It’s settled, but even with the little stream of serotonin running to keep me relaxed, my gut was clenching. I pulled out my necklace and released the smart linkage that held the coin. Though it had worn down considerably, I could still feel the small bumps of the cherry blossoms under my thumb and the faint edges of the raised 100 on the other side. Even in the soft ambient glow of the room, it caught the light and held it, hard.
We sat there for a moment, eyeing it between us like a trap.
“So we’ll flip for it?”
“Of course.” This wasn’t being done offline idly. Neither of us trusted the alleged anonymity of the hab’s randomness feed.
“Your call.”
The moment was long and elastic, watching it glitter and spin slowly in the low g; then, at the last second, it’s called: “Blossoms.”
I plucked the coin from the air and pressed the cool metal to the back of my wrist. Exhaling, I slowly withdrew my hand to reveal the 100 showing.
We both smiled.
—
Many people visit Extropia, farcasting in and out to conduct the type of deals that the uniquely free-wheeling nature of the habitat allows—deals thought to be impossible or non-binding elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, the Exchange, the central market of Extropia, is a chaos of motion and consumption. All the traffic creates a high demand for morphs. As a result, Extropia has some of the finest sleeving facilities in the system. Body by Czerny is one of them. Framed in its entrance is a taut and lean exalt, newly sleeved. With a kick, the exalt vectors off into the crowd to begin a slow traversal of the market.
[I’m here, Nyuki.]
[<Nyuki02> Hello, Ro!]
[Everything is set at the body shop. The switch has been made, and the body’s tagged so I can keep track of its location.]
[<Nyuki05> Lovely. What are you going to do until it’s time to get started?]
[I have a bit of shopping to get done. I’ll talk to you soon.]
There is no trouble getting the knife or the restraints—both are acquired within five minutes. The EMP grenade is only slightly more difficult, and it comes down to a matter of price rather than availability. The only cleaner nanohive immediately available is more expensive than it should be, and the nanobot specialist selling it is concerned over the sale. Even though the hive isn’t illegal, it will almost certainly be used to violate someone’s contracts, somewhere. After more haggling, Ro buys it, inflated price and all, as outside backing is paying for much of the operational expenses.
Over the course of two hours, the final elements are gathered, and it becomes time to wait and watch. Hiding in the public anonymity of the Exchange crowds, Ro settles in at a small tea shop and orders a drink bulb of a mild white, for focus and calm. Having something to hold will make it easier to avoid fidgeting with the knife. Raising suspicions is hardly the best way to start a murder.
—
“What do you mean, this is the only sleeve available? This is not what I reserved.” Dear god, the voice on this thing is terrible … whoever designed the pharo-nasal on this model was incompetent.
“Our apologies, Professor Rokuzawa. Although your reservation was confirmed, our final pre-sleeving scan detected an abnormality in the medichine function that would have resulted in severe anaphylaxis. The morph required a nanobot flush. Peak physical performance and mental comfort is of the highest concern to Body by Czerny and—”
“Why wasn’t I notified before I cast in? I’m on a tight timeline to get ready for the conference. I should have been consulted for a new model, not put into this. I didn’t pay for the extra mods to that exalt morph to end up in a bouncer, let alone one with a voice from some fandub kimchee western.” The attendant AI’s interface stills for a moment as it finally starts catching on that I’m not going to just nod along and pretend everything is fine because I’m already in the body.
“Our operations do not allow for non pre-approved qu-communication expenses for notice given, as is outlined in the statement of service—” an AR overlay comes up with the relevant section highlighted and I quickly wipe it away.
I’m done with this. “I’m not going to have you fob off an old test-drive sleeve on me due to contractual minutiae. I’ve sent a lot of business and rep plusses here. I’m taking this up with Ilyana.” At least the interface was programmed with the good grace to shut up.
[Yesterday, ping her, and get past her muse, please, this is something I want resolved.]
[Already on it.]
At times like this, I’m particularly happy I use a copy of myself instead of a program for my muse. I can fume self-indulgently and not have to worry about getting shit done.
Blinking a bit, I check out the morph. It’s not even close to my order—not even gendered to spec. It’s in good shape, though Ilyana would never stock something that wasn’t. The mods are sparse but decent. From the looks of it, this is the last release from Trine; extra articulation in the foot thumbs and the change in metatarsal length. I give my left ankle a squeeze with my right foot. The strength and flexibility are there. The grip is much finer than the previous version. If they keep at it like this, Skinaesthesia’s going to start losing market share.
As the implants and accessories come online, I notice it has the extravagant XP suite that Ilyana installs on her testers. Not an accessory I want right now. She always says it’s for “perfectly matching motility for clients’ final orders,” when they buy a morph through her, but I know she has a nice sideline trading gait and kinesic profiles. I fiddle with the XP controls to no avail; they’re locked on. I have to start working on overrides on top of everything else. This is not how I wanted to start off the trip.
[Yesterday, where are we in negotiations?]
[Ilyana’s making all the right sympathetic noises, Chi, but she’s tapped on stock, given the high demand from other attendees.]
[Understatement.]
[Quite. Anything else we’d be interested in is already walking around. We’re stuck with this one for at least the next 50 hours or so. Since that’s outside our timeline, I’ll see what we can work out for our pain and suffering.]
Several minutes later, I’ve stretched and started re-acclimating to micrograv. Ilyana agrees to comp me this sleeve, as well as my costs for casting to and from Extropia. I commit to an in-the-flesh visit—hopefully flesh that I actually order—to her new shop in Shackle for the grand opening and a full writeup review of a limited-release Lunar flyer she’s working on. She promises to make the trip worth my while with a few introductions and kind words to interesting people while I’m there. I hate going to Luna—too much social friction, given some of my published opinions—but Ilyana and I owe each other too many favors for my momentary pique and her shopkeep AI’s sloppiness to matter much in the long run. With a sigh, I run through some quick coordination exercises and rifle through their fabber’s wardrobe choices, since there’s no point printing off the outfit I was planning to wear. At least with a bouncer I don’t have to worry about picking the right shoes.
My first order of business is meeting with my friends, the Nyukis. They’ve expressed some interest in sending a few forks to the Plurality for a bit and wanted my thoughts about the local views on hive personalities before committing to a group visit. I feel badly that the sleeving delay has left me less time to visit before getting to the conference, but I’m sure Nyuki will understand.
[I’m on my way, darlings.]
[<Nyuki08> Looking forward to seeing you!]
[Sadly, I’ll have to be brief and won’t be looking my best. There was a problem at the body shop. I’ll make it up to you by finding a boring symposium to skip out on, so I can play hooky with at least one of you.]
[<Nyuki05> No worries, Chi. Brief will be time enough. We appreciate you making time to stop by to see us before you attend to the rest of your visit. We owe you one.]
—
Chi glides out from the soft-lit aperture of Body by Czerny and into the plaza space, blinking and acclimating to the surroundings. With a few languid pushes, Chi begins maneuvering through the crowds, gaining more comfort and control in the bouncer morph.
Once in the public mesh channels, the piggyback signal from the taggant nanobots triggers a display in Ro’s field of vision; a bright red string extending towards Chi. As Chi moves through the main open space of the Exchange, remaining focused on dodging through the Brownian motion of the crowds, Ro disposes of the now-empty drink bulb and begins following at a distance. Skirting the crowds, moving quickly through the clear spaces at the edges of and between groups, the athletic exalt moves with a predator’s grace. Reflexively, seemingly incidental to other motion, Ro’s hands flutter briefly over pockets and sheaths. Knife, cuffs, and EMP, all where they should be.
[Is everything clear for me?]
[<Nyuki04> No worries, Ro. Everything is going as expected, and the unusual arrival is being downplayed.]
[I’ll need overlay for at least a minute once things start and for you to keep an eye on things while the deed gets done … maybe another 20 minutes. Are you certain you can cover the feeds for that long without being spotted?]
[<Nyuki02> Now is a particularly poor time to decide you don’t trust us. Our best are on it, and we are all the neighbors anyway, so no one will be interfering. Don’t do anything big enough to ping on overall systems performance for the tunnel, and no one will notice your little game.]
[This needs to be intimate. Meaningful. I hope you’ll help keep it that way, as any interruption will seriously risk failure for the whole endeavor and I won’t have this chance again any time soon.]
[<Nyuki04> You sound tense, but that’s to be expected. Don’t get so wound up you spoil the moment … it will be hard to replicate]
[<Nyuki05> We worry. Don’t get carried away just because of who it is.]
[It’s nice to know you care.]
—
Stepping into the open space of the hab from the bodyshop is like walking into a wall of advertising. Food, AR games, prostitutes, drug dealers, XP shows. Ilyana must be making a few credits from advertising residuals now, too, given how much is getting past the security settings on the mesh implants. It takes Yesterday a moment to filter out all the overlays and get some updated interior navigation up. I plot which grabloop route will be quickest.
[I really should get out here more. It’s been too long, and it’s nice to be out of the Plurality and someplace with a little more entertainment.]
[We have some time in three weeks.]
[Maybe. Check the profile of that singer. I bet they’re cetacean. Grab any of their music that’s accessible.]
[Dolphin originally. Getting both official and four bootleg releases, but one is an operetta and has pretty mixed reviews.]
[Check that one out later then. Put on something mellow. This sleeve doesn’t even have full hormonal control and I need to even out. I’m still a bit concerned over the situation with my sleeving and don’t want to be off-center for dealing with Nyuki or the briefing afterwards.]
[Still checking on the sleeving issue. It is unsettling that it occurred, as it’s inconsistent brand experience with her, and she caved on the comp atypically fast. Haven’t found anything actionable to worry about, though. The previous occupant of that sleeve posted negative feedback about feeling ill, and the local vat’s activity records show the body was dropped off to get scrubbed hours ago.]
[Keep at it. Something still seems off.]
[Of course. Our stop’s coming up. We should transition over for a dismount.]
—
Chi swings over to the slower lanes, bleeding inertia before flipping towards an anchor bar, catching it with one foot, and pivoting in a right angle to orient down an arterial tunnel. A few moments and a dozen meters farther on, Ro swings off the line, angling hard toward the wall. Ro makes a jarring but no less effective landing at the expense of some shoulder strain and odd glances from others riding the loops. Turning back towards the tunnel’s mouth, Chi’s location shows crimson in Ro’s vision. The taggant nanobots’ string of breadcrumb markers are devoured meter by meter as Ro closes in.
—
The tunnel is only a short stub that dead-ends twenty meters in, where it connects to the cavern that houses Nyuki’s shop, the Droneworks. The store’s name is spelled out in dozens of languages, forming a design of concentric circles around the large access doors. Aided by subtle AR enhancements, it creates a sense of falling, of depth, upon approach. As Chi moves towards it, though, there’s nothing to fall in to: the doors are closed.
[I’m here, darlings, but you don’t seem to be?]
[Hello?]
[Anybody home?]
Facing the unexpected silence, Chi grabs an anchor bar to come to a stop outside the door. Looking about, there’s no sign of Nyuki, not even a post indicating the shop was closed. Tentatively, almost mockingly, Chi crosses the last few meters to the door and knocks. No response.
[Nyuki, are you alright?]
Suddenly, the opening of the tunnel sprouts a thicket of luminous AR warnings and garish pictograms, all proclaiming that the tunnel is closed for critical maintenance and a variety of terrible things will happen to anyone foolish enough to enter.
[Is something wrong with the tunnel? Warnings just went up locally, but nothing is showing from the habitat’s notification feed.]
[I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m leaving for now.]
[I’ll ping you later, and we’ll find a better time to get together.]
Foot-hands moving nimbly along the rungs set into the tunnel wall, Chi travels towards the tunnel mouth, but stops short. A tall, lean figure detaches from the entrance. Their voice, heavy with tension and anticipation, cuts through the air. “You’re not leaving, Chi. We have work to do.” With that, Ro leers and draws the knife with one hand. Chi unholsters an agonizer.
—
[Yesterday, are you sure those vat records are legit? That looks like the body I reserved.]
[They’re in heavy privacy mode. No public identifiers up. Solid encryption.]
[Public channels are starting to shut down. Getting on Nyuki’s guest VPN.]
[Nyuki, something’s up, need a hand now!]
Agonizer’s armed … be steady. One assailant, get past them and out of the tunnel and hopefully the fuck away from here.
[Nyuki, where are you?]
What.
Oh.
[We lost connection. Active jamming.]
They have a grenade
[We’re getting fucked.]
With a tight, sidearm throw, the attacker hurls the grenade towards me and I leap backwards to try to escape the blast. I assume it works when I’m not blown into bloody pieces. There’s a brief flash that dazzles me, but no apparent injury. Most of what mods and equipment I have on me are shut down.
[Yesterday? Yesterday! Get on any channel you can and call for help!]
[Trying, connectivity is zeroed right now. Mesh implants down. Only mods running are the medichines and XP suite.]
In the second it takes to blink the afterimages out of my eyes and see what’s going on, the attacker is already flying down the corridor towards me. I kick off the decking towards the opposite side of the tunnel, agonizer out and thankfully still firing. The exalt glides through the space I just vacated as the first pulse of the microwave beam slides over their back. They don’t care. With disheartening ease, the stalker re-orients, caroms off the wall and launches at me. We collide and spin free of the decking, turning an awkward somersault in the micrograv. I jab the agonizer into the attacker’s side and open up on lethal. Clothes melt and skin blisters, but it’s not enough to get them off me. I see a flash and start screaming as I feel a blade stab through my thigh and dig into the bone. There’s a surge of pressure in my leg and the limb immediately stiffens. My cry stutters and quickly chokes off as I’m wracked by muscle spasms to the point of seizure as whatever neuro-agent the knife injected begins taking hold.
We crash into the hab wall like graceless dancers. The larger, stronger exalt pins me, as the worst of the flailing passes and the helpless shaking sets in. The agonizer is pulled out of my grip with distressing ease and left to float away. My eyes lose focus and roll. I feel one hand turn my face back towards my attacker. I somehow manage to meet their gaze and imagine I see terror and love co-mingled there. Before I can even consider what that might mean, I’m punched in the face. I feel my lips burst. I lose myself for a moment. The reek of charred skin, smoke, and melted plastic waft and stir in the churning air. Blood and spittle arc and shimmer from my split lips and bit tongue to spatter against the smooth cheek of the assailant. More drops blossom and float in constellations around their face, the center of the universe. I struggle back to myself.
[If I black out, get the farcaster up and pop it … I don’t like where this is going.]
[K. Mild hypoxia’s starting from reduced breathing and blood loss. Medichines still active. Should be able to stabilize.]
[Grand.]
—
Almost reverently, Ro strokes the cheek of Chi’s rapidly swelling face and brushes back the hair floating loosely around it. The barest hint of distraction, of concern, slides over Ro’s features, but is quashed. Resting the heel of the palm just below the victim’s eye socket, Ro begins to push down on the delicate arch of bone. Chi’s head turns aside, further restricting air flow, triggering new spasms in the struggle for breath. Eyes flutter and try to focus.
Leaning in close, Ro whispers, “You understand, don’t you? I have to be the one that gets remembered.”
Chi’s feeble resistance is ignored, and with a quiet crack and stuttering gasp, the cheekbone gives to the pressure.
“Chi?”
Two sets of eyes turn towards the leech-shaped flexbots clustered in the doorframe, each a perfect copy of the others. The only difference between them is the barely perceptible etching in the top center of the otherwise-empty faceplates. Their faces are hidden, as if in shame.
“I didn’t notice you watching, Nyuki.” Ro’s hand comes away, leaving the stricken professor desperately sucking in air. “It’s done.”
“We were … keeping our eyes out for you. You should clean up and get inside.”
For a long moment, Ro searches for some hint of thought or feeling from Nyuki, and is faced with a distorted reflection: Chi and Ro and blood. Ro gestures at the body. “Yes, let’s.”
Ro produces a nanohive, and a moment later a barely perceptible busyness extends out into the air, as cleaners scramble to sanitize the scene. Red is removed, DNA undone. Ro takes a brief look around to be sure there are no other witnesses before the AR warnings at the mouth of the tunnel subside. Two Nyukis scuttle up the wall to retrieve the gray box running the spoof on the security feeds while two others gently restrain Chi’s twitching body and help Ro move it into the workshop. Inside, the productive clutter of the machine shop has been cleared away. The only features that matter are a bare table in the center of the room, a utilitool, and a large smart material bag. Chi is tethered to the table quickly and without cruelty, as much to control the twitching as to restrain.
As the Nyukis file out, one of them hesitates on the threshold. “As your friend, we—”
“I’ll be fine. Really, Nyuki. I want to keep going.”
“Be careful, Professor Rokuzawa, and remember why you’re doing this. We’d hate to lose you.” Stepping back, the door closes, leaving Ro to sort things out alone.
—
It seems unfitting that the fate of my recent work, and quite possibly my academic future, is going to be decided in as drab a setting as this dull little meeting room in the Titan Autonomous University faculty offices. I while away a few minutes, imagining the judges of my fate in the school’s Forum, with dozens of onlookers expressing outrage at my disregard for taboo. I imagine those few of like mind finally standing up publicly for their beliefs and students looking to one another in shock. I clear my head of such fantasy and call for the tiniest spurt of serotonin to even me out. I halfheartedly flick through the VR presentation I’ve prepped until the review board finally comes in. Noomi enters with a scowl and a sharp glance over the frames of her glasses. They’re an idiot affectation I can’t believe I ever found charming. Jonas is here as well, and greets me with his usual faint smile and a friendly “Hello, Chi.” The only indication I have of Trieste arriving is the faint tone that sings through the room to let us know he’s localized his attention with us.
I don’t give them a chance to get settled. I need to get through this calmly and quickly.
“Thank you all for meeting with me so quickly after I got back. You all have a sense of my prior work, so I’ll spare you a re-iteration and come right to my latest effort. Based on the success of re-integration with my fork without the necessity of psychosurgical correction and only short-term, incidental stress responses to knives, the endeavor should be viewed as not only successful, but repeatable.” I can’t help but smile slightly.
“Additional ego back-up states were taken before the trial was performed and can be made available for use with our academic peers under other controlled scenarios where alternately signified constructions of the experience can be explored. For example, the assignment of different combinations of physical gender(s) to the aggressor and victim instances and/or the introduction of ideological or sexual components—”
“Yes, yes, Professor Rokuzawa, do give us some credit for coming into this meeting prepared,” Noomi scowls. “We all read the proposal, and you think that just because you killed your own fork and merged with it afterwards—without coming out an emotional disaster or schizophrenic—that we should bless your egotistic nihilism with special support so you can do it again. With sexual components.”
“There’s nothing to bless, Noomi, because there aren’t any disorders. That’s rather the point. I have no interest in play-acting a snuff scene for my own gratification.” Though I might make an exception for you. “Changes to context change the impressions and memories made, and that lets us study how that impacts the merger.”
“Both of you, please, let’s keep this a civil discourse,” Jonas rubs his eyes. “There’s no need to be so confrontational, Dr. Chowdhury. Now then, all matters of tone aside, we’ve read it Chi, and it’s … challenging work. We want to talk to you because, frankly, we’re concerned about what you’ve already done.”
As expected, Dr. Samuelsson is here to play peacemaker. If I can keep calm and let Noomi look overly aggressive, Jonas might side with me out of his own reflex to help the underdog. “You’ll see I’ve included quite detailed information from the psychosurgeon who oversaw the reintegration, so if you’re questioning the accuracy of my claims about a stable outcome I’ve—”
“The only ‘stable outcome’ from this is the certainty it will be condemned by damn near every serious academic in the field!” Noomi interrupts. “This is a sado-masochistic farce at best, and there’s no reason we should facilitate it happening again. I’ve seen your neural map, and there’s nothing going on that can’t be modeled cold in VR. It’s memory grafting, and it’s been covered before. If you were still in my department I wouldn’t even let you waste the board’s time with this nonsense.”
“Well, Noomi, I suppose it’s for the best that I left your department.”
Her eyes narrow and she sniffs. “We’re in agreement there.”
I continue. “There’s more to it than just memory grafting: it looks clean because there have been fundamental changes in the process of neural mapping. The dynamic contrast of simultaneously having and lacking knowledge of context, the perfect experience of a moment from multiple perspectives—” the feel of the knife in my hand and in my flesh simultaneously “—the extreme emotional responses strengthening and clarifying the experience and memories—” the cold creeping through me as I bleed out, the look of peace supplanting that of panic as it steals the light from my eyes “—those are parts of a living psychology that cannot be produced solely through modeling.”
The barest crackle over the audio system. “So your work is only relevant to those who are physically instanced? Only biomorphs? That’s a narrower field of study than it used to be.”
I hate it when Trieste isn’t visually present at meetings. A disembodied AGI that doesn’t use an avatar is easy to accidentally leave out of a conversation, and he knows it. Even Samuelsson is wincing for me. I need to stay focused.
“No. The goal is to push past what has already been done, both physically and digitally. By proceeding with this experiment instanced in a biomorph, every factor was used to increase the intensity of the experience and increase the strength of the memory to give a more stable foundation to work from during the re-integration. Surprise, anger, assumed betrayal, panic, pain: I will remember every one of those moments vividly—even the ones I’d rather not.” I treasure all of them. “The fact that I have competing and conflicting emotions from both sides of the act, and that I’m holding them together, stably”—god, let it be true—“is something that any psychosurgeon you care to name says shouldn’t work successfully.”
“That’s precisely why we’re concerned Chi.”
“Trieste, even working purely digitally, most experts say you can’t code for fallacious or inconsistent thought. Even the best AGIs can only choose to mock up false beliefs, they can’t truly believe them. Humans excel at contradictory thinking. If I’m able to provide source data for a sane personality that holds mutually exclusive understandings of an event, that could be a boon to many areas of non-seed AGI research, correct?”
“Potentially.”
“This is only the start, Trieste. The specifics are unusual, but the approach is standard: experiment, learn from it, and take the next step.”
“You’ve made your point. Unless you have some other specific questions, Drs. Samuelsson or Chowdhury, I’m satisfied we’ve heard enough to deliberate.”
I close the presentation windows and thank them for their time and consideration. Noomi stares at me coldly, and the chill is more than the usual distance over the loss of what we once shared. Jonas looks like he’s losing a friend. He doesn’t understand why I’m doing this, but he sees some of the potential benefits for his own field of study and there’s a flicker of excitement at what I’ve shown him. I know Trieste is the only one whose judgment won’t be clouded by emotion. He doesn’t care what I do to myself, only whether or not what I’m doing has an interesting outcome.
I leave.
—
Hours later, and still no word from the review board. I give Yesterday the night off and free rein on my social networks. I don’t want to deal with anyone. I parse and pick over each phrase and glance from the review meeting, hopeful and despondent in turn. I try to catch up on reading, idly browse the mesh, jack into some mindless XP, but none of it holds my attention. Unconsciously, I remove the coin from the smart linkage on my necklace and flip it, watching it glitter and spin slowly in the low g. I pluck it from the air and don’t care which face is showing. Each side ends in blood.