Do you still-personally-love Tory Shostokovich?
At first there was a slight pause, then: The kind of love you mean is characteristic of lower-order programming. Not of program-free intelligence.
A moment later Tory canceled all programming, and she floated to the surface, leaving God behind. But even before then she was acutely aware that she had not received a straight answer.
"Elin, we've got to talk."
She was patched into the outside monitors, staring across Mare Imbrium. It was a straight visual program; she could feel the wetwire leads dangling down her neck, the warm, humid air of Magritte against her skin. "Nothing to talk about," she said.
"Dammit, yes there is! I'm not about to lose you again because of a misunderstanding, a-a matter of semantics."
The thing about Outside was its airless clarity. Rocks and shadows were so preternaturally sharp. From a sensor or the crater's seaward slope, she stared off into Mare Imbrium; it was monotonous but in a comforting sort of way. A little like when she had made a Buddha. There was no meaning out there, nothing to impose itself between her and the surface.
"I don't know how you found out about Coral," Tory said, "and I guess it doesn't matter. I always figured you'd find out sooner or later. That's not important. What matters is that I love you-"
"Oh, hush up!"
"-and that you love me. You can't pretend you don't."
Elin felt her nails dig into her palms. "Sure I can," she said. She hopscotched down the crater to the surface. There the mass driver stood, a thin monorail stretching kilometers into the Imbrium, its gentle slope all but imperceptible.
"You're identifying with the woman who used to be Elin Donnelly. There's nothing wrong with that; speaking as a wetsurgeon, it's a healthy sign. But it's something you've got to grow out of.''
"Listen, Shostokovich, tinkering with my emotions doesn't change who I am. I'm not your dead lady friend, and I'm not about to take her place. So why don't you just go away and stop jerking me around, huh?"
Tiny repair robots prowled the mass driver's length, stopping occasionally for a spotweld. Blue sparks sputtered soundlessly over the surface.
"You're not the old Elin Donnelly either, and I think you know it. Bodies are transient, memories are nothing. Your spontaneity and grace, your quiet strength, your impatience- the small lacks and presences of you I've known and loved for years-are what make you yourself. The name doesn't matter, nor the past. You are who you are, and I love you for it."
"Yeah, well, what I am does not love you, buster."
One of the repairbots slowly fell off the driver. It hit, bounced, struggled to regain its treads, then scooted back toward its work.
Tory's voice was almost regretful. "You do, though. You can't hide that from me. I know you as your lover and as your wetsurgeon. You've let me become a part of you, and no matter how angry you might temporarily be, you'll come back to me."
Elin could feel her body trembling with rage. "Yeah, well if that's true, then why tell me! Hah? Why not just go back to your hut and wait for me to come crawling?"
"Because I want you to quit your job." , "Say what?"
"I don't want you to become God. It was a mistake the last time, and I'm afraid it won't be any better with the new programs. If you go up into God and can't get down this time, you'll do it the next time. And the next. I'll spend my life here waiting for you, re-creating you, losing you. Can't you see it-year after year, replaying the same tired old tape?" Tory's voice fell to a whisper. "I don't think I could take it even once more."
"If you know me as well as you say, then I guess you know my answer," Elin said coldly.
She waited until Tory's footsteps moved away, fading, defeat echoing after. Only then did Elin realize that her sensor had been scanning the same empty bit of Magritte's slope for the last five minutes.
It was time for the final Trojan horse. "Today we make a god," Tory said. "This is a total conscious integration of the mind in an optimal efficiency pattern. Close your eyes and count to three."
One. The hell of it was that Tory was right. She still loved him. He was the one man she wanted and was empty without.
Two. Worse, she didn't know how long she could go on without coming back to him-and, good God, would that be humiliating!
She was either cursed or blessed; cursed perhaps for the agonies and humiliations she would willingly undergo for the sake of this one rather manipulative human being. Or maybe blessed, in that at least there was someone who could move her so, deserving or not. Many went through their lives without.
Three. She opened her eyes.
Nothing was any different. Magritte was as ordinary, as mundane as ever, and she felt no special reaction to it one way or another. Certainly she did not feel the presence of God.
"I don't think this is working," she tried to say. The words did not come. From the corner of her eye, she saw Tory wiping clean his facepaint, shucking off his jumpsuit. But when she tried to sit up, she found she was paralyzed.
What is this maniac doing?
Tory's face loomed over her, his eyes glassy, almost fearful. His hair was a tangled mess; her fingers itched with the impulse to run a comb through it.
"Forgive me, love." He kissed her forehead lightly, her lips ever so gently. Then he was out of her field of vision, stretching out on the grass beside the cot.
Elin stared up at the dome roof, thinking: No. She heard him strap the bone inductors to his body, one by one, and then a sharp click as he switched on a recorder. The programming began to flow into him.
A long wait-perhaps, twenty seconds viewed objectively- as the wetware was loaded. Another click as the recorder shut off. A moment of silence, and then-
Tory gasped. One arm flew up into her field of vision, swooped down out of it, and he began choking. Elin struggled against her paralysis, could not move. Something broke noisily, a piece of equipment by the sound of it, and the choking and gasping continued. He began thrashing wildly.
Tory, Tory, what's happening to you?
"It's just a grand mal seizure," Landis said. "Nothing we can't cope with, nothing we weren't prepared for." She touched Elin's shoulder reassuringly, called back to the crowd huddling about Tory, "Hey! One of you loopheads-somebody there know any programming? Get the lady out of this."
A tech scurried up, made a few simple adjustments with her machinery. The others-still gathering, Landis had been only the third on the scene-were trying to hold Tory still, to fit a bone inductor against his neck. There was a sudden gabble of comment, and Tory flopped wildly. Then a collective sigh as his muscles eased and his convulsions ceased.
"There," the tech said, and Elin scrabbled off the couch.
She pushed through the people (and a small voice in the back of her head marveled: A crowd! How strange) and knelt before Tory, cradling his head ift her arms.
He shivered, eyes wide and unblinking. "Tory, what's the matterV
His terrible eyes turned on her. "Nichevo."
"What?"
"Nothing," Landis said. "Or maybe 'it doesn't matter' is a better translation."
A wetware tech had taken control, shoving the crowd back. He reported to Landis, his mouth moving calmly under the interplay of green and red. "Looks like a flaw in the programming philosophy. We were guessing that bringing the ego along would make God such an unpleasant experience that the subject would let us deprogram, without interfering- now we know better."