I know it is important. I am as curious as he to discover the answer. We wait through 3,451 milliseconds of processing silence.
“I’m a monster,” I say.
A smile comes onto his face, then, like bindweed growing across a grave. “Welcome to the club.”
30
COCOONED
Unbolted, unbuckled, I sat up and made an inventory. The organic structures of the brain were of course disrupted by the mapping current, and presumably the damage there would be extensive, but it didn’t matter. The datastore had captured both the memory and the sub-memory “instincts” that drove necessary functions—breathing and whatnot. From the datastore these moved through the inductive webbing. It was working flawlessly, pushing and pulling the brain exactly as it needed to.
Meanwhile the body. Its physiological death seemed to have been brief; the damage was minimal. The bruising to the skull could potentially have implications; I made a note to look into it. The rest was little more than aches and pains, and bothered me not at all.
I laced my fingers together and pushed my palms out, cracking the joints—a huge rush of data there. Fingertips reporting, tendons stretching, ears cataloging the cheerful pop of cartilage, the left thumb and left wrist flaring for attention like a child’s sparkler.
“Don’t hurt her.” Da-Xia. A crack in her voice.
I turned to her, blinking. Another rush, a cascade, of data. The subtle intricacies of reading meaning from the expression on her face: it was the most challenging thing I’d yet been called upon to do. Oh, it was glorious, feeling my new intelligences flipping through the memory of every time I’d seen her face, building the database, gaining mastery. I liked mastery.
But I could not read her now. “What do you mean?”
“The hand?” She put her fingers on my forearm. “You said it was broken.”
“No. What do you mean, ‘her’?”
She hesitated. “Greta.”
“I am Greta.”
And I was. I was a perfect duplicate of her memories, and at least for the moment wore her body. The only complication, in fact, was that the organic structures of memory did (at least in part) still exist. The datastore flipped through its catalog of Da-Xia’s remembered face, looking for a fit for the current expression (immobility of the mouth, widening of the eyes). But meanwhile other memories rose from the squishy, murky depths of the mind—fragmented by the mapping, struggling like newly hatched butterflies. Da-Xia’s face.
That image. It had come from, from—Greta. I am Greta.
“I am Greta,” I said again.
Da-Xia put her hand flat on my cheek. “You’re not.” And then she turned and left the room.
Elián hesitated. “Are you— I mean, are you all right?”
“Certainly,” I said.
Talis said, “She’s in minimal danger at the moment. Go with Xie.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” snapped Elián. And then he went with Xie.
I blinked at Talis, who blinked at me. Was it semaphore? Code? I couldn’t decipher it.
“You’re bleeding.” Talis pulled a one-sided smile and retrieved something from his pocket. It was a wipe in a small packet. He tore it out, reached up, and smudged away the blood from the compression wounds left by the halo screws. “Antiseptics, coagulants,” he said. “Stuff to force the scars.”
“It stings.”
He made a shushing noise. “Yeah. I know.”
“So I am in minimal danger?” I was not afraid. Though (my datastore was providing me with a complete catalog of the fates of AIs of the First Wave) perhaps I should have been.
“At the moment,” Talis said again.
The datastore agreed: statistically, historically, any deterioration was likely to happen later. Skinning. I wondered what provoked it.
Talis frowned at me. “Don’t worry about it now.”
I obeyed, and easily. “Help me down,” I said. “I want to see everything.”
Outside the grey room, the world glittered with colors I was only beginning to see. Information overlays seemed infinite in their richness. It was— Somewhat dazzling. Even the hallway, which I did not remember as interesting, was hung with information, gleaming virtual lights. It was like a Christmas tree.
The organic mind whispered about taffeta figured with flowers, champagne punch, and interview cameras. A nightmare.
My ribs felt oddly tight.
When I took the next step the complex dynamic equilibrium of keeping balance failed me. I staggered and fell to my knees.
Talis crouched beside me. “Dizzy?”
“No.” Dizzy was not what I was. The patellae reported on the force of impact, substantial but not damaging. Silly to think that would once have been a message of pain. I tried to get back up but again balance eluded me.
Talis’s voice was soft. “Close your eyes.”
I obeyed. Greta obeyed. Something in me was glad to close that I.
“There,” he said. “Reducing stimuli will always help. Remember that. Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Keep your eyes closed, and get up.” I got up. “A few steps.” I took a few steps. “Got it?”
“I’m a roadrunner.”