Greg Egan - Quarantine

She winces. 'Telekinesis!' Then adds, reluctantly, 'Well … yeah, I suppose that's exactly what the media will call it — if we ever get to drop all this security bullshit and publish the results.'

'So what should they call it?'

'Oh… neural linear decomposition of the state vector, followed by phase-shifting and preferential reinforcement of selected eigenstates.' She laughs. 'You're right: we'd better think of something catchier, or the whole thing will end up being grossly misreported.'

Her description is meaningless to me, but — ' "Eigenstates"? They're something in quantum mechanics, aren't they?' She nods. 'That's right.'

For a second, I think she's about to elaborate, but she doesn't; she just yawns. I'm certain, though, that she'd happily explain everything (or as much as she knows); all I'd have to do is ask: how does this mod actually work? What's the mechanism, what's the trick? What's the secret at the heart of the Ensemble? Just what is it that I'm living for?

She says, 'Nick, I'm pretty tired — '

Of course. Good night, then. I'll see you tomorrow.'

'Good night.'

I sit in the anteroom, dutifully staring at the door in front of me —

— and catch myself, at three fifty-two, listening to the interminable chirping of synthetic insects … mildly, but undeniably, irritated by the sound.

I try to sink back into stake-out mode; instead, I find myself growing bored, and then uneasy. I run P3's diagnostics, for the twentieth time in a week.

[no faults detected.]

What's happening to me?

It's not a disease — it can't be; all my mods claim they're intact, and even if their self-checking systems had themselves become corrupted, random damage to the neurons involved is hardly likely to have caused exactly the right changes to generate false reports of good health.

What if the damage isn't random? What if an enemy of ASR is infecting the security staff with nanomachines? But if that's so, then their tactics are absurd. Why would they slowly degrade our mods, giving us days in which to ponder the symptoms? It would make infinitely more sense to build latent puppet mods, which could wait in silence, subjectively undetectable, until they were all activated at some predetermined moment.

What, then?

Karenappears in front of me. I try to banish her, without success. She just stands there; silent, frowning slightly, apparently as much at a loss to explain her presence as I am. I plead with her: 'I'm primed. You know how much you hate to see me primed.' This argument doesn't move her, and no wonder; clearly, I'm not primed — whatever P3might think.

What use is a bodyguard whose optimization mods no longer function? Who suffers uncontrollable hallucinations.

I close my eyes, calm myself. It's simple: tomorrow, I'll go to ASR's occupational health unit, explain the symptoms and let the experts sort it out. Whatever's wrong with me, they'll know how to fix it.

The prospect of having my skull inventoried by strangers is humiliating, but that's just too bad. I'll have to explain about Karen… and the loyalty mod? I'll fudge that, somehow; they don't have to know all the details. What matters in the end is serving the Ensemble, and I can't do that if I'm falling apart.

I open my eyes. Karenhasn't moved.

I say, 'Well, if you're going to hang around, what do you want to do? Stand guard with me?' No.'

'What, then?'

She reaches down and touches my cheek. I take hold of her other hand — more starkly aware than usual of the mod contriving to restrain me from putting my fingers through her non-existent flesh. I slide my thumb across the back of her hand, pausing on the familiar shape of each knuckle.

'I do miss you. You know that.'

She doesn't reply.

There has to be a way to get her back. Maybe I can learn to keep her from blaspheming against the Ensemble; learn to control her more tightly — without entirely destroying the illusion of her autonomy. Or … maybe I can have her modified, constrained — give her a 'loyalty mod' of her own. Why didn't I think of that before? Mods can be adapted. Anything is possible.

I look up and meet her eyes. The calm, untroubled love that she engenders seems to waver slightly, like an image reflected in a mirror-smooth lake, subtly distorted by some hidden current in the depths. A chill of anticipation hits me; I feel no forbidden emotion — no grief, no guilt, no anger. But the mere thought that this mod might fail, too — that everything it rules out, everything from which it shields me, might become possible again — leaves me momentarily light-headed with fear.

I let go of her hand, and she —

She fills the room.

She spreads, smears, replicates, like some holographic paintbox gimmick gone wild. I leap to my feet, knocking over the chair, as the space around me grows thick with ever more copies of her illusory body. I shield my face, but I can still feel her brushing against me on all sides. A droning rises up from all directions, garbled and incoherent, but unmistakably her voice.

I cry out —

— and she vanishes, completely.

In the abrupt silence, memory echoes the last moments of sound — and I realize that my own cry almost masked another voice.

Po-kwai.

I enter the apartment, weapon drawn. Advertising signs in the mock windows' cityscape — holograms of holograms — light the way. P2claims it can't localize the shout — that the data is ambiguous — but I suffer the bizarre conviction that I know it came from the bedroom. Obvious first call, anyway. The door is ajar; I kick it wide open. Po-kwai, standing in a far corner of the room, spins round, startled. I freeze for a moment, trying to read her face, hoping for a signal — a flick of the eyes giving away the intruder's location — but she merely looks alarmed, and baffled, by my presence. I step into the room.

'You're alone?'

She nods, and then manages a nervous, angry laugh. 'What are you doing? Trying to frighten me to death?'

'Didn't you call out?'

She scowls, and seems about to deny this vehemently — but then she catches herself, and looks about the room, as if suddenly unable to account for her surroundings. 'I think… I must have had a nightmare. Maybe I yelled in my sleep. I don't know.' She puts a hand to her mouth. I'm sorry. You must have thought — '

It's all right.' I holster the gun; it's clearly making her uneasy.

'Nick, I'm sorry.'

'Don't be; there's no harm done. I'm sorry that I startled you.' With the pressure off, I have time to observe: I'm primed again, P3is functioning normally. Which is good news — but as inexplicable as everything else.

She shakes her head, still apologetic. 'I don't even remember getting out of bed.'

'Do you sleepwalk?'

'Never. Maybe I had such a shock, in the dream, that I leapt out of bed, shouting… but only really woke once I was on my feet. I honestly can't remember.'

I glance at the bed; it doesn't look much like she 'leapt' out of it. I don't argue, though; if she sleepwalks, that's worth knowing, but there's nothing to be gained by embarrassing her if she doesn't want to admit it.

'Yeah. Well — sorry about the intrusion. I'd better let you get some sleep.' She nods.

Back in the anteroom, I can hear her moving restlessly about the apartment. I sit and wait for P3to fail, for Karen to appear and go berserk again, but nothing happens. Hoping that the glitch has miraculously vanished is just wishful thinking; the truth is, for all I know it might recur at any time — and I'd rather confront the doctors as a babbling wreck, smothered by the ghost of my dead wife, than have them probe me superficially and offer the same bland reassurances as the mods themselves: no faults detected.