Axiomatic (24 page)

Then I phoned the company which had supplied the office software, and explained what had been going on — leaving out details of the subject matter of the nuisance calls.

Their troubleshooter asked me to authorise a diagnostic link; I did so. She vanished for a minute or two. I thought: it will be something simple, and easily fixed — some trivial mistake in the security set-up.

The woman came on-screen again, looking wary.

‘The software all seems fine —there’s no evidence of tampering. And no evidence of unauthorised access. How long since you changed the breakthrough password?’

‘Ah. I haven’t. I haven’t changed anything since the system was installed.’

‘So it’s been the same for the last five years? That’s not good practice.’

I nodded repentantly, but said, ‘I don’t see how anyone could have discovered it. Even if they tried a few thousand random words—’

‘You would have been notified on the fourth wrong guess. And there’s a voiceprint check. Passwords are usually stolen by eavesdropping.’

‘Well, the only other person who knows it is my wife — and I don’t think she’s ever even used it.’

‘There are two authorised voiceprints on file. Whose is the other one?’

‘Mine. In case I had to call the office management system from home. I’ve never done that, though — so I doubt the password has been spoken out loud since the day we installed the software.’

‘Well, there’s a log of both breakthrough calls—’

‘That’s no help. I record all my calls, I’ve already given copies to the police.’

‘No, I’m talking about something else. For security reasons, the initial part of the call — when the password is actually spoken — is stored separately, in encrypted form. If you want to view it, I’ll tell you how — but you’ll have to speak the password yourself, to authorise the decoding.’

She explained the procedure, then went off-line. She didn’t look happy at all. Of course, she didn’t know that the caller had been imitating Loraine; she probably thought I was about to ‘discover’ that the threatening calls were coming from my wife.

She was wrong, of course —but so was I.

Five years is a long time to remember anything so trivial. I had to make three guesses before I got the password right.

I steeled myself for one more glimpse of the fake Loraine, but the screen remained dark — and the voice that said ‘Benvenuto’ was my own.

* * * *

When I arrived home, Loraine was still working, so I left her undisturbed. I went to my study and checked the terminal for mail. There was nothing new, but I scrolled back through the list of past items, until I came to the most recent video postcard from my mother, which had arrived about a month before. Because of the time-rate difference, talking face-to-face was arduous, so we kept in touch by sending each other these recorded monologues.

I told the terminal to replay it. There was something I half remembered at the end, something I wanted to hear again.

My mother had been slowly unageing her appearance ever since her resurrection in Coney Island; she now looked about thirty. She’d been working on her house, too — which had gradually mutated and expanded from a near-perfect model of her last real-world home, into a kind of eighteenth-century French mansion, all carved doors, Louis XV chairs, ornate wall hangings, and chandeliers.

She enquired dutifully about my health and Loraine’s, the gallery, Loraine’s drawings. She made a few acerbic comments on current political events — both inside and outside the Island. Her youthful appearance, her opulent surroundings, weren’t acts of self-deception; she was
not
an old woman any more, she did
not
live in a four-room apartment. Pretending that she had no choice but to mimic her last few years of organic life would have been absurd. She knew
exactly
who and where she was — and she had every intention of making the best of it.

I’d planned to fast-forward through the small talk, but I didn’t. I sat and listened to every word, transfixed by the image of this nonexistent woman’s face, trying to make sense of my feelings for her, trying to untangle the roots of my empathy, ray loyalty, my love . . . for this pattern of information copied from a body now long decayed.

Finally, she said, ‘You keep asking me if I’m happy. If I’m ever lonely. If
I’ve found someone.’
She hesitated, then shook her head. ‘I’m not lonely. You know your father died before this technology was perfected. And you know how much I loved him. Well, I still do; I still love him. He’s not gone, any more than I am. He lives on in my memory — and that’s enough. Here of all places,
that’s enough.’

The first time I’d heard these words, I’d thought she’d been speaking in uncharacteristic platitudes. Now, I thought I understood the barely intentional hint behind her reassurances, and a chill passed through me.

He lives on in my memory.

Here of all places, that’s enough.

Of course they would have kept it quiet; the organic world wasn’t ready to hear this — and Copies could afford to be patient.

That was why I hadn’t yet heard from my mother’s companion. He could wait however many decades it took for me to come to the Island ‘in person’ — and that’s when he’d see me ‘again’.

* * * *

As the serving trolley unloaded the evening meal on to the dining room table, Loraine asked, ‘Any more high-tech heavy breathing today?’

I shook my head slowly, over-emphatically, feeling like an adulterer — or worse. Inside, I was drowning, but if anything showed, Loraine gave no sign that she’d noticed.

She said, ‘Well, it’s hardly the kind of trick you can play twice on the same victim, is it?’

‘No.’

In bed, I stared out into the suffocating darkness, trying to decide what I was going to do . . . although the kidnappers no doubt knew the answer to that already — and they’d hardly have gone ahead with their plan if they hadn’t believed I’d pay them, in the end.

Everything made sense now. Far too much sense. Loraine had no scan file — but they’d broken into mine. To what end? What use is a man’s soul? Well, there’s no need to guess, it will tell you. Extracting the office password would have been the least of it; they must have run my Copy through a few hundred virtual scenarios, and selected the one most likely to produce the largest return on their investment.

A few hundred resurrections, a few hundred different delusions of extortion, a few hundred deaths. I didn’t care — the notion was far too bizarre, far too alien to move me — which was probably why there hadn’t been a very different ransom demand: ‘We have your Copy…’

And the fake Loraine — not even a Copy of the real woman, but a construct based entirely on my knowledge of her, my memories, my mental images — what empathy, what loyalty, what love did I owe
her?

The kidnappers might not have fully reproduced the memory-resurrection technique invented in the Island. I didn’t know what they’d actually created, what — if anything — they’d ‘brought to life’. How elaborate was the computer model behind ‘her’ words, ‘her’ facial expressions, ‘her’ gestures? Was it complex enough to
experience
the emotions it was portraying — like a Copy? Or was it merely complex enough to sway
my emotions
—
complex enough to manipulate me, without feeling a thing?

How could I know, one way or the other — how could I ever tell? I took the ‘humanity’ of my mother for granted — and perhaps she in turn did the same for my resurrected unscanned father, plucked from her virtual brain — but what would it take to convince me that
this
pattern of information was someone I should care about, someone who desperately needed my help?

I lay in the dark, beside the flesh-and-blood Loraine, and tried to imagine what the computer simulation of my mental image of her would be saying in a month’s time.

IMITATION LORAINE: David? They tell me you’re there, they tell me you can hear me. If that’s true

... I don’t understand. Why haven’t you paid them? Is something wrong? Are the police telling you not to pay? (Silence.) I’m all right, I’m hanging on — but I don’t understand what’s happening. (Long silence.) They’re not treating me too badly. I’m sick of the food, but I’ll live. They’ve given me some paper to draw on, and I’ve done a few sketches . . .

Even if I was never convinced, even if I was never certain, I’d always be wondering:
What if I’m
wrong? What if she’s conscious after all? What if she’s every bit as human as I’ll be when I’m
resurrected — and I’ve betrayed her, abandoned her?

I couldn’t live with that. The possibility, and the appearance, would be enough to tear me apart.

And they knew it.

* * * *

My financial management software laboured all night to free the money from investments. At nine o’clock the next morning, I transferred half a million dollars into the specified account, and then sat in my office waiting to see what would happen. I considered changing the breakthrough password back to the old

‘Benvenuto’ — but then decided that if they really had my scan file at their disposal, they’d have no trouble deducing my new choice.

At ten past nine, the kidnapper’s mask appeared on the giant screen — and said bluntly, without poetic pretensions, ‘The same again, in two years’ time.’

I nodded. ‘Yes.’ I could raise it by then, without Loraine knowing. Just.

‘So long as you keep paying, we’ll keep her frozen. No time, no experience — no distress.’

‘Thank you.’ I hesitated, then forced myself to speak. ‘But in the end, when I’m—’

‘What?’

‘When I’m resurrected . . . you’ll let her join me?’

The mask smiled magnanimously. ‘Of course.’

* * * *

I don’t know how I’ll begin to explain everything to the imitation Loraine — or what she’ll do when she learns her true nature. Resurrection in the Island may be her idea of Hell — but what choice did I have?

Leaving her to rot, for as long as the kidnappers believed her suffering might still move me? Or buying her freedom —
and then never running her again?

When we’re together in the Island, she can come to her own conclusions, make her own decisions. For now, all I can do is gaze up at the sky and hope that she really is safe in her unthinking stasis.

For now, I have a life to live with the flesh-and-blood Loraine. I have to tell her the truth, of course —

and I run through the whole conversation, beside her in the dark, night after night.

DAVID: How could I not care about her? How could I let her suffer? How could I abandon someone who was — literally — built out of all my reasons for loving
you?

LORAINE: An imitation of an imitation? There
was
no one suffering, no one waiting to be saved. No one to be rescued, or abandoned.

DAVID: Am I
no one?
Are you
no one?
Because that’s all
we
can ever have of each other: an imitation, a Copy. All we can ever know about are the portraits of each other inside our own skulls.

LORAINE: Is that all you think I am? An idea in your head?

DAVID: No! But if it’s all I have, then it’s all I can honestly love.
Don’t you see that?

And, miraculously, she does. She finally understands.

Night after night.

I close my eyes and fall asleep, relieved.

<>

* * * *

LEARNING TO BE ME

I was six years old when my parents told me that there was a small, dark jewel inside my skull, learning to be me.

Microscopic spiders had woven a fine golden web through my brain, so that the jewel’s teacher could listen to the whisper of my thoughts. The jewel itself eavesdropped on my senses, and read the chemical messages carried in my bloodstream; it saw, heard, smelt, tasted and felt the world exactly as I did, while the teacher monitored its thoughts and compared them with my own. Whenever the jewel’s thoughts were
wrong,
the teacher — faster than thought — rebuilt the jewel slightly, altering it, this way and that, seeking out the changes that would make its thoughts correct.

Why? So that when I could no longer be me, the jewel could do it for me.

I thought: if hearing that makes
me
feel strange and giddy, how must it make
the jewel
feel? Exactly the same, I reasoned; it doesn’t know it’s the jewel, and it too wonders how the jewel must feel, it too reasons: ‘Exactly the same; it doesn’t know it’s the jewel, and it too wonders how the jewel must feel . .

.’

And it too wonders—

(I knew, because
I
wondered)

—it too wonders whether it’s the real me, or whether in fact it’s only the jewel that’s learning to be me.

* * * *

As a scornful twelve-year-old, I would have mocked such childish concerns. Everybody had the jewel, save the members of obscure religious sects, and dwelling upon the strangeness of it struck me as unbearably pretentious. The jewel was the jewel, a mundane fact of life, as ordinary as excrement. My friends and I told bad jokes about it, the same way we told bad jokes about sex, to prove to each other how blasé we were about the whole idea.

Yet we weren’t quite as jaded and imperturbable as we pretended to be. One day when we were all loitering in the park, up to nothing in particular, one of the gang — whose name I’ve forgotten, but who has stuck in my mind as always being far too clever for his own good — asked each of us in turn: ‘Who
are
you? The jewel, or the real human?’ We all replied — unthinkingly, indignantly — ‘The real human!’

When the last of us had answered, he cackled and said, ‘Well, I’m not.
I’m
the jewel. So you can eat my shit, you losers, because
you’ll
all get flushed down the cosmic toilet — but me, I’m gonna live forever.’

We beat him until he bled.

* * * *

By the time I was fourteen, despite — or perhaps because of-the fact that the jewel was scarcely mentioned in my teaching machine’s dull curriculum, I’d given the question a great deal more thought. The pedantically correct answer when asked ‘Are you the jewel or the human?’ had to be ‘The human’ —