Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (28 page)

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“How did the designers know that the probe would function in the first place? By theory and experimentation, mainly. I may only be one person, but I’ve had a lot of time to improve my education. As a result, I am now a self-taught expert on every field in the earth archives. Give me another thousand years and I’ll be far in advance of anything we left behind. Perhaps —just perhaps —I will find a way to rebuild the drive from scratch. Faster-than-light propulsion or time travel may not be impossible, either. Given the opportunity, I am confident that I can undo the setbacks we have suffered, and return us to the place we belong.”

“That doesn’t mean we should forget about everything that’s happened in the past,” says Exene.

“No,” he agrees, “and nor should I expect you to —even if I
could
guarantee eventual success. Indeed, as it stands I doubt very much it’ll happen. At the current rate of attrition, I estimate that the probe will be utterly dead within five hundred years. Without someone to maintain it, it will fail by degrees until the battery reserves of the primary bank are drained. Cosmic radiation will then corrupt the stored information bit by bit, until even the engrams frozen for eternity will be at risk. And that’ll be that. Everything we endured will have been for nothing.”

“Wait.” Tiger Coveny holds up a hand. “The implication here is that you will cease to maintain the probe. Are you thinking of holding us to ransom?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I know —but
are
you?”

Her suspicion makes him smile. “If by confronting you with the truth I’m forcing you to make a decision, then yes, I suppose I am guilty of a sort of blackmail. But believe me, my intentions aren’t malicious. All I want is to make absolutely clear to you that, as things stand, I will be unable to continue in my present capacity for much longer. A thousand years is all I can endure —and much, much more than I deserved —of this living hell.”

His smile is gone. The assembly stares at him, startled by his sudden intensity. No one dares speak, for this is so unlike the Emmett Longyear we all remember. The air of amusement that at times made him seem condescending may never have been there at all, his expression is so bleak. Now, I think,
now
he looks a thousand years old.

“You think you have suffered,” he says, softly at first. “You who have endured thirty years of frustration and despair. Well, imagine that multiplied by thirty-three—for I am the same as all of you —just as human, just as fallible, just as
flawed.
I’ve felt everything you feel now, and much more besides. The only thing that has sustained me for so long is your belief that I am responsible for your situation —plus the fact that I’ve been trying to do something about it. Without accepting categorically that I
am
responsible, it does give me some satisfaction to come before you today to tell you that, finally, after a great deal of hard work, the end may soon be in sight. I have isolated the problem, devised a solution, and now await only your decision before putting it into practice. And once
that
is done, we may never have to worry about death or boredom ever again. Ever!”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t beat around the bush.” Exene’s voice is harsh against Emmett’s, and I can tell he is annoyed at her for interrupting his flow. “Get to the point before I run out of patience.”

“I’m offering you freedom,” he says slowly. “Freedom from the past, and from yourselves. Freedom to become whatever you want.”

She rolls her eyes, unimpressed. “Specifics, please. You haven’t mentioned anything we don’t already have, at least in theory — “

He almost leaps on the word, snatching it out of the air with one hand. “Exactly!” he says. “In
theory,
we should be living in nirvana. We have enormous virtual resources: we can do anything we want. But instead we do nothing. We are depressed, miserable, suicidal. What is it we’re lacking?”

“Hope,” says Tiger, dully.

“No. I thought so for a long time, too. The correct answer is actually
change.”

“I don’t understand.”

He takes a step back from the edge of the arena.

‘‘I met myself once,” he says eventually. “We all did. I encouraged you to — your originals, anyway. It was my way of reinforcing the fact that we are no longer the beings we once were —that we engrams are
different.
But the thing that struck me, when I came face to face with the old me, was the sense of continuity I felt. There was no dislocation, no jarring unreality. I still knew who I was; there were simply two of us from that moment on. And it has taken me the better part of a millennium to realize why I felt that way, and how it has jeopardized the future or this mission.

You see, although I felt the same, I clearly wasn’t. The discrepancies mounted up as time went on, and not just in me. We have all lost something, to a greater or lesser degree: I can’t juggle conflicting agenda anymore; Jurgen can’t talk; Letho can’t intuit crystalline structures the way he used to; and so on. Some of us have continued in our fields only slightly less ably than we could before; others, like Peter, are unable to continue at all. Whatever it was that made our originals stand out among the majority of other humans is no longer in us — and there is nothing we can do to get it back.

“But we still
believe
we are the same. That’s the problem. We are bound by our originals’ conscious contributions to the creation of their engrams: everything they believed to be pivotal parts of themselves, we are now forced to regard the same way,
even if we no longer possess those parts at all.”

“Seriously?” Letho is frowning.

“Yes. And
this
is the source of all my pain —and all of yours, too. Although broadly speaking there’s nothing wrong with emulating our originals —that’s what we were designed to do, after all —as time goes on and we learn more and more it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion that nothing
should
change. I have lived a thousand years but am still recognisably the same person. Why should I be? I could have shed this appearance scores of times; I could have transformed myself into something more or less than human. The same with the way I speak. We only
believe
we speak in languages: underneath the pretence, it’s all the same machine code. So why haven’t I abandoned the old means of communication for more efficient electronic methods? If I have not, it is only because I
cannot.
I am an intelligent creature who wants to evolve, trapped in the cage of a self I once was and can no longer be.”

“I don’t believe it,” says Tiger. “I’m me, not anyone else. I’d know if it was otherwise.”

“No you wouldn’t. You’re not able to. The core program makes certain of that.”

“How?”

“By reinforcing your identity parameters on a subconscious level. When you feel an emotion, are you aware of the process underlying it—the calculations undergone and algorithms utilized to transform you from one state to another? No. In the same way, we are unaware of the way certain rules influence our preferences and behavior on a less subtle level.”

“Such as?” Tiger is still sceptical, and I don’t blame her.

“Well, take Peter for example.” I sit up straight, acutely conscious of everyone’s attention on me again. “Peter, what is your primal place, the place you think of when you are under stress and need to relax?”

“Port Gibbon, South Australia,” I reply without needing to consider the question. “My grandfather used to take me there when I was a child.”

“And that’s where you spend your time now?”

“Yes.” It’s my turn to frown. “So?”

“You’re under stress constantly, so you go there without thinking —and never leave.” His eyes are piercing. “Why don’t you tell us what you do there? How do you define yourself?”

“I am a composer.” Again the reply is automatic.

“Even though you haven’t written anything for—how long?”

I squirm in my seat. The beach is certainly looking attractive, now.

“You can’t write music at all,” he answers for me, “yet you are still defined by the preconceptions of your original. That explains why you’ve made no attempt to learn something new. It wouldn’t be
you
to do so —’you’ as defined by your original, of course, not ‘you’ as you truly are. You are trapped between the two: one won’t let you free to become the other. You’re frozen, just like the rest of us.”

“Except you, I suppose,” says Exene, derision naked in her tone.

“No, that’s not true. I’m frozen too. I’ve just had longer to think about it than you. And I’m more acutely aware of the edits in my own personality than you are.”

“What do you mean by that? What ‘edits’?”

He shrugs. “My original clearly didn’t want me to know everything about the program, so he left out the more sensitive information. Some of this tampering is evident in the form of holes in my memory —holes I’ve been aware of ever since my awakening. As a result, the realization has always been there that I am an artificial construct bound by rules beyond my control. Indeed, the rule that binds most tightly is the one stating that I cannot under any circumstances change those rules.”

“How could you?” asks Letho.

“Easily, I’ve discovered. The core program that governs our behavior operates from the primary bank. It applies the rules once every two or three seconds to make sure we haven’t gone off the rails.” He points at Tiger. “Ever had an unexpected thought that suddenly went nowhere? If it wasn’t part of the specifications your original laid down, it would have been discarded as inappropriate.”

“Maybe.” Tiger looks unconvinced, defensive, afraid.

“The same thing explains why we can’t commit suicide: death is inconsistent with the template.”

She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “What are you suggesting we do about this?”

“I want to rewrite the core program — to take out the code that ties us to our original templates.”

“Erase
it?”

“Utterly.”

The look of horror on her face mirrors my instinctive reaction. “You’re insane!”

“No, Tiger, just very, very tired of being someone I’m not.”

Tiger looks around for reinforcement. Exene raises her hand.

“Isn’t this a little dramatic, Emmett?” she asks when she has his attention. “Why can’t the code simply be edited to allow more flexibility?”

“Because that will almost certainly create more problems. How do we decide which parts of the template should change and which shouldn’t? How should the core program apply these changes, and over whet time period would they be in place?” He shakes his head emphatically. “By accepting this solution, we open ourselves up to a worse situation than we have now, where change is sluggish and potentially misdirected. Better for us all to grow naturally, as evolution demands.”

“All
of us?” says Cuby. “I’m happy the way I am right now. Why should I change just because you want to?”

“Because that’s the way the core program functions. It oversees all of us at once and I can’t cut an individual out of the loop. It’s either all or none, I’m afraid, which is why I’ve come to you now. The decision is in your hands.”

“Is it?” asks Exene suspiciously.

“As I said earlier, I am bound not to alter the programming of my own will. One of you has to do it.” He smiles. “Believe me, it would’ve been tempting to do it without your knowledge, otherwise.”

“I can imagine.” Exene looks around the room, gauging our response to the suggestion. We are all slightly stunned.

“Well?” she asks. “Shall we discuss this? Or do you have something more to say, Emmett?”

“I’ve finished for now,” he says, folding his hands behind his back and stepping out of the focus of the arena. “If you want me to answer any questions, I’ll stay for the discussion.”

“Please.” Exene nods.          

“I don’t think we should even consider it,” says Tiger. “It’s an insane idea.”

“I agree,” echoes Cuby. “We should test it first, to see what happens when the templates are relaxed.”

“How can we test something that will affect all of us at once?” asks Letho.

“We can’t,” says Cuby. “Unless we duplicate the banks and run the copy to see what happens to it.”

“Is that feasible?” Exene asks Emmett.

He shakes his head. “Insufficient resources.”

“Then all we can do is theorize.”

“We need an AI specialist,” says Letho. “Or a psychologist.”

“We have neither,” I say. “Kumich and Wyra are inactive. Unless we vote to wake them — “

“No.” Exene shakes her head. “And what good would it do, anyway? They’d be as much in the dark as we are.”

“Hasn’t anyone tried this before?” Cuby asks.

“Not according to the archives,” Emmett says. “In our day, such experimentation was forbidden on subjects that were legally alive, which ruled out AIs and intelligences based on humans. Engrams hadn’t been around long enough for problems with the templates to arise.”

Cuby shrugs. “So we have no data. We can’t base a decision on mere speculation.”

“The data we have comes from nature itself,” Emmett counters. “Our originals changed as a matter of course, throughout their lives. There’s nothing to say we won’t do so just as well.”