The Artificial Kid

by Bruce Sterling

  “Gestalt means that there is a hidden force in wholeness. It means that the totality of the bits and pieces of a whole are greater than their mere sum. There is a mystic force in a whole system, there is something else lurking in that web of interactions, those chains of feedback. The greater the system’s complexity, the greater its gestalt! Man is vastly complex, and that complexity makes itself known in the phenomenon we call consciousness. This element of self-awareness is something that has always troubled reductionists, but they have tried to sideslip its intuitive evidence. They have built artificial consciousnesses for machines, though we all know how that turned out.” Anne shuddered delicately.

  “They have even demonstrated that consciousness is tied to matter by altering the brain and showing that this causes altered mental states. This was done centuries ago, and that destroyed the old, old doctrine of mind-body dualism. But I never espoused that doctrine, and the idea of gestalt is entirely different! The idea of gestalt acknowledges the presence of matter in mind, the presence of those physical actions and interactions. The only supposition it makes is that we do not fully understand the nature of these apparently simple events. A reasonable supposition, one would think. A theory that at least deserved a good hearing. At least I thought so.” It buried the tips of its webbed fingers in its unruly yellow hair.

  There was a long silence. I got up, poured some water into a dead sponge, and began to sponge the crusted salt from my skin.

  The Professor looked up suddenly. “Oh yes, you asked about the bead sculptures. I saw my first sculpture there in the University, while I was giving my testimony. Its peculiar beauty entranced me; they had several of them, and data on a great many others. They are found occasionally, but only in deep space, always looking as perfect as they did the hour they were launched, so many millennia ago. That struck me immediately—their element of permanence. They were not meant to be on display. They were not meant to be found or seen. They were meant to be permanent, untouched by time. And they were obviously constructed with extreme care—the relationship of every bead to every bead was so sinuously perfect, the angles of the connecting wires were so incredibly exact. The entire sculpture was a system, and since it was a system it must contain gestalt. And since it was so carefully protected—meant to outlast even the Elder Culture itself—it must be something very precious.

  “I arrived at the theory that it contained a soul. Probably the soul of the person who built it. I’m convinced that they still hold souls, the souls of members of the Elder Culture. I wouldn’t claim that these sculptures are conscious, of course. They’ve been extensively monitored, even cut apart bit by bit, and there is no transfer of energy within the structure, at least none that our instruments can monitor. But they live. I could sense it somehow. I have no proof of this. It simply made sense to me. It was an elegant theory. It accounted for both the great amount of effort invested in the sculptures and the fact that they were abandoned in the quietest wastes of interstellar space. But I kept this theory to myself, having no firm evidence to back it. I only brought it out, as a theory, in the worst heat of the Gestalt Dispute, and only then because Rominuald Tanglin urged it strongly on me. He had his own theories concerning the Elder Culture and they meshed to a degree with mine. But only to a degree. I take no responsibility for his doctrines during his final delirium.”

  “I thought one of the criteria of a scientific theory involved its being tested empirically,” Moses Moses said. “Did you try that, Professor?”

  The Professor made a peculiar quick fiddling movement with its fingers, a typical gesture that expressed its frustration. “How could I, when Gestalt could not be monitored or quantified? What is it, actually, that makes a system a system? Oh, I made tentative experiments, of course. There was my ten-year involvement with the Reverid slimemold. It is a creature that begins as a cluster or grouping of amoeboid protozoa and slowly develops into a crude salamander-like form with an interior skeleton and a circulatory system. Later the salamander develops a cancer-like fruiting body and bursts into millions of protozoa again. I attempted to find the lowest threshold of interconnections—to tabulate the relationships between the original amoeboid bits that triggered the rapid development of the salamander—the lowest possible number of webbed interactions that each contributed gestalt to the living system, you see?”

  Anne and Moses looked at him blankly. Crossbow shook its head. “It’s been such a long time since I tried to express it to laymen,” it said. “My friend Tanglin was always much better at it. If he were here he could make you understand.”

  “I’ve seen the tapes he made during the Dispute,” Anne said slowly, “but I must confess that they didn’t mean very much to me. The worst of the Dispute was well before my time. I heard other Church members refer to it at times, not very flatteringly, I’m afraid.”

  Crossbow nodded. “Yes, churches of all kinds are usually opposed to the Academy on principle. They follow their own dogma too closely to concern themselves with the dispassionate search for truth.”

  Anne looked none too pleased at this and it was then that I first noted the peculiar rapport that had sprung up between Moses Moses and Professor Crossbow. Obviously Crossbow was in a wary, suspicious state, and its suspicion should have focused on Moses, the only one of the three of us whom Crossbow did not know. But this was not the case. I noticed that the two of them kept exchanging brief glances, little two-second moments of eye contact. It was as if they spoke some private code of the very old, some intense rapport beyond the youthful crudities of speech. I had never seen anything quite like it and it bothered me at once.

  “I have some ointment for that sunburn of yours,” Crossbow said to Anne. It got up from its seat on the parachute and popped open the lock on a small waterproof case made of wood and green plastic. There was a little compartmented case inside. Crossbow produced a transparent collapsible tube full of gooey white paste. “Shall I put it on for you?” asked the neuter politely. “It may burn a bit at first.”

  “Thank you, no,” Anne said. She squeezed out a small blob of paste, sniffed it, and made a face. Then she began to spread it on her cheeks.

  Crossbow, as usual, was generous to a fault. It provided Moses and me with new clothing, two pairs of blue bodytights. Anne refused to wear clothing that clung so tightly to the body, so Crossbow tolerantly gave her needle and thread so that she could stitch her own clothes out of balloon fabric. He then warmed up his pressure cooker and shared with us his hardy wilderness fare: steaks of deep-sea fish, plankton puree, minced kelp, and sweet seaweed gelatin.

  The three of us ate ravenously, but Crossbow merely toyed with its chopsticks. Finally it spoke in a low voice, its words obviously directed to Moses Moses. “I would like to make an appeal to frankness.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?” Moses said. Anne and I traded worried glances.

  Crossbow lowered its head and mumbled almost incoherently, “Perils of personal dominance. The mask becomes the face. Sieges of panan. Too many steps back … do you follow me?”

  “Yes, of course,” Moses said with deep, tender sympathy. The words meant absolutely nothing to us and Anne and I were alarmed. It obviously meant something to the neuter, however, for it actually blushed. I had never seen it blush before and I had thought that it was impossible.

  “It’s been a long time,” Crossbow said. “Very well, all masks off then. A pact between us. You agree? We’ll seal hands then.” Moses put down his platter and took the neuter’s slim, webbed hands into his own.

  They were silent, staring into one another’s eyes. Anne put down her chopsticks and I stopped wolfing down the gelatin. She shivered. I was frightened too. It seemed to have grown colder inside our snug little bubble. For a long moment we heard only the impersonal hum of the generator and the quiet breathing of the two old people. Their breathing seemed to be synchronized. They were going through something that we didn’t understand, that we had never seen before. They were both so incredibly ol
d. Anne and I couldn’t help it. We were overcome by a sort of superstitious dread. I felt that there was some sort of tainted power at work; an old, cold, strong power that could eat us up like a viper eats young birds. Moses had dropped his facade again, just as he had when we were floating in the water, convinced that we would die. His face seemed to shine and there was a look in his round yellow eyes that terrified me. A glance at Anne showed that she felt the same way. I wanted to beg them to stop, but I was afraid to break their eerie concentration.

  At last they released one another’s hands and Anne and I both drew a sigh of relief. I was deeply glad that she had been with me to share that peculiar ordeal, and her look at me showed that she was also grateful. It had lasted only twenty seconds but it had drawn us much closer to one another. I wanted to embrace her and sit and breathe in the warmth of young, human contact, but I didn’t, for Crossbow spoke.

  “You are Moses Moses.”

  Moses nodded. “Yes, Crossbow. I slipped past death and ran for the light with destruction gnawing at my heels. And I lived. I have nothing beneath me but a shell, but I live. It rasps away inside me until I echo with hollowness, but it has never caught me.”

  Crossbow nodded. “Yes, we are members of the same brotherhood. You have seen how my old friend compromised with death.” It nodded sharply at me. “I found an anchor. He thought he had found one too, but she destroyed him. And even now my enemies pull at me. They seek to tug me from the sea bottom just as this flying island tugged itself from its rooted moorings and floated up into the airy thinness of despair. But they won’t succeed. You can help me.”

  Moses shook his head. “I haven’t the strength. I haven’t your conviction. Ask the young people. They have the vitality you need, not me. I haven’t anything—I even envy you what you have. You’ve studied life. You understand it. You have meaning. I have nothing.”

  “There is a way, Moses.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “No! Did you see madness within me? No. Think, Moses. It is awful, it is dreadful, as all things of great power contain an element of dread. But it can be ours. It is immortality. It may be tainted. Tainted with great age. But we are tainted. How could we live but with a tainted life?”

  The terrible intensity of their rapport seemed to scorch us. Anne could not bear it any longer. “Stop! Please stop!” She folded her small hands over her sunburned ears, and shrank into a ball, drawing up her arms and legs.

  Moses and Crossbow jerked up their heads, the thread of their rapport broken by her cry. In an instant their friendly, genial masks were back on; they seemed to drop over the two of them like flesh shrouds naked bone. They stopped leaning toward one another; they broke their eye contact. Moses reached down and picked up his platter. Crossbow stood up and smiled its old parental, protective smile at me. It seemed to drape it over me as if it were an old, warm blanket. It seemed intolerably artificial; I just stared.

  “I still haven’t told you what I’m doing on this island,” said Crossbow brightly, leaping to a new subject with the agility of a mountain goat. “My presence here must have shocked you as much as yours shocked me!” It chuckled genially but without much conviction. Anne uncurled and moved closer to me; we sat together on the floor, touching hips and shoulders. I felt the warmth of her shoulder through the fabric we wore. Moses Moses was eating stoically and apparently ignoring the neuter, but I could sense him vibrating inside like the plucked strings of an autoharp. I slipped my fingers around Anne’s naked wrist and the touch seemed to calm us both.

  “I discovered this island in its bud stage three years ago,” Crossbow said. “I found it on a tape while I was mapping the sea bottom near my house, with undersea drones. I had tracked the life cycle of the flying islands before, with drones and tracers, but I had always wanted to observe one personally and do a great deal of necessary detail work. I was able to estimate this island’s eventual destination by calculating the trade winds and the paths of other islands; in fact, to be frank, I chose this island because of its destination.”

  “The Mass,” Moses Moses said.

  Crossbow nodded. “The Mass.” It seemed pleased that Moses Moses had guessed correctly.

  “But we can’t go there,” Anne said in alarm. “That’s a horrible place.”

  “The Corporate terms of settlement are supposed to forbid human exploration,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. I didn’t disapprove; I merely wanted to point it out. “And the drone tapes I’ve seen of the Mass … well … they didn’t look promising.” In my mind’s eye I saw the nightmare landscape of the Mass: sticky pools slimed with white muck, leafless trees furred inches deep in bright mold, crawling things bristling with damp ridges of shelf fungus, breathless stillness broken only by dripping … a landscape not of death but of fervid, fetid life.

  “I’ve been there before,” Crossbow said. “I wasn’t able to stay as long as I liked. But I had time to make a crucial discovery.” It looked at Anne and me, then it shrugged and smiled shyly. “I might as well tell you; there’s no call for false modesty, as my friend Tanglin used to say. It was this thing—this organism.” It pointed with one slim webbed finger at the tangled wiring overhead. “This is a model of its molecular structure—a very limited one of course, though the torus shape seems to be well established. You’ll notice the helical gaps within the structure; there are twenty-three of them, though why that number I can’t say. Notice the peculiar arrangement here at these genomes; you can see that by faulting and folding this long double chain is moved shut almost like a trap door.” The neuter stood up and began crimping and bending a section of wire with its thin but powerful fingers. Anne and I watched nonplussed as a long chain of linked beads moved up over a gap in the structure, like jaws closing. A section of fatigued wire popped with the strain and half-a-dozen beads of varying color spilled to the fabric floor and rolled off drunkenly under the generator, but Crossbow didn’t seem to notice.

  “See how it covers up that helical gap!” said Crossbow, filled with admiration. “It can trap an entire chain of genes in there—a whole half-helix. You probably wonder why it doesn’t hold them there by chemical means—why it uses this mechanical arrangement instead. Well, it does use chemical linkage to a certain extent. Of course it has to have a chemical catalyst to trigger this crimping movement. But if it used a completely chemical linkage it would induce too many mutations. A half-chain of DNA is very volatile chemically, you know! There are all those open-ended linkages, just looking for adenine, thymosine, guanine, to complete itself and initiate a new being! It’s like a little box, you see? A little torus-shaped box to hold life itself!” The neuter’s face shone with a saintly radiance as it prodded eagerly at the tangled mess.

  “I call it the Crossbow Body—that’s the name the Academy gave it. I’m still uncertain whether or not it lives. It seems to be as much a construct as a being. I can’t decide how it reproduces. I’m not sure that it does reproduce. It seems to be immortal, like an amoeba, barring accident of course, barring dissection.… And yet it can’t be sterile—there must be some mode of reproduction, or perhaps reconstruction is a better word. And as for the problem of its origin—well, I’m convinced that it is natural. I’m convinced that it is the product of a Gestalt agency that is not intelligence—that is not consciousness—that is an attribute of a world-spanning gestalt that transcends intelligence as completely as intelligence itself transcends instinct. It is a teleology! It has a purpose that transcends determinism! It has slipped free of the iron chains of evolution! And it is evolution that demands death! It demands all death so that the old can give way to the new! But the Crossbow Body escapes death. The Crossbow Body destroys the motive for competition between species. It destroys competition between the old and the new.”

  Trembling with excitement, the old neuter sat down with a sigh on the single parachute. Then it looked at me with reproachful amusement. “Arti, you don’t believe me! Don’t worry. You’ll see the truth soon enough.” />
  I smiled falsely. Crossbow’s speech had sounded very familiar, in form if not in content. It sounded very much like the senile ravings of my old patron, Mr. Money Manies. And a similar motivation had triggered it, I felt sure. Members of the Academy were no more immune from aging than were laymen. It sounded like poor Crossbow was cloaking its obsession with death in a thick blanket of pseudo-scientific patter. Its critical faculties had been distorted by the bright promise of personal immortality.

  Obsessions with the molecular workings of life seemed to be in the air among the oldsters of Reverie. No doubt it was our peculiar zeitgeist.

  “Have you already sent your findings to the Academy, Professor?” I asked.

  Crossbow nodded eagerly. “Yes. Three years ago.”

  I nodded resignedly. “Well, that explains the presence of Professor Angeluce, then. It just struck me. Taxonomic microbiology—that was his specialty, too, wasn’t it, Anne?”

  “Yes, I remember,” Anne said, nodding.

  Crossbow shrieked and convulsively grabbed the sides of its head with both hands. “Angeluce! They didn’t send him, certainly!”

  “They certainly did,” I said grimly. “And a most unpleasant little bugger he is, too. I’ve sworn to kill him. If I live through this, I will.”

  “Yes,” Anne said musically. “He called you a ‘neuter charlatan,’ Professor. After that the Kid criminally assaulted him—didn’t you, Kid?”

  “How do you know?” I said testily. “You were unconscious at the time.” It had struck me suddenly that Crossbow’s mad meddlings had been the root cause of the disruption of my idyllic existence. If it hadn’t stirred up the embers of the old Gestalt Dispute, Angeluce would never have come to Reverie. I would never have insulted him and thrown him off Money Manies’ balcony. He would never have attacked me and poisoned the minds of the Cabal against me. Quade Altman would never have been mind-killed. The Instant Death would not have declared blood feud on me. Armitrage would not have died. Sulkily, I ate the rest of my gelatin, darting occasional black looks at my old tutor. I felt like beating it up, but it was my oldest friend, and my Old Dad’s last and best friend. I restrained the impulse. As the last of the stimulant I had taken wore off, I somehow found it in my heart to forgive the old neuter. After all, it was our host, and it had meant no harm.