Before anyone on the council can reply, I say, “I’m not a—whatever. I’m Jessica Rowe, astrobiologist from the Intrepid. I was born in the year 2097. I was selected for the Procyon Alpha mission in 2132 from a pool of two hundred candidates. Before that, I served on the Mars/Earth run, clocking over three years in space, spread over eight launches—”
“The subject will be silent.”
“What?” My eyes go wide. I’m not accustomed to being ordered around by someone I don’t know. “I’m not sure how things work in this age, but I’m pretty damn sure I have the right to speak.”
I hate waiting for a reply. I’d rather keep talking, especially as that makes it easier to squash their dissent. Speaking over the top of them might not be polite, but it’s effective. Now, though, I remain quiet. I’m genuinely intrigued by what seems like archaic attitudes even for my time.
The counselor says, “You have no rights. You’re not alive.”
I do not like where this is leading.
“I’m not alive?” I say, pointing at myself. “From one hologram to another, that’s rich, but I guess you have some physical presence beyond a brain in a jar? I’m a biologist. You still have biology, right? Do you know exactly how many molecules within your body are truly alive?”
I pause, but not long enough for anyone to interrupt me.
“None. There’s not one of them that, under a microscope, is any different from those produced by a basic chemistry set. Biology is an illusion of physics and chemistry, that’s all.”
The council chair is a young man, which surprised me when I first saw him. In my time, it was the old farts that ran the show. He speaks over the top of me, but the timing gap makes it difficult to pull off. His words come through slightly out of sync.
“You’re nothing.”
“You think I’m nothing?” I say. “You’re nothing more than a squishy membrane stuffed full of loosely arranged energetic particles. That’s all any of us ever are.”
I point at the light streaming in through the window.
“Every element in your body can be found in the heart of that goddamn star. The only difference is those atoms are far more energetic than yours, by a factor of at least a thousand. And yet those atoms aren’t alive—your’s are. Why?
“Do you want to talk to me about life? I’ll tell you about life. Life isn’t a thing, it’s a state. Life is a delicately balanced process sustained by a trillion other interconnected processes. Yours depend on biology. Mine are governed by a digital heartbeat, but they’re just as real.”
“Jess.” Jorgensen gestures for me to be quiet, but that’s not happening. I’ve got to shift the argument onto an area where I can win.
“I saw them—the aliens. They’re real. They’re not microbes. These were multicellular organisms with clearly differentiated organs. I saw eyes, tentacles. There was intelligence. They were dissecting my body.”
The principal holographic judge or political representative or professor or whatever the hell he thinks he is has his hand out trying to silence me.
“This session has been called to discuss your existence, not to debate some hypothetical extraterrestrial entity.”
“They’re real.”
I’m tempted to keep talking, but I’m not helping my cause.
“You have no evidence.”
“But I do.” I point at my head. “It’s all in here. Sarah can extract the memories. I know she can. You just need to give Doctors Everton and Jorgensen more time.”
Jorgensen screws up his face, turning to me as he asks, “Who?”
“Sarah. Dr. Sarah Everton. Your colleague.”
Whereas before, the lead hologram was belligerent, now he sounds confused—genuinely perplexed. “Everton? There is no record of any Sarah Everton on Erebus or any other colony within the system.”
My throat constricts. Oh, no—it’s happening again. I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff. I’m about to plunge from this world into some other. I know it. I’m shaking. My knees go weak.
Is this moon real? I assumed it was, but what if this is just one more simulation? What if this is yet another layer within some matrix of possibilities? I fell from the African Savannah into an icy wasteland and then onto a road in 20th century America. All of it seemed utterly real. It was real to me—the sand, the dust, the snow, the heat bouncing off the concrete. I felt it. Is this just one more illusion?
“No. No. No.”
I feel as though my head is splitting apart.
The speaker ignores me. “Since the Declaration of Consciousness, there has never been any recognition of any artificial neural construct. Without evidence to the contrary, I see no point in any further discussion. The entity is unique but does not fit the requirements for conscious life.”
“But she’s physical.” Jorgensen gestures to the brain fragments. “We revived and stimulated her neurons, but we didn’t create her. There’s been no violation of the AI protocol. Although her biological tissue is lifeless, it’s still viable. With the right electrical stimulation, she can think for herself. She arose spontaneously. She’s real.”
Right now, I feel all too real. I’m going to be sick. How is that even possible? Want proof of life? Here it comes. I’m not sure what virtual vomit is going to look like spraying out across the marble floor. I’d rather not find out.
I lean forward on my knees, breathing deeply, doing my best not to throw up, fighting a panic attack. Jorgensen realizes I’m distressed but doesn’t understand why.
He says, “I’m preparing a paper on my methods. I’ll present peer-reviewed research outlining my approach to harvesting necrotic neural cells. In summary—the subject’s brain was effectively freeze-dried. Rapid evaporative cooling and moisture boil-off in a vacuum resulted in the desiccation of her brain matter. The integrity of her neural network wasn’t compromised. The pathways were still traceable.”
I reach for him, not that I can touch him. I’m desperate to get his attention.
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“She’s distressed,” Jorgensen says. “I move that the council retires. We should suspend this debate until the research paper is ready for review. I ask only for a continuation.”
“Granted. But within the limits of biological existence. There will be no artificial enhancement.”
“Understood.”
Each of the holograms wink out of existence. I doubt half of the people listening in were actually engaged in the meeting. Most of them looked distracted, watching something else off to one side.
Jorgensen eases the cart back, turning around. I feel awful. My head is throbbing. The taste of bile washes up in the back of my throat. Jorgensen is kind.
“I’m sorry. I thought that would go better. Ambassador Rousseau is my patron. He’s normally quite supportive, but I think he felt I’d gone too far.”
I walk along with Jorgensen, but mentally, I’m drawing comparisons with the tribesmen I saw running through the long grass of the Serengeti. The woman in the snow was convincing. The teens chewing gum in some idyllic American midwest town were believable. They all appeared real—or at least I thought so until I fell into this world. Once here, I was convinced by Jorgensen and Everton that my reality was fabricated and their’s was real. Suddenly I’m not so sure. Their world is looking pretty damn flimsy.
I ask, “What do you remember?”
“Me?” Jorgensen is surprised by what, to him, must seem like a question out of context.
“About yesterday.”
He cocks his head sideways. “When you first arrived?”
“Yes.”
There’s a significant disconnect between us. I’m serious. He’s amused. I don’t think he’s trying to belittle my anguish. He genuinely can’t see any cause for concern.
“Ah. You dropped from the sky. You were falling between worlds, but I managed to bring you to the forefront of the macrocosm.”
“Who else was there?”
“You’
re serious?” he asks. “Dozens of people saw you. Ah, the guys from—”
“No. With you. Who was working with you?”
“No one.”
Shadows stretch across the forecourt. We walk back to the cleanroom. The gas giant is low on the horizon. Dark clouds swirl in cyclonic storms easily a million miles away. From here, the clouds appear stationary, but the winds around the equator are moving at hundreds of miles an hour. The rings. They’re beautiful. They’ve always been beautiful, every time I’ve seen them. They look utterly real, but they’re not. They can’t be. None of this is real. This too is a fabrication.
Where am I?
Am I in limbo?
How do I get out of this place of purgatory?
How can I reset and get back to the Intrepid?
Is that where I should be going?
Isn’t that a dead-end?
Where else can I go?
During our survival training back in Houston, they submerged us in five meters of water. NASA used a winch to pull our capsule beneath the waves. They popped the hatch and a wall of water rushed in, slamming us against the sides of the craft. There were divers in there with us, but in the dark, we couldn’t see them. Their black wetsuits were invisible once the power shorted and the lights failed.
Watch for bubbles, they told us. Don’t move until you know which way’s up. It sounds crazy. The body floats, right? Wrong. At those depths, the crush bearing down on the chest removes any sense of buoyancy, especially for women with our smaller lungs.
One by one, we made our way through the hatch, feeling our way in the dark water. Breathe out slowly, they said. Release just a few bubbles. Fool your mind into thinking you can breathe again. Don’t panic. Watch the bubbles, not the water, not the craft, not the guy ahead of you–the bubbles.
I was sure the Pegasus was oriented with its base was against the tiles. The damn thing is unsinkable by design. The craft was facing up when we were lowered to the bottom of the dive pool, but in the rush of incoming water, it turned over on its side. What felt like up was down—but the bubbles. The bubbles never lie. Bubbles rolled over my cheeks, catching in my hair. I turned, following them, kicking for the surface.
I needed those bubbles. I need them again out here on Erebus. I need a sign, something to ground me in reality. I whisper, “Watch for bubbles.”
“What?” Jorgensen asks.
“Nothing.”
Veritas
Most of the cleanroom staff are gone by the time we get back. I spot Pretty Boy lingering. He looks in our direction as he finishes up but leaves without saying anything to me. I get the feeling he was hanging back, waiting for us, curious about what was happening to the lab rat. Although there’s a gulf between us in terms of time and understanding, his curiosity extends beyond mere novelty. He’s concerned about me. He smiles, giving me a little nod as he leaves. Ah, my sweet knight. My gallant protector. The damsel-in-distress trope has survived thousands of years intact.
It’s funny, but walking back into the cleanroom is comforting. This place feels like home. I reach out and touch at my virtual table, not for any reason other than to be able to touch something. My fingers linger on the wood.
“Are you going to be okay?” Jorgensen asks.
“I’m fine,” I reply, not sure how much I should say to him. My head is swinging from the realization Dr. Sarah Everton has been erased from history. But how? Why? By whom? I perch myself on the edge of my holographic table. I don’t think Jorgensen had anything to do with it. He’s a victim of whatever information scrubbing has taken place. I find myself questioning the state of reality as he perceives it. How could he not even remember her?
Is it possible to be a hologram within a virtual world?
Could it be that I’ve been duped yet again?
Erebus doesn’t feel any different from any of the other worlds I fell through. They were all convincing. The only difference on this moon is time. I’ve been here for roughly 24 hours, and those hours have passed sequentially. My sense of continuity is convincing. One second has followed another with strict regularity, immersing me in the moment, and yet this has to be an illusion. If Erebus is real, if this really is the Proc, then these creatures can alter not only electronic records but the very contents of someone’s mind. Once again, I find myself wondering about reality. How could these alien creatures track interactions across time? It seems to me that life on this tiny moon must be an illusion. If it were real, it would be impossible to manipulate all the physical evidence. If Dr. Everton gave someone a birthday card yesterday, there would be physical items to erase along with memories. How comprehensive is the scrub? Or am I falling through yet another imaginary world? Am I about to fall back into the snow or onto the savannah?
“Do you need anything?” Jorgensen asks, sensing the machinations of my mind working through the problem.
“Yes.” That gets his attention. “I need to see the news.”
“The new?”
“Newssss. Plural.”
“New Plural? How can something be new twice?”
“Newssss. Information. Recent events. You know, a mining shuttle crashes, and there’s a story about it on the news.”
“A story? So it’s not real.”
Damn it. I need a dictionary. “How do you know what’s going on in your world?”
“We learn from the Veritas.”
I nod. “Okay. Can I have access to your Veritas?”
“Sure.”
My virtual keyboard springs to life. Most of the characters are familiar, just a little simplified. The letter F is missing the middle stroke. It looks like an upside-down L. I get the gist of the modern alphabet and type the word FIRE.
The hologram within my hologram brings up a virtual fire before me. Circled around the crackling fire are bundles of paper. I doubt Jorgensen or any of his generation have ever actually seen paper. Somehow, this icon has survived as long as I have. In my time, the ‘save’ button was an archaic floppy disk most people would never recognize in real life. In the same way, a pile of paper has become the universal symbol for knowledge.
I’m curious. I wave my hand over the bundles, spinning them around, interacting with the Veritas.
As these guys have neural implants that give them direct access to the Veritas, I’m surprised they still use keyboards, even if they are virtual. I think I understand why these archaic interfaces still exist. Thoughts alone are a scratchpad, somewhere to mull over concepts and contemplate ideas. Committing thoughts to action is akin to distilling alcohol. There’s something about condensing disparate, often fragmented ideas into a single notion. My own thoughts are often conceptual. I grasp vague notions rather than having concrete ideas. To me, thoughts are a bit of a haze. They’re a quantum wave function waiting to collapse into corporeal form. I like the gap between thought and action. As Jorgensen can render a virtual keyboard within my simulation, I guess he could give me an implant as well. I won’t ask for one. I’m quite happy being old school and gathering my thoughts as my fingers flicker through the air. Punching at ghostly keys is therapeutic.
The nice thing about these holographic keyboards is they drift with my arms. The keys remain within reach so long as my hands are together. The position of my hands is the trigger for the appearance of the interface, which is delightful. It phases in and out of view as soon as I’m ready to type.
Jorgensen gestures to the bundles around the virtual fire.
“You can select from broad categories like current and historical events, peer-reviewed research, cultural artifacts. From there, you can refocus on another level.”
A quick flick, and I’m looking at an array of scientific topics relating to exothermal oxidization. Okay. Intuitive. I love the ability to manipulate information in three dimensions. I discard bundles with one hand, filtering results with the other. I isolate the ideas that interest me, zooming in on the details. Damn, this is addictive. Consumption rates for information in this age must be off the
charts. Already, I can see the interface is anticipating my interest based on past actions. It arranges data packs for easy access, bringing the most likely information to the forefront. Despite the current aversion to AI, I suspect there’s some machine-learning algorithm driving this in the background.
“Cool.”
Jorgensen leaves me to play with the interface. I type in Erebus. The moon appears before me along with broad topics—Composition, Position, Historical, Exploration, Planning, Colonization. Everything I need is at my fingertips.
Jorgensen grins. He’s enjoying watching me jump across thousands of years worth of technological development in mere seconds.
“I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for in there.”
“I hope so.”
Jorgensen goes to leave. “Ummm.” He pauses by the edge of the bench, asking, “What’s bothering you?”
I get the impression Jorgensen is a stranger everywhere he goes, even at home. At a guess, those close to him have never really known him. He’s focused rather than social and has an intensity that drives him. In Dr. Everton, I found a friend. When it comes to Jorgensen, though, I suspect I would never be more than a work colleague.
I push the virtual interface to one side, making it clear my interest is in talking with him.
“How do you know what’s real?”
“Oh.” He smiles, waving a finger and suppressing a soft laugh. “That’s the question, isn’t it? That’s always been the real question.” To my relief, he sits on a chair and swivels to face me, ready to engage on a deeper level. “You tell me. What’s real?”
Jorgensen’s smart. Ask the hologram about reality—that’ll work. He’s cagey, but I understand why. I’m a relic. Worse, I’m a lab rat. From his perspective, I’m not his equal. I’m a scientific experiment under observation.
I reply, “Back on the Intrepid, I was sure about reality. I was convinced. Everything was so real—just like here in the lab. A cool breeze swirled within my helmet as oxygen circulated from my life-support pack. The sound of breathing was my only companion. I remember the way sunlight caught on the double-glazed glass insulating my visor. Occasionally, the sun would reflect off the brushed aluminum locking collars around my wrists. My fingers had to flex against my gloves. I remember the buckle on the strap of my Snoopy cap. It had shifted sideways during my spacewalk, catching on the edge of my jaw. Annoying as fuck, but there was nothing I could do about it.”
Déjà Vu (First Contact) Page 9