Jack Chalker: Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

It may seem like a strange life, going about not knowing where you have been or what you’ve done, but it has its compensations. Because any potential enemy, military or political, knows you’ve been wiped, you can live a fairly normal, relaxed life outside of a mission structure. There’s no purpose to coming after you—you have no knowledge of what you’ve done or why or for whom. In exchange for these blanks, an agent of the Confederacy lives a life of luxury and ease, with an almost unlimited supply of money’ and with all the comforts supplied. I bummed around, swam, gambled, ate in the best restaurants, played a little semipro ball or cube—I’m pretty good, and it keeps me in shape. I enjoyed every minute of it, and except for my regular re-qualification training sessions, four-to-six-week stints that resemble military basic training only nastier and more sadistic, I felt no guilt at my playboy life. The training sessions are to make sure that your body and mind don’t stagnate from all that good living. They have sensors in you that they constantly monitor to determine when you need a good refresher.

I often wondered just how sophisticated these sensors were. The notion that a whole security staff could see all my debauchery and indiscretions used to worry me, but after a while you learn to ignore it.

The life offered in trade is just too nice. Besides, what could I do about it, anyway? People on most of the civilized worlds these days had such sensors, although hardly to the degree and sophistication of mine. How else could a population so vast and so spread out possibly be kept orderly, progressive, and peaceful?

But when a mission came up it wasn’t practical to forgo all that past experience. A wipe without storage simply wouldn’t have been a good idea, since a good agent gets better by not repeating his mistakes. So in the Security Clinic they had everything you ever experienced on file, and the first thing you did was get the rest of you put back so you would be whole for whatever mission they’d dreamed up this time. I was always amazed when I rose from that chair with my past fully restored. Just the clear memories of the things I’d done always surprised me—that I , of all people, had done this or that.

The only difference this time, I knew, was that the process would be taken one step further. Not only would the complete me get up from that table, but the same memory pattern would be impressed on other minds, other bodies—as many as needed until a take was achieved.

I wondered what the others would be like, those four versions of myself. Physically different, probably—the offenders they got here didn’t normally come from the civilized worlds, where people had basically been standardized in the name of equality. No, these people would be from the frontier, from the traders and miners and freebooters that always existed at the edge of expansion. They were certainly necessary in an expanding culture, since a high degree of individuality, self-reliance, originality, and creativity was required in the dangerous situations in which they lived. A stupid government would have eliminated all such, but a stupid government quickly degenerates and loses its vitality and growth potential by standardization. Utopia was for the masses, of course, but not for everyone—or it wouldn’t be Utopia very long.

That was the original reason for the Warden Diamond Reserve in the first place. Some of these hard frontier people are so individualistic that they become a threat to the stability of the civilized worlds. The trouble is, anybody able to crack the fabric that holds our society together is most likely the smartest, nastiest, meanest, cleverest, most original sort of person humanity can produce—and therefore not somebody whose mind should idly be wiped clean. The Diamond, it was felt, would effectively trap people like that forever, yet allow them continued creative opportunities, which when properly monitored might still produce, something of value for the Confederacy.

Of course the felons down there were anxious to please as well, since the alternative was death. Eventually such creative minds made themselves indispensable to the Confederacy and ensured their continued survival. That possibility had been foreseen, but it wasn’t altogether unwelcome. Like all criminal organizations in the past, they provided services that people were convinced should be illegal or were unmoral or some such, but that masses of people wanted anyway.

The damned probe hurt like hell. Usually there was just some tingling, then a sensation much like sleep, and you woke up a few minutes later in the chair yourself once again. This time the tingling became a painful physical force that seemed to enter my skull, bounce around, then seize control of my head. It was as if a giant fist had grabbed my brain and squeezed, then released, then squeezed again. Instead of drifting off to sleep, I passed out.

I woke up and groaned slightly. The throbbing was gone, but the memory was still all too current and all too real. It was several minutes, I think, before I found enough strength to sit up.

The old memories flooded back, and again I amazed myself, by recalling many of my past exploits. I wondered if my surrogate selves would get similar treatment, considering that they couldn’t be wiped after this mission as I could. That caused me to make a mental note that those surrogates would almost certainly have to be killed if they did have my entire memory pattern. Otherwise a lot of secrets would be loose in the Warden Diamond, many in the hands of people who’d know just what sort of use to make of them.

No sooner had I had that thought than I had an odd feeling that something was very wrong. I looked around the small room in which I’d awakened and realized immediately the source of that feeling.

This wasn’t the Security Clinic, wasn’t anyplace I’d ever seen before. A tiny cubicle, about twelve cubic meters total, including the slightly higher than normal ceiling. In it was a small cot on which I’d awakened, a small basin and next to it a standard food port, and in the wall, a pull down toilet. That was it Nothing else—or was there?

I looked around and spotted the most obvious easily. Yes, I couldn’t make a move without being visually and probably aurally monitored. The door was almost invisible and there was certainly no way to open it from inside. I knew immediately where I was.

It was a prison cell.

Far worse, I could feel a faint vibration that had no single source. It wasn’t irritating; in fact, it was so dun as to be hardly noticeable, but I knew what it was. I was aboard a ship, moving somewhere through space.

I stood up, reeling a little bit from a slight bout of dizziness that soon passed, and looked down at my body. It was small and lithe, almost wiry, but there was muscle there and no fat at all. I had a few rough-looking scars, but aside from the evident fact that they had been more crudely treated than by a meditech they didn’t look all that unusual. The skin was naturally dark, with an almost olive complexion that was unusual but apparently quite natural. A natural-born body, then, and not one that had been genetically engineered. It would be psychologically difficult to adjust to being not merely short but small. I could only stand there, stunned, for I don’t know how long.

I’m not me! my mind screamed at me. I’m one of them— one of the surrogates!

I sat back down on the cot, telling myself that it just wasn’t possible. I knew who I was, remembered every bit, every detail, of my life and work.

My shock gave way after a while to anger—anger and frustration. I was a copy, an imitation of somebody else entirely, somebody still alive and kicking and possibly monitoring my every move, my every thought. I hated that other then, hated him with a pathological force beyond reason. He would sit there comfortable and safe, watching me work, watching me do it all—and when the mission was over, he’d go home for debriefing, return to that easy life, while I—