Face Smuggler

by Matthew Sills

  His itinerant black-marketeering these past twenty years served him a bit too well in keeping ahead of the past. It was a silly notion: keeping ahead of the past. Where else would one be? Yet, it was never entirely behind him either - all the while holding onto it, too scared to let go. It was time. And at last, he had a plan that might work for Alice and him both.

  The G-forces pressed Grayson into the pilot’s chair as the Eunoe pulled away from the asteroid cluster. He laid in a course for Ceres that would take them around two of the larger mining operations in the sector. Once the C-Class got up to speed and the Gs subsided, he made radio contact with Ceres.

  “I need Axios Corporation,” he said and waited as the response traveled back across space. The light delay was about ten minutes round-trip.

  “Axios Corporation, 1-Ceres Advanced-Semiconductor Foundry. Is your craft commercial or industrial?” The man on the other end had a pleasantly lilting tenor. Mushy consonants belied a Jovian accent.

  “This is Grayson Reynolds piloting the Eunoe speaking on behalf of Alice Liddell - personal identification code 2165931 - requesting assistance. We are en-route to Ceres. I am sending you our transponder code. Can you send a ship to rendezvous and escort us the rest of the way to Ceres?”

  The response was nearly twenty minutes in coming. The woman who now replied spoke in a clearly articulated Earth accent: “Identification confirmed and transponder signal located. We’ll dispatch an escort to your projected location. Are you on a straight line approach?”

  Grayson smirked. “Negative. I’ll send you our flight plan. One moment.” He sent the course he’d plotted.

  Another ten minutes passed. “We have your flight plan. Projected rendezvous point in spatial grid 192 mark 45 mark 283. Please acknowledge and confirm.”

  It was about where Grayson expected. “Acknowledged and confirmed.”

  With that taken care of, Grayson set about disconnecting Alice from the ship’s computer system and integrating his tablet into her processes. He had given considerable thought about how to improve her immediate situation once it became necessary to disconnect her processes from the ship computer. Grayson had no intention of ever letting her drift in the sensory deprived darkness again now that he knew her true condition. Even being left to run on the CPU without sensory input was unacceptable.

  He permanently networked her cpu to his tablet, giving her access to its microphone, speakers, and camera. It was not a perfect solution, but Alice expressed her appreciation for the improvement over before. He also kept her linked in to his cochlear implant, which allowed her to talk to him as long as he was within range. He couldn’t help thinking that this might have been the way Sarah turned out if things had gone differently, and he resolved not to fail Alice as he had Sarah.

  The only thing left to do now was wait to arrive at the rendezvous coordinates. Three burns should put them on target for the rendezvous. It was scheduled in a sector just outside of the area claimed by the Gefion Consortium - one of the few groups based in the rebellious Jovian Empire allowed mining rights in the belt. Grayson had fair dealings with them before.

  The Eunoe reversed its burn to slow down as it approached the coordinates. The Axios ship was approaching from afar: still invisible to the eye but crystal clear on the Eunoe’s scanners. As the communications lag decreased, the two ships’ computers synchronized operations in order to coordinate the mid-space rendezvous. Automated calculations transmitted back and forth between the ships’ computers to triangulate each craft’s position amid the stars.

  They grew closer until each emerged from the tapestry of stars and became visible to the other by the naked eye. “Axios vessel,” Grayson’s voice transmitted across the void. “Advise caution. We are experiencing anomalies in our magnetic containment system. Attempting to do a cycling reboot of pressure controls.”

  A man replied from the Axios ship. “Acknowledged. Maintaining standard safe-distance protocols. Please notify when reboot has been completed.” The Axios ship moved off to the standard distance of one hundred kilometers and matched speed on a parallel course.

  The Eunoe cruised in the void for several minutes. Presently, the engines flickered to life one final time then abruptly died. The Eunoe went dark.

  “Eunoe, what is your status?” The man about the Axios ship radioed. “I’m showing a massive drop in the thermal output of your engines, please respond.”

  Slivers of pure white light shot along microfractures in the Eunoe’s dorsal engine casing, and then a blinding globe engulfed the ship as its fusion containment systems suffered cascading failures.

  The Axios pilot shielded his eyes. He was momentarily blinded by the flash, and it took him a moment to process what had happened and report on it. He radioed back to the foundry on Ceres: “We have a problem.”

  “What do you mean ‘a problem’?” Came the Earth-accented woman’s delayed response.

  “It looks like the micro-fusion reactors just blew on the Eunoe.”

  “Move in and confirm. If it’s true, then that solves more problems than it creates. Report back as soon as the situation is confirmed.”

  “Copy that.” The Axios ship swung around and executed a reverse burn. It crept forward at minimal speed through the Eunoe’s debris field. “Situation confirmed. Jesus - there’s nothing left out here.”

  Grayson lay on a spartan cot in the escape pod. Everything was cramped in the pod, and he didn’t want to imagine what it would be like if there were other crew members crammed into the space for any prolonged period. It made Alice’s lack of corpuscularity a distinct boon. After six hours he was already itching to get off.

  By this time the Eunoe would have already rendezvoused with the Axios vessel and suffered its little ‘accident.’ He wondered how long the Axios craft would linger in the area and how thorough its search would be. Not that that would matter if no one found them - another six hours and it should be safe to turn the pod’s emergency beacon back on. They should be close to the Gefion mining operations by then.

  The escape pod’s trajectory at its launch took them through the heart of the Gefion mining operation. The hope was to be spotted and picked up by a mining freighter; however, cruel necessity demanded that escape pods carried limited fuel and economics dictated fusion engines far too expensive. Survivors of an accident at space had to drift and pray they were on an auspicious bearing. Grayson tried his best to put them on one. The Gefion freighter captains who worked the mining lanes were well known for helping other space farers in need. It was a tradition that harkened back to their ancestral terrestrial mariners of old and the universal recognition of any sea-going or space-faring man that the shoe could easily be on the other foot some day.

  Grayson wasn’t expecting to be picked up for another day or two at least. He wanted to be well clear of the Eunoe’s flight path before he activated the beacon and drew attention to Alice and himself. Nevertheless, there was something disconcerting about drifting in space without broadcasting a distress signal. Grayson knew it was irrational: that the pod was not moving quickly enough to put them out of rescue range; that they were presently of reasonable rescue range and were in fact moving into it; that the beacon would be turned on with plenty of time to be found. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but think of the stories told in the cold bowels of ships on long space flights: stories of individuals and crew alike lost in space, doomed to drift into their oblivion only to be retrieved decades later, perfectly preserved by the conditions of space once life support systems failed. It was a good thing Alice was there to talk to.

  “Grayson,” Alice said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Suppose the real Alice had died in surgery. What do you suppose I’d be then?”

  “You’d be the same as you are now.”

  “You don’t think I’d be a real person if that had happened?”

  “You’re a real person now. I don’t see how the other Alice being alive or dead af
fects that.”

  “I’m just a copy,” Alice said. “But if the original disappeared, then I’d be the only one, right?”

  “I’m not sure I see what you’re getting at. Are you saying you’re not a real person because you share your memories with the other Alice?”

  “The real Alice. And yes. I mean, if I’m being honest. I’m just a copy of her, so it seems that a copy can never be anything more than that as long as the original is still around.”

  “That makes no sense,” Grayson replied. “First of all, a copy is still a copy even if the original gets destroyed. But second of all, I don’t buy the idea that you are just a copy. Maybe you started out that way, but you stopped being just a copy the second after the neurotranscription completed. I think originality or derivation have nothing to do with the quality of your existence… those are… accidental factors, mere starting points.”

  “Do you really mean that?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Look at it this way: why are you worried about being a copy?”

  “I’m not unique. I always thought that’s what makes someone a person - being unique and unrepeatable?”

  Grayson shrugged. He wasn’t sure if Alice could see the gesture. “Maybe. But I’ve met a lot of people who aren’t all that unique, and a few whose uniqueness wasn’t all that great if I’m being honest.”

  Alice laughed at that. “True.”

  “Besides, being a copy doesn’t make you less unique.”

  “That’s kind of the definition of a copy.”

  “No, think about it. It’s a starting point but not the be-all-end-all of it. The original Alice has been living for the past 20 years, growing and making new memories. She’s not the same person whose memories and personality were copied over. And ever since you started thinking and experiencing things for yourself, you stopped being her too. Isn’t that right?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Alice said at length. “That means they failed, then.”

  “Who failed?”

  “My parents, the doctors - they wouldn’t have saved Alice if she died. They just created a new one, a different one.”

  Grayson nodded. “That follows”

  “That means you would have failed too,” Alice said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “With Sarah. If you had succeeded, you would have still failed in the end, wouldn’t you? Your copy wouldn’t have been Sarah any more than I am Alice. We just have the same name - and, well, memories.”

  Grayson rubbed his hand on his cheek. He couldn’t think of a counter-argument. “That sounds right.”

  “That’s tough,” she sounded melancholy.

  “Life is tough.”

  “But people try so hard to save the ones they love and it doesn’t work out. It seems unfair.”

  “It works out sometimes, just not for us. One thing I’ve learned is that there are never easy answers when you’d like them.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve only been wrapped up in questioning the nature of my own existence.”

  Grayson laughed. “That puts you in decent company.”

  “So do you think a person’s memories are what it all comes down to - is that what makes you a person?”

  Grayson thought. “They’re what make me this person, but I don’t think that’s what makes me a person.”

  “So then at one point I was the same person as the other Alice?”

  “I suppose.”

  “But our differences in memories began to differentiate us. It makes me wonder if who we are is so malleable. I feel like there has to be something deeper to it at the end of the day. When you thought I was an AI, you didn’t think the memories I carried automatically made me a person; I was an AI with someone’s memories. Why make that distinction?”

  “I don’t know, honestly,” Grayson said. “Maybe memories make us the person we are in the moment, but my gut tells me there’s something more: something deeper to what makes us who we truly are. I’m damn sure having a difficult time putting my finger on it, though.”

  The conversation left him decidedly contemplative. He reflected that in the right frame of mind the walls of the escape pod were like a cell: not a cramped prison cell; rather, a monastic cell and space outside a cloister. At length, he switched on the emergency beacon, and the escape pod’s distress signal broadcasted its call. Grayson breathed easier.

  The following day by Earth reckoning their signal was picked up by an independent freighter running ore from Minerva to Io. The freighter captain ordered a detour to pick them up, and Grayson expressed his profound thanks. He didn’t mention Alice. The captain was more than willing to let Grayson stay on board to Io (one less detour), where Grayson would be free to depart and carry on his business. Thankfully, the captain was not the inquisitive type. The Jovians usually weren’t. They understood and respected that a man’s business was his own.

  A month later, Grayson and Alice disembarked the freighter at a habitat above Jupiter. From there, Grayson located a shipment of circuits heading for the data centers on Titan. They hitched a ride. From there, any number of transports would bring them to the outer rim planets or the Kuiper Belt habitats. To the rest of the solar system Grayson Reynolds was dead, and there never existed a copy of Alice Liddell’s memories or personality; and so, they enjoyed the best form of safety - anonymity.

  4

  THE OUTER RIM

  Grayson met Matilda three months after he and Alice arrived at Makemake. Soon, if things didn’t work out, it would be time to move on again. It had been nearly a year without sign of Axios pursuit, but they remained cautious as they worked for a solution to Alice’s minor disembodiment problem. In an orbiting habitat around Neptune, Grayson called in some favors to fix his ear and alter his other features: Blue eyes, sandy hair, a hooked nose, and enhanced cheekbones now graced his face. He looked entirely different. He regarded such things with indifference, but admitted to himself that he should have done something about reseeding his hairline long ago.

  The Makemake habitat had been drilled into the surface of the dwarf planet, and its rotating drum replicated near Earth gravity while being powered by the liquid methane on the planet’s surface. A fusion reactor was due for delivery within the year. This far out, it took an eternity for specialized heavy equipment to arrive.

  The habitat was full of an enterprising sort of people, and Matilda was one of the newest arrivals. She was like many others Grayson had met who decided to come to the outer rim to find a new life of sorts. However, not all were as haunted by their pasts as Matilda despite her relatively few years. If anyone were ever in need of his services as artisan of memories, it was her.

  “Please, I want to be somebody else. Someone happy, if possible,” she had said after hearing of Grayson’s specialty. It seemed that her life had been marked solely by tragedy. It was not so much in the things that happened to her, but the things that she continually chose - for the truly tragic always stems from one’s own actions.

  Grayson, who went by Milton now, asked her if she knew what she was asking and if she understood the implications of what she was doing.

  The woman nodded as tears welled in her eyes. Although, like so many, she came to the outer rim to find some kind of escape, the things she ran from were neither of the sort to be deterred by the distance of space nor much more by the distance of time. It was for souls such as hers that the ancients wrote of the river Lethe. Grayson wondered if what he did re-crafting memories and likenesses for people like her counted as a form of reincarnation. In this instance, more than any other, the thought seemed apropos.

  Matilda told him her story, and he didn’t blame her for her decision. He had to ask one more time to be sure, however, “You want a total rewrite?”

  “Everything,” she said emphatically. “Wipe everything out and start things over new.”

  “Okay.” He hooked her up to the machine and began the careful process of e
ngramatic translation. It would take several hours to prepare her neural pathways for reencoding.

  Meanwhile, Alice was in his ear. “She decided to go through with it?”

  “Yes.” Without revealing the totality of Alice’s situation, Grayson informed Matilda that he had come into possession of a full personality with complete memories. If she wanted to wake up entirely different as she professed, then he could make that happen for her.

  Matilda never expressed a moment of doubt or hesitation. Alice insisted that be the case and disqualified two others herself before Matilda contacted them. He and Alice spent many long hours discussing the decision. After months of rejected possibilities, Matilda presented their best option to try.

  “What do you think happens to a person when you alter their memories?” Alice had asked.

  “They become a new person with those memories,” Grayson answered.

  “But what happens to the person who was there before?”

  “They’re still there, just in a new way - altered by the new memories. It’s not too different from how we gain memories naturally and let those change us. Is it so different if new memories are added artificially?”

  “Perhaps not - but what if all the memories are replaced? Who does the person become then?”

  “You’re thinking about our plan.”

  “Yes,” she said. “If you replace someone’s memories with my own, what happens to the person who was there before: is she erased?”

  “I don’t know,” Grayson admitted. “Maybe.”

  “Or does the person remain, and it is simply the content that is replaced?”

  “That’s a possibility too.”

  “If that’s the case, then what happens to me - is the essence of who I am transferred as well or is it just the content that’s transferred on to someone else?”

  Grayson rubbed his head. “I wish I had those answers for your Alice. We’ll have to find out together.”