Zendegi (47 page)
Authors: Greg Egan
Back in her office, she set the test in motion.
A wide-angle view of the antechamber appeared on the screen. The walls were panelled with oak, and two plush red sofas stood on either side of each of the two doors. The Proxy entered through one door, emerging from a world of featureless whiteness resembling the inside of a closed ghal’e. Its icon was being moved for it involuntarily at first, but as it woke to find itself in mid-step it took the reins easily enough. It was using the same form of puppetry Martin had used when he was lying in the MRI, but starting it flat on its back would only have encouraged it to brood on its strange condition as it struggled to recall how to get its icon upright.
Nasim’s icon was seated on one of the sofas by the second door. The Proxy turned to face her, smiling in recognition, and the screen switched to her point of view.
‘Nasim?’ the Proxy said. ‘What are you doing in Zendegi? Where’s Javeed?’
‘You’ll see Javeed soon,’ she said. ‘I’m just here to bring you up to speed.’
The Proxy frowned slightly, but then it seemed to grasp what she meant. It waited patiently for her to say more.
‘It’s 2030,’ she said. ‘Javeed’s nine years old now; his birthday was last week.’
‘Okay.’ The Proxy beamed at her, apparently unperturbed by the realisation that he must have been woken more than a hundred times already. Certainly the neural activity maps in the corner of the screen revealed no stress, no fear, no hostility.
‘His icon’s been updated,’ Nasim continued, ‘so don’t be surprised by how tall he’s become.’
‘No, of course not.’ The Proxy gestured at the door. ‘What’s he into now? Still the Shahnameh?’
‘Close: elephant racing.’
The Proxy laughed. ‘How? How can he sit on an elephant in Zendegi?’
‘Most of the ghal’eha now have something like a retractable mechanical bull,’ Nasim explained. ‘There’s a geodesic frame to support it, and it folds up out of the way when it’s not needed. The shape’s variable, so you can feel like you’re riding almost anything: a motorbike, a horse, an elephant. Or you could just be sitting on a motionless chair.’
‘That’s amazing,’ the Proxy said. ‘Elephant races! Javeed will be over the moon.’
Nasim said, ‘Does the situation bother you?’
‘What situation?’
‘The fact that Martin’s been dead for more than two years,’ she said bluntly.
The Proxy’s face showed nothing but sympathy. ‘How’s Javeed coping?’
‘He’s all right,’ Nasim replied.
The Proxy said quietly, ‘I hope I’ve been some help.’
Nasim wasn’t comfortable responding to that. ‘What’s your relationship to Javeed?’ she asked.
‘Relationship? I’m his father. Javeed is my son.’ The Proxy’s expression was mildly quizzical; the neural maps still showed no distress, no anxiety.
‘If Javeed’s your son, what should I call you?’
The Proxy was amused. ‘You know my name: Martin Seymour.’
‘But Martin’s dead,’ Nasim insisted.
‘From cancer,’ the Proxy replied. ‘Liver cancer. We all knew that was coming.’
‘So how can you be Martin, when Martin’s dead?’
The Proxy roared with laughter. ‘I get it now: you’re just screwing with me, to see my reaction. You know how I can be Martin, Nasim. You of all people know how.’
Nasim kept her nerve. ‘And that doesn’t bother you at all? How you’re here? Who you are?’
The Proxy regarded her with good-natured bemusement. ‘Why would it bother me? Martin is dead. I’m here in his place. Wasn’t that the whole point?’
Nasim restarted the Proxy and pushed it harder. This time, she claimed, it was 2040; she had her icon aged to make the lapse seem more real.
‘Javeed’s nineteen,’ she said. ‘He’s engaged to be married.’ She hesitated. ‘I expect it’s hard for you, knowing that you’ll miss your son’s wedding.’
The Proxy remained sanguine. ‘I’m sure he’ll show me the video. I never expected to be there in person, like a ghost trapped in a wallscreen; the truth is, I never thought he’d keep me around this long at all. But if he still wants my advice, I’m happy to keep giving it.’
Nasim said, ‘Maybe he doesn’t want your advice, but he doesn’t know how to stop waking you. Do you think it’s easy for him to shut you down and walk away?’
The Proxy replied, with just a trace of irritation, ‘Don’t take offence, Nasim, but that’s something I’ll discuss with Javeed face to face.’
Nasim soon lost any sense of reticence; she had an obligation to be as thorough as she could, to test her creation almost to destruction while Martin was still in a position to judge the results. She restarted the Proxy again and again, announcing different ages for Javeed, trying different ways to provoke it into angst. In her darkest moments she had feared that she might have been creating some mewling, pitiful thing that would chafe against its limitations, obsessing over its lack of embodiment, its imperfect memory, its truncated sense of self. But the consequences of its neural deficits appeared to have turned out exactly as she’d hoped: the Proxy seemed incapable of missing the things it lacked.
How much of this equanimity was down to her choice of ersatz neuroanatomy, and how much to Martin’s own clear-eyed acceptance of the imperfect deal he was buying into, Nasim couldn’t say. But the result was about as far as it could have been from a tortured abomination, screaming that if it couldn’t have real wind on its face, real hope for its future and real memories of its past it should be wiped from the face of the Earth. Confronted with stark reminders of its nature and every kind of stress short of outright sadism, it remained simply grateful for its chance to outlive Martin and keep watch over his son.
Nasim continued the tests until dawn, then she took a break to grab a quick shower, change her clothes and gulp down some coffee. Then she sat and worked her way through another dozen permutations. It was beyond her power, beyond anyone’s, to know how the Proxy would respond to every conceivable piece of news that the coming decades might bring, but when she pushed the envelope the results tended more to laughter than to tears.
‘I’m afraid Javeed’s become a follower of Shahidi,’ she declared. ‘He doesn’t want to see you any more.’
The Proxy’s shocked silence dissolved into guffaws. ‘Nice try, Nasim, but we agreed that if Javeed doesn’t want to wake me, no one else will. I’m guessing Martin’s still alive and you’re just putting me through my paces before he signs off on me.’
Nasim replied provocatively, ‘And does it worry you that one of us might reject you?’
The Proxy snorted. ‘I’d be worried if the two of you weren’t doing some heavy-duty quality control before you unleashed me on my son.’
‘So far,’ Nasim assured it, ‘you’ve come across as remarkably stable. But how do you feel when I tell you I’m about to shut you down, leaving you with no memories of our conversation?’
‘You’ll remember what we’ve said,’ the Proxy replied. ‘That’s enough. And when I’m doing my job for real, Javeed will remember; that’s more than enough.’
Nasim halted it.
Looking back, her night’s labours seemed surreal. Even after hours of dialogue, she couldn’t decide if the Proxy was genuinely conscious - in spite of its deficits, in spite of its crippled sense of self - or if it was just an accomplished actor: a brilliant mimic who felt nothing at all, but knew Martin’s responses inside out.
She was certain of one thing, though. Even if Rollo was right and the Faribas were like battery hens in hell, this was one side-load who wasn’t facing a life of voiceless suffering. Either Virtual Martin felt nothing, or he felt exactly what he claimed to feel: love for his son, acceptance of his limitations, and contentment with the purpose for which he’d been brought into existence.
As to whether he could fulfil that purpose, it was up to Martin now to decide.
27
‘When are you coming hooooome?’ Javeed demanded, pulling free of Rana’s grip and walking over to the monitor beside Martin’s bed.
‘Don’t touch that,’ Martin warned him, ‘or the nurse will beat me up.’
‘When?’ Javeed repeated.
Martin said, ‘Tomorrow night I’m going to come and stay with you and Aunty Rana, then after a few nights I’ll come back to hospital for my new liver. Then after a few more nights we’ll both be back in our own home. How does that sound?’
Javeed ignored all the obfuscatory details and cut straight to the point. ‘Why don’t they give you your liver now?’
‘It’s not quite ready,’ Martin lied. ‘That’s why I’ve got the little one until then.’ He moved the sheet aside and showed Javeed the tiny, neat scar left by the keyhole surgery. ‘The one that the robot put inside me.’
Javeed still didn’t quite believe him about the robot, even though Martin had shown him images from the manufacturer’s glossy website.
Rana said, ‘It’s taking them a long time to grow your liver. A whole child can be born in nine months!’
‘An adult liver weighs as much as a new-born baby,’ Martin claimed, fairly sure that this was neither true nor relevant. All he needed now was for Dr Jobrani to walk in while his visitors debated the reasons for the organ’s tardy arrival. ‘Anyway, I’m lucky they can do it at all.’
‘Thanks to God,’ Rana agreed. ‘You’ll be out soon, as healthy as ever. Like Omar’s father with his artificial legs. You should see him, Martin: he’s like a young man again.’ This was clearly intended as a form of encouragement, but Rana seemed to mean it sincerely.
‘Yeah?’ Martin smiled. ‘Well, he waited more than forty years, so I don’t have anything to complain about.’
Rana glanced at the clock on the wall and addressed Javeed. ‘Say good-bye to your father. We’ll go home and have some dinner.’
Javeed approached the side of the bed and Martin kissed him. ‘Thanks for coming, pesaram. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ He turned to Rana. ‘Thanks for bringing him. I know he’s a handful.’
‘Khahesh mikonam.’
‘I’m not a handful!’ Javeed protested.
‘No, he’s been good,’ Rana said, almost convincingly. ‘It’s a pleasure to have him.’ She rose from her chair.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Martin said. ‘Khoda hafez.’
‘Khoda hafez.’
When they were gone, Martin took his notepad from the side of the bed and returned to the Zendegi website. He’d narrowed down his list to three scenarios, but he wanted to make a definite choice for the following day so he could fall asleep knowing there’d be one less thing to deal with in the morning.
In Zendegi, a great many people spent a great deal of time pretending to fight and kill each other, and Javeed had shown no signs that he would buck the trend. For all that Martin had tried to steer him away from battle scenes, the chances were that within a few years the attraction would prove irresistible. Martin had gone through that phase of his childhood fencing with sticks and shooting water pistols; there had been no technology around to make his opponents fountain blood and spill viscera. That magic had been confined to the movies, with the most graphic material out of his reach - though at twelve he’d managed to sneak into Jabberwocky and found himself in heaven.
He was hoping there’d be time for several different test runs before the transplant, but with Zendegi’s health looking as precarious as his own, he needed to be prepared to make a judgement as quickly as possible. So if he wanted to see the Proxy jump through hoops, there was no point starting with any but the highest, and no point sparing the flames.
Nasim collected Martin from the hospital and drove him across the city. She seemed nervous, but it was clear from her demeanour that the optimistic verdict she’d given him after her own tests had been genuine. The Proxy had not disappointed her; the only thing she feared was that Martin might not feel the same way.
It was half past seven when they arrived, but despite the chilly morning Shahidi’s supporters were out in force. Martin had only been following the politics sporadically, but he’d heard Zendegi’s side-loads being lumped together with a whole grab-bag of permissive and un-Islamic trends. The respectable conservative line went like this: Nobody wanted the corrupt mullahs back, lining their pockets and throwing their enemies into prison, but the pendulum had swung too far and a correction was desperately needed. A vote to rein in immodesty and blasphemy would be the antidote to extremism, dealing with popular discontent before it exploded into a violent backlash.
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