Emergence (Fox Meridian Book 5) (34 page)

‘Okay. Another reason to try things out sooner rather than later.’

‘Yes. I’m not arguing over trying out the body fast. Poppa and I discussed it. If you can cope with the frame in its current form, you’ll be better able to handle it when it’s skinned. And if you wig out, we can skin it and try again with something which looks more like you. Um, you should try to transfer back to your server to sleep.’

‘Kit said the sleep cycle was used to update my ba.’

‘Yes, but it’s also used for an incremental backup with a thirty-day cycle. If, for whatever reason, your ba is destroyed, we can reload you from the backup. That’s more likely to work if the backup is somewhere safe.’

‘Huh. I’ve read the specs on this chassis. It’s fairly safe.’

‘Agreed,’ Jackson said, ‘but when you can do it, an off-site backup, so to speak, is always preferable.’

‘Basic data security, okay. I guess I’m going to have to take a lot more care of things like that now.’

‘Indeed. Now, the transfer process is two-stage. Three if the remote location needs ka installing, but we’ve taken care of that. Your current ba is copied to the remote computer first. You can remain conscious for that part. The final stage is the transfer of your current memory cache. That needs to be stable when it’s moved, so you’ll have a short discontinuity during that transfer, followed by activation on the far side. The data transfers are all handled by ka, all automatic once you initiate. Ka will become the primary driver for a remote body, so you’ll wake up… as though you were waking up after a nap.’

‘The interface was designed to appear pretty much like an implant interface,’ Terri said. ‘The cyberframe should feel like your body, more or less, and you’ll access its systems as you would any implanted computer.’

‘More or less like my body?’ Fox asked.

‘Well, no skin. All the other senses will be there, and you’ll have a very basic sense of pressure, but the full tactile sense won’t be available until we put the skin on.’

‘Okay… How do I do this?’

‘There’s a transfer control interface you can– Yeah, that one.’

‘I’ll go ahead,’ Kit said, and she promptly vanished.

Fox looked over the panel which had appeared in the air beside her. It
was
a simple interface, but obviously expandable. She could have more ‘bodies’ if she wanted, just as Kit could, technically, occupy any computer-equipped frame she had access to. For now, there were two entries in her selection list: Body 1 and Server. Server had a tick beside it. A few other controls dotted around the small window appeared to indicate there were other settings, and the ability to rename the buttons. ‘I am going to have to rename “Body 1.” That is not a great name.’

‘Automatically generated,’ Terri supplied. ‘I have no idea what someone would actually want to call their body.’

‘Trixie, maybe. Judy, as in Punch and Judy.’

‘Ha ha. Quit stalling.’

‘Right.’ Fox reached up and tapped the virtual button for ‘Body 1’ and then the commit button. The display changed to show a progress bar and ‘transferring ba.’ It seemed to be moving at a reasonable rate. ‘A hundred terabytes… You’ve got this thing hooked up with a fibre?’

‘The unit has infrared, wireless, and fibre networking,’ Jackson said. ‘Even when it’s skinned, you’ll have a fibre port available at the back of the skull. It’s used for maintenance functions as well as data transfer.’

‘Maintenance?’

‘Every two weeks, you’ll need to be checked over. It’s one of the reasons we haven’t made this available to the military yet. Biweekly maintenance is too short a timescale for the intended purpose. Frankly, I doubt we’ll be able to improve upon that, given the specifications, until the next generation of hardware becomes available.’

‘So I’ll likely be the only one of these walking around for a while?’

‘We may find a use for them in another market, but that would probably mean changing the specs. So, yes.’

Silence fell as Fox ran out of questions and everyone started anticipating the coming event. It took less than two minutes to complete the first transfer, and as the bar neared its end, a second message appeared under the first:
Transferring memory cache in 5… 4… 3…

Fox closed her eyes.

~~~

There was a moment of disorientation as Fox opened her eyes, lifted her head, and found herself looking out at a different room. This was one of the labs in Jenner Station, a robotics lab from the looks of it, and Fox was at one side of it held upright by a support frame. Across the room, Jackson and Terri were emerging from the viron, shaking their heads as they returned to reality.

‘How does it feel?’ Kit asked. Her voice sounded in Fox’s head, just as it always had, and Fox smiled.

‘It feels… Actually, smiling feels a bit weird. Like I know I’m doing it, but I can’t feel it. I guess that’s the lack of skin.’

‘Yes. You seem calm.’

‘Nothing much to concern me yet. I don’t feel like I’m… looking out of a shell or something. Maybe Terri should’ve done a better job on the frames for the rats.’

‘Don’t move for a second,’ Jackson said, crossing the room quickly. He stepped up to her, reached behind her head, and pulled away a thin cable. In Fox’s vision field, a window appeared:
Network interface 1 disconnected.
‘There,’ Jackson continued, ‘and now we just…’ He hit a button and the frame holding Fox in place lifted away.

She stumbled forward, catching herself quickly, and grinned. Then she straightened up and lifted an arm. Her ‘skin’ was currently composed of plates of flesh-toned plastic over a transparent layer. She could see wires and what looked like synthetic muscle under the plastic. Her fingers were jointed, segmented. Fox watched as they curled and uncurled at her command, saw the plastic layers flex as artificial muscle fibres expanded and contracted beneath them. Looking down, she saw the same sort of architecture on the rest of her body. Right now, she looked like an animated, plastic doll.

How did she feel about that? Fox frowned and wondered absently whether her face was moving with her: she could not feel it. She ran her hands over her stomach, feeling nothing. The doll had breasts, and squeezing them proved that they were actually soft and made Jackson turn away to stare at a wall, but resulted in no tactile sensation.

‘You should try to talk,’ Terri suggested.

Fox looked up at her. ‘Can I have a mirror?’ The voice sounded like her voice.

‘They used voice prints and recordings to program the synthetic larynx,’ Kit said. ‘This frame was designed to appear human, remember? It makes sound in a manner comparable to a human.’

Terri was holding a mirror, a little defensively. ‘You know this isn’t what you’ll look like when the frame’s finished, right?’

‘I know. The lack of touch is kind of weird. I can’t feel my face moving. I want to know I smile when I smile. And I’m kind of fascinated.’

‘Okay.’ Terri held out the mirror.

Actually holding the hand mirror was more difficult than Fox had expected, but she managed it, lifting it so that she could see her face. ‘Not having a sense of touch is a real pain… Oh!’

‘Are you okay?’

Fox examined her face for a second. It was
her
face, just… robotic. She could see the structure there and the tone was actually fairly close to her natural skin colour, even if it was smooth plastic. There was no hair, but someone had decided that giving her eyebrows would work better for some reason, even if they were just drawn on. Her lips were darker than usual, almost a purple colour. There were gaps in the plastic, as with the rest of her body. Complex muscle fibres were visible under her skin. Her eyes were something else: blue, but clearly cybernetic. Concentric circles of pale and darker blue which were, weirdly to Fox’s thinking, rather attractive. She smiled and watched her cybernetic face do exactly what she expected it to do.

‘I may keep the eyes,’ Fox said. She heard Terri breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Really, the eyes are kind of cool. Maybe I should change my hair too. Something dark, like the colours I use for my avatar.’

‘But… then you wouldn’t be Fox.’

‘Well, maybe I don’t feel quite like me yet. You could change it again, right?’

‘We could,’ Jackson said, ‘but sticking with your original form is likely to help you acclimatise.’

‘Yeah, maybe. What’s this?’ Fox had noticed something a little odd about her chest earlier, but the mirror gave her a better angle. There was a panel over her breastbone, bolted in place, it seemed.

‘That is the access panel for your computer. Having that area solid works well, because it’s fairly solid on a human. It’s only needed on a major overhaul. Yearly for most people, but with your lifestyle… probably quarterly.’

‘Oh, ha ha. I only get kidnapped and tortured once every two years. It’s a policy.’

‘Well, keep in mind that you need to be
repaired
. You won’t heal.’

‘Apparently that’s no change from my old body.’

‘Ah, well, currently true. Your skin will regenerate when it’s damaged, given power and a supply of protein, but the cyberframe beneath is a machine.’

‘An armoured machine. Getting shot or stabbed isn’t going to be a major issue. What about electrolasers or EMP?’

‘Tasers and electrolasers are not likely to be a problem. Your skin should provide sufficient surge protection. EMP is another matter. Your electronics are hardened, but there are limits to how effectively we can do that in this kind of platform. High levels of radiation may cause problems too, so don’t go crazy near a reactor.’ Jackson raised an eyebrow. ‘Also, we discussed clothes…’

Fox looked down at her plastic body. ‘Seriously? This bothers you? I’m like a Barbie doll.’ She looked up. ‘How, exactly, am I supposed to have sex when–’

‘The plate over your groin will be removed and replaced during the skinning process.’

Terri was holding out a white, zip-up boiler suit. ‘Here, put this on.’

Fox fixed her gaze on the garment and then pointed at it with her mirror. ‘No. Get me some jeans and a shirt, and I’ll put them on. I am
not
going to walk around looking like a reject from a dystopian sci-fi film.’

‘This’ll be easier to–’

‘No.’

‘Okay… I’ll get something fabricated, but I’m telling you, jeans are going to be a pig with no sense of touch.’

‘I’ll cope.’

~~~

When it came down to it, Terri had to do the button on her jeans after Fox fumbled it several times and got grumpy. They went with a camisole T-shirt, which Fox could just pull over her head. On the other hand, Fox was quite pleased with the general flexibility of the body, and the sensitivity problem would be fixed once she had skin.

‘It’s not like I’m totally comfortable with this,’ Fox said when she was dressed. ‘I feel… weird. But I’m not going to wig out either. It’s like… It’s not quite the same as remote piloting a cyberframe, but it’s not
quite
the same as being… um, human.’

‘You should walk around a bit,’ Terri said. ‘You know, kind of get a feel for it. I think you’ll feel more like yourself when you’ve got real skin.’

Fox grinned. ‘Real, synthetic skin.’

‘You know what I mean.’ Terri tilted her head a little. ‘You know, I never realised how much people rely on feedback for expressions. Your grin’s a bit lopsided.’

‘Oh, thanks. Make fun of the robot girl why don’t you.’

‘Hey, I’m learning. I’m seriously considering doing this myself… At some point.’

Fox thought she probably raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you think of your daughter’s plans, Jackson?’

‘Frankly, I’ve considered it myself more than once. Medical technology and the advancements in genetics could keep Teresa young-looking and healthy for centuries, but the prognosis for me is less certain. There are, however, a number of legal hurdles which will need to be jumped before I could consider it.’

‘Not for you,’ Terri said quickly.

‘Explain,’ Fox said.

‘Well, when the project was started, we knew we would eventually want to do a human trial, so we looked into any problems we could think of. One of them is that, technically, you’re dead. I mean, your body doesn’t have a brain. Questions regarding brain death are pretty moot. Then there’s the legal status of infomorphs. Any subject faced the prospect of being declared dead, and then needing a legal owner… Even if they were going to die anyway, that’s a pretty big pitfall to agreeing to the procedure.’

‘Yes, so…’

‘So we got permission for one person to be converted. Assuming the result could pass a few basic tests, legally there’s no change in condition.’

‘Tests?’

‘You just have to pass a basic intelligence test and prove you’re you. To be honest, a well-programmed AI could do it, but the government agreed to it. Once you pass those, and you will, you’ll still be legally alive, still Tara Meridian, still an American citizen. But anyone else wanting to undergo the procedure is going to need changes in the law before they can continue being the same person afterward.’

‘Not wishing to place undue pressure on your shoulders,’ Jackson said, ‘but you are our ambassador for Akh, much as Kit has become an ambassador for class four AIs.’ His lips quirked. ‘I understand that a recent social media event has produced a rise in sales of the Kitsune model in Japan.’

Fox heard a moan from Kit and smirked. ‘Yeah, she’s paru-kawaii, and also really embarrassed. Oh, does this mean I have to do more chat shows?’

Jackson reached out and patted Fox’s arm; it was not as comforting as he probably thought since she could barely feel it. ‘We’ll try to keep them to a minimum.’

Fox glowered at Terri. ‘I hate you.’

Terri nodded. ‘Okay… I guess that’s fair.’

New York Metro.

Kit’s avatar occupied the witness box in one of the smaller hearing chambers in Rikers, and she seemed to be causing something of a stir. The size of the room had, it seemed, been a mistake since the audience section was overflowing with reporters. Kit was rather glad that Helen had managed to squeeze in at the back, because all the attention was intimidating and at least there was one friendly face.