Further: Beyond the Threshold (23 page)

I continued on toward the bridge, exchanging nods and pleasantries with every manner of biological, synthetic, and mix of the two along the way. But before I reached the entrance to the bridge, I heard a voice calling my name.

“Captain Stone, do you have a brief percentage of the day to spare?”

I turned and saw First Zel i’Cirea standing in an open doorway, dimly lit rooms beyond. Her dark-blue hair was pulled back into a tight knot at the back of her head, the sapphire-colored eye patch over her left eye in stark contrast to her alabaster skin.

“Certainly,” I said, a bit warily, and walked over. “What can I do for you?”

“I have something to show you.” She stepped to one side and motioned to the rooms beyond the door. Her manner was unusually solicitous, and I couldn’t help but be suspicious.

“Is there something wrong, First?”

“No, nothing like that,” she said, a faint smile on her lips that didn’t reach her eye. “I just wanted to get your opinion on something.”

I shrugged. “I’m in no particular hurry.”

As I stepped into the room, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom beyond. There was someone standing in the far corner in the shadows, a low couch, and a pair of chairs.

“Do come in,” Zel said as the door closed behind me. “Captain Stone, I believe you’ll recognize my guest?”

The figure stepped out of the shadows. As the light fell across his features, he stood revealed as an old man in his late seventies, if not older, hair white and thin against dark skin, shoulders slumped and knees slightly bent.

It was me. Or rather, the me I’d been just a few days before.

“What is this?” the old me said angrily. He took a few steps forward and pointed an arthritic finger in my direction. “Who the hell is
he
supposed to be? What kind of game are you playing, lady?”

“My questions exactly,” I said. It was disorienting, hearing my voice come out of another’s mouth, much less someone who looked exactly as I had only a short time before. I turned to Zel. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the Amazon said with a faint smile. “Perhaps you prefer
this
model?”

She glanced at the old man, who seemed to waver for a moment like an image reflected in a rippling pool. When he steadied again, he now appeared to be about thirty, in the prime of life, looking so much like me that I could have been gazing into a mirror.

“Look,” the other me said, as though nothing had changed, “I’ve played along this far, but I think I deserve some answers. Where am I? What’s going on?”

“All of your questions will be answered in time,” Zel said serenely, “but first, I have a question of my own. Who are you?”

The other me straightened, forcibly controlling himself. “Captain Ramachandra Jason Stone, UNSA, commander of
Wayfarer One
. Now, I demand to know where I am.”

“What’s the last thing you remember, Captain Stone?” Zel asked.

“Going into cryogenic suspension on board my ship,” he answered dismissively. “Now, who
are
you people? Where’s my crew? Where’s my ship?”

Ignoring the other me, Zel turned and looked my way. “Go ahead, ask him a question, if you like. As many questions as you feel are necessary to establish his identity.”

I narrowed my eyes and looked hard at my second-in-command. Her words were friendly enough, but there was a hard edge to her voice, and I didn’t like the way things were heading.

“It’s a holographic projection, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Well, naturally,” she answered, “but I could just as easily have fabricated a physical body, if I’d so chosen. There are no extant samples of R. J. Stone’s genetic material in the historical record, but I’m sure we’d have been able to cobble together a reasonable facsimile that would stand up to any rigorous examination.”

“What are you people talking about?” the other me said, his tone growing angrier by the moment. “I demand to speak to someone in charge!”

Zel shrugged, casting a sidelong glance at the other me. “His speech is more than a little clichéd, I’ll admit, and I have him speaking and understanding Common and not Information Age English, but his personality template was a rushed job, and I’m hardly an expert at this. If I’d had time to bring in someone with the appropriate experience—a dramatist, perhaps—the dialogue would doubtless be improved. But this is good enough to prove my point, I think.”

“What point?” I demanded, growing a bit hot myself.

“Ask him a few questions, Captain Stone, and
then
I’ll tell you.”

I stood, fixing her with a hard stare.

“
Fine
,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll start. Captain Stone”—she turned to the other me—“when and where were you born?”

“March 2, 2136 CE, Bangalore, India,” the other me answered, with pause.

“I included a compulsion to answer questions,” Zel said in an aside to me, “just to speed the process along, but if you prefer to read in a lengthy delay and a bit of back-and-forth, that’s perfectly fine.” She turned back to the other me. “And who were your genetic donors.” She paused, and then added, “I’m sorry, who were your
parents
?” She glanced my way. “It’s sometimes hard for Pethesileans to keep the facts of sexual reproduction straight, I’m afraid.”

“My father was Jonathan Stone, and my mother was Sanjoevani Pilot.”

“What’s this supposed to prove?” I asked impatiently.

“Patience, Captain. Now, what was your favorite entertainment as a child?”

“
Earth Force Z
,” the other me answered. “And
The Adventures of Space Man
.”

“Who was the first female you ever loved, aside from your parent?”

“Vijaya Nelliparambil.”

“What’s your favorite curse?”

“
Madar chowd
.”

“What pastime do you enjoy but not find enough time to pursue?”

“The game of Go.”

“Where did you learn the game?”

“From Eiji Hayakawa, my commanding officer on board lunar buoy tender
Orbital Patrol Cutter 972
.”

“How did you…?”

“OK, OK,” I said angrily, raising my hands. “This is a great trick—you two must be loads of fun at parties. Now, what’s this all about?” I thought of the digital copy of Amelia Apatari, currently residing in the signet ring on my finger. “Did you get hold of a copy of my mind?”

“No,” Zel said in a clipped tone. “I’ve not once referred to any of the recordings done of your connectome or genome, either those done by the crew of my mining ship or the ones carried out by Maruti Sun Ghekre the Ninth.” She drew her mouth into a tight, hard smile. “Next theory?”

“Look, I’m getting tired of this!” the other me shouted, taking a step forward. “If I don’t get—”

“Enough,” Zel snapped and, with a wave of her hand, froze the other me in his tracks. He was struck silent, and absolutely immobile, like a paused playback. “He was getting a bit tiresome, don’t you think?”

I stepped forward, leaning in to examine the holographic projection more closely. Seen from a distance of only a few centimeters, I noticed that the fine details were wrong. A meter or two away and it looked just like me, but on close inspection, the nostrils were a little too flared, the eyebrows slightly the wrong shape, the lips not quite full enough.

“All right, I give up.” I straightened, and turned to face Zel. “What’s this supposed to prove?”

Zel fell into one of the nearby chairs, legs folded and arms arranged gracefully across her chest. She motioned me toward the other chair with an incline of her head, but I preferred to stand.

Zel motioned to the frozen holograph. “It took me only an insignificant fraction of a day to draft our friend this morning. And he’s able to answer any number of questions put to him about the private life of Ramachandra Jason Stone. Correct?”

“Yes, but—”

“And his general appearance is consistent with recorded images of Stone that survive to the present as well, yes?”

“I don’t know,” I said tiredly. “I haven’t seen any.”

“Well,
I
have. I’ve been studying them, in fact, ever since your ship was ‘discovered.’ I’ve been studying everything I can find about the life of Captain Ramachandra Jason Stone. And do you know what I’ve discovered?”

“No. What?”

“That everything about you is in perfect accord with history’s record. And do you know what that fact suggests to me?”

I took a labored sigh. “No,” I said through clenched teeth. “What?”

“I’ll put it simply, Captain Stone,” she said, all trace of warmth or humor gone from her voice. “I think that you’re just a better version of our somewhat repetitive subsentient friend here.”

“
What
?”

“I don’t think that you’re real.” Zel spoke slowly, enunciating broadly, as though talking to a child. “You are nothing more than a constructed personality in a well-crafted suit of flesh, passed off as a figure from history and legend.”

I blinked, slowly, unable to believe what I was hearing. “You think I’m a
what
?”

“A simulation, a copy, a replica. An artificial personality constructed from everything that’s known about the historical Stone, drawn from diaries, journals, biographies, government records, what have you. A pawn in someone else’s game.”

“I’m a…In whose game?”

“Well,” Zel said calmly, “let’s examine the facts, shall we? Who has the most to gain by passing you off as the genuine article? And, more importantly, who has the resources to do so?”

“I don’t…” I trailed off and found that I was pacing the room, my hands twisted into white-knuckled fists at my sides.

“I’ll tell you,” Zel went on, not waiting for me to continue. “The Plenum. After all,
they
were the ones to authenticate the age of the derelict craft, remember? And after shepherding you around the Entelechy, showing you off in a few crowded locales, they suddenly decide to contribute to the
Further
fund, which hasn’t interested the AIs in the slightest in a hundred years. And who do they pick as their sole representative in the crew?”

“Look—”

“And when one of their number volunteers to act as the governing intelligence of the
Further
, it just
happens
to be built on the template of the same AI who was your nursemaid and guide? Doesn’t that seem somewhat unlikely?” Zel stopped and fixed me with a hard stare, one eye narrowed, the sapphire eye patch glittering over the other. When she spoke again, her voice was cold and sharp, like a knife made of ice. “Doesn’t it?”

“Hold on a minute,” I said, raising my hands before me. “You’ve asked a hell of a lot of questions, so give me a chance to answer, all right?”

Zel drew her mouth into a tight line, but kept silent.

I couldn’t help but think about Amelia in her ring, unable to tell whether she was sentient or not. I found that the only answer that occurred to me was the same answer she’d come up with as well.

“Look, I can’t prove that I’m real, I suppose, if you’re capable of doing”—I waved toward the holograph—“all of that. The only thing I can tell you is that I
feel
real. You might be able to program a simulation into saying it remembers my parents, but I actually
do
remember my parents. There’s a difference.”

“Is there? Suppose you’re only telling
yourself
that you remember them? And even if you
do
remember them, that memory could have been lathed out for you by an AI dramatist, for all you know. Memory is hardly infallible.”

I shook my head wearily and started for the door. I’d had enough of this line of discussion for one morning.

“Well, then I guess I’ll just have to keep on acting as if I’m real until proven otherwise.”

“Captain Stone,” Zel called out as the door slid open in front of me. “Don’t you want to take your new friend with you?” She motioned toward the frozen holograph.

I forced a smile on my lips, without any trace of humor. “He’s all yours, First.”

The door slid shut behind me, and I was once more alone in the corridor.

I could feel my pulse racing, and as I continued on toward the bridge, I steadied my breathing, following the pranayama exercises my mother had taught me.

But
had
she taught me? Had the mother I remembered ever even existed? Was I, was Amelia, were all of us, just simulations, merely pawns in some complex political maneuvered going on far above my head?

I didn’t know. I
couldn’t
know, I realized. All that was certain was that I didn’t
feel
like a constructed personality.

But it was all academic, right? I was real.

Wasn’t I?