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1
THE SHIP
1.
Personality and memory download in progress. Please hold all thoughts in abeyance until mental overwrite is complete, or unexpected results may obtain.
Where was he? Who was he?
Information unavailable--all neural pathways occupied by emergency noetic adjustment. Please stand by. Normal thinking will resume presently.
What the hell was going on? What was wrong with his memory? He had been dreaming about burning children as he slept, and the shadow of aircraft spreading clouds of nano-bacteriological agent across a blasted landscape.…
This unit has not been instructed to respond to commands until the noumenal redaction palimpsest process is complete. Please hold all questions until the end; your new persona may be equipped with proper emotional responses to soothe uncertainties, or memory-information to answer questions of fact. Are you dissatisfied with your present personality? Select the Abort option to commit suicide memory-wipe and start again.
He groped his way toward memory, to awareness. Whatever the hell was happening to him, no, he did not want to start all over again. It had been something terrible, something stolen from him. Who was he?
He had the impression he was someone terrible, someone all mankind had gathered to ostracize. A hated exile. Who was he? Was he someone worth being?
If you elect to commit suicide, the new personality version will be equipped with any interim memory chains you form during this process, so he will think he is you, and the illusion of continuity will be maintained.…
"Stop that! Who am I?"
Primary memories written into cortex now. Establishing parasympathic paths to midbrain and hindbrain for emotional reflex and habit-pattern behavior. Please wait.
He remembered: he was Phaethon. He had been exiled from Earth, from the whole of the Golden Oecumene, because there was something he loved more than Earth, more than the Oecumene.
What had it been? Something inexpressibly lovely, a dream that had burned his soul like lightning--a woman? His wife? No. Something else. What?
Thought cycle complete. Initiating physical process.
"Why was I unconscious?"
You were dead.
"An error in the counteracceleration field?"
Marshal-General Atkins killed you.
The last soldier of Earth. The only member of the armed forces of a peaceful utopia, Atkins commanded godlike powers, weapons as deadly as the superhuman machine intelligences could devise. Strangely enough, the machines refused to use the weapons, refused to kill, even in self-defense, even in a spotless cause. Only humans (so said the machines), only living beings, should be allowed to end life.
There was a plan. Atkins's plan. Some sort of plan to outmaneuver the enemy. Phaethon's exile was part of that plan, something done to bring the agents of the Silent One out of hiding. But there were no details. Phaethon did not know the plan.
"Why did he kill me?"
You agreed.
"I don't remember agreeing!"
You agreed not to remember agreeing.
"How do I know that?"
The question is based on a false-to-facts supposition. Mind records indicate that you do not know that; therefore the question of how is counterfactural. Would you care to review the thought index for line errors?
"No! How do I know you are not the enemy? How do I know I have not already been captured?"
Please review the previous answer; the same result obtains.
"How do I know I am not going to be tortured, or my nervous system is not being manipulated?"
Your nervous system is being manipulated. Damaged nerves are about to be brought back to life temperature and revitalized. Would you like a neutralizer? There will be some pain.
"How much pain?"
You are going to be tortured. Would you like a discontinuity?
"What kind of discontinuity? An anaesthetic?"
Pain signals must be traced to confirm that the pain center of your brain is healthy. Naturally, it would be counterproductive to numb the pain under these circumstances, but the memory of the pain can be redacted from your final memory sequence, so that the version of you who suffers will not be part of the personal continuity of the version of you that wakes up.
"No more versions! I am I, Phaethon! I will not have my self tampered with again!"
You will regret this decision.
Odd, how matter-of-fact that sounded. The machine was merely reporting that he would, indeed, regret the decision.
And, just as he blacked out again, he did.
Copyright © 2003 by John C. Wright
