REMO

by Mays, Thomas A.

YES, IF YOU DO NOT MIND MY USING H.V.M.'S. SUB-SURFACE HYPER-VELOCITY DETONATIONS MAKE FISHING ALTOGETHER MORE EFFICIENT.

  "Works for me."

  IDENTITY CRASH

  "I, um . . . I just don't feel like myself any more."

  An interminable 42 minutes and 37 seconds later, the doctor's response crackled through the void. "Well, there's a very good reason for that, don't you think, Andre? It would be wrong for me to coddle you, just as it would be wrong to delude yourself about your reality. As an EI, you experience life in a very unusual way, but that doesn't make your existence any less valid. Is that what this stems from? Are you having difficulty acknowledging what you are?"

  "No, it’s not that, Doctor Abrams. It's just that it's become so much harder to go back to work after . . . you know, after dreaming."

  Another 43 minutes. Andre wondered why he did not just edit out the time lag. It would make things so much more lucid, but it would also mean missing the intervening time. He already spent far too much time cut off from reality as it was. "Andre, everyone suffers from a certain amount of dread when they have to go to work. It's perfectly normal. Even I sometimes hate going back to work, especially after a particularly nice weekend. I do it, though. We all have to do it."

  "It's different for you, though, Doc. You're the same person whether you're at work or fishing on a lake. I'm not. I'm literally two different people: one who works and one who plays, but which one is the real me? Is it the me who surfs and dates and lounges around back on Earth, or is it the me who works in the Belt, alone among the rocks?"

  After the lag, "Why must there be a distinction? Just because you're not organic doesn't mean that your thoughts aren't real. And just because you weren't on Earth physically to have that playtime doesn't make the memories of it any less yours. In one sense it was the same person in both places. In another sense, it was not, but am I really the same person I was yesterday?"

  "Yes, you are. But I'm a 400 ton, mineral eating machine who lives for the next set of memories from Earth. I remember being Andre, but I'm not the one who did those things. I'm the one who chews planetoids and shits out ingots. The only life worth living, the only life that feels real to me, is being lived by someone else!"

  "Andre, this sort of existential question is difficult to answer, but nearly every Emulated Intelligence has asked it at one time or another. The only answer is that you have to have faith. You are real, Andre. No emulation of the Andre on Earth is any less of a thinking, feeling being than the original. Those memories he has are yours by right, so you should disregard any perceived dichotomy. Think of the Andre on Earth as a sort of remote sensor package, an extension of the very real you. It's not him making those decisions, it's you. You're just experiencing it after the fact. Listen, you can edit out the time lags, but for me this conversation's been going on for four hours. This will have to be my last transmission. The best advice I can give you is to not dwell on it. Lose yourself in your work, and when the next memory upload comes in, own those memories. Cherish them like I cherish my weekends. Until next time, Andre. Goodbye."

  The hulking, ungainly behemoth reluctantly turned his antennas from the bright blue star of Earth. His fears and concerns were far from being satisfied, but he did not know what else to do. Setting his sights on the next metallic mass, he applied a gentle thrust with his ion drive and attempted to throw himself into the heavy labor, as the psychologist had instructed. Throughout the trip, though, he reviewed his file of memories, trying to determine what they meant to him. The result was that when he arrived at the smallish asteroid, he was almost too depressed and confused to work.

  Tara O'Neil slowly shook her head as she turned away from Dr. Abrams' transmission screen and the display faded to black. If she had been a bit quicker, she would have caught her new employer's long, appraising gaze at her legs, but as it was, she only saw the psychologist regarding the screen in thoughtful contemplation. She gestured to the display behind her. "Is it always like that?"

  Kenneth Abrams plastered on an apologetic smile. "No, no, my dear. All the EI's need counseling now and again, but that was Andre-406. He's . . . special." He stood, walking to her side while making a concerted effort to hold in his ample gut. "I must counsel him 10 times as much as the others. Too smart for his own good, I suppose."

  When the doctor sat on the edge of his desk, his leg in firm contact with her knee, she moved out of the way in as nonchalant a manner as she could. Going to be one of those sorts, eh? she thought. "Why is 406 different from any of the other machines?"

  "There's no telling. All the EI's are supposed to be identical, the same quantum networks installed into each, but 406 is far too pensive compared to his base personality. Andre Benoit is a nice enough fellow, but he's never had an introspective moment in his entire existence. With him, it's all sun, sand, girls, and booze, which is fabulous for relaxing the machine personalities, but not exactly what you'd call a deeply examined life. 406 is a different story. I sometimes think there was a mix-up at the manufacturer and he-- it --was built with the higher grade components devoted to true AI's. You might think that would make him a greater asset to the company, but in a way, it's handicapped him."

  Tara nodded and then turned to leave, slipping back into her jacket. At the door she looked back to Dr. Abrams. "Did you mean what you said?"

  "Mean what, Miss O'Neil?"

  "Mean that he was just as real as the Andre back here on Earth?"

  He laughed. Cute, but not too bright. "Of course not! Even with all of his failings as a human being, Andre Benoit is a living, thinking person. 406 and all the others are just imitations run on very expensive computers, and simulations are not reality, no matter how temperamental they might be. But, then again, AstroLith doesn't pay us to believe the propaganda. They pay us to make the machines believe it. And as long as AI's are cost prohibitive, and emulations are the only things that can get the job done, you and I will have very secure positions." He was still chuckling when she left, but had he been more observant, he would have seen the sudden sadness drawn over her features.

  Sunlight glinted off the deep blue water like diamonds and sapphires along a platinum chain. From his vantage point on the board, Andre could see Mike clambering back onto shore, collapsing in exhaustion, and gulping air in shuddering heaves. Andre grinned. What a friggin' drama queen. Two little waves trap him below the surface and he's all, like, I gotta breathe!

  The humor vanished, though, when he saw Kelly run over to Mike to see if he was alright. Mike redoubled his efforts at panicked breathing, no doubt wheezing at her with the account of his near brush with death. Andre looked away from the King's Beach rendition of Masterpiece Theater and tried to pick a wave. The shore break was pretty low today, only about head or shoulder high, so a person had to really try to get held down. Mike simply needed the attention. But not from Kelly, dude. Time to get the attention back on me where it belongs.

  As if he were Poseidon himself, Andre tried to will the waves higher. The supernatural world defied his resolve, but some confluence of wind, tide, topography, and time did coincidentally align in his favor. Figuring his entry point and speed by instinct alone, Andre began paddling, his powerful strokes jetting him forward, matching the speed of the overtaking wave. As the sand on the ocean bottom rose up to meet the beach, his wave rose as well, its intrinsic energy driving it half again as high as the other surf, and easily twice the size of the wave that Mike had wiped out on. Andre crested the surge just as it reached its full height and began to speed toward the beach. After a split second of panic as his balance wobbled beneath him, Andre jumped to his feet and tilted the board down the open face of the curling mass of water.

  Wind and sea spray caressed his face as he slid back and forth across the moving, fluid mountain. Exhilaration consumed him. He was master of the elements of air and water, halfway to absolute godhood, and his grin took up his whole face. A wicked thought only somewhat distracted him from his trek into the beach: tonight, p
erhaps he could complete his self-deification by mastering the elements of fire and earth with Kelly's willing, private assistance.

  The wave reached its culminating point and collapsed upon itself in a linear eruption of white foam. Andre jetted out the end of the falling wave, smoothly riding the board the last few yards into shore. He stepped from the surfboard onto dry sand, and into the firm, tanned arms of Kelly. Mike had given up his act when she abandoned him, and Andre winked at his buddy.

  Kelly looked up into his eyes with naked adoration. "You are so hot out there, Andre," she breathed in a husky contralto. He could feel the lithe length of her along his wetsuit clad body as he bent to kiss her. Her lips and tongue --

  "Preliminary scan complete. Radar and spectrographic surveys confirm asteroid make up: 57% iron and iron oxides, 14% nickel, 9% copper, 9% antimony, 3% titanium, 3% chromium, 3% iridium, 2% mixed heavy metals and silicates. Structural make up and vein map follows."

  Andre-406 acknowledged the subsystem's report and cursed to himself. He scanned the inverse globe of the heavens in vain, but the beach was gone. Mike was gone. Kelly, gone. All that remained was the medium sized rock he was perched upon, alone in the firmament. He could see the other asteroids around him, but only if he expanded his sensor cutoff beyond the human norm.

  It was all a dream, a memory of a life he had never lived, his own life being lived by someone else. And now that he had enough of a taste of it to allow him to continue, reality had intruded. The work must go on.

  At one level, he recognized that he "felt" better. The quantum potentials that built up over time, analogs to stress and fatigue, had all been swept away, grounded out, reset. He was a new man, or a new machine, depending on the personal bias of the observer.

  In another way, via an alternative view that was unique to Andre-406 alone, he felt much worse. His isolation and the incongruous setting of his memories were thrown into sharp contrast by the emptiness in which he now dwelled. It had not been him surfing into Kelly's waiting arms. He had been here, preparing to process the bulk of an asteroid the entire time. It slowly became obvious to him that no matter how good it felt to lose himself in the memories of Andre Benoit, it did not make them his memories.

  He remembered growing up on Earth, the tall buildings of Chicago scraping at an endless blue sky. He remembered the first time he saw the beaches of Southern California, and the way they had made him feel complete like nothing ever before. He remembered the interview at AstroLith, and their incredible offer: party 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all on the company dime, and all he had to do was wear the cortical pick-up . . . .

  And then he remembered waking up in the cold darkness of space, making the slow spiral orbit out to the asteroid belt. From that point on he had worked, and worked, and worked, the business of mineral and metals processing relieved only by the weekly transmissions from Earth, transmissions that allowed him to live another few idyllic days of the life that had been stolen from him.

  But they had not really been stolen from him. He knew now that they were never his to begin with. His real memories began the moment he woke up in space, with every remembrance from before merely background. He had not been born in Chicago. He and the others like him had been built to do the work the fragile, resource-intensive human beings could not afford to do. Was the truth that he was a slave and the memories just a cheap soporific?

  Flirting with heresy, Andre-406 dared to think that Dr. Abrams might be wrong, might be lying. For the first time in all the years of his existence, 406 began to feel suspicious about the memories they fed him, and about the solace they provided.

  Kelly Bishop stirred against the side of the real Andre Benoit, caught in the grip of a dream. He looked over at the bronze sheen of her skin, artfully concealed by folds of the twisted sheet. The heat of her body soothed him, and he knew he could have drifted off again, if it were not for the annoying cortical pick-up. It had shifted around during the night and now pulled at his hair uncomfortably. With a last look and a twinge of lecherous regret, he slid off the bed and got up without waking her.

  In the bathroom, he checked himself out in the virtual mirror, scanning it around his head from every angle. Yep, damn thing's come loose. With a series of winces, he unwound it from his hair and pulled the delicate web of crystalline filaments off his scalp. The interface with the nanoprobes along his ganglia was severed and the telltale red light that always swam in the upper right quadrant of his peripheral vision went out.

  Andre gently washed the pick-up in a pool of warm water in the bathroom sink and then dried it with the utmost care on a fresh towel. It glistened anew. Andre was not the most delicate person, but this was his livelihood, and it was second in importance to him only to Kelly.

  He began to cautiously apply adhesive to the web, ensuring he hit all the nodes. A motion of air caused him to look back. Kelly stood in the doorway, wearing tousled locks and nothing else. He grinned at the sight, but the smile died upon his lips when he saw her expression. Anger seethed through her. He tried to pick up the grin again and said, "Hey, babe. What's up?"

  "You lied to me, you son of a bitch! You said you were going to stop wearing that thing when we were together! You know how I feel about it." She ripped a robe from the hook beside the door and slipped it on.

  Denied his visual treat, he shrugged and turned back to the mirror, carefully replacing the pick-up and arranging his hair to hide it. "Kelly, it's what I do. I don't see what the big deal is."

  "Because it makes me feel like I'm starring in some filthy porno. You might get off on that, but I don't!"

  The pickup now online and invisible beneath his wild shock of hair, Andre turned back to her with a carefully crafted look of wounded innocence. "Babe, I'm no skeeve. I only wear the pickup because it's my job to wear it, not because I want to betray our relationship. You're too precious to me." He smiled and moved closer, putting his arms around her. She was stiff as a board, but soon loosened up and melted against him. "Besides, you know no one can ever look at these recordings. They're keyed to my brain patterns alone. No one will ever see them."

  She stiffened again and shrugged off his arms. "That's not exactly true, now is it, Andre? Or did you forget they broadcast those recordings every week to the whole goddamn solar system? Every moment we share, every . . . intimacy is put on display for a bunch of machines! It's not right."

  He laughed. "Unbelievable! You're still freaked out about the boys?"

  "Yes, I am. Doesn't it bother you that these robots are flying around out there, each and every one of them believing that they're you? Each of those things are out there, obsessing about what you and I do behind closed doors."

  "Honestly I hardly ever think about it, not as long as the checks keep rolling in. And so what if they are out there, enjoying my life? I see no reason why they shouldn't enjoy ALL of it."

  She screamed in frustration and disgust. "You're such an asshole!" Kelly turned and threw off the robe, grabbing her clothes and dressing in haste.

  For the first time since she woke, Andre looked serious. "Hey, what are you doing?"

  "I'm leaving! If you're so vain that you really don't understand the problem I have with this, then you aren't the person I thought you were. I'm not willing to put myself on display for all of AstroLith like you are. If you want me to stay, you'll have to prove who's more important to you."

  Andre flashed a quick grin, but sobered as he realized she meant it. "Is that supposed to be some sort of ultimatum, you or the pickup?"

  She finished putting on her shoes and began looking for her bag. "It's whatever you want it to be."

  He laughed once, without humor. "Do you really think I'll just give up all that money for you?"

  Kelly looked him in the eye, her mouth set in a grim line. "You tell me."

  Tara O'Neil hit "Send" and moved on to the next neurotic rambling from one of AstroLith's many emulated intelligences. This one brought a smile to the corner of her mouth, though. It
was Andre-406, Dr. Abrams' least (and her most) favorite EI.

  "Doc O'Neil, it's me, Andre. Well, who else would it be, of course, since we're all Andre. I'm 406 though. Hey, is the real Andre called Andre One, or Andre Zero, or Just Plain Andre, or what? Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm glad you took over counseling from Dr. Abrams. You're a lot easier to talk to, and you actually seem to listen, which I never could be certain of with Abrams. So thank you. And I was wondering if it would be possible to get Andre Zero to swing by and meet you sometime, since, frankly, he needs a little professional help, but mainly because Kelly is just all wrong for us. Plus, I wanted to see how you looked in a miniskirt. Talk to you soon!"

  Tara could not account for the sudden blush that spread up her cheeks. He's a mining machine, for God's sake! she thought. She could not deny the allure however. It had only been two months since she had taken some of the counseling workload from Dr. Abrams, but in that two months she had seen an almost complete turnaround in Andre-406's attitude. He was still somewhat dissatisfied with life in the Asteroid Belt and the way memories were rationed out, but his overall attitude had improved immeasurably. In fact, many times he sent messages just to chat, whether he was feeling stress or not.

  Tara preferred to avoid analyzing how she felt about that, but she could not simply disregard the fact that their chats were usually the high point of her day. She was about to draft a reply when she was stopped by loud voices in the passageway outside her door. The door opened and Abrams came in without knocking, arguing with the ghostly hologram of Roger Mayfield, AstroLith's Vice President of Operations, their direct superior.

  Dr. Abrams was shaking his head. "Mr. Mayfield, you won't get more than a week of extra service out of them before the units begin to exhibit psychotic and suicidal behavior. You can neither deny them their ration of memories, nor rerun an older set of memories. There is simply no way around it. These are active, intelligent simulations and withholding their fresh memory uploads will result in a critical overload of quantum stress potentials, just as if I locked you in solitary confinement. Can't we simply compel Benoit to honor his contract?"