Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction
Page 549
“KGB?” Pam’s voice is rising: “you said you weren’t mixed up in spy stuff!”
“Relax; it’s just the Moscow Windows NT user group, not the RSV. The uploaded crusties hacked in and—”
Bob is watching him oddly. “Lobsters?”
“Yeah.” Manfred stares right back. “Panulirus Interruptus uploads. Something tells me you might have heard of it?”
“Moscow.” Bob leans back against the wall: “how did you hear about it?”
“They phoned me. It’s hard for an upload to stay sub-sentient these days, even if it’s just a crustacean. Bezier labs have a lot to answer for.”
Pamela’s face is unreadable. “Bezier labs?”
“They escaped.” Manfred shrugs. “It’s not their fault. This Bezier dude. Is he by any chance ill?”
“I—” Pamela stops. “I shouldn’t be talking about work.”
“You’re not wearing your chaperone now,” he nudges quietly.
She inclines her head. “Yes, he’s ill. Some sort of brain tumour they can’t hack.”
Franklin nods. “That’s the trouble with cancer; the ones that are left to worry about are the rare ones. No cure.”
“Well, then.” Manfred chugs the remains of his glass of beer. “That explains his interest in uploading. Judging by the crusties he’s on the right track. I wonder if he’s moved onto vertebrates yet?”
“Cats,” says Pamela. “He was hoping to trade their uploads to the Pentagon as a new smart bomb guidance system in lieu of income tax payments. Something about remapping enemy targets to look like mice or birds or something before feeding it to their sensorium. The old laser-pointer trick.”
Manfred stares at her, hard. “That’s not very nice. Uploaded cats are a bad idea.”
“Thirty million dollar tax bills aren’t nice either, Manfred. That’s lifetime nursing home care for a hundred blameless pensioners.”
Franklin leans back, keeping out of the crossfire.
“The lobsters are sentient,” Manfred persists. “What about those poor kittens? Don’t they deserve minimal rights? How about you? How would you like to wake up a thousand times inside a smart bomb, fooled into thinking that some Cheyenne Mountain battle computer’s target of the hour is your heart’s desire? How would you like to wake up a thousand times, only to die again? Worse: the kittens are probably not going to be allowed to run. They’re too fucking dangerous: they grow up into cats, solitary and highly efficient killing machines. With intelligence and no socialisation they’ll be too dangerous to have around. They’re prisoners, Pam, raised to sentience only to discover they’re under a permanent death sentence. How fair is that?”
“But they’re only uploads.” Pamela looks uncertain.
“So? We’re going to be uploading humans in a couple of years. What’s your point?”
Franklin clears his throat. “I’ll be needing an NDA and various due dilligence statements off you for the crusty pilot idea,” he says to Manfred. “Then I’ll have to approach Jim about buying the IP.”
“No can do.” Manfred leans back and smiles lazily. “I’m not going to be a party to depriving them of their civil rights. Far as I’m concerned, they’re free citizens. Oh, and I patented the whole idea of using lobster-derived AI autopilots for spacecraft this morning; it’s logged on Eternity, all rights assigned to the FIF. Either you give them a contract of employment or the whole thing’s off.”
“But they’re just software! Software based on fucking lobsters, for god’s sake!”
Manfred’s finger jabs out: “that’s what they’ll say about you, Bob. Do it. Do it or don’t even think about uploading out of meatspace when your body packs in, because your life won’t be worth living. Oh, and feel free to use this argument on Jim Bezier. He’ll get the point eventually, after you beat him over the head with it. Some kinds of intellectual land-grab just shouldn’t be allowed.”
“Lobsters—“ Franklin shakes his head. “Lobsters, cats. You’re serious, aren’t you? You think they should be treated as human-equivalent?”
“It’s not so much that they should be treated as human-equivalent, as that if they aren’t treated as people it’s quite possible that other uploaded beings won’t be treated as people either. You’re setting a legal precedent, Bob. I know of six other companies doing uploading work right now, and not one of ‘em’s thinking about the legal status of the uploadee. If you don’t start thinking about it now, where are you going to be in three to five years time?”
Pam is looking back and forth between Franklin and Manfred like a bot stuck in a loop, unable to quite grasp what she’s seeing. “How much is this worth?” she asks plaintively.
“Oh, quite a few million, I guess.” Bob stares at his empty glass. “Okay. I’ll talk to them. If they bite, you’re dining out on me for the next century. You really think they’ll be able to run the mining complex?”
“They’re pretty resourceful for invertebrates.” Manfred grins innocently, enthusiastically. “They may be prisoners of their evolutionary background, but they can still adapt to a new environment. And just think! You’ll be winning civil rights for a whole new minority group—one that won’t be a minority for much longer.”
* * * *
That evening, Pamela turns up at Manfred’s hotel room wearing a strapless black dress, concealing spike heels and most of the items he bought for her that afternoon. Manfred has opened up his private diary to her agents: she abuses the privilege, zaps him with a stunner on his way out of the shower and has him gagged, spreadeagled, and trussed to the bed-frame before he has a chance to speak. She wraps a large rubber pouch full of mildly anaesthetic lube around his tumescing genitals—no point in letting him climax—clips electrodes to his nipples, lubes a rubber plug up his rectum and straps it in place. Before the shower, he removed his goggles: she resets them, plugs them into her handheld, and gently eases them on over his eyes. There’s other apparatus, stuff she ran up on the hotel room’s 3D printer.
Setup completed, she walks round the bed, inspecting him critically from all angles, figuring out where to begin. This isn’t just sex, after all: it’s a work of art.
After a moments thought she rolls socks onto his exposed feet, then, expertly wielding a tiny tube of cyanoacrylate, glues his fingertips together. Then she switches off the air conditioning. He’s twisting and straining, testing the cuffs: tough, it’s about the nearest thing to sensory deprivation she can arrange without a flotation tank and suxamethonium injection. She controls all his senses, only his ears unstoppered. The glasses give her a high-bandwidth channel right into his brain, a fake metacortex to whisper lies at her command. The idea of what she’s about to do excites her, puts a tremor in her thighs: it’s the first time she’s been able to get inside his mind as well as his body. She leans forward and whispers in her ear: “Manfred. Can you hear me?”
He twitches. Mouth gagged, fingers glued: good. No back channels. He’s powerless.
“This is what it’s like to be tetraplegic, Manfred. Bedridden with motor neurone disease. Locked inside your own body by nv-CJD. I could spike you with MPPP and you’d stay in this position for the rest of your life, shitting in a bag, pissing through a tube. Unable to talk and with nobody to look after you. Do you think you’d like that?”
He’s trying to grunt or whimper around the ball gag. She hikes her skirt up around her waist and climbs onto the bed, straddling him. The goggles are replaying scenes she picked up around Cambridge this winter; soup kitchen scenes, hospice scenes. She kneels atop him, whispering in his ear.
“Twelve million in tax, baby, that’s what they think you owe them. What do you think you owe me? That’s six million in net income, Manny, six million that isn’t going into your virtual children’s mouths.”
He’s rolling his head from side to side, as if trying to argue. That won’t do: she slaps him hard, thrills to his frightened expression. “Today I watched you give uncounted millions away, Manny. Millions, to a bunch of crusti
es and a MassPike pirate! You bastard. Do you know what I should do with you?” He’s cringing, unsure whether she’s serious or doing this just to get him turned on. Good.
There’s no point trying to hold a conversation. She leans forward until she can feel his breath in her ear. “Meat and mind, Manny. Meat, and mind. You’re not interested in meat, are you? Just mind. You could be boiled alive before you noticed what was happening in the meatspace around you. Just another lobster in a pot.” She reaches down and tears away the gel pouch, exposing his penis: it’s stiff as a post from the vasodilators, dripping with gel, numb. Straightening up, she eases herself slowly down on it. It doesn’t hurt as much as she expected, and the sensation is utterly different from what she’s used to. She begins to lean forward, grabs hold of his straining arms, feels his thrilling helplessness. She can’t control herself: she almost bites through her lip with the intensity of the sensation. Afterwards, she reaches down and massages him until he begins to spasm, shuddering uncontrollably, emptying the darwinian river of his source code into her, communicating via his only output device.
She rolls off his hips and carefully uses the last of the superglue to gum her labia together. Humans don’t produce seminiferous plugs, and although she’s fertile she wants to be absolutely sure: the glue will last for a day or two. She feels hot and flushed, almost out of control. Boiling to death with febrile expectancy, now she’s nailed him down at last.
When she removes his glasses his eyes are naked and vulnerable, stripped down to the human kernel of his nearly-transcendent mind. “You can come and sign the marriage license tomorrow morning after breakfast,” she whispers in his ear: “otherwise my lawyers will be in touch. Your parents will want a ceremony, but we can arrange that later.”
He looks as if he has something to say, so she finally relents and loosens the gag: kisses him tenderly on one cheek. He swallows, coughs, then looks away. “Why? Why do it this way?”
She taps him on the chest: “property rights.” She pauses for a moment’s thought: there’s a huge ideological chasm to bridge, after all. “You finally convinced me about this agalmic thing of yours, this giving everything away for brownie points. I wasn’t going to lose you to a bunch of lobsters or uploaded kittens, or whatever else is going to inherit this smart matter singularity you’re busy creating. So I decided to take what’s mine first. Who knows? In a few months I’ll give you back a new intelligence, and you can look after it to your heart’s content.”
“But you didn’t need to do it this way—”
“Didn’t I?” She slides off the bed and pulls down her dress. “You give too much away too easily, Manny! Slow down, or there won’t be anything left.” Leaning over the bed she dribbles acetone onto the fingers of his left hand, then unlocks the cuff: puts the bottle conveniently close to hand so he can untangle himself.
“See you tomorrow. Remember, after breakfast.”
She’s in the doorway when he calls: “but you didn’t say why!”
“Think of it as spreading your memes around,” she says; blows a kiss at him and closes the door. She bends down and thoughtfully places another cardboard box containing an uploaded kitten right outside it. Then she returns to her suite to make arrangements for the alchemical wedding.
* * * *
Copyright © 2001 by Dell Magazines.
APPENDICES AND GUIDES FOR WRITERS
Stories and Authors Listed Alphabetically, with page number in print edition
“2 B R 0 2 B” 694
Abdallah, Ayana R. 892
“Afterwards” 207
Aldiss, Brian W. 514
“All Cats Are Grey” 289
“Allamagoosa” 488
“Almuric” 133
“Alternate Histories” 974
Anderson, Poul 323
“Arena” 251
“Armageddon—2419 A.D.” 186
Asaro, Catherine 892
Asimov, Isaac 228
“At the Conclusion of an Interstellar War” 975
“At the Mountains of Madness” 156
“Bad Day for Sales, A” 421
Baker, Kage 905
“Barnacle Bill the Spacer” 832
Bear, Greg 704
“Bears Discover Fire” 912
Benét, Stephen Vincent 247
Benford, Gregory 710
Bester, Alfred 327
“Bicycle Repairman” 858
Bisson, Terry 912
“Black Destroyer” 305
Blish, James 333
“Blood Music” 704
“Bloodchild” 559
“Born of Man and Woman” 432
Boucher, Anthony 340
Bova, Ben 521
“Bow Shock” 710
Brackett, Leigh 346
Bradley, Marion Zimmer 522
Breuer, Miles J. 110
Brin, David 720
“Bring the Jubilee” 441
Brown, Fredric 251
Brunner, John 546
Budrys, Algis 352
“Buffalo” 780
Bujold, Lois McMaster 726
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 6
Busby, F. M. 554
Butler, Octavia 559
Butler, Samuel 40
“By the Waters of Babylon” 247
Cadigan, Pat 742
Campbell, John W. 116
Čapek, Karel 45
Card, Orson Scott 746
Cherryh, C. J. 752
Chiang, Ted 915
“City of Truth” 790
Clarke, Arthur C. 357
Clement, Hal 361
“Cold Equations, The” 396
“Computer Iterates the Greater Trumps, The” 891
“Country of the Kind, The” 412
Dance Dance Revolution 945
Dann, Jack 566
Davidson, Avram 365
“Day Million” 293
de Camp, L. Sprague 256
“Death and What Comes Next” 818
“Death of a Spaceman” 435
“Defenders, The” 367
Del Rey, Lester 263
Delany, Samuel R. 571
“Demi-Urge, The” 576
Di Filippo, Paul 756
“Diabolical Drug, The” 130
Dick, Philip K. 367
Dickson, Gordon R. 375
Disch, Tom 576
Doctorow, Cory 920
“Dogwalker” 746
“Door Through Space, The” 522
Doyle, Debra 930
Drake, David 758
“Driftglass” 571
“Duel on Syrtis” 323
“Edge of the World” 865
Ellison, Harlan 576
England, George Allan 61
Erewhon 40
“Evil Robot Monkey” 954
Farmer, Philip José 387
“Fast Times at Fairmont High” 681
“Fiddling for Water Buffaloes” 853
“Firefly Tree, The” 322
“First Contact with the Gorgonids, The” 605
“First Contact” 423
“Flashes” 969
“Fondly Fahrenheit” 327
“For I Have Touched the Sky” 819
Foster, Alan Dean 762
Fowler, Karen Joy 932
Frost, Gregory 766
Gallun, Raymond Z. 268
“Game of Rat and Dragon, The” 504
Gardner, James Alan 935
Godwin, Tom 396
“Going Under” 566
“Golden Horn, The” 476
Goldstein, Lisa 773
“Good with Rice” 546
“Gostak and the Doshes, The” 110
“Graveyard of Dreams” 484
“Green Hills of Earth, The” 281
“Griots of the Galaxy” 940
“Grotto of the Dancing Deer” 295
“Gun for Dinosaur, A” 256
Hairston, Andrea 940
“Habit of Waste, A” 948
Haldeman, Joe 583
“Hand to Hand” 786
“Harbour Whistles” 177
“Hardened Criminals, The” 957
Harris, Clare Winger 130
Heinlein, Robert A. 281
“Hell is the Absence of God” 915
Henderson, Zenna 401
“Her Lips Are Copper Wire” 82
“Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” 666
Herbert, Frank 407
“Hero” 583
Hong, Cathy Park 945
Hopkinson, Nalo 948
Howard, Robert E. 133
“If This Is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy” 554
“Jeffty Is Five” 576
Kelly, James Patrick 776
Kessel, John 780
Knight, Damon 412
Kornbluth, C. M. 415
Kowal, Mary Robinette 954
Kress, Nancy 954
“Lady Margaret, The” 637
Lafferty, R. A. 598
“Last Days of Shandakor, The” 346
Last Man, The 76
Laumer, Keith 602
Lawrence, D. H. 67
Le Guin, Ursula K. 605
Leiber, Fritz 421
Leinster, Murray 423
Lethem, Jonathan 957
“Letter from the Clearys, A” 877
“Lincoln Train, The” 963
“Little Black Bag, The” 415
“Little Faces” 621
“Little Worker” 756
“Lobsters” 975
“Loo Ree” 401
Lovecraft, H. P. 156
Loy, Mina 68
“Lucky Strike, The” 824
“Lunar Baedeker” 68
Macdonald, James D. 930
“Madonna of the Maquiladora” 766
“Man In His Time” 514
“Man Who Awoke, The” 179
Manning, Laurence 179
“Martian Odyssey, A” 314
“Martian Sends A Postcard Home, A” 819
“Martian Way, The” 235