Limit of Vision

by Linda Nagata

  Summer looked skeptical. “Is there any conception of meaning in these phrases?”

  Virgil shrugged. “At this stage? I’m not sure. It might just be an exercise, like singing scales, to reestablish verbal pathways. The vocabulary, though, has been taught because it’s relevant. These are the words E-3 needs to describe its experience.”

  As he fell silent, so did Epsilon-3. Virgil found himself leaning forward, his hands squeezing the arms of his chair as he waited for what would come next. Then, with an abruptness that always startled him, words tumbled from the speaker, but this time they issued forth in a new, breathless rhythm Speak quickly play remote talk with other not you.

  Summer looked at Virgil as if he were a charlatan in a street show.

  “The grammar module is sour,” Panwar said.

  Virgil ignored them both. The LOV project was not about perfection, and it was not about creating a human mind. That was easy. Good old Love & Sex accomplished that feat thousands of times every day. The tantalizing aspect of the LOV project was the prospect of developing a mind that was distinctly inhuman, yet still capable of complex thought. What would such a being think? What insights could it uncover? What new avenues of awareness could it reveal?

  The desire to know ate at him. It was the same desire that had brought Gabrielle into the project, and in the end it had killed her. He blinked, his eyes dry and tired. “Replay that,” he muttered.

  The “sentence” ran again: Speak quickly play remote talk with other not you.

  Almost always the words carried their true dictionary meanings. They came out in a hash because the grammar was poor, or because they were used in unfamiliar ways. Decoding could sometimes work. He cued Panwar to transmit his words to the LOV colony. “Speak of what?” he asked.

  The answer returned immediately, as if an impatient child waited on the other end of the line: What is all the other knew-know best.

  Virgil bit his lip, thinking quickly. He had engaged in exchanges like this before, with the phrases stacked liked crashed cars in a fogbound freeway crack up. The tack he took was to clarify the meaning of each phrase before moving on. All right then: “What is the other?”

  That is Gabrielle.

  He felt as if he’d been gut-punched.

  “You want me to take it?” Panwar asked.

  “No.”

  “It remembers its last interaction with her.”

  Virgil nodded. He drew a deep breath, reviewing once again the staccato sentence that had started this conversation. Speak quickly play remote talk with other not you.

  Speak quickly play remote talk with … Gabrielle. The other not you. “Other” served as the class of objects that interacted with the colony but was not the colony. Gabrielle was “other.” So was Virgil. But the colony could recognize that Gabrielle was not Virgil—“the other not you.”

  Again he nodded to Panwar to transmit his words: “There was remote talk with Gabrielle?”

  Quick talk.

  “What the hell is ‘quick talk’?” Panwar muttered.

  Virgil touched the LOVs hidden beneath his hairline. Panwar watched him, his eyes growing wide as understanding dawned. Usually they hid their LOVs from Epsilon colony, blurring that segment of the visual transmission to avoid the very feedback reaction that Gabrielle had been seeking.

  Virgil addressed the colony: “Does quick talk use words?”

  No.

  “Does quick talk use light?”

  Light yes. Thought is sense inside is trapped is meaning move not. Get it out. Question: How?

  Again Virgil looked at Panwar—and saw a reflection of his own surprise. “The colonies almost never ask questions,” Panwar explained in answer to Summer’s inquisitive look. “Epsilon-3 and its direct parent are the only ones ever to do it.”

  “Do you have any idea what the question is about?” she asked.

  Panwar shrugged. “Frankly, no.”

  “Rephrase question,” Virgil said.

  The voice that was like his spoke again: Rephrase. Thought is here. Thought is sense inside here. This auditory output is not thought. Thought is trapped. Meaning does not move. How will thought get out?

  In the following silence Virgil could hear his heart pounding. Sweat stood out on his arms. “Your farsights are recording, right?” he asked Summer.

  “Yes.”

  “So answer it quick,” Panwar urged. “Its metabolism is so much faster than ours. Its time sense might be faster too. Don’t give it a chance to forget, Virg. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  Virgil nodded. “It took something from Gabrielle. It learned something important from her.”

  “Answer it,” Panwar repeated.

  Virgil turned back to the colony. “Auditory output is not thought,” he confirmed. “It is words. Words are the way to share thoughts between there and here, between two beings, Epsilon and Virgil.”

  Words are way of meaning-passing. Passing meaning. Eyes are better windows to meaning. Said this. Other. Gabrielle other. Measure excitement in blue-green flash. Thought. This is thought but not thought here. But it is not thought here. But it thought is not here. Not within.

  “It is another’s thought,” Virgil said, his voice taut with fear that he had got it wrong. Still, he plunged ahead. “This is an awareness of another’s thought, but the thoughts cannot be sensed.”

  That is here question. The eyes show thoughts not here.

  Panwar said, “You know what it’s getting at, don’t you, Virgil?”

  “I think so.” He closed his eyes, taking a moment to steady himself. Then he looked at the colony and asked: “What are eyes?”

  Light receptors. Blue-green best eyes. Other eyes dull.

  Virgil held up his hand, fingers splayed. “Here is my hand. Here are my fingers. This finger”—now he held out only the index finger, moving it slowly until it touched the corner of his right eye—”touches an eye. Which eye?”

  Right dull.

  He moved his pointing finger, using it to lift away the neat cords of his hair. At the same time he pointed to an implanted LOV tucked against his hairline. “Which eye is this?”

  Seven from right bright blue-green.

  “Can thoughts be seen here?”

  Thoughts indicated. Not understood. Question: Integrate?

  “How?”

  Talking reaches integration. Not words. Light.

  Talking with light: That was what Gabrielle had been doing. He and Panwar had suspected it. Now it was confirmed. Virgil felt the temptation to follow her, to uncover what she had learned, but the smell of her was still in his nostrils. “Words for now,” he said softly, letting his hair fall back across his forehead.

  AFTERWARD he sat with Panwar and Summer in the lunchroom, holding a cold glass of breakfast-balance in his hands. “So what do you think?” he asked her. “Is it a mind?”

  She leaned back in her chair, studying him for several long seconds. Her farsights had gone opaque gold. “You ask me that, but you don’t ask me if I think it’s dangerous?”

  “I know it’s not dangerous.”

  “If it is a mind,” Panwar said, “it can’t be sterilized. That would be murder.”

  Her brows crested the rim of her farsights. “What surprises me most is that the two of you seem to be more worried about the LOVs than you are about yourselves.”

  “The wonder,” Panwar said, “is that you don’t feel the same way.”

  “Stop it,” Virgil told him. “That isn’t helping.”

  Panwar shook his head. “Does it matter? She made up her mind before she came in here.”

  Virgil turned to her. “But you’ve changed your mind, haven’t you?” She had made the LOVs. She could not be unaffected by what she had seen in Epsilon-3.

  Summer didn’t answer right away, studying him with the calm, thoughtful expression that seemed to be her default mode. “Tell me, Virgil, does it bother you to cull a mind?”

  At first he didn’t understa
nd her question. He cocked his head, puzzling it out. “You mean when we cull the old colonies?”

  “Exactly. If you don’t think of the colonies as sentient—”

  “That doesn’t matter anymore!” Panwar snapped. “It’s all changed now. You saw it.”

  “That’s right,” Virgil said. “You agree, don’t you? The LOVs must be preserved … whatever happens to us.”

  But Summer was shaking her head. “No, I don’t agree. I’m not even sure you’re rational.” Her gaze shifted to his forehead.

  Virgil raised a hand, self-consciously touching the LOVs hidden behind his hair. “You think it’s the LOVs talking?” he asked. “That they’re some kind of Hollywood body snatcher, using me to get around?”

  “Could it be that way?”

  “No! It’s not like that. Not at all. What it’s like is feeling more, perceiving more, being more alive in every day-to-day moment. Being less dependent on our machines.”

  “Machines are a crutch,” Panwar said. “They let us increase our intellectual speed, our competence, but at the cost of moving our intelligence off-site, where it’s vulnerable to damage, or corruption, or some fundamentalist revolution. Machines will never be part of us, but the LOVs already are.” He tapped his forehead. “They are us. The whole world is getting faster, smarter. Without your LOVs, Summer, how will we ever keep up?”

  She considered this for several seconds. Then she stood. “I want to thank you both for being honest with me.”

  Virgil saw through to her true feelings. “You think we’re crazy.”

  She didn’t argue. “Before I go, I’m supposed to let you know … your status as biohazards makes you difficult prisoners to handle. So you’ll continue to be held here”—she gestured at the suite—”while arrangements are made with a neurosurgeon to remove your LOVs. That could take time. No one has been trained in the procedure of course, so guidelines will have to be—”

  Panwar was the first to find his voice. “No. They can’t take our LOVs.” He slammed his chair back and stood, touching his brow where the illicit grains glittered. “Haven’t you heard anything we’ve been saying? Our LOVs are part of us! You can’t carve up our minds.”

  Virgil envisioned the laser, hunting among his cerebral cells, resculpting his personality, leaving … what? Even if no mistakes were made, it wouldn’t be him anymore. Not without the LOVs. “They can’t do this,” he said. “They can’t force it on us. Not without some specific legal authority. And we haven’t been before a judge yet. We haven’t seen a lawyer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Summer said. “But no one has any choice in this. No one. It’s an artificial life-form. The guidelines are clear.”

  chapter

  6

  ELA SAT CROSS-LEGGED on Phuong’s platform, watching one of her peeper balls float past. No bigger than her fingertip, the little sphere was held aloft by micropumps in its shell that kept its internal air pressure low. Reflections slid with oily grace across its smooth surface: the last gray glimmer of twilight, chased away by the bright orange spark of a cooking fire exploding to life on a neighboring platform.

  Joanie Liu had called to announce the surrender of both the Coastal Society and Ky Xuan Nguyen. “The propagandists have been paid off, while Mr. Nguyen will be sponsoring your next project. He would like you to prepare a historical document describing this village, though there is one unusual clause in the agreement. The document is not for publication. Therefore, it cannot be resold. Because of this, I have negotiated for you a slightly higher fee.”

  Ela had frowned over the restriction, wondering aloud why Nguyen would pay for an article and then bury it. If he truly was concerned for these people, wouldn’t he want their plight advertised as widely as possible?

  Joanie did not respond well to her musings. “You may investigate that question if you like, Ela Suvanatat, but only after you finish the project, after you are paid, and after you find a new job broker.”

  “Undo, Joanie. I was only wondering.”

  So now she was working for Nguyen, creating a profile of village life that would never be accessed by anyone. It was a stupid project, but at least she would not have to start selling her equipment just to buy her next meal.

  Under Kathang’s remote guidance, the peeping ball drifted away, off to eavesdrop on some unsuspecting villager. Ela smiled to herself. Unsuspecting? Who was kidding who? These people knew exactly what the peeping balls were for. Whenever the kids spotted one they would run after it, telling dirty jokes or love secrets to embarrass their friends. Kathang had been schooled to compensate for that behavior by lofting the balls until they vanished into the sky, then letting them descend somewhere else, where they might go unseen, at least for a little while. The ROSA would sort through every thread of stolen conversation, seeking choice quotes.

  Ela listened to the rising bustle and hum in the village. The population of the little shantytown had quadrupled since the fisherfolk returned at sunset. They had carried their boats into the village, laying them upside down on the platforms. Wet hulls gleamed in the light of flowscreens ablaze with opera programs and kung fu films. Phuong had disappeared, now that the last of the children in her care had been turned over to their parents. Ela decided she would take a walk too.

  First though, she had to protect her belongings against theft. She hid her backpack and diving gear under some of Phuong’s empty boxes, leaving a button camera on top of the pile so that Kathang could monitor. Then just for luck, she added a stink trap primed to explode with a noxious odor if Kathang gave the signal. After that, Ela felt ready to explore.

  With her farsights in recording mode she strolled between the shacks, capturing the sound of phones trilling, and the sight of fish roasting on sticks, or on grills set over charcoal beds, and of the many people eating vacuum-packed meals.

  Nguyen had insisted that any data she collected be stored in an account on his server. Ela felt uneasy with the arrangement. She had no guarantee the data would not be wiped or pirated. Then again, what did it matter? Ky Xuan Nguyen was paying her to go through the motions without producing anything real. It was an insult to her integrity, but in the circumstances, it was the best she could do.

  She stopped to watch a kid with a synthesizer as he doubled, then redoubled his voice until he had a whole chorus of selves singing a heartbreaking teen suicide anthem. Farther on, it was oldies night: a pack of kids bounced ecstatically to the aggressive rhythm of Burn Out.

  On the inland side of the shantytown several women had set up trading tables, where fresh fish was exchanged for commercially prepared foods. Relative values fluctuated as the women eyed the pace of one another’s business. The scene rivaled the Can Tho marketplace for noise. Ela examined the catch, surprised there were still so many fish to be found in the overworked water. Some of the better-looking specimens were being hawked as produce of the fish farms, though Ela didn’t believe it. She had seen the robo-sub. Poaching would have taken more resources than she saw on display here.

  Beyond the trading tables, a tall coastal levee rose in dark silhouette against the night sky. Ela climbed its steep face, to look out over a checkered field of fishponds glittering in the light of a rising moon. Tiny campfires sparkled on the narrow strips of land between the ponds. Who was out there?

  “Kathang: Nightvision.”

  Now her farsights multiplied every incoming photon, so that Ela looked out on a ghostly green landscape nailed in place by fierce points of fire. Several seconds passed before she spotted a slender figure moving between the ponds, swift and graceful, making for the levee on which she stood. After a few seconds she saw another, and then another. They popped into her awareness like hidden creatures in a puzzle drawing.

  Perhaps half a mile away a caretaker stepped out on the porch of a little prefab house balanced on the back of the levee, his open door blazing like a furnace in Ela’s farsights. He watched the silent migration. Ela wondered if these might be his workers. It didn’t seem so, t
hough, for he did not raise a hand. He did not call a greeting, or even a warning as they began to climb the levee’s inland slope. A wind chime on his porch sang in a slow night breeze.

  Ela shifted nervously, wondering if she should stay or go. But none of the figures was headed directly for her. They would pass to either side if they kept going as they were.

  She stayed, watching as they reached the levee’s summit, as they spilled down the other side like rain rolling down a windshield. A green-tinted ghost of a face, smooth and fresh, slid by only an arm’s length away. A child, she realized, perhaps eight years old. They were all children—and every one of them wore farsights, just like the children she had seen working in the fishponds along the river.

  The boat captain had called those children Roi Nuoc, a phrase Kathang translated as “water puppets.” Ela had ordered a search of the term and found two definitions. The first was a traditional theater using wooden puppets on a stage formed by the surface of a pool or lake, with the puppeteers half-submerged behind a bamboo screen. But in the delta Roi Nuoc had taken on a second meaning, referring to a mythically elusive clan of wild children, reputed to be half spirit, or half ghost in nature, but always recognizable by their ever-present farsights.

  Ela turned to watch the graceful youths disappear into the shantytown’s crowded alleys, wondering if the Roi Nuoc could be the story that would finally get her work into the premiere markets of the west.

  A masculine voice interrupted her speculations, speaking softly from her farsights: “They emerge as if made of mud and darkness.”

  She recoiled, gasping in a spasm of panic—a reaction that drew a chuckle of mild amusement from the electronic intruder. “Forgive me, Ms. Suvanatat. This is your new employer, Ky Xuan Nguyen.”

  Mr. Nguyen? How had he wormed in on her system? His icon was not even present on her screen. Then Ela grimaced, as she saw through the puzzle. “You are here through the recording link?”

  Nguyen didn’t bother to answer. “Look at these children,” he said. “Why do you suppose they have come here?”