Kiln People

by David Brin

  Notice and appreciate the feral-mammalian gracefulness of real Albert Morris as he swerves the automobile, trying to avoid collision … then guns the accelerator when he sees the platinum take aim … and fire! Ah, it all happened days ago in linear time, yet the urgency feels so fresh.

  Can you anticipate remembering what to do next?

  Soon, you’ll find there’s no one conscious down there, under the desert stars. Albert and Ritu, stunned inside the Volvo’s cab, won’t notice as you take over a small fragment of ditKaolin, hanging on the car’s window. You’ll use the remnant, reaching inside, taking the vehicle’s tiller …

  … and yes, guide it to a narrow ravine, hidden from all those civilized eyes out there that might feel pity or concern, bringing rescue much too soon.

  You’re about to be distracted.

  Some information still pours into you through realAlbert’s organic eyes and brain, pinning your concern back in the frozen ortho-moment of Friday morning in the underground lab. You will wonder, for instance, what is happening to Yosil Maharal’s great invention? Which personality is winning control? Will the glazier beam shoot forth as predicted, soaring above both the real and spiritual planes?

  You’ll ask about the missiles — did realAlbert succeed in stopping them with his final sabotage? Will the people of the city be saved? Or will backup systems kick in, sending death bullets flying after all?

  There is satisfaction in realAlbert’s feral heart, having swung that metal chair a final time, smashing the computer controller to sparking debris. Yet, through a corner of his eye, he sees both slender Ritu and a much larger Beta rushing toward him. For once, the two seem united in purpose. Isn’t it amazing how siblings can overcome rivalry when faced with threats and opportunities to the family at large?

  Time jutters forward a few notches before sticking again. Those quick seconds bring the pair closer. A few more such jumps and they will be upon poor Albert.

  Only now, far across the room, Al’s eye detects another figure entering. This golem wears a beige spiral dye job, garishly corkscrewing from the top of its head all the way down. Its expression, surveying the vast chamber filled with expensive equipment, is one of towering anger!

  At first you will imagine that it’s yet another version of Beta. Then you’ll realize that looks are deceiving.

  Why?

  Why is all of this happening? What is the context for all of this meddling?

  That will be your question soon. And I’ll answer, to the extent possible, after a few more errands.

  First we shall move to coordinates a little closer in spacetime. Make it about half a day ago …

  There! Albert Morris is alone in the great underground defense armory, sifting through computer records of the military base, tracking the secret thefts and treacheries of Yosil Maharal. Not far away stand columns of blank-eyed soldiers — sealed-to-preserve-freshness — ready to bake at a moment’s notice, whenever their country needs them. Or when someone clever enough comes along to hijack them.

  Shall we help ourselves? You will need just one.

  First, look around for Ritu. An earlier version of that wounded-confused soul. You’ll detect her soon, filled with self-loathing as she surrenders to an inner craving beyond her control, laying her shaved head between the poles of a high-capacity tetragramatron while autokilns warm up nearby, preparing several dozen giant golems built for war.

  Come, while she’s still fighting the compulsion, still showing some spirited resistance to that inner pressure. Beta never had to overcome such active opposition before! That means the imprint he makes upon the very first copy will be weak. You’ll slip between the cracks and take over that one, pushing Beta aside. Yes, the ditto may be damaged. But it will be good enough — yours to command — first out of the oven.

  Ready? Have you done it? Then bring along your warrior and we’ll go find Albert.

  What’s that? Are we going to rescue him?

  No, I don’t expect Albert will call this much of a rescue. Not when he still winds up herded into that awful tunnel. And yet, time loops can be surprising. Even after an infinite number of recursions, they are never exactly the same. Maybe this one will amaze us.

  No matter.

  I’m sure that when the critical moment comes you will know what to do.

  67

  … and Roll

  … Gumby hears a pitter-patter …

  As journeys go, this one was even worse than that miserable slog along the river bottom, back on Monday night. I didn’t so much crawl downstairs as tumble most of the way.

  What else could I do, with just an arm, a battered head, and a torso that kept dropping off bits with each bump or hard landing? I had no sense of smell, of course. (I could barely even remember the concept.) But oily vapors oozing off this body were easy to see. One reason for haste was to stay ahead of those fumes, which tend to accelerate final decay — it’s why dissolution usually happens all at once, swiftly and mercifully.

  No such luck for me. Too obdurate to give up, I guess. How strange that frankie mutation made me more like Albert than even he was!

  Finally, and rather to my surprise, I ran out of stairs, arriving at the same landing where I chose the least traveled of three forks in the road. Was that half an hour ago? I didn’t regret the decision to climb those dark steps. Stopping the missile launcher, even temporarily, was the greatest achievement of my bargain-basement life. Only now I faced another trio of options.

  Back to the cave entrance and the vacation cabin, where maybe a working telephone might be found amid the debris?

  Forward, toward Maharal’s inner sanctum? That’s where the pilot of the Harley scooter went — though now I doubted that he was ever Beta, after all. No doubt big happenings were going on, down that way.

  But those two alternatives were out. I’d never make it more than a few meters. My sole choice lay across the corridor, in a niche containing that all-in-one home copier machine, warm and ready with its hopper full of fresh blanks. What I was about to try went against custom. You can even get fined if you’re caught, though everybody tries it once or twice. In my state, I’ll probably make a slobbering monster.

  Still, the poor thing won’t have to remember much. Step out of the kiln, run upstairs, and smash the launcher beyond repair. Easy!

  All of which was moot until I reached the padded spot where an original must lay his head. Staring up, I wondered — How the hell do I do that?

  My enzyme clock was ticking out, the missile codes might be restored at any moment … and now I had another reason to hurry. Through my battered abdomen I picked up vibrations, rhythmic and growing more forceful by the second.

  Motors and wheels, I thought, recognizing some.

  Other thuddings reminded me of running feet.

  68

  Wherever You’re Atman

  … or learning what’s already known …

  Next you’ll discover the soulscape is far larger than you imagined.

  And yes, inhabited.

  Did you arrogantly expect that the entire universe was waiting upon man to arrive?

  Well, in a sense, that’s true. Our cosmos is but one of trillions spun off by a single fertile singularity, whose daughter black holes spawned countless more baby universes, each of them exploding and inflating and cooling into billions of galaxies, which in turn made their own black holes and more singularity-spawned universes, and so on … Among all those experiments, intelligence surely occurred, though far less commonly than you imagined.

  Even scarcer still are creatures made of earthly flesh who look up at the stars and covet them across huge gulfs of empty space.

  Most exceptional of all are those who find another way, bypassing cold vacuum, uncovering shortcuts to far richer fields. Exceptional almost to the point of uniqueness. Hence the vast emptiness of what Maharal dramatically called the “spiritual plane.” A deeper continuum, made of stuff more basic than energy and matter. A frontier he meant to strid
e upon like a god, using all that raw material to cast paradise in his image.

  Oh, you are rarities, you hot-souled humans. So flawed. Wondrously bright. It’s a privilege to watch as you begin to waken. As you start to choose.

  Have you begun to suspect who and what I am?

  This voice that you mistook for a guide … you’ll soon notice that “I” never give commands, or even suggest very much. For the most part I only foresee, comment, and predict.

  No, I’m not your Virgil. No mentor or font of wisdom. I’m your echo, you-who-were-Albert-and-more. A way to remember things that you haven’t yet learned. One of many conveniences you’ll soon grow accustomed to, where paradox is a normal fact of life.

  Back in the ortho-moment — still moving forward in jerks and sudden stops — events will soon be coming to a head. Just three more swings of Yosil’s pendulum while the glazier stores energy, preparing to burst forth whether or not a human imprint gives it personality. Whether or not a city full of dying souls awaits to feed it, in an orgy of necrophagia.

  What, you still care about that? Very well then, let me predict that you will go back again to nudge events a little more. Go ahead.

  You will find the green Albert who calls himself a “frankie” … what’s left of him … less than an hour before the ortho-moment. Yes, right over there. Moments after his arm was snapped off by the closing scooter-canopy, sending him plunging through the roof of Yosil’s cabin into a debris-strewn living room.

  He might use a little encouragement at that point. What approach will you use?

  Will you scold him for lying there in the dust, watching the Harley fly away, feeling defeated and ready to expire?

  Well, then, try imitating my vatic tone, then listen as the green reacts!

  Except that Clara will never get to hear the whole story … and now the bad guys will win.

  Aw, man. Whatever nagging inner voice had to put in that last bit? What guilt-tripping nag? If I could, I’d tear it out! Just shut up and let me die.

  You gonna just lie there and let ’em get away with it?

  Crap. I didn’t have to take this from some obsessive soul corner of a cheap-model golem who was misborn a frankie … became a ghost … and was about to graduate to melting corpse.

  Who’s a corpse? Speak for yourself.

  Stunning wit, that triple irony. And though I tried hard to ignore the little voice … my right hand and arm moved, lifting slowly till five trembling fingers came within sight … Then my left leg twitched … Reacting to imprinted habits a million years old, they started cooperating …

  Oh well. Might as well help.

  The bedraggled greenie moves! And just to be sure, you’ll nag him again during that long drag through the grotto, then climbing the dark stairs, and so on.

  Just don’t exaggerate the importance of your badgering — or the reification triggered by your presence as an observer. These things matter far less than physical action in the “real” world of cause-and-effect. The green might have made it entirely without your/my/our interference!

  No matter. You will do this and it will aggravate him. It may help save a million lives, and divert the Standing Wave toward a different destiny. So by all means go ahead.

  Now perhaps you will also go back a few hours, to a moment in Pal’s apartment, whispering for the green to turn his head and listen at a crucial moment. Perhaps … oh, of course you will.

  You always meddle at the beginning. It is part of learning. Becoming.

  Back in the ortho-moment — another pendulum swing has passed, like the ticking of a titanic clock. Surprising resonances perturb the amplified Standing Wave, raising concern in the two stalemated combatants. Probability amplitudes are collapsing like quantum dominoes all around.

  Their battle is over. It’s out of their control now.

  To Yosil, the news is calamitous. The germ missiles may not launch at all! No viral rain of death virus to mow down millions and feed the glazier beam when it arrives. Hovering above the city, it will harvest only a trickle. The few thousand who normally die each day will discover an afterlife unlike anything they were taught about in church! But Yosil despairs that such meager reinforcement will never give the glazier the boost it needs to become a spiritual behemoth, capable of bending the soulscape to its mighty will.

  The other personality — once rooted in Albert Morris — had succumbed to Yosil’s dream, adopting it as his own. Can he now accept it’s over and choose a more modest goal?

  Others plunge into this fray.

  While the glazier builds toward ignition, the organic body of realAlbert sways along the axis of the beam, like an anchor dragged by a rising storm -

  — as Ritu and Beta arrive with arms outstretched, united in purpose at last, bent on pushing him aside, or worse.

  I know you’re curious to probe Ritu’s complex, tormented soul. By all means, use the new powers of perception. Soon you’ll see the crime that set her tragic tale in motion …

  … the reason why her syndrome so resembles and exaggerates the very same one suffered by Yosil.

  Not genes alone, but also a trauma they both suffered long ago, when a doting father tried using clever new technology to encourage and spur his infant daughter’s developing brain, by imprinting talents from one loving soul to another.

  Like playing music for a fetus in the womb — that is how poor Yosil imagined it — a harmless gift from one generation to the next, alas, before anyone understood about subjective uniqueness and soul-orthogonality. Before the dreadful harm was widely known. Before such things were out-lawed.

  Tragedy can have its own triste beauty, evoking tears or laughter. This one rippled on with gorgeously transfixing horror worthy of Sophocles, across years wracked with silent remorse, obsession, and pain.

  Yes, you’ll pity them. From this new perspective, you will commiserate, dwell upon, and share their agony.

  Later.

  Others plunge into this fray.

  A spiral-patterned golem charges through the opposite door, shouting about betrayal in terms that only a multibillionaire would use. And you have to hand it to Aeneas Kaolin. (You will hand it to him, I predict.) It took ingenuity that no one imagined him capable of, to penetrate the many-layered disguises and defenses erected by a family of brilliant paranoiacs. Yosil and Ritu and Beta underestimated him. So did Albert Morris.

  With a little more time … or if he trusted Morris enough to confide and ally with him from the beginning … Kaolin might have made a difference. But now? Even as he raises a weapon, shouting threats and demands to desist, Aeneas clearly knows that it’s too late.

  Same with the warriors now arriving from the military base, bursting through that dark tunnel under Urraca Mesa. Armed, armored, and representing the wrath of abused taxpayers, it is the cavalry at last — pulverizing Beta’s rear guard to reach the high parapet and gaze down on all of this. Among their weapons are cameras, beaming images around the world.

  Light cleanses. The World Eye was supposed to prevent all big nasty conspiracies and mad scientist labs.

  It very nearly did.

  Maybe next time it will.

  If there is a next time.

  Has anyone noticed the alignment yet?

  Like a superheated, pressurized mix of air and explosive, the amplified Standing Wave has grown beyond containment or forbearance. Nor can you retard the advancing ortho-moment any longer. The time for meddling is about to end -

  — as Kaolin charges toward the red mirror

  — as Ritu and Beta plunge toward the gray

  — as soldiers throw themselves courageously over the balcony on ropes made of living clay

  — as realAlbert lifts his eyes … the only one who seems, quite suddenly, to know what’s happening.

  69

  Joe Friday

  … as Gumby tries to do what comes naturally …

  A tester once told Albert he was “born for this era,” with the right combination of ego, foc
us, and emotional distance to make perfect duplicates. Well, except for me, his first and only frankie. Still, I was willing to gamble on that talent -

  — providing I could somehow reach the scanning plate of a simple copier.

  This time there was a chair nearby. Fumes wafted from my poor arm as it dragged me over there, one slither at a time. Worming around to grip a chair leg with my chin, I hauled it back, positioning the chair next to the big white duplicating machine. Only about a kilo of my body mass melted along the way.

  It doesn’t go high enough, I quickly realized. Glancing around for something else, I spied a wire-mesh waste receptacle three meters away. With a groan that escaped through several cracks other than my mouth, I set out to fetch it — a journey that felt like crossing the North Pole while being pelted by asteroids.

  Half of my remaining ceramic teeth fell out while gripping the metal basket on my way back. Then, the first time I tried tossing it on top of the chair, I missed and had to repeat the whole damned thing.

  This had better be enough, I thought, when the basket was finally in place, upside down on the cushioned seat. Any minute, someone might restore contact with that missile launcher upstairs and resume the countdown. And those vibrations of running feet grew closer by the second. Whatever was going on, I wanted the power to act! Even as the shambling replica of a frankie.

  Well, here goes.

  From the floor I reached up, grabbed the edge of the chair, and pulled hard. My head and torso weighed much less now — and grew lighter with each passing moment — still the strain was enormous. Fresh pock-fissures erupted all along my quivering arm, each one venting noxious steam … till at last my chin broached over the ledge, taking some of the pressure. That made things a bit easier, though no less painful. Commanding my elbow to twist up and around, I managed to push down now, dragging my attenuated body to perch at the edge of the seat.