by S. J. Ryan
“Keep his breathing deep and slow. Keep his eyelids from fluttering. Pulse stable. That little hammer on the bedside table, I think they use that to test reflexes. Make sure he doesn't react if they tap his joints. And that flashlight, they'll pry his eyelids open and shine the light into his eyes. Make sure his pupils don't respond. Basic thing is, don't react to stimuli.”
Ivan Beta hovered a pop-up window in his field of vision that displayed the patient's vitals. As Ivan Alpha implemented Matt Four's suggestions, the sedative was neutralized and brain activity increased. Ivan Beta related that Ivan Alpha expressed concern about the potential for detection by electroencephalography, but Matt Four assured, “See any wires going to his head? No. They don't have a way to monitor his brain waves, so don't worry.”
“I do not worry. I evaluate risk.”
Ivan Alpha, Matt Four noted, was speaking to him directly now. On the other hand, the dividing line of personas between an AI and its partition was tenuous to begin with.
Disengaging from the VR feed, Matt Four sat in the cell with his butt on the floor and his back to the wall and gazed into the darkness and thought of the old adage, Four walls do not a prison make. It was true, he thought – you also needed a ceiling and a floor. He remembered the days in his youth, when he been such a loner that being trapped in a box had hardly seemed a punishment. It hardly seemed a punishment now. For what was waiting for him on the outside of this cell?
He was a printed being, his memories counterfeits. The man who had embraced him as a son hardly spoke to him, the last time centuries ago. His relationships had always been awkward, had always fallen apart. He hadn't spoken to Random since childhood. Synth was gone. And Stoker and the others he'd led in futile rebellion against Athena's rising empire, were they alive after a century without rejuvenation technology?
I don't even have my Ivan anymore.
So there was no one of family or friends, except a woman he'd never met, floating lifeless between the stars, whom if he could rescue might accept him as her son despite the insanity of third millennium biotechnology . . . .
“I feel old,” he said to no one.
“That is to be expected,” Ivan replied. “You have not been rejuvenated in over a century.”
“The kind of 'old' I'm feeling isn't the kind you can rejuvenate away.”
“Matt Four. Matt is conscious. He is being informed of status.”
“You've warned him not to make any visible indications of consciousness, right?”
“At his request, I have induced paralysis over his entire body as to simulate a continued state of coma.” Pause. “He wishes to speak to you.”
“Patch him in.”
A long silence, and finally, “Hello?”
Matt Four spoke into the darkness of his cell: “Hello, Matt. This is – well, I guess we're calling me 'Matt Four.' I suppose this is uncomfortable for you too.”
“I'll be okay.”
“Matt,” Matt Four said. “Do you feel well enough to fill me in on what's happening here?”
In faltering, stumbling sentences, a groggy Matt the Template described how he'd been diverted to Delta Pavonis by seeming accident, how he had landed on Ne'arth, how he'd met the people of Britan and Rome, how he'd come to the Other Side in search of his 'brother.' He told of Savora, and the Church, and where he had found Matt Four, and how he had been captured.
“Church of the Star Wizard,” Matt Four said. “Wow, that is weird. Do you have any telemetry of that?”
“Ivan, transmit.”
Matt Four gaped at the archived telemetry of Matt's wanderings through the Abbey of Klun, dropped his jaw at the sight of the Cathedral, barely suppressed a giggle at the tour guide's reverent exposition of the deeds of the Holy Matt.
“It's not funny,” Matt said. “People believe in that stuff and it messes with their development.”
“I know, but . . . me, the messiah of a religion. And I was asleep the whole time. It's hilarious.”
“You were tortured and kept in a dungeon.”
“Tough universe, kid.”
“Mom . . . is she really dead?”
Matt Four felt the stress in the synthesized voice. Neural implants were good at conveying the nuances of emotion. Sobering, he reminded himself of how emotionally vulnerable he'd been at age seventeen.
“I know it's a shock. It hit me pretty hard when I first learned about it.”
He cringed, waiting to be told, She wasn't your mother. But Matt, The Original Matt, only said, “Can you tell me what this is about?”
“You mean, where are we going, who are we going to see?”
“Yeah. It's something to do with Athena and Eric, right?”
“Well, the archived-telemetry file I made for you pretty much sums up what I know. You said you viewed that.”
“I got to the part about Dad calling you, and then you were on Earth. Did you actually cloneport?”
“There's no interstellar catapult in the Centauri System, and even if there was, it wouldn't have gotten me back to Earth soon enough.”
“For what?”
“To save Synth.”
“From what?”
“From herself.”
“How – “
“Why don't we resume viewing the file? It should be self-explanatory.”
“All right. Ivan, resume the VR file.”
“And include me in,” Matt Four interjected. “I can provide commentary.”
“Yeah, Ivan. Include him.”
“Commentary begins. The year is 2689, the place is Earth . . . . “
The cell and all physical sensation thereof swirled away into darkness.
Then there were colors, bright colors. A beautiful sunlit day. There was blue above and blue below, with bands of green and white in between. The blues resolved into sky and sea, the green into forest and the white into snow-capped mountains.
From the shore of Seattle, Matt Three was gazing across Puget Sound toward the Olympic Peninsula. Watching second-hand, the sight, after all these years, after all these versions, still took Matt Four's breath away. He assumed in the silence that Template Matt was having the same reaction.
“Hello, Matt,” Synesthesia said.
Matt Four had compiled the VR file and knew that it was coming. Still, reliving the meeting, hearing her voice, triggered a shiver.
Matt Three turned toward the city and smiled at Synth. She was centuries old, and unlike him, her body had never been reprinted, but nonetheless she appeared to be no older than her early thirties. And, he thought, forever lovely.
“It's good to see you, Synth. How long has it been?”
“I could give you the exact number in days, but my children tell me that's annoying.”
They sat upon the curving steps of the waterfront park, oblivious to the natural scenery and the dynamic activity of the city. They spoke more words to each other in minutes than they had when Matt was a shy teenager so many centuries ago.
She said, “Tell me about Tian.” So he told her about Tian. When he finished, she said, “And you left all that to come back here.”
“What can I say? Got homesick.”
“You cloneported.”
“You have a problem with that?”
“Well, no, it's just that – well . . . . “
“You do know the guy on Tian wasn't the original Matt.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them and smiled. “It takes getting used to. But I want you to know, Matt, I accept you as my friend.”
There were so many things he could have said. He could have been defensive. He could have been expository. He decided to change the subject. “So tell me what you've been up to.”
“Well, I quit Ascendancy.”
“That was centuries ago. I read your blog entry. You said it was about not wanting to compute pi to the last digit.”
“You know, Random sent me a long email explaining that pi is a transcendent number and doesn't have a last digit. I don't think h
e appreciates my humor.”
“Random doesn't miss a thing. He was probably trolling you.”
“'Trolling.' I haven't heard anyone use that expression in years. Centuries. Time goes fast, doesn't it?”
“So what happened after you left Ascendancy?”
“Got a doctorate in Abstract Mathematics. Went to the Moon, flew in the caverns. Got married, had kids. Got divorced. Got into shape-shifting, became a raven and a dolphin. Went to Mars, dug around Cydonia.”
“I read your paper on that. Your 'Temple of the Martian Moon Gods' Theory.”
“It's not pareidolia, Matt. The mathematical relationships are too numerous and consistent. The alignment of the faces, the ratio of distances . . . the government is covering up.”
“But you never found anything.”
“I discovered that I love archeology Or at least, digging around to solve mysteries. Anyhow, that was the first hundred years. Then – more marriages, visited every planet in the Solar System, hot-air ballooning in the clouds of Saturn, worked on the Venus terraform project before that was canceled . . . I suppose I'm boring you.”
“No no. Go on.”
She looked like she was about to, but then she sighed. “Matt, catching up on old times isn't why you had me come here. This morning I receive an anonymous message that says, 'Meet me by the biggest pirate.' Very secretive. How many people would know what that even meant?”
Matt gazed where she was gazing: at the statue of Christopher Columbus, who in turn was gazing westward, across Puget Sound and Olympics, toward the Pacific Ocean, an ocean the mariner had never visited.
“I thought that would be something that only you would get. I remembered you once said in history class that he was the biggest pirate of all time, stealing two continents.”
“Second biggest now. Eric Roth has commandeered an entire world.”
“And I heard you're investigating that.”
“I did mention that I like to dig around. Matt, are you worried about me? Is that why you were so secretive in setting up this meeting?”
“You need to be careful, Synth. Eric Roth can be a dangerous person. Athena too. Maybe more so.”
“Eric has been under virtual house arrest for centuries. Athena hasn't been seen in a century.”
“That doesn't mean she's not somewhere.”
“The popular theory is that she stowed aboard a freighter to Alpha Centauri, which had an accident and got lost, just like your template. So there's no danger from either of them.”
“They have lots of friends, Synth. And you don't know what they're capable of.”
“I know exactly what they're capable of. That's why I left Star Seed.”
He had studied her eyes, and sensed loss. “You really wanted to go to Tian, didn't you?”
“It was my whole life, Matt. The way some teenage girls have a crush on an actor or a musician, I idolized a whole planet.” She shook her head slowly. “And worse, I idolized Eric.”
“But then you resigned the Project. Did he . . . did he – “
“Oh no, he never touched me. Well, not physically. Sometimes, though, I feel that he abused my mind. My heart. My soul. He tricked me, Matt. It was sickening . . . I'm not going to cry.”
He had waited for her to regain composure. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“It's bizarre. You may not believe me. Flakey Synth, my students at the U Dub call me.”
“You're talking to a cloneporter. My credulity is vast and expansive. Especially when it comes to trusting you. Especially when you're saying trash about Eric Roth.”
“I wish I could show you, but they made me turn off Emmy before I went into the room. I don't have any telemetry, no evidence at all.”
“If there's one thing I know, it's that you're not a liar. Just tell me, all right?”
After a long moment of silence, she muttered, “They wanted me to join their cult.”
“What?”
“That was my reaction too. You were there at the Project, you remember those days. Everything was going so well at Star Seed. I was on track to be the youngest person ever to go to the stars!”
“You were a celebrity. They sent you on fund-raising tours.” Matt – both versions – remembered how comparatively little fanfare there had been when Synth's departure had jumped him into that role.
“Eric and Athena were like a second mother and father to me. Then one day, everything changed. They invited me into a conference room. Half the department heads are there. They're all smiling and I'm thinking, wow, this is going to be something great.”
“Then they tell you about human DNA on seeder probes?”
“They weren't just creating humans on Delta Pavonis Three. They made AI modules called 'mentors,' to teach the humans language and how to form a society. The mentors were like neural implants, only their hosts didn't choose to invite them. Instead, the mentors chose the hosts, climbed inside of them and hooked into their brains without permission. When I heard that, I felt sick, Matt.”
“The Right to Freedom of Thought is the most basic right in the Solar Charter.”
“So you believe me? Because there's more.”
“Tell me about Eric Roth.”
“It just got crazier! I'm in that conference room, sitting at a table with all the adults in the world that I admire, and suddenly they're all talking nonsense! Do you know what kind of society they wanted to form on DP Three? A duplicate of the Roman Empire – with Eric Roth as Emperor!”
“What? Why?”
“Because he's an egomaniac who's surrounded himself with fawning sycophants, and he came too late to found an empire on Earth so he wants to found one among the stars. Oh, I mean, that wasn't their reasoning. They had a very scientific-sounding argument about how technology has dulled evolutionary competition in modern human society, causing the biological progress of the human species to stagnate. They wanted to create an 'ideal society,' with pre-singularity technology, where humans would have to use their minds without computer aid, competing according to Darwinian principles. They thought that would reignite human evolution.”
“But why model ancient Rome?”
“Because the sociological variables of the Roman Empire have been exhaustively studied, so that they could effectively control the society they created. And of course, Eric Roth would be Emperor, because he's Eric Roth, and who else is worthy to sit upon a throne and direct the evolution of the human species?”
Matt Three blinked. “I haven't heard of any of this.”
“You wouldn't unless you were on the inside. It wasn't enough to be a part of the Project. Even most of the directors were in the dark. To know about it, Eric Roth had to personally select you, and you had to be initiated. That day in the conference room, they were initiating me. I used to be so excited about the Project, Matt! I guess that's why they thought I'd be a willing candidate to join their cult.”
“Dad told me he'd heard rumors about probes launched to Delta Pavonis, but nothing about . . . Rome.”
“Only a handful knew the details. In the years since, I've done research on cultic organizations, and I've learned that they're designed with multiple levels of initiation and revelation. Everyone thinks they're at the top level, and only the people truly at the top know the full story. Star Seed was like that. Religion with a veneer of science.”
“You would think someone would reveal the conspiracy.”
“I can't speak for others, but I was just a kid and who was I going to tell? Without sounding crazy? Without being killed?”
“So you do think they're capable of that.”
“Once they tell you a secret like that, you can't refuse. Either you enthusiastically accept, or they start thinking of how to keep you from talking. If I had openly rejected them and stayed on the Project, or if I'd just fled onto the street, they would have hunted me down. So I pretended to enthusiastically accept, and they made me go through the initiation ceremony. And that's where it really got strange, M
att. Candles and robes and blood oaths. They congratulated me and I acted like it was my heart's desire – and as soon as I was out of there I was in tears. As soon as I turned eighteen, I joined the Ascendancy Project so that I wouldn't have to do what they wanted.”
“But of all places, why did you go to Ascendancy?”
“Because the Ascendancy Project keeps you isolated. It locks you into a laboratory with the tightest security in the Solar System. I told the Rothians that I still believed in Star Seed, but this way I could help the Project even more because I would have access to all the computing resources that Ascendancy owns. I don't know if they fully believed me, but they had to leave me alone.”
“What did your parents think of all this?”
“They were the ones who recommended me to Roth. I've never told them the truth.”
“Oh, Synth.”
“Of course, Ascendancy is nonsense too. There's more to human consciousness than software modeling. At least the people there were decent. It was creepy, but it was all voluntary, all ethical. They couldn't start actual irreversible Neuronic Replacement Therapy until I was twenty-one, and by then I made sure to flunk the psych evaluations.”
“Synth, I was your friend. Why didn't you talk to me?”
“You would have thought I was crazy. Besides, your father was Director of Project Security.”
“I should have known that if something was driving our friendship apart, it had to be big.”
“We were both kids, in over our heads. I remember how I kept you at a distance.”
“That's in the past now. I know you're trying to investigate Roth and Spencer, and I want to help.”
“I can't ask you to do that.”
“You're not asking. I'm volunteering. Hey, I'm a celebrity now, you know? One of the few people to cloneport 'in the other direction.' I have a permanent planetary visa and receive oodles of extra woo just for breathing. Let me help, Synth. Don't turn me away. I came forty trillion kilometers to help.”
She stared at his face for a long time. “You're serious, aren't you?”
“I am.”
“I didn't know you cared that much.”
“I didn't know either until I heard you were involved in this.”
