“No, no way, lady. Not me. You’re just data. You need to shut up and turn off.”
“I’m a personality upload. I might have been data when they poured me in, but we’ve got past that stage of the relationship. Now, just sit tight until I’ve worked out just what’s going on.”
“No fucking way.” And I put a call into Brian.
Brian has no social life. He’s sitting in his nook reading technical manuals, probably, or else he’s sitting on some message board, population Brian and three of his creepy no-life friends.
“’Sup?” says Bri.
“Man, I need a favour. Got some runaway processes in my headware. Need ’em terminated, man, or I’m not going to get any sleep tonight.”
There’s the usual sort of pause while Brian remembers who he is and where his feet are, and whether he likes me enough to help me out. But Brian Dey sure as goddamnit doesn’t have many friends who aren’t weird-ass losers like he is, and so he says, “Yerp, ’kay, I come over.”
“This isn’t going to work, Jimmy,” my passenger tells me. “And this will go a whole lot easier if you just work with me, here.”
I put some music on, playing over my earpiece because of what I said earlier about the thin walls. I crank it up real high and hope it gives Miss Data a headache. I mean, maybe the real her is getting beat up and tortured back on Earth, and maybe that means I should have more sympathy, but she is in my head and that’s not right. I don’t know what Sugar’s techs did, to make it so she went in like a fully functioning personality rather than just a stack of ones and zeros. I never even heard of someone having a personality downloaded into their headspace. Like the woman says, goddamn over-engineered or what?
Anyway, Brian’s round in ten with a backpack of toys and I sit on my folded-down bed while he stands in the doorway, connects to my headspace and runs checks. He doesn’t look at what’s in there, because I ask him not to, but he does a better job of what the shoddy little scanner did, and grunts with surprise when he finds out just how much is firing away.
“Never seen ’em like this,” he tells me frankly. “Chock full o’ buzz, man.”
“So un-buzz the fuck out of it.” He doesn’t have to listen to Miss Data telling me how this is showing ‘unwarranted hostility’ and she’ll ‘take necessary measures’.
Brian brings out some more toys. “Gon’ run a general shut down order on your headspace, man. Put all they critters back in the box.”
“Just do it, man.”
So I get to listen to Brian droning in one ear about how it all works, all of which is past my pay grade for computer tech, while Miss Data is talking in the other, telling me Earth stuff, floods and disasters, lawyers, clandestine meetings. Sounds exactly like the kind of crazy that gets a copy of your mind sent to Mars for safekeeping. I mean, I never heard that was something people were doing, but why not? Sounds exactly the sort of nasty shit they’d have going on back home. I mean, they’re still trying to make the laws on what a saved personality is, right? Whether it has rights, whether it’s a person, gets the vote, all that. Thirty years they’ve been a thing, and a million lawyers and philosophers and politicians all got an angle. And all I’m saying, then and there as Brian works, is that they’re a royal pain in the ass to have cluttering up your headspace and complaining in your ear.
And in the end Brian’s all, “Nope, nothing doing.”
“What do you mean, you useless bastard?” I shout at him.
“Can’t turn ’em off.” Brian’s packing away his toys. “Sorry, Jimmy. That thing ain’t gon’ back in its box. Can’t sever it from your system, don’t have the privileges.”
“It’s my head, Bri, I’m giving you permission.”
“Ain’t how it works. No idea what you got in there, Jimmy, but ain’t listening to me.”
I grab him by the front of his overalls. “Brian, you have got to have something. I just need it quiet, that’s all. Shut it up for me. I’ll owe you, man. Owe you solid.”
For a moment he looks shifty, and I think he’s about to come clean that he’s some secret computer ninja, some black market software guru who can go movie-cyberspace on this damn loose personality I got riding me, go walking inside my head and karate-chop it into submission. Then he shakes his head. “Go get it wiped, man,” he says. “Only way.”
“I can’t,” I tell him. “I…” can’t tell him why, either, but Sugar would feed my balls to Murder and Marmalade if I just scrub the data.
“Only way.” And he shifts his bag to one shoulder and slopes back to whatever the fuck Brian Dey actually does when he’s not in eyeshot of me, which I sure as hell don’t want to speculate about.
And I can’t. But I can’t have Miss Data chattering in my ear like we’re an old married couple until Sugar needs the data back. And what if she can’t take the data back, now it’s been unpacked? What if this is How We Live Now? And it’s almost worse when my passenger isn’t talking because then just what is she doing? I picture some shadowy woman rummaging around in there, getting comfortable, redecorating the inside of my head. And it’s not my brain, it’s just my headspace, but still. Even though it’s not a real person, just some copy, it’s still like having something foreign living inside your head, and that’s nothing anybody wants to think about. Still less be told about by the brain-worm thing itself.
“This is better,” she tells me, without warning. “I’m starting to assemble a memory train.”
“Any chance you can ride the fucking thing out of my head and just piss off?” I demand.
“You really are an unconstructive little monster, aren’t you,” she says, and I shudder and pop another tab of Stringer in the hope that it’ll help somehow. The hit builds up in me and makes me feel purposeful and dynamic, and then Miss Data is talking again and all that purposeful dynamism has nowhere to go, and so I end up jittering about on my bed like a crazy person. I am full to the brim with the sense that I can do anything, that I’m significant in the grander scheme of the universe, and at the same time I can’t get this goddamn woman out of my head and I feel like I’m playing second class citizen in my own body.
“Your biometrics have just had a remarkable spike,” she observes like my goddamn maiden aunt. “I’m guessing that was Metrosyl or some fabricated equivalent? Popularly known as Drive if you’re a stockbroker or Stringer if you’re at street-level.”
“What, you’re my goddamn drugs counsellor now, are you?”
“I’m still working out precisely who I am. But we’re getting there. I have a name.”
“Is it Her Majesty Royal Pain In My Ass?”
“Dear me, what an impoverished vocabulary you have. You can call me Honey.”
I have no intention of calling her anything of the sort except… A horrible suspicion comes to me.
“Are you…” My throat is suddenly very dry, and for once it’s not the dust. “Are you Bees?” I mean, Bees, Honey, seems plausible to me. Indra’s always going on about how the Bees DisInt colony wants to infiltrate Hell City, so why not as black market data. Sugar probably didn’t even know she was opening the door to humanity’s great nemesis, but then, that’s why data smuggling is fucking illegal.
“Bees…” Honey’s voice takes its sweet time over the word. “Interesting. You’re familiar with her, then. You’re in a position to do me a favour here, Jimmy Marten. I’m still piecing together what I’m here for, but I know it involves Bees. I need you to set me up a meeting with her, if you could.”
Like I’m her secretary. Like I have an inside line to a fugitive DisInt entity that half the World Senate wants to declare an enemy of the species. Like everyone in Hell City hasn’t already been told to report any contact from Bees, the other great Martian power, for all nobody knows where she is or what she’s doing. I mean, Mars is smaller than Earth but there’s still a lot of it. All we know is that, after the World Senate started making laws to limit DisInt creation and expansion, Bees cut ties with everyone and the last thing she
said was that she considered herself beyond any human ability to control. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a lot of our nightmares start here on Mars.
And now Honey is my unwanted lodger, fully functional and booted up within my headspace and talking to me through my own radio implant. And asking for Bees.
They’ll render me down for my useful molecules if anyone finds out. Nobody’ll lift a finger to save poor Jimmy from the fire, not if Bees is involved. I don’t know who this Honey construct is but it’s worse news than I could possibly have imagined. And do I go back to Sugar now, and complain about the quality of the illegal shit she stuffed into my headspace? Do I demand she rip it out and give it to some other poor sap? And what if Sugar’s in on it, already working for Bees. She would, the mercenary bitch. She’d take anyone’s money.
Brian was right, goddamnit, there’s only one thing to do.
Which is what sees me turn up at Central Data Services and filling in the forms to get my whole implant wiped clean. I mean, Sugar is going to kill me. Or get Marmalade to eat me. But maybe, just maybe, I can talk my way round her. Maybe I can sell myself body and soul to whatever damn enterprise she wants me for, forever and ever, and that’ll be enough to pay her back. Or I could just keep running until her blood cools. Hell City isn’t huge, but it’s half complete and that means a lot of holes and corners. And I’m good at running. And if I turn up with a concrete talking link to Bees in my head, there’ll be no talking round, no running, no nothing for Jimmy Marten. And the longer she’s there, the more chance that Bees will find me. I mean, Bees like Honey, am I right?
I run through the form, all the waivers and disclaimers, check, check, check. Yes, I understand my data will not be accessible after the wipe, that’s the whole goddamn point. Yes I graciously absolve Admin of any loss occasioned by irretrievable data. Yes I know what I am doing. The Stringer is finally pulling its weight, confirming that, Yes! now I’m doing something, it’s definitely the right thing and I should be happy about it. I’d feel that way whatever the hell I was actually doing but it’s nice to have someone cheering in my corner even if it’s only a fast-dissolving tab of illicit pharma.
“Ah, I see,” says Honey disapprovingly. “It’s like that, is it, Jimmy?”
“You bet your digital ass it is,” I tell her. “Shoe’s on the other goddamn foot now, isn’t it. Say goodbye, Honey, because I am scooping you out of the jar.” And that is, if I say so myself, fucking hilarious, and I have a bit of a laugh about it right there in Data Services, which doesn’t endear me to anyone.
“Jimmy, this is a mistake, please don’t do this. I’m here on very important business. I’ve come a long way.”
“We all have, doll. It’s Mars. Nobody’s born here.” Not yet, anyhow.
“‘Doll’,” she notes with superbly simulated distaste. “Is that what you think I am. Just a low-grade AI, like a sexbot?”
“Don’t knock sexbots. Some of the best talk I ever have is with sexbots.” And I say that way too loud and they’re staring at me even as I send the completed waivers over.
“Jimmy, I am a distinguished academic, author and rights activist.”
“No you’re not,” I tell her under my breath. “You’re just a copy, a crappy backup someone made and sent out here for fuck knows why. And I’m not living with you. I’m scrubbing you from my head and to hell with Sugar.” And only then do I think: Sugar, Honey, Bees, Jesus how far does this shit go? It’s like the fucking glucose illuminati around here.
“You underestimate the capabilities of your own headware,” she says. “There’s room in here for a whole functional intelligence download. Upload. Whichever is appropriate, if you look upon every upload as being a download somewhere else. As the playwright says.”
“I do not care,” I tell her forcefully, “what the playwright says. You go away now.”
I don’t know the tech at the terminal but they look bored out of their skull. “You want it all wiped clean?” she says doubtfully.
“Empty it out, sister,” I agree enthusiastically. “Leave it smooth as a baby’s ass.”
Apparently that’s not the technical terminology she’s used to, but she shrugs and brings up all the forms I just went through. “And you accept that you will lose any and all data stored in your Personal HeadspaceTM?” She actually says the little letters.
“I just okayed all those goddamn documents didn’t I?”
“And you agree that you absolve—”
“Look, just do it, please, will you? Yes, yes and yes. I do, better or worse, have and to hold, all that shit.”
She looks mortally offended because apparently the worst thing she’s had to deal with today is a little harsh language. Nonetheless she starts setting up the connection to my ’ware.
“My, that is very busy in there. You should try to keep it under control, Mr Marten, and then we’d not need to do this.”
I grind my teeth at her aggressively.
“Jimmy,” says Honey, “I’m giving you one last chance to change your mind. Or things will go downhill fairly sharply between us.”
“You can go downhill all the way until you fall off the goddamn cliff,” I snarl at her, which the technician catches and obviously feels is aimed at her.
“I am obliged to ask you for your auth—”
“Just do it!”
“Your authorisation one last time, Mr Marten, before we—”
“Jesus!”
“Before we commence what will be an irreversible process. Are you clearly confirming that you wish us to—”
“Actually no, I’ve changed my mind.”
She stares at me, and she obviously thinks I’m being sarcastic. I, on the other hand, know for real that I wasn’t and just stare back at her in terror.
“I do apologise for wasting your time,” say my lips and tongue and vocal cords. “I have decided that I do not want to undergo this process at this moment.”
And I can’t stop them.
“Mr Marten…?” The tech doesn’t know what to do. She can tell something’s wrong, though probably she hasn’t got a fuck’s chance in hell of realising just how wrong.
“I mean, I do not want to goddamn well undergo this fucking process at this time, thank you,” says my voice.
“There’s no need to—” she starts automatically.
“Well I do apologise, and I agree with you, there really isn’t,” I say, and roll my shoulders in a way I never did before, that makes all the bones grind together weirdly. I’m standing oddly too, slightly bandy-kneed, arms dangling by my sides, head held up. When I turn and walk out it’s like I’m on stilts, always just about to lose my balance. And I can’t do anything about it. I see through my eyes, but where they look is out of my hands. I hear through my ears and the radio link. I think, locked up there in my own brain. And everything else is gone. Everything else is Honey.
“I did warn you,” she tells me in my ear. “I suppose we’ll have to do things the hard way, now.”
7
[RECOVERED DATA ARCHIVE: ‘HONEY’]
That unpleasantness aside, and my own peremptory extinction averted, time to get back to the real business. Jimmy Marten will keep, frankly. Right now I don’t feel that his removal from the Hellas Planitia project for a little while is depriving the solar system of any particular gift.
Which leaves me with the age-old existential question: Why, precisely, am I here?
So it’s back to the memory mines to toil a bit and see what gems I can bring up to the weak Martian sunlight, because one thing I have come across is a real sense of stress and urgency, but without events to tie it to. In fact most of what I’m uncovering suggests I was living a fairly leisurely life, in and out of the public eye.
But there was something about a meeting with a lawyer, and my general cultural touchstone suggests that’s a common source of stress, so let’s see…
*
Keram John Aslan had aged well, I thought. He’d gone elegantly silver, th
e sort of way film stars sometimes did. That and his suits told me he was still doing well enough for himself despite all the pro bono. Aslan Kahner Laika had offices on the second floor of a New York brownstone these days. He’d been twenty floors higher last time I visited, changing the offices after David Kahner’s retirement because an increasing number of his clients had difficulty with elevators, capacity twelve people or point seven five of a bear-model Bioform.
I took the stairs, which he’d had reinforced after quite a fight with planning. Accessibility battles weren’t exactly the most heavily reported aspect of Bioform integration, but we were fighting all the same clashes as the disabled had a half-century and more before. And you still got the same arguments from people: ‘Well X didn’t have any problems, so we feel we’re in the clear as far as reasonable adjustments go.’ Except that X was engineered from cocker spaniel stock and weighs less than one of my arms. And then there are issues like heating for reptile forms, and rodent models need something to gnaw on for good dental hygiene and… and there used to be all sorts of talk about how to help Bees fit into human environments, but that discussion went sour.
Aslan was already striding into the waiting room to greet me, barely a limp from that hip surgery of two years ago: living growth replacement, top of the line new procedures based on Bees’ biotech research from before that self-same souring. Amazing how everyone was happy to use the work and forget about the worker. He took my hand, or at least my thumb, and we made a show of clasping hands. He was one of the few people who’d just stick their fragile human digits into my grasp, for all that I was an old bear and my claws were blunt as breadsticks.
*
And here I have to get off the memory train and take a branch line, searching Keram John Aslan and working out why he was important to Honey, to my original. I skim over the records: he worked for the UN back before it was the World Senate. He wrote the first report recommending that Bioforms be granted limited personhood, back when people were slavering to have us all destroyed. He saved Rex, the dog-form who went on to become the poster child for Bioform heroism, the acceptable face of non-human sentience. He made a lot of money and a very well-publicised career in high-profile rights cases, and he and David Kahner won more than they lost, in the glory days. That was when public opinion was for us, and it looked like it was liberté, égalité and fraternité all the way into the golden future. Back when Bees was making the frontiers of human science her bitch and HumOS came in from the cold and we were all one happy family. And reading this fleshes me out and reminds me who I am and who I was, because there was a time before that. There was a time when I went underground, rather than getting academic posts at this university or that, shambling about being the absent-minded professor, the dancing bear of the scholarly world. There was a time when, if Keram John Aslan, Rex and HumOS hadn’t done such a good job, I’d have released several hundred angry, uncontrolled Bioforms in the heart of Europe, because the alternative would have been to see them destroyed. There was a time I was a soldier, and I bit the hand that fed me. I realise, reviewing and cataloguing my older memories, that the whole business with the doctorates and the public speaking and the genial Goldilocks act I put on – not too tepid to be useless to the cause, but never too hot to become a threat to my human friends and allies – was never entirely me. The old bear who I see clasping paws with Aslan casts a long, dark shadow. We do what we have to.
Bear Head Page 8
