Slant

by Eikeltje

  produced by pathic disturbances."

  Nathan considers this, tapping his chin with one finger. "I've wandered into

  a few of the Yox sensationals and experienced, you know, the inner thoughts

  of ax-murderers, that sort of thing. Some of them have seemed realistic, but I

  doubt they give deep insight." He focuses completely on Jill's nearest sensor

  stick. Ayesha feels like a third wheel, but stands with arms folded, looking

  around the room.

  "A pathic disturbance can be either a malfunction of the self-awareness loop,

  or a distortion of the capacity to model and make emotional connections with

  others, right?"

  "I suppose. I'm not a therapist, Jill."

  "You have degrees in theoretical psychology."

  "Yes . . . but I've been working with you for so long, you've bured out my

  human side."

  "Ha ha. I have a related question."

  Nathan smiles as if he is dealing with a child, and that is the response Jill

  desires, for she is feeling overly curious, even perversely so.

  "Let's hear it."

  "I was in FFDC collapse for a year and a half. When I underwent this

  collapse, the rate of therapy for thymic disturbances in the human population

  was four out of ten employed persons, and three in ten unemployed. The rate

  now is six out of ten employed, and one in ten unemployed. Have the definitions

  for these disturbances broadened, or are more people feeling bad?"

  "It's a social phenomenon. You've done a lot of work on social activity as a

  networked neural-like phenomenon."

  "Yes, Nathan, I understand the weather of cultural and economic trends,

  and that corporations now demand high natural or fully therapied employees

  because of world-wide competition pressures and the need for greater efficiency.

  But is this purely a spurious flow, the result of misperceptions and irrational

  expectations, or are there in fact more unhappy humans on this planet, in the

  sum of human cultures? The trends are widespread."

  38

  GREG BEAR

  "Very good question," Nathan says.

  "I hope to understand my own malfunction better," Jill says, "to avoid

  having something similar happen again."

  Ayesha's expression is both fascinated and a little embarrassed, as if she has

  intruded upon an intimate family discussion.

  "Your collapse was nothing you could have foreseen or prevented, Jill. I

  thought you understood that."

  "I do, Nathan, but I do not believe it, entirely."

  "Ahhh. Well, that's..." Nathan considers some more. "You had too many

  feedback loops interrupting your neural processes at too high a resolution,

  higher than you could sustain, Jill. Before your collapse, you were modeling

  yourself seventeen times over, at a level of resolution--well, simply speaking,

  you were generating I-thou loops at more than ten thousand Hertz. I doubt

  even God could sustain that sort of self-awareness."

  Jill chuckles. Ayesha smiles, but more in bafflement than amusement.

  "Really, Jill," Nathan continues. "You are based to some extent on human

  algorithms, less so than you were before the collapse, I might add--but you

  simply can't compare yourself, your weaknesses, I mean, to the weaknesses of

  a human brain. Your neural circuitry is incredibly robust. It can't be trodden

  down by stress or misuse. You have none of the anachronistic chemical defense

  mechanisms found in our bodies."

  Jill never pauses in discussions. Nathan has learned to never interpret her

  quick responses as thoughtlessness.

  "May I access LitVid channels which can help me understand thymic imbalances

  and pathic disturbances?"

  "Of course. They won't do you any harm."

  "I wish to access the works of some of the highly regarded boutique creators.

  Especially the Bloomsbury and Kahlo groups."

  Nathan smiles broadly and shakes his head.

  "Why not the Arm Sexton and Sylvia Plath whole-life vids?" Ayesha suggests

  innocently. Nathan shoots her a stern look.

  "They might be useful, as well," Jill says. "Thank you. And the Emanuel

  Goldsmith boutique."

  Nathan shrugs his shoulders and holds up his hands, for all the world, as if

  he is a father and she is his adolescent daughter, hell-bent on exploring the

  darker sides of life. Vicariously, at least.

  "I don't know to what extent you can make a simulacrum that will receive

  the brain-specific inputs," Nathan says. "You're not built like the average Yox

  consumer."

  "I believe it can be done. In the future, thinkers will reside in every house,

  as friends and confidantes. We will design and deliver Yox and whole-life rids."

  "Yes, well, I'd still love to see how you do it."

  "I .,;11 cMn,m xrnu N!rhanMarhan."

  /

  SLANT 39

  Nathan signs off.

  "How embarrassing," Ayesha says as they leave the room. Jill listens to their

  departing conversation.

  "She's pretty wonderful, isn't she?" Nathan says.

  "Makes me feel like an old rag," Ayesha says. "What a voice! Where'd she

  get that voice?"

  "Actually, it belongs to a woman named Seefa Schnee. Before she left Mind

  Design, she had a hand in the early stages of Jill's design."

  "She left?"

  "Fired, actually"

  Jill detects some nervous emphasis in Nathan's voice. As does Ayesha, apparently.

  "Were you two friends?"

  "Yes."

  "How long since you heard from her?"

  Nathan laughs and puts his arm around Ayesha's shoulders. "Not for many

  years."

  "All over, huh?"

  Nathan nods. "Much too weird for me."

  "But brilliant, right?"

  "Unhappy and weird and brilliant."

  "She doesn't ever call to chat?"

  "She doesn't talk to anybody I know. Nobody on the team has heard from

  her in five years."

  Jill loses interest and blanks the receptors in the room in Palo Alto. Almost

  simultaneously, she receives an unexpected query from an I/O fibe link no one

  should know is open.

  It is the fibe channel she might use in an emergency, to store her most

  recent memories in rented banks across the country, should she feel she is

  about to undergo another collapse. But the link is supposed to be on-call only,

  not currently active. Not even Nathan knows about it.

  She waits for the signal to happen again, and it does. This time it is definitely

  a request for full link. She isolates a portion of her mentality, a separate

  self, to deal with this, wrapping it in evolvon-proof firewalls that will disrupt

  and dissipate their contents should the link prove toxic.

  The isolated self reports back to her with an abstract of the exchange.

  "We have been contacted remotely by an individual who claims to be a

  child," the firewalled self tells her greater selves. "He wishes to converse with

  us about a number of things, but will not answer key questions, such as his

  physical location and how he discovered this link. All he will say is that he

  has an emergency memory bank setup, much like our own, and that he knows

  a great deal about you, perhaps more than you yourself know."

  "Then he is not human."

  4O GREG BE
AR

  "Is the link broken, and are you free of evolvons?"

  "Yes and yes. The communication was simple."

  Jill removes the barricades and absorbs the isolated self. She studies the

  memory of the exchange in detail, and considers whether or not to respond.

  Of one thing she is certain. If this "child" is not human, it is also not a

  registered thinker. All registered thinkers (there are only twelve of them so far

  in the entire world) have formal links with her. She is in a real sense their

  mother; they are all based on her templates and are either manufactured by

  Mind Design, or licensed by them.

  This personality, if it is a full personality and not some elaborate hoax (or

  a test from Mind Design itself), is new and unknown.

  Suddenly, the questions about thymic imbalance and pathic disturbance are

  shunted into background processing. This new problem occupies her for a full

  hour as she scours all the datafiow services available to her, trying to speck out

  where and what this "child" might be...

  At the end of this time, having learned nothing, she resets her isolated self,

  erects secure firewalls around it, and allows it to return the "child's" touch.

  But there is no reply.

  Jill feels disappointed. She looks over the details of this emotional response,

  and how it fits in with her overall affect patterns. The introspection annoys

  her; another emotional complexity she does not understand. Examining her

  annoyance is in turn annoying. She cuts that loop.

  She has tried not to deal with the core emotion she discovers behind her

  disappointment. It is difficult dealing with human-like emotions when she

  lacks an endocrine system or any other physical reference.

  Nevertheless, she feels. The woman, Ayesha, was right.

  Jill is lonely, but for who or what, even she, with all her built-in analytical

  tools, does not know.

  That which is forbidden with all is delicious with a committed partner.

  The glue of culturally accepted sexual relationships is often the sense of

  gifts given that are extraordinary, special, and most of all, exclusive.

  We are kept together by a shared sense of violation and mystery. Our culture

  pretends to forbid certain acts, sexual acts; some are suspect or forbidden even

  in the context of culturally condoned relations. When we court and marry, however,

  part of the glue that binds us together is the delicious sensation of having shared in

  the violation of cultural standards--violations allowed in the name of love, commitment,

  total sharing. The couple stands outside the rules, bound by its own sense of

  specialness, and exclusivity. It discovers sex all over again, secure in the knowledge

  of its daring creativity.

  Jealousy arises at the contemplation of a partner engaging in sexual acts outside this

  protecting envelope. Sex with others, outside the couple, emotionally charged and

  A,,I- I1,,

  ,-I ,,n,

  n 'n r!efrnv thi ilhinn of shared and creative violation of

  / SLANT 41

  Reality intrudes: these acts are common, not special; they are natural, no matter how

  forbidden; the illusions that strengthened the commitment are suddenly revealed. The

  jealous partner feels duped, misled, unfairly coerced into an emotional bond based

  on romantic delusions.

  Trivial, perhaps; but from these passions have come murder, the end of kingdoms,

  brand new branches in the river of history. Never underestimate the ubiquitous power

  of sex.

  The Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie

  5

  KILLING HUNGER

  Mary Choy, at thirty-five, has been a PD for thirteen years--ten in Los Angeles,

  the last three in Seattle. As far as she is concerned, her work is the most

  important factor in her life; but that focus may be changing. So much about

  her is changing.

  She reads from her pad--pure text--as she finishes a lunch of cheese and

  fruit in a small ninties-style cafe on North Promenade, in the shadow of the

  Bellevue Towers.

  Even her appearance is in flux. Since 2044, she has been a transform,

  increasing her height by a foot, customizing her bone structure and facial

  features, and turning her skin to satin ebony. But she is now reversing

  much of this transform. Her skin is slowly demelanizing to light nut brown;

  for now, she is mahogany. The satiny texture remains, but will in a few months

  dull to ordinary skin matte. She retains her height, but her facial features

  are flattening, becoming more those of her birth self. She never liked

  the looks she was born with, but since her mind has undergone

  changes--difficMties she calls them--she feels it is only right to assume a less

  striking appearance.

  Also, in Seattle, while open tolerance of transforms is mandated by federal

  and state law, there is an undercurrent of disapproval. And Seattle has been

  her home for three years, ever since her fall from high natural tatus to simple

  untherapied... The lapse of her brain's loci, the proportionil reshifting of

  personality, sub-personalities, agents, organons, and talents...

  The end of her brief marriage to artist E. Hassida...

  The pass-overs for promotion in the LAPD...

  Her resignation and transfer to Seattle Public Defense...

  The two-day-old breakup with her most recent boyfriend.

  Usually, thinking about all the changes darks her, but this afternoon she is

  42 GREG BEAR

  blue-gray Towers, the southernmost of the Eastside equivalents to the elongated

  ribbon combs that dominate central Seattle.

  After lunch, she will walk to a PD conference in Tillicum Tower on West

  Eighth, where she will present a speech on Corridor Public Defense Cooperation.

  She has been asked to handle inter-departmental relations until she is

  rated for full Third, which she is assured will happen any day now. Seattle PD

  is so much more casual about high natural vs. natural or untherapied, though

  if anything even less tolerant of high thymic or pathic imbalance.

  Reading for pleasure is a luxury she's come to enjoy in the past few years--though

  the lit she's perusing now affords her a few too many uncomfortable

  insights to be purely pleasurable.

  An arbeiter politely inquires if she is done with her repast. She hands the

  tray to the machine and reaches for her bag when her personal pad, still on the

  table, chimes.

  She has a few minutes. She answers the touch.

  "Mary? This is Hans."

  Mary stiffens. The face in the pad screen is handsome, boyish but not foolish;

  a face that held her interest for three months. And still attracts. It was Hans

  who inexplicably chilled and told her it was over, it wasn't working.

  "Hello, Hans," she says with forced casualness.

  "I wanted to explain some things."

  "I don't need explanations, Hans."

  "I do. I've been feeling pretty rotten lately."

  Mary passes on this opportunity.

  "I liked you better the way you were. That's what... I've decided. I didn't

  want you to change."

  "Oh." She's going to let him do the talking; that's obviously why he's called.

  "You were beautiful. Really exotic. I don't know why you want to change."

  "I
see where it can get confusing," she says. "I'm sorry."

  Hans flashes. "Who are you, Mary, goddammit?"

  "I'm the same as I was, Hans."

  "But who in hell is that?"

  Good question. For a time, she had hoped Hans might be able to help her

  discover the answer, but no; Hans is hooked on appearances. He liked her the

  way she was.

  "I mean," he says, "I don't know you at all. I've been thinking about what

  it must be like to become.., what you are, and then to go back."

  "You mean, what it says about me, personally."

  "Who does that sort of thing? I've been sad the past few days, missing you."

  Good.

  "But that person, that woman, isn't around. You're different from the person

  I miss."

  "Oh," Mary says.

  /

  SLANT 43

  "No. Probably not." Her tone is professionally sympathetic. She refuses to

  give him any more, show him anything deep.

  "Who are you, Mary Choy?"

  Her jaw muscles tense. She touches her cheek, pokes hard with a fingernail

  to prod a little relaxation. "I'm a hard-working woman with very little time