The unit was perfectly equipped to serve as a probe through the hatch, save for one thing. What the control box didn’t have was intelligence.
Michael Poole stroked its surface with a gloved hand. ‘We’re sending this beast into an entirely unknown situation. It’s going to have to work autonomously, figure out its environment, perform some kind of sensor sweep, before it can even start to work out how to talk to us. Running a GUTengine is a pretty simple and predictable job; the AI in there isn’t capable of handling an exploration like this.’
‘But,’ I said, ‘it carries in its store backups of four human intellects – mine, dead Bill, and you two geniuses. What a shame we can’t all ride along with it!’
My sarcasm failed to evoke the expected reaction. Poole and Miriam looked at each other, electrified. Miriam shook her head. ‘Jovik, you’re like some idiot savant. You keep on coming up with such good ideas. I think you’re actually far smarter than you admit yourself to be.’
I said honestly, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘The idea you’ve suggested to them,’ Harry said gently, ‘is to revive one of the dormant identity-backup copies in the unit’s store, and use that as the controlling intelligence.’
‘Me and my big mouth.’
As always when they hit on some new idea, Poole and Miriam were like two eager kids. Poole said rapidly, ‘It’s going to be a shock for the copy to wake up, to move straight from atmospheric entry where it was downloaded, to this point. It would be least disconcerting if we projected a full human animus. A complete body.’
‘You’re telling me,’ said the head of Harry Poole.
‘And some enclosing environment,’ Miriam said. ‘Just a suit? No, to be adrift in space brings problems with vertigo. I’d have trouble with that.’
‘The lifedome of the Crab,’ Poole said. ‘That would be straightforward enough to simulate to an adequate degree. And a good platform for observation. The power would be sufficient to sustain that for a few hours at least . . .’
‘Yes.’ Miriam grinned. ‘It would feel like a voyage in the Crab. Our observer will feel safe, in control. I’ll get to work on it . . .’
I said, ‘OK. So you’re planning to project a Virtual copy of one of us through the wormhole. And how will you get him or her back?’
They looked at me, as if I’d asked yet another foolish question.
‘That won’t be possible,’ Poole said. ‘The unit will be lost. It’s possible we could transmit back a copy of the memories the Virtual accrues on the other side – integrate them somehow with the backup in the GUTengine’s other store—’
‘No,’ Harry said regretfully. ‘The data rate through that interface would never allow even that. For the copy in there it’s a one-way trip.’
‘Well, that’s entirely against the sentience laws,’ I put in. They ignored me. But to point this out was, after all, my paid job.
Poole said, ‘That’s settled, then. The question is, who? Which of the four of us are we going to wake up from cyber-sleep and send into the unknown?’
I noticed that Harry’s disembodied floating head looked away, as if he were avoiding the question.
Poole and Miriam looked at each other.
‘We should give it to Bill,’ Miriam said firmly.
‘Yeah. There’s no other choice. Bill’s gone, and we can’t bring his stored backup home with us . . . We should let his backup have the privilege of doing this. It will make the sacrifice worthwhile.’
I stared at them. ‘This is the way you treat your friends? By killing them, reviving backups and sending them to another certain death?’
Poole glared at me. ‘Bill won’t see it that way, believe me. You and a man like Bill Dzik have nothing in common, Emry. Don’t judge him by your standards.’
‘Fine. Just don’t send me.’
‘Oh, I won’t. You don’t deserve it.’
It took them only a few more minutes to prepare for the experiment. The control pack didn’t need any physical modifications, and it didn’t take Miriam long to programme instructions into its limited onboard intelligence. She provided it with a short orientation message, in the hope that Virtual Bill wouldn’t be left entirely bewildered at the sudden transition he would experience.
Poole picked up the pack with his gloved hands, and walked towards the interface, or as close as Harry advised him to get. Then Poole lifted the pack over his head. ‘Good luck, Bill.’ He threw the pack towards the interface – or rather pushed it; its weight was low but its inertia was just as it would have been on Earth, and besides Poole had to fight against the resistance of the syrupy sea. For a while it looked as if the pack might fall short. ‘I should have practised a couple of times,’ Poole said ruefully. ‘Never was any use at physical sports . . .’
But he got it about right. The pack clipped the rim of the hole, then tumbled forward and fell slowly, dreamlike, through that black surface. As it disappeared, autumn gold glimmered around it.
Then we had to wait, the three of us plus Harry. I began to wish that we had agreed some time limit; obsessives like Poole and Miriam were capable of standing there for hours before admitting failure.
In the event it was only minutes before a scratchy voice sounded in our suit helmets. ‘Harry? Can you hear me?’
‘Yes!’ Harry called, grinning. ‘Yes, I hear you. The reception ought to get better, the clean-up algorithms are still working. Are you all right?’
‘Well, I’m sitting in the Crab lifedome. It’s kind of a shock to find myself here, after bracing my butt to enter Titan. Your little orientation show helped, Miriam.’
Poole asked, ‘What do you see?’
‘The sky is . . . strange.’
Miriam was looking puzzled. She turned and looked at Harry. ‘That’s not all that’s strange. That’s not Bill!’
‘Indeed not,’ came the voice from the other side of the hole. ‘I am Michael Poole.’
14
So, while a suddenly revived Michael Poole floated around in other-space, the original Poole and his not-lover Miriam Berg engaged in a furious row with Harry. Despite the circumstances, I found all this amusing.
Poole stormed over to the GUTengine’s remaining control pack, and checked the memory’s contents. It had never contained backup copies of the four of us after all; it contained only one ultra-high-fidelity copy, of Michael Poole himself. I could not decide which scared me more: the idea that no copies of myself existed in that glistening white box, or the belief I had entertained previously that there had. I am prone to existential doubt, and am uncomfortable with such notions.
But such subtleties were beyond a raging Michael Poole. ‘Miriam, I swear I knew nothing about this.’
‘Oh, I believe you.’
They both turned on the older Poole. ‘Harry?’ Michael snapped. ‘What in Lethe did you do?’
Disembodied-head Harry looked shifty, but he was going to brazen it out. ‘As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to apologise for. The storage available on the Crab was always limited, and it was worse in the gondola. Michael’s my son. Of course I’m going to protect him above others. What would you do? I’m sorry, Miriam, but—’
‘You aren’t sorry at all,’ Miriam snapped. ‘And you’re a cold-hearted bastard. You knowingly sent a backup of your son, who you say you’re trying to protect, through that wormhole to die!’