Kiln People

I should move toward Ritu, since she summoned me. But it’s a platinum Kaolin-ditto who dominates the scene. Is it the same one I met earlier this morning? Must be, since it gives a nod of recognition before returning attention to a vid call — consulting with underlings and advisers, I reckon. All the onscreen images look worried. Yosil Maharal was a vital member of their organization. Some major project may be in big trouble.

Damn. I half-hoped Kaolin himself would show up for this tragic scene, taking a short ride down from that silvery dome. Maybe he’s a genuine recluse, after all.

A jet black technical specialist finishes waving his wand of instruments over the casket, subjecting the cadaver to cascades of glittering light. The expert turns to Ritu Maharal.

“I have repeated all scans, Miss. Again, there is nothing to indicate your father’s accident had anything to do with foul play. No toxins or debilitating drugs. No needlemarks or infusion bruises. No trace of organic interference. His body chemistry does show signs of extreme fatigue, consistent with falling asleep at the wheel before driving inadvertently over the highway viaduct where he was found. This matches the conclusion of police investigators, who went over the wrecked vehicle and found no signs of tampering. And no indication of other persons, either in or near the car. I’m sorry if this news displeases you. But accidental death appears to be the correct diagnosis.”

Ritu’s face seems carved from stone, her coloration almost ditto white. She keeps silent, even as a tall gray moves close to put an arm around her. It’s a duplicate of her father — the one I met just a couple of hours ago — with a face resembling the corpse. Of course no man-made process can imitate the texture of real skin, durable enough to last decades, yet so worn and haggard-looking after more than half a century of cares. ditto Maharal stares down at his real self, knowing that a second, lesser death will come soon. Duplicates can only inload memories back to the original who made them. The Template Effect. So now he’s orphaned with no home base, no real brain to return to. Only a ticking expiration clock and pseudocells fast ru

In a sense, Yosil Maharal lingers on, able to contemplate his own passing. But his gray ghost will vanish in at most a few more hours.

As if sensing this, Ritu throws both arms around her daddit, squeezing tightly … but briefly. After a few seconds, she drops her arms and lets a matronly green lead her away. Perhaps an old na

She doesn’t see me.

What shall I do? Follow?

“Give her a while,” a voice says.

I turn and find ditMaharal, standing close.

“Don’t be concerned, Mr. Morris. My daughter is resilient. She’ll be much better in half an hour or so. I know Ritu wants to talk to you.”

I nod. Fine. I’m paid by the minute. Still, curiosity is my driver, whether I’m riding around in flesh or clay.

“She thinks you were murdered, Doc. Were you?”

The gray shrugs, looking rueful. “I must have sounded odd this morning, when we first met. Maybe a bit paranoid.”

“You downplayed it. But I felt—”

“—that there must be something? Where there’s smoke, there must be fire?” ditMaharal nodded, spreading his hands. “I was already recovering from my panic when I made this copy. Still, it felt — and feels — like emerging from a spell.”

“A spell?”

“A fantasy of technology gone mad, Mr. Morris. The same fear, perhaps, that Fermi and Oppenheimer experienced when they watched the first mushroom cloud at Trinity Site. Or something like the curse of Frankenstein, long delayed, but now coming true with a vengeance.”

Those words would give my original a case of the shivers. Even as a gray, I experience some visceral dread.

“You no longer feel that way?”

Maharal smiles. “Didn’t I just call it a fantasy? Humanity managed to evade destruction by atom bombs and designer germs. Maybe it’s best to trust that people will take on future challenges with common sense.”

He’s playing it coy, I think.

“Then could you please explain why you went into hiding, in the first place? Did you feel someone was after you? Why change your mind? Maybe your rig had a relapse after making you. The accident suggests sleepless anxiety, maybe panic.”

Maharal’s ghost-ditto ponders this for a moment, meeting my gaze — one gray to another. But before he can answer, Vic Aeneas Kaolin comes striding over, a stern look on his platinum face.

“Old friend,” he tells ditMaharal. “I know this is a hard time for you. But we must think about salvaging what we can. Your final hours should be put to good use.”

“What do you mean?”

“A debriefing, of course. To salvage your work for posterity.”

“Ah. I see. Pressure-injecting my brain with a million meshtrodes, zapping me with gamma rays to make an ultratomograph, then sifting every pseudoneuron through a molecular strainer. It doesn’t sound like a pleasant way to spend my last moments.” Maharal mulls it over, working his jaw with realistic expressions of tension. And I can sympathize. “But I suppose you’re right. If something can be preserved.” ditMaharal’s reluctance is understandable. I sure would hate to go through stuff like that. But how else can anything be retrieved? Only the original human template can inload a duplicate’s full memory. No other person or computer can substitute. If the template’s missing or dead, all you can do is physically sift the copy’s brain for crude sepia images — the only data that’s machine-readable from golemflesh.

The rest — your consciousness Standing Wave, the core sense of self that some call the soul — is little more than useless static.

There used to be an old riddle. Are the colors you see the same as the ones I see? When you smell a rose, are you experiencing the same heady sensations that I do, when I sniff the same flower?

Nowadays we know the answer.

It’s No.

We may use similar terms to describe a sunset. Our subjective worlds often correspond, correlate, and map onto each other. That makes cooperation and relationships possible, even complex civilization. Yet a person’s actual sensations and feelings remain forever unique. Because a brain isn’t a computer and neurons aren’t transistors.

It’s why telepathy can’t happen. We are, each of us, singular and forever alien.

“I’ll have a car take you to the lab,” ditKaolin tells ditMaharal, patting the arm of his friend, as if the two were real.

“I want to be present during the debriefing,” I inject, stepping in.

Kaolin isn’t happy about this. Again, I spot a trembling of his elegantly sculpted hand as he frowns.

“We’ll be covering sensitive company matters—”

“And some of the recovered images may shed light on what happened to that poor man.” I gesture toward realMaharal, lying cold in his coffin. Left unsaid is the fact that I’ve been hired by the body’s sole legal heir. Ritu could sue me for malpractice if I don’t attend the sifting. Legally, she might prevent anyone from dissecting her father’s ghost.

Kaolin considers, then nods.

“Very well. Yosil, would you go on ahead to the lab? Mr. Morris and I will come along once you’ve been prepped.” ditMaharal doesn’t answer at first. His expression seems far away, gazing at the door where Ritu departed, minutes before.

“Um, yes? Oh, all right. For the sake of the project. And the members of our team.”

He clasps Kaolin’s elegant hand briefly and gives me a curt nod. When next we meet, his head will be under glass and under pressure.

Now Maharal’s ghost departs toward the big atrium and the front door.

I turn back to Kaolin.

“Dr. M. mentioned having been fearful, on the run, as if someone might be hunting him.”