Каарон Уоррен - The Lowest Heaven

Something in him snapped in that moment. “You’re committing suicide, in other words. Being taken apart, until there’s nothing left of you. You can’t become a robot, any more than you can become air, or sunlight!”

“What is this◦– a glimmer of contradiction? The faintest signs of a spine? Keep at it◦– there may be hope for you yet.”

“This isn’t about me. This is about you, throwing yourself away◦– wasting what you are.”

“How little you understand of us. What would be the last thing I clung to, do you think? The last, most sacrosanct piece of myself?”

“Your mind,” he stated firmly. “You do not reside in your heart and lungs, but without your brain, there is no Rhawn.”

“What you mean is, without the encoding of my personality implied by my detailed idiosyncratic brain structure, there is no Rhawn. How could there be? But that encoding doesn’t care about the terms of its own embodiment.”

“I would,” Oleg said, with fierce certainty.

“Weeks ago, at the commencement of my second crossing, small volumes of my brain structure were duplicated by artifical connective structures located outside my body. Machine circuits, in other words. When neural signals passed through the interfaces of these brain volumes, my Totalist peers had the freedom to choose whether those signals continued to pass through my existing anatomy, or were instead shunted through the exosomatic structures. The change was made, and then switched back◦– and made again, over and over! The key thing is that I felt no change in my perception of self, regardless of whether my thoughts were running inside my head, or in the exterior circuitry! Electricity doesn’t mind which route it takes, as long as it gets to the same destination! And so, step by step, volumes of my own brain were switched out◦– supplanted and discarded! This continued. Over the weeks, fifty, sixty, seventy percent of my old architecture was supplanted by exosomatic machinery. And now you arrive. I stand now on the cusp of absolute machinehood◦– ready to make the final transition to Totality. Only the last ten percent of my mind is still inside my head. You see now why it is far, far too late to reverse what I have become?”

“There’s still active brain tissue inside you?” he asked. “Still some meat, inside the head I’m looking at?”

“What is left of me, you could squeeze between your fingers, like a handful of wet grey sand.”

“Then where is the rest of you? Executing inside one of these machines? Already in a robot, waiting for you to take control?”

“You misunderstand. Ninety percent of me has already completed the transition. And one hundred percent of me is already in control. My robot body is not ‘waiting’ for me. I am already mostly in it. And we have already met.”

He turned from the globed head, conscious that the robot that had brought him in from outside was still there. He looked with renewed fascination at the symphony of flickering coloured lights.

“I should have guessed. You never did give me your name.”

“And you never asked,” the robot said, nodding. “But here I am. This is me. I am Rhawn. That thing that you have been talking to, that is just the place where I used to live.”

“You could have given me your answer outside.”

“I thought it would help if you understood. I am ready now, you see. But that last ten percent of me◦– I won’t pretend that there has not been hesitation. I could have completed the transition days ago. On the brink, I quailed! Foolishly, I could not quite bring myself to submit to Totality. The meat’s pathetic last twitch! But you have been the spur I needed. For that alone, Oleg, you have my undying gratitude.”

“I’ve done nothing!”

“You have come, and now you may observe. Suffer one useful moment in your miserable existence. Are you prepared?”

“For what?”

“To bear witness. To document my becoming. In a moment, the last traces of my living neural tissue will cease to serve any useful function. And I will have transcended myself.” But when he thought she might be done, Rhawn added: “You may thank your masters, Oleg, for their kind offer. I spit it back at them, all the same. They were much too late, of course, but it would have made no difference if they had sent you years ago. I have been on this path for much too long for that. I have always felt the pull of Totality, even before I knew it in my self. The more I move from the meat, the more the meat repulses me.”

“And one day,” Oleg said, “you’ll feel the need to go beyond this as well. It’s in your nature.”

“What could possibly lie beyond the perfection of robotic embodiment?”

“The greater perfection of non-embodiment. The flawless condition of non-existence.”

“You mean that I would kill myself.”

“I’m sure you will. You can’t ever accept what you are, Rhawn. It’s just not in your nature.”

A new light came on in the robot’s head. It was a pale green, rising and falling in brightness without ever quite dimming completely. Oleg was quite sure it had not been activated earlier on.

“Even now?” she asked.

“Even now.”

“Well, you’re mistaken. But then, you are only human. And now that I have completed my second crossing, I feel my conviction more forcefully than ever before. We shall have to see who is wrong, won’t we? I hope you have a great deal of patience, not to mention a solid medical plan. You are a bag of cells with an expiration date. Parts of you are already starting to rot. It will take me centuries to begin to exhaust the possibilities of Totality.”

“You’ll burn through then quickly enough. And then what?”

“Something beyond this. But not death. There is no art in death, Oleg. Only art’s supreme negation.”

He smiled thinly. “The world will await your next masterpiece with interest, Rhawn. Even if it never leaves Mercury.”

“Well, something shall. Does this surprise you? And you shall be its custodian.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It is… traditional… among the Totalists. At the time of our second crossing, we concieve of a new piece. A celebration of transition, if you will. The work is initiated before the crossing’s start, and not fully completed until the crossing is done. I have … planned such a work. I call it A Map of Mercury . It is a minor piece, in the scheme of things. Almost beneath me. But since you have gone to such pains to find me, I should consider it fitting if it should fall upon you, the great and glorious Oleg, to bring the work to public attention.”

“A new piece by Rhawn?”

“Exactly that,” she said proudly. “A new piece by Rhawn. And, as far as the outside world is concerned, the last. No, I shan’t be abandoning art. But the realms into which I expect to push… these will shortly lie beyond your conceptual horizon. You would not only fail to recognise my art as art, you would fail to recognise that it was anything at all. But this last piece will be my gift to you◦– and your meat cousins. You will find it comprehensible. Take it to your masters. Fight over it like dogs. I will enjoy watching the overheated spasms of your Jovian economy.”

“It’s not what they asked for,” Oleg said.

“But they won’t be displeased with you?”

“No,” he supposed. “I came for you, but never with much expectation that you’d agree to the offer. They’ll hand that moon over to someone else, I suppose. But to return with a new piece by Rhawn … that was never in my plans. They’ll be pleased, I think.”

“And will their pleasure be of benefit to you? Will you also profit from this?”

“I should imagine.”