"Hmm." I can tell when I'm being stroked for a hard sell. "You'll have to tell me more about it."
"Certainly. One moment?" I can tell Piccolo-47 is going into quicktime and messaging someone else: its focus of attention wandersI can see the sensor peripherals unfocusingand the manipulator root stops shimmering. "I have taken the liberty of transmitting your public case profile to the coordination office, Robin. The experiment I allude to is a cross-disciplinary one being conducted by the departments of archaeology, history, psychology, and social engineering within the Scholastium. Professor Yourdon is its coordinator-general. If you volunteer to participate, a copy of your next backupor your original, should you choose total immersionwill be instantiated as a separate entity within an experimental community, where it will live alongside roughly a hundred other volunteers for thirty to a hundred megaseconds." Roughly one to three old-style years. "The community is designed as an experiment to probe certain psychological constraints associated with life prior to the censorship wars. An attempt to reconstruct a culture that we have lost track of, in other words."
"An experimental society?"
"Yes. We have limited data about many periods in our history. Dark ages have become all too frequent since the dawn of the age of emotional machines. Sometimes they are unintentionalthe worst dark age, at the dawn of the emotional age, was caused by the failure to understand informational economics and the consequent adoption of incompatible data representation formats. Sometimes they're deliberatethe censorship wars, for example. But the cumulative result is that there are large periods of history from which very little information survives that has not been skewed by observational bias. Propaganda, entertainment, and self-image conspire to rob us of accurate depictions, and old age and the need for periodic memory excision rob us of our subjective experiences. So Professor Yourdon's experiment is intended to probe emergent social relationships in an early emotional-age culture that is largely lost to us today."
"I think I see." I shuffle against the stonework and lean back against the fountain. Piccolo-47's voice oozes with reassurance. I'm pretty sure it's emitting a haze of feel-good pheromones, but if my suspicions are correct it won't have thought of the simple somatic discomforts I can inflict on myself to help me stay alert. The pitter-patter of icy droplets on my neck is a steady irritant. "So I'd, what, go live in this community for ten megs? And then what? What would I do?"
"I can't tell you in any great detail," Piccolo-47 admits, its tones conciliatory and calm. "That would undermine the integrity of the experiment. Its goals and functions have to remain uncertain to the subjects if it is to retain any empirical validity, because it is meant to be a living societya real one. What I can tell you is that you will be free to leave as soon as the experiment reaches an end state that satisfies the acceptance criteria of the gatekeeper, or if the ethics committee supervising it approves an early release. Within it, there will be certain restrictions on your freedom of movement, freedom of access to information and medical procedures, and restrictions on the artifacts and services available to you that postdate the period being probed. From time to time the gatekeeper will broadcast certain information to the participants, to guide your understanding of the society. There is a release tobe notarized before you can join. But we assure you that all your rights and dignities will be preserved intact."
"What's in it for me?" I ask bluntly.
"You will be paid handsomely for your participation." Piccolo-47 sounds almost bashful. "And there is an extra bonus scheme for subjects who contribute actively to the success of the project."
"Uh-huh." I grin at my therapist. "That's not what I meant." If he thinks I need credit, he's sadly mistaken. I don't know who I was working for beforewhether it really was the Linebarger Cats or some other, more obscure (and even more terrifying) Powerbut one thing is certain, they didn't leave me destitute when they ordered me to undergo memory excision.
"There is also the therapeutic aspect," says Piccolo-47. "You appear to harbor goal-dysphoria issues. These relate to the almost complete erasure of your delta block reward/motivation centers, along with the associated memories of your former vocation; bluntly, you feel directionless and idle. Within the simulation community, you will be provided with an occupation and expected to work, and introduced to a community of peers who are all in the same situation as you. Comradeship and a renewed sense of purpose are likely side effects of this experiment. Meanwhile you will have time to cultivate your personal interests and select a direction that fits your new identity, without pressure from former associates or acquaintances. And I repeat, you will be paid handsomely for your participation." Piccolo-47 pauses for a moment. "You have already met one of your fellow participants," he adds.
A hit.
"I'll think about it," I say noncommittally. "Send me the details and I'll think about it. But I'm not going to say yes or no on the spot." I grin wider, baring my teeth. "I don't like being pressured."
"I understand." Piccolo-47 rises slightly and moves backward a meter or so. "Please excuse me. I am very enthusiastic for the experiment to proceed successfully."
"Sure." I wave it off. "Now if you'll excuse me, I really do need some privacy. I still sleep, you know."
"I will see you in approximately one diurn," says Piccolo-47, rising farther and rotating toward a hole that is irising open in the ceiling. "Goodbye." Then it's gone, leaving only a faint smell of lavender behind, and me to the strikingly vivid memory of the taste and feel of Kay's tongue exploring my lips.
2. Experiment
WELCOME to the Invisible Republic.
The Invisible Republic is one of the legacy polities that emerged from the splinters of the Republic of Is, in the wake of the series of censorship wars that raged five to ten gigaseconds ago. During the wars, the internetwork of longjump T-gates that wove the subnets of the hyperpower together was shattered, leaving behind sparsely connected nets, their borders filtered through firewalled assembler gates guarded by ferocious mercenaries. Incomers were subjected to forced disassembly and scanned for subversive attributes before being rebuilt and allowed across the frontiers. Battles raged across the airless cryogenic wastes that housed the longjump nodes carrying traffic between warring polities, while the redactive worms released by the Censor factions lurked in the firmware of every A-gate they could contaminate, their viral payload mercilessly deleting all knowledge of the underlying cause of the conflict from fleeing refugees as they passed through the gates.
Like almost all human polities since the Acceleration, the Republic of Is relied heavily on A-gates for manufacturing, routing, switching, filtering, and the other essentials of any network civilization. The ability of nanoassembler arrays to deconstruct and replicate artifacts and organisms from raw atomic feedstock made them virtually indispensablenot merely for manufacturing and medical purposes, but for virtual transport (it's easier to simultaneously cram a hundred upload templates through a T-gate than a hundred physical bodies) and molecular firewalling. Even when war exposed them to subversion by the worms of censorship, nobody wanted to do without the A-gatesto grow old and decrepit, or succumb to injury, seemed worse than the risk of memory corruption. The paranoid few who refused to pass through the verminous gates dropped away, dying of old age or cumulative accidental damage; meanwhile, those of us who still used them can no longer be certain of whatever it was that the worm payloads were designed to hide in the first place. Or even who the Censors were.