Candle

by Barnes, John

  “But I felt her personality,” I said. “Real and human and twelve years old, not the kind of thing that even One True could make up—”

  “Oh, I’m sure One True started with some memories from Kelly, when it created the one it gave you. Probably even copied over some bits and pieces from some adult woman who was raped as a child—the War of the Memes went twenty years and sooner or later pritnear every girl and woman who had the bad luck to live in those years got serbed, so One True probably had a wide selection of rape memories.”

  “I never serbed anybody,” I pointed out, “and I was in the War of the Memes.”

  “I was too, and I never serbed anybody either!” Dave said. He was glaring at me, dark eyes fierce under his bushy, unkempt brows.

  “Until recently when it was your wife and daughter,” I said, sneering, maybe hoping he’d just kill me.

  “That’s what I’m fucking telling you, Curran. The memory is false. One True probably started with some of Kelly’s fear, from when I broke into the house, which it got via her copy of Resuna. Then it fused in a bunch of rape memories. You damn well know that memes can create memories that you experience as real—weren’t you ever hit with Unreconstructed Catholic, or didn’t you know someone who was? And don’t you remember how everyone who ever ran Unreconstructed Catholic all remembered kindly Sister Agnes and lim koapy Father Jim from first grade at St. Aloysious School? And being their favorite and feeling secure and safe with the Church guarding you? Or Real America’s memory of the Fourth of July when you were in eleventh grade and went to the high-school prom in Brightsburg, Vermont, with the red-haired girl that used to pitch for your Little League team? You know memes can make you remember things that didn’t happen, dammit.”

  “They can” I said, “but One True doesn’t. Never, never, never. It just helps you understand the memories you have. And anyway, One True isn’t a single program dominating your brain; it’s just what all the Resunas together make. Your individual Resuna is a much smaller program than the old memes, and it’s just a helper for your own personality. It’s not going to screw things up for you by making you remember things that didn’t happen…” My voice was getting softer and I was almost mumbling.

  I hated the feeling and wished Resuna were here to help me, but it wasn’t. Unfortunately I was realizing a couple of things. First of all, Resuna and the emergent version of One True were the most sophisticated and capable memes; it wasn’t smaller because it had less power. Anything any other meme could do, One True could do, easily.

  Then a rush of feeling and memory roared through my mind like white noise cranked to ear-bleeding volumes. I was remembering things that had been erased from my memory of my life with Mary, trivial stuff like little fights and moments of anger, that I was better off forgetting—yet still they had happened—yet I was better off not remembering—yet-yet-yet… and simultaneously I felt an odd quality to my memories of Mary’s love and support during my cowboy hunting days… in fact she’d been very upset nearly all the times when I went out, and actually there were times when I came home and could tell that everything had just been cleaned and fixed up that minute, and really there was no Mary to talk to, just her Resuna, as if in reality it had been unable to make her function and had just grabbed control and straightened out a mess at home… I remembered her throwing the lamp at me the time she had yelled something about days spent in bed crying, and yet another memory seemed to try to crawl over it and say that she had told me that story about a time during the War of the Memes when she was a slave … and yet, ghosted over all that, images of my brave, supportive, smiling wife who could send me off to fight cowboys with the warm confidence that I would be back, with a total confidence and love.

  Well, that had been very useful for One True to have me remember, hadn’t it?

  All of those thoughts and feelings rushed through my head in less time than it takes to think a single sentence in words. I hated Resuna, One True, Mary, the whole of my life, and Dave, not necessarily in that order. I hated myself for having lived for years that way. And most of all I hated the way that it seemed likely that Dave was right. “Shit,” I said, flatly. “Shit, shit, shit. You might as well make me the rest of your argument.”

  He shrugged. “You have the same expression in your eyes that Nancy did as she came out of it. Look, I don’t think One True would have put that rape memory into Kelly; it made up the memory to show to you, but it put something different into her head. That’s why it didn’t set up for you to meet her. Probably it told her that she hid under the bed the whole time I was there, and maybe that I vandalized the place or threatened her. From One True’s standpoint, that would make sense—it wouldn’t give her any more trauma than it had to for its purposes, so it gave her a false memory that would help her cope with the world she’ll have to live in. Probably slightly painful but nothing she can’t cope with. And I would bet that the false memory they gave her doesn’t hurt as much as her few hours of knowing the truth and being herself did. But she did seem to like that little taste of freedom, even with the pain and all. Or maybe I’m just projecting because I wanted her to like them.”

  “Why would One True give somebody a false memory?” I asked. I was rummaging, hard, in my own memories, trying to get Resuna to come back; I felt so utterly defenseless without it, and I was sure that if only I had One True here, it would have a real answer to all these accusations. “And why should I trust you to be the one telling the truth?”

  He looked so directly into my eyes that I sat down as if he had pushed me. For a moment, I wondered if this might not be some sort of hypnosis. “Look,” he said. “You know the answer to that perfectly well, even if you don’t want to admit it. One difference between me and One True is that I don’t have a planet to run. And all those billions of copies of Resuna in everybody’s brain are parts of One True. Now since the world began, people have been lying to themselves to get through their day, get through their job—get through their life. How many people have gone to their graves thinking that the boss really valued them, or that they were better off not changing jobs, or that their mother cared about them, or that their children loved them—when any objective observer could have seen it for pure bullshit? Sometimes it’s just very useful to believe something that isn’t true.

  “And you don’t care what your individual brain cells do or believe, except as it matters for your convenience, do you? If it makes you happy to have a few thousand of your brain cells think your wife is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and respond to her like that, you don’t necessarily want those cells to develop the objective opinion that she’s actually much plainer than ordinary, do you? Aren’t you better off having those deluded little cells in your head telling you different?

  “Well, that’s what One True needs from its component copies of Resuna, frequently. Much as I hate to defend it, One True’s reasons for what it does are not necessarily bad or crazy. One of the troubles with fighting One True, psychologically, for every cowboy I ever knew who wasn’t crazy, was that—objectively speaking—we had to admit that One True wasn’t evil; oh, it had done some cruel stuff and it had fought the War of the Memes to win, and like that, but unlike so many of the other memes, One True was not out to enslave the human race to some ideal that was meaningful only to it, or force people into behaving according to some crazed code that was a bad parody of an extinct set of ideas, or any of that stuff. It really did intend to benefit human beings and the planet.

  “When One True took over, a billion people worldwide were hungry even though there were more than resources enough to feed them; hundreds of disasters were going their way without interference, even though humanity had the brains and resources to control them; and everyone was in fear, even though the only thing they really had to fear was each other, and very few of them really wanted to hurt each other.

  “One True gave everyone Resuna, and became what everyone needed—something that would ensure that everyone put his wh
ole heart into meeting the global crisis for the next few decades. Earth would be in worse shape without it.” He was emphasizing his points as if trying to pound them into me; I couldn’t imagine why a cowboy was talking like this.

  “So, along the way, sometimes, One True needs an individual to believe something that isn’t true. What if a woman wants a particular man, maybe one she got separated from during the War of the Memes, so much that she won’t do her work in the farm or factory, and just wants to go looking for him? Resuna keeps the thought of him out of her mind until One True can learn if he’s alive or dead, and if he’s alive, maybe it’s convenient for the Earth, and the whole project of saving the planet, to bring them back together—and maybe it’s not. If it is, they get together and there’s much rejoicing; if it’s not, they don’t, and their copies of Resuna keep them from feeling more than a trifling sadness now and then. Who’s hurt?

  “Or maybe a brother and sister both have genius-level talent for doing the math for the ecological computer models that One True needs them to do. Unfortunately, the brother molested the sister when she “was a little girl, and she’s afraid of men, afraid of him, and too depressed and angry to do any work. Her copy of Resuna adjusts all that, and bingo, she’s functional, she’s not unhappy, she and the whole planet gain. Furthermore, his copy of Resuna adjusts him so that he won’t do things like that anymore. He’s not only happier, he’s a much better person. And the math gets done, part of the Earth gets repaired, fewer children get hurt, and two people who would otherwise have been basket cases of one kind or another work happily side by side. Now who can argue with that? Might not be all that much justice to it but there’s pritnear perfect mercy.

  “So, Resuna needs to make sure that Kelly does not form any part of her identity out of being a cowboy’s daughter, and it really doesn’t want her forming any ideas about rebellion or freedom or any of that, which young brainy people are very apt to do given half a chance. So instead it creates a memory that will be a barrier, forever, against that side of herself. The minute she thinks of things that are wild and free and uncontrolled—like a cowboy—she thinks of how scared she was by me. And then Resuna comforts her and she doesn’t feel so sad anymore, or hurt; all she feels is love and gratitude for Resuna. And Resuna needs you to want to hunt me down—so it gives you that gruesome memory and tells you it’s Kelly’s. The result is that Kelly grows up to be productive and happy, you catch the cowboy, and everyone is better off. Even the cowboy, who finally has his personality altered so that he can function in the real world. The false memories are good for her, good for you and me, good for One True, might even be good for the future of the planet. And if what you remember doesn’t happen to be true, well, it’s useful, isn’t it?”

  The strangest thing about it all, as he sat there and said that to me over our hot coffee, was that he not only didn’t sound bitter or sarcastic, he sounded more as if he were just explaining, in a friendly way, to someone who didn’t know, how the world worked. It was a good strategy, I realized—I wanted to believe him. And now that I was calming down, the thought no longer made me angry at Resuna or One True. I still wanted to get back as soon as I could. I just felt as if I weren’t quite myself.

  I sighed and asked, “How do I know, though, that you’re telling me the truth?”

  He shrugged. “You don’t. That’s what life was like before Resuna, and if I were still fighting to free the world from it, and I thought I could win, I’d say that’s what life will be like after Resuna. One of the books I like to reread—Forks in Time, even though I’m not cybertao—says ‘Certainty is a very overrated quality,’ and it’s got a point. But then Surfaces in Opposition says ‘Certainty is what most people prefer to truth, and it cannot be kept from them.’ So you slice it whatever way you want, I guess.”

  I shuddered, feeling as cold as if I had rolled naked in the snow. “I can’t seem to make my thoughts come together, at all. And I don’t mean to be rude, but I feel incredibly tired.”

  He nodded. “Well, just making a guess, I’d say that since you’ve just had an exhausting physical injury, your first good meal in a long time, and a whole big set of emotional shocks, you probably need to sleep. Let’s put you to bed—I hope you won’t resent that I have to lock the door—and when you’re awake again, we can talk more. For right now, I don’t have any reason to do anything except feed you and keep you here, till I make up my mind what’s to be done.”

  As soon as he mentioned the idea of sleeping, I realized I’d never heard a more attractive idea. And who could say? Maybe I’d get Resuna back after some more normal sleep, or come up with an idea for escaping and contacting the authorities … or I’d feel more sure that Dave was right, and then do something—the lights went out, I heard the lock turning, and I was asleep.

  When I woke up, I remembered everything, and got up and carefully made my way to the light switch. I used the chamber pot, and wondered if perhaps I could get a sponge bath or the use of the hot tub soon, because I had spent enough time in a too-warm bed to be pretty rank.

  Resuna was still gone, and the ghosted-over memories felt more false; you don’t remember a thing as vividly when there isn’t a voice in your mind insisting that you do.

  There was a knock at the door, and I said, “Sure, come in.”

  “Saw the light on,” Dave said. “You’ve slept from meal to meal; you want to come out and eat again, and maybe talk some more?”

  We’d about finished eating when he said, “Well, I don’t know exactly how to put this, Curran, so let me just say it, and say I’m sorry to have to think about this. Now that you’re so much better, I’m going to have to decide what to do with you. I like having somebody to talk to, and there’d be room for two here, so if it was just you and me, I’d invite you to be my roommate and that would be all there’d need to be. However, there’s a whole big planet out there, and by spring at latest there’s going to be another manhunt for me, and I can’t afford to have a house guest who’s on the other side, if you see what I mean. Nor can I let you go—your copy of Resuna already uploaded enough to One True to give the hunters a much better chance of catching me, and what you know now would pretty much zero them in on this place, so I want the time to move my things and start over somewhere else. I’m way too old to run out in the middle of the night, sleep in trees for a year, and start all over from my skivvies again.

  “So, little as I like it, I have to figure you’re getting stronger every day and pretty soon locking you in a bedroom won’t stop you, or even deter you. And once that’s true—which might be tomorrow for all either of us knows—well, then my two choices seem to be to enlist you, or to kill you.”

  “Uh … how do you mean, enlist me?”

  “Partner up. Work together. Not really for the cause—I’m not at war with One True anymore, except so far as it’s at war with me—but just to live free out here. I know it’s not much to offer but I wanted to have some alternative to killing you; I’m really soft these days, or something, because I could have just walked right in there and done it while you were asleep, and you’d’ve never known. Anyway, it didn’t seem fair to just sit here, making small talk with you, and not have you know that that’s what’s going on in my mind.”

  He looked as embarrassed as a teenage boy proposing marriage to the girl next door. In slightly different circumstances I’d probably have laughed. As it was, feeling stupid, I said, “I understand your situation, and I understand that it’s nothing personal, and all that. You aren’t going to kill me right now if I say no, are you?”

  “You haven’t said whether you want to take my offer.”

  “Will you trust me if I say yes?”

  “Guess that’s up to me.” He sighed. “Let’s fix a big pot of coffee and go sit in the hot tub. We can talk for a while about any old thing, and maybe if I put the decision off long enough, I’ll think of something else, or you’ll decide you’d rather live free, or something.” He got up from the table. “How
are you feeling?”

  “Pretty well mended,” I admitted. “Resuna’s still gone. I don’t seem to miss it quite as much as I did at first, but if I said I didn’t miss it, I’d be lying.”

  The reconstitutor pinged—he had some “refrigerator art” pinned to it, and he grinned and said, “Kelly’s, of course. Nancy gave it to me. All except this one that Kelly drew for me, herself, right then.”

  I looked at it and was startled by memory, again. Kelly’s drawings were good first-and second-grade art—basic realism, shading, stuff that looked son of ordinary—but I remembered, then, that “Kid pictures didn’t used to look like this. This is like something a talented fifteen-year-old might have done in the old days. How is it that now all children do this kind of thing at six?”

  He shrugged. “Resuna pleases people as much as it can. Small children really want to draw realistically, it’s just that the parts of the brain that they need for the process haven’t grown in yet. So what Resuna does is, it takes control of the eye and the hand and draws for the kid, copying skills from more experienced artists. Eventually the skills do download, which is why everyone can draw really well nowadays. See, in the one picture she drew while she was free, it’s supposed to be a picture of me, but you can see where the skills weren’t all there and she had trouble integrating things; I think it looks sort of cubist.”