As the months went on, the ziggurat we built loomed over our rustic valley like an oversized electricity pylon. We called it ‘the installation’, and with all our enhanced intelligence we never suspected it might be exactly that.
The great work was done. I stood on the bank and watched a couple of digging-machines break through the crumbling wall of soil that separated the merely damp bottom of the Stone Canal from the city’s already partially flooded canal system. For a moment they were swamped by the surge of water, then, dripping, they hauled themselves out. A ragged cheer went up from the opposite bank, where a small crowd had gathered to watch. I felt a radio ripple of robotic satisfaction from the other construction-machines around me. Then, indifferent again, already signalling their availability for another contract, they stalked or trundled away.
Reid was among the human crowd. He made a short speech, of which I didn’t bother to catch more than snatches. The crowd, no doubt inspired by his proclamation of the historic importance, etc., dispersed. We stared at each other for a moment, then I waded across to meet him.
‘I knew you’d be the one still here when the others left,’ I said. I waved a limb. ‘Otherwise, it’s a bit hard to tell you apart.’
Reid rocked back on his heels and laughed.
‘Nice one, Wilde,’ he said. ‘Reckon it’s about time you rejoined the human race?’
‘Or in my case, joined it,’ Meg said. The voice from over my shoulder spoke from the machine’s grille. Reid’s face betrayed only the smallest of double-takes as he smiled and nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of growing clones for both of you.’
‘Where did mine come from?’ Meg asked.
‘We’ve got millions of human cells,’ Reid said. ‘Some of them are from people who are also among the dead, but many aren’t. Storing tissue-types was very common even before the Singularity – people used them for regeneration and rejuvenation, after all. So there are plenty of spare genotypes to choose from. Yours, Meg, was some obscure video actress. I doubt if she was among those who had their brains scanned, so…’
‘It should avoid any future embarrassment,’ Meg said. ‘Imagine turning up at a party to find another woman wearing the same body. Wouldn’t you just die?’
‘Somebody would,’ I said.
We walked along the canal-bank into the growing city. Hitherto, I’d only seen it virtually. Still sparsely populated, it resembled the abandoned habitation of an alien race, now being colonised by venturesome humans.
And others. The first hominid I saw – a big-brained chimp sauntering by, talking rapidly to what looked like a couple of human teenagers – caught me by surprise.
‘Oh, that,’ Reid said casually. ‘Early experiments. The old US/UN scientists were pretty sick specimens. Don’t blame me, man. I did the poor bastards a favour by drafting them into the workforce. The scientists were all for – now what was the charming expression? – sacrificing them.’
We arrived at a building like a warehouse, which although recently built already had a sad look of decrepitude. Reid palmed the door and we walked into a chilly hall about a hundred metres long by twenty wide, filled with row upon row of pods. Each pod was three metres long, had a transparent upper half, and a cluster of electronics at one end. All except two were empty, and it was to these two that Reid led me.
I, and Meg behind my sight, looked down on our apparently sleeping forms, floating in clear fluid. Meg’s body looked like she had always looked to me. Mine was a reminder that the body-image I’d retained from the time of my death was that of a rejuvenated, rather than a young, man. Had I ever been so…innocent? It seemed almost a violation to send my hacked, copied, experience-accreted mind through the wires that mingled with his floating hair.
‘Where are the others?’ I asked.
‘You two are the last,’ Reid said. ‘We’ve got everybody else out.’ He fiddled with connecting-cables, turned to me with a question in his eyes.
‘You first,’ Meg said.
I indicated the tank in which my clone lay.
‘I think you’d better fold your limbs,’ Reid said. ‘The process takes a few hours.’
I settled on the floor. Reid loomed over me, and attached a cable to my shell. I remembered my first life-extension treatment, and my heart stopping. I had not known then what dry seas I would love Annette beside, what rocks would melt before we’d be immortal. I remembered the Kazakh snow-drifts, and the colours bleeding from the world, and Reid’s face, and Myra’s. I remembered the fading light in the macro mind-world, and Meg rescuing me. This would be my fourth death. I was not getting used to it, but love had always been with me, and was with me still.
Everything went away.
I saw a pair of cowboy-boots, jeans, a jacket and, as I tracked upwards, Reid’s impassive face.
‘I’m sorry, man,’ he said as I stood. ‘It didn’t work. For you, or for the succubus.’
I felt Meg’s presence like a held hand in the dark.
‘What do you mean, it didn’t work?’
‘Your minds aren’t compatible with human brains anymore.’ He shrugged. ‘The transfer didn’t get through the interface. There’s no translation from your computer to synaptic connections. Must have been something that happened in the macro.’
‘Everybody else was in the macros,’ I protested, but I already knew what his answer would be.
‘Not while they were going bad,’ he pointed out. ‘And it was I who asked you to do that. Like I said, I’m sorry.’
At that moment his face showed real guilt. I knew him well enough to know that guilt was not an emotion whose validity he recognised, or was likely to feel for long.
‘Can’t anything be done about it?’ Meg asked.
Reid shook his head. ‘It’s the same old trap,’ he said. ‘The fast folk, whether they’re AIs or uploads themselves, could do it. We can’t, and we daren’t do anything to revive them until we know how to stop them going bad again, or contain them if they do.’
We stood in silence, thinking this over.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can live with it. Plenty for a bright young robot to do here. We can always use VR and projections and so on to socialise –’
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ Reid said. ‘The attitude I told you about has got more entrenched, if anything. People are people. Robots are robots. Along with that goes an almost hysterical feeling against blurring the distinction between VR and actual reality. Everybody is convinced that was how the fast folk went bad, or mad.’
‘And they’re not far wrong,’ I said grimly. ‘But I can’t see people giving up the advantages of having VR.’
‘They don’t,’ said Reid. He ran his finger along the dust on top of the clone-pod, leaving a shiny trail. ‘They use it for games, and for porn I guess, and for design work. But seamless VR, like you live in – no.’
‘OK,’ Meg said. ‘Like Jon says, I can live with it. I can live with him. I’ve never done anything else. But what I want to know is, what can we actually do? Couldn’t we get on with the research into controlling or containing the fast folk? After all, I reckon we’re pretty well equipped for it.’
Reid glowered at me.
‘No way,’ he said. ‘No fucking way. There’s no research project at the moment. We can’t afford it, and I won’t allow it. I’ve got the code-keys to revive the macros, and I’ll decide the time and place. We’ll do all that in good time, when we’ve got isolated space-labs with laser-cannon pointing at them! And let me tell you, anybody else on this whole fucking planet would’ve left you switched off and shoved you in the nearest metal-recycler the minute, the fucking minute they found you were infected with some kinda shit from the macros!’
He was backing away, a shadow of alarm and suspicion on his face.