Artifacts

by Greg Egan

  Nobody seemed to notice his deterioration. Although he was paid more than ever, his job had become a simple matter of deciding which ANM tunes were to be used for which products, and his choices didn’t seem to make much difference; all the campaigns were wildly successful, he could have made the allocations by throwing dice. Magda was wrapped up in her own work, and he had no trouble with their brief exchanges, nor with the kind of conversation that took place at the dinners and cocktail parties they attended.

  One morning, he found he could no longer read the newspaper—because tune #87 was pulsing along in his head, in the form of a revolting jingle about air freshener that kept the printed words in front of him from making any sense—but he told himself that he was merely tired, and anyway, he didn’t need to read the paper. He could still put on his clothes, he could still knot his tie and tie his shoelaces, he could still kiss Magda goodbye and walk to the bus stop—in short, he could do everything that was required of him.

  Each night, before sleeping, came a brief respite: he would listen to a piece from his private collection, and emerge from mental quicksand into comparative lucidity. The effect lingered for a few minutes after the music stopped, and in these windows of clarity he made all kinds of plans: He would quit his job. He would go to Halbright, explain the terrible side effects, and beg him to devise a cure. He would go to the clients and let them know what had been kept from them. He would go to the press and tell them everything.

  It was conceivable that he was the only person crippled by the ANM music—but when he was lucid, this struck him as unlikely. What if some small proportion of the population shared his susceptibility? It would be far worse for the others; they wouldn’t even know what was happening, they would probably think they were going insane. That he was coping at all, himself, was a miracle—what about people who needed to concentrate, whose jobs depended on it? Whose lives depended on it?

  At which point, the latest, most powerful jingle would begin to echo in his head, cutting off all such difficult and complex trains of thought.

  One evening, Underwood came home and switched on the TV news. Pictures and the spoken word could still penetrate his stupefaction, if there was enough color and movement, and the leading item of the bulletin had plenty of both. Two jets had collided at the airport. Both had been about to take off; evidently one pilot had ignored or misinterpreted the control tower’s instructions. Both planes had caught fire. Over four hundred people were dead.

  Underwood didn’t really want to know. It was tragic, of course, but his sympathy wouldn’t bring anyone back to life. He rose to switch off the slow-motion replay of the impact—the airport had recently installed video cameras at strategic points on all runways, paid for by a national TV network—when the pilot’s last words were heard in voice over:

  The simple things in life are best

  That’s what my Grandpa said

  Like sunrise o’er a golden field

  And Grandma’s home-baked bread

  Though times have changed since then, I know

  His words they still ring true

  So Western’s bread’s the one for me

  And it’s the one for you

  Underwood fell to his knees, shaking his head. It wasn’t possible. An advertising jingle couldn’t kill four hundred people.

  Flames billowed on the screen, some technical fault rendering them a strange, unnatural hue. A man dived from an exit, clothes and hair on fire—Underwood thought: he looks just like a movie stuntman—screaming in an artificial baritone from the slowed-down tape.

  He couldn’t be held responsible—the pilot must have known she was impaired, she should have grounded herself voluntarily! But he knew that was nonsense; she would have dismissed the inane distraction blossoming in her head as no more dangerous than any of the dozens of other scraps of musical garbage which competed for her attention every day; she would have assumed, from past experience, that a little mental discipline would push this one, too, into the background, as soon as she really needed to regain her concentration.

  He jumped to his feet, finally galvanized into action. It all had to stop, now. All commercials with ANM tunes had to be pulled off the air, immediately, and the public had to be warned, had to be told how to identify the symptoms so they could take precautions and stay out of harm. Perhaps he would end up in prison—Or perhaps he would be lynched—but this was no time to think about that, he had to put an end to the deaths. How many others had there been? Traffic accidents, industrial accidents—there was no way of knowing how many recent fatal human errors had in fact had their roots in Halbright’s music.

  Magda was out, working late with a team of sound editors to meet a deadline for a tax concession. Who should he ring first? The papers, the TV stations? The police? Who would be most likely to listen, to understand, to set things in motion? He struggled to concentrate; the pilot’s song was growing louder in his head, threatening to blot out everything else; her off-key crooning was even more insidious than the original, professional version—a grotesquely successful chance mutation.

  Only Halbright himself would know enough of the truth to believe him at once, and as the creator of the music, he could spread word of the danger with some kind of credibility—not a lot, perhaps, but more than Underwood would have.

  He picked up the phone, and tried to recall Halbright’s home number. The simple things in life are best / That’s what my Grandpa said. He couldn’t. No matter; he found it in the address book by the phone. He stared at it, repeated it a few times, then started punching keys. Like sunrise o’er a golden field / And Grandma’s home-baked bread. Half-way through, he stopped; he’d already forgotten the last few digits.

  He placed the phone on the page, so that he could see both the keypad and the written number at the same time. And Grandma’s home-baked bread. He began again, but when he came to the end of the number, the phone remained silent—he’d missed a digit along the way. Like sunrise o’er a golden field / And Grandma’s home-baked bread. Sweat was pouring down his face; this was the end: complete dysfunction, insanity. Like sunrise o’er a golden field / And Grandma’s home-baked bread. He screamed at the mocking voice to shut up, but his rage only seemed to incite it.

  He crossed the living room to his CD player. He wasn’t beaten yet. There had to be something that could clear his head, just long enough for him to make the call. He found the disk with “Song of the Siren,” inserted it, and managed to select the right track. But the angelic, ethereal voice that had once moved him to rapture couldn’t even begin to drive out the dead pilot’s awful drone. He turned up the volume until the speakers shook, but the song remained remote and ineffectual. The track came to an end.

  The phone rang, and he staggered over to it. It was Halbright, who asked nervously, “Did you see the news? What are we going to do?”

  Underwood screamed, “Ring the TV stations! Ring the papers!”

  “Me? I’m no PR expert; I was going to ask you—” Halbright continued speaking, but his words made no sense to Underwood, who put down the phone and grabbed his head, moaning. The pilot’s song had begun to invade his other senses. It had a strong stench of something sweet and rotten, and a sugary, fermented taste to match. He felt it, too; a thick, lukewarm, syrupy presence, flowing over his skin. Like sunrise o’er a golden field / And Grandma’s home-baked bread. He cried out and waved his arms, as if trying to shake himself clean, and then the jingle, at last, appeared to him: a dark, viscous fluid which filled the room to shoulder height and flowed around him, encircling him in a sticky whirlpool. He screamed, and struggled to escape, but then the sweetly stinking black tide reared up and engulfed him completely.

  When Magda found him lying by the phone, his eyes were open, but sightless, and all he could do was hum.

  Underwood awoke—nauseous, aching all over, with a terrible throbbing behind his eyes, and a peculiar tightness in his scalp—and yet, without understanding why, he felt extraordinarily calm and happy. />
  Magda and Halbright stood by the bed. Magda stared at him anxiously, then gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile, and took hold of his hand.

  His mouth was dry. “What’s going on?”

  She said, “Michael … you’ve been unconscious for nearly two weeks. I gave them permission to operate. Dr. Halbright said it was your only chance. And it’s worked—hasn’t it?”

  “Operate?”

  Halbright cleared his throat, then spoke, looking straight at him. “We did some scans while you were unconscious. You have … certain atypical structures in the higher levels of the auditory pathways, which don’t quite conform to our standard model. I’ve run some simulations, and several of our tunes, when processed by your kind of circuitry, produce exponentially increasing responses—eventually limited by physiological constraints, but still strong enough to be virtually self-perpetuating—and strong enough to affect other parts of the brain .... a bit like a massive, never-ending epileptic fit.”

  Underwood stared at him. “And the operation?” He reached up and touched his head. It was shaven and partly bandaged, and he suddenly realized why, in spite of everything, he felt an undercurrent of blissful relief: for the first time in what seemed like forever, there was no ANM music playing in his skull.

  Halbright said, “They cut the pathway at a few critical points. It was the only way. You would have been comatose for the rest of your life. There are ten others, just like you were, awaiting surgery right now.”

  Underwood suddenly remembered the plane crash, and his tranquility vanished. “So, that pilot was the same as me? She didn’t fit your standard model, either. Who were those two thousand volunteers, anyway? Two thousand medical students? No, there wouldn’t be that many in the whole state, you must have roped in some veterinary science and dentistry students as well, maybe even a few biochemists! What a broad cross-section that must have been!” He started shaking, sick with guilt and fear. “What’s going to happen to us? Are we going to prison?”

  Halbright looked away and said angrily, “We didn’t break any laws.”

  The last track of the last disk came to an end.

  The effect had been obvious from the very beginning, but Underwood had played his entire collection, ten hours a day for the past fortnight, to eliminate any doubts. To him, the disks now contained sequences of completely arbitrary sounds; he perceived each note in isolation from everything that had preceded it. For him, there was no longer any such thing as music.

  Halbright had been right, of course, there was nothing they could be charged with. A number of civil actions were pending; the lawyers expected to settle out of court. Both men had received death threats, but the police had agreed to provide protection.

  Underwood walked over to the window and looked out; the unmarked car was in the usual position. He took off his headphones, and sat in the dark for a while.

  THE EXTRA

  Daniel Gray didn’t merely arrange for his Extras to live in a building within the grounds of his main residence―although that in itself would have been shocking enough. At the height of his midsummer garden party, he had their trainer march them along a winding path which took them within metres of virtually every one of his wealthy and powerful guests.

  There were five batches, each batch a decade younger than the preceding one, each comprising twenty-five Extras (less one or two here and there; naturally, some depletion had occurred, and Gray made no effort to hide the fact). Batch A were forty-four years old, the same age as Gray himself. Batch E, the four-year-olds, could not have kept up with the others on foot, so they followed behind, riding an electric float.

  The Extras were as clean as they’d ever been in their lives, and their hair―and beards in the case of the older ones―had been laboriously trimmed, in styles that amusingly parodied the latest fashions. Gray had almost gone so far as to have them clothed―but after much experimentation he’d decided against it; even the slightest scrap of clothing made them look too human, and he was acutely aware of the boundary between impressing his guests with his daring, and causing them real discomfort. Of course, naked, the Extras looked exactly like naked humans, but in Gray’s cultural milieu, stark naked humans en masse were not a common sight, and so the paradoxical effect of revealing the creatures’ totally human appearance was to make it easier to think of them as less than human.

  The parade was a great success. Everyone applauded demurely as it passed by―in the context, an extravagant gesture of approval. They weren’t applauding the Extras themselves, however impressive they were to behold; they were applauding Daniel Gray for his audacity in breaking the taboo.

  Gray could only guess how many people in the world had Extras; perhaps the wealthiest ten thousand, perhaps the wealthiest hundred thousand. Most owners chose to be discreet. Keeping a stock of congenitally brain-damaged clones of oneself―in the short term, as organ donors; in the long term (once the techniques were perfected), as the recipients of brain transplants―was not illegal, but nor was it widely accepted. Any owner who went public could expect a barrage of anonymous hate mail, intense media scrutiny, property damage, threats of violence―all the usual behaviour associated with the public debate of a subtle point of ethics. There had been legal challenges, of course, but time and again the highest courts had ruled that Extras were not human beings. Too much cortex was missing; if Extras deserved human rights, so did half the mammalian species on the planet. With a patient, skilled trainer, Extras could learn to run in circles, and to perform the simple, repetitive exercises that kept their muscles in good tone, but that was about the limit. A dog or a cat would have needed brain tissue removed to persuade it to live such a boring life.

  Even those few owners who braved the wrath of the fanatics, and bragged about their Extras, generally had them kept in commercial stables―in the same city, of course, so as not to undermine their usefulness in a medical emergency, but certainly not within the electrified boundaries of their own homes. What ageing, dissipated man or woman would wish to be surrounded by reminders of how healthy and vigorous they might have been, if only they’d lived their lives differently?

  Daniel Gray, however, found the contrasting appearance of his Extras entirely pleasing to behold, given that he, and not they, would be the ultimate beneficiary of their good health. In fact, his athletic, clean-living brothers had already supplied him with two livers, one kidney, one lung, and quantities of coronary artery and mucous membrane. In each case, he’d had the donor put down, whether or not it had remained strictly viable; the idea of having imperfect Extras in his collection offended his aesthetic sensibilities.

  After the appearance of the Extras, nobody at the party could talk about anything else. Perhaps, one stereovision luminary suggested, now that their host had shown such courage, it would at last became fashionable to flaunt one’s Extras, allowing full value to be extracted from them; after all, considering the cost, it was a crime to make use of them only in emergencies, when their pretty bodies went beneath the surgeon’s knife.

  Gray wandered from group to group, listening contentedly, pausing now and then to pluck and eat a delicate spice-rose or a juicy claret-apple (the entire garden had been designed specifically to provide the refreshments for this annual occasion, so everything was edible, and everything was in season). The early afternoon sky was a dazzling, uplifting blue, and he stood for a moment with his face raised to the warmth of the sun. The party was a complete success. Everyone was talking about him. He hadn’t felt so happy in years.

  “I wonder if you’re smiling for the same reason I am.”

  He turned. Sarah Brash, the owner of Continental Bio-Logic, and a recent former lover, stood beside him, beaming in a faintly unnatural way. She wore one of the patterned scarfs which Gray had made available to his guests; a variety of gene-tailored insects roamed the garden, and her particular choice of scarf attracted a bee whose painless sting contained a combination of a mild stimulant and an aphrodisiac.

  He
shrugged. “I doubt it.”

  She laughed and took his arm, then came still closer and whispered, “I’ve been thinking a very wicked thought.”

  He made no reply. He’d lost interest in Sarah a month ago, and the sight of her in this state did nothing to rekindle his desire. He had just broken off with her successor, but he had no wish to repeat himself. He was trying to think of something to say that would be offensive enough to drive her away, when she reached out and tenderly cupped his face in her small, warm hands.

  Then she playfully seized hold of his sagging jowls, and said, in tones of mock aggrievement, “Don’t you think it was terribly selfish of you, Daniel? You gave me your body … but you didn’t give me your best one.”

  Gray lay awake until after dawn. Vivid images of the evening’s entertainment kept returning to him, and he found them difficult to banish. The Extra Sarah had chosen―C7, one of the twenty-four-year-olds―had been muzzled and tightly bound throughout, but it had made copious noises in its throat, and its eyes had been remarkably expressive. Gray had learnt, years ago, to keep a mask of mild amusement and boredom on his face, whatever he was feeling; to see fear, confusion, distress and ecstasy, nakedly displayed on features that, in spite of everything, were unmistakably his own, had been rather like a nightmare of losing control.

  Of course, it had also been as inconsequential as a nightmare; he had not lost control for a moment, however much his animal look-alike had rolled its eyes, and moaned, and trembled. His appetite for sexual novelty aside, perhaps he had agreed to Sarah’s request for that very reason: to see this primitive aspect of himself unleashed, without the least risk to his own equilibrium.