Asimov's SF, October-November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “It's almost,” mused Denise to her son, “as if your predecessor guessed you wouldn't be having much of a fun time in this life!"

  “So he made things even worse for me?” asked Jimmy. “That seems selfish and irresponsible. But I'm not that, am I?” If he wasn't, how could his predecessor have been? Unless, perhaps, by deliberate choice, by going against the grain.

  “Of course you aren't selfish, darling. I mean, it's as if your past-self guessed, given your, um, physical attributes, that you might just as well devote this life to earning lots of money. If you can clear nine million, obviously you're on your way to racking up a small fortune for your successor. He, that's to say you, can have gorgeous bimbos and surf in Hawaii and whatever."

  Whatever his predecessor had lavished money on. But of course you couldn't ask that, because of confidentiality. Why would you want to go into details? A bank not run by human beings could be trusted.

  If you think this was a rather mature conversation to have with a six-year-old, well, that came with modern-day reincarnation. Specific memories of previous lives didn't persist, but maturity came quickly and easily after a few early innocent years. A facility for life in general. It had been so ever since the discovery of how to barcode souls. You could get in the saddle and pick up the reins much faster, whereas before you were groping blindly.

  True, you might be reincarnated anywhere in the world, and there you'd stay with your birth parents. However, barcode scanners uploaded to the A.I. everywhere from Kazakhstan to Kalamazoo. In fact, one vital duty of the A.I. was RC—Rebirth Confidentiality. So the A.I. was a bit like a god in this respect: It Alone Knew All About Everyone. Its other duty being management of the Life-Time Bank.

  * * * *

  Incidentally, there was only one A.I. in the world, distributed everywhere. In the old days nobody had dreamed about the A.I. Exclusion Principle, whereby only one super-intelligence could exist at any one time. This was explained by Topological Network Theory and the Interconnectedness Theorem. Any other evolving networks would instantly be subsumed within the first one that had arisen.

  Some scientists suggested that the existence of the A.I. distributed everywhere had caused souls to be barcodable. And some far-out scientists even suggested that until the A.I. became self-aware not all souls reincarnated of their own accord. But these were deep questions. Meanwhile, practicalities...

  “A predecessor who's able to predict is impossible,” said Mike. “I can't predict anything except that your Mom and me both need to save!” Did one detect a note of panic?

  “I know you can't help me pay my debt,” Jimmy said maturely. “It's everyone for himself. Democracy, no dynasties.” The boy drew himself up as much as he could. “To everyone their own chance in life. It would be dumb to leave money to kids who are merely your biological offspring. My predecessor might have been a Bushman in the Kalahari."

  The impulse to have children who are deeply part of you had taken a bit of a knock with reincarnation, but, on the other hand, breeding instincts die hard, especially if offspring look reasonably similar to their bio-parents. Mostly you could ignore the fact that the soul within was a stranger. Not least since a soul didn't store conscious memories except once in a blue moon. Well, once in every one hundred million births approx, the exception—so to speak—that proved the rule of reincarnation. There were glad media tidings whenever that happened and a young kid remembered, like some Dalai Lama identifying toys from a past life. Of course after the initial flurry such kids and their parents were protected, not made a spectacle of. Right of privacy.

  Denise raised her eyebrows. “I don't know if many Bushmen can go through nine million. What do they spend it on? Bushes?” She laughed. Her eyebrows were tinted apricot, and her hair peach color. You had to have some of life's little luxuries, not fret about saving all the time. If everyone saved and nobody spent much, what would happen about beauticians and ballet dancers and champagne producers? Just for example. Denise worked from home in cosmetics telesales. She put her mouth where her money was, so to speak. Retro was always chic.

  Mike owned a modest but upmarket business called Bumz, specializing in chairs. He'd been reborn with about eighty thousand dollars, revealed when he was six years old. Denise only had one thousand to start off with, though admittedly that was better than minus a thousand.

  Their house, of timber imported as a flat-pack from Canada, enjoyed a front view of a free-range chicken farm that was more like a bird zoo, for this was a salubrious suburb. There were side and rear views of other pleasant houses amidst trees and bushes. Denise had often sat her son on her knee so they could bird-spot through binoculars the various breeds of poultry such as Silver-laced Wyandotes with bodies like mosaic, White Cochins with very feathery feet, Black Leghorns with big red combs, and greenish Australorps.

  Of course, if Jimmy's parents were both car-crashed prematurely—for example, but perish the thought—house and land would revert to the L-T Bank, and Jimmy would need to go to an L-T orphanage till he was sixteen.

  Although disappointed by the bank's statement, Jimmy took the news in his hobbling stride.

  “I'm going to start counting chickens,” he said, “to train my mind to pick up patterns, and estimate."

  “Chickens keep on moving all the time,” observed his mother.

  “Exactly! No, I mean inexactly. I'll need to go into financial prediction, fund management. That's where the big bonuses are."

  “I'd rather hoped you'd join Bumz,” said his father, perhaps feeling a little slighted.

  “No, Dad, I must think big from now on."

  “We have a range of outsize chairs that don't look enormous, so they're flattering to fatties."

  “I'll never be a fatty, Dad. Maybe next time, but not this time. I just can't afford to sympathize. I'm not going into Limbo!"

  Limbo, of course, was what happened if you couldn't clear off most of an inherited debt with the L-T Bank during your lifetime. Black mark on your barcode. The A.I. delayed your reappearance. This was because, now that the economy had been restructured by reincarnation, negative interest and anti-inflation applied to an unpaid debt in between lives. So the debt reduced. But a big debt might take centuries to reduce to zero, and you'd want to pack in as many lives as possible ... until what? Nobody knew, though one day the human race might mutate into something else, or die out.

  Numerous debts did remain unpaid at death, consequently Limbo served to limit the population somewhat. Arguably, the A.I. had devised a way to maintain a kind of utopia on Earth, quite unpredicted by doom-mongers who once bleated that an A.I. might be a tyrant or an exterminator of Homo sapiens. And since nobody needed a heaven any longer—at least probably not for the next few million years—religions apart from Buddhism had tended to die out, which was utopian too.

  Pity about pets. According to the A.I., even the pets with the most personality weren't barcodable. Would have been nice to know that your dead parrot was squawking anew somewhere. Some people had tried giving a healthy bank account to a cat or dog on its last legs, but this didn't cause a barcode. Winsum, losesum, as the saying goes.

  Of course that begged the question of what about chimps. Just 2 percent genetic difference from people; why shouldn't chimps have souls? And what about prehumans such as Neanderthals? Well, it seemed you had to be able to speak lucidly to have a soul. Telling ourselves the story of ourselves is how identity is firmed up—that requires a capacity for complex language. Likewise, for harboring a soul.

  Hey, what about the small number of souls that must have existed ten thousand years ago, and the big number now? Well, there are plenty of unused souls in the ghostlike alternative realities that cling like a cloud around the one actuality. A soul is a ghost that gets a body, and then it's permanently actual. The A.I. had proved this, though the proof was a very long one.

  Some people had suggested that an A.I. couldn't emerge unless it had some sort of body to interact directly with the world—relying
on algorithms wouldn't be sufficient. Well, in a way the A.I. had everybody, every body. Maybe barcoding everybody's soul was the only way an A.I. could emerge—participatorily.

  Incidentally, what year was it when the lady from the bank visited the Robinsons? 210 ABC, After Bar-Coding, that's when. Some people still said 210 AAI, After Artificial Intelligence, but “Ay Ay Aye” sounded a bit like an outcry, and there was nothing to cry out about. ABC was much simpler.

  Life in general hadn't changed all that much in the previous couple of centuries. Of course cheap flights around the world were a thing long gone, but hell, in your next life you might be living in Paris or Tahiti and in this life virtual travel was cheap. Consequently physical tourism was no loss—on the contrary, nowadays the poor of the planet didn't envy the prosperous getting suntans on their patch. In fact rancor at global inequalities had greatly diminished, because in the long run everyone might get their turn as prince or peasant; a fortune gotten in Nebraska could turn up next in Namibia. This also was quite utopian, give or take a residue of religious suicide-fighter-martyrs who seemed almost nostalgic in their fanaticism, and who couldn't export themselves far. Yes indeed, the world was realistically utopian.

  But don't go imagining Jimmy's world as a Matrixiarchy. The A.I. hadn't stored everyone in pods in a collective dream without folks noticing. The A.I. probably needed to experience reality through people, not the other way round. Matrixism was as defunct as Marxism. Some ancient movies were hilarious.

  * * * *

  “Mom,” said Jimmy, “might I be a woman in my next life?"

  “Would you like to be a woman?"

  “I want to have a better body!"

  “You think women's bodies are better?” asked his Dad.

  “Maybe I've already been a woman! Maybe you have!"

  “Son, I think I have a kind of manly spirit."

  Denise chuckled—no, it wasn't a snigger.

  And Jimmy said, “The A.I. must know if men become women, and women men. The Bank might know!"

  Mike shook his head. “Rebirth Confidentiality. Bank only knows barcode account numbers, not names and sexes."

  “Maybe,” said Jimmy, “this is how gay people come about. Womanly spirits in men's bodies. Though you'd think over time people could become either men or women, unless there's a bias."

  Already he was seeking for patterns, as amongst the movements of the hens. Chickens. Poultry, whatever.

  Jimmy continued, “If everyone gets to be a woman and a man, then what counts each time might only be the hormones."

  “Evidently,” said Mike, “the A.I. thinks we oughtn't to know about that side of reincarnation. But anyway, men love other men for manly reasons, not because one of them's a woman in disguise."

  Denise regarded Mike archly. “And women love women for womanly reasons. And you're forgetting about transvestites."

  “Yeah, don't ever forget about transvestites."

  “We did those in school last week in Sex-Ed,” piped up Jimmy.

  “I think,” said Mike, “transvestites are a conspiracy by the fashion industry. Sell twice as many clothes.” But he winked; he was joking.

  Jimmy picked up the binoculars and gazed at the Wyandotes and Leghorns across the way. He had a lot of thinking to do, for a six-year-old chap. But he was bright.

  * * * *

  “He's very bright,” Miss Carson told Denise and Mike during a parents’ evening at school three years later. “The star pupil, as ever."

  “Ever,” said Jimmy, “is probably the crucial word. If I'm clever now, presumably I was always clever, and that can't change—or can it? I mean seriously, does it? Was my predecessor a bit dumb to run up a nine million debt? A bit lacking in the thought department?"

  “Maybe your predecessor had a brain problem,” suggested Miss Carson helpfully. “I often wonder what happens in his next life to a kid with Downs. If he gets a normal brain next time, does he brighten up? Do we have a brain-mind-soul dilemma here?"

  “A dilemma,” said Jimmy, “is two lemmas, not three, from the Greek di, two, and lemma, something received, an assumption. Mathematically it means a short theorem used in proving a larger theorem."

  “Don't be insufferable,” said Denise, “or else I won't buy you an ice cream."

  “Though actually there are lots of Lemmas, such as Abel's Lemma, Archimedes’ Lemma, Farkas's Lemma, Gauss's Lemma, Hensel's Lemma, Poincaré's Holomorphic Lemma, Lagrange's Lemma, Schur's Representation Lemma, and Zorn's Lemma."

  “No ice cream!"

  “Mom, I only said such as. I didn't list all the Lemmas."

  “He's probably a genius,” said Miss Carson. “But he's popular, not insufferable. He'll help anyone with their homework. He doesn't tee off the teachers much either."

  “Enlightened self-interest,” explained Jimmy. “It would be dire to be dumb in life after life, the way most people ... Sorry, that's patronizing."

  “Well, son,” said Mike, “have you thought that maybe there's swings and roundabouts, or alternatively craps and..."

  “...poker,” said Jimmy. Already he had finessed his pocket money considerably by on-line gambling.

  “I may be old-fashioned,” said Miss Carson, “but I think that a genius should devote himself to helping the human race."

  “A race is what life is,” avowed Jimmy. “Geniuses are often a bit twisted. Who knows at any particular moment in time what'll prove helpful to Homo sap? Van Gogh earned millions—for other people after he died."

  “Van Go,” Miss Carson semi-echoed.

  “Goff,” Jimmy corrected her gutturally in a Dutch way.

  * * * *

  Of course the other kids in school all knew what they would inherit, or anti-inherit, come the age of sixteen. Sharon Zaminski particularly boasted about her forthcoming future of lavish self-indulgence, which in fact she'd already embarked on anticipatively on the strength of a very high interest loan from her parents. That's why her nickname in school was Jools. Sharon really adorned herself, and there was increasingly more of her to adorn due to her liking for very creamy gourmet meringues; already she had false teeth, the best that money could buy, much better than her original teeth. Indeed she wore jewels on her teeth where other girls might have braces. She was a real princess. It's always fun to have an airhead princess around, especially if she hands out gifts willy-nilly to stay popular.

  “Don't you bother about your Mom and Dad charging you 500 percent?” Jimmy asked her one day.

  “They needed to borrow the money at 100 percent."

  “Bit of a mark-up."

  “People have to make their way.” She grinned sparklingly. “Most people have to."

  Jimmy wondered what Jools could have done in her previous life to make a fortune. Had she been the trophy wife of a billionaire? Surely not even a high-class prostitute could have amassed as much as Jools claimed! Maybe she really had been a princess or a queen.

  Jimmy hadn't kept quiet about his huge debt, so as to balance off in other people's minds—in addition to his physical demerits—his evident genius, which might otherwise have caused resentment.

  And then at the other end of the scale there was Tamara Dexter, who owed a lot, and who wasn't remarkably bright, though she showed signs of developing significant non-financial assets. She did talk about prostitution as a solution, so she was keeping herself pure and pristine for better value.

  “Surely you'll need to practice,” Jimmy said to her a year or so later. “You know, positions and dexterity and whatnot."

  “Not with you!” Tamara retorted, as if Jimmy was concocting an ingenious plan to seduce her as soon as puberty arrived.

  “A client might be ugly,” he observed, just to tease her.

  “I'm going to major in gymnastics,” she declared.

  * * * *

  A scientific genius often has his best ideas when fairly young. Given the head-start benefit of reincarnation, by the age of twelve Jimmy was tutoring the math and science teachers a
bit after school. More importantly, he'd drafted a general theory of soul barcoding. It needed to be a general theory—about the principles involved—because the barcode on a soul wasn't visible, no more than the soul itself was visible.

  CAT-scanning the brain—or the heart, or any of your organs or limbs for that matter—was no help at all in locating a barcode. So how did the actual bar-code scanners function? Well, the A.I. had designed those, and organized their mass-production and use—and the barcode scanners delivered the goods, or rather a long number that was probably encrypted.

  You might visualize a striped soul, with thick and thin bars on it—invisibly—but that probably didn't correspond to reality if the soul was distributed, say, in an electromagnetic somatic aura, or subtle body. Subtle, as opposed to physical. Etheric.

  Or maybe the soul lurked in the rolled-up micro-dimensions demanded by string theory; and that's where the alternative realities hung out. A couple of dozen bits of string side by side look quite like a barcode. In using the term barcode, the A.I. might have been aiming for a populist touch. You could readily imagine a barcode, as on a can of carrots, even an invisible one that only revealed itself at a certain wavelength. People wouldn't want to visualize their souls as rolled up bits of string, like fluff in a tiled kitchen collecting up against a skirting board.

  Jimmy's general theory pointed towards the micro-dimensions explanation. But alternatively, it also pointed to the junk DNA in everyone's genetic code that seems to have no purpose whatever. Maybe the thick and thin lines of a barcode corresponded to varying lengths of junk interrupting those stretches of DNA that did something useful. Jimmy coined the name knuj for junk which, in reverse of previous dismissive opinion, coded not for proteins and enzymes, but for soul. However, by what means would a newly deceased individual's knuj become the knuj of a new human embryo thousands of miles away? Maybe topology—the branch of geometry concerned with connectedness—could explain this. Or maybe not. Maybe a new vision of topology was needed, such as a distributed A.I. might understand intuitively, being all over the place but well connected.