Kiln People

by David Brin

  That is, if you were rich and white, a small inner voice reminded me. The whitish-brown of a ruling elite.

  The mere idea of racism seems bizarre today. Yet each generation has problems. As a kid, I endured food rationing. Wars were fought over fresh water. Now we suffer afflictions of plenty. Underemployment, the purple wage, state-subsidized hobby-frenzy, and suicidal ennui. There are no more quaint villages or impoverished natives. But that means having to share all of Earth’s fine places with nine billion fellow sightseers — and another ten to twenty billion golems.

  “Go ahead, brother. Make a statement.”

  The voice broke my gloomy reverie. I turned to see another greenie, standing off to one side of the trail. Archies and their families ignored him as they passed, though he brandished a placard flowing with bright letters:

  Compassion is color-blind.

  Look at me. I exist. I feel.

  The ditto grinned, meeting my gaze and gesturing toward Moonlight Beach.

  “Go on down there,” he urged. “I can tell, you want to make them see you. Seize the day!”

  I’ve noticed more of these creatures lately. Agitators for a cause that leaves most people mystified — at once both echoing past righteous struggles and trivializing them. I’m torn between disgust and a wish to pillory him with questions. Like why does he make dittos, if he hates being discriminated against when he is one?

  Would he give equal rights to entities that last no longer than may-flies? Shall we give the vote to copies that can be mass-produced at whim — especially by the rich?

  And why doesn’t he go down to the beach, right now? Jostling among real humans, trying to jog their conscience, till one of them gets irritated enough to demand his ID pellet, posting a fine against his owner for some minor insult. Or till one of them decides to pay a fine, for the pleasure of cutting him to tiny pieces.

  Of course that’s why he stands on this bluff, holding up a sign but otherwise staying out of the way. This fellow is probably a brotherdit to some of the protestors I saw this morning, outside Universal Kilns. Somebody whose fervor is to send out proxies that demonstrate all day. An expensive avocation … and an effective way to protest.

  That is, if his cause weren’t absurd! More proof that most people have way too much free time nowadays.

  Suddenly, I wondered what the hell I was doing there. I began today having fantasies about taking Clara’s pleasure-ditto for myself, wallowed in philosophical issues beyond reach of a mere green, then abandoned the chores I had been made for, running off to waste beach time in a body that can’t enjoy the sand’s texture or the sea’s tart taste.

  What’s wrong with me today?

  Then it hit me. A weirdly thrilling perception.

  I must be a frankie!

  A borderline case, for sure. No staggering around with arms outstretched, going unh-uhhhhnh like Boris Karloff. Still, they warn you that dog-tired neurons are a recipe for trouble when you imprint, and poor Albert must have been running on fumes when he made me.

  I’m a false copy. A Frankenstein!

  Realizing this, a strange acceptance settled over me. The beach lost its allure and the agitator’s rhetoric palled. I retrieved my scooter, aiming it downtown. If this frankied rox lacks enough patience for house chores, maybe I’ll take it over to Pal’s and listen to him for a while.

  If anyone can relate to my condition, it’ll be Pal.

  Update. Post-recorded about an hour later.

  I just had some bad luck. Bad and weird.

  On my way to Pallie’s, I suddenly found myself trapped between some hunters and their prey.

  Maybe I was preoccupied, careless, and driving much too fast. Anyway, I missed the warning signs. Maser flashes from the helmets worn by a pack of urban idiots, baying and yelling as they chased their quarry through the steel and masonry canyons of Old Town.

  Other dittos veered aside. Lumbering dinobuses squatted down and hunched their scaly flanks. But I saw thinning traffic as an opportunity and zoomed straight toward the opening. Soon, maser beams were all over me, piercing clothes and tingling pseudoflesh. They resonate when they touch real skin, warning hunters not to shoot. But there aren’t many archies downtown anymore, so it makes a great recreational battleground … for jerks.

  They came dashing round the next corner, sweeping the intersection with hi-tech sensors and weapons. A hunter shouted, raising his bulbous, cannonlike thing in my direction!

  Why me? I sniveled. What’d I ever do to you?

  The shooter fired and fierce heat passed behind my left ear. A poor shot, if he was aiming at me.

  Swerving my scooter to speed the other way, I braked barely in time to avoid hitting a gangly, naked humanoid! Bright yellow but stained with red concentric target-circles on his chest and back, he teetered in front of the Vespa staring past me, wild-eyed, then spun about to flee.

  The pursuers screamed jubilation — sludgeheads grabbing an afternoon’s adrenaline rush. Their guns sizzled, shooting past me again, cheerfully risking a dit-bystander fine if they fried my corpus in the bargain. And maybe I should’ve gone for the trade! Met the guns with outstretched arms. Albert would get double damages for a mere frankie. Good trade.

  Instead, I hunched on the handlebars, slamming the throttle. The Vespa answered with a reedy wail, rearing like a bucking pony. At its high point, something hit the front tire. There were other impacts, on the machine and my body, as my scooter dug in and fled.

  The quarrydit was fast — puffing, running and dodging like mad. Still he spared me a brief glance as I passed, and I realized two things.

  One: he has the same face as one of the hunters.

  Two: I could swear he’s having a good time!

  Well, the world is filled with all kinds of kinkiness and folks with too much free time. But I was busy controlling the wounded Vespa. By the time I turned a corner, beyond the line of fire, it was coughing, smoking, then died.

  I stood next to my poor scooter, mourning its fatal wounds, when the phone rang, emitting an urgent rhythm.

  By reflex, I tapped my left ear, with its cheap implant, in time to hear one of Albert’s other selves answer.

  “Yes?”

  “Albert? It’s Ritu Maharal. I — I can’t see you. Don’t you have vid?”

  Words buzzed while I examined the scooter. Some kind of gummy substance splattered over the hybrid engine, shorting it out. I didn’t dare touch the stuff, clearly devised to incapacitate dittos.

  “… I’m just a gray, Ritu,” a voice answered. “Anyway, don’t you already have one of me—”

  “Where are you? Aeneas is waiting in the car, getting impatient. He expected you and my … father’s ditto to join him. But you both vanished!”

  I found more of the same gunk on the right leg of my paper garment. Hurriedly, I tore and kicked away the shredded pants, then searched for more.

  “What do you mean, vanished? How could they …”

  “Ritu? It’s me, Albert Morris. Are you saying that my gray is missing? And your father’s too?”

  Dull pain sensations drew my attention to a place in my back where something truly bothersome was going on. Turning to look at my spine in the Vespa’s mirror, I spotted a hole, half the size of my fist, in the lower left … and it was growing! If I were human, I’d already be crippled or dead. As things stood, I couldn’t have much time left.

  I spotted the intersection of Fourth and Main … still too far from Pal’s to reach him by foot. There were camionetas and jitneys on Main Street. Or I could stick out my talented green thumb and try to hitch. But where?

  Then I remembered. The Church of the Ephemerals lay on Upas Street, just two blocks away!

  I turned and started running east, while my archetype kept on talking to the alluring Ritu Maharal.

  “So my gray was last seen following your father’s—”

  “Out the back door of the mansion. After that, no one’s seen or heard either of the dittos … Oh, no. Aeneas
just walked in. He looks angry. He’s ordering a complete search of the grounds.”

  “Do you want me to come over and help?”

  “I — just don’t know. Are you sure the gray hasn’t checked in?”

  The pain in my back got worse as I stumbled down Fourth. Something was chewing me up from within! I still had enough sense to step aside for anybody who looked real. Everyone else got out of my way as I grunted and shouted, running toward the one place that might offer help.

  An edifice of dark stone loomed ahead. The place used to be a Presbyterian church, but all the real parishioners left this part of town long ago, letting it refill each day with a new servant class. One supposedly without souls to save.

  That’s when the Ephemerals took over.

  Underneath a multicolored rosette symbol, the glass-faced announcement board foretold a coming sermon. Culture can be continuity, said a cryptic message in uneven letters. There’s more to immortality than inloading.

  Staggering up the front steps, I passed an assortment of dittos — all shades and colors — who were lounging about, smoking and chatting as if none of them had chores to do. Many were damaged or disfigured, even missing arms or legs. I hurried past, plunging into the dim coolness of the vestibule.

  It wasn’t hard to spot the lady in charge — dark brown and real — sitting on a stool next to a table piled high with papers and supplies. She wrapped the arm of a greenie whose whole left side looked badly burned. Overhead, another of the rosette symbols gradually turned, like a circular mandala or a flower whose petals all flared to wide tips.

  “Open your mouth and inhale this,” the volunteer told her patient, pushing a pop-breather at the poor roxie’s face. Snapped, it billowed a compact cloud of heavy fumes the green sucked gratefully.

  “It’ll numb your pain centers. You must be careful then. Any bump or minor injury might—”

  I interrupted.

  “Excuse me. I’ve never been here before, but—”

  She jerked her thumb to the left. “Please get in line and take your turn.”

  I saw a rather long queue of injured dittos, patiently waiting. Whatever mishap brought each one to this place, their owners clearly wouldn’t inload such memories. Nor were these golems quite ready for recycling. Not with ancient instincts still screaming at them to fight on. The Standing Wave’s oldest imperative is endure. So they came here. Like me.

  But I couldn’t afford to be patient. Turning around, I insisted.

  “Please, ma’am. If you’d just look at this.”

  She raised her eyes, tired and perhaps cranky after long hours in this makeshift clinic. The volunteer nurse started to utter a curt dismissal, only it died on her lips. She blinked, then shot to her feet.

  “Somebody help me here, stat! We’ve got an eater!”

  What followed was weird, in a crazed-panicky-resigned kind of way. Like a scene from some old wartime hospital drama, updated with the hasty banter of a pit crew at an auto race. I lay prone on a filthy tabletop, listening through a haze while others dug into my back with makeshift, unsanitized tools.

  “It’s a clayvore! Damn, look at the bastard move.”

  “Watch out, it’s big one. Grab those needle-nose pliers.”

  “Try to catch it whole. Eaters are illegal in this state. We may get a month’s rent from the bastard who used this!”

  “Just grab the little devil before it gobbles something vital. Hey, it’s trying for the central ganglia—”

  “Shit. Oh wait, I think … Got it!”

  “Oh man, look at the nasty mother. What if they ever gave these things a taste for real flesh?”

  “How do you know they haven’t, in some secret lab?”

  “Don’t be paranoid. The Henchman Law ensures—”

  “Shut up and put that awful thing in a jar, will you? Now someone get me a cup of plaster. The ganglia’s intact. I think we can get by with a patch.”

  “I don’t know. The wound’s pretty deep and this green’s young. Maybe we should give the motivators a quick test.”

  I listened from quite some distance away. The pop-breather stopped pain, all right — a merciful aspect of ditto design, required by law. It also explains why there are few free clinics. This was the first time I ever used one … to the best of my knowledge, that is. What a futile idea, after all — spending effort to save creatures who will vanish in a few hours anyway. Like ditto emancipation, most folks don’t see the point.

  Yet there I was, fighting to survive, and grateful for the help.

  As I said before, a ditto’s personality is almost always based on its archetype. Almost always. Maybe I came here for help today because I’m a frankie. Because I no longer share Albert’s wry stoicism. At least not completely.

  Anyway, the operation was far shorter than any visit to a realperson hospital. No worry about recovery or infections or malpractice suits. I had to admire the volunteer staff, making do with makeshift equipment and stale, off-market parts.

  Ten minutes later I was sitting among other brightly hued patients and derelicts in the old church’s wooden pews, sipping Moxie Nectar while antidotes countered the pain drug. Underneath a hand-carved sign that read Helping the Kneady a crippled purple stood at the old preacher’s rostrum, reciting to us from a sheet of paper that she held in her good hand.

  “It is not for Man to set boundaries, or to define the limits of soul.

  “Once, human beings were as children, needing simple tales and naive visions of pure truth. But in recent generations the Great Creator has been letting us pick up His tools and unroll blueprints, like apprentices preparing to work on our own. For some reason, He’s permitted us to learn the fundamental rules of nature and start tinkering with His craft. That’s a fact as potent as any revelation.

  “Oh, it is a heady thing, this apprenticeship and the powers that go with it. Perhaps, in the long run, it will turn out to be a good thing.

  “But that doesn’t make us all-knowing. Not yet.

  “Most religions hold that some immortal essence stays inside a real human being — the original body — when copies are made. The golem-duplicate is just a machine, like some kind of robot. Its thoughts are projections — daydreams — sent in a temporary shell to perform errands. To help make your ambitions come true.

  “For a rox, afterlife comes only by reuniting with its rig … just as the rig achieves it someday by reuniting with God. That’s how older religions dismiss the ambiguity, the moral quandary, the troublesome morality of making new intelligent beings from clay.

  “But doesn’t some bit of immortal tincture transfer, each time we copy? Don’t we still feel passion and pain, while wearing these brief forms? Does heaven have a place for us, as well?

  “If it doesn’t, well, maybe it ought to.”

  The sermon droned on while I regathered my thoughts. Again, I saw the rosette pattern overhead — this time in a stained glass window that looked half-finished. Several crippled dittos worked in a corner, fashioning another flared bit for the flower. Only this petal looked more like a fish of some kind.

  I always figured the people who ran this place — the Ephemerals Temple — were related to the self-righteous kooks who picket Universal Kilns, like that greenie at the beach. So-called mancies who want citizenship for dittos. Or maybe the religious aspect meant they were kin to those other demonstrators … conservatives who see roxing as an affront to God.

  But neither seems to be true. They aren’t asking for equal rights, only compassion. And to save a little soul-stuff, here and there.

  All right, so maybe they’re sincere kooks. I’ll ask Nell to send the Ephemerals a donation. If realAlbert doesn’t veto it.

  Still, I got out of there as soon as I could stand, seeking a quiet place to make this recording. Maybe Al and Clara will listen to it together and ponder a few new notions.

  That’s enough immortality for me. For a frankenstein mutant.

  Meanwhile, it’s time to get busy. I may no
t be a faithful duplicate of my original, but we still share some interests. Things I’d like to know before vanishing away.

  9

  The Sleeper Wakes

  … or how realAlbert learns he can only count on himself …

  Even in the old days it was normal to wonder, now and then, if you were real. At least it was normal for zen masters and college sophomores.

  Now, the thought can strike you in the middle of a busy day. Running errands and doing business, you actually lose track of which table you got up from that morning. You can’t help checking, lifting a hand to glance at the color, or giving flesh a quiet pinch.

  The worst part is dreaming.

  Dittos hardly ever sleep. So the mere fact that you’re dreaming ought to reassure.

  It ought to. But nightmares have their own logic. You can thrash in bed, worrying that you aren’t really you … but someone else just like you.

  My brain still felt loggy when Ritu Maharal’s second call got me up for good. Clara would say it serves me right. “Only old-fashioned cyberfarts think they can ignore the sun.”

  Easy advice, from someone in her profession. Wars are mostly scheduled, nine-to-five affairs nowadays. But in my line of work it’s easy to slip off-track. Well, four hours of rest — plus a bottle of ginger-fizzy Liquid Sleep — would have to do. Anyway, Ritu’s news had me worried.

  Shambling into my office, I checked the ditto roster to see how my copies were faring. If gray number one had gone missing, some clue might be evident on the board. Or maybe another of my selves could be diverted to Kaolin Manor.

  I blinked at the glowing emblems, unable to believe my eyes. All three status lights flashed amber for inaccessible/incommunicado!

  “Nell, can you explain this?”

  “Not completely. Gray number one vanished less than an hour ago, at the estate of Vic Aeneas Kaolin.”

  “I know that already.”

  “Then do you also know they just found that gray’s ID pellet lying on the ground in an off-limits area, restricted to Kaolin’s intimate servants? The Vic’s attorney wants to know what your ditto was doing there.”