Halo

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