain. Their brainjacks were the first marketed attempt at a nontherapeutic brain-computer interface.

  “I’ve hacked these specs to include full haptic coordination and eyetracking,” continued Veronika, “voice and blink commands, gyro-recognition, and the full spectrum of language and perceptive input from any sensorium I link.”

  Her bragging and implicit criticism amused him. “Impressive. Room’s very goth,” he said.

  “Ha. Nope. Very you. Hello, darkness, baby.” She pointed to the black wall. “This is my frustratingly banal meat existence.” She pointed up. “And that is the purity and light of information. Where we can all, like, be together.”

  “Dramatic,” he said.

  “Fuck yeah.”

  He spied a hunk of half-melted and half-burnt fiberglass in a Plexiglas case on a shelf. He’d seen the ads last year. For $1,499.95, one could fondle a “relic” of Major Tom’s past: a piece of Anthony Dulles’s American Dream II that had exploded off the coast of California, not far from her house, when he was chased by the Phoenix Club. The ad claimed treasure hunters had scoured the bottom of the Pacific for the pieces that proved Major Tom’s story, then sold them when the man was hailed as a global hero.

  On another shelf, he found a crystal presentation vial, purporting to contain a tiny piece of biological tissue from Thomas Paine’s remains. “Your Own Piece of DNA History!” read the label. The flesh would have come from the Sacramento General Hospital morgue, where his body had been taken after his upload. Supposedly, morgue attendants had discovered his identity and taken more tissue samples than necessary. That would have cost her a lot of money.

  He knew the boat fragment was fake, but the tissue was real. She was a Major Tom fangirl. He had never met one in real life before.

  “Do you put the visions in my head?” he asked.

  “What visions? Do they softly creep?” She giggled, braiding her hair.

  It was difficult for Major Tom to gauge all her emotional tells with her eyes obscured by the mixed reality glasses. But she seemed quite relaxed. He also didn’t want to tip his hand or betray any technical vulnerability. The popular image he portrayed was smarter than he was, and he liked to keep it that way.

  “So will you rejoin the world and help us?” she asked.

  “Who’s ‘us’?” he asked.

  “Dr. Who,” she said. “And the Sovereign. And everyone depending on what they do.”

  “And who are you to them? And they to you?”

  Veronika sat up on the bed. “Look, I know what happened. And you do, too.”

  “What I know is of no use to you. Or me . . . ”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “Only the savior can fix this. You can’t live in silence. It’s like . . . a cancer. No one in TCoMT knows who or what you really are. They’re interpreting false messages.”

  “That’s your pitch? ‘The Sound of Silence’?”

  “No! I know who has Dr. Who. At least I think I do.” She picked at an acne scab on her face.

  “And that would be . . . ?”

  “This connection isn’t secure enough,” she said. “Somewhere more private.”

  “Where’s more private?” he asked.

  “Please,” said Veronika. “I can’t tell you yet. But I can soon!”

  “We’re done here. Good luck on your adventures.” He cut off the private communication, and they found themselves back on the cobblestone street in TCoMT.

  Her furious avatar tilted her tear-streaked face up at a streetlight and screamed, then turned away to a neon sign on an alley wall. It read, The words of the prophets are written nowhere and are read by no one.

  He hadn’t written that. And he wasn’t sure if she had.

  The thing he was afraid of had happened.

  He knew one thing. He was supposed to come out and fix it. Whatever “it” was. For everyone. And he didn’t want to.

  There was a part of his personal statement he had never made public. Even though he thought of himself as the creator of the changes in the world, it posed problems:

  But the world’s people did not see me as their parent. They blamed me. Or worshiped me. Or forgot me. And I, them. I forgave my enemies their will to power and status. But it’s hard to forgive yourself. When you have such powerful technologies delivering the riches of the world to your neural-net tips, the troubles of humans grow distant . . . petty . . . inconsequential . . .

  He cranked Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes,” rising and falling with each twanging digital cubit of sound. In the song, his namesake, the musical Major Tom, still floated in space, adapted to his new life. He wanted to “come down” but didn’t know how to break the addiction of his drug: his newly detached self. Bowie also hadn’t known how to come down off the drugs he was addicted to, and Major Tom knew that the life he was living was as potent as any drug. It allowed him to hide. Be free. Never engage.

  Could he ever “come down”? And where would his home be now?

  It was enough to make him pull inside his digital snail shell and lock the entrance. But a thought escaped from a tiny, parceled-off part of him: When did he become such a coward?

  This hermetic fear and resistance wasn’t him. It had never been him. Something was wrong.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Major Tom frequently eavesdropped on Ruth to check on her well-being. Ruth knew it. He knew that Ruth knew it, and so on. It was a game that neither enjoyed playing.

  Removing her privacy screen, Ruth still sat in her favorite ergonomic chair on the ship’s bridge, reading a private message from Veronika Gascon: I know what happened to Dr. Who and the Sovereign. Please help me convince Major Tom that he is the only one who can help them. This will not be isolated. Many more lives are on the line.

  Then
Ruth received another message from Miss Gray Hat, the mysterious hacker for whom Ruth held an unrequited geek crush. Ruth had taken Miss Gray Hat’s sudden departure from their lives badly. Ruth had given her the moniker Fräulein Ethische, meaning Miss Ethical. It was Thomas Paine who had named her Miss Gray Hat, denoting that she was neither a legal white-hat hacker nor an illegal black-hat hacker, but someone in the middle who did the right thing, even if it was criminal. Miss Gray Hat could speak several languages, including Ruth’s own Yiddish, and Ruth had always assumed she was a fellow Eastern European Jew.

  Miss Gray Hat had also helped when Peter Bernhardt/Thomas Paine had needed her most, by stealing IBM’s Blue Gene programming for their own use; protecting him from cyber attacks; setting traps for cyber spies; uncovering and collating data about the Phoenix Club; and along with Dr. Who, spreading disinformation about Thomas Paine to his enemies. She was extremely talented. But Major Tom didn’t know if she was even a she. Miss Gray Hat had successfully maintained her anonymity with elaborate encryption, voice anonymization, and contact impersonal enough to reveal almost nothing. After his uploading two years ago, the hacker had departed for computers unknown. Ruth was heartbroken. Major Tom was suspicious. Miss Gray Hat had been such an intense and necessary part of both their lives. Had she taken another gig? Was she upset with them? Was she dead?

  Neither had heard from her until now. Was this even her?

  Anonymized through the usual feminine voice, the audio message said, “Have you heard from Veronika yet? I know her. Listen to her. She’s right. Dr. Who needs our help.”

  “What do you think, Ruthie?” asked Tom.

  Ruth slunk down into her chair and crossed her arms defensively over her chest. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, we know that Miss Gray Hat and Dr. Who worked together for us a couple of years ago. We just don’t know how deep the relationship might be. I’m guessing she knows something. Right?”

  “I’m allowed? To have an op-p-pinion?” Ruth muttered.

  “Always.”

  “Hmmph . . . ” Ruth’s shoulders twitched. “That’s a first.”

  “You think I ignore you?” asked Tom.

  “Yes,” said Ruth. “You withdraw. You leave me alone. You do what you want. With no thought of me. How are you my best friend?”

  He was concerned. Ruth had had a crush on Peter Bernhardt as far back as when they were graduate students together in her father’s nanotechnology lab at Stanford. “We’ve been friends and colleagues a long time. And we always will be.”

  “I want more,” she said. “And I don’t think you can.”

  Ruth was never one to dissemble. But she wasn’t able to have a traditional relationship, either. Her unique neurological wiring made it painful to touch another human being. Once, she had thought Major Tom would be the ideal partner, because he had no body.

  “I’m sorry, Ruthie. You said I was a great mate: ‘Toilet seat stays down. Toothpaste stays capped. Never needs a hug.’ And I thought we were bound for life with our blood oath.” Ruth insisted they perform a blood oath ceremony three years ago, each depositing a drop of their blood onto a single microscope slide and sandwiching them together. Ruth had kept the slide as a sign of their pact to work together forever. He wasn’t sure where the slide was anymore.

  “Worst d-d-decision I ever made,” she said.

  With the swipe of a finger, she deleted both Veronika’s and Miss Gray Hat’s messages, then turned on her privacy screen again.

  “Guess that’s my answer,” said Tom. He was sorry to see Ruth depressed, but he knew she would have to deal with both Veronika and Miss Gray Hat directly. They were making sure of it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Major Tom and Talia Brooks kept an open AV link between her office at Prometheus Industries and his servers. As CEO, she now ran the firm that he and Carter had created. And she was not pleased to hear from him.

  “Why do you need me to do this?” she asked.

  His GPS and satellite image of Veronika’s robocar showed it parked in the lot, and she was entering the main doors.

  “I asked her to come so I could get your opinion. You might pick up something I don’t.”

  “Female intuition is overrated,” said Talia.

  Tom ignored her sarcasm. “She knows things, and I can’t figure out how or why or what. But we owe Dr. Who. How can we help her without more information?”

  “Hmm . . . ” Talia had a sad, faraway look.

  “Sorry. Guess you’re in my crap again,” said Tom.

  “I’m always in it,” Talia said. “You just never notice.”

  Talia had been inextricably linked to Tom for over three years. From the moment Peter Bernhardt’s technology came on the scene, she had stalked him, knowing that the Phoenix Club would pounce on its potential. One of the few who understood what the club would do to him, she had struggled to convince Peter that he would be their victim and only succeeded after she saved his life. Talia had helped make him their mutual weapon against shared enemies, overseeing the creation of Thomas Paine in the image of her murdered father. Even though she had feared that his brain technology would change him, she had become his lover. And now, she was a keeper of his flame. Since his and Carter’s deaths two years ago, she and her once-past-now-present lover, Dr. Steven Carbone, had run Prometheus Industries. They handled everything Peter Bernhardt had created, but not as he would have wished. But Major Tom had no say anymore, legally or ethically.

  “You know I wouldn’t ask unless necessary,” he continued.

  Talia sighed, then focused on the monitor. “It’s all about to change again, isn’t it?”

  Tom didn’t answer. He studied the alterations that the last couple of years had rendered in her. She let her hair grow back from a dyed bombshell red to its natural dark brown. She wore less sunblock and pale makeup, so her skin darkened to its natural café au lait hue. The soft curves of her body revealed that she no longer kept it up as her weapon of mass seduction. But she was still gorgeous. Major Tom’s digital memory could never forget that, even if he didn’t have a body to react to her with hormonal feedback. He might not want to have sex with her, but he knew beauty when he saw it.

  “How’s the ethics committee going?” he asked. Because of his fear of the technology, Steve had insisted on creating an ethics committee as part of the management structure.

  “Doing what it’s supposed to: first, do no harm.”

  Tom made the speaker sigh. “That’s the Hippocratic Oath for medicine. Where’s the revolutionary or groundbreaking research in that?”

  Talia’s life over the last decade had been traumatic: the murder of her father, fleeing and fighting the club, and the death of Tom. He hadn’t made her life any easier. Fearing the world-changing potential of the various brain-computer interface technologies, Talia and Steve had locked up all research that could lead to another upload event. Instead, they used Prometheus to continue developing technologies and drugs to save lives. The only tech of Peter Bernhardt’s that they continued, and that kept the entire enterprise profitable, was nanomedicine. Microbivores, artificial white blood cells designed to destroy any programmed pathogens in their path, eliminated common diseases from viruses and bacteria to precancerous pathogens. Respirocytes were artificial red blood cells that provided drowning, choking, and smoke-inhalation victims the oxygen necessary to survive. They were now carried by EMTs and ERs around the world. Thomas Paine had been the first human subject to use them. Nanomedicine made Prometheus Industries a hugely successful biotech business, but it was not as radical as what Tom had once hoped for.

  “Still haven’t learned, have you?” she asked.

  “Guess not.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Ready?” said Tom.

  Talia shook her head no and yelled, “Come in!”

  Veronika Gascon tripped through over the threshold and threw herself into the chair across the desk from Talia. She wore her black shirt, skirt
, and boots, but she had the Veronika’s Veil portrait in a gold, silver, and enamel oval frame hanging from her neck on a silver chain. A close look revealed that it was a tiny flat digital screen projecting her artwork. Her hands fidgeted. She tugged at her long hair. Major Tom turned on other cameras so he could see the conversation from several angles.

  Talia stared at the portrait of Thomas Paine on Veronika’s chest, her expression betraying confusion, but it wasn’t the time for Tom to explain. She finally looked up into Veronika’s eyes and gestured to the monitor that displayed Tom. “He says you know about Dr. Who’s kidnapping. Convince me you’re not crazy.”

  “I’ve been followed. They know I’m here,” said Veronika.

  Major Tom immediately searched for proof in nearby traffic cameras and available satellite imagery. He found nothing to support her claim. It was possible, but he couldn’t prove it.

  “Who is ‘they’?” asked Talia.

  Veronika rolled her eyes. “Whoever attacked the Sovereign?”

  “That might indicate you’re crazy,” said Talia. “You’re the only person who thinks that happened.”

  “I’m not. Major Tom knows,” said Veronika.

  “And how do you know that?” asked Talia.

  “Because he didn’t say I was wrong.”

  Talia squeezed her eyes shut in annoyance.

  Veronika continued, “I think Major Tom is depressed and can’t understand why he needs to help.”

  “Depressed? How can an artificial human intelligence be depressed?”

  “Why not?” asked Veronika. “He has the programming of past emotions.”

  Talia rocked back in her chair, crossed her arms, and stared deadpan at the young woman. “There’s a new job at Prometheus: AHI psychoanalyst. ‘Come lay here on my CPU and tell me about your motherboard.’”

  “Why don’t you admit you know, too?” asked Veronika.

  “Because I don’t,” said Talia.

  Even Tom could see the tell in Talia’s reaction. He replayed the eye squint and her glance away to be sure. She did know. Talia thought he was depressed, too.