Chasing Shadows: Visions of Our Coming Transparent World

by David Brin

  “I prefer to think of it as retired from the world,” Binh Yen said. If she’d had deeper authorizations, she might have seen saffron robes, or hemp, or maybe nothing at all. He obviously didn’t like to advertise the fact.

  “You know me.”

  “I remember you,” Binh Yen said. “I always thought Anh Ngoc did you a great disservice.”

  “How so?” She didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to talk about this, but she owed him. For the Inmost Layer, and her loss of control.

  He smiled, a bare quirk of the lips. “Her new husband doesn’t have half your fire. You’ve met him?”

  “No.” The words stung. “I’ve barely met Anh Ngoc.”

  “Of course.” Binh Yen made a dismissive gesture. “Ngoc was always … prickly. Like a durian fruit.”

  In spite of herself, Thanh found herself smiling, a bare tightening of her lips. “You still haven’t told me why you’re talking to me, and not to anyone else.”

  Binh Yen shook his head. “I’ve talked to people. But sometimes you just want to be alone, don’t you?” He sighed. “I’ve come to see the child, in truth. I don’t have much in common with Anh Ngoc’s friends.”

  “There must be other relatives.” Thanh had caught a glimpse of them, and had steered well clear.

  “Of course,” Binh Yen said smoothly. “At the center of their own little courts.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hands. “We had … an argument.”

  Things Thanh had seen for only half a second flashed across her mind: transactions and authorizations and carefully worded memorials. “Inheritance,” she said, before she could stop herself. “You disapproved.”

  Binh Yen watched her for a while. She wished she could see his face, or his eyes, or anything that would give her a hint of what he thought. The level of conversation they were having was a jarring mismatch for the authorizations he’d given her. “Of course,” he said at last. “You’re Inmost Layer, aren’t you? Knowing everything and everyone.”

  “I—” She took a deep, trembling breath. Breach breach breach, but there was no avoiding it. She’d already slipped, already failed. “I wasn’t meant to look. But I did. I’m sorry.”

  Binh Yen was silent, again; Thanh braced herself for a rebuke, or even for freezing silence, a withdrawing of all authorizations, the strongest castigation in station life—but his silhouette didn’t waver or move. “We all fail,” he said. His voice was low, expressionless, but not unkind.

  “I don’t,” Thanh said, slowly. “Didn’t.” Because there was no point in arguing the obvious, was there?

  “We all fail,” Binh Yen repeated. “And all forgive ourselves, eventually.” And then, after a while, “I argued that our great-grandmother’s inheritance should go to her youngest and poorest descendants, instead of to the eldest. That was … unfilial of me.”

  “But…” Thanh wanted to say something about the eldest helping their own children, but she couldn’t find something that wouldn’t sound hopelessly, inappropriately familiar. “Surely they should stand by you.”

  Binh Yen smiled again, that odd expression on a face that wouldn’t quite come into focus. “And perhaps I’m the one who isn’t standing by them. Who knows?” He made that same dismissive gesture, as if he were one of the monks, releasing birds into the sky and watching them fly away. “I burden you, younger aunt. With an old man’s conversation.”

  “No, not at all. I—just needed peace and quiet.” For the first time since coming to the party, she didn’t feel on edge, not ill at ease or angry or struggling to conceal hurt. “But I didn’t…” She spread her hands. “I didn’t mean to stay that long.” Didn’t meant to talk to him—didn’t mean to wrong him, and yet she had, and she couldn’t take it back.

  We all forgive ourselves, eventually. And forgive others, and move on, or be swallowed by pride, and anger, and bitterness.

  “Perhaps you didn’t.” His voice was shrewd. “The hour is getting late.” Overhead, night had fallen; the moon was waning and there was … a restlessness in the air, a background of quiet mutterings among the guests. Binh Yen was watching Anh Ngoc who, regal as ever, was chatting with someone in the robes of a Greater Rings official. But her face was taut, her gaze wandering left and right. Late, and the promised Master had not come.

  Big’sis? Is it still ongoing?

  Hours, Hoang Cuc had said. Hours of waiting with impatient, important guests who were not used to waiting, or to prevarication. A party that was slowly going stale, and everything Anh Ngoc had worked for—the ceremony that should have been a pinnacle of achievement, of enlightening conversations, of sharing of elegant verses and fine food—a failure that would be the talk of the station for days and days.

  It would serve her right.

  Thanh would have said that, a moment ago, she would have turned and walked away as she’d meant to. But …

  Big’sis?

  Silence, on her comms—no comforting words, no biting reproaches—just her, facing herself, facing Anh Ngoc, who would never answer her.

  “Tell me,” she said to Binh Yen. “About Anh Ngoc.”

  “What should I tell you?”

  What she wanted to hear. That Anh Ngoc was going to see her, to talk to her, to say she was sorry, and laugh as she’d used to laugh, hug her in a welter of jasmine and sandalwood perfume. That Thanh just had to wait long enough, and it would happen.

  But then, she already knew everything there was to know about Anh Ngoc, didn’t she? “She invited me here because I was someone, didn’t she? Because I made her look good.”

  “I can’t apologize for her,” Binh Yen said, at last. “Or rather, I could, but I don’t think they would be the words you’d want or need to hear.”

  “No. They wouldn’t.” Thanh had come expecting intimacy, and reconciliation, but it would never happen—because Anh Ngoc didn’t apologize, because the time for that closeness had passed. And Thanh could hold on to that grudge forever and ever, keep that old well of hurt bleeding under layers and layers of renewed grudges, keep turning into everything she despised, into someone who breached again and again, and made sorry excuses for it—or she could, once and for all, let go.

  No, she couldn’t. She wasn’t that much of a fool, that much of a weakling. There was no way. “Tell me,” she said to Binh Yen again, but he merely spread his hands.

  “There’s not much else I can tell you,” Binh Yen said.

  He’d said … He’d said Anh Ngoc had done her a great disservice. That she was the one wronged, the one who could hang on to her rightful anger.

  Except, of course, that it was untrue.

  Anger twisted her out of shape; anger made her inefficient, forgetful of her obligations and her duties. Anger made her breach. She was Master of the Inmost Layer, not some quivering, faint-headed girl unable to get over her first love—and she, like the other Masters, held in trust the privacy of the entire station.

  She’d failed once, and it was one time too many.

  Thanh took in a deep, trembling breath. I’m not doing this for her, she said, slowly, to the silent, comforting presence of Hoang Cuc. She could say it was for Binh Yen’s sake, but that would have been untrue, too—it was for no one’s sake but her own.

  “Can you—” she asked Binh Yen—her voice dipped, faltered, and then grew stronger as the words came one by one, falling into place with the weight of a magistrate’s inevitable verdict. “Can you take me to Anh Ngoc? I can help her.”

  And, as she slipped into her formal role—as she walked across the courtyard overlay, the proper words of the First Presentation ceremony running in her mind like a litany she clung to—as she steeled herself for meeting Anh Ngoc’s gaze again, for seeing the face of a child who could have been hers—she thought of Binh Yen’s hands opening up; and imagined her old hurt, like a caged bird, taking flight in the overlay’s sky, and finally fading away into darkness.

  It remains up to us. Adapt to change …

  … or choose not to.
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  AFTERSHIFT MEMORIES

  DAVID RAMIREZ

  A locker room. Steel doors painted gray, yellow-tiled floor. It smells of disinfectant, old soap, stale water.

  In his surroundings. But not hers.

  His fingertip slides the lockout switch on one arm of his glasses.

  How much privacy do I really have? In theory, his peers and the hospital administrators cannot access the feed from his glasses, but nothing stops C4Duceus itself from observing. What does the hospital AI make of our non-work-related behaviors?

  He sees translucent imagery flooding over the locker room, subduing the here-and-now, a bright day’s sky outside a window. Not winter but apparently springtime. The view shifts down at small feet in black patent-leather shoes, standing on the red flooring he associates with the elementary schools of his childhood.

  Motion superimposed over stillness. When not at full opacity, it can be jarring, but he is used to it. Her voice comes across from far away—in space, in time—yet is right here, projected as if within his skull. A trick of acoustics, a bug in the audio.

  “You’re in your last year, B. It’s not much longer.…”

  His words sound strange to himself.

  “I’m missing out on so much.”

  “Just hang in there.”

  Bells ring.

  “Recess is done, B. I have to see to the kids.”

  Below, schoolchildren run across a green field of tall grass, bright against the skin of their legs. Grades 1 through 3 are still in khaki shorts. The long pants are for grades 4 and up. He recalls when they first met, and how she told him, years later, that he looked kind of like a worm, but in a nice way.

  “Okay.” His words hesitate. “Love you, Grace. Give Jay my love too.”

  “You’ll get through this, B. It’s just one of your moods. You’ll see.”

  The recording ends.

  * * *

  He goes through the menu. That call was last week. Okay, not so long ago, in time, but still so far away.

  Dr. Bayani lies on his shoulder, arm numb, wandering the gray zone between asleep and awake. There is a pot of coffee, one hour old, in his blood. Caffeine crackles along his nerve. Bladder shifts, stretches.

  His eyes seem directed at the whiteboard on the wall. Once, it was used for the I. M. residents’ duty schedule and rotations. Now obsolete, it’s just doodles and morbid doctor humor. A safer space than the forever of the online. When a budget is found, it will be replaced with a wall-mounted touch-screen dynaTerminal linked to the hospital systems. There have been many promises of additional funding, and sometimes the money even comes through.

  It is not the whiteboard he sees.

  Over his face lie glasses with wire frames and little round lenses, windows to another reality. Light flickers upon the inner surfaces, another externalization of memory.

  * * *

  He sees what the cameras in her own consumer glasses saw … when did these images come from?

  When she turns her head to the side and looks down, he sees her bare, brown arm leading down to a delicate hand with calluses, and the shiny spots of old, healed burns. In her hand—a much tinier one, leading to a boy with a solemn face, looking back at her.

  Dr. Bayani, on his cot, imagines that he ought to feel more. Jay does not look like this anymore. Does not laugh so suddenly like this, face in wonder at something out of view. He is growing up so serious.

  Summer’s light against broad-leafed shades of green in the background. Spots of moisture on their shirts, wicked away from the skin by smart fabrics. When is it not hot in Manila?

  She glances to the side. There is a rail. Beyond and below the rail there is water, and from it rises the ruined hulks of the past—former luxury hotel cabañas for rich businessmen and foreign tourists, gorging on breakfast buffets and room service, with people to wash and press their clothes, answer phones, schedule meetings. Now, home to migrant workers, hauling nets of trash. Luminescent lines, just under the water, grow upgened spirulina capturing carbon from the air, processed into gray-green nutrient bricks to be sold to food companies.

  The boy turns away and looks up his left arm, at a man. Grace lifts her gaze and there he is, a younger Bayani, smiling at them both.

  “Will there be lots of money, Dad? When you’re a doctor?”

  “Well, things will be better, anyway.”

  He is smiling at him, at her, and the Bayani of the present sees the one of the past and wonders what she sees in him. Warmth and sweetness, joy, hand-in-hand.

  An alarm vibrates through his skull.

  * * *

  The picture vanishes, the lenses clear, HUD coming to life as words scroll across his vision.

  Pt. M. Andrews, Rm. 312; impending cardiac event.

  Details flash. So many patients over so many hours. Which is Andrews? Data appears before he requests it. ECG looks normal. But beyond what his brain can process, there are patterns. The beeping intensifies.

  “I’m going, I’m going,” he mutters, wincing. Cuts the alarm.

  Rolls off the cot. Coat on, stet, steady jog, IntelliPod shoes silent against the tiles.

  It is an old hospital. There is a weight to the air, despite new paint and shiny tech integrated with the walls.

  Year three of Phase 3.

  His friends in the surgical department complain that the animated guides and haptic feedback are stiff and constraining. But for internal medicine? Dr. Bayani suspects that C4Duceus has leapfrogged beyond human perception, beyond the best cardiologists, to predicting imminent heart attacks. For in-hospital Code Blue scenarios, the warnings come farther and farther in advance of the actual incidents; it started at a few seconds and now—

  Almost a full minute after the Pre-Alarm, an announcement on the hospital’s legacy system echoes through the empty halls, as Pt. Andrews goes into arrest.

  A timer starts counting up from zero.

  Code blue. Code blue. Rm 312. A cold voice over the speakers. He has heard that a warmer, more easily understood voice is being synthesized based on an amalgamation of all doctors with C4Duceus glasses.

  He is not looking forward to C4Duceus being able to talk.

  Pt. Andrews’ ECG live feed glows in the corner of Dr. Bayani’s field of vision, the line a bright red ugliness, a heart squeezing incorrectly in a body that begins to die. The patient’s medical history is available too. Lab results, family history, work history, the entire life of Madison Andrews—if needed, the microcameras in the frame would detect the movements of his eyes, and open displays with the relevant information.

  During orientation, he was constantly opening tabs and menus by accident, but by now, he has adjusted to the control scheme of the model C4D AR goggles, as much as the goggles have adjusted, self-calibrating to him.

  A blink and a timeline opens on his right, floating letters on a ghost clipboard at his side. As Dr. Bayani speeds into a full run, each event is time-stamped and recorded.

  Code: 10 seconds. Autonomous crash cart 4 at bedside.

  Code: 33 seconds. Nurse Baxter at bedside. Chest compressions.

  Code: 51 seconds. Intern Johns at bedside. Bag-valve mask.

  Code: 104 seconds. Dr. Reyes at bedside. Intubation.

  He slows through the doorway, gets his breathing under control, and takes in the changes to Patient Andrews’ vitals recorded by sensors in the smartMetrics bed and transmitted to the adaptive screens on the walls, and onto the glasses worn by the code team.

  They say their hellos.

  “Doctor Bayani.”

  “Sir.”

  “Doctors. Nurse Baxter.”

  Hellos—before C4Duceus, there would be no time for chatter during a Code, but now that each of their glasses can access all the data and guidelines at a blink.… Dr. Bayani has to resist the urge to ask Reyes to report what’s going on—everything that’s happened thus far is already on his HUD and it would waste time.

  “A bit slow today, Bay?” Dr. Reyes does not even lo
ok at him as she prepares an injection of epinephrine.

  In so many little ways, Reyes enjoys needling him. He holds in the acid comebacks she likes to induce in him.

  At the third minute since the arrest began, Reyes announces, unnecessarily, “Administering 1 mg epi.”

  Observe, assess. C4Duceus displays a scrolling decision tree summarizing advanced cardiac life support procedures at the edge of his peripheral vision. The team grumbles, bleary-eyed during another long night, but they perform their tasks with precise timing and technique, guided by their headsets. For a moment, Dr. Bayani wonders if Reyes’ intubation was so smooth on her own skill, or if she was a puppet, hands following the animated guides and haptic feedback of the system wired into the sleeves of the white coat.

  ECG micropatterns too subtle for humans upload wirelessly to distributed databases, are compared against aggregated cases across all institutions participating in Phase 3.

  Evaluating. Evaluating.

  The other residents have nicknames for C4Duceus. BroDoc. AutoDoc. AutoBones. Some talk to it as if it were another physician, standing just out of view. Perhaps they look forward to it speaking with a human-ish voice. He wonders if they notice that they treat it with more respect than the training officers. Understandable. The system never yells or badgers, it does not take pleasure in quizzing them “to keep them on their toes.” It doesn’t judge.

  To Dr. Bayani, C4Duceus is a swarm of spiders, everywhere along an otherworldly web. One baby spider haunting each headset, chittering with all the others, and secreted across Elan Medical Systems’ server farms, the massive, bloated, many-legged, many-eyed mother at the heart of it all. There is something spooky about their predictive algorithms, their awareness of everything in the vicinity of the glasses. Sometimes it seems the spider is in his head instead of software communicating with a very expensive interactive terminal on his face.

  Prepare for defib, his spider instructs. The moment approaches.

  While the others continue cardiac life-support tasks, he prepares the pads, applies the conductive gel to Pt. Andrews’ translucent, papery skin. Presses everything into place only a little less efficiently than the perfect movements the spider’s guidance module superimposes over his hands, an interweaving performance of the technique of thousands of other doctors during hundreds of thousands of Code incidents.