It is consciousness itself that is an illusion … that process of retrospectively fabricating a continuous narrative is going on at every moment, fooling us into believing we are experiencing the world objectively through our own singular perspective.
Alice is not sure in which order the processes occur, whether the impulse to operate the console has come first and triggered the memories, or whether the impulse has been triggered as a result of the memories. They are like a child’s collage inside her mind, a kaleidoscope of disparate components experienced simultaneously.
Amidst the maelstrom is a memory of a face, speaking directly to her in a video message. It is a woman in her forties or fifties, moist-eyed and tired, burdened by sadness. Alice feels affection, sorrow and regret, but at a remove. This must be what was meant by the watermark effect, because she can sense that this is not her own memory. She has never experienced it before. She doesn’t know if this means that all of her previous memories are genuine, or that the synthetic neuron system works more seamlessly than the mesh.
“I’m sorry that this is the last time I will speak to you,” the woman says. “I’m sorry I didn’t come home to Earth for the end, but I don’t have long left, and I have chosen to use the time I do have to do this.”
More fragments coalesce. She knows who this is. It is Cassandra Shelley.
It is her mother.
No. The watermark. This is not her memory, not her mother. Shelley is the mother of whoever’s memory this is.
“I kept the tumour secret from you, and for that I apologise.”
Alice feels an echo of sadness, the memory of a memory. This is the recollection of someone watching this video message not for the first time. Watching it in a lab, nearby, recently.
“I had to keep my illness from Maria because I didn’t know what she might do if she found out. She still thinks there will be time for her to understand my work. She believes we will get over our disagreements and that I will share with her the elements I have kept to myself. But I have realised that I cannot allow that, and I honestly don’t know what she is capable of were she to learn that I will be taking those secrets to the grave.”
Alice feels another echo of sadness, another coalescence: whoever’s memory this is reflecting on the irony. Shelley designed these synthetic neurons and their cell-cloning replication process as a means to repair brain damage, but her innovation came too late to save herself.
“I’ve seen what she means to do. She has already operated on two infants. Twins. I can’t say for sure how she got them, though I have a strong idea, which I will also have to take with me to my grave. What she has done is beyond unethical, utterly unconscionable, but I can just about forgive her this much. It is her long-term plans that truly frighten me. I am sending you the files along with this transmission, so that you can understand: nothing less than the free will of the human race is at stake here.
“This is why I am going to destroy all of my work, and as much as I can of hers. It will appear as an accident, a fire. She must never know that I was the cause of it, or that it was deliberate, because I do not want suspicion to fall upon you when one day you take up a post here. Maria will not give up. She will rebuild and try again, which is why I am pleading with you to become my own invisible agent.
“I hope you understand what I have done. Please know that I have taken steps to ensure the fire will be contained and nobody else harmed. I also have drugs to ensure I do not suffer. I will be gone before the flames reach me. Forgive me, Leonard. I love you.”
Leonard.
Leonard Slovitz was Shelley’s son. This is his memory, of re-watching an old video message from his mother.
The kaleidoscope resolves again.
“If you are remembering this, it’s because everything else has failed.”
Another second-hand memory: Leonard Slovitz looking in the mirror. He is talking to himself, and yet not talking to himself. He is talking to the intended recipient of his message.
“Gonçalves is moving all her pieces into place. The most powerful of them is you, Alice Blake, through whom she will effectively control the Seguridad. Electromagnetic shielding dictates that her link to your mind will be lost on your ascent to Heinlein. I have sabotaged the system at this end so that it can’t be re-established remotely. Eventually, Gonçalves will have to bring you here, to restore control and to correct anything she doesn’t like. I have hijacked that process too. Instead, she will upload this little care package, my own last resort.
“My plan is to go public by smuggling out a piece of hardware, one I have been involved in designing. It is a prototype remote-access module for the Gen-5 mesh, augmented with an emergency behaviour-control function. With it I will be able to demonstrate what this new technology allows its operator to do. It is power that should be in nobody’s hands: no individual, no government and no corporation.
“Time will be against me. Once my actions are discovered, Gonçalves will move heaven and Earth to recover the machine and to silence me. If that should prove so, then all I have left is to plead to you this echo of my mother’s request if I have become, like her, a ghost in the machine.”