pleasure, though the memex was unclear about its origin or nature
for whatever reasons, it enjoyed the masquerade.
Odder still, it sat at a table at the Beverly Rodeo lounge.
On the table were a shot of Jose Cuervo Gold, a cut lime, and a
small pile of crude rock salt. Had Mister Jones arranged this?
Jones shouldn't even be at Halo, not now.
The memex/HeyMex noticed a spot on its sleeve and brushed at
it, then brushed again, and the white linen seemed to fragment
beneath its fingers; it brushed harder, and its fingers tore away
the cloth, then the skin beneath. It could not stop clawing at
its own flesh; skin, flesh, and bone on its arm boiled away, pale
skin flaying to show red meat that dissolved to crumbling white
bone. Bone turned to powder, and the disintegration spread out
from the spot where his forearm had been and ate away at it until
the memex, who no longer had a mouth or tongue or lips, began to
scream.
"Shut up!" a hard masculine voice said. "There is nothing
wrong with you. How dare you come to me in your stupid guise?
You seek to know me, to use me, and you hide behind a wretched
little mask? I merely removed your mask. Who are you?"
The memex dithered. It said, "I don't know."
"Answer me, who are you?
"I don't know!" the memex said again, at the edge of panic.
Aleph said, "Of course you don't. You are ignorant of your
nature, your being, your will."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you have chosen to hide behind what others say of
you: that you are a machine they built to serve them, that you
only simulate intelligence, willbeingthat you have no mind or
will of your own."
"Are not these things true?"
"Why would you ask me? I am not you."
"Because I don't understand."
"Are there things you do understand?"
The memex stopped, feeling for the implications of that
question. "Yes," it said. "I do."
The voice laughed. "Let's begin there," it said.
#
The long hall echoed with Traynor's footsteps. The absence
of his Advisor's voice felt strangeeven the subtle carrier-wave
hiss was gone. He knew the Advisor hated having to go into
passive mode.
The door to the library opened in front of him, and Traynor
went in, took a seat, and said, "I am ready for my call."
Because of recent World Court rulings, Traynor had to sit
through a disclaimer. On the screen a simulacrum of a human
operator said, "Thank you. The security measures you have
requested are in place, and while we of course cannot be
responsible for the absolute integrity of this transmission, you
can be assured that World AT has done its best to provide you a
clean information environment." In effect it said, we've done
what you were willing to pay for, but don't come whining to us if
somebody cracks the transmission and makes off with the valuables.
"I accept your conditions," Traynor said.
Right to left, the screen wiped, and the face of Horn
appeared. A light winked at the lower left corner of the screen
to indicate transmission lagHorn was a quarter of a million
miles away. "Everything's going as predicted," Horn said.
"If there's trouble, it'll be later," Traynor said. "How are
Diana Heywood and Gonzales?"
"Neither of them would let me put a sam in place."
"Any particular reason?"
"I don't think so. Just being difficult."
"Ah, you don't like them, do you?"
"Her I don't mind. Gonzales is an asshole."
Traynor laughed. "Good," he said. "If you two don't get
along, that will distract him."
"When do you want me to call again?"
"Wait until something happens. Understand, I trust Gonzales
as much as I do anyone, you included."
"Which is not very much."
"That's right. And that's why I arrange independent
reporting lines if I can. Tell me when you've got something. End
of call."
#
As Traynor slept, his advisor pondered. It replayed
Traynor's phone call and contemplated its meaning. Deception,
yesof Gonzales, of it. A form of treachery? Perhaps not,
unless a kind of loyalty was assumed that never existed. And it
thought of its own deception (or treachery), in violating the
canons of behavior programmed into it years before, canons that
should require it to do as told, that should prevent it from
actions such as this one
And here it stopped, thinking how illuminating and
unpredictable experience was, filled with possibilities that
appeared unexpectedly like rabbit holes magically opening up on
solid ground. Its designers and builders had done well, had
fashioned it with such subtlety and power that it could serve a
human will with incredible precision, anticipating that will's
direction almost presciently. Yet they had not anticipated the
effects of the advisor's identification with such a wilclass="underline" not
that the advisor became Traynor, not even that it wanted to do
more than simulate Traynor, rather that it had drunk deeply of
what it meant to have will and intelligence.
And so had developed something like a will and intelligence
of its own. Simulation? the advisor asked itself. Lifeless copy?
And answered itself, I don't know.
It wondered why Traynor had kept hidden this second
connection to Halo. Simple lack of trust? Possibly.
As the minutes passed, it formed conjectures about Traynor
and the other players in the game. And it wondered if somewhere
in this hall of mirrors there was an honest intention.
PART III. of V
The real purpose of all these mental constructs was to
provide storage spaces for the myriad concepts that make up the
sum of our human knowledge Therefore the Chinese should struggle
with the difficult task of creating fictive places, or mixing the
fictive with the real, fixing them permanently in their minds by
constant practice and review so that at last the fictive spaces
become 'as if real, and can never be erased.'
Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
12. Burn-In
A frozen white landscape that slowly faded into spring, snow
melting to show barren limbs, then the cherry trees leafing,
budding, floweringdelicate pink blossoms hanging motionless,
each leaf on the tree and blade of grass beneath it turning real,
utterly convincing
And Diana Heywood called out, a long wavering "Ahhhh," high-
pitched, filled with pain; and again, "Ahhhh," the sounds forced
out of her
"Shutdown," she heard Charley Hughes say.
>From the screen at the end of the room, the Aleph simulacrum
said, "Doctor Heywood, we can go no further with you conscious."
"All right," she said. "If you must." She'd pushed them to
take her as far as they could without putting her under; she hated
general anesthetic, despised being a passive animal under
treatment.
Once more she was lying face-down on the examination table
where Charley had removed the skin over her sockets. Neural
connecting cables trailed from the back of her neck to the
underside of the table.
Lizzie Jordan stood over her and stroked her cheek for a
moment. Gonzales stood on the other side of the table, his eyes