David Brin - Kiln People

At one level, I was involved with a college student. At another level, a warrior and international celebrity. So? Who hasn’t grown accustomed to living several lives in parallel? If humanity has one majestic talent, it’s an almost infinite capacity to get used to the Next Big Thing … then take it for granted.

I looked back at the note Clara left for me. Her thumbprint, bio-sculpted to resemble a familiar winking leer, marked the end, pointing to a second scrap of paper underneath:

Her duplication machine — a sleek model from Fabrique Gabon — took up a quarter of the boat’s petite salon. The storage compartment, translucent with frost, revealed a humanoid figure — Clara’s shape and size — presumably imprinted and ready for baking in the kiln.

Pondering the well-proportioned silhouette, I felt like a husband whose absent wife left a ready-to-heat supper in the fridge. A strange thought, given Clara’s attitude toward marriage. And yes, Clara likes to make specialists. This ivory wouldn’t be big on intellect or conversation.

Well, I’ll take what I can get.

But not now. Between one emergency and another, I’d been up for forty hours and needed sleep more than surrogate sex. Anyway, a vague sense of unease gnawed as I drove back to my own place.

“Did you check on the waiter at La Tour Vanadium?” I asked Nell, parking the Volvo in its little garage. My house computer answered in a customary mezzo-soprano.

“I did. The restaurant reports that one of their waiters lost his service contract last night, for upsetting clients. They are hiring skilled dittos from another source, starting tonight.”

“Damn.” This meant I owed the guy. Manual labor contracts aren’t easy to come by, especially at classy eateries, where owners demand uniform perfection from the staff. Identical waiters are more predictable, and employees who are cast from the same mold don’t squabble over tips.

“Did they give his name?

“There is a privacy block. But I’ll work on it. Meanwhile, you have ongoing cases. Shall we go over them while imprinting today’s duplicates?”

Nell’s tone was chiding. Our normal routine had gone completely off-kilter. Usually, by this hour I’d have already turned out copies to run errands and make inquiries while the rig went back to sleep, napping to conserve precious brain cells for the creative side of business.

Instead of collapsing into bed, I headed for my kiln unit and lay down while Nell thawed several blanks for imprinting. I looked away as they slid into warming trays, doughlike flesh puffing and coloring as millions of tiny achilles catalysis cells began their brief, vigorous pseudolives. Today’s kids may take this all for granted, but most people my age still find it a little unnerving, like seeing a corpse waken.

“Go ahead,” I told Nell, while neural probes waved around my head for the critical phase of imprinting.

“First, I’ve been fending off Gineen Wammaker all morning. She’s anxious to talk to you.”

I winced as tickling sensations began dancing across my scalp, comparing my ongoing Soul Standing Wave to the basic ground state stored in memory.

“The Wammaker job is done. I completed the contract. If she’s gonna quibble over expenses—”

“The maestra has already paid our bill in full. There are no quibbles.”

Blinking in surprise, I almost sat up.

“That’s not like her.”

“Perhaps Ms. Wammaker noticed that you were abrupt with her this morning, and subsequently refused her calls. That could have put you in a position of strength, psychologically speaking. She may worry that she provoked you once too often, perhaps losing your services for good.”

Nell’s speculation had some merit. I felt no desperate need to keep working for the maestra. Relaxing again, I felt the tetragramatron’s sweep intensify, copying my sympathetic and parasympathetic profiles for imprinting.

“What services? I said the job is done.”

“Apparently she has another in mind. Her offer is our top-standard fee, plus ten percent for a confidential consultation early this afternoon.”

I pondered it … though you really aren’t supposed to make crucial decisions while imprinting. Too many random currents surging in your brain.

“Well, if playing hard-to-get works, make a counter offer. Top-standard rate plus thirty. Take it or leave it. We’ll send a gray if she accepts.”

“The gray is thawing as we speak. Shall I also continue preparing an ebony?”

“Hm. A bit expensive, if I’m making a gray anyway. Maybe he can finish with Wammaker early and get home in time to help.”

“That should suffice for casework. But we still need a green—”

Nell paused abruptly.

“I’m receiving a call. An urgent. From someone named Ritu Lizabetha Maharal. Do you know this woman?”

Again, I barely refrained from sitting up, ruining the transfer.

“I met her this morning.”

“You could have told me.”

“Just pipe it in please, Nell.”

A wall screen lit up, showing the slim face of Vic Kaolin’s young assistant. Her real skin flushed taut with emotion, not at all like the relieved expression I last saw an hour ago.

“Mr. Morris … I mean Albert …”

She blinked, realizing that I lay supine in the kiln. Many folks consider imprinting private, like getting dressed in the morning.

“Forgive me for not getting up, Miss Maharal. I can interrupt if it’s urgent, or call you back in a few—”

“No. I’m sorry to disturb you while you’re … It’s just that I — I have terrible news.”

Anyone could tell as much from her expression — bleak and grieving. I hazarded a guess.

“Is it your father?”

She nodded, tears welling.

“They found his body in …” She stopped, unable to proceed.

“His rig ?” I asked, shaken. “Not the gray ditto I met, but the real … your father’s dead?”

Ritu nodded.

“C-could you please send a you over here, right away? Send it to the Kaolin estate. They’re calling this an accident. But I’m sure Dad was murdered!”

Running subvocal commentary.

Notes-as-we-go.

If this body of mine were real, a passerby might see my lips move, or hear a low whisper as I tape this. But talking into a microphone is irritating and inconvenient. Folks can listen. So I order all my gray ditto blanks with silent-record feature and a compulsion to recite.

Now I am one of them.

Damn.

Oh, never mind. I’m always just a bit grumpy getting up off the warming tray, grabbing paper garments from a rack and slipping them over limbs that still glow with ignition enzymes, knowing I’m the copy-for-a-day.

Of course I remember doing this thousands of times. Part of modern living, that’s all. Still, it feels like when my parents used to hand me a long list of chores, saying that today will be all work and no play … with the added touch that Albert Morris’s golems have a high chance of getting snuffed while taking risks he’d never put his realbod through.

A lesser death. Barely noticed. Unmourned.

Ugh. What got me in this mood?

Maybe Ritu’s news. A reminder that true death still lurks for us all.

Well, shrug it off! No sense brooding. Life’s fundamentally the same. Sometimes you’re the grasshopper. Some the ant. The difference now is that now you can be both, the very same day.