The Soul Continuum (36 page)

“They don't,” Cartinian says, “and I've been wanting to know what that thing is for a while. Just lately, I got my
own ideas what it might be, and I never asked before because
I just knew she'd never spill, but I have a feeling we're going to find out today. That's if she's still in a chatty . . . mood.” He smiles mirthlessly at me as he emphasizes the last word, secretly threatening me with something I haven't wanted him to reveal to the others.

“Astute,” I tell him. “Mood is the operative word. My catharsis gland is a new creation built by the Unitas Communion. It regulates the level at which my brain can function without the influence of nanodrone cells or the Unitas Communion.”

Yeeka screws her face up. “It does what?”

Oluvia lifts her chin. “It means the more she uses it, the more human she can be.”

“Very good, Oluvia,” I say. “Almost correct. I have always been classified as human, but my emotions were very different before the Unitas Communion chose me to test this organ. If it operates at anything below 3 percent, I would be connected to the Unitas Communion. Between three and 85 percent the Unitas Communion's influence is gone, and my brain allows me to feel brain emotion in combination with my CPU emotion. Between 86 percent and 100 percent, I would be aware of only brain emotion.”

Sooli squats and rests her arms over her knees. “So what percentage are you running at now?”

“Sixty-one percent. I have the percentage incrementing at a slow rate so that I can acclimatize.”

“Whoa!” Cartinian says. “So what's it like to have real emotion mixed with fake?”

I am uncertain if Cartinian is trying to tease me, or if he is genuinely ignorant. “I do not have any fake emotions.
The emotions generated by my machine self are simply silicon
based instead of carbon based. Thoughts and emotions are nothing more than uniquely configured electrical impulses. It does not matter if they are generated by brain matter or silicon circuitry.”

“Okay, okay!” Cartinian grins and holds his hands up. “Keep your hair on. Oh, wait, bitch don't have hair, does she?” He looks at Yeeka and Sooli, who roll their eyes.

“Does it hurt?” Oluvia observes me seriously now, and the smiles fall from the faces of the other three.

“Does what hurt?” I ask her.

“Having two different types of feeling stuck together. Does it hurt?”

“Shit!” Cartinian says, shaking his head. “She's not even three years old and she's asking questions like that?”

I study Oluvia carefully. She continually baffles me. Despite much study, I am no closer to understanding why we are linked or why her growth was triggered. From my studies of modern
Homo sapiens
children, I gauge Oluvia to be unremarkable. With the standard genetic augmentations set in motion by DNA tuning, her growth rate is normal, the point at which she first began to walk is normal, and her comprehension of language is normal, yet she does, on
occasions like today, exhibit above-average signs of maturity.

“The machine emotions hurt,” I tell her. “It is why we created the catharsis gland, so that silicants can feel what other human species can feel. The previous four designs failed, but I feel confident that this one will succeed.”

“Is this why you are called Silicant 5?” Sooli asks.

“Yes.”

Oluvia nudges closer to me on the seat, her eyes wide and concerned. “Why do the machine emotions hurt? What do you feel?”

How can I tell her that the machine emotions, which
are still 39 percent active, hate her with a passion? It hates that she is pushing her repulsive flesh against me. It hates all
irregularities and imperfections and smells and touch and—most
of all—it hates the part of me that shares organic commonality
with her kind.

Instead of answering her question, I look at Cartinian. “You told me you were investigating the sounds we keep hearing. Do you have anything yet?”

“The sounds were scary,” Oluvia tells him.

“Ah, your freaky sounds,” he says and scratches his head, squinting as if the sun is in his eyes. “Yeah, they're kind of . . . well, I guess Oluvia has a point: they are scary. Sounds like the walls are growling.”

“What do you mean? Have you heard them?”

“Oh, I've heard them,” he says, eyes widening again but avoiding mine. “There are heaps of files in the Council's database where they've been reported and recorded, but it's not the sounds themselves that scare me. It's the pattern.”

A pattern! In my own investigations I had not noticed a pattern, and I find it difficult to believe that Cartinian would discover anything ahead of me. I used him only because of his abilities to hack undetected into all of the
Socrates
's systems.

“Actually,” Cartinian continues, “it's not so much that it's a pattern. It's a repeat.”

“A repeat is a pattern,” I correct him.

“No, you don't understand.” Cartinian stares at the grass beneath his bare feet and takes a deep breath. “It's a copy of a unique configuration. The occurrence of each sound event was in a random place on the ship every time, but there was no break between each event until they completely stopped three weeks ago. There was a total of five hundred sound events. You know that, right?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” He nods slowly, then finally makes eye contact with me. “And . . . uh . . . anything happen in your life three weeks ago that was different than normal?”

“Not that I am aware. Why?”

“Sure,” he says. “That's what I thought you might say. So here's the really freaky part. The places the sounds happened
weren't random at all.”

“They were.”

“No, 5, they were not. Well, actually they were, yeah, but they weren't.”

“You're not making sense,” Sooli says. “Either it is or it isn't; you need to come down off the amps, Lennon.”

“Shut up,” he barks, then turns back to me. “I think it's you, 5. I think it's that weird catharsis gland of yours.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Phantoms of the id. It's like an old, old story I once read, ‘The Forbidden . . .' something-or-other. I think you're doing it unconsciously.”

“You are deluded. What evidence do you—?”

“Hear me out,” he says, lifting his palms. He pauses for my consent, then continues. “The pattern of sound placement is an exact copy of another random sequence of events that happened previously. It's atomic. My algorithms ran the sequence of sound occurrences, looking for a match,
and if you take the center point of the
Socrates
for orientation,
the sound locations map exactly to the locations of an electron's
path inside a specific atom.”

“That is a ridiculous correlation,” I tell him. “There are trillions of atoms on this ship. There is a high probability that one of their electron's paths would match.”

“Yeah? And what if the atom my algorithm pinpointed was right at the very center of that freaky new organ of yours, huh? Still think it's a ridiculous correlation?”

I hold his gaze for several seconds. The accusation is preposterous. Impossible, even. Yet if he is telling the truth, I am at a loss to explain it.

As if he has read my thoughts, he holds up a finger. “Now you know I got no reason to lie, right?” He shrugs. “I'm just telling you what I found.”

Sooli and Yeeka frown at me and remain silent. Even
Oluvia edges away slightly. Could it be me? Could the catharsis gland somehow be redirecting my machine hatred into some
kind of tangible force rather than simply diminishing it?

“Have you shared this with anyone?” I ask.

“Nope. The Council are investigating too, but they are
taking a different route of investigation. They have maintenance teams scouring the liner's systems looking for structural
defects. Obviously, they haven't found anything.”

“Good. Tell them nothing. We need more information before we tell anyone else.”

“But I just told you—”

“Your theory is unrealistic,” I tell him. I glance at the others. “There is nothing in my physiology that could possibly
create such a phenomenon.”

“Like I said,” Cartinian says carefully, “just telling you what I found; that's all.”

Oluvia's smile has left her completely now. She reaches out with a podgy hand and gently touches my fingers. I wish I knew what she was thinking, but I cannot ask.

D
ays 801 to 1824: Routine.

Day 1825.

Almost three standard years have passed since the accusation.

Another sequence of the sounds came days after the first series, equally random in their placement, but Cartinian's
algorithm could not identify a matching atomic signature that time, and when the sounds eventually stopped again, the urgency of the issue lessened until, months later, it was abandoned by all as an unsolvable mystery.

One curious aspect of the sound's duration at each location
was that it matched perfectly with Excelsior's sequence theorem,
once called the Fibonacci sequence. The only anomaly was
the number three appearing in place of sixty-three. It was either
an aberration, an attempt at communication, or a natural occurrence, and Nature is replete with this mathematical sequence. Whichever it was, I was still unwilling to accept that it was my mind creating those disturbing sounds, especially when the second series evidently had no link to me, but my sense of caution (or perhaps paranoia) rekindled my determination to quell the negative emotions infesting my machine mind. I capped my catharsis gland at 85 percent so that I am only vaguely aware of the vicious hatred that festers there. I do not want to switch it off completely. While
I still sense it, I feel that I am watching it, almost supervising
it like a caged animal, ready for a deadlier manifestation than an eerie sound should it decide to escape.

The fact that the disturbances have not come back since I stabilized my catharsis gland offers disconcerting evidence that I may be the source, but I prefer not to investigate further; if an equilibrium has been achieved, I have no wish to jeopardize that. Unfortunately this almost superstitious and very human instinctual line of reasoning has prevented me from progressing with a more thorough investigation of the original mystery: the connection between Oluvia and me. And yet I find I am less concerned about that, too. I have found a curious contentment in mundane routine, passing each moment with the careful and meticulous precision of a quantum engineer, risking nothing.

In contrast, Oluvia continues in her usual exuberant fashion, fascinating Cartinian, Sooli, and Yeeka with her peculiar fusion of childlike genius and naïve wonder. To some extent, the diversity of life I deny myself is lived through her, and I find satisfaction in that. I may actually be the very first of my genus to achieve the state of content
ment for which we have been striving, and this is why I cannot,
must
not, give any credence to Cartinian's theory
of the id monster. This latest adaptation of the Unitas Communion's catharsis gland is a success. It must stay that way.

Today, however, my emotional stability is challenged because Oluvia's presence on board the
Socrates
is in danger of being revealed. I have been summoned unexpectedly to the astronomics section to examine some anomalous data. A summons like this is rare, and I cannot refuse. Until now it has been a simple task to keep Oluvia secret. I have no visitors aside from Cartinian and his females, and upon
request, they watch over her in the simulation suite, preventing
her from becoming a victim of her own curiosity on the many occasions when it is necessary for me to leave my home. Cartinian is also content to maintain the hacking software to mask her life signature on the liner's internal sensors, as long as I continue to manufacture amphidextrine for him. But the summons gave me no time to make preparations, and without being able to reach any of the three on short notice to watch over Oluvia, I was forced to leave Oluvia unsupervised. I have taken precautions to ensure she does not leave, and I even explained to her why she must not follow me, but she is very resourceful and determined. I am worried that she—

“What are you doing?”

The question is shouted by the senior astronomer several
hundred meters down the central strip hugging the equator of the astronomics globe, and I detect significant alarm in his voice. This is not unusual for Higgs Tazaria. He is an excitable male with a tendency to exaggerate any experience that is new to him.

“I am recording a personal log entry.”

Higgs Tazaria marches the distance between us, glaring at me from beneath a hedge of unruly white eyebrows, and I wait for him. He is more than twenty thousand standard years old, but he goes for centuries without visiting a genoplant, claiming there is still value in well-seasoned years and the discipline that comes from battling one's own bodily decay. He is underweight but lithe, and with his white overalls hanging from him like the shed reptilian skin of an albino snake, he takes advantage of his disturbingly worn appearance to great effect. The twenty members of his staff milling nervously over their stations fear him to the degree that his decisions and conclusions are never challenged. It is no wonder then that—aside from the infamy of Under
Paris—the astronomics section is one of the shabbiest places
on the
Socrates
: much as he does with his own person, Higgs rejects the interference of sanitation nanodrones in this place, preferring the effort of humans to keep everything clean. Hence, to an eye with greater powers of scrutiny such as mine, the astronomics section is abundant with microbial carnage and dead skin cells. Aside from that, it is an impressive location. More than one thousand meters across, bulging out from the lower end of the lengthy passenger shaft like the ballooned throat of a primitive amphibian stretched to a smeared transparency, the globe of the astronomics section still commands a healthy respect from all who are invited.