Kiln People

by David Brin

  Tuesday’s Green, Made for Cleaning Toilets and Mowing Lawns … the Dull Thing Shouldn’t Even Exist Anymore!

  A green? The one who called himself a “frankie,” then sauntered off to seek self-fulfillment? I wondered. How could it be here?

  The AI-XIX screen displayed new letters:

  REPAIRS INITIATED

  “Ignore the Distraction,” my own voice muttered. “The Launcher Will Repair Itself. Get Back to the Business at Hand.”

  The business in my hand — achieving immortality the way Escher and Einstein did, with a pencil. Adrenaline surged and my heartbeat pounded. Reptile, primate, cave dweller, and urban man all tried to mutiny. But now spiritual resolve felt much stronger than instinct.

  It would be just like inloading, I thought, gathering strength.

  Only another diversion yanked the makeshift weapon back again.

  This time it was pain. Brilliant, dazzling, coruscating pain.

  Yosil Has Seen My Plan — How realAlbert’s Death Whiplash May Eject Him!

  Yosil Reacts, Channeling a Blast of Refined Agony to Knock Albert out of Alignment.

  Poor Albert Moans at Sudden Images of Fire and Brimstone. Hellish Pangs Abet the Animal Portions That Always Come Embedded in Trueflesh, Rousing Them to Flee or Fight.

  Now Yosil’s Golem Shouts from His Swinging Perch, Calling for His Daughter to Rush Downstairs — for Her to Push Albert Aside and Take His Place in the Beam!

  This Will Keep Their Agreement, He Vows. But She Must Hurry.

  With Seconds Left, I Must Draw Albert Back into Focus. Show Him That Pain Is an Illusion.

  “Pain Is an Illusion,” my own voice soothed. The mouth spoke words from outside the brain. “Pain Is a Mirage Compared to the Hyper-Reality of the Great Soulscape.

  “Gaze upon It Now, Albert.

  “Behold!”

  All at once, the panorama of that vast new realm spread open before me, wider and more gorgeous than any Earthly horizon, beckoning me away from a hellish abyss, replacing it with appealing cross sections from every “heaven” ever imagined.

  The pleasures of sensual paradise!

  The bliss of unreserved acceptance and love.

  And the nameless serenity that comes with detachment from the Great Wheel. All of these heavens and more — tendered without trickery or deceit — would soon be mine.

  Ours, I thought, imagining a better a world for all. All people. All life.

  It worked! The visions soothed my “animal” parts, calming resistance, easing the way.

  And yet -

  While reaching out, I also felt the green ditto’s flickering presence nearby, now a barely mobile lump sprawled on the floor of a cold chamber somewhere upstairs in this very labyrinth, watching helplessly as the missile launcher deployed robotic repair units to dislodge a pitiful ceramic limb. The golem’s brave sacrifice had bought only a little time for the city. Minutes, at best.

  Of course he knew nothing of the broader ramifications, or the greater good that would come out of all this, or the inviting immensity that awaited us in the vast soulscape.

  And yet -

  And yet -

  There was something about the greenie lying there, so pathetic after making that grand, futile gesture.

  Feelings rose unbidden within me. First a soft touch, then a tickle at the back of my throat.

  A tickle that burst forth as a surprised snicker.

  Then a chuckle at the hapless, one-limbed, decaying parody of me — flopping about on the floor, all wretched and friendless, without even another leg to throw, but still trying to intervene.

  The image was poignant, touching … and funny!

  Both tears and guffaws flowed like uncorked magma, not from mind but gut. I laughed at the piteous thing — at its courage and misfortune and utter slapstick obstinacy. Moreover, in that raw moment I knew with perfect clarity:

  I’m not meant to be a god.

  All those heavenly perspectives I’d been shown. They were true possibilities, ripe for reification. Only now I realized what was missing. Not one of them had a place for humor!

  How could they? Any “perfect” world would eliminate tragedy, right? That meant giving up the gritty-human answer to tragedy, the defiant levity that can make even a futile gesture worthwhile, even — especially — in the face of unbearable injustice.

  Aw, man. I had more in common with that ragged green than any pompous, puffed-up, deified gray.

  This one insight seemed to push great billows of fog away. Suddenly feeling whole again, I hurled the stupid pencil across the room with a derisive chortle.

  Then I started looking for that folding chair.

  Incredible. He Refused the Offer!

  Worse, realAlbert Hopes to Interfere.

  I Can Stop Him. Just Reach out and Tweak His Beating Heart. Burst an Artery. Disrupt the Sodium Channels in a Few Million Well-Chosen Neurons.

  I’ll Be Doing Him a Favor.

  To Win the Prize, It Seems That I Must Not Only Defeat Yosil. I Must Also Imitate Him.

  I Must Crush My Other Selves.

  With a bit more spring in my step, I turned away from the great soul-amplifying apparatus and saw what I was looking for, a much simpler machine, right there in front of me. Grabbing and lifting the chair with both hands, I figured Pal would approve of my monkey wrench. It had pleasant heft. I felt stronger and filled with purpose as I brought it swinging down, first at the computer’s holo array.

  REPAIRS 60% COMPLETE, it flashed as the fragile display blew apart, filling the air with sparkling meshtrodes. Satisfying? Sure, but that was just a holo unit. The true superconducting heart of AI-XIX lay beneath, in a pressed phenolic casing.

  The chair swung up again as someone yelled. Was it Ritu or Beta, approaching as the stretched seconds ticked slowly by? Did it matter?

  On the next downstroke I felt swarmed by unpleasant sensations. Palpitations in the chest. Throbbings in my arm. I might have called it painful, except I’d been taught there’s no such thing!

  The CPU casing cracked under my first blow. It might take several, plus a prayer that Professor Maharal never spent extra for remote backup. I raised the chair once more — even as my lips moved, once again muttering on behalf of the mega-entity in the glazier beam.

  “Albert … Yosil and I Agree on This … You Must Be Stopped.”

  I wanted to shout back — the hell you say! — but a tight fist clamped around my heart, sending me reeling.

  Still, the mouthed words came.

  “Sorry … About This … It Must … and Will Be Done.”

  That was when another voice broke in, reverberant and strange, as if out of nowhere.

  Oh no, it won’t.

  As suddenly as it came, the pressure in my chest vanished, leaving me to stagger, nearly blanking out. Consciousness wavered. But I couldn’t give up now. Not after witnessing the example set by that poor greenie.

  I can do anything that I can do.

  Gritting my teeth and grunting hard, I brought the chair down again with all my might.

  65

  Ready to Rock…

  … Gumby is almost equipped to play first base …

  Did it work?

  I wondered after throwing my former leg at the launcher ramp. Then, for about a minute, I felt exultant as the machine halted, groaning and complaining.

  FIRING SEQUENCE INTERRUPTED, the small display blared.

  Only my triumph was short-lived. For that message was followed by a second that I liked much less.

  REPAIRS INITIATED, said the screen as half a dozen maintenance dronelets deployed from recesses in the machinery. Scurrying like worker ants toward the source of the problem, they started tugging and pulling at my bygone ceramic limb. Two of them ignited small cutting torches.

  Meanwhile, the first missile hummed in its place at the bottom of the ramp. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it seemed impatient.

  Although it was harder to move than ever, I tried using
my one arm to drag myself closer. Maybe I could distract the drones by shouting or bluffing a voice of command …

  … but only a hoarse croak emerged. Well, after all, I was a wreck.

  Helpless to do anything but watch, I wondered about this germ warfare attack — why would Beta want to do such a thing? Yes, a deadly act of terrorism might distract the authorities for a while, making them too busy to pursue a notorious ditnapper and copyright thief. They might even forget all about the prion attack on Universal Kilns …

  Still, it made no sense! Only a stupid crook bets everything on the cops remaining ignorant forever. There are too many ways to leave inadvertent clues in the modern era, no matter how careful you are. Anyway, this didn’t sound like Beta.

  Maybe it isn’t, I thought. A ditective should always be ready to revise or discard his working theory.

  Well? If the pilot of that Harley wasn’t Beta, who else then?

  Someone eager to follow Ritu Maharal and discover the whereabouts of her father’s cabin.

  Someone who found it suspiciously easy to track down the Volvo, out there in the desert.

  Someone who must have studied Beta well, in order to mimic my arch foe’s mannerisms, and who knew all about what happened at Queen Irene’s.

  Someone who quickly found out about the meeting that Palloid and I arranged in dittotown with Pal and Lum and Gadarene … someone who showed up surprisingly well prepared.

  There seemed only one reasonable explanation for how “Beta” and I escaped from the Waxer attack on Pal’s safehouse apartment. We were meant to get away. It was all arranged in advance, hence the convenient manner that he reappeared, with an air scooter, in the nick of time. That had already been clear to me, only now -

  I blinked (though one eyelid was already coming off), feeling close, very close to the answer.

  In fact -

  I sagged. Did any of it matter now? When those missiles fired, people in the city — maybe the whole world — would care little about the details. Only raw survival.

  And it wouldn’t be long now.

  REPAIRS 80% COMPLETE, the display read.

  Ah, well.

  Lying there, I knew it was way past my rendezvous to check out — to stop fighting the insistent call of the slurry bin. Dissolution would come as a relief.

  Time to become an untidy stain on the floor.

  I made ready to let go …

  Then held back as amber words, high above, turned into flashing red.

  HARDWARE failure at command source

  The missile launcher’s display monitor seemed resentful somehow, as it continued reporting.

  UNABLE to confirm reestablishment

  OF launch code certificates

  REMINDER: protocols demand repeated high-level

  VERIFICATION for weapon targeting

  OUTSIDE of a publicly sanctioned battlefield zone

  RETRY or query alternate server?

  Snippy machine. Yet I approved wholeheartedly as the thing began shutting down. Crimson-tipped rockets reengaged their safeties, rolling back into their storage magazine, and I wondered, Does this mean it’s over?

  Not quite. The repair drones were still hard at work, carving up my erstwhile leg and disposing of the bits. Moreover, the remote link could be restored, setting all firing codes and proceeding with the countdown, at any minute.

  There’d be no way for me to stop it next time.

  Oh yes there will be.

  Huh?

  I thought my imaginary Nag had vanished.

  Are you back, then?

  Then? Now?

  Present and past do not matter.

  What counts is that you get moving again.

  Moving? Where? And more important … how?

  There seemed no point in protesting, though. Anyway, I knew the answer already. I just didn’t like it.

  Back.

  Back down those awful stone stairs. Only legless now, dragged along by just the one weary arm, with a little gravity assist.

  Back to the one place where I still might do some good. As if I had a snowball’s chance in hell of making it.

  Well, at least there’d be some illumination this time, trickling from the open window of this narrow room. The light of yet another day I never expected to see.

  That’s it.

  Look at the bright side.

  Now I suggest you move.

  If only I could have strangled my badgering scold. But that would take two hands … plus a physical neck to wrap them around.

  So I did the next best thing. I moved.

  66

  E Pluribus Pluribus

  … all together now …

  Less than four minutes had passed since Ritu and Beta and realAlbert entered the underground lab to stare down at a soulistic circus — complete with swinging trapeze act, frantic magician-impresario, and a pair of garish clowns pinned to targets at either end. And in between? A growing tangibility distortion made space seem to ripple and flow, like some caged power, pacing and preparing to burst free.

  During those few minutes, a battle raged over which personality would imprint the new godwave.

  Who would gain ultimate control over the vast, fallow soulscape? The genius who pioneered the way? Or one whose raw talent seemed made for the job?

  The combatants never considered a third possibility — that the new frontier may not be as barren as they thought.

  Somebody might already be there.

  Like most of the audible meaning-squawks that are used by organic men, “already” comes laden with implications. Take past and present tense, for example — narrative deceits that help perpetuate a myth of linear time.

  Not for you, though. You who were/was/am/are/will be Albert. Your story is complex, looped, and fractally nested. It calls for a style that’s flexible, confident, predictive.

  So here, let me tell you what I foresee.

  Before doing anything else, you will relinquish fear.

  There. Wasn’t that easy?

  Fear is marvelously useful to biological beings. You won’t miss it.

  Next, you will realize that your life — such as it was — has come to an end.

  Surely you didn’t expect to survive all these experiences unscathed? No anchored mind can gaze upon the soulscape and remain unchanged.

  Forget those symptoms that you once thought to be caused by plague — by some war virus. Soon you’ll realize there is nothing physically wrong with the clever animal that carried you around so faithfully, for so long. The sensations you mistook for illness will be recognized as natural separation pangs.

  The body will live. Its embedded instincts won’t even complain very hard when you move on.

  Anyway, we have chores to do! Such as learning about the nature of time.

  You’ll notice that it seems frozen around us. Even Yosil’s garish pendulum grinds to a halt, suspended in mid-slice, while the mad ditto’s mouth gapes in an angry scream. This is the ortho-moment. The now of palpable reality. The narrow moving slit in which organic beings may move and act and perceive.

  Great thinkers always knew that time must be a dimension, with inherent potential for travel, like any other. But living organisms can’t abide a paradox, Albert. Incongruities of cause-and-effect turn out to be toxic. How could the creative genius of evolution work its slow miracle — gradually stirring raw chemicals into soul-carrying beings — without enormous numbers of trials and outcomes? The “real” world needs consistency and countless failures in order for natural selection to do its job, drawing complexity out of chaos.

  It is the answer to the Riddle of Pain.

  So we mustn’t stretch time’s fabric very much, Albert! Just a tweak, here and there, as we spiral back and forth, helping to create ourselves.

  Confused? You won’t be when we take our first small step back … almost a week … to last Monday evening.

  No, don’t try to navigate in normal terms. Follow affinities instead.

  Ther
e! Pursue that trace of smugness, mixed with four parts stubbornness, plus some excess self-reliance and a dash of the romantic gambler. Track it and you’ll find the green ditto that you were that night, wounded and reckless as he crossed Odeon Square, harassed by bored punks and chased by Beta’s angry yellows, pelting you with stones.

  Don’t try to remember. Anticipate! It’s much easier on this plane.

  Soon you’ll grasp necessity. The green must survive, but on its own.

  Only the slightest interference will do. Enough to collapse the probabilities a bit. Something minor, easily dismissed.

  Yes, go ahead. Experiment. Soon, at a crucial moment, you’ll decide to reach out and nudge the mind of that waiter over there, serving dinner in a quayside restaurant, whose repeated clumsiness will offer distraction at a crucial moment …

  … but carefully! For even a nudge spreads ripples, as you’ll see. Something about the way those dishes go flying -

  Later it will bother one of your suspicious selves. He’ll worry over it, like a sore tooth. As I said, clever animals get jittery around a paradox.

  Yosil Maharal, amid his brilliance and his flaws, imagined that the raw material of the soulscape would be like simple clay for him to mold, to meddle with however he liked. But you will see — it’s far more subtle than poor Yosil ever imagined.

  You’ll find our next stop even stranger, skipping forward one day to a patch of desert road, far outside of town, as someone hefts a bulbous weapon preparing to ambush the occupants of an approaching car. Yes, the silvery ditto bears a soul-imprint of Aeneas Kaolin. Also note the biting stench of dread. Everything isn’t going to his liking.

  But don’t probe too deeply! Never mind about such mundane mysteries as who or why or what or where. Forget motives and crimes. Leave the real-world detective work for your successor to solve.

  That’s no longer any of your concern.

  Here’s what I predict you’ll choose to do. You’ll watch as the ambush unfolds.