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Taking a step closer, I recognize the ditto under the hood. Maestra’s executive assistant, her face a conservative gray tone, perfectly matching her attire.
“Will you come with me, please?”
She beckons and I follow … away from Wammaker’s. “Our meeting concerns sensitive topics, better discussed elsewhere,” she explains, handing me a cowled robe like her own. “Please put this on.”
If I were real, I might worry. Could the maestra be pla
I put the robe on and follow.
A small service elevator takes us down, back to the low-rent floors of the old mall. Doors open and my guide heads straight for a nondescript storefront with opaque windows, bearing the name RENEWAL ASSOCIATES. I follow her into a realm of hanging fabrics that shimmer with piezoluminescence, wafting in tailored breezes. Some effort’s even gone to growing indoor plants that provide a welcoming atmosphere. Mostly simple ferns and ficus. But your eye is meant to be drawn elsewhere, to holo posters of Gineen and her best affiliates — women and men whose copies offer sybaritic pleasures to those weary of mere sex.
Off the waiting room stand shaded booths where clients may consult privately with special advisers. Still, it’s not as elegant as Wammaker’s. The maestra must be branching out.
“Please wait,” the assistant says, pointing to a straightback wooden chair … no doubt a precious antique, and uncomfortable as well. I stand again as soon as she departs. My golem blanks have relax-a-stilt joints. Sitting is redundant.
Of course I’ll be kept waiting, so I pull out a cheap reading plaque and dial up the Journal of Antisocial Proclivities. Since Ritu Maharal proclaimed that her father was murdered, I thought about looking up homicide. (I wonder how gray number one is doing right now. Have I reached any conclusions yet?) But after passing through Studio Neo, my thoughts wander toward another problem. Decadence.
Are the new puritans right? Is golemtech hardening our hearts?
Clara calls this place a “soul-callus.”
“Today we can wallow in depravity without paying for it in disease or hangovers,” she said only last week. “The oldest profession’s been updated for a new age, without prisons, prudity, or any need for empathy. What a deal.”
Me, I’m usually less cynical. Life is better in lots of ways. Wealthier. More tolerant. No one cares what shade of brown your real skin is.
But my grays do vary a bit from one another and this one feels a dour suspicion that Clara may be right.
Blinking, I notice that the reading plaque already glows with a selected journal article. It must’ve done an iris-dilation interest scan while I pondered gloomy thoughts. (Who says dittos don’t have a subconscious?)
Sublimation of the Immortality Impulse:
A Return to Necromancy?
Ouch. What a title for a scientific paper! Not my usual cuppa tea. Still it’s intriguing. I wonder …
“Mr. Morris?”
It’s the assistant. I expected to be snubbed longer than that. Maybe Wammaker really is worried about something this time.
Looking up, I notice the assistant’s gray dittobody has blue eyes.
“The maestra will see you now.”
6
It’s Not Easy Being Green
I hate getting off the warming tray, throwing paper garments over limbs that still glow with ignition enzymes.
Not only am I a copy today, I’m the greenie.
Damn.
After a thousand times, it still feels like I’m being punished. Given a long list of nasty chores. Sent to take all sorts of risks you’d never put Lord Protobody through.
I start this pseudolife filled with dark feelings.
Ugh. What a mood. Archie must really be tired to start me off with a Standing Wave as gloomy as this. Any worse and I might’ve been a frankie …
Well, shrug it off! Today you’re an ant.
And green, at that. Leave philosophy to your betters.
Well, last night another green took on Beta’s henchdits, and won. A hero-duplicate, who slogged through hell to bring back vital news. So a green can matter! Even if today’s job is to fetch groceries, clean toilets, mow the lawn, and other horrors.
Grays get fancy realtime recorders. But I gotta do quick dumps into an old microtape ring. Post hoc. Don’t know why I bother. If Archie wants to know what I did today, he can inload and find out.
I rode into town behind gray number one, keeping both eyes tight shut while he swerved like a maniac, risking both of our carcasses, and nearly wrecked our last Vespa. Schmuck.
Left him in a park, waiting to meet the UK limo they’re sending over. He’ll see the beautiful Ritu soon, and talk to Vic Kaolin, and maybe investigate a murder.
And later, maybe tonight, realAlbert will get lonesome. He’ll go thaw the sybarite Clara left for us in her freezer. I felt a wave of irrational jealousy about that. A temptation to drive over to her houseboat and use it myself!
Of course I didn’t. Her dit would take one look at me and refuse to waste itself on the coarse senses of a green. Anyway, what’s the point? If I inload, I’ll rejoin Albert and share it all in realflesh. And when Clara returns from the front, I’ll share that reunion, too.
So I went about my chores. Visited the market, adding some fresh items to the normal delivery — fruits and deli stuff, plus a gourmet dish or two. Should arrive by the time Archie wakes from his nap. I hope I’ll like the herring. It’s Danish.
Dropped by the bank and updated my level three passcodes. Everyone does a monthly update in person, with biometric and chemical scans to verify you’re you. But for weeklies a ditto will do. No one can fake a personal Standing Wave. Anyway, it’s been years since the Big Heist. Some analysts think cyber crime is already passé.
That may be. But villainy still worries citizens. It comes up as a top priority every election. There must be nearly a hundred real cops in this city alone. If Yosil Maharal was murdered, that makes twelve homicides in the state so far this year. And summer’s barely half over.
I don’t fear being unemployed soon.
Oh, the phone rang while I was shopping. It was Pallie, needing some attention again.
Albert grumbled. “I’ve got three dits ru
Three dits?
Gray number one is busy with Ritu Maharal and Vic Kaolin — a big case, maybe a real moneymaker. Gineen Wammaker may tie up gray number two all day.
Care to bet I’ll be sent to hear Pal’s latest conspiracy theory?
Crum. What’s a greenie for?
Had to pick up the lawn mower from fix-it shop. Repairs cost eight-fifty, plus abatement fees for the old gas engine. Tied it securely to the back of the Vespa, but that messed the scooter’s balance. Nearly cracked up in a fast curve on the way home. Got a five-point violation, too. Crap.
At least the mower started right up. (Mitch, the repair guy, knows his stuff. He was there in person, this time.) Soon I had the lawn edged better than that orange-striped “gardener” everyone else in the neighborhood hires. Things grow on my tiny patch of earth. Roses. Fresh carrots and berries. I like growing things, same as Clara needs to hear water lapping on the hull of her houseboat.
Next, tackle the pile of dishes in the sink, then toilets. Might as well clean the whole damn house while I’m at it. Except vacuuming. Lord Archie’s gotta nap.
Ho-hum.
Some days I weigh existential matters. Simple ones a green can grasp. Like, should I volunteer NOT to inload tonight? I mean, why remember this banality? Albert’s already experienced nearly a hundred subjective years, counting golem recollections. Some techies put a theoretical max at five centuries. So why not conserve?