Capacity (19 page)

“What does that mean?” Helen asked.

“Look it up,” Judy said.

Out of Penumbra, back in one of the EA’s regular processing spaces, Zinman was running towards the entrance of a Lite station, hoping to lose himself in the crowds. A simple rectangular door opened in the air just in front of him and Helen tumbled out, naked and bleeding from where she had torn the thorns from her body. She caught Zinman around the waist and dragged him to the ground.

“Leave him, Helen,” Judy commanded, stepping easily through the doorway behind her. It was a relief to be back in a digital France, under the plain dull sky, to smell the salt air of the sea.

Helen released Zinman and gave him a nasty smile. “Okay, give him the pill, Judy. I’ll take one as well. I want to feel this, too.”

Zinman gave a whimper. Out here, away from the illusions of Penumbra, he was just a thin old man—sunken grey cheeks with three-day stubble, pale green eyes like a fish’s that bulged from hollow sockets. He licked his dry lips with a dry tongue.

“I don’t think so, Helen,” Judy said. “I’m going to hand the correction of this one across to one of my sisters. We haven’t got time to do it ourselves. We came to Zinman because we wanted to find Kevin, remember?”

Helen spat at him, and Zinman flinched. “I want the bastard to suffer,” she growled.

Judy stared at Helen, concentrating.

Helen gave a shout of disbelief as she realized what was happening.

“What? You’re actually trying to correct
my
behavior?”

“I correct everyone’s behavior,” Judy said. “Zinman, talk to me about Kevin.”

Zinman wiped a white trail of spit from his cheek. “What about him?” he moaned. “It’s years since I met him. He never went into Penumbra. He couldn’t stand the true reality.” He looked thoughtful. “In some ways he’s even more conservative than you, Judy.”

“I’m the most liberal person you will ever meet, Zinman. I’m holding Helen back, aren’t I?”

Zinman gaped at Helen and shivered.

Judy leaned closer to him. “You’re frightened of the wrong person, Zinman,” she whispered. “Tell me. Did Kevin get you into one of his processing spaces?”

Zinman looked down. “He came to me in the atomic world. Back then, he was only an image in a viewing field. I was just the one person then, the atomic Zinman.”

“Why did he come to you?”

“He said he’d read my profile. He claimed to know what it was that I really wanted.”

“And what was that?”

“You know.” Zinman dropped his gaze. “What you said in there.”

“Dominance? Is that what he offered?” Judy tilted her head questioningly.

“Not as such…” Zinman said. “But pleasure, hedonism. The chance to live my dreams.”

The salt wind blew from the sea. Helen hardly noticed that she was shivering; she was too absorbed by the grey wreck of a man kneeling before her.

“ ‘The chance to live my dreams’? Tell me the truth, Zinman.”

“That is the truth!”

“So what were your dreams? Say the words.”

“Dominance,” Zinman said in a small voice. “Rape.”

Judy shot Helen a warning glare, but Helen just stood gazing, her arms firmly wrapped around her breasts, more for warmth than modesty.

“Kevin just seemed to know what I wanted, Judy. No offense, but he left Social Care standing. I didn’t know I had those wishes myself until he reached inside me and drew them out.”

“Zinman…” Judy warned.

“Okay, they were
my
wishes. I suspected they were there, but it was Kevin who gave me the chance to live them. He kindled the fire. There’s something about Kevin. You wouldn’t know unless you’d met him. He’s not like most people. He’s old-fashioned. Out of time, like he’s not really a man at all. More of a…” He looked at Helen and something awoke in his eyes. “Oh…” he began.

“Is he the one who persuaded you to make a personality construct of yourself?” Judy said quickly.

“Yes, I suppose he was,” Zinman said in some surprise. “I never thought about that before. I used to interface with his processing spaces from the atomic world, but Kevin persuaded me that it would be more satisfying if I was in there with the…clients.”

“Victims, Zinman. Say the word.”

“Victims.” A thought occurred to him, a difficult one. “He had me in his power as soon as I did that, didn’t he?”

“That will be something for you to think about later. Have you met Kevin since you had this PC made?”

“Oh, yes, many times. He used to come to my processing space all the time. Always with his servant in tow.”

“What did he come there for? Recreation?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think he got his kicks on a more
mental
plane than I did. He liked controlling people without having to touch them. Now
there’s
power.” He blinked, looking into Judy’s black eyes. “You’ve done something to me, haven’t you? It’s like I’m seeing things clearly for the first time.”

“I’m good at my job,” Judy said.

“You are. But you’re like Kevin, aren’t you? You’re doing to me what he does. You both manipulate people: get them to do what you want. Did the Watcher teach you that?”

“I’ve never met the Watcher.”

“No, but you follow its wishes.” Zinman shook his head. “That’s what I mean, Judy: we have no free will out here. We only do what we are told, whether we are aware of it or not.”

“I asked about Kevin,” Judy said. “If you wanted to, could you summon him?”

“Penumbra is the only place to live.” Zinman’s voice sounded slurred. He looked back and forth, trying to concentrate on something. “Kevin lives in the Shawl. He is made in the factory, over and over again. In the factory. Over and over again. Oh. I think I…Over and over…”

His voice faded away, leaving him staring into space.

“What have you done to him?” Helen asked.

“Nothing.” Judy frowned. “I think that something has been done to—Hold on.” She reached out and took hold of her console. “I’m calling up his VRep.”

She studied the shape that formed in the air before her: a loop of tape clunking round and round between two hemispheres. “But that’s impossible!” she murmured in disbelief. “I thought we cured that years ago.”

“Cured what?” Helen asked nervously.

“Recursion. The White Death. I guess Kevin didn’t want him telling us any more about how to find him. He got a recursive meme into Zinman’s head.” She bit her lip. “We’d better get back up to the Shawl. We’ll take the direct route. I want to talk this over with my sisters. There’s something strange going on here. I’m beginning to wonder about Kevin. I think there is more to this than just the Private Network.”

She stood up and made to go, but was halted by the expression on Helen’s face.

“What’s the matter?”

“Is he dead?” Helen stared at Zinman.

“Not exactly, but his mind is in a loop. I doubt if we can get it out of that.”

“Good,” said Helen. “He deserved it.”

“It’s not for us to say who deserves what,” Judy replied.

“Really. Except you, maybe?”

“No, not even me.”

Helen stared at Judy. “He was playing with my mind, wasn’t he? Literally shaping my thought patterns!”

“Not literally, Helen, but even as a PC your mind is dependent on your virtual body. People like Zinman are experts at warping your hormones and glands and sending your mind curving off down other paths.”

“And you let him do it!” Helen’s voice cracked.

“No,
you
let him do it. Helen, the next time you go to Penumbra, you won’t have me to look after you. You have to learn to handle these things on your own.”

Helen gazed deeply into Judy’s calm eyes. There was a tiny flicker there, just enough to convince Helen that her suspicions were correct.

“But that’s not all there was to it, is it, Judy? You liked what happened to me in there. You enjoyed watching them take me apart. You knew that you could stop them at any moment, so essentially I was safe, but even so,
you let them do it
.”

“I took no enjoyment in watching, Helen.”

“Hah! I don’t believe you. Watching is what you do, Judy. Like Zinman said, it’s how all the people in Social Care get their yayas.”

“We always accuse others of what we wish to do ourselves, Helen.”

“But that’s the point, Judy. I’ve done it all. You’re the one who hasn’t. You’re the virgin. You’re the one who gets her kicks by listening in to the illicit memories of others.”

She tore a last piece of rose thorn from her hair and flung it to the ground.

“I’m beginning to understand what Zinman was talking about. The Transition is a huge confidence trick. The Watcher has laid down the path that it wants us all to follow, and you willingly steer us along it saying it is for our own good. Hypocrites! You’re all hypocrites!”

The Atomic Judy 3: 2240

Ten years ago,
when she was nineteen, Judy had known everything. She wore her chastity like a shield between her black kimono and her lithe body, and she walked with a calm self-assurance that allowed the former to spice the latter. Her black hair was pulled up to reveal her long white neck sliding smoothly down to the promise of her naked body beneath her clothes.

“Into the main hall,” Frances said, speaking through Judy’s console. “I think that’s where I should like it to take place.”

Judy walked through a door like any other and into the huge space of the factory. A woman in a white jumpsuit was gazing up at a great yellow wishbone being pulled slowly from two flat pools of golden liquid set in the floor. She straightened up as she saw Judy and gave her an inquiring smile.

“It’s all right, Ms. Barbucci; she’s with me.” The woman’s expression changed to something like respect as Frances’ voice sounded from her console.

“You must be Judy,” she said, taking her by the arm. “Come this way. I have some things laid out waiting.”

She led Judy around the low lip of one of the circular pools from which they were pulling the wishbone. The syrupy liquid it contained seemed no more than a few centimeters deep, yet as they circled its calm surface, Judy saw another half-meter or so of smooth yellow material slide from the pool.

“The finished object must be all one piece,” explained Ms. Barbucci, pointing upwards to where her leg of the wishbone joined the one emerging from the other pool.

“What’s it for?” The yellow shape was beautiful in its flawless way, possessing a balance and symmetry to its sweeping form.

“Energy column for Jupiter. They drop a stack of these things about four thousand kilometers long into the upper atmosphere. They sing like tuning forks, I’m told.”

Judy eyed the wishbone appreciatively. She wondered: if she took a little blue pill, would she be able to hear the latent note that would someday ring from it?

“Why don’t you grow your body like that, Frances?” she wondered aloud.

“I thought about it,” said the voice on her console. “But I want to live on a human scale and see the world the way you see it.”

“I still don’t quite understand why. But thank you anyway, Frances. Thank you for inviting me to your birthday.”

“Who else would I invite? Now, that looks like the place.”

A white rectangle, the size of a large room, had been painted on the factory floor. The area inside was stacked with rolls of silver cloth, piles of black chips, rusty tangles of steel wire, fluffy clumps of white stuff, glistening blue sponge…

“My birthplace,” Frances sighed.

Judy stepped onto the white rectangle and looked around. She felt dwarfed by the activity of the rest of the factory. Some people called this place the Source; it was where the first sections of the Shawl had been designed. Now they reproduced by themselves in the space beneath the factory, the blue-white disc of the Earth lying thousands of kilometers below. If you looked down through the great transparent lens in the factory floor, you could see some of the newly born sections turning end over end, waiting to be joined to the uppermost row of the Shawl itself, from where they would begin their long procession downwards as other rows were added above them, until eventually they were released….

But there were other things made here, too. Some of them were quarantined: new types of robot, experimental star drives, VNM designs that had the potential to reproduce unchecked. But everything else was open to inspection. Not far away was a swarm of silver VNMs busily working away, repeatedly forming themselves into metal towers, springing almost as high as the wishbone above before shrinking to nothing, rising and falling like the bars on a graphic equalizer as they tried and failed to find an optimal shape.

“Frances?” The voice came from Judy’s console. It was deeper, yet in some imprecise way more feminine than her friend’s.

“Sukara!” Frances called, “I’m so pleased you’re here.”

“Don’t forget us!” chorused two other voices.

“Lemuel! Cadence!”

“We couldn’t let you leave us without saying good-bye.”

“But I’m not leaving you!”

Judy tried to adopt an impassive expression, but she couldn’t manage it. Her face wobbled in a tearful smile. She was dimly aware of the sacrifice Frances was making.

“Now, stop that, Judy. We need you to look after our friend!”

“I will,” Judy said, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

“She will,” Frances agreed. “They know you will, Judy. That’s why they’re having this conversation at a human level—so you can listen in. They respect you. They think you’re all right.”

“For a human,” Sukara laughed.

High above, a cloud of scarlet gas was twisting as it drifted up the side of the incredibly high, domed roof of the factory. Judy guessed the shape that was coalescing up there must be the size of a small town. The gas, the wishbone, the heaving mass of VNMs, all these made her aware just how small she herself was. She had a sudden, greater, insight into what Frances was doing: cutting herself loose from the wider domain of the processing spaces to trap herself in one small body.

“Frances,” Judy said, suddenly humble. “You know I’m flattered, but why me?”

“I’ll tell you, but you might think I’m being rude.”

“I won’t. I’m a counselor for SC. We’re supposed to understand other points of view. You helped train me.”

“And I saw a potential in you I have seen in no other human. You know that. But that’s not why I chose you. You want to know why? It’s because I know your limitations better than any other human’s.”

Judy smiled. “I can see how that could be a compliment.”

“It wasn’t intended as a compliment,” Frances said. “It was just a statement of fact. Now, I think I’m ready. See the blue sponge?”

It looked like glistening transparent blue jelly, sitting in a shallow tank near her feet. Tiny silver bubbles fizzed inside it.

“I see it,” Judy said.

“Drop one of the reserve VNMs from your console into the sponge.”

Judy held her console over the blue jelly, the silver bubbles fizzing excitedly towards her, and watched as a tiny silver-grey machine dropped into the tank.

“Will that be enough?” she asked. “Don’t you need special machines? That VNM is the one that I usually use for repairing rips in clothes.”

Frances and the other AIs laughed from the console. “That’s such a human thing to say, Judy. All machines can make other ones eventually. There is nothing special about the materials—only the shaping intelligence.”

The little machine seemed to dissolve into the tank.

“How long will it take?” Judy whispered.

“Shhh…It’s happening already.”

The silver bubbles in the tank were rushing together, forming shapes. Silver rods formed of bubbles rose to the surface, bringing the jelly up with them. A blue spongy skeleton began climbing from the tank, even as it formed itself. Blue arms gripped the sides as a blue blob looking something like a brain pulled itself clear of the surrounding goo.

“All right,” Frances said, “I’m ready…”

Voices called from the console.

“Good-bye.”

“Good luck, dear.”

“Come home to us.”

The blue skeleton swayed as it rose from the tank. In some strange way, it seemed to be looking directly at Judy. She backed away uncertainly.

“No, Judy, stay. I need to touch you.”

The voice came from her console, but Judy had no doubt that Frances was now speaking from the blue skeleton. She swallowed hard, then held out her arm. The blue skeleton took her wrist in a cold, fizzing grip.

“I’m giving up so many viewpoints, Judy, but this. To really touch something for the first time…”

Something like a blue hand ran itself across Judy’s face. She forced herself not to flinch.

“Oh, Judy, I have so many more ways of experiencing the world than you, yet even so, I feel so restricted. But if I was everywhere, I would not be a robot. It is necessary for me to withdraw into this body to get the human perspective.”

The blue skeleton gripped Judy for support as it looked around the factory, up at the scarlet shape that had formed in the roof space, back at the last motion of the stacks of VNMs behind them which seemed to have settled on a final shape.

Rain began to fall over half the extent of the factory floor. Judy could look through the silver curtain of water to the dry floor lying beyond the golden pools. Fat drops splashed against her kimono, plastering the thin silk against her skin.

“Why is it raining?” she asked.

“You know,” Frances said in a voice of awed wonder, “I don’t know straight off. I have to look it up.”

“It’s not too late to come back, Frances,” called one of the voices from the console.

“No, Lemuel. I want to stay…”

“Aren’t you going to put a skin on?” Sukara asked. There came a crackling noise from around the base of the brain of the blue skeleton, and then Frances spoke from the robot’s body.

“Oh, yes, I know the perfect thing. Judy, help me.”

Frances led Judy across the factory floor, the black-and-white woman supporting this blue, spongy, fizzing, stick creature. They were heading towards the base of one of the wishbone legs.

Frances climbed into the yellow pool and Judy watched the blue skeleton sink beneath its surface.

“But the wishbone is so hard,” said Judy. “Frances won’t be able to move.”

“Frances was an expert engineer,” Cadence said. The surface of the yellow pool began to stir.

“She still is,” Judy murmured. None of the omnipresent AIs were so rude as to contradict her.

Frances emerged from the pool in a golden suit, yellow liquid slowly setting around her body like buttery toffee. Frances’ body was to be smooth and featureless, and Judy had a sudden flash of recognition: that was how she, Judy, liked to think of herself. And then she saw the buttons between Frances’s legs, and she heard a peal of laughter from her console.

“You’re her template, Judy,” Sukara explained. “She’s not been totally honest with you. Already the strain of being focused into one point is restricting her. She’s reacting to you. She’s the rest of you. She’s exploring humanity by completing you.”

Ten years later, Judy and Frances stood on a road that wound its way along the Brittany coastline. White spray, carried by the brisk wind from waves crashing on the rocks below, glistened on Judy’s golden skin. She moved her head this way and that, searching for a route to Peter Onethirteen.

“My feet are cold.”

“Put your tabi back on, then,” Frances said, pointing to the scraps of material tucked into the white silk of her friend’s obi.

“They’re genuine cotton!” Judy said indignantly. “They’ll get stained.”

The wind gusted again and she shivered. The pines standing on the low hills that rose out of the sand dunes were almost doubled over, their branches waving inland, bent by the ceaseless winds blowing over the iron-grey sea.

“This way.” Frances led her along a strip of rough grass weaving inland from the sand dunes between the green reeds of a saltmarsh.

“I hate this wilderness.” Judy fastidiously pulled the legs of her cotton trousers up a little. She had tucked the five separate robes of her dress up into her sash to stop them getting dirty. “The sooner they release VNMs to convert the whole Earth to plastic, the better.”

Frances laughed. “I find it quite sensual. You’re too clinical, Judy. I’m sure that your digital selves have a better time of it. They can always take refuge in the thought that their world is all bits, in the end.”

“And my world is all atoms. It’s all the same.”

The air was damp. Rough grass coated in gritty sand rubbed against their legs as they strode on through the no-man’s-land between the dunes and the low green hills. Ahead of them, a sparkling pattern of lavender lights formed a wall in the air as a warning. Judy waved her hand through the barrier experimentally. Frances stepped straight through and turned to wait for her friend.

“According to the records, the atomic Peter Onethirteen spends most of his time in here,” she said. “I can see why. I sometimes think about coming to live in a common land. It seems to me to be an echo of the thinking behind the Shawl, only without compromise—purer.”

“You should move to Penumbra.” Judy took a deep breath, then followed her friend through the lavender wall.

“See, you’re still alive,” Frances said.

Judy ignored her, examining a scrubby brown tree that twisted itself close to the ground, its ragged green leaves flickering in the wind. The overlaps of her robes flickered in sympathy. “Look at that tree. Is it natural, or a venumb?”

“Natural,” Frances said. “It’s a hawthorn. Now
that
looks like a venumb to me.”

Judy turned in the direction she was pointing. Keeping just inside the lavender wall, a brown spider bush shuffled backwards, tugging at a piece of silver foil. Silver metal hinges bent and clicked, forming joints in the brown thorny twigs that comprised its legs.

“Where did the foil come from?” she asked.

“Trunk of another spider tree, probably,” Frances said. “Let’s follow it. It’s heading in Peter’s direction.”

Sand spilled across the green mounds in long yellow tongues. Judy’s ankles felt cold and raw from the damp abrading wind. The spider bush seemed unconcerned, its legs clicking along like clockwork, the topmost joints weaving in loops like knitting needles as it dragged its prize back home. Next to the bright colors of Judy’s kimono, it looked dull and unimpressive.