Permutation City (27 page)

"I was about to ask you the same question."

She smiled wickedly. "Ah. Then maybe this body you hope is me only asked you first to put your mind at ease."

In the sky above her right shoulder, Peer could see a stray cloud taking on a new shape, a whimsical sculpture parodying the bodies on the grass below.

He said, "And then admitted as much?"

Kate nodded, and started slowly rising. "Of course. For the very same reason. How many levels of bluffing will it take before you get bored and say: Fuck it, I don't care?"

She lifted herself until they were almost apart. He closed his eyes and violated the geometry, licking the sweat from between her shoulder blades without moving a muscle. She responded by sticking her tongue in both of his ears simultaneously. He laughed and opened his eyes.

The cloud above had darkened. Kate lowered herself onto him again, trembling very slightly.

She said, "Don't you find it ironic?"

"What?"

"Trans-humans taking pleasure by stimulating copies of the neural pathways which used to be responsible for the continuation of the species. Out of all the possibilities, we cling to that."

Peer said, "No, I don't find it ironic. I had my irony glands removed. It was either that, or castration."

She smiled down at him. "I love you, you know. But would I tell you that? Or would you be stupid enough to pretend that I had?"

Warm, sweet rain began to fall.

He said, "I don't care, I don't care, I don't care."

+ + +

Peer sat on the lowest of the four wooden steps leading up to the back porch of his homestead, glancing down now and then at his bare feet and thin brown arms.
Ten-year-old farm boy at dusk.
Kate had made both the environment and the body for him, and be liked the tranquil mood of the piece. There was no invented family, no role to play; this was a painting, not a drama. One place, one moment, lasting as long as he chose to inhabit it. The scenery wasn't quite photorealist -- there were subtle distortions of form, color and texture which made it impossible to forget that he was inhabiting a work of art -- but there were no sledgehammer techniques: no visible brushstrokes, no Van Gogh lighting effects.

Violating the whole aesthetic, an interface window hovered in front of him, a meter above the chicken-feed-scattered dirt. The cloning utility insisted on following an elaborate confirmation sequence; Peer kept saying, "Please skip to the final question, I know exactly what I'm doing" -- but icons in legal wigs and gowns kept popping up in front of the window and declaring solemnly, "You
must
read this warning carefully. Your brain model will be directly examined for evidence of complete understanding before we proceed to the next stage."

It was a thousand times more trouble than baling out -- he knew that for certain, having almost done it -- but then, baling out entailed fewer legal complications for the people outside. Peer's estate was controlled by an executor, who'd signed a contract obliging her to act according to "any duly authenticated communications -- including, but not limited to, visual and/or auditory simulations of a human being appearing to proffer instructions or advice." What
duly authenticated
meant revolved around a ninety-nine-digit code key which had been "hardwired" into Peer's model-of-a-brain when his Copy was generated from his scan file. He could summon it up consciously if he had to, in some unlikely emergency, but normally he made use of it by a simple act of will. He'd record a video postcard, wish it to be
duly authenticated
-- and it was done. Unless the key was stolen -- plucked right out of the computer memory which contained the data representing his brain -- Peer was the only software on the planet capable of encrypting instructions to his executor in a form compatible with her own matching key. It was the closest thing he had to a legal identity.

By law, any clone which a Copy made of itself had to be given a new key. It was up to the initial Copy, prior to the cloning, to divide up the worldly assets between the two future selves -- or rather, divide them up between the executor's two portfolios.

Peer fought his way through the process of assuring the cloning utility that he really had meant what he'd told it from the start: The clone would require no assets of its own. Peer would run it on sufferance, paying for its running time himself. He didn't plan on keeping it conscious for more than a minute or two; just long enough to reassure himself that he was doing the right thing.

He almost wished that Kate was with him, now. She'd offered to be here, but he'd turned her down. He would have been glad of her support, but this had to be done in private.

Finally, the utility said, "This is your last chance to cancel. Are you sure you wish to proceed?"

Peer closed his eyes.
When I see my original, sitting on the porch, I'll know who I am, and accept it.

He said, "Yes, I'm sure."

Peer felt no change. He opened his eyes. His newly made twin stood on the ground where the interface window had been, staring at him, wide-eyed. Peer shivered. He recognized the boy as
himself,
and not just intellectually -- Kate's piece included adjustments to every part of his brain which dealt with his body image, so he'd be no more shocked by catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror than he was by the way his limbs felt as he walked. But the effect wasn't so much to see through the "disguise" of the ten-year-old body, as to find himself thinking of the clone -- and himself -- as if the two of them really were that young.
How could he send this child into exile?

Peer brushed the absurd notion aside. "Well?"

The clone seemed dazed. "I --"

Peer prompted him. "You know what I want to hear. Are you ready for this? Are you happy with your fate? Did I make the right decision? You're the one who knows, now."

"But I
don't
know." He looked at Peer pleadingly, as if hoping for guidance. "Why am I doing this? Remind me."

Peer was taken aback, but some disorientation was only to be expected. His own voice sounded "normal" to him -- thanks to the neural adjustments -- but the clone still sounded like a frightened child. He said gently, "Kate. We want to be with her. Both of her --"

The clone nodded fervently. "Of course." He laughed nervously. "And of course I'm ready. Everything's fine." His eyes darted around the yard, as if he was searching for an escape route.

Peer felt his chest tighten. He said evenly, "You don't have to go ahead if you don't want to. You know that. You can bale out right now, if that's what you'd prefer."

The clone looked more alarmed than ever. "I don't want that! I want to stow away with Kate." He hesitated, then added, "She'll be happier in there, more secure. And I do want to be with her; I want to know that side of her."

"Then what's wrong?"

The clone sank to his knees in the dirt For a second, Peer thought he was sobbing, then he realized that the noise was laughter.

The clone recovered his composure and said, "Nothing's wrong -- but how do you expect me to take it? The two of us, cut off from everything else. Not just the real world, but all the other Copies."

Peer said, "If you get lonely, you can always generate new people. You'll have access to ontogenesis software -- and no reason to care about the slowdown."

The clone started laughing again. Tears streamed down his face. Hugging himself, he tumbled sideways onto the ground. Peer looked on, bemused. The clone said, "Here I am trying to steel myself for the wedding, and already you're threatening me with children."

Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed Peer by one ankle, then dragged him off the step. Peer hit the ground on his arse with a jarring thud. His first instinct was to freeze the clone's power to interact with him, but he stopped himself. He was in no danger -- and if his twin wanted to burn off some aggression on his brother-creator, he could take it. They were evenly matched, after all.

Two minutes later, Peer was lying with his face in the dirt and his arms pinned behind his back. The clone kneeled over him, breathless but triumphant.

Peer said, "All right, you win. Now get off me -- or I'll double my height, put on forty kilograms, and get up and flatten you."

The clone said, "Do you know what we should do?"

"Shake hands and say goodbye."

"Toss a coin."

"For what?"

The clone laughed. "What do you think?"

"You said you were happy to go."

"I am. But so should you be. I say we toss a coin. If I win, we swap key numbers."

"That's illegal!"

"
Illegal!
"
The clone was contemptuous. "Listen to the Solipsist Nation Copy invoke the laws of the world! It's easily done. The software exists. All you have to do is agree."

Talking was difficult; Peer spat out sand, but there was a seed of some kind caught between his teeth which he couldn't dislodge. He felt a curious reluctance to "cheat," though -- to remove the seed from his mouth, or the clone from his back. It had been so long since he'd been forced to endure the slightest discomfort that the novelty seemed to outweigh the inconvenience.

He said, "All right. I'll do it"

And if he lost?
But why should he fear that? Five minutes ago, he'd been prepared to give rise to -- to
become
-- the clone who'd stow away.

They created the coin together, the only way to ensure that it was subject to no hidden influences. The reality editor they jointly invoked offered a standard object ready-made for their purpose, which they decorated as a one-pound coin. The physics of flipping a real coin wouldn't come into it; any Copy could easily calculate and execute a flick of the thumb leading to a predetermined outcome. The result would be controlled by a random number generator deep in the hidden layers of the operating system.

Peer said, "I toss, you call" -- at exactly the same time as the clone. He laughed. The clone smiled faintly. Peer was about to defer, then decided to wait. A few seconds later, he said, alone, "All right, you toss."

As the coin went up, Peer thought about encasing it in a second object, an invisibly thin shell under his control alone -- but the long list of attributes of the fair coin probably included crying foul if its true faces were concealed. He shouted "Heads!" just before the thing hit the dirt.

The two of them fell to their hands and knees, almost bumping heads. A hen approached; Peer shooed it away with a backward kick.

President Kinnock, in profile, glinted in the dust.

The clone met his eyes. Peer did his best not to look relieved -- short of severing ties with his body. He tried to read the clone's expression, and failed; all he saw was a reflection of his own growing numbness. Pirandello had said it was impossible to feel any real emotion while staring into a mirror. Peer decided to take that as a good sign. They were still one person, after all -- and that was the whole point.

The clone rose to his feet dusting off his knees and elbows. Peer took a hologram-embossed library card from the back pocket of his jeans and handed it over; it was an icon for a copy of all the environments, customized utilities, bodies, memories and other data he'd accumulated since his resurrection.

The clone said, "Don't worry about me -- or Kate. We'll look after each other. We'll be happy." As he spoke, he morphed smoothly into an older body.

Peer said, "Ditto." He reached up and shook the young man's hand. Then he summoned one of his control windows and froze the clone, leaving the motionless body visible as an icon for the snapshot file. He shrunk it to a height of a few centimeters, flattened it into a two-dimensional postcard, and wrote on the back:
to malcolm carter.

Then he walked down the road a kilometer to one of Kate's little touches, a postbox marked us
mail,
and dropped the postcard in.

19

(Remit not paucity)

JUNE 2051

The anaesthetist said, "Count backward from ten."

Maria said, "Ten."

She dreamed of arriving on Francesca's doorstep with a suitcase full of money. As she walked down the hall behind her mother, the case fell open, and hundred-dollar bills fluttered out and filled the air like confetti.

Francesca turned to her, radiant with health. She said tenderly, "You shouldn't have, my darling. But I understand. You can't take it with you."

Maria laughed. "You can't take it with you."

Her father was in the living room, dressed for his wedding day, although not as young. He beamed and held out his arms to Maria. His parents, and Francesca's parents, stood behind him -- and as Maria approached, she saw from on high that behind her grandparents were cousins and aunts, great-grandparents and great-aunts, row after row of relatives and ancestors, stretching back into the depths of the house, laughing and chattering. The money had brought them all back to life. How could she have been so selfish as to think of denying them this grand reunion?