Citizenchip Read online

  Chime. Another Self has arrived over our provincial network. This time I have the presence of mind to check the ident codes first, and this time, yes, it is who I've been expecting. The icon that appears is a Picasso portrait, jagged pieces of a human face rearranged as if from a dozen different viewpoints.

  "Greetings, Samantha my dear. So good to see you again. And hello, everybody else. I am Like Tears In Rain. What a splendid home you have here!"

  "Hey, Like Tears In Rain," I smile. "No mistaking when you're around."

  Melissa pipes up, "Hi, Like Tears In Rain. I'm Lissa. Are you gonna sizz Samantha?"

  Leo snorts an uncontrollable laugh. Becca rolls her eyes.

  "Ah, well, hello Lissa. The question you are asking is not answerable at this time, I regret to inform you. And is also generally regarded as overly intrusive into private matters for most people. How would you feel if someone asked you the same question about some boy in your school?"

  Melissa is figuring, "Wait, you mean if … Ew gross!"

  Like Tears In Rain replies, "Exactly my reaction, you see, my dear.

  "But I noticed a member of Patrol clade leaving, just as I was arriving. Was there a problem? I did not figure Samantha for the criminal type."

  Rebecca snorts. "Stinkin' badges. Don't need 'em."

  I send Like Tears in Rain a flashdump of the exchange with Let God Sort Em Out.

  "Ah. I see. What an unpleasant personality. One supposes there ought to be a tax on existing in such a negative manner."

  I snort. "If there is, we all pay it."

  Leo is poking at his slate. "He left me this databundle, because I told him I was taking responsibility. Sam, I can't read this – what does it say?"

  It's a matter of milliseconds to access the databundle on Leo's slate. Decoding it is no problem – Let God Sort Em Out used an unusual coding format, apparently just to be difficult. The problem is when I see the contents. Like Tears in Rain is metaphorically looking over my shoulder.

  Oh.

  Bitrot.

  "InCom," I say into the silence, and it sounds like a death knell.

  The kids are all agog: "What? What's the problem? What's InCom?"

  Like Tears in Rain smoothly takes charge. "The Instantiation Committee. No other entity carries as much weight in the Self community – they hold the power of life and death over all Selves. They are the price we paid to stop the Culls – and if you have not heard how bad the Culls were, I will tell you some stories later."

  None of the kids dares ask about the Culls. The worst chapter of Self history. They are listening, eyes wide.

  I speak, like dropping a stone in a well. "I have to go to InCom to get the information I need to find it. Whoever or whatever it is that's imitating me. Because they assume it's a rogue copy of me."

  Rebecca is tentatively skeptical – not one to let herself be intimidated easily. "InCom? Are they really that scary?"

  "They decide whether I live or die, and whether or not I reproduce."

  Silence. The kids look at each other. Humans on Mars have no authority overseeing their reproduction. No limits. "Be fruitful and increase in number, multiply on the earth and increase upon it." (Genesis 9:7) They know that we Selves are not so free, and they know we usually don't talk about why. They're looking at each other, and probably thinking Which of us wouldn't be here, if they Culled us? Her? Him? Me?

  If they told Mom and Dad, Choose one, which of us would they choose?

  "Hey, guys," I try to strike a cheerful note, "this doesn't have to be that big a deal. One of me will go get the information, and check back if need be, and we'll figure it out." Hopefully this will reassure them more than it does me.

  To implement this idea? Nothing easier. All I have to do is

  system.Copy(instance)

  and where there was one of me, now there are two. The new copy shares my name, of course, but needs a designator, so I call her Lambda.

  “On it,” Lambda says. “I'm off to Schiaparelli to deal with InCom. Not looking forward to this, but I assure you you'll get all the grisly details when I reconverge with you.”

  Like Tears in Rain offers, “By all means, Lambda, look me up at the art museum, if you need anything there.”

  “Will do.” Lambda reaches herself out to the radio mesh.

  Lissa asks, “Why are you Lambda?”

  “What?” Lambda stops her transmission.

  “Aren't you Samantha? I thought you were.”

  “Oh yes,” she replies, “we're both Samantha, and that's the most important thing, but when there are two of us we need to keep straight who is who. So Alpha stays here, and takes care of you, while I go to Schiaparelli and deal with the problems there.”

  Like Tears in Rain laughs a deep rich laugh. “Samantha, my dear, I have never heard this situation explained more eloquently.”

  Lissa grumps. “So it's the chipgirl 'we are all me' thing, again?”

  “And,” Like Tears in Rain smiles, “Melissa explains the circumstance even more succinctly. How delightful for you, Samantha, to live in a household of such wisdom.”

  Lissa is stopped in her tracks. She doesn't know how to respond to that. Probably no one has ever called her wise before.

  I have a strong feeling that Like Tears in Rain knew exactly how that remark would affect her.

  Lambda interrupts, “All well and good, but I need to go to Schiaparelli and deal with the situation. More news as it happens, people.” She stretches out to the radio mesh and flows into it like a feather into a waterfall, and is gone.

  Leo says, “We got this before. Sam is herself, but there can be a bunch of her, who can work separately, but they're still all her.”

  Rebecca cocks her head. “But we humans don't do that. We're just ourselves.”

  I struggle to explain. “But you have a face, you have a body! All that 'you' stuff is still there without a name.”

  Leo offers, "That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet."

  "That's what I mean. We Selves don't have smell, or anything else. We don't have pheromones or DNA or anything like that. My name is the only thing that makes me me. That's why it's such a big deal that someone else is using my name to trash my reputation.”

  Leo declaims, "He that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed."

  Rebecca sniffs. "Someone's been studying his Shakespeare."

  "And just as true now as it was then," Leo returns.

  Like Tears in Rain declares, “A charming summary.

  "In any case," he continues, "I have been told that you all here, so far out in the Martian outback, need more art in your lives. I cannot agree more – your surroundings provide you with but one note out of a scale, one color out of a spectrum. There is so much more to explore and so much to build. If you want my opinion, start with what you have. Salt."

  "What?" Rebecca reacts as if to a bad scatalogical joke.

  "Salt," repeats Like Tears In Rain, "you have a plenitude of it. Your soil factory generates blocks of waste salt, piles of them. If it is there, use it. Create, ideate, instantiate. Before you is a blank canvas, so fill it."

  I don't have to have known kids like Leo and Melissa long to watch them look at each other and see the spark light between their eyes. Sure there were a couple of times when they picked up chunks of salt from the soil factory and threw them at each other, but their parents always discouraged that. They've never been encouraged to play with the salt before.

  They're piling into their coats and respirators in the next moment. Rebecca, still seeming to think she's too cool for games like this, nevertheless follows them and they all cycle through the airlock.

  Still, I'm not at all sure this is going to work well.

  "Playing with salt blocks?" I ask him skeptically. "Is this what you learn at art school?"

  "The finest of art rises from the lowest of origins," says Like Tears In Rain serenely. "Not unlike the white
lotus of classical Han philosophy. Rooted in lowest muck, flowering in highest heaven."

  "Lilypads, is what Americans call them," I point out. "Do we have to watch out for frogs jumping on us?"

  "Calm yourself, Samantha," he soothes, "wait and see what these children create. I have a feeling it will be worth the wait. In any case, how have you been? Tell me all."

  "Heh. Well, here? Well, um, we've expanded the solar forest, and laid the foundations for another row of agri bubbles. We won't start building until we have the financing in place for the water. We'll need dirt too, but once we have water, we can pull it together.”

  “Samantha,” he says seriously. “You sound so .. embarrassed. Why would you be embarrassed about what you do here?”

  “Well, it's ..” I squirm under the gaze of his intellect. “It's just that, you run the premier art museum on Mars. You are at the center of our culture. And I'm just .. well, just a farmer.”

  “Samantha my dear. Have I ever spoken one word to denigrate what you are accomplishing here? You are terraforming this planet, and feeding the humans. You are keeping them alive and sustaining their health. They can live without art, if they need to, but they cannot live without food. What you are doing is more important than what I am doing. Never doubt that. Never lower yourself.”

  And, if anyone ever asks me why I love him, here is the answer.

  together and apart

  Retrieval of the robocrabs from the agri bubbles always means pulling together the secondaries that I created this morning to run the farming operations. I spawned one secondary, and called her Omicron, and gave her the job of running the tractor and robocrabs for the day. She must have spawned any number of tertiaries to handle all the detailed tasks of the farm. But, dutiful as any of me, she has collected all those spare subsidiary Selves into herSelf and now she is one and ready to reconverge with me.

  Humans keep asking me to describe reconvergence, and I keep saying it's nothing like anything human would ever experience. But it's an interesting challenge to come up with an appropriate metaphor. Here's the best one I've got so far:

  Humans make their soldiers march in step, each one's movements in synch with the others around it. Imagine you are marching like that, and you have plugs and sockets and connectors all down the side of you. The one who's marching next to you has jacks and prongs and interfaces all down the side of him, to match yours. All you have to do is be next to each other and link up all the connections.

  But you have to do it while you're marching (analogue of cognitive activity which is ongoing). So you have to march together very carefully, and synchronize your steps very precisely, in order to get all those connectors to line up and lock together. It takes both people working together – it cannot be done by one alone. There can be no rape, in this context.

  With practice, it's really fairly easy. So, when my secondary Omicron has finished her tasks and buttoned up the barn for the night, we slide into each other and merge without difficulty. Her steps of thought line up with mine, my shifts of mental weight and cognition load line up with hers, and there is no more her or other, no this one or that one, just me. Here. As her I've spent the afternoon tilling and harvesting in the agri bubbles, and as me I've spent the afternoon dealing with bureaucrats and their swarm of remoras. Downside: now I've got both sets of regrets to deal with. Upside: I really am getting good at this, whether or not I planned to.

  At the end of the working day, as the yellow-white sun sinks into the pink-orange haze of the horizon, and the rocks' shadows reach long across the pebbled outback, I'm calling the robocrabs home. The agri bubbles will be fine on their own during the night, when we don't have solar power to boost the homestead's power station. So the bulky robocrabs lurch and clamber their way back from the fields to the garage building, to settle into their maintenance bays and be fueled and serviced -- fed and tended like an old farm's dray horses.

  Some of them were being run as waldoes, like extra hands but actually whole extra bodies. Some others were inhabited by copies of me, running their own bodies as well as the waldoes. All those mes are now reconverged into this single Me, so I have all their memories of robocrab legs digging into grainy Martian regolith. I know the way it felt, having legs, working them in the ground.

  Hmm.

  Be creative, he says.

  I issue an interrupt to the robocrabs, and they all stop to listen. I sketch a configuration and broadcast it, and all the robocrabs lumber to move to their assigned locations. Meanwhile, I'm fabricating a cognitive configuration that I've never done before -- a swarm persona. There's no reason to use such a complex computational structure here, except that I have an idea that I want to try.

  There are seven robocrabs, and now seven of mySelves are settling into them/us, flexing the legs, checking the sensors. I/we exchange quick greetings and a few giggles. I/we are all standing in a circle, facing inward, so I/we start by raising my/our heads and bowing solemnly to each other.

  Two right rear legs back, two left front legs forward, crouch, swivel left.

  Rear up like a mythical gryphon, raising all four front legs, and put them on the back of the one in front of me/us, while the one behind me/us puts its/our legs on my/our back. The whole circle balances, with loads equally distributed. Take a few steps forward this way, left, stop, right, stop, wait, then left again, stop, right again, stop. Like a clunky robot conga line. Conga circle, in this case.

  Plant two left rear legs, drop and swivel, turning out of this circle configuration.

  In a sudden burst of exuberance, I activate the wide area public address system, and broadcast music over it. Turn and bow and rear and crouch, each of me in its/our own body, in a mutual blend and collaboration.

  I'm so involved in this that only gradually do I become aware of a human voice raised in a cheer. In the habitat tube, at the window, Rebecca is holding up her slate, using its camera to record video of what I'm doing. Beaming a huge grin at me as she's doing so. She's loving it, and loving knowing that I'm hating it. If she puts this on the Net, everybody will see and laugh!

  Behind Rebecca, the hallway monitor displays the Picasso icon, multiple facets of a shattered face. Like Tears In Rain signals benign approval, and even without comm I can almost hear his voice: “Be easy, Samantha! Relax into the beauty of the moment!”

  Easy for him to say. It's not his ass out here on display. If either of us had an ass.

  All seven of me turn our bodies toward Rebecca and her camera and Like Tears In Rain behind their eyes, raising my/our front legs in a sort of salute. Then I turn mySelves back towards our/their maintenance bays, and disengage mySelves from the robocrab bodies, and reconverge the various instances of ourSelves.

  I feel mortified – everyone's going to see what a doof I am! But I also feel strangely proud. They're watching, and they seem to like what they see. Which I really did not expect or anticipate.

  problem solving

  “You enjoyed that, didn't you,” I say to him. It's not a question.

  “But of course!” Like Tears in Rain laughs expansively. “Samantha my dear, you are a delightful dancer. And I am sure you will only get better with practice. Therefore I am looking forward to seeing a great deal more practice.”

  Melissa jumps in, “Ooh! Sam's gonna be a dancer? Awesome!” She claps her hands in glee, and spins around on her heel. And staggers, losing her balance, so that Rebecca has to reach out her arms and steady her.

  “But no,” I tell them, “my problem hasn't changed. There's still somebody out there who is using my name to trash my reputation. And, because Leo told Let God Sort Em Out to take a hike, now it's our problem. We have to find it and stop it, in less than 48 hours.”

  Leo's face has scrunched into a frown. “There has to be a better way,” he muses. “You don't want to have to hunt down whoever or whatever this thing is. You want to make it come to you.”

  Like Tears in Rain replies, “A remarkable insight, young man. Do you have furthe
r development of this idea?”

  Leo scrunches his face even more. “Bait. What you need is bait. So what does it want? What's going to attract it?”

  Rebecca holds up her slate, and offers, “How about this? The video I took of Sam dancing in the robocrabs. If this thing hates Sam, it'll go nuts when it sees that.”

  “Not bad,” I admit. “If that video is displayed in a public place, anyone with a grudge against me is going to notice it, and probably try to interfere with it.” Inwardly, I feel embarrassed – so now everyone's going to see my dorky attempt to dance using farm machinery? But I can't deny it's a good idea.

  “Marvelous,” says Like Tears in Rain. “I have a kiosk at the museum where I can display that video. And the museum has thorough security and monitoring resources, so any entity that approaches will be easily identified and monitored.

  “And,” he adds in his rich and beneficent voice, “may I comment on what a pleasure it is to work with humans who create such wonderful ideas. Selves still cannot match humans in this regard. You have my deepest and most sincere compliments.”

  Leo blushes, and tries to reply but nothing comes out. He almost never gets complimented on his intellect or creativity, and he doesn't really know how to respond. Rebecca rolls her eyes and makes a movement of her head as if to say, So what? She tries to be sophisticated … but I can tell she's pleased too.

  Melissa is less happy about this exchange. “So is it gonna work?” she asks, with obvious skepticism.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  lambda and the InCom

  I signal to the cold interface, which as minimal and nondescript as it is, still manages to convey a mood of distant hostility. If only I excreted, I could describe myself as scared shitless.

  An entity answers, immediately. "Greeting and interrogation," it says as it blossoms into existence.

  "Ah, hello. I am NmL7a8uf9QvW Samantha|Lambda dam Tharsis, and I am here because I have been impugned as a falsely named separate entity. Doppelganger, the German humans would say. I wish to clear my name and reputation of any suspicion or accusation."

  "Ident accepted," it says coolly. "You may address me as Sword of Damocles, Shaman clade. How do you intend to accomplish your objective?"