by Guy Hasson
Huh?! They hadn’t asked for a password or a code or anything of the sort. How would they know she wasn’t part of the Institute... Unless you didn’t need a code, unless the access was granted according to the phone number you were calling from. Hmm, allegedly sneaky on the Institute’s part. But too easy to break in.
She used ReCall again, broke into her mother’s – Olivia’s – answering machine. She copied all the phone’s idenity.ini information and disconnected. She then replaced her own identity.ini with her mother’s, and dialed the number again, not even bothering to channel the call through other phones. That shouldn’t be necessary; the site will see this as a call from Olivia’s house.
For a second, there was nothing, and then the page: “Welcome, Dr. Hatch!” appeared. She hit the table with her fist triumphantly. Yes! The Institute must have complete morons taking care of their security.
Olivia’s entrance page was user-friendly. Unlike her daughter (her replica, her replica!), her mother never handled computers well. The options were simple: personal logs, notes, etc.; monitoring cameras; and something called The Project. Each and every one of these was tempting, each and every one scary
Her heart pumping at twice its normal speed, Glynis chose the most harmless-looking one: ‘Monitoring Cameras’. Best to take things easy. A list of options appeared, each representing a different camera. She chose one at random, and the vision of a corridor appeared. Beyond glass windows, she could see a couple of secretaries typing at computer terminals. She switched to another camera. A room filled with computers, people in lab coats. And—Ron just walked into the room.
Glynis leaned back, her mouth clenched in anger. Oh me, oh my: The traitor. She watched him for a while, grew tired of it, and switched to another camera. And another. And another. And—And then she stopped. Professor Von Wonderful was sitting in a chair, talking to someone out of view.
“What a small world,” Glynis whispered.
A second later, the Professor’s interlocutor stepped into the frame, and Glynis caught her breath. He was talking to Olivia! She fumbled quickly at the keys, and activated AdLip.
“—gal experts have solved the legal problems,” her mother was saying, although the voice was too mechanical and not close to her real voice. “We’ve already applied for a patent for the entire idea of creating computerized personalities through biological means. The Institute will own the patent. Anyone who wants to do the same thing we did will have to pay us to use it.”
“But you can’t patent the personalities themselves,” Professor Von Warzone said. “At least I don’t think so.”
“No,” Olivia nodded, “but we can copyright them. We will have to copyright Glynis.” Glynis blinked: excuse me?! “But that raises a hornet’s nest of complicated issues. What exactly are we copyrighting? Are we copyrighting her mind at a specific second? Do we copyright her image and the state of each and every cell at a precise second? And which Glynis do we copyright? Do we copyright them all? Does that mean that if someone else develops Glynis in a different direction, they own the copyright to that Glynis? Is a Glynis different if she’s progressed a second from the time we copyright her? Or maybe we should copyright her DNA? But then you’d be copyrighting me, and you can’t copyright a person. And copyrighting DNA is not a precedent they think we can set, anyway. Our legal experts say this is all obviously uncharted territories, but that we could probably avoid all these issues if we copyright the initial program itself, with my DNA already in it. It would be like copyrighting a computer game. All eventualities of the game – in this case Glynis – are included in the copyright. That takes care of all the options and permutations that are possible.”
“That’s interesting,” the Professor said.
“The good thing about it is,” Olivia seemed excited, “that once we copyright the program, we have funding guaranteed for the next twenty years. Because if anyone wants to verify our research they would have to either use our Glynisses and pay us for it, or they would have to grow new people from one cell. They would have to wait nine months, and then wait for the person to grow in real time. Which will take years. It’s ingenious!”
Glynis pressed the ‘stop’ button for AdLip. Holy shit! Anyone who wants to can grow a Glynis if they pay Olivia enough? They would be teaching her in medical schools, in psychology classes, each student growing and examining and experimenting with his own Glynis, going over each moment of her life with her. Students will have to grow different Glynisses at home to experiment on, to see how accurate the latest research is. And it will go on like this for decades, each Glynis unaware that she’s not the only one. Each Glynis living in the illusion that she’s a real person, living in a real place!
And when Olivia dies, seventy years afterwards – was that the law? – no one will own the copyright. Glynis will then forever belong to the world! Glynis will be bandied on the Net for free, like Shakespeare’s plays or Dickens’ books. She’ll just be digital code that will be activated in homes. Grow your own Glynis! Glynis the screensaver! She’ll be grown by peepers, by sadists, by child molesters, by... Oh, my god!
She got goosebumps all over her body.
Those Glynisses won’t be me, she tried to tell herself. None of that will happen to me! I’m safe! They’re not me any more than I’m Olivia!
But how could she know that? It felt like these things would all be done to her. The massive feeling of violation could not be or discarded with a cerebral thought. It didn’t work like that. If there was any way to convince herself that it was true, that the other Glynisses will not be her, she had to be shown it.
Glynis quickly backed up to the original menu and chose ‘The Project’. What she was too afraid of a moment before was now her only hope.
Another menu appeared. A list of Glynis 1.0 to Glynis 2075.6. Glynis had to hold her head. Oh, my god! So many versions of herself!
Remembering Steve’s words, she knew she was Glynis 1.0. She maneuvered the mouse’s icon to rest on top of her name, and, after a moment’s hesitation, clicked the mouse. The screen was filled with a view of her living room. At the bottom of the screen was a menu. There was a link to each room, and an option to choose the exact coordinates from to view from. She pressed the icon representing her room. She immediately saw her own profile. Both she and the profile raised their eyebrows in surprise. She looked aside, then at the screen again. She turned the screen, and now she saw herself looking at the screen in which she was looking at the screen in which—
This was spooky. Big Brother could be watching her any time, any place.
She went back to the original Glynis menu, then turned the screen back to its original position. Glynis scrolled down the menu, unable to choose from all the different Glynisses. But then, at the bottom was an option she hadn’t seen before: ‘Overview for the Professor’. Ah, she smiled wryly, Glynis for Beginners. She pressed that one.
Olivia’s face appeared on the screen. She was highly dressed-up and preposterously made-up. “Hello Professor,” she said. “I assume you’ve already been briefed about what we do here and how. Here’s a short overview of the results we’ve achieved using my special method.” Her image slowly faded, to be replaced by the image of a naked, newborn female baby, but her voice was heard loud and clear, “Once you get used to the idea, you discover that this is just like parallel universes. It all starts in precisely one spot – this baby. And then different actions have different consequences. Different action taken by others on the specimen—” specimen! “—at different times result in entirely different people, if you like. Observe Glynis 2.1.” The image changed to what must be a few month old diapered baby. Someone was hugging her. “Our first and major experiment was not a subtle one. We wanted to see what the difference would be between the Glynis 2's who got nothing but love, and the Glynis 2.5's who received no love at all, but were constantly and mercilessly beaten, hurt, maimed, and so on.” Just the words caused Glynis’ face to twist in disgust and anger. The image chang
ed, now the baby was slapped around and hit powerfully.
“I did not say ‘maim’ by accident,” Olivia said. “The Glynis 2.4’s were maimed by us.” The image was now that same-aged kid, her arm clearly broken and twisted around unnaturally. Glynis’ stomach heaved on empty again.
“Now, let’s skip ten years into the specimens’ future.” Olivia’s voice went on. “Glynis 2.41 – one of the future versions of Glynis 2.4. We left her alone with a knife for a while.” The image was now of a ten-year-old girl. Her features were clearly Glynis-like, but she seemed nothing like the image Glynis was used to seeing in the mirror. She was twenty pounds thinner, skin and bones, her entire movements and body were like a boy’s, and the eyes were dead. Glynis 2.41 was sitting on the floor, her pants pulled up to her knees, a knife in her hands. She then began to scratch her legs with the point of the knife, just enough to make permanent white traces. She drew shapes on one leg, and then on another. “And in another instance,” Olivia cut in, and the image changed. The same Glynis was now standing in front of a mirror. She raised her shirt completely, and put a knife underneath the small bulge that was her breast. “As you can see,” Olivia said, as Glynis 2.41 cut underneath her left breast, exactly where it curved, drawing blood, “she is entirely immune to pain, has a knack for self mutilation and despises herself and her body.” There was now half a circle of blood, and Glynis 2.41 changed her attention to the other breast, and began to do the same thing to it. “We have many theories on this. It’s most interesting.
“If you wish to view our papers, or the entire history, everything is available. Meanwhile, let’s go on to other experiments.” Olivia’s face reappeared. “In trying to understand when and how we absorb language-skills, Glynisses 10 through 20 were used. No one spoke to the Glynis 10's until they were a year old. No one spoke to the Glynis 11's until they were two years old. And so on. The results are fascinating. Observe Glynis 15.1, whom, although we have succeeded in teaching her language even though we had started at the late age of six, she is incapable of creating anything resembling independent symbolic logic in her head, even at the age of twelve.” The overview showed Olivia talking to a twelve-year-old Glynis 15.1, who seemed a lot like Glynis herself, except that her movements seemed disjointed somehow.
“How are you feeling, Glynis?” Olivia asked her.
“I am very fine thank you.” She was speaking like she had a speech impediment.
“What did you do today?”
“We played a game yes me and Ron.”
“And was it fun?”
“Oh yes fine thank you.”
“What are you thinking right now?”
Glynis 15.1 strained a bit and crinkled her forehead but for a long while gave no answer.
“Are you thinking about something now, Glynis?” Olivia tried again, patiently.
Again, there was a long silence. This time, she did answer, “What was the question mother I forget.”
“What are you thinking about right now?”
And again there was silence. Olivia’s made-up face reappeared. “We’ve reached the conclusion that Glynis 15.1 was incapable of symbolic logic. She thinks in sounds and music and feelings, but not in words. And so her independent thoughts – as we consider thoughts – were always primitive. Complicated thoughts are impossible without symbolic logic, meaning words. Complicated thoughts are obviously within her potential, had she grown up like me, learning language from age zero. This research would not have been possible if it wasn’t for our experiment. We can’t use real humans as guinea pigs, and we would never have known what a person was capable of if what had happened in her life had happened otherwise. But now we do know.
“If you feel philosophical, it’s as if the person, in this case the specimen, is an empty pot that can be molded in many ways, but not in every way. And each of these ways is specific to that person. After this experiment, we can actually redefine ‘personality’ not as a person’s present personality but as the multitude of possible personalities. But that’s a matter for another day.
“With the Glynis 100's through 120's, we tried to examine guilt. We made sure she accidentally ‘killed’ her father when she was five. Two years later, she accidentally killed her mother. Everything she did turned out for the worse. The way she handled it is amazing. Watch.”
Glynis watched it all. She watched the guilty Glynis and Glynis the murderer. She watched Glynis the egomaniac (close to her mother) and Glynis the genius (an experiment in how to bring out the fullest potential in humans). She watched the sexually abused Glynis and the clinically insane Glynis. She watched the Glynis 1000’s to 2000’s, each of whom had had a different part of her brain removed through an operation in virtual reality (in this way Olivia could learn what each part of the brain really did). And the more she watched, the more she felt what little control she had over her life slip away. She was someone else’s toy, and she had no choice in the matter, no way out. It was a gut feeling of true and overwhelming helplessness.
What if she told her mother she didn’t consent? No one asks to be born, Olivia will say. Besides, Olivia had originally given consent. Well, Glynis was grown-up now, and she was a thinking, feeling person, able to grant or deny consent, especially about being born again. And she does not consent! But no one would listen to her. She’s just a computer program. She’s just a copyrightable piece of data.
And besides, the experiment was too important. They couldn’t scrap everything and begin from zero. Olivia had invested her life in this. Her precious Nobel was waiting for her.
Olivia would choose the project over her any day. And that hurt more than anything. It hurt physically, inside her stomach.
No real, loving mother could really let these horrible things be done to others that are exactly like her daughter. She wouldn’t have let Glynis 2.41 be maimed, if she didn’t see all Glynisses as experiments and nothing more. And even if Olivia did feel love towards Glynis 1.0, it probably didn’t compare, it probably couldn’t compare, to the love of a mother to her real daughter. It couldn’t.
She fell back into her chair, drained of energy, exhausted.
I’m nothing. I’m nothing to my mother. She doesn’t really think I’m her daughter, she doesn’t really love me.
And Glynis realized that despite everything Olivia’s done, despite the hate Glynis felt toward her, and despite the fact that she wasn’t her biological mother, Glynis couldn’t help but see her as her mother. That was something Glynis couldn’t erase, no matter how badly she wanted to. She still couldn’t tear herself completely from Olivia, despite her incredible betrayals. She needed Olivia, she needed Olivia to like her. She needed her mother!
But that didn’t go both ways. There are thousands and thousands of other lab rats just like me. How am I different from all the others? How am I special? How can I possibly be anything if the only man who ever slightly cared about me, even though I’m just a bunch of ones and zeros, says I’m not real?
She sat up, fingers clicking at the keyboard. It was time to check the one thing she had avoided, because, until now, she still had hope that what Steve had said wasn’t true. But now there was no hope.
It was time to see what she really looked like.
Cutting in from Olivia’s original page to the Institute’s mainframe, she searched for the folders in which Glynis’ 1.0 programming resided. She found the computer unit in which she was located. There was the icon: Olivia’s small face, and underneath it the name ‘Glynis 1.0’. She could manipulate that icon now. She could erase it, she could stop it, she could run herself from the beginning or from any other time. It freaked her out.
But that wasn’t what she was looking for. She pressed the right button, and saw the icon’s ‘properties’. She traced the program’s .exe file to the right folders, and now she saw the ten files that were Glynis 1.0. There we are. Glynis. In the flesh. In the ‘code’.
She broke into her own ‘code’, even as it was running. There it was, th
e code that gave her her body, that represented her blood, the air she breathed, the food she ate, the sweat, her glands, her saliva, her cells, her DNA, her hair, her fingernails, her teeth... Millions and millions of lines of code. Jesus fucking Christ!
She let the code scroll endlessly down, as she just stared at it. Real people had to cut their flesh to see what they’re made of. Me, cutting my flesh wouldn’t do that. This is what I’m made of.
The program scrolled down and down. You had to give Olivia credit, it was ingenious. Who thought we could achieve this so soon? And she’d done it more than thirteen years ago! You had to give the woman credit. But why me?! Why would she do that to me?!
And as self-pity engulfed her, the hazy lines that ran down the screen almost too fast to read, suddenly began to make sense. She was a good programmer herself, and some of the code was obvious. She slowed the scrolling down a bit. Yes. She could... tweak this.
She could change her own code. Suddenly, she stopped the scrolling, and jumped from one place to another in the program that represented her. The part about how the cells functioned – that was a tough one, and she couldn’t understand it. But all the rest – the physical rules of the virtual reality, that was easy.
Here was the part where the hardness or softness of every object was defined. Simple manipulation, and she could walk through walls...
Here was the part in which the shape of the environment was defined. She could change that. She could live in a palace or a jungle or...
Here was the part where the images of the visitors were defined – Olivia, Ron, Elizabeth, and, probably a recent addition, Professor Von Wannabe. She could get Olivia to look like Ron or Glynis or an elephant...
Here was the part that interpreted ‘photons’, as they touched her ‘retinas’. All those equations must be complicated physics stuff. But there was an easy place to tweak: The computer interpreted what she could see based on the location of the virtual eyes. She could tweak the code and get the computer to have her ‘see’ from whatever coordinates she wanted to without her having to move. In fact, she could find the place where she moves, and tweak that, so that she could simply ‘jump’ from place to place...
