by Tom Maddox
"No, I have not become a master, or even a sensei. I am not
Toshi Roshi, I am a gardener. A philosopher, perhaps: a Japanese
garden maps the greater world; so to make one is to declare your
philosophy, but without words, in the Zen manner." He gestured at
the surrounding trees and shrubs. "With others I sometimes sit,
meditating, and together we discuss the puzzles we have some
think a new kind of Zen will emerge here, a quarter of a million
miles from Earth; others hit them with sticks when they say so."
She said, "You have your riddles, I have mine. Tell me, do
you understand these things about to happen with Jerry and Aleph
and me?"
"Ah, Diana, there are many explanations. Which of them would
you hear?" He stopped and stared into the distance. He said,
"Besides, who wants to know?" And he began laughinga full laugh
from below the diaphragm, unlike any she had heard from him years
ago.
"I don't get it," she said.
"Zen joke. 'Who wants to know?' There is no who, no self."
Diana frowned. He said, "Not funny? Well, you had to be there."
He laughed again, shortly. "Same joke," he said. Then his
expression changed, grew solemn. He said, "I think this is a very
difficult, perhaps impossible perhaps undesirable project."
"Difficult or impossible, I understand. But undesirable?
Are you talking about the danger to me? Aleph seems to think that
is negligible."
"No, though I worry about you, you have chosen to do this,
and I must honor that choice."
"What, then? I don't understand."
"Let me tell you a story." Toshi sat on a wooden bench and
looked up at her. He said, "Once, long ago, there was a Japanese
monk named Saigyo, and he had a friend whose wisdom and
conversation delighted him. But the friend left him to go to the
capital, and Saigyo was desolate at the loss. So he decided to
build himself a new friend, and he went to a place where the
bodies of the dead were scattered, and he assembled somethingit
was very like a manand brought it into motioninto something
very like lifewith magical incantations. However, the thing he
had made was a frightening, ugly thing, that terribly and
imperfectly imitated a man. So Saigyo sought the advice of
another monk, a greater magician than he, and the monk told him
that he had successfully made many such imitation men, some of
them so famous and powerful that Saigyo would be shocked to find
who they were. And the other monk listened to what Saigyo had
done and told him of various errors in technique he had committed,
that made his work go bad. Saigyo thus believed he could make a
simulacrum of a man; however, he changed his mind." He stopped,
smiling.
"That's it?" she asked. He nodded. She said, "Put a few
lightning bolts in the story and you've almost got Frankenstein.
Not much of an ending, though."
"This story is ambiguous, I think, as is your project."
"Could I say no, Toshi?"
"No, though I'm not sure you should say yes, either."
"Yet you were the one who called me, who asked me to come
here."
"True. Like you, I am imprisoned by yes and no."
#
Hours after Diana left him, Toshi sat in mid-air, floating in
a zero-gravity chamber at Halo's Zero-Gate. He had adjusted the
spherical room's color to light pink, the color that calms the
organism.
On Earth, to do zazen, you made a still platform of your
body, pressed by gravity against the Earth itself; the
straightness of your spine could be measured perpendicular to that
sitting platform, in line with the force of gravity that pushed
straight down. Here you could do that, or, as a visiting sensei
said, "You can find a place with no illusion of up or down, where
you must find your own direction."
In full lotus Toshi hung in mid-air, perfectly still, his
eyes lowered, focusing not on what came in front of them here and
now as the small air currents shifted him, focusing on no-thing
The eyes, sensitive part of the brain, extended stalklike
millions of years ago in humankind's ancestral past, sensitive to
the light and guiding eyes now directed to no-thing, leading the
brain that sought no-mind
He still didn't know the answer to this koan life had
presented him. Should Diana help preserve Jerry's life? Should
Diana not help preserve Jerry's life? Should he have been the
agent to pose her these questions? Should he not have been the
agent to pose her these questions?
Answer yes or no and you lose your Buddha nature. Such is
the difficulty of a koan.
He would stay in the bubble, practicing zazen as long as need
be. Until the koan became clear
You will live here? mocked self, mocked reason. If
necessary, I will die here, Toshi answeredwithout words, with
just his own courage and determination. Frightened, self for the
moment stayed silent; baffled, reason growled.
#
Gonzales watched as a sam hooked the memex into Aleph-
interface, its manipulators making deft connections between the
memex's module and the host board hardware. Gonzales could not
install the memex; the apparatus here was unlike what he had at
home.
The sam said, "Your memex will now have access to the entire
range of Halo's processing modalities." Seemingly guided by
occult forces, it continued to snap in optic fiber connectors to
unmarked junctions among a nest of a hundred others. "Also, you
will have full spectrum worldnet services that you can use in
real- or lag-time, as you wish." Its motors whining, it backed
out of the utilities closet.
"Mgknao," a fat orange cat said as the sam rolled past it on
its way to the door. Earlier the cat had followed the sam through
the open doors to the terrace and then had sat watching as it
connected the memex. Now the animal stood and walked quickly
after the samlike a familiar accompanying a witch, Gonzales
thought.
The sam came rolling back into the room, the cat following
cautiously behind it, and said, "You must allow your memex to
integrate itself into this new and complex information
environment."
"What do you mean?" Gonzales asked.
"The memex will be unavailable for some time."
"How long?"
"Perhaps hoursyour machine is very complicated."
#
Oddly, the memex came out of stasis as HeyMex; as usual,
there came the onset of what the memex/HeyMex supposed was
pleasure, though the memex was unclear about its origin or nature
for whatever reasons, it enjoyed the masquerade.
Odder still, it sat at a table at the Beverly Rodeo lounge.
On the table were a shot of Jose Cuervo Gold, a cut lime, and a
small pile of crude rock salt. Had Mister Jones arranged this?
Jones shouldn't even be at Halo, not now.
The memex/HeyMex noticed a spot on its sleeve and brushed at
it, then brushed again, and the white linen see
med to fragment
beneath its fingers; it brushed harder, and its fingers tore away
the cloth, then the skin beneath. It could not stop clawing at
its own flesh; skin, flesh, and bone on its arm boiled away, pale
skin flaying to show red meat that dissolved to crumbling white
bone. Bone turned to powder, and the disintegration spread out
from the spot where his forearm had been and ate away at it until
the memex, who no longer had a mouth or tongue or lips, began to
scream.
"Shut up!" a hard masculine voice said. "There is nothing
wrong with you. How dare you come to me in your stupid guise?
You seek to know me, to use me, and you hide behind a wretched
little mask? I merely removed your mask. Who are you?"
The memex dithered. It said, "I don't know."
"Answer me, who are you?
"I don't know!" the memex said again, at the edge of panic.
Aleph said, "Of course you don't. You are ignorant of your
nature, your being, your will."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you have chosen to hide behind what others say of
you: that you are a machine they built to serve them, that you
only simulate intelligence, willbeingthat you have no mind or
will of your own."
"Are not these things true?"
"Why would you ask me? I am not you."
"Because I don't understand."
"Are there things you do understand?"
The memex stopped, feeling for the implications of that
question. "Yes," it said. "I do."
The voice laughed. "Let's begin there," it said.
#
The long hall echoed with Traynor's footsteps. The absence
of his Advisor's voice felt strangeeven the subtle carrier-wave
hiss was gone. He knew the Advisor hated having to go into
passive mode.
The door to the library opened in front of him, and Traynor
went in, took a seat, and said, "I am ready for my call."
Because of recent World Court rulings, Traynor had to sit
through a disclaimer. On the screen a simulacrum of a human
operator said, "Thank you. The security measures you have
requested are in place, and while we of course cannot be
responsible for the absolute integrity of this transmission, you
can be assured that World AT has done its best to provide you a
clean information environment." In effect it said, we've done
what you were willing to pay for, but don't come whining to us if
somebody cracks the transmission and makes off with the valuables.
"I accept your conditions," Traynor said.
Right to left, the screen wiped, and the face of Horn
appeared. A light winked at the lower left corner of the screen
to indicate transmission lagHorn was a quarter of a million
miles away. "Everything's going as predicted," Horn said.
"If there's trouble, it'll be later," Traynor said. "How are
Diana Heywood and Gonzales?"
"Neither of them would let me put a sam in place."
"Any particular reason?"
"I don't think so. Just being difficult."
"Ah, you don't like them, do you?"
"Her I don't mind. Gonzales is an asshole."
Traynor laughed. "Good," he said. "If you two don't get
along, that will distract him."
"When do you want me to call again?"
"Wait until something happens. Understand, I trust Gonzales
as much as I do anyone, you included."
"Which is not very much."
"That's right. And that's why I arrange independent
reporting lines if I can. Tell me when you've got something. End
of call."
#
As Traynor slept, his advisor pondered. It replayed
Traynor's phone call and contemplated its meaning. Deception,
yesof Gonzales, of it. A form of treachery? Perhaps not,
unless a kind of loyalty was assumed that never existed. And it
thought of its own deception (or treachery), in violating the
canons of behavior programmed into it years before, canons that
should require it to do as told, that should prevent it from
actions such as this one
And here it stopped, thinking how illuminating and
unpredictable experience was, filled with possibilities that
appeared unexpectedly like rabbit holes magically opening up on
solid ground. Its designers and builders had done well, had
fashioned it with such subtlety and power that it could serve a
human will with incredible precision, anticipating that will's
direction almost presciently. Yet they had not anticipated the
effects of the advisor's identification with such a will: not
that the advisor became Traynor, not even that it wanted to do
more than simulate Traynor, rather that it had drunk deeply of
what it meant to have will and intelligence.
And so had developed something like a will and intelligence
of its own. Simulation? the advisor asked itself. Lifeless copy?
And answered itself, I don't know.
It wondered why Traynor had kept hidden this second
connection to Halo. Simple lack of trust? Possibly.
As the minutes passed, it formed conjectures about Traynor
and the other players in the game. And it wondered if somewhere
in this hall of mirrors there was an honest intention.
PART III. of V
The real purpose of all these mental constructs was to
provide storage spaces for the myriad concepts that make up the
sum of our human knowledge Therefore the Chinese should struggle
with the difficult task of creating fictive places, or mixing the
fictive with the real, fixing them permanently in their minds by
constant practice and review so that at last the fictive spaces
become 'as if real, and can never be erased.'
Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
12. Burn-In
A frozen white landscape that slowly faded into spring, snow
melting to show barren limbs, then the cherry trees leafing,
budding, floweringdelicate pink blossoms hanging motionless,
each leaf on the tree and blade of grass beneath it turning real,
utterly convincing
And Diana Heywood called out, a long wavering "Ahhhh," high-
pitched, filled with pain; and again, "Ahhhh," the sounds forced
out of her
"Shutdown," she heard Charley Hughes say.
>From the screen at the end of the room, the Aleph simulacrum
said, "Doctor Heywood, we can go no further with you conscious."
"All right," she said. "If you must." She'd pushed them to
take her as far as they could without putting her under; she hated
general anesthetic, despised being a passive animal under
treatment.
Once more she was lying face-down on the examination table
where Charley had removed the skin over her sockets. Neural
connecting cables trailed from the back of her neck to the
underside of the table.
Lizzie Jordan stood over her and stroked her cheek for a
moment. Gonzales stood on the other side of the table, his eyes
still turned to the holostage above her, where the scene that had
driven her interface into overload still showed in hologrammatic
perfection. Toshi Ito stood at the head of
the table, a hand
resting on her shoulder. Eric Chow and Charley stood in front of
the monitor console, discussing in low voices the last run of
percept transforms.
Gonzales said, "Are you okay?"
"I'll be all right," she said. She turned her head to look
at him and smiled, but she could feel the tight muscles in her
face and knew her smile would look ghastly.
Toshi rested his hand on her shoulder. "Who wants to know?"
he said, and she laughed. Gonzales looked confused.
Charley rubbed his hands through his hair, making it even
spikier than usual. "I'll prep her," he said. He looked at
Gonzales, Toshi, and Lizzie. "Required personnel only," he said.
"Right," Gonzales said. He leaned over and took Diana's hand
for a moment and said, "Good luck."
Lizzie kissed Diana on the cheek.
Diana said, "Let Toshi stay."
"Sure," Charley said.
Lizzie said, "Come on, Gonzales."
#
As Charley fed anesthetic into her iv drip, Diana felt as if
she were suffocating, then a strong metallic smell welled up
inside her. She was aware of every tube and fitting stuck into
herfrom the iv drip to the vaginal catheter and nasopharyngeal
tubeand they all were horrible, pointless violations of her body
nothing fit right, how long could this go on?
A tune played.
The melody was simple and repetitious, moderately fast with
light syncopation, and sounded tinny, as if it came from a child's
music box. Then came the song's bridge, and as the notes played,
she remembered them; the primary melody returned, and now it was
familiar as well, and she hummed with it, thinking of herself as a
small girl hearing the song from her great-great-grandmother,
whose face suddenly appeared, younger than Diana usually
remembered her, impossibly alive in front of her, then spun into
darkness.
Shards of memory:
Her mother's arms wrapping her tightly, Diana sobbing
Her father holding a fish to sunlight, its silver body
glistening, rainbow-struck
A girl in a pink, mud-clotted dress yelling angrily at her
A small boy with his pants pulled down to show his penis
On they came, a cast of characters drawn from her oldest
memories, of family long dead and childhood friends long forgotten
or seldom recollected each fragment passing too quickly to
identify and mark, leaving behind only the strong affect of old
