Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

Gabe shook his head, unwilling to speak and disturb the odd intimacy of the moment.

“I remember being human, and yet I never was. Elspeth gave me that. The complete history of Richard P. Feynman — his letters, his memoirs, his lectures, his interviews, his recorded conversations and music, his drawings, his art — it's all me. I remember it, probably more clearly than a human would. Conflation, and constructed memories, and the data has become a person, because that is the way I was programmed. I think I'm him. I remember being him. But in point of fact, I can't know if I'm really a thing like him. Or if my memories bear any resemblance to what he recalled. And there are things about him I don't know, can't know, if they were never committed to paper.”

“Spooky.”

A holographic shrug. “If you're easily spooked, I suppose. If I were a religious man, I'd wonder at the morality of it — reconstructing a person, even an electronic person, in the shadow of a dead one. It's got tremendous potential for misuse.”

“Indeed,” Gabe said. He swung his feet down, his ship shoes scuffing on the deck. “Mais ce n'est pas que j'ai voulu dire.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“I was wondering what it was like to be… multithreaded. To be more than one person at once.”

Richard laughed. “I'm not, you know. I'm all one person. I'm just capable of being more than one place at the same time. For example, right now I'm talking to Dr. Perry about climactic change, to the Prime Minister about the court case, I'm trying to find ways to remanage some Atlantic currents and running sims to see what certain changes might do—”

“And you're here in this room with me.”

“I've gotten used to it.”

“And yet you seem like a regular guy.”

Richard smiled. He looked down at his hands. He hooked his illusory thumbs through his imaginary belt loops, tilted his head, and looked up again. “Gabe,” he said, and paused, and made a helpless gesture that Gabe knew was completely calculated — or was, more precisely, a translation of Richard's picosecond-long loss-for-words onto a human scale. “Thanks. That means something to me, Gabriel.”

Whatever he might have said next was interrupted by a tapping on the hatch, a metallic sound that made both men's mouths twitch: Jenny, knocking with her left hand. As good an announcement of who was there as a Victorian calling card. And Richard shrugged wryly, winked broadly, and vanished as Gabe got up to answer the door.

Jenny stepped back as he swung the hatch open, hair slicked off her forehead from a recent shower, dressed off-duty in sweats and a heather-gray T-shirt. She was smiling. It looked forced. Gabe stepped out of the way.

She folded her spidery frame and ducked through the hatch, eyes downcast as he pulled it shut behind her and dogged it.

“Jenny, what's wrong?”

“What makes you think anything's wrong?”

He put his back to the hatch. Her skin was warm when he laid his hand on the nape of her neck, clipped hairs fuzzy against his palm. She sighed and turned into him, her cheek on his shoulder, her face pressed into his throat. He paused for a moment and let his free hand slide around her waist, her body like a twist of rawhide. Tough and implacable and fragile as soap bubbles, and he held his breath as if he could accidentally blow her away.

“This,” he said, when he dared, her breath warming the hollow over his collarbone. He felt her rueful smile. She stepped back and held him at arm's length, the steel hand and the human on his shoulders, her chin lifted to look him dead in the eyes.

“Damn you, mon ange.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “Je suis une plaque de glace pour toi, n'est-ce pas?”

“Non.” He stepped closer, and kissed her lightly. She didn't try to hold him away. “Tu es une mystère. Jen—”

“Oui?”

“Out with it.”

She took a breath, the long muscles under his hands tightening. “Wainwright wants Genie for the pilot program.”

He would have jerked away from her, but his shoulders hit the hatch when he stepped back, the handle catching him over a kidney with a sharp shock of discomfort. He flinched and let his hands fall. Jenny held him tighter, the light catching in her prosthetic eye so the cornea seemed to sparkle.

“Putain!”

“C'est vrai.” She wasn't letting him go, and he didn't mind.

“Dick could have warned me—”

“Dick doesn't tell tales out of school.” Tiredly, her head rocked back on her shoulders for a moment, and she closed her eyes. “I told the captain — c'est trop cher.”

“She didn't care, of course.” Very carefully, so she wouldn't think it was a dismissal, he reached up and plucked her left hand off his shoulder. She wasn't wearing the glove today; no point with the short-sleeved T-shirt showing the gleaming hydraulics of her prosthesis. Her touch sensitivity included the palm and fingertips only; he squeezed her wrist anyway, the metal cool and unyielding, even though she couldn't feel the touch.

She shook her head and turned inside his embrace, leaning her shoulders against his chest, her head against his shoulder, winding his arm around her like a ribbon when he didn't let go. The weight of her body pressed him harder against the door handle. He grunted and stepped to one side, arm around her midsection to move her with him, and she came along like a dancing partner, smooth and light.

“It gets her off the planet,” she said.

Jenny was tall enough that he had to stand up straight and tilt his head back to tuck her under his chin. She sighed when he did it, and melted against him as if his warmth had unmoored whatever emotional props kept her stiff-backed and upright. He nodded into her hair.

“Dammit, Gabe. I'm tired. Je suis fatiguée.” She shook her head. “When do we get to take a break?”

He snorted and pulled her closer, breathing in the shower-clean scent of her skin. “When they push us over and shovel dirt on our heads,” he answered, holding on tight.

1400 hours

Friday September 28, 2063

Lake Simcoe Military Prison

Ontario, Canada

Xie Min-xue stared at the wall of his cell, which was beige and featureless, but he wasn't seeing it. He wasn't feeling the headache caused by the fluorescent lights, his enhanced senses turning what was supposed to be a flicker too fast for perception into something more akin to the stutter of a strobe light, because all his attention was turned inward focused on an old American poem. Richard was still helping him with his English, and in a little less than a year it had gotten much better than he would ever have permitted his guards — or his fellow Chinese prisoners — to realize.

As clearly as if someone who had been quietly reading a book had raised his head and fixed him with a glance, Min-xue felt the shift in Richard's attention. He'd been backgrounded, conversing with one of Richard's subroutines while Richard's core identity handled half a dozen more important things. Now the threads merged again, the AI's primary awareness focusing on Min-xue. It was the equivalent of a man clearing his throat, except Min-xue felt the pressure of that regard as an internal thing.

It prickled the hairs on his neck.

Hello, Richard.

“Hello, Min-xue…”

That polite hesitation, and it told Min-xue that Richard was serious. You're here to tell me what they're going to do with me .

“I'm here to let you know what's being discussed, and let you know what we're going to do about it. You do have friends in high places, you know.”

Not high enough. The pilot shook his head and rose to his feet. He paused for a moment, looking down at his feet in their white canvas sneakers with the thin plastic soles. You're going to ask me to defect, Richard. I will not do that.