Kiln People

by David Brin

  34

  Fishing Real

  … as Little Red gets jerked around …

  It can be hard to penetrate the mind of a genius.

  That’s usually no cause for worry, since true brilliance has a well-known positive correlation with decency, much of the time — a fact the rest of us rely on, more than we ever know. The real world doesn’t roil with as many crazed artists, psychotic generals, dyspeptic writers, maniacal statesmen, insatiable tycoons, or mad scientists as you see in dramas.

  Still, the exceptions give genius its public image as a mixed blessing — vivid, dramatic, somewhat crazy, and more than a little dangerous. It helps promote the romantic notion, popular among borderline types, that you must be outrageous to be gifted. Insufferable to be remembered. Arrogant to be taken seriously.

  Yosil Maharal must have watched too many bad movieds while growing up, for he swallowed that cliché whole. Alone in his secret stronghold, without anyone to answer to — not even his real self — he can ham up the mad scientist role, to the hilt. Worse, he thinks something about me offers the key to a puzzle — his sole chance at eternal life.

  Trapped in his laboratory, helplessly shackled down, I start to feel a well-known pull — the salmon reflex. A familiar call that most high-level golems feel at the end of a long day. The urge to hurry home for inloading, only now amplified many times by strange machinery.

  I’ve always been able to shrug it off, when necessary. But this time the reflex is intense. An agonizing need, as I yank against the bonds holding me down, struggling heedless of any damage to my straining limbs. A million years of instinct tell me to protect the body I’m wearing. But the call is stronger. It says this body doesn’t matter any more than a cheap set of paper clothes. Memories are what count …

  No. Not memories. Something more. It’s …

  I don’t have a scientist’s terminology. All I know right now is craving. To return. To get back into my real brain.

  A brain that no longer exists, according to ditYosil, who informed me a while ago that the real body of Albert Morris — the body my mother spilled into the world more than twelve thousand days ago — was blown to bits late Tuesday. Along with my house and garden. Along with my school report cards and Cub Scout uniform. Along with my athletic trophies and the master’s thesis I always meant to finish someday … and souvenirs from more than a hundred cases that I solved, helping to expose villains, sending the worst of them to therapy or jail.

  Along with the bullet scar in my left shoulder that Clara used to stroke during lovemaking, sometimes adding toothmarks that would fade gradually from my resilient realflesh. Flesh that is no more. So I’m told.

  I have no way to know if Maharal is telling the truth about this calamity. But why lie to a helpless prisoner?

  Damn. I worked hard on that garden. The sweet-pit apricots would’ve ripened next week.

  Good, I’m getting somewhere with this approach — distracting myself with useless internal chatter. It’s a way to fight back. But how long can I keep it up before the amplified homing reflex tears me apart?

  Worse, the golem-Maharal is talking too. Jabbering on while he labors at his console. Maybe he does it for his nerves. Or as part of a devilish plot to harass mine.

  “… so you see it all started decades before Jefty Annonas discovered the Standing Wave. Two fellows named Newberg and d’Aquili traced variations in human neural function, using primitive, turn-of-the-century imaging machines. They were especially interested in differences that appeared in the orientation area, at the top rear of the brain, during meditation and prayer.

  “They discovered that spiritual adepts — from Buddhist monks to ecstatic evangelicals — all apparently learned how to quell activity in this special neural zone, whose function is to weave sensory data together, creating a feeling of where the self ends and the rest of the world begins.

  “What these religious seekers were able to do was eliminate the perception of a boundary or separation between self and world. One effect — a presentiment of cosmic union or oneness with the universe — came accompanied by release of endorphins and other pleasure chemicals, reinforcing a desire to return to the same state again and again.

  “In other words, prayer and meditation induced a physicochemical addiction to holiness and unity with God!

  “Meanwhile, other investigators plumbed for the seat of consciousness, or the imaginary locus where we envision our essential selves to exist. Westerners tend to picture this locale centered behind the eyes, looking out through them, like a tiny homunculus-self riding around inside the head. But some non-Western tribes had a different image — believing that their true selves dwelled in the chest, near the beating heart. Experimenters found they could persuade individuals to shift this sense of locality, where self or soul resides. You could be trained to envision it outside your body. Riding some nearby object … even a doll made of clay!”

  Amid this ongoing rant, the professor occasionally pauses to offer me a smile.

  “Think of the excitement, Albert! At first, these clues came with no apparent connection. But soon, brave visionaries began realizing what they were onto! Pieces of a great puzzle. Then a gateway to a realm fully as vast as the grand universe of physics … and just as full of possibilities.”

  Helplessly, I watch as he cranks a big dial up another notch. The machine above me gives a preliminary groan, then sends yet another jolt into my little red-orange head. I manage to choke back a moan, not wanting to give him any satisfaction. For distraction, I keep mumbling this running commentary … even though I have no recorder and the words are futile, vanishing into entropy as I think them.

  That’s beside the point. I keep telling myself to find a habitual behavior and stick to it! Venerable advice for the helpless prisoner, offered long ago by a survivor of far worse torment than Maharal could ever dish out. Advice that helps me now as -

  Another jolt impales my skull! My back arches in spasms. Writhing, I feel wracked by a need to return.

  But return where? How? And why is he doing this to me?

  Suddenly I notice something through the pane of glass dividing Yosil’s lab. On the other side I see grayAlbert. The ditto who was captured at the Kaolin Estate on Monday. The one who was brought here, replenished and then used as a template to make me.

  Each time this body of mine wrenches, so does the gray!

  Is Maharal doing the same thing to us both, simultaneously? I see no big machine like this one aimed at the gray.

  That means something else is happening. That ditto is somehow feeling what I feel! We must be — agh!

  That was a bad one. I bit down so hard I might have broken a tooth, if I were real.

  Got to speak. Before the next jolt.

  “Rem — em — emo—”

  “What is that, Albert? Are you trying to say something?”

  Yosil’s ditto hovers near, offering faux sympathy. “Come on, Albert. You can do it!”

  “Remo — tuh … Re-mote! Y-you’re t-tryin-ing to do r-r-r—”

  “Remote-imprinting?” My captor chuckles. “You always guess the same thing. No, old friend. It’s nothing as mundane as that old dream. What I’m trying to achieve is much more ambitious. Phase-synchronizing the pseudo-quantum soul states of two related but spatially separated standing waves. Exploiting the deep entanglement of your Shared Observer Unification Locus. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Shivering. Jaws chattering.

  “Sh-shar-shared observ—”

  “We talked about this before. The fact that each person helps to make the universe happen by acting as an observer, collapsing the probability amplitudes and … oh, never mind. Let’s just say that all copies of a Standing Wave remain entangled with the original version. Even yours, Albert, though you give your golems remarkable leeway.

  “I want to use the connection! Ironically, that requires severing the original link, the only way it can be severed … by eliminating the template prototy
pe.”

  “Y-you k-killed—”

  “The original Albert Morris, using a stolen missile? Of course. Didn’t we already cover that?”

  “Yourself. You killed yourself!”

  This time, the gray golem before me winces.

  “Yes, well … that, too. And it wasn’t easy, believe me. But I had reasons.”

  “R-reasons … ?”

  “Had to act fast, too. Before I realized fully what I was up to. Even so, I nearly got away from me, speeding along that desert highway.”

  It’s getting harder to talk … even to grind out single words … especially each time another spasm strikes. The relentless pummeling of the machine, plucking the chords of my Standing Wave with a sharp twang … makes me cry out to escape … to rush back for inloading … to a home brain that no longer exists.

  Uhn! That was bad. How much worse can it get?

  All right, think! Suppose the real me is gone. What about the gray in the next room? Can I dump this soul back into him? Without inloading apparatus to connect us, he might as well be on the Moon.

  Unless …

  … unless Maharal expects something else to happen. Something — uhn! — unconventional.

  Can it … can it be that I’m expected to send something … some essence of me … across the room and through that glass wall to my gray, without any thick cryo-cables or any of the normal inloading junk connecting us?

  Before I can even begin to ask, I sense another jolt gathering strength, a big one, readying to strike.

  Damn, this one’s gonna hurt …

  35

  Glazed and Confused

  … as Tuesday’s gray gets the urge …

  Damn. What was that?

  Did I just imagine a wave of something, passing through me, like a hot wind?

  I could be making it up. Strapped to a table, unable to move, sentenced to the worst fate possible.

  Thinking.

  Ever since Maharal made me imprint that little red-orange copy and left me here to stew, I’ve been trying to come up with a clever escape plan. Something all those other captive Alberts never tried before. Or, failing that, some way to get a message out to real-me. A warning about Yosil’s techno-horror show.

  Yeah, I know. As if. But scheming, no matter how futile, helps pass the time.

  Only now I’m getting surges of weird anxiety. Flickering almost-images, too brief to recall, like fragments of a dream. When I chase them using free association, all that comes to mind is a vast row of silent figures … like the statues of Easter Island. Or pieces on a giant chess-board.

  Every few minutes, there’s another episode of wild, claustrophobic need. To leave this prison. To go home. To flee this stifling body I’m wearing and get back into the one that counts. One made of nearly immortal flesh.

  And now, something like an ugly rumor whispers, There’s no me any longer to go home to anymore.

  36

  Kiln Street Blues

  … Greenie goes gallivanting …

  Dittotown? Sherds!

  Departing the Temple of the Ephemerals, Palloid and I hurried down Fourth Avenue past dinobuses that bellowed and snorted, hauling in cheap factory laborers, round the clock. Truckbills and brontolorries grunted at each other, jostling to deliver their wares, while errand boys sprinted by on gangly legs, stepping over the bowed heads of stubby epsilons, who marched to underground workpits without a thought or care. Obsessive little dit-devils scurried about, sweeping up any debris or trash, keeping the street spotless. And striding imperiously amid all these disposables were lordly grays, ivories, and ebonies, carrying the most precious cargo of all — memories that real human beings may actually want to inload at day’s end.

  Dittotown is part of modern life, so why did it feel so unfamiliar this time? Because of all I’ve learned as a frankie, at the ripe old age of almost two?

  Ducking past the Teller Building, where Tuesday’s raid led poor Albert into troubles beyond his ability to cope, I hurried down a “shortcut” recommended by the little weasel-shaped fellow riding on my shoulder. Soon we left the commercial district with its bustling factories and offices, and plunged south into the backstreet area — a world of decaying structures, reckless whims, and short-term prospects.

  The dittos that you’ll find in that area were sent on missions that have little to do with business or industry.

  One flashing sign yelled E-VISCERAL! Touts stood outside, dyed in garish colors, beckoning passersby to enter for “the trip of your lives.” Through gutted walls I saw that a twenty-story building had been converted into one giant thrill ride … a wildly gyrating roller coaster without straps or safety backups, and with the added feature that many customers had guns — trading shots with those streaking past them in other cars. What fun.

  Next came a row of mud-pimperies and d-brothels — with exaggerated holems of all kinds leering out of brightly curtained windows — for those who can’t afford to have their fantasies special-made and delivered to their door.

  There followed some of the same soot-wracked battle lanes that I visited as a teen, still marked with flickertape risk warnings and cheap kiosks renting weapons to those who neglect to bring their own. Free head-collection, yammered one flasher-ad, as if any of these places would dare charge for the traditional service. Let Us Stage Your Gang Rumble! another yelled. Discounts for Birthday Parties!

  You know. The usual ditritus. Embarrassing reminders of youth.

  It was distracting for another reason. My skin had started shedding. The gray coating that had seemed so posh and high-class back at Kaolin Manor, when I got my renewal treatment for another day of life, was apparently no more than a cheap spray-on. Once it started peeling, the whole thing came away in strips, taking away the red-orange layer underneath. Rubbing away the itchy stuff, I found myself rapidly regaining this body’s original hue — utility green. Good for mowing the lawn and cleaning the bathroom. Not for playing detective.

  “Turn left here, then right at the next intersection,” Palloid urged. His claws dug in. “But watch out for Capulets.”

  “Watch out for what?”

  I saw what he meant in a few minutes, rounding a corner, then stopping in surprise to stare down a street that had been expensively transformed since the last time I ventured this far into dittotown — an entire city block, meticulously rebuilt as a lost fragment of Renaissance Italy, from cobblestones all the way to a garish Brunelleschi fountain in the grand piazza, facing a romanesque church. Towering at both ends were two ornate fortress-mansions, their balconies festooned with the fluttering banners of competing noble houses. Multicolored bravos leaned from terraces to shout at those passing below, or swaggered on patrol, sporting flounces over gartered tights and bulging codpieces. Buxom females dragged around tents of ornate silken fabric, strolling past shopkeepers hawking tastefully archaic merchandise.

  Such a lavishly expensive recreation seemed rather much for dittotown, where the whole thing might be wrecked the next time a nearby golemwar got out of hand, spilling bazookafire over the border. But I soon realized, risk was the very justification for its existence. The reason for its inditgenous population.

  Shouting broke out near the fountain. One fellow in red and white stripes nudged another whose skin and clothes both featured polka-dot motifs … each the livery of a feuding house. Bright rapiers abruptly whistled, clanging like harsh bells, while a crowd gathered to cheer and wager in faux-Shakespearean lingo.

  Ugh, I thought, getting it. One of them must be Romeo. I wonder if all members of the club take turns with the role, or if it’s a matter of seniority. Maybe they auction off the honor daily, to finance this place.

  Unemployed and bored with cautious play-acting in the suburbs, these aficionados must get up early to send dittos here each crack of dawn, then spend all restless day at home, eagerly awaiting another headful of drama — whether dead or alive. Nothing they might legally experience in realflesh could match the vivid, alternate life th
ey led here.

  And I thought Irene was weird!

  Easy, Albert, a part of me chided. You have a job and lots more. The real world has meaning to you. Others aren’t so lucky.

  Oh yeah? answered another inner voice. Shut up, twit. I’m not Albert.

  Several polka-dot bravos turned away from the duel to eye Palloid and me, as we passed under a nearby flowered colonnade. They glowered, hands drifting to pommels.

  Must be Capulets, I realized, offering a quick, inoffensive bow and hurrying onward, with averted eyes.

  Thanks, Pal. Some shortcut.

  Some trend. I soon learned that whole sector of dittotown had been given over to simulations, whole stretches of abandoned buildings finding new life as imitation worlds. The next block had a Wild West theme, complete with sauntering gunslingers dyed in every shade of the Painted Desert. Another streetscape followed some glassy-metallic sci-fi scenario that I didn’t have time to figure out as we hustled by. The common touch was danger, of course. Oh sure, digital virtual reality offers an even wider range of weird locales, vividly rendered in the privacy of your own chador. But not even touchie attachments can make VR feel real. Not like this. No wonder the cyber realm is mostly for cyberfarts.

  The next zone was the grandest of all, and most terrifying.

  It spanned six whole blocks, with giant holo screens at both ends, fostering the illusion of an endless, sweeping cityscape. A cruel cityscape of dilapidated tenements and chilling familiarity. A world my parents used to describe to me. The Transition Perdition. That era of fear and war and rationing was nearly over by the time I was born, when the dittoboom began delivering its cornucopia, along with the purple wage. But mental scars from the Perdition still afflict my folks’ generation, even now.

  Why? I wondered, while staring at the vast imitation. Why would anyone go to so much expense and care, trying to recreate a hell we so narrowly escaped? Even the air seemed hazy with something acrid that stung the eyes. “Smog,” I think it was called. Talk about verisimilitude.