"Right."
Where this was heading was worse than Victor’s dream theory. "S-so what has been done to us?" said Dixie Mae.
Michael’s eyes were wide, though he managed a tone of dry understatement: "Pardon a backward Han language specialist. You’re thinking we’re just personality uploads? I thought that was science fiction."
Both Ellens laughed. One said, "Oh, it is science fiction, and not just the latest Kywrack episode. The genre goes back almost a century."
The other: "There’s Sturgeon’s ‘Microcosmic God’."
The first: "That would be rich; Gerry beware then! But there’s also Pohl’s ‘Tunnel Under the World’."
"Cripes. We’re toast if that’s the scenario."
"Okay, but how about Varley’s ‘Overdrawn at the Memory Bank’?"
"How about Wilson’s Darwinia?"
"Or Moravec’s ‘Pigs in Cyberspace’?"
"Or Galouye’s Simulacron-3?"
"Or Vinge’s deathcubes?"
Now that the ‘twins’ were not in perfect synch, their words were a building, rapid-fire chorus, climaxing with:
"Brin’s ‘Stones of Significance’!"
"Or Kiln People!"
"No, it couldn’t be that." Abruptly they stopped, and nodded at each other. A little bit grimly, Dixie Mae thought. In all, the conversation was just as inscrutable as their earlier selfinterrupted spasms.
Fortunately, Victor was there to rescue pedestrian minds. "It doesn’t matter. The fact is, uploading is only sci-fi. It’s worse that faster-than-light travel. There’s not even a theoretical basis for uploads."
Each Ellen raised her left hand and made a faffling gesture. "Not exactly, Victor."
The token holder continued, "I’d say there is a theoretical basis for saying that uploads are theoretically possible." They gave a lopsided smile. "And guess who is responsible for that? Gerry Reich. Back in 2005, way before he was famous as a multi-threat genius, he had a couple of papers about upload mechanisms. The theory was borderline kookiness and even the simplest demo would take far more processing power than any supercomputer of the time."
"Just for a one-personality upload."
"So Gerry and his Reich Method were something of a laughingstock."
"After that, Gerry dropped the idea–just what you’d expect, considering the showman he is. But now he’s suddenly world-famous, successful in half a dozen different fields. I think something happened. Somebody solved his hardware problem for him."
Dixie Mae stared at her email. "Rob Lusk," she said, quietly.
"Yup," said grader Ellen. She explained about the mail.
Michael was unconvinced. "I don’t know, E-Ellen. Granted, we have an extraordinary miracle here–" gesturing at both of them, "–but speculating about cause seems to me a bit like a sparrow understanding the 405 Freeway."
"No," said Dixie Mae, and they all looked back her way. She felt so frightened and so angry–but of the two, angry was better: "Somebody has set us up! It started in those superclean restrooms in Olson Hall–"
"Olson Hall," said Michael. "You were there too? The lavs smelled like a hospital! I remember thinking that just as I went in, but–hey, the next thing I remember is being on the bus, coming up here."
Like a hospital. Dixie Mae felt rising panic. "M-maybe we’re all that’s left." She looked at the twins. "This uploading thing, does it kill the originals?"
It was kind of a showstopper question; for a moment everyone was silent. Then the token holder said, "I–don’t think so, but Gerry’s papers were mostly theoretical."
Dixie Mae beat down the panic; rage did have its uses. What can we know from here on the inside?
"So far we know more than thirty of us who took the Olson Hall exams and ended up here. If we were all murdered, that’d be hard to cover up. Let’s suppose we still have a life." Inspiration: "And maybe there are things we can figure! We have three of Reich’s experiments to compare. There are differences, and they tell us things." She looked at the twins. "You’ve already figured this out, haven’t you? The Ellen we met first is grading papers–just a one-day job, she’s told. But I’ll bet that every night, when they think they’re going home–Lusk or Reich or whoever is doing this just turns them off, and cycles them back to do some other ‘one-day’ job."
"Same with our customer support," said Victor, a grudging agreement.
"Almost. We had six days of product familiarization, and then our first day on the job. We were all so enthusiastic. You’re right, Ellen, on our first day we are great!" Poor Ulysse, poor me; we thought we were going somewhere with our lives. "I’ll bet we disappear tonight, too."
Grader Ellen was nodding. "Customer-support-in-a-box, restarted and restarted, so it’s always fresh."
"But there are still problems," said the other one. "Eventually, the lag in dates would tip you off."
"Maybe, or maybe the mail headers are automatically forged."
"But internal context could contradict–"
"Or maybe Gerry has solved the cognitive haze problem–" The two were off into their semi-private language.
Michael interrupted them. "Not everybody is recycled. The point of our net-tracking project is that we spend the entire summer studying just one hour of network traffic."
The twins smiled. "So you think," said the token holder. "Yes, in this building we’re not rebooted after every imaginary day. Instead, they run us the whole ‘summer’–minutes of computer time instead of seconds?–to analyze one hour of network traffic. And then they run us again, on a different hour. And so on and on."
Michael said, "I can’t imagine technology that powerful."
The token holder said, "Neither can I really, but–"
Victor interrupted with, "Maybe this is the Darwinia scenario. You know: we’re just the toys of some superadvanced intelligence."
"No!" said Dixie Mae. "Not superadvanced. Customer support and net surveillance are valuable things in our own real world. Whoever’s doing this is just getting slave labor, run really, really fast."
Grader Ellen glowered. "And grading his exams for him! That’s the sort of thing that shows me it’s really Gerry behind this. He’s making chumps of all of us, and rerunning us before we catch on or get seriously bored."
NSA Ellen had the same expression, but a different complaint: "We have been seriously bored here."
Michael nodded. "Those from the government side are a patient lot; we’ve kept the graduate students in line. We can last three months. But it does ... rankle ... to learn that the reward for our patience is that we get to do it all over again. Damn. I’m sorry, Ellen."
"But now we know!" said Dixie Mae.
"And what good does it do you?" Victor laughed. "So you guessed this time. But at the end of the microsecond day, poof, it’s reboot time and everything you’ve learned is gone."
"Not this time." Dixie Mae looked away from him, down at her email. The cheap paper was crumpled and stained. A digital fake, but so are we. "I don’t think we’re the only people who’ve figured things out." She slid the printout across the table, toward grader Ellen. "You thought it meant Rob Lusk was in this building."
"Yeah, I did."
"Who’s Rob Lusk?" said Michael.
"A weirdo," NSA Ellen said absently. "Gerry’s best grad student." Both Ellens were staring at the email.
"The 0999 reference led Dixie Mae to my grading team. Then I pointed out the source address."
"lusting925@freemail.sg?"
"Yes. And that got us here."
"But there’s no Rob Lusk here," said NSA Ellen. "Huh! I like these fake mail headers."
"Yeah. They’re longer than the whole message body!"
Michael had stood to look over the Ellens’ shoulders. Now he reached between them to tap the message. "See there, in the middle of the second header? That looks like Pinyin with the tone marks written in-line."
"So what does it say?"
"Well, if it’s Mandarin, it would be the number ‘nine hundred and seventeen’."
Victor was leaning forward on his elbows. "That has to be coincidence. How could Lusting know just who we’d encounter?"
"Anybody know of a Building 0917?" said Dixie Mae.