The Ensemble, Huang explained, is an international alliance of research groups. BDI is a leading member of this alliance. The work they’re doing is ground-breaking—and I’m going to play a small part in ensuring that it continues. I’m still suffering the numbness of mild shock, but as that fades, I begin to realize how excited I am at the prospect. The Ensemble is important to me, and the fact that this is due to nanomachines having rewired part of my brain, rather than more traditional reasons, doesn’t make it any less true.
Sure, fucking with people’s brains against their will is abhorrent—generally speaking—but for the sake of something as vital as the Ensemble’s security, it was entirely justified. And sure, I may have seen BDI as my adversaries, twenty-four hours ago—but that wasn’t exactly the cornerstone of my identity. I’m the same person I’ve always been—with a new career, and new allegiances, that’s all.
I stop off for a meal in a small, crowded food hall, for the sake of the distraction as much as anything else. I find that the longer I refrain from pointlessly dissecting my situation, the better I feel about it. I’m going to work for the Ensemble! What more could I want? And perhaps this is conditioning, after all—the mod rewarding me for taking the right attitude—but I don’t think so. Surely it’s the most natural human response, to grow weary of analysing the reasons for happiness.
It’s just after midnight when I get back to the flat. Karen says, ‘Tell me: are you in love? Or have you got religion?’ I send her away.
Lying in the dark, though, I can’t help trying to think it all through one more time:
Loyalty mods are obscene—but the Ensemble is doing important work, they had to protect themselves, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
Why do I think that their work is important, when I don’t even know what it is? Because of the loyalty mod, of course.
Knowing that my feelings have been physically imposed makes them no less powerful. Part of me finds this paradoxical, part of me finds it obvious. I can contemplate this contradiction until it drives me mad—or begins to seem utterly mundane—but there’s nothing I can do to change it.
And I don’t believe I’ll go mad. I’ve lived with P3. I’ve lived with Karen. I’ve never had a mod forced on me, but the principle is the same. Deep down, I must have swallowed the fact, long ago, that my emotions, my desires, my values, are the most anatomical of things. On that level, there are no paradoxes, no contradictions, no problems at all. The meat in my skull has been rearranged; that explains everything.
And in the world of desires and values? I want to serve the Ensemble, more than I’ve ever wanted anything before. All I have to do is find a way to reconcile this with my sense of who I am.
Huang returns in the morning, to help me get organized. With BDI as my sponsors, immigration is a mere formality. I arrange for removalists to pack and ship the contents of my flat in Perth. It takes only seconds to alter the nationality of my bank accounts, and the primary physical address of my communications number.
My client is due to call me on the twelfth, for a fortnightly status report. I load The Night Switchboard with a message—to be triggered by the password which was allocated at our first contact (and which the mod knows, but I don’t)—stating that I’ve dropped the case for reasons of ill health, and requesting an account number to which I can refund my fee.
As I tidy up each loose end from my old life, it grows clear how much more sense it makes to have recruited me, rather than killing me. This way, there is no corpse to be disposed of, no data trail to be erased, no police investigation to be led astray. The only deception required consists of a few white lies—and what more could anyone hope for in the perfect crime than the victim’s sincere collaboration?
In the afternoon, Huang shows me around BDI.
There are about a hundred employees, mostly scientists and technicians, but only a small part of the organization’s structure is explained to me. Chen Ya-ping (the woman who interrogated me) is in charge of security, but she also has administrative and scientific duties; her official title is Support Services Manager. She questions me again—with no gun at my head, this time—and seems disappointed that my story is virtually unchanged. All I can confess to having lied about is my speculation on the reasons behind the kidnapping—and when I describe the two theories I previously kept to myself, she gives no indication of how close I might be to the truth. I swallow my disappointment; the Ensemble is everything to me, and I want to know everything about them—but I understand that I’m going to have to earn their trust, loyalty mod notwithstanding.
Later, she shows me some glossy promotional material for state-of-the-art upgrades which will supposedly chameleon-proof their security system. I break the news, as tactfully as I can, that the latest model chameleons, due for release at the end of the month, will render any such expensive improvements obsolete. And although I can’t offer to put her directly on the chameleon makers’ advertising list—they vet applicants very thoroughly—I promise to pass on all further information as it reaches me.
Security itself is just four people, all of whom I’ve met before. Besides Huang Qing, there’s Lee Soh Lung (who drugged me in the basement), and Yang Wenli and Liu Hua (who guarded me in my flat). Lee, the most senior, is responsible for the details of day-to-day operations; she formally explains the job to me. There are always two guards on duty, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; with five of us now, each shift is to be nine hours and thirty-six minutes. I’m rostered from 19:12 to 04:48, starting tonight.
In the early evening, I call my parents, who are travelling in Europe; I catch them in Potsdam. They seem relieved that I’ve finally taken up stable employment. As for moving north, well, why not? ‘NHK is full of opportunities, isn’t it?’ says my mother, vaguely. Germany, they tell me, is becoming unpleasant—the Saxony Independence Front is blowing up trains again.
Huang is on duty with me until midnight. I spend the shift primed; my four colleagues all have Sentinel, which is basically a commercial equivalent of P3. (I pry no further; curious as I am, I assume it would be indelicate to ask if anyone else has loyalty mods.) Apart from random patrols through the building and grounds—stepped up, says Huang, since my incursion—there’s little for us to do; even the images from the surveillance cameras are monitored by software. Our presence is far from redundant—no computer alone could have kept me from fleeing the building with Laura that night—but being potentially indispensable does nothing to keep you busy. We pass the time when we’re not patrolling by playing cards or chess; there’s no need for this, since our mods preclude boredom, but Huang—fifteen years younger than me—has some old-fashioned ideas. ‘You’re more alert if you’re doing something. Besides, spending half your life in a stake-out trance is like living half as long.’
Other staff work at night, but we don’t have much contact with them. I was right about one thing: Laura’s room is monitored separately, and members of the team studying her are on duty round the clock. They have half a floor to themselves, packed with computing equipment. A few people greet Huang as we walk through, but most ignore us. I glance at the workstation screens; some show neural maps, some are densely covered with formulae; one shows a schematic of the basement room—briefly, before the user flicks to another task. I start wondering how things would have turned out, if Culex had caught that image—but there’s no point thinking about it.