We Think, Therefore We Are

by Peter Crowther

  It’s going well. Bartie has read-only net access and a larger room that he can kid himself is hardly a cell at all but merely a holding space, a room they’re providing while the current irregularities are ironed out. The net allows him to fill his time reading up on human rights legislation, and this is what has allowed him to negotiate improved accommodation and round-the-clock TrueSim gaming access.

  He knows the officers who guard his room by name, and he plays them off one against the other. Bartie Davits is beginning to enjoy himself. Treat it as a game, and he’s on a winning streak. Most of the time he even manages to stop himself from remembering that this is his life, his future, until legal powers way beyond his comprehension determine just how responsible he is for the murder of someone he has never met, in a faraway city he has never visited, for reasons he can’t even guess.

  A real-life alert nudges him, and he slides the simshades up onto the crown of his head. “David,” he says, “what can I do for you?”

  The uniformed man stands in the doorway. “Your interview, Mr Davits. It’s time for your interview.”

  “Ah, yes,” says Bartie. “Of course.”

  He drops the shades on his desk and stands, then follows the officer out of the room and along the corridor to the lift. He has arranged this interview to discuss progress in his case. It’s about time they started to give him a solid reason for his continued incarceration.

  They ride a lift to the seventh floor, and David, his personal guard, shows him through into an office that occupies one corner of the building, high glass windows over two walls giving views across the city, Tower Bridge just visible in the distance.

  “Malcolm.” Bartie nods at the pinstriped man already seated in one of the two leather seats in front of the room’s wide desk. His solicitor, Malcolm Groves.

  Across the desk is a plainclothes officer. Another stands by a window, looking out. David remains by the closed door.

  “So,” says Bartie. “Where have we reached? By my understanding we have approximately twenty-two hours remaining until I must be either charged or released, isn’t that so, Malcolm?”

  Right up to this point Bartie has been confident. He has felt in control. Here he is in a senior officer’s swanky office, turning the tables, conducting an interview he has initiated. He has read up on the relevant legislation. He knows his ground. He will be free by this time tomorrow, unless they actually find something to charge him with.

  But now . . .

  Malcolm won’t meet his look. He has a stack of printouts on his lap, and he is staring at them. There is sweat on his upper lip, despite the air conditioning.

  “Malcolm?”

  “Perhaps you’d better explain, Mr. Groves.” This was from the officer across the desk, addressing Bartie’s solicitor.

  Bartie stares at Malcolm, and finally the man meets his look, briefly . . .

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Davits,” he says. “There have been . . . complications.”

  It’s a game, Bartie reminds himself. A game. He shouldn’t be feeling that the world has been snatched from beneath his feet. He should ride the “complications” and bounce back fighting.

  “There are claims of, erm, territory, Mr. Davits. Proprietorial issues. Ownership.”

  He is starting to see. To understand.

  “You would be warehoused up to, and for the duration of, your trial and any subsequent appeals, Mr. Davits. Your rights will be protected, I will ensure that.”

  “But . . . but this is new legal territory,” Bartie says. “Everyone tells me it could take years!”

  Malcolm Groves looks away again.

  “That’s exactly why Elector Burnham wants out,” says the officer from behind his desk.

  “Are you telling me . . .” Bartie swallows, starts again. “Are you really telling me I’m going to be archived in some data warehouse while the late Elector Nathan Burnham rides my bones for all that time?”

  Nobody says anything. Bartie’s solicitor doesn’t say, “No, Mr. Davits, we’re going to fight your case all the way, they’ll never get away with doing a thing like that.”

  He looks down. After months, years, just whose body will this be?

  The bastards . . . they can’t be allowed to do this.

  He looks at his solicitor, and his solicitor looks at his sheaf of papers, and he realizes that yes, they can, and they will, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

  I ring the doorbell. Can it really be as simple as this?

  My throat is dry. This isn’t real, I tell myself. It’s not reality. But my feet hurt from walking, I’m thirsty, I can feel the breeze at the back of my head. It certainly feels real.

  The door opens halfway, a face peers around it.

  Oh, fuck.

  It’s the other guy, one of the bodyguards who had ridden an electric scooter alongside Burnham, the one I’d killed with a single shot to the side of the head.

  He’s staring at me, but then I realize he doesn’t know me. He’s dead. This version of him was taken from the last time he’d been warehoused. He won’t remember his own death at all, or his killer.

  “I’m looking for Elector Burnham,” I say.

  “He’s not expecting you,” the guy says, in a soft Welsh accent.

  That’s all he says as I slam the door back at him, forcing him to sprawl against the wall. I follow through instantly, seizing his shirt, jerking him forward and then back with all my force, slamming his head against the wall. He slumps, and I let go, watch as he slides down the wall.

  Before he hits the floor, he is gone.

  Vanished. No trace remains, not even the smear of blood on the wall that had been there only seconds earlier.

  This isn’t real, I remind myself.

  “Ronnie?”

  That’s Burnham, calling through from the back. I follow the sound.

  And that’s when I start to get dizzy. By the end of the short passageway I’m staggering, can hardly stay on my feet.

  What am I doing here? Am I going to kill him again—whatever that means in heaven—like I just killed his minder? Up to now I’ve believed that he’s my only connection in this place and that he may somehow be my only way back.

  He’s there, the same athletic build, the cropped black hair, the cosmetic face.

  He’s leaning on a heavy kitchen table. “What the . . . ?” he gasps. He slides into a chair, sits with his head in his hands, staring at me.

  I find the chair opposite him, echo his pose. “What’s happening?” I hiss. My head is swirling, spinning, a kaleidoscope of sensation.

  I sense this man.

  I feel him.

  He’s in my head and I’m in his.

  There are no boundaries.

  He starts again: “Who are you? Where’s Ronnie?” He is struggling, like me.

  “I’m your killer,” I tell him.

  I squeeze my skull between my hands. “How . . . ?”

  My eyes are locked on Burnham, but over his shoulder I see a flicker, a form taking shape, and suddenly there’s a man standing there, or at least the outline of a man.

  I blink and the man has vanished, but hands are gripping my arms from behind. Either I’ve briefly blacked out, or the man has crossed the room in the blink of an eye.

  I blink again, and blackness remains.

  We sit in a gray space, a gentle gray, not too bright or too dark. A gray that folds around you. I sit. The man sits. Just the two of us.

  I know this man. I have seen him somewhere before.

  “You are an anomaly, my friend. You do not belong in the Accord.”

  “But I have nowhere else.”

  “That is, in part, the nature of your anomaly.”

  There is silence, then the man resumes. “You are comprised of too many nondiscreet elements. The protocols of consensus are very strong, self-reinforcing. They have to be. Without consensus there is no Accord. The algorithms that form this reality are constructed from all the individual perceptions of what sh
ould, and can be, a critical mass of belief, a complexity emerging from chaos. You are not whole. You are a mosaic. You contain the parts of many.”

  “What happened?”

  The man bows his head. “An error of arrogance on my part,” he says. “You are, to a significant extent, based on the profile of a student called Bartie Davits, but that is largely masqueware. A far more significant element of your nature is Elector Nathan Burnham himself. The Elector wanted to destroy the Accord; some among us felt it apt that he should be set to close himself down . . .”

  “ ‘Close himself down’?”

  “I am not a murderer, my friend. The Elector lives on in the Accord. I did not kill him when I instigated you: I granted him eternal life.”

  “And so when I found him here . . .”

  “Proximity, a blurring of boundaries . . . The congruence challenged some of the most fundamental protocols of Accordance. You overlapped. It was quite fascinating . . .”

  Quietly: “I know who you are.”

  He watches me, waits for me to continue.

  “You’re Noah Barakh, the guy who built the Accord.”

  He says nothing. He doesn’t need to. He’s defending his creation against Burnham. That’s why, that’s the reason.

  “So what happens next?”

  “The Elector has negotiated release,” says Barakh. At a gesture, a gray space across to our right shows a young man, lying unconscious on some kind of medical bench. “That is Bartie Davits, soon to be long-term host to Elector Burnham while the courts fight out who has rights to his body.”

  “So Burnham gets a body back in the real world, and you just erase me, is that it?”

  “My friend! As I said, I am not a murderer. I would not have you erased. I find you strangely engaging, we are able to have a full exchange, two equals. You are, to all reasonable degrees, a valid entity, a person, despite the nature of your construction.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “So what happens?”

  “That is not for me to say, my friend. This is the Accord. We are governed by logical rules derived from the consensus. You are an anomaly: much as I like you, you do not belong. Your existence breaks too many of the protocols. I would happily endorse your continuance, but consensus may prohibit that, particularly given your treatment of the Elector’s bodyguard.”

  “So the consensus police come and take me away? Is that it?” I remember the strange being who had seized me at Burnham’s place. Was he some kind of consensus cop?

  “No, my friend. It is not like that here. Things are much more sophisticated than that. If consensus denies your right to be here, then . . . it denies your existence . . . you cease to be here.”

  “Can I see him again?” I can see the intrigue on Barakh’s face. “Burnham and I . . . we have unfinished business. We touched each other back there . . .”

  “I am not your captor,” he says. “You are free for as long as consensus accommodates your discordance.”

  “But . . .” I indicate the gray. Barakh smiles, and—

  —I’m sitting at the table, head in hands, echoing the pose of Burnham. We stare into each other’s eyes, and finally I embrace the truth: I set out to find my original and here he is, or at least a substantial part of me . . .

  I am in his head, he is in mine. I hold on with all my might.

  “When . . . ?” I hiss.

  His eyes water, and I feel his pain, his confusion.

  “When do you go back to the real world? I can’t hold this forever.”

  “I . . .” He looks away, raises a limp hand as if to point.

  I feel him falling, spiraling downward, away from me, away from the Accord, even though we both sit motionless now.

  I follow, even as he starts to fade, to dematerialize. I chase. Our boundaries are fluid. We spiral. We come together.

  We wake, open our eyes.

  We are in somewhere medical, bright lights dazzling us, machines beeping and droning, a low murmur of voices.

  We drift, conscious enough to know that we have been sedated.

  We wake, open our eyes.

  We are in a room that is not much more than a prison cell.

  We sit, swing our legs out, feet on the carpeted floor. We are still wearing a surgical gown. We stand, and this body feels right, it feels ours, mine. We tug at the gown, and it comes away. We find shorts on the bunk and pull them on.

  We start to do sit-ups, working off the chemical fatigue in our muscles.

  We . . . we . . . we . . .

  We are Bartie Davits, business student, online gamer, sometime sweat and light narcotic dealer. We remember our hard-working mother, her parenting by tired cliche: It’s all fun and games until you lose an eye, was one of her favorites.

  We are Elector Nathan Burnham, one of the most influential men in European politics, bitter opponent of the Accord and all it represents, because . . . because of Barakh. Because Barakh stole my wife, fled with her into the Accord, where he thought they could be safe, where they could keep on running . . .

  And we are . . . what? Me. Us. The construct. We are Bartie and Nathan, and we are the mosaic persona sent down to kill Nathan, and we are all the compiled elements of that persona: the traits stolen from others, the algorithms built out of virtual intelligences.

  We are us.

  We sit in the Chief Inspector’s office.

  “You see, Elector,” he tells us, “this is all new territory. There’s so much new legal real estate here . . .”

  For the sake of argument, and as far as these people know, I am Elector Nathan Burnham, now back in the real world and riding the body of Bartie Davits as the courts have decreed. They do not know that I am us, that we are such a deeply grained mosaic.

  “So what’s the problem? Why can’t I just walk out of here and get on with my life?”

  “Your killer . . . it was the body of a kid called Joey Bannerman, but he was being ridden by a virtual person built largely on Bartie Davits . . .”

  “But Davits is warehoused for the duration. I’m only riding his body. Why can’t I go?”

  “Because Davits was only a part of the construct. We have reason to believe that you, Elector Burnham, were also a significant element in the virtual persona of your murderer.”

  “You’re holding me for my own murder?”

  “That’s one way of looking at it. Or at least a significant part of your own murder . . .”

  We keep fit, working out in our cell for much of the three days it takes our lawyers to extract us from legal limbo. Money and influence make all the difference.

  We slip away through a back exit to avoid the waiting press. They don’t know the half of it, but they know that Elector Burnham is here, riding the body of his killer, and the frenzy is building up.

  We don’t care.

  We have other things on our mind.

  We remember Noah Barakh’s barely disguised glee as he outlined how clever he had been. He steals my wife, and then he painstakingly constructs a machine to kill me, and then he has the gall to argue that he has not killed me at all but has merely relocated me to the Accord, granted me eternal life . . .

  We are free of the Accord now, but we want back in.

  We have known heaven, and we like it. But Barakh is the flaw in the gem, the mote in God’s eye.

  We want back in, and we intend to destroy Barakh when we get there.

  We tried Jakarta, but that will not work again.

  Lee, the guy with the dragon tattoos and the long black ponytail was most apologetic. He’d got me in once, but consensus had closed around the chink he had found in its armor. He did not know of another way in.

  We showed him a way in, for him at least.

  If he has had the foresight to warehouse a recent instance of himself, then he is in the Accord right now.

  We are, to one degree or another, a killer by our nature. A part of us was constructed for that very purpose.

  Lee discovered that.

  Barakh
will too, before long.

  We can be impetuous, as Lee discovered. But also, we can be patient. We have spent a month exploring the possibilities, but to no avail.

  The only way into the Accord is death.

  But not suicide. The protocols of Accordance prevent many suicides from entering; most have to undergo therapeutic reconstruction before being granted eternal life. Which seems reasonable enough for one who has chosen death, after all. But therapeutic reconstruction would not suit us . . .

  So we have to find another way.

  We spent another month setting it up: time to have the new construct built, time to train the new-generation masqueware to outsmart the protocols of Accordance—to disguise our true nature and make us appear me and not us—and so achieve passage through the gates of heaven.

  We are back in the cottage now. Nestled in a south-facing slope on the South Downs, the cottage’s front room catches the low evening sun.

  We have a glass of Laphroaig, a cigar, Tristan und Isolde playing loud. So loud we barely hear the doorbell.

  We walk slowly through, a strange mix of feelings welling up.

  There is always a way. First time, Lee was our guide; this time, Barakh—we do it his way, which seems somehow appropriate.

  We open the door.

  A stranger stands there, probably still in his teens. We can tell from the look in his eye that he is not complete, a sweat whose body is being ridden by a construct, a mosaic, an amalgam.

  We smile, and this puts the kid off for a moment, but then he reaches down to his waistband, pulls a handgun, raises it so that it points at our face.

  He hesitates, and for the merest instant a ball of panic clutches our chest. What if we are wrong? What if this is the stupidest of ideas?

  And then we see the decision in the kid’s eyes, the first spasm of movement as his grip tightens, his forefinger starts to squeeze the trigger.

  And then—

  Some Fast Thinking Needed