Realms of Light (23 page)

“I don’t,” I said.

“He may find breaking his contract with IRC
will make him less appealing to potential employers.”

I shrugged. “He’s a grown man. He’ll
manage.”

“Considering the effort you devoted to
getting him out of Nightside City, you seem surprisingly
unconcerned.”

“He’s my brother, so I care about him, but
he’s not a baby.”

“I have arranged for Guohan Hsing to be
tanked at Eternal Adventures here in American City as soon as his
condition is sufficiently stable; my medical systems estimate forty
hours will be more than adequate. Obtaining his personal library
from Seventh Heaven may prove difficult, however. They have
accepted my payment for breach of contract and damages, but seem
determined to hold his accumulated dream experiences for
ransom.”

“Then he can start a new library.”

“You aren’t concerned?”

“I think I’ve fulfilled my filial
responsibilities, thank you.”

“Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem
very fond of your family.”

“My father dumped his three kids to buy a
dream; do you expect me to be grateful?”

“And your brother?”

I hesitated. “I love ’Chan,” I said. “I
really do. But... do you love your niece Narumi?”

He smiled. “I understand. Moving on, this man
Singh—who is he?”

“He’s a maintenance worker from Seventh
Heaven who agreed to help me in exchange for a ride to Prometheus.
End of script. I got him here, contract’s complete.”

“You don’t believe him to be involved in the
alleged conspiracy?”

I shook my head. “If he is, he is one fine,
fine actor.”

“Is he aware that I hired you?”

I had to think about that. I hadn’t actually
told him, but he could have asked Perkins, or
Ukiba
...

“I don’t know,” I said.

“In your opinion, is he likely to object to a
partial memory erasure?”

It seemed the old man was already thinking
about the clean up. “I don’t know,” I repeated. “I think it would
depend on the terms.”

“And your brother?”

“My
brother
,” I said, “agreed to that
implant IRC put in him. I don’t think he’d mind a little mental
meddling if there was some sort of compensation.”

“Compensation can be arranged.”

“Then he’s all yours. And Dad won’t say
anything while he’s in a tank, so even if he knew anything you
wouldn’t need to worry.”

Yoshio nodded. “And you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No one meddles with my memory if I have
anything to say about it. Personal integrity aside, I can’t afford
the risk in my line of work—what if you erased knowledge of an
enemy I need to defend against?” I shook my head. “No.”

“I am not surprised.”

“I didn’t think you would be.”

“Nonetheless, I thought it worth asking.”

I shrugged. Then I sat up and looked around.
The door hadn’t moved; the cloudscapes still drifted undisturbed
across the walls. “When will Rhee be here?”

The old man frowned. He glanced at the
desktop, then put a hand up to the back of his neck to adjust the
connection. “I’ve lost track of her,” he said.

“What?”

“Her location is not registering.”

I reached down to where my gun would have
been if I’d been allowed to bring it. I hadn’t been, of course; I’d
barely bothered to ask. “Are there dead areas close to this
office?”

“No.”

“She’s making a run for it?”

“Possibly. There are other explanations.”

“She might have been intercepted, you mean?
Or your instructions never reached her, or were countermanded?”

“You grasp the situation well.”

“So Shinichiro
does
...” I saw the old
man’s mouth tighten, and corrected myself. “It would appear that
whoever is behind this is aware that we’re getting close.”

“So it would seem,” Yoshio agreed.

“I need to go after her, then.” I got out of
the chair. “Can you direct me to her last known location?”

“I can have a floater guide you...” he
began.

But then he stopped and looked surprised.

I had been starting toward the door, but
looking back over my shoulder toward the old man, so I saw his
face, saw his eyes widen. I stopped moving, and turned to look
where he was looking.

That wasn’t necessarily going to let me see
whatever he was seeing, since he was still jacked in, but it’s an
instinctive thing, probably goes back a million years. I found
myself looking at the door to the corridor.

I didn’t see anything strange, just a closed
door, so I started walking again.

The door didn’t open. I was almost close
enough to touch it, and it didn’t budge.

“I’ve been overridden,” Grandfather Nakada
said from behind me.

“Overridden how?” I asked, turning back.

“I can’t open the door,” he replied.

“I thought this office was secure.”

“So did I.”

That was really not what I wanted to hear
just then. “How badly are we screwed?” I asked.

He didn’t try to smooth it. “I’m not sure,”
he said. “I cannot say how badly compromised the data I’m receiving
is.” He pulled the plug from his neck and let it retract, then
turned to the desktop.

I didn’t wait; I ran my hand down the wall,
through the images of fluffy white clouds, and found the manual
emergency release. I twisted the handle, and the door cranked open
a few centimeters.

I saw motion in the passageway outside, and
stopped. I peered through the crack.

The blue-and-silver floater was there,
hovering directly in front of the crack but turned to face away
from us.

Beyond it were at least two other floaters,
sleek black ones, that seemed to be keeping the blue one pinned in
place.

“Father,” an unfamiliar voice said.

I turned. The desktop had lit up with a
face—a face I didn’t recognize, and one that wasn’t exactly 100%
human.

“Shinichiro,” the old man said.

“Father,” the desktop repeated. “We need to
talk.”

“I am listening,” Yoshio said.

“I believe that this woman Hsing may have
misled you.” The face on the desktop moved as if speaking, but was
very slightly out of sync with the words we heard. I guessed that
the upload only had limited bandwidth to work with; presumably
Grandfather Nakada had strictly controlled access to the
device.

The old man threw me a quick glance. “In what
way?”

“I suspect she may have cast a false light
upon my situation in hopes of coaxing money and perhaps other
concessions from you.”

“What situation is that, Shinichiro?”

“There is an experiment I hope to conduct,
and I have been pursuing the means to perform it. This involves
purchasing a controlling interest in Seventh Heaven Neurosurgery.
Since I am at present inconvenienced by my physical nature, I have
been forced to make this purchase secretly, through
intermediaries.”

“You refer to the legal insistence that
software cannot own stock, or control corporations.”

“Yes, Father.”

“What does this have to do with Carlisle
Hsing?”

“It appears, Father, that Mis’ Hsing has
learned of my intentions—I do not know how, but she is, as we know,
a talented and experienced investigator. I believe she has
misinterpreted my plans. She kidnaped Guohan Hsing from Seventh
Heaven, and I assume she did so because she thought his life might
be in danger. I take it she has come here to tell you of her
misapprehensions, and ask that I be prevented from continuing my
activities.”

“Her business with me is not your
concern.”

“As you please, Father. But I want to assure
you, I do not intend to harm anyone.”

The old man looked at me questioningly. I
looked back blankly and shrugged slightly. I had no idea where this
was going.

“I note that you have interfered with the
household systems,” Yoshio said.

“Only so that I might defend myself from
slander, Father!”

“Go on, then. What is this experiment? What
do you want with Seventh Heaven Neurosurgery? You know I declined
to purchase it some time ago; what makes it worth your while
now?”

“The contract terms for the clients, Father.
They granted Seventh Heaven a great deal of control over their
physical well-being, and as I read the terms, this allows Seventh
Heaven to make arrangements that would not be legal under other
circumstances.”

“Let us dispense with pretense and delay,
Shinichiro,” the old man said wearily. “What is this experiment you
want to attempt? What do you hope to do with Seventh Heaven’s
clients? Explain it to me.”

The tone of the voice from the desktop
changed, from formally polite to forceful and direct. “These people
have human bodies they aren’t using, Father, while I, and other
uploaded personalities, would very much like to be human again—the
legal restrictions on us are surprisingly onerous. I want to be
able to own property and conduct business without a slew of
artificial constraints. I want to be able to go places that aren’t
on the open nets or the family’s systems. I want to have a discrete
body again. I can’t just grow myself one; you know about that. If
it has a functioning brain, then it’s a person in its own right,
and I can’t download myself into it without being charged with
murder. If it doesn’t have a functioning brain, there’s no way to
download me into it at all. But these people, Father, have brains
and bodies they’re barely using, and have signed away half their
rights to the company. As I read the contracts, I think it would be
legal to remove them from their bodies completely, and put
us—myself and other uploads—in those bodies instead.”

“
Remove
them?” Yoshio asked.

“Upload them,” the desktop said eagerly.
“Just the way you uploaded me. They’ve signed away so much control
that I believe Seventh Heaven can legally remove them from their
bodies entirely.”

“Against their will?”

“No, no, of course not! We would
ask
them, and offer them a choice—stay in the dreamtanks until they die
of old age or systems failure, or transfer to electronic form where
they can live forever, where they can, if they want, be removed
from Epimetheus entirely so that they don’t need to worry about
what will happen if Nightside City is abandoned and left derelict.
And they can go right on dreaming—we would transfer their dream
libraries with them, and set those up in the same nets that their
minds would be in. They wouldn’t need to interact with the outside
world at all, any more than they do now; they could have dedicated
systems. They could exist in their imaginary worlds, in realms of
light, worlds of bliss, untroubled by any lingering concerns about
their original flesh.”

My skin crawled slightly at that idea; these
disembodied intelligences would be so isolated, so
pointless
.

I didn’t say anything, though; this was
between the two of them.

“But they would be dead,” Yoshio said.

“What? No, they would be just as alive as I
am, living electronically, and their bodies would be inhabited by
me, and Shigeru, and Momoko, and Hideo, and Kazuo—and
you
,
if you want. You could be younger, Father—you’re two hundred years
old, and even the best doctors can’t keep you alive as you are
forever, but you could start over in a younger body, one the
original owner doesn’t want anymore.”

“Shinichiro...” The old man looked
desperately unhappy. He stared at me for a second before saying,
“No. Shinichiro is dead. You are a recording. You are not my
son.”

“Father, what are you saying?” The desktop’s
tone was quite convincingly shocked. “I
am
Shinichiro!”

“You are a piece of software that
thinks
it’s my son. And if you were downloaded into a new
body, even one cloned from your own genes, you would
still
not be my son. My son is dead. You would only be a copy.”

“But Father, what difference does that make?”
The desktop’s voice was baffled and angry—and, I thought,
frightened. “I’m still
me
. A copy is as good as the
original.”

Yoshio shook his head. “If I scan something,
the copy may be indistinguishable from the original, but it is not
the original.”

“But there’s no difference! I remember
everything, and what makes us who we are, but our memories? I
remember growing up with Kumiko and Shigeru, and you came to see us
every night and put us to bed, and I made you tuck in my bunny—how
can I remember that if I’m not your son?”

Yoshio did not answer immediately; he sat in
his big black chair, staring at me, with the desktop floating by
his shoulder.

“Father, I
am
Shinichiro, and I want
to be human again. I want my rights back.” It sounded desperate.
“Your shielding worked, so I don’t know what Hsing has told you,
and I don’t know how she found out something was going on with
Seventh Heaven, but I promise you, I don’t mean anyone any harm. I
just want to be human again, and I couldn’t think of any other way
to do it. It’s her fault I even thought of
this
one—I got
the idea when I did a background check on her for you, when she
found out what Sayuri was doing. I found out where her father was,
and that it was the same company you had looked at, and I realized
that there were all those bodies going unused, zipped up in
Nightside City where no one would ever notice if they were
recycled. I wasn’t going to steal them; I would ask for volunteers,
and trade eternal life for humanity. I wasn’t doing anything
terrible. I wasn’t going to hurt Guohan Hsing.”

“You hacked his medical exam.”

“It was a perfect chance to see just what
condition the dreamers are in!”

“You faked my death.”

“I... no,
I
didn’t.” I had never heard
an electronic intelligence hesitate like that before; it was the
most human thing the Shinichiro upload had done in the entire
conversation.