by Lea Daley
“A perfect reason to keep me iced.”
“Yeah—except they needed your money.”
“My money?”
“Wealth derived from Returnees is the engine that drives this economy, Leslie—not to mention Jashari’s raison d’etre. Why else would the natives tolerate thousands of Incurables? Repulsive as we are?”
I was trying to frame a response when I heard a footfall behind me. Turning, I saw Bahji. Rubbing her eyes, still half asleep. “Mom! I dreamed Belladonna was gone!”
Taylor rose to meet her. “Come back tomorrow, Leslie. I have to concentrate on Bahji right now.”
I didn’t argue. Rising, I hugged them both long and hard. “I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.” Then I left, not sure why I’d apologized.
* * *
I don’t remember how I found my way home. Though my body was out of steam, my brain was on overdrive. Separate bits of data whirled and danced as I fought to integrate all that had just happened with everything I’d learned before. But the information never formed a coherent picture. Bed was the place I collapsed, too wasted to pull up the covers. Even there my mind was relentless, flinging up fragments of the evening’s dialogue, shuffling events, desperate for a rational explanation. Or at least some strategy for the future.
After several hours of frenzied analysis, I was positive I’d identified the only practical course of action. Dragging myself upright, seriously sleep-deprived, I slipped into the cool comfort of my courtyard. Seated on a bench, I focused my mind, then sent out a ringing cry for aid, like trumpets rousing warriors to righteous battle.
Before I opened my eyes, I sensed Aimée’s presence. Reaching out blindly, I found one delicate hand and held it for a moment. Just a heartbeat, really. When I looked up, saw her beautiful face smiling at me in the soft light of first dawn, I was overcome by a rush of contrary tenderness. The feeling that makes you want to hug something so hard you might hurt it. Which couldn’t mean much, right? Because hadn’t I felt the same way about puppies and kittens? Still, for one highly charged second, I forgot why I’d summoned the VTO.
Aimée bowed deeply. “Good morning, Leslie-ahn.”
“Not really, my friend. I need to talk with you, probably for quite a while. Is this an okay time?”
“An okay time?”
“Yeah. I mean…are you free…available…or are you still busy with that other Returnee?” Mental head slap. If I couldn’t form a simple sentence, how would I tell Aimée about the Hemingways? And—most tantalizing of questions—why wasn’t she already copied in?
Her brow was furrowed when she said, “I can arrange to be at your disposal within a few hours.” And when she departed, the VTO was visibly disturbed. Because she’d sensed that I was humming with anxiety—yet probing my mind had gotten her nowhere. Which would be the most maddening thing she’d experienced in her brief existence. Aimée just wasn’t programmed to accept the inexplicable. Neither, for that matter, was I.
* * *
Waiting was hell—there are no other words to describe those solitary hours. I longed to see Taylor, to resume our conversation, to find some resting place in her answers. Still I forced myself to stay home, concerned that a visit would complicate matters for the Hemingways. After much aimless pacing, I fetched Serenghi’s book and turned to her counsel on courage. Written in Riahminang Prison, most likely her final resting place.
Sadly, her unparalleled strength only made me feel deficient. Hero was the last label I’d seek, the first I’d reject. Yet I felt bound to help Taylor and Bahji. And knew no avenue for assistance except Aimée. Who I ardently hoped was worthy of that confidence. I returned to my guidebook—my lifeline—and consulted Serenghi again:
Trust born of innocence may bring riches beyond measure, or the staccato clattering of jackboots down a hall at midnight. Trust born of experience and judgment may yet be misplaced.
Grant trust generously, but not lightly. Neither withhold it from undue caution, nor bestow it in ignorance. Accept trust only when it can be rewarded with a reciprocity of faith.
And know always that trust—the most authentic touchstone of human intercourse—is both the highest honor conferred, and the most dangerous attitude to assume.
“Well, damn!” I said aloud. “That’s certainly helpful! Not!”
The unvarnished truth was that I could trust Aimée or no one. Whatever I’d wandered into was unfolding faster and faster—without intervention, events might spiral out of control. But just how would one intervene in matters prophetic or mathematical? Shaking my weary head, I returned to Serenghi’s book. Where I was soon engrossed in an arcane fable.
The Spinster
When the heavens were new and unknown, a foolish spinster believed she might bind the swirling galaxies with a single sleek strand of her own devising. She fattened six silver silkworms on dew-struck leaves until they were the finest creatures ever seen. By the light of a crescent moon, on her great crystal wheel, she spun their delicate filaments. Twisting, twisting, tucking in each loose fiber. At last she had the strongest, longest, most resilient line imaginable. She wound it round her slender waist, encircling herself with certainty.
Next she sought the safest place to stand, a land of stolid granite, of rock immovable as mountains. She bound herself in place, a spire of stone for her spine. With infinite caution and care, she let out a loop of her silken skein, twirling it, twirling it.
Light as air, it spun outward, lifting through the clouds, past the skies, beyond the sun, until finally it captured a young star. The maiden shouted with triumph. Tightening her grasp, reeling in her line slowly, she gathered the slack, gathered the slack, conscious only of the trembling length in her hand. Bent on the task of tethering that sparkling sun, she pulled and pulled. A roar grew up around her, the wrenching of majestic forces. Perhaps she’d slowed the universe entire?
Then, all at once, the rock beneath her gave way, ripping asunder, sending up sparks. The spinster was flung high and wide, flying outward in ever-widening circles on the end of her own silken cord. Whirling in starlit space, a new and shining satellite in the nighttime sky.
Answering to forces beyond her imagining, she etched a singular orbit in eternity.
I caught myself just in time—if I hurled that ancient book, it would disintegrate on contact. Sighing, I set it gently on my desk. Serenghi had nothing to say to me today—nothing, at least, that I wanted to hear. And why hadn’t Aimée returned?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Before I completed the thought, the VTO was standing in the living room. Studying my petite Christmas tree and the primitive wrapping on the gift I’d made for her. A thousand years ago, or so it seemed. Though relief washed through me when I saw her, my greeting sounded like an accusation. “You’re finally back!”
“Yet you have not used my absence to perfect your social skills.”
“True. But neither have you fully mastered mindreading.”
When Aimée flinched, my stomach twisted. I didn’t know why I’d flung that challenge at her. Maybe it was just the fastest way to get the ball rolling. “I’m sorry. But there are things you don’t know, things I need to tell you.”
Aimée raised a hand to her forehead. “I am so perplexed, Leslie-ahn. I do not like this feeling—I do not like it at all!”
“Welcome to the human race.”
“Thank you, but I have been a member since inception.”
The claim was so startling I allowed myself to be sidetracked. “Aimée, you’re very dear, but you’re hardly human. You never could be.”
“Excuse me, Leslie-ahn. You are mistaken. By any measure—physiological, psychological or mathematical—I am a human being.”
“Sweetheart, I don’t want to offend you, but humans are more than just electrochemical contraptions. We’re emotional, irrational, unpredictable, insistently selfish, often tragic creatures.” I smiled. “Maybe I’ve just given you a backhanded compliment.”
“Leslie, I could be al
l those things—if they served the social system.”
“But people—biological people—have needs that don’t always fit into systems! Unless you stop living for others every minute and sometimes put your desires first, you’re not truly human!”
“That would be so chaotic. How can we all go separate ways? Can you not see that individual needs must be suppressed for the Harmony of the Whole?”
“You’re wrong! Every time that’s been tried, it’s been a dismal failure! That’s exactly what was so horrendous about the World Unification Movement. It demanded that we give up our unique, assertive, annoying selves to become cogs in a system.”
“This I know. Jashrine culture is an outgrowth of that movement which you so casually dismiss as a failure.”
“But it is a failure! Individuality is our strength, not our weakness! We simply need to channel it productively. On Earth, we were just beginning to figure out how to use diversity for the common good when radical conformists upended everything!”
I closed my eyes, remembering. “I come from a frightening time, Aimée. There were riots in United Europe and pogroms in Africa. Everything was moving toward violent homogenation—in much of the world, there was an upfront agenda to eradicate natural variations in our species. Outlaw scientists had mined the Human Genome Project and were planning to produce a dominant race—people who looked, thought and acted alike. In the name of peace!”
“I am well acquainted with this period of Terran history.”
“Here’s something I bet your programming doesn’t include: Every homosexual on the planet was horrified by the prospect of genetic manipulation. We were already suspect. Even subject to the death penalty in some countries! And often we were our own worst enemies—”
“How is that possible?”
“We based our appeal for justice on the argument that being gay was rooted in DNA, never a choice. But the more we insisted there was only one path to homosexuality, the easier it was to visualize the world without us. Because the radical conformists certainly wouldn’t preserve gay traits for a new world order. And, Aimée? I’d cheerfully sacrifice their system to selfish need.”
Internally, I was berating myself for getting off on such a stupid tangent. But Aimée’s face was lit with the intensity of the true believer. Clearly we’d have to bring this to a close before I broached my current problems.
“Leslie-ahn, I would argue that the human race is better for this homogenation. More stable, more rational. Less troubled.”
“You have no idea what homogenation costs! People died, Aimée! Wonderful, courageous, irreplaceable people died for the right to be themselves! And our community had already been decimated—by AIDS, by terrorism, by ‘legal reforms.’ The fight was probably just warming up in my era, but it already had its heroes—Lutan Serenghi, for one.”
“Ah. The author of that book you read so obsessively. In the end, she—”
I held up a warning hand. “Don’t tell me anything I don’t already know. For me, she’ll always be alive, always fighting for the right to be what she made of herself, against all odds. You couldn’t begin to understand how much Serenghi’s example meant to us.”
I picked up her book, turned that stunning holo toward Aimée. “Look at her! She rose from a society that devalued women and deified orthodoxy. How did she do that? Why did she risk it? Best guess? She learned the true worth of individuality by being denied it!” I was revved up now, almost out of control. “To be fully human is to honor Lutan Serenghi!”
The VTO’s response was chillingly formal: “It is evident that you hold your construct of humanity in the highest regard.”
I forced my shoulders to relax. “Not so much, Aimée. Because the flip side of the coin—the Standard Unit, if you prefer—is that you transcend humanity in many ways. You have skills we can only dream of. Your ability to read minds, alone, sets you apart from us, elevates you.”
“It need not.”
“Be glad of it, Aimée! Because to be human is also to be confused and isolated and misunderstood. To have one’s needs unmet, one’s cries unheard. To be human is to forge through life blindly, scrambling to avoid pitfalls, but never seeing them in the road ahead.” I clasped her hands. “Seriously, Aimée…don’t wish too hard to be human.”
“I am what I am, Leslie-ahn, despite your narrow definition—a living, adaptable, sentient organism, complete with emotions and desires. I simply repress aspects of my personality for the common good.”
“How can you have a personality, when you’re not a person!”
Aimée looked at me through narrowed eyes—a clear sign her patience was wearing thin. “Do I seem devoid of personality?”
“No…but I can never forget that you’re actually a highly sophisticated package of hardware and software. Not exactly the stuff of rugged individuality.”
The VTO’s arms were crossed, her tone increasingly stern. “What do you know about…chaos mathematics…as you would have called it?”
“As little as possible.”
“Seriously, Leslie-ahn!”
I sighed. We were down the rabbit hole, chasing yet another digression. “I read some stuff after Michaelson developed her chaos camera.”
“Perhaps you recall that chaos theory addresses systems of enormous complexity? Systems where infinite variety develops, even when the starting point is the same? Sperm meeting an egg, let us say.”
“And?”
“When humans mate, the resulting organism usually has predictable characteristics. It will develop two arms, two legs, an ability to construct language and so on—characteristics shared with all other typical humans.”
“Agreed.”
“Given this common beginning, Leslie-ahn, how do humans develop distinct personalities?”
“It’s complicated. Sure, one egg and sperm have a lot in common with every other egg and sperm. But each also has genetically-coded traits, so newborns have distinct features, temperaments, abilities—you know. Then each individual is modified by experience, opportunity and socialization.”
“Just as I am.”
“It’s not the same.”
“You cannot know that.”
“Okay, tell me.”
“I do have what you call ‘hardware,’ but so do you—your brain and body. And I do have what you call ‘software’—but so do you. All those inborn, predictable sequences like instructions for learning how to walk and talk and draw.”
“But that’s not personality!”
“Bear with me, Leslie-ahn. Consider the similarities between identical twins. Even when they are separated at birth, raised in completely different families or cultures, they usually display numerous similarities if reunited as adults. Most will share many preferences and behavior patterns with their siblings.”
“Granted.”
“But that is not the interesting outcome—that is completely predictable. It is only when you look at the differences in identical twins that you discern which aspects of personality are not a product of hardware and software. This is where chaos theory comes into play.”
Aimée looked like she’d scored the final point, but I waved for her to continue. “Don’t you see, Leslie-ahn? Over time, these twins differentiate themselves until they are alike, but no longer indistinguishable. Two complex beings with identical origins have diverged as a result of experience. Human personality is simply one proof of chaos theory.”
“All right. But what’s that got to do with you?”
“Techno-organisms are much more complex than you imagine. We begin with a common template—our equivalent of genetic code. Programming permits variety in our responses…roughly equivalent to what you call ‘temperament.’ And because we must react to the circumstances we encounter, we adapt over time. We think, and thus learn. We too have preferences. And feelings. I can name direct corollaries to every trait you possess—including personality.”
“Pardon my skepticism, but when I met you, you hardly had a fa
ce, much less a personality.”
“My point exactly. Just like you, I change in response to experiences—only much faster. And I do have a face now, as you may have observed!”
Indeed she did. Those amber eyes flashed at me. Her cheeks were becomingly flushed. And there was no sign whatsoever of her captivating dimple. It was increasingly hard to remember how flat, bland and motionless she’d been on first meeting.
I was losing ground, but still not convinced. “You’re artificial, a mechanical construct. That’s a long way from human!”
“Leslie, people of your era spent absurd amounts of time trying to find some characteristic that distinguished them from other life-forms—tool use, language and so forth. But every time they developed a new definition, it collapsed under the weight of evidence. Tools are used by creatures as lowly as birds. Honeybees and whales communicate through symbolic systems. Mice sing to one another subsonically. Dolphins and parrots name their own. Certain plants summon benign insects when they need defense from invaders.”
Aimée laughed. “Finally, someone concluded that the one defining difference is the human tendency to find certain smells, tastes or concepts disgusting. In other words, Leslie, humans are those who recoil from their own excrement!”
“As an artist,” I said, sidestepping a direct response, “I have an alternative definition: only humans perceive and respond to beauty.”
Aimée’s gaze roved pointedly over my features. “You certainly cannot disqualify me on that basis, Leslie-ahn.”
I caught my breath, but she was still speaking. “Until you have a more defensible standard, you cannot know who or what fails to meet it.”
“So you’re human because I can’t prove you aren’t?”
“Suppose I could prove that I am?”
I was tired, frustrated, done with debating. “Go for it.”
