by Stanley Bing
“Don’t be scared, Gene,” Bob murmured. “Over there?” He gestured toward the voluminous armchair on one side of the room and headed to his desk. “The problem is,” he said, as if talking to himself while he fussed with some random stuff on his desk, “while some independent consciousness is necessary for this thing to work properly, you keep coming up short or blowing past an acceptable level. We have to keep rebooting you. This time you seemed just about right. Then Sallie completely overstepped her bounds and upset you. I understand why you were upset, but you have completely the wrong idea about this whole thing. That’s what I want you to see. This situation is a win-win for everybody. Want a drink?”
Gene sat. He thought about whether he wanted a drink or not. It was quite possible he did. But Bob was continuing.
“The thing is, unless we move along now, a whole bunch of extremely unpleasant and time-wasting—not to mention incredibly expensive—things have to happen, and I don’t think either of us wants any piece of that shit.”
Gene didn’t know what shit Bob was talking about. But he was starting to feel a little better. He had been very frightened when he was awakened and rousted out of bed by Officer O’Brien and a bunch of augmented humanoids. And right now there appeared to be very little he could do. He was different. He had found some of himself. By running. With Liv. He’d been human for a little while. He had regained some memories. He was a person, or at least a protoperson. He had a feeling that they weren’t going to be 100 percent successful taking that away from him, whatever wacky plans Bob here wanted to implement. So he figured hey, why not. Nobody could make him do anything he didn’t want, not forever. The big chair, almost a couch, was supremely comfortable. “Yeah,” he said. “I could do with a drink.”
“Marvelous!” exclaimed Bob. He beamed at Gene with what could only be called parental pride. “We’ll fix you up.” He continued to regard Gene fondly for a moment. Then he went to a sideboard. “By the way,” he said, almost offhandedly, “what did you think of Arthur?”
“He’s an extremely nasty old man, Bob,” said Gene. “I certainly hope I don’t have to spend much time around him.”
“You know what?” Bob exclaimed as if he had just discovered a world-class idea. “I’ll have a drink, too!” He went to a small recess in the wall of his office, where a printer was warming up. “Here we go,” he said, placing a heavy crystal glass in a receptacle beneath the machine. In a moment, there was a pleasant sound of liquid pouring into the container, followed by a Ding! Bob reached in and removed the glass, which now sported two fingers of a gleaming golden liquor. “Sixty-year-old Yamazaki,” Bob said. He sniffed it. “Brilliant.” Then he crossed the room and handed Gene the glass. “Don’t chug it,” he advised. “It’s liquid gold, you know. That one glass would cost you more than two thousand simoleons in the Floating Islands district.”
“Simoleons!” said Gene, who knew the word. He took a sip of the magic elixir. It was indescribably smooth but had a little bite to it as well, and just a hint of peat. “This is a rather small portion,” Gene said, sipping. Bob chuckled, went back to the device, and printed himself a drink. Then he carried the glass back to his desk and took a big swallow.
“I imagine you have some questions,” he said, gazing at the brown liquor with affection.
“Not too many,” said Gene nonchalantly. “But you go ahead, Bob. I’m listening.”
“I’ll lay it out for you just a little bit.” Bob put down the glass and began fiddling with his desk drawer, which seemed to be resisting his advances. “There are many things now possible in the world of science,” he observed, as if he were giving a tour of the children’s museum. He stopped and glared at the drawer.
“Come on, Bob,” said Gene with some bravado. “I probably know most of it already.” Yes, Gene was feeling very tough.
Bob looked him over. “You know, it’s funny about truth,” he said. “You don’t want to impose more of it on a person than they can bear.”
Bob’s whole condescending tone annoyed Gene. He sat up, fighting the possessive grasp of the semi-animate chair. “You know what?” he said. “I’m tired of this game.” He stood and brushed himself off. “I think I’ll vamoose.”
Bob emitted a short, sharp laugh. “Vamoose,” he said with a chuckle. “One of my favorite words. Goes all the way back to the nineteenth century. From the Spanish, vamos. You and I may be the only people left who know that word.” He looked at Gene very seriously now, his eyes welling up with large, juicy tears. Then he straightened, collected himself for a moment, and once again attacked the top drawer of the desk.
“Would you like a little Xee?” he asked as he wrestled with the furniture.
Wow, thought Gene. He sat down again. “I’ve never had Xee,” he said. He was still determined to play his winning hand, which boiled down, basically, to a strong determination not to cooperate. But still, he thought, Xee!
“Yeah,” said Bob. “Let’s make this a little more fun.”
“Okay, Bob,” said Gene. He certainly had nothing against fun. “Why not?”
“Why not indeed.” Bob pounded the drawer with the fat part of his fist. “Shit.” He pounded it again. “Let me tell you about Xee,” he continued, scowling at the stubborn desk. “It’s legal, with a prescription. It’s safe, within limits. And it makes your head feel good. The boost in intelligence and insight into situations of all sorts last a good forty-eight hours. Goddamn it!” He slammed the drawer hard, with both fists balled up into mallets, and it finally sprang open obligingly, as if it had been teasing him the whole time. “These intelligent desks aren’t so fucking intelligent, it turns out,” he muttered. “There are people who have some Xee every morning and are none the worse for wear,” he continued as he pawed through the contents of the drawer. “Of course, there are contraindications associated with overuse, as there would be with any powerful synthetic. One study shows a severe abuser whose brain exploded out of his nose, but there was very spotty peer review on that one. It could just be an urban legend.”
From the desk, Bob removed a small metal box with a hinged glass top. He raised the lid to reveal several compartments, each containing thin strips of varying colors about the length of a toothpick and twice the width. Carefully, he selected a single wafer of iridescent, gleaming platinum.
“This is a strip of Xee. It melts on your skin as cool as the first flake of a snowstorm and enters your body on a time-release basis. This leads to an effect curve not unlike a perfect wave, with a build, an apex, and an elegant down sweep at the end that deposits you on the beach of everyday existence again. With me so far?”
Gene went back to nursing his drink. He said nothing. He figured Bob would go on anyway. Also, truth be told, he was kind of eager to get high.
“The red strips are a light and frisky twenty mils and simply give you an overall feeling of sharpness and well-being that after eight to ten hours devolves into the most delectable sleep imaginable. The gold strips are fifty mils and infuse the spirit with all the grandeur of consciousness on an extremely elevated plane. They also come with a powerful side effect: seriously bad impulse control. This takes a wide variety of forms, fitting itself seamlessly into the hollow places in each user. Formerly cheap bastards with more money than God abruptly divest themselves of all worldly goods and beam off to the Andreessen Hydroponic Gardens hanging 22,500 miles above the earth in geosynchronous orbit. The weather up there is reputed to be fantastic. Others with the thrill-seeking chromosome sometimes jump from high places, with mixed results. Individuals who favor more sensual pleasures plunge into them in ways that did not always sync with socialized existence. You don’t want to deal with a psychopath on Xee.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Gene. He was now done with his whiskey and wanted some more, but he didn’t say so. To be anesthetized is one thing, dead drunk another, particularly if he was going to be full of Xee in a minute.
“Finally, there are the platinum magic carpets of
Xee-1000,” Bob intoned with some dramatic flair. “Each of these costs at least ten thousand ameros. That’s a hunk of cheese, let me tell you.” Bob held it up to the light. “Just look at this puppy. I never knew anybody who’s taken one of them. I hear that Sergey took one right before he disappeared a few years ago. Supposedly he applied the Xee-1000 directly to his testicles and sat very still for about an hour. Then he said, ‘Entanglement is macro,’ and actually went into the room with the quantum computer.”
Bob’s voice was soothing now, affectionate and warm. He regretfully put the silvery strip back in the glass box, and out came a little red strip. He ripped open the cellophage wrapper carefully, starting the tear with his teeth but making sure that none of it hit his tongue. When he had the strip out, he approached Gene, who was already mellow as the month of May, and put a paternal hand on his shoulder. “As you will know if you check your database, Gene, a quantum computer at this point isn’t really a computer at all in the traditional sense.”
“It’s not?” said Gene, looking up at Bob. He didn’t want to be thought incapable of keeping his half of the conversation going, but he had no idea wheresoever the fuck it was going.
“No. It’s actually a gigantic environmental area inhabited by about a trillion organic receptors fabricated from virus-based nanocillae.”
“Ah,” said Gene.
“Objects that fall within the extremely limited event horizon of the quantum space around the computer enter a unique status in which they both exist and do not exist at the same time, in alternate universes. Unfortunately for the people of the Alphabet Mars Colony, Sergey ceased to exist in this universe, although it is thought that he may be fulfilling an important function in some other.”
While Gene was considering this example of quantum duality, Bob laid the little red ribbon of psychotropic DNA Crispr tenderly on the back of his neck, which immediately felt as if an icicle had been placed there.
“Will you be having one?” Gene inquired, shivering slightly. It wasn’t unpleasant, though. Just different . . . Differnet, he thought. Daffernet. Duffer . . . naut.
“No, Gene,” said the doctor. “I’m working.”
Gene was feeling the sizzle and burn that all who have enjoyed Xee will recognize, followed by the nice citrus thing in the back of his throat and the smell of tangerine. My, thought Gene. That is tasty. I have to remember to ask Bob for a prescription for this shit. Then he thought about a flock of seagulls on a beach, cavorting with the remains of a candy bar. Then a big, steaming hot dog in a gigantic, fluffy bun invaded his mind. It was very pretty. Then it was quiet for a while. Gene felt extraordinarily clear and good. What had he been concerned about? Could use a hot dog, though. Pretty much right away, actually.
“You good?” Bob’s hand continued to reside gently on Gene’s shoulder. It moved lightly and fondly stroked the back of his head.
“Sure,” said Gene. He surfed the mind wave for a moment. Then a very dreamy inquiry. “Tell me about Sallie.” It was, after all, the only question he truly wanted to ask.
“That’s my boy,” said Bob indulgently. Gene felt him slip another wafer onto the skin of his ankle. His mind left his body and spread out to take up the entire room. “The question is why a beautiful woman like that would marry a desiccated old weasel like Arthur. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Gene said, from the edge of the universe. “Why?”
He could feel the cosmic wind in his hair. The deep black of space; the shifting hues of the gas and dust that blow between the stars. He lay back in the great nothingness and looked at the interface between time and space that must be heaven.
“Our conclusion,” said Bob, “is that Sallie is truly in love with him. I know it seems counterintuitive, but there it is. And you know what, Gene? Any man who could claim to be the recipient of such a love must be considered lucky indeed, don’t you think?”
This seemed like a trick question. Gene found himself thinking about the whole setup. It did have its moments. He thought of Sallie greeting him at the door of the splendid mansion. The synthetic koi were in the pond. The inauthentic sky above was filled with birds of uncertain provenance. The little green fabricated lizard nuzzled her leg. What was its name? Lucy? Had it spoken to him? The old man with brain material leaking out of his ears. The drool cascading down his chin, which she was happy to mop up with her very own napkin. And the way she looked at Gene himself. What was that? What could it possibly signify? Was it his imagination, or had it been infused with some kind of intense mixture of love and . . . what was that, lust? No, that could not be possible. And yet, was that so unthinkable? As much as she might adore the crumpled, odiferous, seeping, ancient lawn gnome that suppurated on the divan in the darkened study of their gigantic palazzo, was it not possible that at the same time she would crave a man with blood in his veins that didn’t come from a liquid printer?
“Arthur will die soon,” Bob said. “And yet it is mandatory—for a variety of reasons, only some of them pertaining to Sallie—that his consciousness, his self, his persona, continue on beyond the limits of the body that was issued to him more than a hundred years ago. Most importantly, it is his money that is funding absolutely everything you see around you, which does a lot of good for a lot of people. Do you get me, Gene? I want you to understand the value of what you are doing. It’s important to me. Because I love you, Gene. And I wouldn’t be doing this unless it was absolutely necessary.”
“I love you, too, Bob,” said Gene, but it might have been the Xee talking.
“Around fifty years ago, a bunch of very, very rich guys from around these parts decided that they didn’t want to die, ever. It sounds silly, but they put a lot of money against the project, and you know how much money they have, Gene. When you have those kinds of resources, you can do anything. And after about thirty years, they came up with something. They worked out a way to implant certain essentials of one person’s consciousness into another.”
“Another what?”
“Another person. It was and remains an imprecise process, but it’s all but perfected now.”
“Get outta here,” said Gene. He didn’t feel so good all of a sudden. Like, there’s a point where you’re too high. Your face gets cold. Stomach tightens up, gets kind of heavy. Legs get wobbly. Head flying around all over the place. Might actually puke. That would be a bummer. He sat bolt upright, a ringlet of sweat beading his brow. “I think I need a glass of water,” he said.
“It’s called personality capture and migration,” Bob continued. “Attitudes. Memories. Sense of self. Life story. The whole person. If it goes right, you’ve created digital immortality.”
“I’m gonna barf, Bob,” said Gene.
“I really hope you don’t,” said Bob sternly. “These carpets are real twentieth century.”
Gene lay back in the chair. He breathed, trying to collect himself and stop the world from whirling. If he lay straight, and very, very still, and kept his eyes open, he might be all right. When he closed them, though, everything took off in all directions. “I can see where this is going,” he murmured, close to tears. “And I don’t think I like it very much.”
“Once you wrap your mind around the concept, it really seems quite simple,” said Bob, enthused by the amazing tech behind it all. “Utilizing the cranial implant, you upload the entire contents of the donor into a machine environment. Then, when you’re ready, you slam it in one gigantic core dump back down into a receptive biological host. And voila.”
“It sounds like a bad deal for somebody,” Gene observed.
“Actually, yes, Gene,” said Bob, “and I feel bad about it, you know I do.” He produced a small bottle of something clear from a nearby shelf and fixed Gene with a friendly smile. “Here. Drink this,” he said kindly. Gene, his head spinning, sat up and took a sip. The liquid was amazingly good, but the first sip was better than the second, and the second better than the third. By the time the bottle was half-empty, it had started to taste kind of funn
y.
“The reason that you have been created, Gene, is that all previous attempts to do this involved real, biologically produced people—normal people with actual histories and experiences and dreams and memories—but during the transfers, the migration was imperfect, and the implant failed to take.
“Well, that’s encouraging.”
“No it isn’t, because the donor and host were pretty much burned to a crisp.”
“Too bad,” said Gene. “Boo-hoo-hoo.” He was getting sleepy. He felt strongly that this was highly inconvenient, since they seemed to be at the point of the lecture where it might be important to pay attention.
“So it turns out that a . . . regular human being . . . is unsuitable, in the end, for the purpose. And that issue has proved insurmountable. For a total, complete migration, somebody very special would have to be available. Somebody who was a complete human entity; conscious and aware up to a point but not yet imprinted with experience. And if he or she didn’t exist yet, well”—he brightened considerably—“he’d just have to be printed out, now, wouldn’t he?”
“I gotta go,” said Gene. He stood up, took two steps, spun around twice, and fell in a heap on the floor.
“Perhaps I’ve said too much,” said Bob. Then he pressed the button on his desk that called for the orderlies.
9
Migration
The pain was a screaming white light that penetrated through his temples and out through the back of his scalp: four screws at 45-degree axes bearing down one ratchet at a time, micron by micron, the probe in his cranial implant going deeper and deeper into the ooze of his brain, and then way inside the core of it, into the tiny, hollow center of his skull. The fire of a million suns burned away who he was and replaced it with an incoming flow that was not himself but someone else entirely, and little by little Arthur took residence in there: first as an infinitesimal spark, and then a nucleus of positive energy, and then a wave of pure being that began to seep into every corner of him until there was no Gene to speak of at all—there were only the beginnings of something that would very shortly become nothing but Arthur. And yet Gene still fought it.