Reality Dysfunction - Emergence

“Yeah, on the first starship I can buy passage on. If I can get down to Durringham before any alarm gets out, then I can use one of the villagers’ Jovian Bank credit disks without any trouble. And with you in charge back here there wouldn’t be no alarm.”

“What about your Ivet friends, the ones you seem to be busy baptizing in blood?”

“Fuck ’em. I want out. I got business back on Earth, serious business.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“How about it? We could work it together. Me and the Ivets could round up the women and children during the day when the men are out hunting and farming, use ’em as hostages. Get ’em all into the hall and take their guns away. Once the men are disarmed, it’ll be no problem for you to incorporate ’em all. Then you just make ’em live like they do now. Anyone turns up later, Aberdale is just another crappy colonist village full of arse scratchers. I get what I want, which is out of here , and you get plenty of warm bods; plus there’s no more security risk of someone stumbling on this wood palace and shouting to Durringham about it.”

“I think you’re overestimating my ability.”

“No way. Not now I’ve seen what you’ve got. This incorporation gimmick has got to be like persona sequestration. You could run a whole arcology with that technology.”

“Yes, but the bitek regulators we implant would have to be grown first. I don’t have them in store, certainly not five hundred and fifty of them. It all takes time.”

“So? I ain’t going anywhere.”

“No, indeed. And of course, were I to agree, you would make no mention of me once you returned to Earth?”

“I’m no squeal. One of the reasons I’m here.”

Laton eased back onto his settee and gave Qui

Qui

“In the region of thirty-five years.”

“I figured something like that; you couldn’t have landed after the colonists arrived, not if you’re as well known as you say you are. Thirty-five years living in a tree without any windows, I gotta tell you, it ain’t me. In any case, I ain’t no Edenist, I don’t have this affinity trick to control the bitek.”

“That can be rectified, you can use neuron symbionts just like your friend Powel Manani. More than a third of my colleagues are Adamists, the rest are my children. You’d fit in. You see, I can give you what you want most.”

“I want Ba

“I meant, Qui

“Oh, yeah? What?”

“A form of immortality.”

“Bullshit. Even I know that ain’t on. The best the Saldanas can do is a couple of centuries, and that’s with all their money and genetic research teams.”

“That’s because they are going about it the wrong way. The Adamist way.”

Qui

“A combination of affinity and parallel thought-processes. You know Edenists transfer their memories into their habitat’s neural cells when they die?”

“I’d heard about it, yeah.”

“That’s a form of immortality, although I consider it somewhat unsatisfactory. Identity fades after a few centuries. The will to live, if you like, is lost. Understandable, really, there are no human activities to maintain the spark of vitality which goads us on, all that’s left is observation, living your life through your descendants’ achievements. Hardly inspiring. So I began to explore the option of simply transferring my memories into a fresh body. There are several immediate problems which prevent a direct transfer. Firstly you require an empty brain capable of storing an adult’s memories. An infant brain would be empty, but the capacity to retain an adult personality, the century and a half of accumulated memories that go towards making us who we are, that simply isn’t there. So I began looking at the neuron structure to see if it could be improved. It’s not an area that’s been well researched. Brain size has been increased to provide a memory capacity capable of seeing you through a century and a half, and IQ has been raised a few points, but the actual structure is something the geneticists have left alone. I started to examine the idea of human parallel thought-processing, just like the Edenist habitats. They can hold a million conversations at once, as well as regulating their environment, acting as an administrative executive, and a thousand other functions, although they have only the one consciousness. Yet we poor mortal humans can only ever think about or do one thing at a time. I sought to reprofile a neural network so that it could conduct several operations simultaneously. That was the key. I realized that as there was no limit to the number of operations which could be conducted, you could even have multiple independent units, bonded by affinity, and sharing a single identity. That way, when one dies, there is no identity loss, the consciousness remains intact and a new unit is grown to replace it.”

“Unit?” Qui

“I mean a human body with a modified brain, bonded to any number of cloned replicas via affinity. That is the project to which I have devoted my energies here in this exile. With some considerable degree of success, I might add, despite the difficulties of isolation. A parallel-processing brain has been designed, and my colleagues are currently sequencing it into my germ plasm’s DNA. After that, my clones will be grown in exowombs. Our thoughts will be linked right from the moment of conception, they will feel what I feel, see what I see. My personality will reside in each of us equally, a homogenized presence. Ultimately, this original body will wither away to nothing, but I shall remain. Death shall become a thing of the past for me. Death will die. I intend to spread out through this world until its resources belong to me, its industries and its population. Then a new form of human society will take shape, one which is not governed by the blind overwhelming biological imperative to reproduce. We shall be more ordered, more deliberate. Ultimately I envisage incorporating bitek constructs into myself; as well as human bodies I will be starships and habitats. Life without temporal limit nor physical restriction. I shall transcend, Qui

Sheer willpower kept Qui