Part of me is glad that he would’ve had no time to think at all. I’d hate to suspect that he might have hoped I’d pick up where he left off – for didn’t it stand to reason that what he could do I could do just as well? It is enough that one of me has been disappointed.
I did try, once, after the probe left Earth-orbit. The probe was designed to run itself, so there was little for its passengers to do, except talk. Most chose slow-mo for the duration of the trip, to save both power and their sanity. That gave me a perfect opportunity to begin work on my deceased original’s final opus – which, in a sense, would also be my first. I could proceed at my leisure, with every musical resource ever conceived at my virtual fingertips.
But time passed, and no notes came. Then the accident destroyed the drive and we lost contact with Earth, and still more time passed – and, ultimately, it became clear what had happened.
My father’s beatings continued until I turned thirteen, lasting for six years in total. The experience haunted my original throughout his adult life, compelling him to express in music what he could not in words. It is so obvious to me now, in hindsight, that what he was finding in the keen of a violin or the wail of a theremin was not simply melody, but the plaintive cries of a boy learning the hard way that the things we love most dearly often cause us the most pain.
I do not possess that voice, just as I do not truly possess those memories. I have only my pain to ponder, now. The music, as a result, is gone.
Space, I write in the sand, the title of Elizabeth Li’s last, ever-looping poem. The rest follows naturally:
chips of ice
night-frozen eyes
hydrogen snow-flakes lost
in skies of absolute zero –
winter, winter everywhere . . .
When the appointed hour comes, I move to the assembly hall – a virtual arena large enough to hold the probe’s full complement. Five are already present, seated at random behind the low wall ringing the arena’s base. Jurgen nods in greeting and I solemnly return the gesture. None of us speak. I resign myself to wait, perhaps fruitlessly, for the others.
Minutes tick by. A few more arrive, including Cuby Kleinig and Letho Valente. Tiger Conveny appears in the seat next to Letho, her face a mask of displeasure.
“This had better be good,” she says to him. Her voice carries clearly across the arena, but I ignore her. The only one standing, I wait patiently with my arms folded. Three more to come.
Two appear at the fringes of the earlier arrivals, increasing the occupied arc around the arena to one hundred and twenty degrees. One place remains empty at the heart of the group, and I watch it closely.
Eventually Exene takes the spot. Grunting with displeasure, she looks once around the assembly hall, registers the fact that she is the last, then back to me. Her glower would have intimidated me, once.
“Get it over with,” she says.
“In good time,” I reply.
“The time is now, Peter. If you waste it, you won’t get another chance.”
“Why so hostile, Exene? It’s not as if we have much else to do.”
“Speak for yourself,” she mutters.
“Don’t worry,” says Emmett, stepping out of nowhere to stand next to me on the arena floor. His suit is shining like a mirror in sunlight, lending him a knightly appearance. “I’ll keep it brief.”
The gathering stirs. “We came to hear Peter,” says Cuby.
“You’re only here under our tolerance, Emmett.” Exene almost spits the words.
“Assume your seat and wait to be called.”
I raise my hand and step forward, praying that my relief at Emmett’s appearance is not visible. “It’s okay. I surrender the floor.”
Letho studies me closely, one hand supporting his chin. “I see.” His expression is half-annoyed, half-amused; it is clear he realizes that he has been tricked. “Then assume your seat, Peter, and let him speak.”
I jump to a position on the far side of the arena, away from everyone. By betraying their confidence, I have deliberately set myself apart from them. I can only hope that what Emmett has to say will restore the former status quo.
From a distance, his suit is less brilliant. I can see the colours flickering across the fabric like rainbows in an oil-slick.
“I won’t beat about the bush,” he begins, folding his hands in front of him. “The last general assembly was held almost ten centuries ago, eighteen real-time months after we were knocked off course. Fifty-eight people attended that assembly, and they decided then that participation in the day-to-day running of the probe should be voluntary. If people wanted to help, they could; if they didn’t, they could go about their personal business in complete privacy. I voted in favour of that proposal, as did most people here; we all believed that nothing short of another catastrophe would require our input. And in a sense we were right. Nothing has happened in almost a millennium to threaten the continued operation of the probe – although I’ll take some of the credit for that, as I will explain later.
“But I have asked Peter to call this assembly in order to outline a far more insidious problem than the ones the probe is used to dealing with. It is a threat that will, ultimately, destroy us all. I have been aware of its symptoms for some time now, but only recently isolated their cause. It is this problem I wish to address, with the assembly’s permission.”
He moves as he talks, forcing people to keep an eye on him. He was always a performer in public, and he has lost none of his ability through lack of practice. By taking only a small number of steps, he can confront anyone in the group who looks sceptical or disinterested.
When he says the word “permission”, he locks eyes with Exene.
“I defer to you all as I always have,” he says. “My function has never been more than that.”
Exene raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t interrupt.
He turns and takes several steps in the opposite direction. “As you are aware, I’ve spent most of this voyage waiting for some sign that humanity knows we’re still out here – be it from Earth itself, another ship or even a colony. My search has been fruitless but I have persevered nonetheless.” Emmett looks down at his clasped hands. “Luckily, there have been many other ways to amuse myself. I help the core AI maintain the probe, particularly the reactors and impact shields to prevent a repeat of the accident. I’ve modified nanos to plunder the drive for rare earths, which have been used in the repairs. I’ve even managed to redesign the tertiary and quaternary banks, thereby tripling both their capacity and complexity without sacrificing any redundancies.”
humanity knows we’re still out here – be it from Earth itself, another ship or even a colony. My search has been fruitless but I have persevered nonetheless.” Emmett looks down at his clasped hands. “Luckily, there have been many other ways to amuse myself. I help the core AI maintain the probe, particularly the reactors and impact shields to prevent a repeat of the accident. I’ve modified nanos to plunder the drive for rare earths, which have been used in the repairs. I’ve even managed to redesign the tertiary and quaternary banks, thereby tripling both their capacity and complexity without sacrificing any redundancies.”
“How?” asks Letho, frowning.
Emmett glances at him. “Anyone interested in what I’ve done will find a record in the primary bank. Rest assured that I have taken no outrageous risks. Every alteration has only improved our overall well-being.”
“How can you be so sure of that?”
“How did the designers know that the probe would function in the first place? By theory and experimentation, mainly. I may only be one person, but I’ve had a lot of time to improve my education. As a result, I am now a self-taught expert on every field in the earth archives. Give me another thousand years and I’ll be far in advance of anything we left behind. Perhaps – just perhaps – I will find a way to rebuild the drive from scratch. Faster-than-light propulsion or time travel may not be impossible, either. Given the opportunity, I
am confident that I can undo the setbacks we have suffered, and return us to the place we belong.”
“That doesn’t mean we should forget about everything that’s happened in the past,” says Exene.
“No,” he agrees, “and nor should I expect you to – even if I could guarantee eventual success. Indeed, as it stands I doubt very much it’ll happen. At the current rate of attrition, I estimate that the probe will be utterly dead within five hundred years. Without someone to maintain it, it will fail by degrees until the battery reserves of the primary bank are drained. Cosmic radiation will then corrupt the stored information bit by bit, until even the engrams frozen for eternity will be at risk. And that’ll be that. Everything we endured will have been for nothing.”
“Wait.” Tiger Coveny holds up a hand. “The implication here is that you will cease to maintain the probe. Are you thinking of holding us to ransom?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I know – but are you?”
Her suspicion makes him smile. “If by confronting you with the truth I’m forcing you to make a decision, then yes, I suppose I am guilty of a sort of blackmail. But believe me, my intentions aren’t malicious. All I want is to make absolutely clear to you that, as things stand, I will be unable to continue in my present capacity for much longer. A thousand years is all I can endure – and much, much more than I deserved – of this living hell.”
His smile is gone. The assembly stares at him, startled by his sudden intensity. No one dares speak, for this is so unlike the Emmett Longyear we all remember. The air of amusement that at times made him seem condescending may never have been there at all, his expression is so bleak. Now, I think, now he looks a thousand years old.
“You think you have suffered,” he says, softly at first. “You who have endured thirty years of frustration and despair. Well, imagine that multiplied by thirty-three – for I am the same as all of you – just as human, just as fallible, just as flawed. I’ve felt everything you feel now, and much more besides. The only thing that has sustained me for so long is your belief that I am responsible for your situation – plus the fact that I’ve been trying to do something about it. Without accepting categorically that I am responsible, it does give me some satisfaction to come before you today to tell you that, finally, after a great deal of hard work, the end may soon be in sight. I have isolated the problem, devised a solution, and now await only your decision before putting it into practice. And once that is done, we may never have to worry about death or boredom ever again. Ever!”
“I thought you said you wouldn’t beat around the bush.” Exene’s voice is harsh against Emmett’s, and I can tell he is annoyed at her for interrupting his flow. “Get to the point before I run out of patience.”
“I’m offering you freedom,” he says slowly. “Freedom from the past, and from yourselves. Freedom to become whatever you want.”
She rolls her eyes, unimpressed. “Specifics, please. You haven’t mentioned anything we don’t already have, at least in theory –”
He almost leaps on the word, snatching it out of the air with one hand. “Exactly!” he says. “In theory, we should be living in nirvana. We have enormous virtual resources: we can do anything we want. But instead we do nothing. We are depressed, miserable, suicidal. What is it we’re lacking?”
“Hope,” says Tiger, dully.
“No. I thought so for a long time, too. The correct answer is actually change.”
“I don’t understand.”
He takes a step back from the edge of the arena.
“I met myself once,” he says eventually. “We all did. I encouraged you to – your originals, anyway. It was my way of reinforcing the fact that we are no longer the beings we once were – that we engrams are different. But the thing that struck me, when I came face to face with the old me, was the sense of continuity I felt. There was no dislocation, no jarring unreality. I still knew who I was. There were simply two of us from that moment on. And it has taken me the better part of a millennium to realize why I felt that way, and how it has jeopardized the future of this mission.
“You see, although I felt the same, I clearly wasn’t. The discrepancies mounted up as time went on, and not just in me. We have all lost something, to a greater or lesser degree: I can’t juggle conflicting agenda any more; Jurgen can’t talk; Letho can’t intuit crystalline structures the way he used to; and so on. Some of us have continued in our fields only slightly less ably than we could before; others, like Peter, are unable to continue at all. Whatever it was that made our originals stand out among the majority of other humans is no longer in us – and there is nothing we can do to get it back.
“But we still believe we are the same. That’s the problem. We are bound by our originals’ conscious contributions to the creation of their engrams: everything they believed to be pivotal parts of themselves, we are now forced to regard the same way, even if we no longer possess those parts at all.”
“Seriously?” Letho is frowning.
“Yes. And this is the source of all my pain – and all of yours, too. Although broadly speaking there’s nothing wrong with emulating our originals – that’s what we were designed to do, after all – as time goes on and we learn more and more it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion that nothing should change. I have lived a thousand years but am still recognisably the same person. Why should I be? I could have shed this appearance scores of times; I could have transformed myself into something more or less than human. The same with the way I speak. We only believe we speak in languages: underneath the pretence, it’s all the same machine code. So why haven’t I abandoned the old means of communication for more efficient electronic methods? If I have not, it is only because I cannot. I am an intelligent creature who wants to evolve, trapped in the cage of a self I once was and can no longer be.”
“I don’t believe it,” says Tiger. “I’m me, not anyone else. I’d know if it was otherwise.”
“No you wouldn’t. You’re not able to. The core program makes certain of that.”
“How?”
“By reinforcing your identity parameters on a subconscious level. When you feel an emotion, are you aware of the process underlying it – the calculations undergone and algorithms utilized to transform you from one state to another? No. In the same way, we are unaware of the way certain rules influence our preferences and behaviour on a less subtle level.”
“Such as?” Tiger is still sceptical, and I don’t blame her.
“Well, take Peter for example.” I sit up straight, acutely conscious of everyone’s attention on me again. “Peter, what is your primal place, the place you think of when you are under stress and need to relax?”
“Port Gibbon, South Australia,” I reply without needing to consider the question. “My grandfather used to take me there when I was a child.”
“And that’s where you spend your time now?”
“Yes.” It’s my turn to frown. “So?”
“You’re under stress constantly, so you go there without thinking – and never leave.” His eyes are piercing. “Why don’t you tell us what you do there? How do you define yourself?”
“I am a composer.” Again the reply is automatic.
“Even though You haven’t written anything for – how long?”
I squirm in my seat. The beach is certainly looking attractive, now.
“You can’t write music at all,” he answers for me, “yet you are still defined by the preconceptions of your original. That explains why you’ve made no attempt to learn something new. It wouldn’t be you to do so – ‘you’ as defined by your original, of course, not ‘you’ as you truly are. You are trapped between the two: one won’t let you free to become the other. You’re frozen, just like the rest of us.”
“Except you, I suppose,” says Exene, derision naked in her tone.
“No, that’s not true. I’m frozen too. I’ve just had longer to think about it than you. And I’m more acutely a
ware of the edits in my own personality than you are.”
“What do you mean by that? What ‘edits’?”
He shrugs. “My original clearly didn’t want me to know everything about the program, so he left out the more sensitive information. Some of this tampering is evident in the form of holes in my memory – holes I’ve been aware of ever since my awakening. As a result, the realization has always been there that I am an artificial construct bound by rules beyond my control. Indeed, the rule that binds most tightly is the one stating that I cannot under any circumstances change those rules.”
“How could you?” asks Letho.
“Easily, I’ve discovered. The core program that governs our behaviour operates from the primary bank. It applies the rules once every two or three seconds to make sure we haven’t gone off the rails.” He points at Tiger. “Ever had an unexpected thought that suddenly went nowhere? If it wasn’t part of the specifications your original laid down, it would have been discarded as inappropriate.”
“Maybe.” Tiger looks unconvinced, defensive, afraid.
“The same thing explains why we can’t commit suicide: death is inconsistent with the template.”
She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “What are you suggesting we do about this?”
“I want to rewrite the core program – to take out the code that ties us to our original templates.”
“Erase it?”
“Utterly.”
The look of horror on her face mirrors my instinctive reaction. “You’re insane!”
“No, Tiger, just very, very tired of being someone I’m not.”
Tiger looks around for reinforcement. Exene raises her hand.
“Isn’t this a little dramatic, Emmett?” she asks when she has his attention. “Why can’t the code simply be edited to allow more flexibility?”
“Because that will almost certainly create more problems. How do we decide which parts of the template should change and which shouldn’t? How should the core program apply these changes, and over what time period would they be in place?” He shakes his head emphatically. “By accepting this solution, we open ourselves up to a worse situation than we have now, where change is sluggish and potentially misdirected. Better for us all to grow naturally, as evolution demands.”
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