by David Brin
The next tout to approach isn’t selling sex. A gray like me, she’s dressed in conservative linen paper, fashioned like a TV doctor’s costume, all the way down to the endoscope hanging from her trim neck.
“Pardon the intrusion, sir. May I ask if you’ve been practicing prudent imprinting?”
I have to blink; it sounds familiar. “Oh, right. You mean protecting my real self from diseases that a ditto—”
“—might bring home and transmit through inloading. Yes, sir. Have you given any thought to how dangerous it can be to reclaim a golem that’s been who-knows-where in the course of a day? Exposed to everything from viruses to memic toxins?”
She offers a slim pamphlet and suddenly I remember a story in the news recently, played up mostly for humor, about people who evidently think we’re living in the bad old plague days of the Fizzle War.
“I try to stay clean. If there’s any question, I inload without touching my rig.”
“Memic toxins don’t require physical contact,” the imitation doctor insists. “They can spread via inloaded memories.”
I shake my head. “We’d be told if any such thing were—”
“There have been outbreaks in more than a dozen cities, around the globe.” Her professional demeanor slips, pushing the pamphlet. “They’re hiding the truth!”
They? A conspiracy fan, then. Talk about memic toxins! Could all of the agencies responsible for public safety — and all of their employees — collude to prevent the public from learning of a new plague? Even that wouldn’t suffice today, with so many clever amateurs around. Then there are the Henchman prizes, made alluring to draw confessions out of the most trusted lieutenant.
“An interesting hypothesis,” I murmur, backing away. “But then why haven’t the free-nets—”
“The toxin designers are clever. Varying symptoms from town to town! The free-nets correlate incidents, rumors, anecdotes. Nevertheless—”
Continuing to back up, I gratefully let the up escalator catch my heel, yanking me aboard the moving steps while feigning an apologetic-polite smile. The “doctor” stares after me for a moment, then swivels to approach another passerby.
Maybe later I’ll ask Nell to do a sift search on the topic of “memic plagues.” Till then, call it another aberrant entertainment served up by Studio Neo.
Now I’m passing the really classy establishments. “Scenarios Unlimited” will send you an expert interviewer — an ebony, zinglemindedly dedicated to create a script to match your budget and favorite fantasy. Then he’ll return with props and a complete cast of characters to play out any scene, from high literature to your darker dreams.
“Proxy Adventures” will take your imprinted-but-unbaked copy to some far corner of the world where they’ll kiln-activate it, put it through a day of frenetic escapades, then return the flash-frozen cranium in perfect condition, so you recall everything. A twenty-four-hour adventure, ready to serve.
Then there are specialists offering services no one imagined before golemtech. Almost anything that’s illegal to do to another human in flesh can be done to a ditto — though often with with fees and a perversion tax.
No wonder Inspector Blane hates this place. It’s one thing to contract out your duplicates for honest labor. Unions fought it and lost, and now millions earn a living in several places at once, doing whatever they happen to be good at, from janitorial service to nuclear reactor maintenance. A fair market offers top expertise to all, at affordable prices.
But expertise in entertainment? Brought down from the silver screen, liberated from the boob tube, leaping off the pages of pulpy romance novels, made tactile and personal … They say that when the Web started, the heaviest single use was for porn. Same here. Only now it walks and talks back to you. It can do whatever you want.
Wait a sec.
It’s the phone. I pick up in time to hear Nell pass the call to my real self.
Pal’s half-paralyzed face fills the little display, surrounded by wish sensors to command his magic wheelchair. He wants me to come over.
My rig sounds grumpy and tired. He won’t do another imprint.
“I’ve got three dits running around on errands,” he tells Pal. “One will drop by, if time allows.”
Three? The green won’t be up to handling Pal. And gray number one has to see Ritu Maharal about her murdered dad. There’s a chance he may even meet and question the real Vic Kaolin — something worth telling Clara about, when she gets back from her war.
So it’s up to me. If Wammaker lets me escape early, I’ll go listen to Pal’s latest wild-eyed theory or scheme. Crum. I can already feel my short “life” getting used up.
Top floor, where rooftop heliports give quick access to rich clients. Where illustrious producers serve fine coffee and fancy hors d’oeuvres, even to visiting grays! Here, elegant shops let you hire first-rate actors to play convincing roles in bodies molded to resemble anyone across time. There’s a penalty when a ditto doesn’t resemble its rig, but it’s small when no fraud is involved. Not that producers refuse a little fraud, now and then.
Wealthy clients also come here to arrange extravaganzas. Once, someone hired Clara’s reserve infantry platoon, off-duty, to be extras in a bloody rendition of Caligula’s final orgy-slaughter. She snuck me in to watch the performance from behind a purple curtain. The reenactment was vivid, lurid, and maybe even educational in its attention to historical detail. The swordfights were superb. Clara’s golem died especially well.
Still, I didn’t care for the show.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” she agreed. In fact, not one member of her outfit inloaded memories from that evening’s brutal carnage. It kind of makes you proud of our boys and girls in khaki.
I’m still more than twenty meters from the elegant portico of Wammaker’s when a cowled figure catches my eye, gesturing from the shadows.
“Mr. Morris. Good of you to come.”
Taking a step closer, I recognize the ditto under the hood. Maestra’s executive assistant, her face a conservative gray tone, perfectly matching her attire.
“Will you come with me, please?”
She beckons and I follow … away from Wammaker’s. “Our meeting concerns sensitive topics, better discussed elsewhere,” she explains, handing me a cowled robe like her own. “Please put this on.”
If I were real, I might worry. Could the maestra be planning some ornate revenge for my breezy behavior toward her earlier? But then, so what? I’m just a ditto.
I put the robe on and follow.
A small service elevator takes us down, back to the low-rent floors of the old mall. Doors open and my guide heads straight for a nondescript storefront with opaque windows, bearing the name RENEWAL ASSOCIATES. I follow her into a realm of hanging fabrics that shimmer with piezoluminescence, wafting in tailored breezes. Some effort’s even gone to growing indoor plants that provide a welcoming atmosphere. Mostly simple ferns and ficus. But your eye is meant to be drawn elsewhere, to holo posters of Gineen and her best affiliates — women and men whose copies offer sybaritic pleasures to those weary of mere sex.
Off the waiting room stand shaded booths where clients may consult privately with special advisers. Still, it’s not as elegant as Wammaker’s. The maestra must be branching out.
“Please wait,” the assistant says, pointing to a straightback wooden chair … no doubt a precious antique, and uncomfortable as well. I stand again as soon as she departs. My golem blanks have relax-a-stilt joints. Sitting is redundant.
Of course I’ll be kept waiting, so I pull out a cheap reading plaque and dial up the Journal of Antisocial Proclivities. Since Ritu Maharal proclaimed that her father was murdered, I thought about looking up homicide. (I wonder how gray number one is doing right now. Have I reached any conclusions yet?) But after passing through Studio Neo, my thoughts wander toward another problem. Decadence.
Are the new puritans right? Is golemtech hardening our hearts?
Clara calls this pla
ce a “soul-callus.”
“Today we can wallow in depravity without paying for it in disease or hangovers,” she said only last week. “The oldest profession’s been updated for a new age, without prisons, prudity, or any need for empathy. What a deal.”
Me, I’m usually less cynical. Life is better in lots of ways. Wealthier. More tolerant. No one cares what shade of brown your real skin is.
But my grays do vary a bit from one another and this one feels a dour suspicion that Clara may be right.
Blinking, I notice that the reading plaque already glows with a selected journal article. It must’ve done an iris-dilation interest scan while I pondered gloomy thoughts. (Who says dittos don’t have a subconscious?)
Sublimation of the Immortality Impulse:
A Return to Necromancy?
Ouch. What a title for a scientific paper! Not my usual cuppa tea. Still it’s intriguing. I wonder …
“Mr. Morris?”
It’s the assistant. I expected to be snubbed longer than that. Maybe Wammaker really is worried about something this time.
Looking up, I notice the assistant’s gray dittobody has blue eyes.
“The maestra will see you now.”
6
It’s Not Easy Being Green
… or how Tuesday’s third ditto discovers sibling rivalry …
I hate getting off the warming tray, throwing paper garments over limbs that still glow with ignition enzymes.
Not only am I a copy today, I’m the greenie.
Damn.
After a thousand times, it still feels like I’m being punished. Given a long list of nasty chores. Sent to take all sorts of risks you’d never put Lord Protobody through.
I start this pseudolife filled with dark feelings.
Ugh. What a mood. Archie must really be tired to start me off with a Standing Wave as gloomy as this. Any worse and I might’ve been a frankie …
Well, shrug it off! Today you’re an ant.
And green, at that. Leave philosophy to your betters.
Well, last night another green took on Beta’s henchdits, and won. A hero-duplicate, who slogged through hell to bring back vital news. So a green can matter! Even if today’s job is to fetch groceries, clean toilets, mow the lawn, and other horrors.
Grays get fancy realtime recorders. But I gotta do quick dumps into an old microtape ring. Post hoc. Don’t know why I bother. If Archie wants to know what I did today, he can inload and find out.
I rode into town behind gray number one, keeping both eyes tight shut while he swerved like a maniac, risking both of our carcasses, and nearly wrecked our last Vespa. Schmuck.
Left him in a park, waiting to meet the UK limo they’re sending over. He’ll see the beautiful Ritu soon, and talk to Vic Kaolin, and maybe investigate a murder.
And later, maybe tonight, realAlbert will get lonesome. He’ll go thaw the sybarite Clara left for us in her freezer. I felt a wave of irrational jealousy about that. A temptation to drive over to her houseboat and use it myself!
Of course I didn’t. Her dit would take one look at me and refuse to waste itself on the coarse senses of a green. Anyway, what’s the point? If I inload, I’ll rejoin Albert and share it all in realflesh. And when Clara returns from the front, I’ll share that reunion, too.
So I went about my chores. Visited the market, adding some fresh items to the normal delivery — fruits and deli stuff, plus a gourmet dish or two. Should arrive by the time Archie wakes from his nap. I hope I’ll like the herring. It’s Danish.
Dropped by the bank and updated my level three passcodes. Everyone does a monthly update in person, with biometric and chemical scans to verify you’re you. But for weeklies a ditto will do. No one can fake a personal Standing Wave. Anyway, it’s been years since the Big Heist. Some analysts think cyber crime is already passé.
That may be. But villainy still worries citizens. It comes up as a top priority every election. There must be nearly a hundred real cops in this city alone. If Yosil Maharal was murdered, that makes twelve homicides in the state so far this year. And summer’s barely half over.
I don’t fear being unemployed soon.
Oh, the phone rang while I was shopping. It was Pallie, needing some attention again.
Albert grumbled. “I’ve got three dits running around on errands. One will drop by, if time allows.”
Three dits?
Gray number one is busy with Ritu Maharal and Vic Kaolin — a big case, maybe a real moneymaker. Gineen Wammaker may tie up gray number two all day.
Care to bet I’ll be sent to hear Pal’s latest conspiracy theory?
Crum. What’s a greenie for?
Had to pick up the lawn mower from fix-it shop. Repairs cost eight-fifty, plus abatement fees for the old gas engine. Tied it securely to the back of the Vespa, but that messed the scooter’s balance. Nearly cracked up in a fast curve on the way home. Got a five-point violation, too. Crap.
At least the mower started right up. (Mitch, the repair guy, knows his stuff. He was there in person, this time.) Soon I had the lawn edged better than that orange-striped “gardener” everyone else in the neighborhood hires. Things grow on my tiny patch of earth. Roses. Fresh carrots and berries. I like growing things, same as Clara needs to hear water lapping on the hull of her houseboat.
Next, tackle the pile of dishes in the sink, then toilets. Might as well clean the whole damn house while I’m at it. Except vacuuming. Lord Archie’s gotta nap.
Ho-hum.
Some days I weigh existential matters. Simple ones a green can grasp. Like, should I volunteer NOT to inload tonight? I mean, why remember this banality? Albert’s already experienced nearly a hundred subjective years, counting golem recollections. Some techies put a theoretical max at five centuries. So why not conserve?
I’ve debated this with myself lots of times, and recall always deciding to inload. Well, duh! Only those dittos who chose continuity became part of continuing memory. But Nell says more than a hundred and eighty of my copies chose oblivion instead. Dispirited deputy-selves who endured dreary days that I’m better off forgetting.
Heck, there are days I had in person that I’d erase, if I could. An ancient problem, I guess. At least nowadays you get a little choice in the matter.
Pausing at Archie’s work screen, I looked over our ongoing cases — about a dozen routine investigations, tracked by priority and progress charts. Most can be pursued by Net — making remote enquiries, sifting data from public sources, or persuading the owners of private streetcams to share their posse archives without a court order. Sometimes I send out my own spy-wasps to follow suspects around town. I couldn’t afford to stay in business if everything had to be done in person, or even by golem-duplicate.
Half of the cases involve my specialty — snaring copyright violators. Pros like Beta offer endless aggravation, but fortunately most rip-offs are done by amateurs. The same goes for face thieves, who send out dittos with illegally forged features, pretending they were roxed from other people. Troublemaking kids, mostly. Catch ’em. Fine ’em. Teach ’em to behave.
Then there are jealous spouses — a private eye’s standby, since the days of ragtime.
Some modern marriages are complex, admitting new partners by joint consent. Most folks prefer old-fashioned monogamy. But what does that mean nowadays? If a husband sends a ditto to fool around while he’s busy at work, does that constitute fantasy, flirtation, or outright infidelity? If a wife rents a little whitey to get through a lonely afternoon, is that prostitution, or a bit of harmless diddling with an appliance?
Most people think flesh-on-flesh still feels best. But clay can’t get pregnant or pass disease. It lets you rationalize, too. Some partners draw the line at inloading memories after a dittosex affair. If it isn’t remembered, it didn’t happen. No recall, no foul.
But if you can’t remember it, what was the point?
All the complications can get confusing for creatures with jealous whims that formed i
n the Stone Age. Anyway, hurt feelings aren’t my concern, just facts. The crux is that civilization fails without accountability. What people do with it is their own concern.
Scanning the screen, I see I’ll need four dits tomorrow. Two just for stakeouts and tails. The freezer is well stocked with blanks, but our scooter situation is dire.
Onscreen I see that gray number two just requested more Turkomens. I prefer Vespas, but who listens to a green?
Looking around the house, I see more cleaning to do. Pencils to sharpen and notes to file. More grotty chores, so the real me can spend precious fleshtime being creative.
I’d let out a long sigh … if this body were equipped for it.
To hell with all this. I’m going to the beach!
7
Price of Perfection
… gray number two gets an offer he can’t refuse …
The maestra has guests.
Four are females, identical, with frizzy pink hair and earthen-red skin so dark it’s almost umber. They look nervous, agitated. One stares constantly at a vid-screen, nodding and grunting. A sluglike string of flesh seems to ooze out the side of her head, clamping a pseudopod onto an electronic sensor pad.
She’s jacked in, of all things! Sending and receiving straight from her clay brain into the Net — direct linkage, digital to neuroanalog — a nasty, unwholesome process that can fry you silly.
The remaining guest is male, modeled on an archetype who must be painfully slender in person. Following a fashion trend, this ditto avoids the stodgy old standard colors that were prescribed during the first generation of kilning.
His skin is plaid.
Ouch. I can barely make out his face amid the visual noise. Instead of paper garments, he wears lavish cloth. And the woven pattern of his shirt and pants actually matches the skin dye job. Expensive styling for a ditto!