Halo: First Strike (10 page)

The IC's viewing window had closed, but the simulacrum's

portion remainedin it, the creature of light sat watching. 

Showalter, Horn, Diana, Lizzie, Charley, and Gonzales sat around

the table.

Showalter said, "This is  Chow's meeting, and I won't say

much in it.  However, I should remind you of certain realities. 

This project does not have high priority in the overall context of

SenTrax's responsibilities to Halo City; thus, while we support

this experiment's humanitarian goals, we are not prepared to delay

other projects."

Horn said, "We cannot divert a significant amount of people

to promulgation and we are not or do not want to encourage any

behaviors which might adversely impact other SenTrax outcomes."

Lizzie laughed, and Gonzales, poker-faced, looked at her and

thought, yeah, this guy's laughable all right.  Gonzales

recognized the performative chatter of the bureaucratic ape, a

mixture of scrambled syntax and pretentious buzzwordslanguage

meant to manipulate or mindfuck, not enlighten or amuse.

Horn, frowning at Lizzie, said, "If the operation becomes

problematized, threatening to seriously impact other more

essentialized Halo priorities, then we require immediate

resolution through proper SenTrax procedures."

Showalter said, "If you screw up, we shut you down."  She

nodded to Horn, and they both stood and left.

Lizzie said, "You notice they held off on the heavy stuff

until the collective had cleared the screen."

Charley  asked, "Do you want to call them on it?  They're in

violation of the group's compact."

"No," she said.  "I expected all that."  She looked at Diana

and Gonzales and said, "Doctor Chow, your show."

"Thank you," Chow said.  His voice was oddly high-pitched for

such a big man; Gonzales had been expecting something on the order

of a basso profundo.  Chow said, "In the late twentieth century,

the idea emerged of a person's identity as something

transferrable.  People spoke, in the idiom of the time, of

'downloading' a person."  On the screen, where the IC had been,

appeared a cartoon drawing of a nude woman, her expression

stunned, the top of her skull covered with a metal cap.  From the

cap a thick metal cable led to a large black cabinet faced with

arrays of blinking lights.

"Absurd," Chow said, and the woman disappeared.  "To see why,

let us ask, what is a person?  Is it a pure spirit, fluid in a jar

that one can decant into the proper container?  Hardly.  It is a

dynamic field made of thousands of disparate elements, held in a

loose sack of skin that perambulates the universe at large.  And

of course it is perceptions, histories, possibilities, actions,

and the states and affects pertaining to all these.

"I can be found in the motion of my hand"  He spread his

fingers like a magician about to materialize a coin or colored

scarf, and on the screen, the hand and its motion were doubled. 

"And in my own perceptions of the handfor instance, from within,

through proprioceptors.  And of course I see I."  Chow turned and

held his hand in front of his face.  He dropped his hand in a

chopping motion, and the screen cleared.  "And I am that which

thinks about, talks about, and remembers the hand and has the

special relation of ownership to it.  I am also the will to use

that hand."  He held the hand in front of his face, made a

clenched fist.  "So, to download even a portion of I would be to

download all these things and their entire somatic context.

"Also, of course, I am that which has my experiences, stored

as motor possibilities, recalled as memory, dream, manifest as

characteristic ways of being and knowing.  To download I would

require duplicating this fluid chaos.

"Downloading the I thus becomes a most daunting task, perhaps

beyond even Aleph's capabilities.  However, when cyborged to an

existing I, even one as damaged as Jerry Chapman, Aleph can create

a virtual person, one who functions as a human being, not a

disembodied intelligence, one who is capable of all the somatic

possibilities he had when healthy.  The physical Jerry Chapman is

a shattered thing, but the Jerry Chapman latent in this hulk can

live."

Looking at Diana, Chow said, "We want you to share Jerry's

world.  He must invest there, must experience other people and the

bonds of affection that engage us in this world.  Otherwise he

will languish quickly; his neural maps will decay, and he will

die."

Gonzales easily followed that line of reasoning:  monkey man

had to have other monkey men or women around or else go crazynot

an absolute rule, perhaps, but good in most circumstances.

Diana said, "Assuming that he becomes at home in this world,

what then?  For how long can this simulated reality sustain him?"

The Aleph-figure spoke for the first time.  It said, "I have

only conjectural answers to these questions but would prefer not

to entertain them right now.  First we must rescue him from the

degenerative state he lives in and the certain death it entails."

"I understand that," Diana said.  "That's why I am here, to

help in any fashion I can.  It's just that I have questions."

Lizzie said, "And you'll get whatever answers Aleph wants to

give.  Get used to it; we all do."

"Of course you do," the creature of light said.  "And how

about you, Mister Gonzales?  Do you have questions?"

"Not really.  I'm an observer, little more."

"A difficult position to maintain," the Aleph-figure said. 

"Epistemologically, of course, an untenable position."

Lizzie laughed.  She said, "It is indeed.  Look, how about I

take you two out to dinner tonight, Mister Gonzales, Doctor

Heywood?"

"Call me Diana," she said.

"You bet," Lizzie said.  "And I'm Lizzie, you're ?"  She

looked at Gonzales.

"Mikhail," he said.  "But call me Gonzalesmy friends do."

"Good," Lizzie said.  "We've got work to do, so let's cut the

shit.  This thing, I'm still not a believer about it, but I know

it's got to happen quickly or not at all.  Tomorrow Charley does

his preliminary examination of Diana, then we move."

9. Virtual Caf

Gonzales and Diana sat in Halo's Central Plaza with Lizzie. 

Colored lightsred, blue, and greenclustered in the branches of

thick-leaved maples that ringed the square.  The smoke of vendors'

grills filled the air with the smells of grilled meat and fish. 

In the middle distance, elevators in pools of yellow light climbed

Spoke 6.  Some people strolled across the Plaza; others sat in

small groups; their voices made a soft background murmur.

"Waiter," Lizzie said, and a sam came rolling toward them. 

It stopped by their table and stood silently.  "What do you have

tonight?" she asked.

It said, "Ceviche made just hours ago, quite good everyone

says, from tuna out of marine habitatyou can also have it

grilled.  For meat eaters, spit-barbecued goat.  Otherwise, sushi

plates, salads, sukiyakis."

"Ceviche for everyone?" Lizzie asked.

Diana said, "That's fine," and the Gonzales nodded.

Lizzie said, "And bring us a couple of big salads, sushi for

everyone, and a stack of plates.  Local beer all right?"  The

other two nodded.

"Yes, Ms. Jordan," the sam said.  "And lots of bread as

usual?"

"Right," she said.  "Thank you."

Strings of lights marked off the area where they sat.  Above

a white-trellised gate, letters in more red faux neon said

VIRTUAL CAF.  Perhaps twenty tables were scattered around, as

were two-meter high, white crockery vases with wildflowers

spraying out of them.  About half the tables had people seated at

them, and the sam waiters moved silently among the tables, some

carrying immense silver trays of food.  Other sams stood at low

benches in the center of the tables, where they chopped vegetables

at speed or sliced great red slabs of tuna, while others stood at

woks, where they worked the vegetables and hot oil with sets of

spidery extensors.  One sam from time-to-time extended a probe and

stuck it into the dark carcass of a goat turning on a spit.

The waiter rolled up with a massive tray balanced on thin

extensors:  on the tray were plates of French bread and a bowl of

butter, dark bottles of Angels Beeron the silver labels, an

androgynous figure in white, arms folded, feathery wings unfurled

high over its head.

Lizzie raised her glass and said, "Welcome to Halo."  The

three clinked their glasses together, reaching across the table

with the usual sorts of awkward gestures.

#

After dinner, the three of them found empty chairs out in the

square's open spaces and sat looking into the close-hanging sky.

Lizzie looked at them both, as if measuring them, and said,

"What I was asking about earlier  either of you folks got a

hidden agenda?  If so, you tell me about it now, we'll see what

can be done, but if you spring any unpleasant surprises later on,

we'll hang you out to dry."

"I know what you mean," Diana said.  "But I don't think you

have to worry about us.  Gonzales is connected, but I think he's

harmless; and I'm out of the loop entirelyhere on strictly

personal business."

Lizzie nodded at Gonzales and said, "You're the corporate

handler, right?"  She was looking hard at Gonzales but seemed

amused.

"Yes," he said.

"You plan to fuck anything up?" Lizzie asked.

"How should I know?" Gonzales said.  Lizzie laughed.  He

said, "You people have your problems, I have mine.  I don't see

how we come into conflict, but unless you're willing to tell me

all your little secrets, I can only guess."

Lizzie said, "I will tell you one home truth:  the Interface

Collective look to one another and to Aleph; then to SenTrax Halo,

then to Halo  and that's about it.  What happens on Earth, we