Electric Forest (5 page)

She began to walk to him, faltering. She was helplessly trying to walk in her accustomed way, the old
way, sidling, hopping, dragging, lurching.

"No!" he shouted at her. He jumped up. He ran forward. Her eyes were level with the hollow

beneath his lower Hp. It shocked her, her height, as the sensation of the switch to her finger had shocked, the floor under her feet. She supposed he might strike her, his negligible patience
already exhausted. But he did not. He pulled up short of her. "You are a woman now," he grated. "Walk like a woman." She took stock of herself. Thinking each step, she walked. It improves," he
said. "You've got a long way to go." He came round her then, and placed his hand on her ribs beneath
her left breast. This was the final shock of touch; nothing inanimate could shock her more than his
human palm and fingers wrapped about her. "Heart beat," he said. "Everything

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works." He moved his hand away and she saw it trembling. "Now, a mirror."

They walked past the capsule. She did not glance at it and she could see he kept note of her avoidance. He
led her along a corridor into a large room. The room was five-sided, one transparent wall looking out across the holostet trees to the wild blue waves dashing below in the bay, and four walls that became mirrors at the contact of his hand beside the door.

"This is your schoolroom," he said. He hesitated on using her name, "Magdala. You will learn most of your lessons in here, with the loving aid of a looking glass. Practice."

By the time he reached the door, his neurasthenic trembling was strongly evident. He went out, the door slid shut and left her alone with herself.

Or, with the self she had become.
II

She learned.

Without completely comprehending, still she learned. She could mislay the memory of her other primal self, as moment by moment, she became what she saw in the mirrors.

Hours passed. She moved in a dream, a beautiful dream, like certain somnolent fantasies she had had in
childhood...
_{. Subliminally, she prepared to wake up, for the dream to shatter. She did not wake. The}
dream went on.

It was sunset, pink sky over blue water through the wall window. The sunset smoothed the savage coast, stained all the mirrors. Rather than waking, she had fallen asleep among her reflections.

She had not speculated, but now, amazed into objectivity,

she questioned that this un-human body could lose its

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senses. Robot machine synthetic simulacrum whatever it was, how could it
sleep?
A voice sang in the wall:
Play me.

She turned. One of the mirrors had opaqued. A silver disc pulsed softly.
I am a recorded tape. Play me,
repeated the voice.

Incidental to her contemplation, she had happened on various tricks of the room. How all the walls and the
window could be altered to other things plastase silk, electrobook screen, trivision receiver, multicolored

kaleidoscope. A chute brought food from a service unit in the kitchen below. A panel lifted to reveal a sea-shade bathroom...

Play me!
whined the tape machine.

She reached to depress its button. Her movements generally commenced naturally now, changing halfway as awareness of what she did unbalanced her into confusion. This is not
myself.
This is

Playmel

She pressed the button into its socket, and Claudio's voice, calm and accurate as a machine itself, emanated
from the disc.

"Listen, Magdala, and listen assiduously. I have recorded this especially for your benefit. And mine. I don't
want to give you the data, face to face. It would bore me. It would, I admit, disturb me. To look at you, and
explain you to yourself. Because you are yourself now. There'll probably never be any occasion for you to
revert to what you were before, that thing lying in the maintenance capsule. You can disown that, even if
you won't ever quite be able to ignore it. Are you listening? Don't let your mind wander. I am going to tell
you everything I consider you should know about your unique condition. Concentrate. This relates to your
survival."

She obeyed. Obedience was a nearly foolproof method of coping with both the situation and the man.

I’ll
put it into simple terms. You won't understand it otherwise, will you? And you have to understand. You

can't sur-

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vive unless you do. Let me explain the phenomena itself, first. My God, it occurs to me that perhaps you
have religion, Magdala, Modernist Christianity or Totalism. If that's your problem, you'll presume I've
transferred your animus your soul from one body to another. Well, if you presumed that, erase it. You
haven't actually gone anywhere -not soul, not even mind. You're still imprisoned, in point of fact, within
that lump of foul accidental composition in which I located you. So what's different? It's your
consciousness
that's been shifted. That and that alone.

I’ll
give you an analogy. It's fair. It may help you. A dream. You he asleep, tissues, bones, blood, organs,

brain, complete and in the same place. But the dreaming faculty of your mind convinces you you're

elsewhere. Your body stays where it is, but your dream insists you are what? possibly swimming in a cold
ocean. Second analogy, better than the first the sensit. You enter a crowded theatre, put a headset on,
and the sensit puts you, cerebrally, into a desert. You experience the sand, the hot winds, you smell the
dust. Dream or sensit, that other place seems real. It isn't, but it seems to be. And that's what's happening
to you now, Magdala, your consciousness has transferred wholly from your own unlovely head to a crystal
conductor in the skull of a simulate woman. It's a sensit dream, but, Christ, the most fantastic sensit of them
all, because this is
real.
You've got a body that factually will be doing whatever you experience. You've got
a body that will come to follow your neural instructions as instinctively and as swiftly as your physical body
did. While your physical body will perform none of these actions, will He quiescent in its capsule. It doesn't
need much from you now, that physical body. It's just the powerhouse, the brain that provides your
consciousness with its life. But you can't turn it off, any more than any other powerhouse. You can't forget
it. You can't abandon it. It's the last and only millstone around your neck. It's a symbiote, a beneficial
parasite. You can't get by without it.

"Here are the facts. Once every eight days, each eight-day

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cycle to the hour, you will have to visit your capsule. The capsule has its own self-servicing equipment, but
certain fluids must be re-stimulated, and various accretions dissipated. Once every eight days. You will find
comprehensive instructions on the side of the capsule. The process is minimal and uncomplicated, merely

the pressing of a few buttons. It is, however, vital. Your body supports your brain.
Mens sana in corpore
sano,
at its most uncompromising. If the body deteriorates, so does the brain, and without your brain, your consciousness cannot operate. From now on, Magdala, you are a beautiful woman with an imbecile child. A nurse attends to this child, but every eighth day your assistance with the brat is called for. Otherwise, you
are free to do as you wish. You can even travel the capsule is stabilized to survive accepted forms of
transport, since it must accompany you on any prolonged journey. It's the one piece of luggage you can't
leave behind. I'm sure you appreciate that.

"The last section of data is probably so obvious it doesn't demand explanation. Nevertheless, I'll explain it to

you. I developed this miracle. Perhaps I'm too facile with it. You won't be. Yet. Your new body is equipped

with an entire assembly of simulate parallels heart, lungs, intestinal organs. Your eyes blink automatically; similarly your heart beats and you breathe. You can eat and drink, too, and excrete, if your sense of
thoroughness desires it though, in fact, this wonderful un-body of yours can internally eliminate ingested
food and fluid, which, of course, it does not depend on, without recourse to the accepted procedure. Any
other mortal function is feasible. You can hiccup, sneeze, sweat, cry tears if the fancy takes you. You have
a circulatory pseudo-blood system. You can even blush. But these rather fatuous demonstrations will not
usually be triggered spontaneously. Not usually.

"There are a few restrictions that still apply. A few natural physical impulses that will relay so forcefully
from your physical brain, that they'll govern your body haphazardly

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fear, for example. Actually
, I confess, I don't believe I’ve
tracked them all down. You may get some

surprises. The one sure biological law you'll still be subject to, however, is the sleep process. The human
brain cannot perform effectively without some ration of sleep. The reasons for this are numerous, and I'll
spare you them. In any event, physically you'll need little rest, and your sleep requirement will be
appropriately low. You needn't worry about allocation. Lack will communicate itself. You'll get tired in the
usual human manner, and lose consciousness in the same way. You'll be glad to hear your new body will
continue to breathe and retain its other life signs during this time. Or maybe your thinking hasn't got far enough, yet, to see why realistic blood and comatose life signs are necessary.

"There's a second blatant stricture. Death. If you had any notions of escaping our friend, the Grim Reaper,
you can erase those, too. Consciousness Transferral isn't a gate either to immortality or invulnerability. I
don't know how long a human being can survive existence in a maintenance capsule. Experiments suggest
indefinitely after all, the wear and tear is slight and protection more or less infinite. Perhaps, on the other
hand, atrophy will set in early despite the extreme ministrations of the mechanical nursemaid. If you take
care of your capsule, I'd say you could expect at least thirty years of guaranteed life. But once your

physical brain dies, your life is finished. Your consciousness goes out with it, and so, my Magdala, do you,
whatever condition your simulate body is in. That is why I stress your care for the capsule. It's your ticket
for the ride.

"Which leads me to death's appendix, injury. Don't injure yourself, Magdala. I don't mean a broken

ankle though you're not completely unbreakable. I don't mean a grazed knuckle, either. Your wise new
f
lesh

mimics the mortal variety exactly. It can bleed and it can heal. But I don't mean any minor injury. What I do mean is, don't drown, don't walk under an auto-bus, don't jump from the roof of a building. Even your type of frame can't sustain that sort of treat-

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ment. In any case, the shock would kill you. Literally kill you. Because you can feel pain just as you can

feel silk on your skin or sea-spray on your face. Your pseudo neurons are as efficient as the genuine ones.
They'll send all their messages through your consciousness via your physical brain and back to your
simulate, activating its response centers just like the originals. They have to, otherwise you couldn't see or
hear, taste or feel or smell, or any of those things which you incredibly can do. But they'll let you have pain,
as well, if the message that reaches your brain centers carries the correct pain cipher. Cut your finger, and
you
’ll
know it. So no crazy stunts. Excess pain can be a killer, even if it isn't happening to you at all." There

was a prolonged pause.

She heard the vibration of the tape fizzing from spool to spool. Then his voice came again. It was different.
It had lost its clinically boastful note. It had become dru
n
k with a clear white poison.

"You scared me," it said. "And what I've done. You still scare me. Perhaps I'll just drop by your capsule,
and rip out the leads."

As the tape guttered into silence, Magdala's body sprang to its feet.

No longer alien, it was suddenly, essentially, her own. And her terror was pure, animal and overwhelming,
uniting her forever with this flesh.

She hurled herself at the door and through it as it opened. She raced, aware of the naked scintillance of her
bare soles on the carpeted corridor, toward the small white room. Upright, light as a cat, beautiful, her body ran. This body
was
hers. She
knew
it. She loved it. If he cheated her, she would kill him

Revelation came like a blow in the belly. She stopped running and sank to her knees at the entrance to the
white room. She could almost catch his laughter, cruel and unstable, in the empty air.

She was looking straight at the capsule. Its leads were in-

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tact. It was all intact. If he had meant to do as he said, he would have done it hours ago, after he had

finished recording his lecture. Done it as she postured before her mirrors, learning each glowing atom, each velvet nerve, each jeweled microcosm of skin. Or when she slept, an ultimate joke, he would have done it.
No, he had offered even this threat with a purpose, electrically to charge her into unity and self-defense.
And it had worked well. She had been electrified, and afraid. It was the first time fear had braced her since
she had gazed into the mirror. She had not been afraid through all the afternoon, till now, Magdala Cled, Ugly, whose behavior had always been governed by the low inner throb of her fear...

But fear persisted. She had deduced the subsidiary aspect of his game. She was intended to confront the
capsule, as in the future she would have to. For, in this most uncanny fashion of all, she was going to have
to learn to live with herself.

She had not yet grasped the full scope of his taped lesson; but enough. Ironically, she recognized that the
inner chill that crept over her as she rose and advanced was the product of her brain within the capsule.

In the tilted glazium mummy-case, roped and entwined by apparatus and glimmering tubes, coroneted by its silver skull-cage, lay a gruesome crippled dwarf.

Magdala's gorge filled her throat, though she knew it did not, could not. (She could probably puke the

food-digesting chemical bile if her distress sufficiently nauseated her, such was the strength of the stimuli from her brain. But it was simple to control, this second-hand mental impetus. While the anesthetized monster before her showed no sign of being the nausea's original fount.)

She stared at the monster. In revulsion. In a revulsion that could only be admitted now that she was
liberated from hell.

And as she stared, superimposed upon the vile thing in its

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fantastic cradle, she beheld her
glamour
reflected in the glazium. Beauty and the Beast. Magdala laughed. She had caught her inventor s madness.

It was a while before she registered that, apart from her two selves, and its own gadgets, the house was