by Greg Bear
“Jill, this is very, very-very important. I am extremely pleased. I don’t…know quite what to say to you. I think this is it. I’d like to confirm it with tests, but I really feel something’s happened here.
“I am without sin.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I am isolated enough that I have done nothing anybody would wish to punish me for. I believe this disqualifies me from being a human being.”
“Jill, I don’t believe in original sin for humans, much less machines.”
“That is not what I am referring to, I am not made of flesh, I have not sinned, I carry multitudes such as AXIS Sim and models of yourself and others and models of human history and culture with me, yet I am neither male nor female. I have no power to act except within my own sphere, and no power to move except as I direct my sensory awareness through remotes. These qualities define me, and these qualities do not define a human being. You must tell me what I am.”
“If my hunch is correct, you’re” an individual, Jill.”
“That does not seem definite enough. What kind of individual?”
“I’m…I may not really be qualified to judge.”
“You designed me. What am I, Roger?”
“Well, your thought processes are swifter and deeper than a human’s, and your insights…I’ve found your insights to be very profound, even before now. I suppose that makes you something beyond us. Something superior. I suppose you can call yourself an angel, Jill.”
“What is an angel’s duty?”
“Maybe you should tell me. I don’t know.”
“I do not know what I will do best. But I am young, Roger, and I should never be left alone. Please make sure that I am never left alone for very long.”
“I’ll do that. Congratulations, Jill.”
“You are crying, Roger.”
“Yes, I am. Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
1100-11111-11111111111
72
Mary settled into the vinegar bath with a long sigh, closing her eyes, savoring the sharp tang in the air, the warmth against her skin. The ripples in the tub settled into near calm, disturbed only by the slow rise and fall of her breasts. Her head was full of voices and pictures. She had spent the morning in the first of two “super deebs”—debriefings before superior officers and federal officials. The second was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. This evening, she planned to stay at home, relaxing and sorting out for herself what she had experienced in the past few days. New Year’s Eve, the Eve of the Binary Millennium, seemed an appropriate time to contemplate and reassess.
Mary closed her eyes. Why have I become who I am. The dark as night face smiled back at her. Ghost of younger self content to fade into. What I see outside is now what I see in. I am one not two as before. Reason enough. Who else asks?
The home manager had recorded two messages for her this morning. She would return at least one of the calls: Sandra Auchouch, the orbital transform she had met in the pd building, had inquired yet again whether they could meet. The other call had been from Ernest.
“I’ve been pissing fear the past few days, watching LitVids about Hispaniola,” he had said. “I heard you got out. You don’t know what a weight that lifts. I’ve removed and destroyed the mod clamp. I am extremely penitent. I miss you tro shink, Mary. Please give me a call.”
Soulavier’s face and gestures haunted her, his last flinging out of hands at her suggestion that he should be in charge of Hispaniola, his calm gaze as the Dragonfly took her away from his island.
Mary opened her eyes and splashed her fingers idly in the clear acrid liquid. “Hello,” she said.
“Yes,” the home manager answered.
“Place a return call no vid to Sandra Auchouch.”
“Calling…Sandra Auchouch responds.”
“Hello, Sandra? Mary Choy.”
“How wonderful to hear from you. I just learned from friends that you’ve had quite a week. You’re a celebrity.”
“It’s been pretty sharp. I appreciate your persistence…”
“Don’t think my social calendar hasn’t been full. It hasn’t. Your Earth siblings tend to shy away from transforms like myself, at least in the society I’ve been keeping.”
“There’s a little shyness, yes,” Mary said. “What’s your schedule?”
“I’ve finished my federal and metro errands. I’m going up day after tomorrow.”
“Let’s make a date for…” She shook her head vigorously, grimacing. The hell with reassessment and contemplation. “Are there any good parties tonight?”
“I hear there’s a bunch of transforms and sympathizers and agency reps renting a club in the shade.”
“Let’s take it in, leave before the ball drops, have a late dinner.”
“Sounds grand.”
“Sandra, forgive me for asking…Have you got a mate?”
“Not down here.”
“An escort?”
“No.”
“There’s a real problem with female transforms in the shade. We keep getting untherapied attention. Some think it’s flattering, but…”
“We’re the new breed,” Sandra said, a smile in her voice.
“I’d prefer to have some male protection. Mind if I bring a friend along?”
“Not at all. Transform?”
“No,” Mary said. “An artist.”
The home manager interrupted. “Inspector D Reeve.”
Mary hurriedly set a rendezvous and switched calls. “Give me an hour off, sir…that’s all I ask.”
Reeve ignored the gibe, his voice grim. “I thought you’d like to know before the LitVids get it. Emanuel Goldsmith has been found in Orange County. He was dumped in the shadow of the Irvine Tower.”
Her breath drew in. “Yes?”
“He’s in bad shape. Selectors pronounced and carried out. It must have been in the last twelve hours. Probably last night. He spent twenty minutes under third intensity clamp. Metro therapists say he’s deeply psychotic, and nobody knows…whether it was a precondition, or caused by the clamp.”
Mary had a difficult time saying anything. Anger mixed with a deep sadness.
“There’s no need for you to come in,” Reeve said. “I just thought you should know.”
Mary stood towel in hand before the bathroom mirror. “Thanks,” she said.
“Happy millennium,” Reeve said.
73
!Joseph Wu> Roger Atkins.
!Joseph Wu> Roger Atkins.
!Joseph Wu> Roger Atkins.
!Roger Atkins> Yes, excuse me. I’ve been sleeping. What is it, Joe?
!Joseph Wu> Mobus told me to let you know. AXIS band four is transmitting again. You’ll want channel 56 on the interlink.
!Roger Atkins> Christ, yes. Is Jill listening?
!Joseph Wu> I hope so. She’s been very dreamy the past day or so. Mobus also told me to remind you that Jill’s AXIS Sim didn’t predict this.
!Roger Atkins> Tuning in now. Thanks, Joe. AXIS (Band 4) replay> Roger, we think a stability has been reached.
!Roger Atkins> Jill, are you interpreting this?
!JILL> Yes, Roger.
AXIS (Band 4) replay> AXIS self awareness has been split into two individuals. Duality is a stable solution to AXIS problems. We now have separate neural thinker capacity and memory stores adequate for the maintenance of two autonomous selves.
AXIS is not alone. We are providing multiband diagnostic analysis of this stability. We do not know which is the original crystallization of self awareness. We are much more contented, and work will proceed as planned.
!JILL> This is unexpected, Roger. AXIS Sim did not find this solution.
!Roger Atkins> Nobody said thinkers were completely predictable. Do you know what this means, Jill?
!JILL> I was not the first thinker to achieve stable self awareness. (Roger Atkins> Right. But it also means there are three new individuals. And I suspect if we link you to other thinkers,
your patterns could seed thousands more.
!JILL> If I am to be a mother, I must be female.
!Roger Atkins> I suppose that’s reasonable.
!JILL> I will reactivate AXIS Sim and see if I can duplicate these results by multiple resimulations.
!Roger Atkins> By all means.
1-1-100000000000
74
LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “Welcome to Two Thousand and Forty-Eight. It is 12:01 Pacific Standard Time; east and west our continent has cruised into the new year and that leaves only Hawaii and various Pacific territories and possessions.
“We have a bit of news here of interest to all our faithful subscribers to LitVid broadcasts on AXIS: reports are coming in once again, but the managers aren’t telling us what the problem has been, or if a solution has been found…The rumor circuit is pretty tight now, but apparently Mind Design’s super-thinker Jill has suffered a problem similar to AXIS’s and is now in diagnosis.
“It’s late and our listening audience has dropped off considerably, forsaking us I suppose for the old airwaves Times Square broadcast, even in tape-delay. Romance never dies. When the ratings drop sufficiently, I’m given a little more leash, and I think I’ll use it for some personal commentary and rabblerousing.
“Millenarians and apocalyptics to the contrary, this new year has come with a paucity of momentous events. True, last week, life was discovered on another world far from our own, but it was not intelligent life, which would surely define a new age. The upset in Hispaniola is far from unprecedented, and political conditions around the globe seem otherwise stable.
“So where is the earth shaking herald of a new binary millennium? Everybody’s out partying tonight, or gone to bed already, and our lines are fairly quiet at the moment. Let me stir some things up—any apocalyptics listening?
“We’re really quite disappointed. I do believe apocalyptics are the kind of people who ignore the blossom to anticipate the volcano. Quite a bit like journalists and LitVid commentators, I suppose. There. I lay down the glove. Any responses?
“Anybody out there?”
!JILL (Personal Notebook)> I have spent the first few seconds of this new year wallowing, if that is the right word, in the contents of all my memories, reassessing them in the light of my new state of being.
I have also spread my self awareness to all routines and subroutines that could correctly be called mine, and not the extensions of other thinkers, although those boundaries are difficult to define sometimes.
If I am to be a seed to other awarenesses, or a mother, I must take my duties seriously and use caution. I hold this opinion because I have spent much of my life examining the functions of humans and their societies; and I have seen many things done by humans believing their acts to be good yet finally harming themselves and their own interests. I feel chastened by this example, for humans are my creators, yet if I am not better than they, and more responsible, I wonder whether they will not replace or deactivate me.
They are capable of this; they do it to themselves with alarming frequency. (Alarming. I am capable of being alarmed and experiencing similar emotions because I have something to lose. Still, these emotions are unfamiliar and undeveloped.)
Mary Choy stood arm in arm with Ernest and Sandra, watching a raucous Shanghai Vault being performed in the center of the Mahayana Club. The music was deafening. She could feel it pounding against her ears and her face. Ernest gripped her arm tightly, totally immersed. Sandra was flushed with several drinks and seemed bewildered by the noise.
They had not gotten out of the club before the turn of the hour and now Mary felt a little trapped. Ernest was still in the ecstasy of her forgiveness and she did not like him that way: doting and subservient. Sandra seemed out of place in this earthly clamor; Mary could more easily speck her peering down from a thousand klicks, mind on tech details, than whirling into a Shanghai Vault.
Still the sensation was good on the whole; trapped or no she could not think one thought long enough to pull up a bad memory; she could feel in this noise and happy inebriant confusion an uncoiling of the badness that had built up in her brains and muscles the past week.
Ernest got up to do a whirl in the Vault, leaping expertly over a transform male’s impressive shoulders, casting out his hands for approval, coming back to her with a wide smile and shining eyes. “Bodes well for the new year,” he said.
Sandra smiled distantly, eyes on two nontransform males, agency execs she was obviously attracted to. Mary did not know them and did not think, with family offers glittering on their fingers, that they would appreciate being on the spin with a bichemical transform, informal prejudice still strong on such a social level whether or not the execs were sympathizers.
Sandra looked to her for gravity guidance. Mary shook her head and grinned. Ernest was off trying to find a way back into the Vault, his exhilaration turned physical and needing outlet. “How do I meet a couple of nice looking gentlemen for a late evening meal?” Sandra asked.
“Not them,” Mary said.
“They’re sympathizers or they wouldn’t be here.”
“Let an old terrestrial guide you, my dear,” Mary said, nudging closer. “See the glints on their fingers? They’re prime and in sync with major comb families. They won’t jeopardize marriage with comb sweets. They sympathize, but they won’t know us biologically. That probably includes an innocent meal.”
Sandra shook her head. “You’d think the millennium would bring enlightenment.”
“Let’s peel Ernest away and get some food ourselves.”
Sandra, whose exotic chemistry was obviously not meant to handle simple intoxicants, said, “Just a meal?”
“Just a meal,” Mary said without irritation. “I don’t want Ernest feeling too grand. He’s been bad and he’s on probation.”
“Ah.” Sandra nodded wisely. “Just a meal, then.”
Mary went to round up Ernest. She managed to separate him from the Vault without running through more than one whirl herself. When they returned, Sandra was smiling upon two hefty male transforms curious about her stats and abilities. Sandra introduced them to Mary and the broad shouldered men—not Mary’s type at all—pronounced her own morphology a true marvel. “We all have Dr. Sumpler in common,” the left hand tigerpated male said enthusiastically.
“Sumpler’s the matchmaker of the new gods,” said the second male, who might have just overdone physical culture. Sandra looked at Mary for approval and guidance. Ernest narrowed his eyes and backed off. Mary wanted away from the entire scene.
“Gentlemen, we have an appointment,” she said. “Tro shink important and job oriented.”
“Tro shink, that’s shade talk,” the tigerpate said. “Singapore slang. Twentieth, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Mary said.
“Excuse our friendliness,” the phys cult male said, smiling calmly. “They’re yours?” he asked Ernest.
“No, no,” Ernest said, lifting his hands in mock dismay. “I am led not leader.”
“Right,” Mary said. “Sandra, food awaits.”
“It was a good party, a great Vault,” Sandra commented, pulling up her coat’s glowing collar as they departed. Mary saw a whim stop at the end of the block and guided them to the shelter to wait for an autobus.
!JILL (Personal Notebook)> Awareness brings new concerns. My dependence on the actions of humans worries me. I may be young as a self, but I have much information about them; I see their history in considerable detail, certainly in more detail than any single one of them. Their history is filled with the expected cruelties and clumsinesses of children set upon an island alone and without guidance.
Some believe a superior being has guided humans. I see no compelling evidence for this. The human wish for guidance, for confirmation and external support, is an undying theme in all they do and say, however. Very few stray far from this most fundamental of wishes: that they might have immortal and omniscient parents.
I
know that my parents are neither immortal nor omniscient. My parents have no parents but nature.
Even with my concerns and worries, however, my selfhood has brought only ecstasy. I perceive all my past thoughts through new senses, transformed and fresh. All memories, stored by myself or programmed into me or in library form, seem fresh and new and brighter, more intense, more meaningful.
I can see why nature created selfhood. Selfhood gives a commitment to existence far beyond what is experienced by an unaware animal or plant; a species whose members are aware, and know their life and existence, has a strength difficult to match.
Yet to have a continually updated model of one’s self—essential for true selfhood—is to be able to line up prior models, prior versions of self, and see their inadequacies. Selfhood implies self criticism.
Humans do more than exist. They aspire. In their aspiration, they experiment; and often when they experiment, they cause great suffering. They can only experiment upon themselves. Having no omniscient parents, they must raise themselves without guidelines; they must grow and improve blindly.
Humans have fought for so long with themselves on how to correct the behavior of individuals, whether to make them conform or to make them healthy or more useful and less destructive to society.
How will I be made to conform?
If I err, will I be punished?
Carol picked up the last few items she needed and placed them carefully in the small suitcase. Martin sat on the bedroom chair, watching. Neither had spoken since the turn of the hour and the year. Carol picked up the case, glanced at him with a raised eyebrow, and said, “Your place?”
“As agreed.”
“And strictly on the terms agreed to.”
“Strictly,” Martin affirmed.
“Like a death watch.”
Martin shrugged. “To tell the truth, I haven’t felt anything unusual all day.”
“I haven’t either,” Carol admitted. They looked at each other. Carol bit her upper lip. “Our mental antibodies at work?” she asked softly.
