Kiln People

by David Brin

  “How the hell should I know?” And to think, this day began so well. “Put that aside for now. What’s going on with gray number two?”

  “A coded message just came in. That gray has gone over to no-return, autonomous mode.”

  I blinked in surprise.

  “He did? Without consulting me?”

  “It’s always been your policy to give grays this leeway.”

  “Yes, but why—”

  “The copy was offered a quick, profitable job with a consortium led by Gineen Wammaker. In order to avoid conflict of interest with your other cases, the investigation must take place under conditions of sequestered cognizance.”

  “Under conditions of what?” I shook my head. “Oh, you mean no self-telling. I can’t inload the dit, or even find out what it does.”

  This wasn’t the first time a copy of mine took a sealed assignment, heading off on its own in order to make a quick profit for the real me. I’ve been well paid for investigations that I’ll never remember, even if the customer was satisfied.

  What goes through my mind, when I decide to accept such a case? Sitting here in my real body, I can’t picture making the sacrifice. But I guess something in my character makes it possible — even likely — under the right circumstances.

  Just hearing about it leaves me feeling rather creepy. “That gray had better be careful,” I said in a low voice. “I don’t trust the maestra.”

  “The ditto knows Wammaker can be devious. Do you want me to play back its message? Voice profiles ranged from cautious to paranoid.”

  Should I find that reassuring? My grays are exceptionally good. In fact, some years ago I was invited to join a research study of people who imprint especially high-fidelity golems. Anyway, what could I do but shrug and accept the situation? If you can’t trust your own gray, who can you trust?

  “All right, then tell me what happened to the green. This place is a mess. Dishes piled in the sink, trash bins full. Where’s it gone?”

  In response, Nell threw a phone image on the wall. A bland version of my own face abruptly glistened like a plaster cast, stained a color reminiscent of dying chlorophyll.

  “Hi me,” the visage waved jauntily against a shabby background, evidently somewhere in dittotown. “I just dictated a full report, which I’ll send in a minute. But here’s the short version.

  “You blew it, Albert! Shouldn’t imprint when you’re wipe-out tired like you were this morning. You’ve always been lucky, but this time you finally made a frankie.”

  The green face paused to let the news sink in, grinning with ironic resignation that looked at once familiar and yet odd, somehow. I can’t say for sure that I ever smiled quite that way.

  “What’s it like being a mutant copy? I know you’re curious, so let me tell you. It feels downright weird. Like I’m me … and not me … at the same time. Know what I mean?

  “Of course you don’t. Anyway, the crux of it is that I won’t be doing your dishes or vacuuming your house today. But not to worry! You don’t have to call the cops or a disposal service. I’m no public hazard … no crazy stuff. I just have a few interests of my own, that’s all.

  “If I get a chance, I’ll send one last report before I expire. I owe my creator that much, I suppose.

  “Thanks for making me. Guess I’ll see you around.”

  The green ditto winked and signed off. I stared at the blank wall until Nell broke in.

  “To the best of my knowledge, this is your very first Frankenstein duplicate. Shall I make an appointment for you to get a routine medical scan? Life Upkeep is having a sale on checkups this week.”

  I shook my head.

  “You heard him. I was tired, that’s all.”

  “Then shall I put out a notice, renouncing the green’s pellet?”

  “And let every sicko hunt-fetishist go gunning for it? The poor thing seems harmless. I wonder, though …”

  Could the same effect have touched the grays I imprinted this morning? They were made from more expensive blanks, and the scan times were longer. Anyway, with both of them incommunicado, what could I do but hope for the best?

  There was little more to be learned from the green’s dictated report, only some colorful incidents at Moonlight Beach and that dittotown church where they repair golems — interesting and dramatic, but no new light shed.

  Nell broke in. “Now that we’ve updated ditto status, there is work to do. Several ongoing cases need attention. And Ritu Maharal expects you to call back with conjectures about her father’s fatal accident.”

  I nodded. There are always too many things going on to handle all by myself.

  “Break out a specialist,” I ordered. “An ebony. Top of the line. I’d better imprint right away.”

  “An ebony has already been prepped.”

  The storage unit hissed, emitting oily fog as a fresh golem blank slid onto the warming tray, wearing a mirrorlike, glossy black sheen. More expensive than a quality gray, it came pre-tuned for intense focus, amplifying high levels of professional concentration for a full twenty-four hours — assuming that your original already has those qualities. Which may explain why you don’t see ebonies as often as sybaritic whites. A full day of intense pleasure may be as wearing to inload as a day of hard work, but a lot more people have an aptitude for pleasure.

  The kiln was ready. The soul-sifter’s writhing tendrils awaited my head. But first I needed a moment to seek calm. Losing contact with two grays was bad enough, but for one of my greens to turn frankie? The unprecedented occurrence had me worried. Was I rested enough to keep it from happening again?

  Turning away from the copier, I pushed open the back door of my small house and stepped into the garden. Warm sunshine on my face helped a lot. So did the smell of growing things. Moving over to my very own zen lemon tree, I plucked a small fruit and used a penknife to slice open one end, rubbing some juice onto my wrists. The scent filled my sinuses and I closed my eyes, clearing my thoughts.

  Soon confidence returned. Back to work.

  Laying my head between the soul-pickups, I gave the mental signal to begin. This would be a long, careful scan, taking maybe ten minutes, so I tried to stay relaxed and immobile as delicate fingers began riffling through me — mostly the brain but also heart, liver, and spinal cord — copying from the template of my Standing Wave, pressing its image into the nearby clay figure. It all felt familiar, like hundreds of other times. Yet on this occasion I felt self-consciously aware of the undercurrent — ripples of emotion and semi-random memories that imprinting evokes at a level below clear consciousness. Vague, oceanic feelings of connectedness washed over me, sensations that William James called “the religious experience,” before mankind got around to transforming the spiritual realm into just another area of technological expertise.

  It was only natural for my drifting thoughts to contemplate the greenie … especially the time it reported spending at the Ephemerals Temple. Apparently there was more to the place than a bunch of kooks, wasting their altruistic impulses on wounded mayflies. It made me wonder.

  What happens to the soul of a ditto who loses his salvation — who never gets to inload back into the “real” self who made him? It always seemed a metaphysical and rather futile question — except three of me faced that situation today.

  For that matter, what happens when your original dies? Some religions think there’s a final transfer, loading your entire lifestream into God, in much the same way that your golems pour their memories back into you at the end of each day. But despite fervent yearnings — and well-funded private research — no one’s ever found proof of such transfer to some higher-level archetype-being.

  Unsettling thoughts. I tried to let go and just drift, letting the unit do its work. But moments later, Nell interrupted with another high-priority call.

  “It is from Vic Aeneas Kaolin,” my house computer said. “You have no operational self-copies to take it. Shall I answer with an avatar?”

  Use a c
rude software emulation to greet a trillionaire? I quivered at the notion. Might as well insult him with a recorded voice saying, I’m not in right now, leave a message.

  “Put him through to me here,” I ordered. This was going to be one of those days.

  The image that erupted in front of me showed the tycoon’s familiar visage — slender and heavy-browed — sitting in a tidy office with an ornate fountain-sculpture bubbling in the background. I almost sat up in surprise when I saw that he was brown! One of the pale, North European shades. It would be worthwhile interrupting the scan in order to show respect for his rig.

  Then I spied a glint … a brief, specular reflection off his cheek. A non-specialist might be fooled by the guise, but I could tell this was another golem, baked in human shades. It wasn’t even illegal, since you can wear any color you like in the privacy of your own home, as long as no fraud is involved.

  I remained supine, letting the tetragramatron unit continue sifting and imprinting a duplicate of my soul.

  “Mr. Morris.”

  “ditKaolin,” I replied, indicating that I saw through the amateurish guise. He paused, then inclined his head ever so slightly. After all, I was the real person in this conversation.

  “I see you are imprinting, sir. Shall I call back in an hour?”

  As before, I found his way of speaking a bit old-fashioned. But you can afford affectations when you’re rich.

  “It’s a deep scan, but I’ll hardly need a whole hour.” I smiled, while keeping my head quite still between the tendrils. “I can call you back in ten—”

  “This will only take a minute,” the ditto interrupted. “I want you to come work for me. Right away. At double your normal rate.” He appeared happily confident that I would leap up and accept without hesitation. Strange. Was this the same fellow whose lawyers sent threatening notes a little while ago, because they found the pellet of my missing gray in a restricted area? The same Kaolin who wouldn’t let me send a copy of my own to investigate the disappearance?

  “If this has to do with Dr. Maharal’s tragic death, you know that I’ve already been retained by his daughter, Ritu. Accepting your offer right now could risk conflict of interest, unless special arrangements are made.”

  “Special arrangements” could mean spinning off more grays who never come home. That thought, mixed with the turbid sensations of imprinting, left me feeling a bit queasy.

  Kaolin’s ditto blinked, then glanced offscreen. Perhaps he was receiving instructions from his archetype — the real mogul-hermit. Curiosity flamed within me. There were all sorts of rumors about the tycoon. Some of the more garish stories described him as hideously deformed by a rare, genetically engineered plague developed in his own laboratories. I made sure this conversation was being recorded at high fidelity. Clara would want details, when she came home from her war.

  The brown golem brushed away my objection. “That’s a mere technicality. You will perform the same investigation, but I can pay for your exclusive services, sparing poor Ritu the expense during her time of grief.”

  That “exclusive services” part sounded like this morning’s Fealty Oath ploy, repackaged a bit. True, I could always use money. But the world is more than money.

  “Have you cleared this idea with Ritu?”

  The flesh-colored ditto paused, again checking some information source offscreen. Barring a recent memory transfer, this one would have no personal knowledge of me, only what he had been told.

  “No, but I’m sure she’ll find my offer—”

  “Anyway, she’s already paid for today, in advance. Why not wait and see what I come up with? We can all compare notes tomorrow. Put everything on the table. Does that sound fair enough?”

  Kaolin was clearly unused to being put off.

  “Mr. Morris, there are … complications that Ritu doesn’t know about.”

  “Hm. You mean complications relevant to her father’s death? Or the abduction of my gray?”

  Grimacing, the platinum ditto realized his mistake. He was on the verge of giving me probable cause to subpoena him, if I chose.

  “Until tomorrow, then,” he said, with a curt nod. The image vanished and I chuckled briefly, then closed my eyes with a sigh. Perhaps now I could finish imprinting in peace.

  Alas, no longer distracted by the phone call, I felt once again immersed in the turbulence of soul-sifting. Emotion flurries and flashes of memory, most of them too brief to recognize, kept surging out of dark, unconscious storage. Some of them felt like anticipating the past, others like remembering the future. It grew stifling, especially when the perceptron tendrils entered both nostrils for the final and deepest phase of imprinting — the phase called “breath of life.”

  Nell broke in.

  “I have another incoming call, from Malachai Montmorillin.”

  This was the utter last straw. Almost gagging on the tendrils, I grunted -

  “Can’t listen to Pal raving right now.”

  “He appears to be quite insist—”

  “I said no! Use that buzzoff avatar on him. Anything. Just keep him away till I finish work tonight!”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been so vehement. The same intense feeling would carry over into the ebony. Anyway, poor Pal couldn’t help being the way he was.

  But I didn’t have time for his crazy games right then. Sometimes you just have to focus on the job at hand.

  10

  Golem Home

  … or how gray number two gets to have more fun then he really wants …

  The Rainbow Lounge has a retro name and revo clientele. Once you step past a flickersign that says NO REALFOLK ALLOWED, it feels like you’ve entered some nightmarish TwenCen sci-fi movie, filled with cavorting mutants and leering androids.

  Of course, a lot more than just a warning keeps archies away. True-flesh can’t endure the bone-jarring rhythms hammered by a vibrating dance floor. Staccato-strobes hurl juttering lightning arcs that would send organic neurons into conniptions. The atmosphere, clotted with soot from a hundred smoldering ash pipes, could lace your native lungs with lively tumors. The stench — mildly intoxicating to dittos — must be filtered before venting to outside air.

  Back in one-body days, Saturday night mattered. Now, places like the Rainbow hop around the clock, even on a Tuesday afternoon — whenever fresh dittos can arrive, baked for harsh pleasure in their owners’ kilns, decorated in everything from paisley spirals to moiré patters that turn skin into blurry art. Some come molded as gaudy sex caricatures or sport scary accessories, like razor talons or acid-dripping jaws.

  “Would you like a head-check?” The red attendant behind a counter offers me a glowing tag. Next to coatracks stand refrigerated cubbyholes. A tag for cranial storage can help ensure that violent memories will be savored later.

  “No thanks,” I tell her. And yes, I admit that I used to frequent spots like this. Hey, who gets past their teen years nowadays without sampling depths of hedonism that would shame Nero? Why not, if the only thing you keep are memories? And even that’s optional. Nothing that happens to your ditto can harm the real you, right?

  That is, if you ignore certain rumors …

  For many, the intensity fix is addictive — inloading experiences too raucous for mere protoplasm. Especially the unemployed, spending their purple wage to beat back the ennui of modern life.

  “Please wait over there, ditMorris. I’ll come for you shortly.”

  Jarred from doorway contemplation, I glance at my guide, another red-hued femdit. Her speech carries through the racket with remarkable clarity. Sonic interference dampers, embedded in the walls, shape a channel for her words to reach my ears. A tech-marvel you can take for granted, when you happen to own the place.

  “Pardon? Where should I wait?”

  Queen Irene’s red golem points again, past the dance floor and beyond the Grudge Pit. This time I see an empty table with a winking RESERVED light.

  “Will this take long? I haven’t got all day.”
>
  That expression has special meaning for a creature like me, self-sentenced to oblivion for the good of my maker. But my guide only shrugs, then heads off through the crowd to inform her sisters that the hired spy has arrived.

  Why should I spend my last eighteen hours working for people I don’t like, doing a job I don’t understand? Why not escape! The street is just meters away.

  But if I did escape, where could I go? realAlbert would force me to spend all of my remaining span in quick-court, fighting the maestra’s breach-of-contract suit. Anyway, I’m probably being watched right now, targeted by a sighting beam. I can see more copies of the same umber-colored female hurrying about, serving drinks, mopping spills and sweeping bits of broken customers. Several of the reds glance my way. They’ll know if I make a break for it.

  I head for the table, wading through a maelstrom of noise. Living noise that grabs your body like a cloying lover, hampering every move. I don’t like this “music,” but the garish dancers do, throwing themselves into frenetic collisions that few could mimic in flesh. Bits of clay fly, as if from a potter’s wheel.

  Staunch partiers have a saying — if your ditto makes it home in one piece, you didn’t have a good time.

  Seating booths line the walls. Others lounge at open tables that project garish holo images — whirling abstractions, vertigeffigies, or gyrating strippers. Some draw the eye against your will.

  Sidling around the mob, I pass through a fringe minimum, where the sonic dampers overlap, canceling everything to a hush, like inside a padded coffin. Stray bits of dialogue converge from all over the club.

  “… so there’s this clamber-amble, creeping up my leg? I look down an’ see it’s wearing Josie’s face, grinning at the tip! So I got maybe three secs to decide, did she send it as a poison pet or an apology? Get the pixel?”

  “… the committee finally accepted my thesis, only they slapped a perversion tax, on account of ‘sadistic themes’! The nerve. I bet none of those old turds ever read the gospels of deSade!”