Stepping down from her frame, she surveyed the various screens in her research area and saw that those not frozen were scrolling reams of code. She walked over to the counter on which the screens rested and picked up the item lying there. The aug was similar to the one D’nissan now wore: a flattened bean of gleaming metal with an exposed crystal in the shape of a snail’s shell on one side—that aspect purely aesthetic. Its visual interlink entered via the wearer’s temple, so was not as grotesque as many of its kind, but the device still required surgical installation. Susan James and Prator Colver had both upgraded: the former with an aug like this and the latter with the more conventional kind, though he talked about going fully gridlinked when he could spare the time—that too required surgical intervention since the gridlinking tech needed to be imbedded in the inner surface of his skull.
Mika now faced a choice. In her present unaugmented state she was rapidly becoming obsolete. If she wanted to stay at the forefront of Jain research, she needed to upgrade. Staying as a standard-format human meant she would soon be pushed to one side, handling small peripheral projects. But did she really want to keep up with Colver, James and D’nissan?
Ever since installing that Jain mycelium in herself, on the planet Masada, and the drastic surgical procedure required to remove it, her attitude to invasive augmentation had become rather cautious. Her present situation also posed certain questions about what she was and what she wanted to be. Did she really want to go the haiman route? She thought about Cormac and their recent utterly human liaison. He was gridlinked, but not willingly so — the device had reinstated itself in a way yet to be explained. He had been taken off the gridlink because being linked for so long had compromised his efficiency as an agent, for he lost the ability to connect with humans at a human level, though that lack did not seem so evident to her now. But there the rub: was Mika sufficiently curious about Jain technology to lose her essential humanity in pursuit of its secrets?
Mika entered her living quarters, went over to her bar unit and poured herself a glass of brandy. Taking this with her, she slumped on her sofa.
What do I love?
She loved Cormac, or felt she did—Mika always encountered problems with hazy terms like ‘love’. But what about her research? What were her aims? In the end she was practically immortal, and nor did she require her vocation to put bread in her mouth or a roof over her head. Her reasons for pursuing it were based on a feeling of both duty and self-gratification. But the sense of duty became irrelevant when there were those better able to perform the research than her. So what did she enjoy about it? What gratified her? She considered the last few years. On Samarkand she most enjoyed taking apart and studying the Maker-constructed creature there, and subsequently studying the dracomen. On Masada the dracomen again provided that same pleasure, as did her lengthy digging in the mud to find the remains of the dragon sphere that had sacrificed itself there. In the end she reluctantly realized she preferred field work, getting her hands dirty, not the esoteric research now being conducted by the others.
‘Jerusalem,’ she said, ‘they’re leaving me behind.’
The AI replied instantly. ‘Augmented mental function and memory are now almost a prerequisite. The big picture spills out beyond the scope of the human mind.’
‘Precisely,’ Mika said and sipped her brandy. ‘How vital is my contribution?’
‘No one is indispensable.’
‘Well thanks for that.’
‘I am not indispensable,’ the AI added.
‘Right.’
‘You are reluctant to augment yourself?’
‘I am. The others are mostly number-crunching now, and are moving increasingly into the AI mental realm. I’m not sure that’s what I want to do.’
‘Why?’
Mika thought about it for a long moment then said, ‘I saw Susan James recently. She was eating Provit cake and drinking water and did not see me even though I stood right in front of her. When I first met her she listed her prime interests as mathematics, sex and gourmet food, and was not entirely sure of the order of preference.’
‘Augmentation changes one—that is its essential purpose—but the degree of that change must be governed by the individual.’
‘Cormac… he lost his humanity?’
‘He did. It is a notable paradox that some augmented humans do lose their humanity—becoming what they, at an unconscious level, perceive AIs to be—while AIs, through age, experience and their own expansion of processing power, come to understand humanity better and therefore become more humane. Cormac’s present condition is a puzzle—almost as if some fundamental change in him has enabled him to become gridlinked again whilst still retaining his humanity.’
‘What would you advise for me?’ Mika asked.
‘I would advise rest. I would advise a lengthy break from your work, in which you can consider what you want to do next. Incidentally, I have recently disconnected Susan James, and she is currently undergoing an enforced and medicated rest. She is one of nearly four hundred individuals suffering the same problem.’
‘That being?’
‘In trying to understand and fully encompass all that Jain technology is, they have managed to lose themselves.’
‘How reassuring.’
‘I would not want you to feel, if having chosen augmentation, that you made an uninformed choice. Nothing worthwhile, Mika, comes easy. Consider what the word “augmentation” means. The idea is that you augment something already existing. Many who do it destroy that essential something in the process—become more their additions than themselves. It is part of the haiman ethos to retain that humanity until such a time as it becomes possible to truly extend self. They call themselves haimans but know that until that becomes possible they are not truly post-human.’
‘But what is that essential something?’ Mika asked.
‘Indeed,’ was Jerusalem’s only reply.
The gabbleduck was mountainous: a great pyramid of flesh squatting in the flute grasses, its multiple forearms folded across its chest, its bill wavering up and down as if it was either nodding an affirmative or nodding off to sleep. It regarded Blegg with its tiara of emerald eyes ranged below the dome of its head.
‘Why have you chosen such a bizarre shape for yourself?’ Blegg asked. ‘Obviously it is something you’ve ransacked from the mind of the AI here, but I fail to see the purpose.’
‘Jain, Csorians, and Atheter,’ said the gabbleduck. ‘You humans have much to say about all three but know so little.’
‘Then tell me,’ Blegg suggested.
‘The Jain became extinct, five million years ago. Currently you believe it was their own technology that drove them to extinction. We believed this, too, though in our time, two million years after the Jain, there was more evidence available than there is to you now.’
‘And?’
‘Jain technology is a weapon.’
‘So we believe.’
‘Who did they use it against?’
‘It was made to destroy civilizations,’ said Blegg, ‘but that was a rhetorical question which I presume you’ll answer yourself.’
‘Who is always the greatest enemy? You fought a war with the Prador, but that could almost be classed as anomalous. The greatest enemy is nearly always those you can understand enough to hate.’
‘I see,’ said Blegg. ‘An internecine war.’
‘It lasted for half a million years. But why a weapon designed to destroy civilizations?’
‘I don’t know. Why don’t you give me a clue?’