Mind Over Ship

by David Marusek

“Yes, to it and every alternative site you’ve visited lately.”

  “I see,” Fred said. “You’re telling me this whole metaverse is false.”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh-huh. These thousands of forums and billions of entries going back decades. All spun out of thin air to entrap unsuspecting russes.”

  “Not exactly. I’m saying they were all spun out of thin air to entrap you.”

  Fred grunted.

  “Why not?” Marcus went on. “A clever mentar could deconstruct an existing metaverse and rebuild it in a day. Why not create a pocket metaverse to entrap one man?”

  Fred knew that if he asked Marcus who was behind such a plot, he would get no real answer, but he had to ask anyway. “Who?”

  “At this point it would be speculation. As I’m sure you’re aware, Trailing Earth boasts a multiplicity of power centers, several of which have designs on you, not to mention Earth-based competitors.”

  “Please, speculate.”

  “Very well,” the mentar said. “The Capias World organization considers you a troublemaker. A number of other Earth-based organizations, such as the Anti-Transubstantiation League and the World Charter Union, consider you a prime example of what’s wrong with the practice of cloning. Individual russes hate you. There are many members of the general public who wish to do you harm.”

  A flush of anger swept through Fred, but he damped it down and asked, “What about you?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “What about you, Marcus? Do you wish to do me harm? After I was attacked by the donalds, I didn’t expect Nick to stand up for me, but you didn’t either. Why is that?”

  “I was balancing the good of one member of the Brotherhood against all of the rest. I reviewed your comm with Earth Girl warning you to stay out of that area. You chose to disregard it. What would you have me do, try to fix all of your mistakes? You are a free individual. All I can do is provide warnings when I see you about to get in over your head. I tried to warn you last year when you acquired the identikit. You didn’t heed my warning then and went to prison for your actions, but you harmed more than just yourself. You did inestimable damage to the whole russ line, the effects of which are contributing to the present financial difficulties of Applied People, our employer.”

  Fred didn’t need Marcus’s help in pointing out his mistakes, but still, things didn’t add up. “You know what I think?” he said. “I think you’ve been manipulating me and my brothers since we were decanted. I think you censor everything we see. You and Nick need to keep us under your total control, and I think you’re trying to do that to me right now. I’ve discovered a whole world of brothers who don’t conform to your ideal germline. Brothers you have hidden from me, and you’re trying to convince me they don’t exist. You know what? I believe they do.”

  Marcus listened patiently, and when Fred finished, it said, “I am being completely honest with you. I don’t censor, but I do protect against attack. It’s my mission to keep the Brotherhood safe. I was given this mission by your biological mother and your elected BB of R Council. On their advice I have been monitoring your sidekick activity and have only stepped in when you downloaded the so-called Self-Discovery method. That is an especially pernicious piece of malware called an aversion locator. It will scan your brain activity for highly charged personality complexes, both active and suppressed, and it will weave them into a false self-image that, although patently ridiculous, will, nevertheless, feel true to you, causing self-doubt to fester and undermine your self-image. All I am doing here is trying to prevent unnecessary harm to you.” And it added, “As I have always tried to do.”

  “Then prove it to me!” Fred said. “You and the Brotherhood Council. If you’re so sure this russ metaverse is false, then you tell me, here and now, what is the real russ Original Flaw.”

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “But I will put it to the Council.”

  “You do that.”

  FRED WAS ON patrol when the news bulletin flashed in his visor. His partner, Daoud, got it at the same moment, and the two of them halted where they were, shipping shells whizzing by in all directions, to view it.

  An unnamed evangeline, for no apparent reason, had lapsed into a comatose state. She was being cared for and did not appear to be in mortal danger. Meanwhile, other evangelines in several countries were being admitted to clinics with symptoms of severe lethargy and disorientation. Fred immediately put in a call to Mary and set a timer for seventeen minutes.

  “Well?” Daoud said, nudging him. “You planning on standing there all day?”

  “I’m going to call for a replacement to finish my shift,” Fred replied. “I have to attend to this.”

  “Knock yourself out,” Daoud said. “I already tried that, and so has everyone else on duty. Earth Girl says we have to finish our shift. There’s not enough replacements to go around.”

  Ten-Thousand-Year Reunion

  When Merrill Meewee arrived at the frontier gate of the Mem Lab, a detail of russ guards was loading shipping shells and crates into a special freight car. Among the stacks of cargo were cryocapsules, about fifty of them. Meewee tapped the nearest guard on the shoulder and said, “Who’s in those?”

  The guard recognized him but said, “Sorry, myr, that’s classified information.”

  “It’s all right. I’m LOG 1.”

  The guard seemed a little embarrassed. “Sorry, myr, but your status has changed. You are no longer a LOG.”

  “Oh, there you are,” said a beloved voice. With a twinge of apprehension Meewee turned and greeted Dr. Koyabe. It had been weeks since they had talked. Although his new Arrow made it possible to communicate with her while he was outside the Mem Lab, Koyabe had decided that in order to be fair she would have to remain isolated like everyone else until they lifted stealth altogether.

  “Yes, here I am,” he said, as pleased as he could be, “but tell me, who are in these capsules, and where are they going? The guard won’t tell me.”

  “New colonists on their way to the ESV Garden Hybris. Come, let’s talk on the way.” She led him across the frontier gate and out into the hall. “Several of our scientists have signed up to accompany Eleanor, but most of the capsules have russes in them.”

  Meewee already knew of Eleanor’s plan to join the colonists. That was why they were hoping to have at least six viable clones — five to go and one to stay — but he didn’t know she was taking such a large entourage of muscle. When he thought about it, though, he decided he should be more surprised if she didn’t. Why not a detachment of russ guards? Why take chances?

  As soon as they turned the corner and found themselves in a deserted hallway, Meewee and Koyabe fell into each other’s arms. He kissed her with a passion that both surprised and embarrassed him, and he felt about fifty years younger. The sound of footsteps interrupted them, and they hastened to regain a professional demeanor.

  “Are you staying the night?” she asked.

  “Depends on Eleanor, I guess. I hear I’ve been demoted.”

  “Yes, only two LOGs now, Eleanor and Cabinet. You go back to being the ‘wild card.’ ”

  “The what?”

  “That’s what she calls you, her secret wild card.”

  Meewee wasn’t sure what to make of that. “And those capsules, is she in one of them?”

  “No, Dr. Ito says her new bodies are still too delicate. We’ll hold out till the last minute to put her down, or maybe she’ll have to go initially in a quickened state.”

  “They’ve decided which — uh — bodies will go?”

  “Body,” Koyabe said. “Only two have survived. One will go and one will stay. Why don’t you ask them yourself? They’re doing a hardening session in our clinic.”

  “They’re here? I mean, in this module in realbody?”

  “Yes, we have the better health-care facilities here.”

  THE TWO YOUNG Eleanors la
y on pads in the light booth wearing nothing but bikini bottoms and eyecaps. It was a perfect opportunity for Meewee to examine them for physical differences. They looked to be about twenty years old in developmental maturation, which was a testament to Dr. Ito’s accelerated growth regimen. That only two of the original sixty-four beans had survived to this point was a testament to its severity. The two girls were truly identical twins, from the reddish blond hair on top of their heads to the shapes of their toes. They both had the famous Starke eyebrows that spanned their brows in a solid stroke. One did have a mole on the side of one breast, but that wasn’t something he would typically see.

  “Gorgeous, aren’t they?” Koyabe said.

  Meewee blushed. “I was looking for differences.”

  “Bishop Lucky!” one of the girls said when she heard his voice.

  “I have a distinctive freckle here,” the other one said, blindly pointing to the base of her throat.

  “Ah, I see it,” Meewee said.

  “And I’m the smarter one,” the other one rejoined.

  “But I’m better-looking.”

  Meewee said, “Do you have names yet?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m Elaine.”

  “And I’m Elizabeth.”

  Right, Meewee thought, trying to fix them in his memory: Elaine has the mole; Elizabeth the freckle.

  “Don’t let them fool you,” Koyabe said. “While our two beauties might appear to be identical, they have subtly different personalities. Not even our vegetative cloning technique can normalize all gestational factors. And our memory migration techniques are still idiosyncratic in effect.”

  “I see,” Meewee said, not sure that he did. “But tell me, which one of you is going into space?”

  In a suddenly subdued tone, one of the Els said, “Whichever one of us lives that long.”

  The answer upset Meewee who looked to Koyabe for explanation.

  “Not to worry, Bishop; Dr. Ito halted his forced march a couple of weeks ago. And these two are very stable and aren’t likely to expire anytime soon. I think what Liz was expressing is her grief over the deaths of their last four most recent sisters.”

  “They had names too,” Liz said.

  “We have their memories,” Elaine said.

  “We remember being them,” Liz added.

  “Now I’m lost,” Meewee confessed. “You share memories among yourselves?”

  “Yes,” Koyabe said. “The final six clones shared their new memories with each other, as well as with the brainfish Eleanor.”

  The lights in the hardening booth clicked off, and an arbeitor rolled in bearing two glasses of a chalky liquid.

  “Speaking of the devil,” Liz said as she and her sister sat up and removed their eyecaps.

  Meewee said, “That drink, it’s got memories in it?”

  “Ugh,” Elaine said. “Yeah, fishy memories.” The two Els made identical grimaces as they choked down the potion.

  Meewee turned a confused look to Koyabe, who said, “Not ‘memories’ per se, Bishop.” She paused a moment to think about how best to explain it. “We should probably ask Dr. Strohmeyer; she has a way of simplifying this stuff, but I’ll give it a shot.

  “Biological memory has three distinct phases: working, short-term, and long-term. Working memory involves increasing or decreasing potentiation of synaptic spikes.” She frowned and began again. “There are approximately 500 trillion synapses in the human brain . . .”

  The girls laughed, and Elaine said, “Tell him about the Christmas trees.”

  “Oh, yes, one of Dr. Strohmeyer’s analogies. Think of a neuron in your brain like a Christmas tree with many separate strings of lights attached to its many branches. If you energize one string, one pattern of lights is visible. A second string gives you a second separate pattern, and so on. Now imagine you’re looking down from space on a hundred billion of these Christmas trees. Some of them are in a lot called auditory cortex, while others are in the visual cortex lot, prefrontal cortex lot, and so on. Strings on some trees are connected to strings on trees in other lots. Say you energized a set of related strings and observed the pattern of lights that results among the billions of trees. That’s like a memory trace. The branches of the trees are the dendrites of the neuronal cells, and the lights themselves are the synapses.

  “In reality, the synapses also involve axons from other neurons, but what’s important in this analogy are the patterns of light, not the branches, per se, or even the trees. Because it’s the pattern of synaptic firing that encodes memory. The brain can lift a pattern from one set of trees and impose it on others. This is essentially what happens when a memory trace goes from working memory through short-to long-term memory.

  “When we create a machine memory, as we do for sims and proxies, we are essentially scanning the whole forest down to individual lights and duplicating them in toto in a pseudo-living substrate — paste. We’ve gotten very good at this process, but what we’ve had difficulty doing is going in the other direction. How do you impose outside patterns on living neurons?

  “The way artificial brains do it, including the mentar brain, is through electrical impulses. But that’s not practical with living brains. You’d have to implant and coordinate hundreds of trillions of electrodes in people’s heads, and our cells’ insulation just isn’t that good.”

  “Wait a minute,” Meewee said. “If we can scan down to the molecular level to make sims, why can’t we just extrude new brains from scratch?”

  “Excellent question!” Koyabe said. “It shows you are able to follow my confusing explanation. The answer is simple. If we scanned an entire brain with all the memories intact and then duplicated it in a new body with nanotech, we would just be making a new copy of an old brain. That is, biologically it would be just as old as the original. It’s a catch-22: we can’t rejuvenate senescent brains without destroying their memories, and we can’t copy memories without also copying senescent brain structures.

  “What we need to do is make new brains, like baby clone brains, and train them how to remember old memories. The method we’ve developed involves delivering memory patterns to the brain in the form of packets of tiny protein factors that stimulate the body’s own means of consolidating short-term memory. These factors migrate throughout the brain and, in our Christmas tree analogy, latch on to branches. We don’t particularly care which branch or which tree they settle on, as long as they’re in the right tree lots and the overall patterns are retained.”

  Dr. Koyabe paused to see how well Meewee was following, and he, in his turn, struggled to please her by not appearing clueless. “Which is why,” she concluded, “the memory traces have to be injected or eaten instead of being zapped in.”

  Elaine added, “But it’s hard work!”

  “It’s why we still have to sleep eighteen hours a day.”

  “And we have to forget as much as we remember.”

  “And sometimes it’s hard to be certain if the memory is hers or mine.”

  Meewee said, “But why are you sharing each other’s memories in the first place?”

  Elaine, or maybe it was Liz — Meewee’s working memory had already faded — answered, “Soon we will be leading two distinctly separate lives, but we’ll each be able to remember both of them.”

  Meewee hadn’t considered this possibility, and it impressed him. He had often wondered how his life would have turned out if he had chosen to follow a different path than the one he did. With a clone’s memory, he could, in effect, lead two lives at once.

  “And we’re sharing the big tuna’s memories too. She sends out hundreds of proxies every day to do tasks out there. And when they return with results, we don’t even have to listen to a report. The big fish just sends over a milkshake, and we remember what they did.”

  The other El said, “Proxy memory feels different; it’s flat.”

  Dr. Koyabe said, “That’s because it lacks the emotional indexing of biological memory.”

  “And C
abinet’s memories are harder to understand. They’re more like — when you talk to yourself? But you’re not making much sense?”

  “But very distinctive.”

  “Which makes them easy to recall.”

  “And her visuals are great.”

  The girls laughed, and one of them added, “You may be interested to know, Bishop Meewee, that Saul Jaspersen had pan-fried trout for lunch yesterday.”

  Meewee was astonished. “What did I have for lunch yesterday?”

  In unison they said, “Lentil soup!”

  THE BRAINFISH CROWDED the edge of the pool for a virtual pat on the head, including a dozen juvenile newcomers. Meewee was beginning to be able to tell the individual fish apart. He told them, “I just learned that Andrea clones and E-P copies have joined all of the Lucky Five ships except the King Jesus.”

  Eleanor’s holo appeared in the room and replied, “Yes, I know.”

  Meewee turned to the holo. “But you said E-P will destroy the ships in order to quarantine humans to this system. Why go on board only to be destroyed?”

  “No doubt it’s part of a backup suicide sabotage plan.”

  “Then how will we defeat them?”

  “Not to worry, Merrill. We’ll deal with the original E-P and Andrea well before the launch. As to their shipboard clones, let’s just say there’s a handy feature built into the ship design that allows me to rapture any mentar on board at will. And without the E-P mentars, the Andrea clones are powerless.”

  The news that she could destroy shipboard mentars brought the bigger picture into focus. With Cabinet at her side, no mentar opposition, and a detachment of russes backing her up, whichever El shipped out on the Hybris would become its self-appointed ruler.

  The pipe grid over the pool clanked open, and a shower of flakes fell on the water surface. The brainfish quickly gobbled them up. Memories from the front?

  “You’re not human anymore,” he said simply.

  Eleanor’s bushy eyebrows rose in amused surprise. “No, Merrill, I suppose I’m not.”

  “You are posthuman, as posthuman as Andrea. You are using the GEP and me, not to seed the galaxy with humans, but to spread your own kind.”