Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

The door swung open, and a platinum-haired woman in a grease-smeared yellow pantsuit burst through. With hardly a glance, she threw her arms around Muddy and kissed him soundly on the cheek. “My hero!”

Muddy squawked and tried to pull away. “I’m Muddy, madam. Your hero is over there. Please, please , you’re hurting me.”

“You’re both my heroes,” she insisted breathlessly, and launched herself uphill at Bruno who, to tell the truth, reacted much as Muddy had. They were neither one of them too comfortable with displays of gratitude. Some heroes.

Deliah’s face betrayed more curiosity than concern. “I don’t understand, Bruno. Why did you change your name? What exactly did Marlon do?”

Muddy tensed at the question but, to his credit, did his best to answer politely. “That’s a more personal inquiry than you suspect, madam. Pray you never discover the answer.”

Bruno, who’d been ignoring the two so he could feed calculations into a pair of hypercomputers, looked up now and saw the need to intervene. “Ah. Deliah, you’ve hit upon a… delicate subject. Muddy has, until quite recently, been accumulating what we’ll politely call ‘deep psychological injuries.’ All things considered I’d say he’s coping rather well, but it’s unwise—not to mention unkind—to press him. Once he’s seen proper medical attention, he may feel more inclined to share his story, but for the moment even / don’t know it. And perhaps we should take him at his word, that there are things we really don’t want to know.”

Muddy, not surprisingly, burst out crying at this.

Deliah blushed. Her folding chair—now a slim couch of padded white leather secured beside the fax machine— creaked a little as she moved within her restraints. “I’m… sorry, uh, Muddy. I had no idea your troubles were so… That is to say… Urgh. When I first saw you, I thought you looked, um, festive, and so I…”

“Festive. Festive!” Muddy fingered the several gray tufts of hair sprouting from his wrinkled, mottled scalp, then touched his upturned nose, which was somewhat redder and wider than Bruno’s own. His cheeks were ruddier, too. Muddy wasn’t restrained at all; he sat upon his couch, and through his tears an awkward chuckle escaped, and an unhappy smile, and he even managed a little bow in this sickening environment of Sabadell-Andorra under full sunward acceleration.

“I didn’t mean—

“No, no, the lady is most perceptive. Indeed, among… other activities… I was employed exactly as you surmise. You may say the word—I grant you my leave.”

“Here now,” Bruno tried. What he wanted to say was that Muddy might prove useful in the hours ahead, and his delicate-but-functional emotional state should not be tweaked or tampered with. But that sounded so cold, so calculating. If Muddy were Bruno himself, then fine; he could do whatever he pleased. People made copies for purposes both monumental and banal, and reconverged them with equal aplomb. Some even destroyed the copies after certain rough uses, with no reconvergence, no exchange of mental notes, or else they designed sacrificial copies that willingly destroyed themselves. That was a bitter pill for any enlightened society to swallow, but indeed, under Queendom law Bruno would be well within his rights to command Muddy’s erasure as “spoilage.”

For that matter, the Queendom itself could make such a ruling, and poor Muddy would have no recourse. This could hardly be called justice—indeed, such scenarios had inspired some of the century’s most wrenching songs and dramas. And yet, the government must hold these powers, or all its planets would be stuffed pole to pole with cranky, unwanted faxes. If that wasn’t a form of criminal trespass, then what was? A hundred million of the same compulsive, neurotic narcissist? No thank you!

But still, he found reason to doubt. From the look on her face, it seemed clear that Deliah knew exactly what Muddy was talking about, while Bruno himself had no idea. This was hardly the rapport one expected between duplicates, or even brothers.

“Say the word,” Muddy repeated.

Deliah struggled with it for a few seconds before finally giving in. “Jester.”

Still weeping, Muddy bowed again, then carefully slid off his couch until his feet were on the deck. “Jester. Indeed. I am festive, a plaything, a joke between friends. Shall I defy my nature, and gallivant about the solar system with this foul hero?” He jerked an elbow in Bruno’s direction. “Or shall I drug myself insensible, and spare you both my company? The latter, I think. This place is filled with pain.”

As he spoke, he tiptoed gingerly over the supine form of Hugo, still strapped to the floor and apparently content there. He advanced on Deliah, or rather on the fax orifice beside her, and she pulled away as much as her restraints allowed, her face betraying a familiar mix of guilt and mortification.

Ignoring her, Muddy extended a hand to the fax, which anticipated his request and spat a pill into his waiting palm, along with a glass of something that definitely wasn’t water. He popped the drug into his mouth and gulped it immediately, then winced in pain and downed, in two big gulps, the amber fluid in the glass. His sobbing renewed as he put the glass back in the fax again. Then, head down, he trudged back to his couch, settled down on it, and strapped himself in.

“Apologies, Laureate-Director,” he said to Deliah, through his tears. “It isn’t you. I’d no doubt embarrass myself no matter what you did or said. I’m intended to embarrass a certain de Towaji, but I’ve disowned him. Let him find his own humiliations.”

Then he closed his eyes and feigned sleep, and soon enough the heavy rise and fall of his chest was no act.

“I’m so very sorry,” Deliah said, to no one specific.

Bruno was gruff. “Blame your friend Marlon. If you doubt the malice of his intentions, there’s your proof right there. That any human being should be so mistreated…”

“Marlon’s not like that, Bruno. He really isn’t.”

“He is,” Bruno insisted. “Unless someone a thousand times -more evil has constructed Muddy to frame him. False memories, false Iscog trace… I know of exactly two people bright enough and patient enough to pull off that trick, and one of them is Marlon.”

“Who is the other?”

Bruno’s face grew warm. “Oh, all right then; possibly several others could do it. If we’re to live forever, no doubt any number of surprises and infamies will assail us. People can accomplish anything, given sufficient time. This isn’t the last sick fantasy we’ll see played out in our lifetimes.”

“No,” she mused, “I suppose it isn’t. But Marlon ?”

“Occam’s Razor would convict him; his guilt is the simplest explanation. And Deliah, I’m sorry to inform you that he keeps copies of you in his dungeons as well. I have Muddy’s word on it, at any rate.”

That clearly knocked her back. Perhaps he could have broached the matter more delicately. Ah, that worlds-renowned de Towaji charm.

The two of them were silent a long time.

Finally, Deliah said, “I had a personal relationship with Marlon at one time. He was upset about the way it broke off, and I suppose in some sense I don’t blame him. But I couldn’t help it; I really couldn’t. Love is the bane of the immortal, I’ve always said. Are we cheating God by living forever? If so, he gets us back with nagging doubts, and silly dreams of silly perfection. It must have been easier in the days when marriage meant a decade or two of hard work and squalor, then a simple, horrible death. All choices would be permanent in that time, and thus simple. You want to grow old and die alone? No? Then grab a hand and hold it tight! Today, the question is a lot harder to answer, because we know someplace there’s a perfect mate, or at least an optimal one, whom we have only to find and meet. Perfect love! So the thought of spending eternity with anything less becomes appalling. But are we supposed to meet everyone? Shake every hand, kiss every mouth, listen to every bit of passionate nonsense until we’re completely, viscerally swre? What a stupid, lonely quest that is.”