04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (23 page)

Still, Connie was surprised. "With those shackles on? No tube or gas preparation?"

"Not necessary here." Suzuki replied. "The 7800 interface system is quite direct, needing no more prep for humans than for bricks or trees or streetlights."

There was a crackling sound below, like a large electrical short, and the big man was gone. The manacles, excluded from the routine, dropped to the floor with a clang, as did a ring he had been wearing. It was simple to do—a command to ignore all inorganic material not encased in the body.

"I have a strong sense of justice," Pandit Singh told them, "but not without some mercy. Suggestions have been made to the computer, and a routine run on the matrix it already had from arrival which is now being updated and adjusted. As soon as my people clear away the bonds and other debris down there, we'll reconstruct our Hasim. Ah! Now—watch!"

The status board lights went from yellow to green again, and there was another crackle, a noise associated as much with displaced air as it was with the energy-matter transformation itself. Now a human stood there once more, looking around, slightly confused. It was, in fact, a young girl's form, perhaps no more than sixteen, with dark Mediterranean features, big, innocent, soulful eyes, long black hair, looking soft, delicate, and curvaceous.

"Who is she?" Connie almost whispered.

With that beauty and those knockers, Toby thought, I might get easily turned on here.

"That," replied Suzuki, "is Hasim."

Haller coughed and Connie gave a surprised, quiet gasp.

"Come," said the colonel. "My people will find her some appropriate clothing and we'll talk to her."

The interview was short and basic; they would still have to help her with some psychological conditioning and adjustment. Still, it was dramatic enough. She sat there, looking slightly dazed, in an ill-fitting pullover dress.

"What is your name, child?" Suzuki asked gently.

The girl looked blank. "I—I am afraid I do not know. I am trying to think, but I do not remember much of anything about myself." The voice was soft and gentle and even a bit sweet, a child's sort of voice.

"That's all right. I'm a doctor and we'll help you with that later. Can you tell us anything at all about yourself?"

She thought a moment. "I—I am a girl." She said it almost as if she had just realized it herself.

"Good. What else?"

She thought for a moment. "I am a Moslem but without family and unwed." That was said a bit nervously. Conservative Moslem girls were kept pretty well protected by their families until an arranged marriage and a dowry of some kind was paid.

"Can you read and write?"

"No, madam. But I can draw and I can manage animals. I know much about the care and feeding of cows and horses."

"All Islam worships the same God and reveres the same Prophet," the colonel noted, "but there are differences in traditions between the peoples of the Prophet. Of which tradition are you?"

She stared at him a moment. "I am Suni," she told him.

"Thank you, child," Suzuki told her gently. "Now, go with these nice people and they will get you started and tell you more about yourself."

After the girl had left, Toby turned to the psychiatrist. "Hasim—could he read and write?"

"Oh, yes. In three languages. It'll be easier for us to place her in the community with a level of ignorance disguising her intelligence though. She's not going to be supervisory material, after all. She'll make someone a good wife and bear many beautiful children, and she'll be quite an asset on the farm, retaining as she does almost instinctually Hasim's fairly extensive gifts with animals and knowledge of animal husbandry."

They went back to Suzuki's office, more unnerved than stunned by it all, and while they took the offered coffee, Haller, at least, felt like he needed a few stiff jolts.

"Her aggression level has been dampened to a major extent, and her sexual appetite is rather high," the psychiatrist told them. "She's still smart, but she'll need protection, and I fear she'll know the fear of potential rape."

"It hardly seems fair," Connie protested. "I don't care if it is the rejumbled atoms of Hasim, that girl had nothing to do with raping those women. It's a totally different person."

"Only in a sense. If you like, I'll explain the procedure."

"By all means," Haller said.

"We want you to understand it," Singh put in. "because it goes to the heart of the problem. You saw the totality of the change, and I can assure you that it is as permanent as your roads and trees and grass out there. It was done by the computer. True, we put in all the information, all the medical, biophysical, and biochemical information it would need, and the psychiatric profiles as well. Still, the 7800 actually did it, and it did a bit more, interpolating through the holes as best it could. It's getting quite a bit more efficient at creating whole human beings, I fear."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Dr. Haller, I have been digitized and rebuilt many times by the 7800's. So have you and the ladies here. We will be some more, because it is convenient and it saves time. Out beyond the basic Anchor stabilization program, a grid very much like that one covers the whole of the world between Anchors and Gates, and the 7800's have a networked access to it. I can only pray I am the same person at both ends of the transmission, for I would never know it. Out there in the Flux environment, I am continually at the computer's mercy. It is getting far too good at this. We need to know if it still needs us to do it."

"You mean—?"

"I mean, if the Overrider and Guard are one-time folks who believe the Kagan 7800 is god and a wonderful thing that can do no harm, could and would we then all be remade into its slaves?"

9

MAGICIAN'S SPELL

"I—I simply can't believe the level of changes," Haller said, unnerved. "You are changing people into other people. Completely different people. It's magic, that's what it is. The blackest of magics."

"Bullshit," Suzuki responded. "It's science, pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less. These aren't new people, only new aspects of the old people. The changes are physical and have solid grounding in the past, even if we are more or less reversing psychotherapy."

"That girl is not Hasim," Connie put in firmly.

"All right—consider this for starters. You've heard of people with multiple personalities? Usually people who were brutalized or sexually abused as small kids who develop separate personalities to hide from the realities of the past?"

Haller nodded. "I've heard of them, although I've never met one."

"They've always been rare, but they exist, even today. I've seen people with two, three, even forty or fifty different personalities. They believe they are different people in the same body. They act like different people. Even their EEGs are different—just like the brain patterns of totally different human beings. They
are
different. Not always complete, but some really are complete individuals. Often when one is in control, the other doesn't have any knowledge of or memories of what they first did when it was in control. Absolutely nothing. One may be a lousy reader but a brilliant musician. One might paint portraits, the other paint houses. There might be totally male personalities in female bodies and vice-versa."

"Yeah, well, a
personality
change I can accept. We have drugs that do that, even recreational ones. But you changed one person into another," Haller objected. "One no more kin to Hasim than the original dirt I used is to the brick that's now outside."

"You're wrong. Both the Hasim that was and our new girl are different aspects of the same person. The outward physiological change, which we see directly, is actually the least important part of it. Minor. We're using the system now to cure diseases, manage genetic defects, eliminate the physical effects of aging, that sort of thing. You've done it, and so have I."

"I've never done it, but I've known it was being done," he told her. "But that's just curing the original of defects. They're still the same inside."

"Of course—because you didn't touch the brain itself. Now, leaving the multiples aside for the moment, let's think of something else. Religious rapture. We've seen that, even here. Periods of concentration so intense that someone can walk barefoot over hot coals or do single things otherwise impossible. The brain is always selective. It has to be. Just as a lens focuses on the foreground or background, one object or many—but not both—so our brains must also do this. Heighten animal senses when we are in a threatening situation. Close out externals when we are sexually aroused. We even filter out a lot when concentrating on a tough job, or when going to sleep. This is rooted in the brain's parietal lobe—it decides what gets and keeps our attention on the basis of external stimuli fed to it. Danger—filter out so you get the animal wariness and reflexes. Sex—filter out the extraneous surroundings, noises, even the nature of the environment. People screw in the damnedest locations. Delicate craft work—filter out all sounds and distractions not relevant to the task at hand."

"I'm following you so far," he said dubiously, and Connie nodded assent.

"All right, now back to our multiple personalities. The reason the personality in charge is different is because the message is sent to the parietal lobe to filter out everything not relevant to that personality. Memories, for example. Certain skills. Likes and dislikes.

"The brain and the mind are two separate but interacting things. The mind is the integrated personality we see and which interacts with the world. The parietal lobe simply filters out brain information—data—that is not relevant to the mind at a specific time. With the multiples, it filters out
everything
relating to the other personalities, but retains what is relevant to the single, forward personality that is in control of the mind and such skills as may be necessary for that personality—speech, for example. Artistic skills and aptitudes. Skilled crafts. What makes one good at a job is the ability to filter out all that's not relevant to that job while it's being done. You with your engineering and programming, for example. There was once a disease—Alzheimer's, it was called—that attacked the brain at its central switching points, but it was selective. It might allow music, or painting, through—even the reading of music—while not allowing through basic reading or math skills, or the ability to make a cup of coffee. We managed to find a chemical cure, but we know how it works. We can selectively induce and freeze it if need be. We can make anyone we want into anyone else we want, and there is no magic to it, just basic biology."

And he saw it. "Then, what you're saying is that the computer issues a set of instructions, filters, to this lobe in the brain. It creates the new personality, with whatever its gifts and limitations, knowledge and limitations, by the limits of the filter. Selectively, it allows to come through only those things that are relevant to the personality it is designing."

"Exactly! And then it reinforces them in a more or less traditional manner. Our drugs work because they fit specific receptors in the brain. The new chemical changes the synapse— the gap between neurons—and redirects the messages, shutting down some and diverting others. The drugs can do this—make you silly, or emotional, or sexy, or coldly distant, or whatever—because they mimic specific peptides the body has the potential to produce but for either genetic or environmental reasons did not. Once the computer has its filter in place, it can then trigger a real mechanism in the brain to create those new peptides naturally and continuously, and even determine the rate of release. These interact with the data allowed through the filters to the mind to create a specific end result. Finally, it can harden this personality by creating an external form that reinforces the personality and causes others to react to it in certain ways. A nymphomaniac in a gorgeous body with exaggerated physical attributes, for example. Then it's complete. And this filter is locked into place. It can only be changed in the same way it was created."

He was stunned. "Then—you can play god to your heart's content. You can make people into anything you want. Stupid, strong, obedient, handsome, beautiful—whatever. It is the nightmare of every ethical scientist. You can do more than all the genetic engineering and psychodrugs ever promised, easily and with no traces, while remaining yourself virtually immortal."

"There
are
limitations," said the psychiatrist. "We cannot give you what you never had. We can't increase real knowledge. If you knew how to play the piano before, we can retain that, perhaps make a mediocre pianist into a good or even great one through that focus of concentration I mentioned. But if you didn't know how to play the piano before, we can't give that ability to you. We filtered out Hasim's ability to read and write, but had he been illiterate, we could not have made
her
literate. It is mostly a process of subtraction.

"Nor, in fact, do we have immortality. Oh, life extension, certainly, and a physical quality of life, definitely, but not
in
definitely. Growing new brain cells is not like growing a new finger. The organ is too complex, and its components have interrelationships we are nowhere near solving. There is, however, between an eighty and ninety percent excess capacity. All other things being physically equal and nearly perfect, the death of old cells can be compensated for by unused parts. And to that the selectivity we mentioned and then also add the additional experience longer life brings, and we wind up giving ourselves centuries. How many it is hard to say. Five hundred to eight hundred is not, however, outside the bounds of possibility, and all that in the physically perfect body of a youngster. I myself am fifty-four, but physically I am twenty-two."

"Not gods, then," Connie put in, her voice barely a whisper, "but gods at least to those who don't have access. Demigods."

"Demigods is sufficient. We will retain the knowledge and continue to work on the cutting edge of technology while the masses are maintained and maintain us in a self-sufficient economic system stabilized by a practical but rigid social system."