I shake my head. ‘So what? I never assumed that Wei was in charge. The Ensemble is an alliance of different factions—why should that worry me? If they can live with each other’s differences, why can’t I?’
‘Because your loyalty is to the Ensemble—not to whichever faction happens to have manoeuvred itself into power. What if the alliance changes? What if it fragments, and re-forms with new goals, new priorities? Or, fragments and doesn’t re-form? To whom would you owe your loyalty then? Which splinter group would you fight for, if it came to that?’
I start to say something dismissive, but I catch myself. The Ensemble is the most important thing in my life; I can’t just shrug off questions like this, as if they weren’t my concern. But —
I say, ‘What can it actually mean, to be loyal to the Ensemble “as a whole”—if not to be loyal to the faction in power? It’s a good enough principle for governments—’ Lui snorts with derision. I say, Okay, I’m not suggesting that we should sink to the same level of cynicism. But what exactly are you suggesting? You still haven’t stated the alternative.’
He nods. ‘You’re right, I haven’t. First, I wanted you to concede that an alternative was necessary.’
I’m not sure that I’ve conceded any such thing, but I let it pass.
He says, ‘There’s only one group of people qualified to decide which of the factions—if any—truly represents the Ensemble. It’s a question that has to be judged with the utmost care—and it can’t possibly be a contingent matter of who is or isn’t in control at any given moment. Surely you can see that?’
I nod, reluctantly. ‘But… what “group of people”?’
‘Those of us with loyalty mods, of course.’
I laugh. ‘You and me? You’re joking.’
‘Not us alone. There are others.’
‘But—’
‘Who else can we trust? The loyalty mod is the only guarantee; anyone without it—wherever they are in the organization, even in the highest echelons—is at risk of confusing the true purpose of the Ensemble with their own private interests. For us, that’s impossible. Literally, physically impossible. The task of discerning the interests of the Ensemble must fall to us.’
I stare at him. ‘That’s—’
What? Mutiny? Heresy? How can it be? If Lui does have the loyalty mod—and I can’t believe that he’s faked all this—then he’s physically incapable of either. Whatever he does is, by definition, an act of loyalty to the Ensemble, because it hits me with a dizzying rush of clarity…
— the Ensemble is, by definition, precisely that to which the mod makes us loyal.
That sounds circular, incestuous, verging on a kind of solipsistic inanity… and so it should. After all, the loyalty mod is nothing but an arrangement of neurons in our skulls; it refers only to itself. If the Ensemble is the most important thing in my life, then the most important thing in my life, whatever that is, must be the Ensemble. I can’t be ‘mistaken’, I can’t ‘get it wrong’.
This doesn’t free me from the mod — I know that I’m incapable of redefining ‘the Ensemble’ at will. And yet, there is something powerfully, undeniably liberating about the insight. It’s as if I’ve been bound hand and foot in chains that were wrapped around some huge, cumbersome object—and I’ve just succeeded in slipping the chains, not from my wrists and ankles, but at least from the unwieldy anchor.
Lui seems to have read my mind, or at least my expression, brother in insanity that he is. He nods soberly, and I realize that I’m beaming at him like an idiot, but I just can’t stop.
‘Infallibility,’ he says, ‘is our greatest consolation.’
By the time Lui departs, my head is spinning—and like it or not, I’m part of the conspiracy.
The brain-damaged arbiters of the nature of ‘the true Ensemble’ call themselves the Canon. All have the loyalty mod—but all have succeeded in convincing themselves that ‘the true Ensemble’ to which they owe allegiance is not the organization which goes under that name.
What, then, is ‘the true Ensemble’?
Every member of the Canon has a different answer.
The one thing they agree on is what it isn’t: the research alliance which calls itself the Ensemble is a counterfeit, a sham.
On my own, without Lui to keep propping up this bizarre way of thinking, I find myself wondering if I really have mastered the mental contortions required to sustain it. The Ensemble is not the true Ensemble—what kind of ridiculous, hair-splitting sophistry is that?
And yet… if I can somehow believe it, that’s enough to make it true. Common sense, everyday logic, simply don’t come into it: I have no rational reason to be loyal to the Ensemble—all I have is the anatomical fact of the loyalty mod. The true Ensemble that the mod refers to is whatever I’m physically capable of believing it to be —
That’s ludicrous, it’s nonsensical…
I pace the flat, trying to stay calm, hunting for a parallel, a metaphor—a model to guide me, however crudely, into some half-sane way of imagining what’s going on in my head. The Ensemble is not the true Ensemble. What is the true Ensemble, then? Whatever I honestly believe it to be.
This is insane. If every member of the Canon is free to interpret their allegiance precisely as they choose, as if it were a matter of private conscience, without regard to the existing authority… that’s anarchy.
And then it finally hits me.
I understand how I can make sense of this, how I can explain it to myself. I stop in mid-step and say out loud, ‘Welcome to the Reformation.’
My induction into the ranks of the Canon is a gradual process; Lui arranges meetings in various locations around the city, with one or two members at a time—some from BDI, some from ASR, some from organizations unnamed. At first, I can’t see what justification there could be for taking such risks; we discuss almost nothing that Lui hasn’t already disclosed to me, and there’d certainly be far safer ways to introduce me to the Canon. Eventually, though, I realize that this personal contact is essential to the cementing of my new loyalties; only by talking face to face with these people can they convince me—and I them—that we really do share the mod.
Of course, the very fact that the members of the Canon should wish to meet, to cooperate, to confer at all, is paradoxical. Consensus should be anathema to us: the true Ensemble is defined within our individual skulls; no one else’s opinion could possibly matter. Having freed ourselves from the lies of the sham Ensemble, why shouldn’t we each follow our own unique, separately perfect, vision?
Because alone, divided, we’d have no hope whatsoever of reforming the sham Ensemble, of rebuilding it as it should be. United, the prospect is daunting—but not quite unimaginable.
My work goes on as if nothing had changed. The temptation to confide in Po-kwai, to explain everything that I’m going through and everything that’s been concealed from her, is almost overpowering at times—but not when I’m actually in her presence, with P3 granting me limitless self-control. Chen’s instructions may no longer compel me to keep silent about Laura and BDI—but the need to protect the Canon now takes priority, and I find myself even more guarded with her than before. She seems puzzled by this at first, but then shrugs it off and withdraws into her reading. Our evening discussions of quantum metaphysics and invisible Bubble Makers come to an end. Primed, this makes no difference to me—but at home each morning, looking back on the featureless hours I’ve spent in the stake-out trance, I feel a strange, hollow ache in my chest, and it keeps me from choosing sleep.