Wildcard (32 page)

The rubber man waited, as if wondering
whether Karl had more questions. He didn’t, and rubberman left.

A woman came in, unhooked the cable. She led
him to a comfortable room. Relaxed lighting, armchairs, a coffee
table, carpet. There was food on the table. He started to eat after
realizing he was famished.

“Please wait a moment, Mister Smith.” She
hooked a cable into his head again.

“
Mansworld is a replica of this world, isn’t it?”

“What?”

He repeated the question.

“I don’t know what
Mansworld
is. You may eat now. Try to eat
slowly.”

“Are you monitoring my eating?”

“Yes, also you will become nauseated if you
eat too quickly.”

After lunch, she asked him an endless series
of questions: life story, occasionally for minute details, like his
favorite color, happiest memory, saddest memory, favorite movie.
Much of it seemed trivial to him and he asked why it was
important.

“A quantum mind map requires accumulating
details. Your synaptic activity is being monitored and matched to
your answers. Describe your best friend.”

Karl told her about a man named Sam he had
known for years. They often walked the streets of Grenoble together
talking. A painter who sold his canvases on the sidewalk.

“Someone you love?”

“Martha. I don’t remember her so well. It’s
been a long time, ten years.”

“You’re a bit young to have an affair from
ten years ago.”

“Not an affair, more like a mother. I didn’t
have a real mother.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She looked at her electronic pad.
“Close your eyes, and see yourself with her. Any memory. Let it
build, then describe it in detail to me.”

He remembered Martha taking him to the Bois
de Boulogne on the edge of Paris to a kid’s play park. He met some
other children, much older. He seemed to get along poorly with kids
his own age. He walked her through the day, from leaving their
small apartment, taking the subway, buying tickets. She frequently
stopped him to ask about these details.

“Did a man or a woman sell you the
tickets?”

“A woman.”

“Describe her.”

They spent 5 days on the questions, then
moved on to physical, mental, emotional, and stressor responses. A
battery of exercises, mostly in very real seeming simulations,
testing his response to crisis and conflict. He was forced to argue
with people, fight others physically, and even kill someone to
prevent their killing an innocent. He stopped an armed robber in a
convenience store by talking him down. He felt good about that. He
solved puzzle after puzzle. Math, logic, language, visual acuity,
auditory. All of his senses were tested extensively. He listened to
music of all sorts, nature sounds, mechanical sounds,
overwhelmingly loud and very quiet. Had to pick out particular
voices or faces in a crowd. He lost track of the days.

“Is Seeker doing this, too?”

Sarah, the testing woman, didn’t know who
Seeker was.

One day, she shook his hand. “It’s been very
nice working with you, Karl. I hope to see you again.”

“What? Are we done?”

“Yes, we’re done. Congratulations. I know
it’s been a bit of a marathon. You did very well. Thanks for your
patience.”

Seeker wanted in. He didn’t want out of
where he was. He liked Mansworld. Liked it very much, in fact. But,
he could only be one place at once, and he had not been to the
human world.

“The transfer is not reversible,” the Doctor
told him. “You will never be able to return.”

“Why not?”

“Ask :3:. Probability spin, he calls it. It
multiplies each transfer, apparently, making a second transfer a
probable disaster. Possible on the first, too. A real disaster.”
The Doctor had smiled as if he wanted that more than a success.
Seeker decided to flinch, but did it too late for good effect.

“What kind of disaster?”

“Insanity. Melded personality disorder.
Severe mental or emotive retardation. Cross-traiting. Minor
personality tendency overenhancement. Severe stuttering. We do not
know.”

“It sounds as though…Sounds like you know to
me.” Seeker was working on more natural speech patterns. He watched
a lot of human movies and television, repeating lines and phrases
to practice.

The Doctor put in the q-link during that
visit.

“Karl will receive his q-link soon. The two
are mated and will slowly become more active. You will receive
occasional patches of data, though it will not feel like data.”

“How will it feel?”

“I cannot say for sure, but you will get
tastes of …Karl, in some way. Perhaps the emotion he is feeling,
perhaps the emotion he would feel in your situation.”

“Wow.”

Seeker chose to like that.

He wondered if Wildcard would let him attain
great longevity as the first Mans to move into the human realm. He
knew it would never happen in Mansworld, but that was not the
motive for the leap, as he called it, in echo of “Wildcard. ”He was
‘hell-bent for leather’. He had seen a movie where a character had
said the line. He thought himself unlikely to use it as part of his
Seekerness, but he said it a few times, anyway. He thought it
should be funny.

Karl was inside already, in process. He had
been undergoing tests for over a week, and would be finished
tomorrow. The transfer was scheduled for 3 pm. He would go in at 9
am for some final tests and something the Doctor called
null-environment conditioning. He said it would make the leap
easier, somewhat tricking the mind into believing it was not in
Mansworld anymore before the leap. Karl apparently needed much more
null-environment conditioning than Seeker did.

T minus 24 hours. Seeker was laying on his
couch, staring at the ceiling. He had set an alarm for the stroke.
He shot off a bottle rocket in his apartment to mark the event
somehow. He wanted to invite friends over, but he didn’t really
have any friends. The phone rang. The Doctor.

“Good afternoon, Seeker. I
hope I am not disturbing you.” Chilly, knife in the spine. This was
the thing that Seeker hated about Mansworld
.
The caricatures who schemed and
manipulated. The deep, weird villainy that Mansworld somehow
created. It didn’t exist in the human realm, he thought, not to
that degree. Not the mad scientist situation like the
Doctor.

“I need you to come in now.”

“What?” Seeker tried to sound surprised, sat
up on the couch to enhance the effect.

“Some data I have discovered in evaluating
Karl. I need you for 24 hours beforehand.”

Seeker considered, decided he would be
unhappy about the development. “Listen, sawbones, I don’t want to
spend my last night in Mansworld in :3: labs.” Sawbones. Nice
touch.

“It is important, Seeker. I need to do some
process simulation on you.”

He knew he had no choice. He actually wanted
to go, but he thought a human would act this way, so he tried it.
“Is there no other way?”

“No, there is not.”

“Oh, very well. I will…I’ll be down in an
hour.”

Seeker walked to the bus stop. As he waited
for the bus, he tried to look as if he were ‘doing nothing
important’ in such a way that it would be obvious that he was doing
something very important. He was unable to find the correct
configuration of body, face, and gestures. He had a good time,
trying, though. Most of the beings around him were just icons,
anyway. Not real Mans.

He started a conversation with one en route,
an old woman with a hip problem.

“Where are you headed?”

“I’m going to work. Desk clerk at the
Ridgeway Arms hotel.”

She did not ask him. He wanted her to ask,
felt happy that he actually wanted it. He did not need to create
the desire. Something was happening. He felt certain it was a more
realistic human emotion. The q-link. Excitement. He rubbed his
hands together. That did not seem right. A villain would do that,
and he was not a villain. He was a good guy.

No, too simplistic.

He was … well, he was Seeker. No need to
explain it. Humans did not evaluate and decide who they were so
much. He would stop doing it, hoped it would be natural inside a
human body with a human brain.

“I am…I’m going to :3: labs,” he told the
woman who had not asked. Trying to sound casual, and turning his
head casually to casually glance at her.

“Ooh, interesting. I’ve never been there.
The building is extremely large.”

This icon was very plastic. He disliked
her.

“Gonna cross over.” He forced out the word
‘gonna.’ It sounded awful to him. He did not have to make it sound
awful, either. It sounded awful by itself. Seeker was happy about
that.

Sarah took Karl to a room
with another plain grey door and walked away. He was getting tired
of these doors and was happy it was time to go into
Mansworld
.
He
stepped into the room to an attack of stomach flutters.

“Are you ready, Karl?” The Doctor asked.

“Very ready. I want to get out of here. Can
I see the human world one last time?”

“It is very important that you do not. I can
get you out of here quickly, however. Better to do so, in
fact.”

“OK, what do I need to do?”

The rubber man walked out from behind an
observation window.

“What are you, anyway?”

“I am the Doctor.”

“But…this thing. This rubber body. What is
it?”

“Ah, I see. This is a mechano-suit connected
prosthetic h-unit. A robot I control from Mansworld.”

“You’re a Mans?”

“Yes.”

“How do you control it? A q-link?”

“No. That is not necessary for these. I am
wearing a suit which controls the unit by replicating my
movements.”

“Neat. Can you see stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Feeling?”

“Very limited. Only pressure. Karl, will you
step into this box? Seeker, you too.”

The box was more like a frame of a box.
Slightly more than 2 meters to a side, it was built from centimeter
wide poles which had a shifting color and seemed to be changing
location. The outside of the poles were squared and the inside, the
parts ‘in’ the box, were rounded. Or ovaled. At the corners of the
box, the poles curved into each other. He could not tell exactly
where the edges were, but they were not moving, per se. Objects
behind the box had multiple images, each one flatter than a real
object.

“Why does it look like that?”

“It is a quantum portal. It creates
probabilities and maps them across to here.”

“Karl, are you ready for the big adventure?”
It was Seeker’s voice.

“Ready, willing, and able. Excited.
You?”

“More than excited. I’m made out of
puppies.”

“You’re what?”

“It’s a Mansworld expression for being
excited. Puppies here are always excited.”

Karl stepped in, sat down in the chair.
Doctor rubberman jerked over and awkwardly plugged the cable into
his head.

“Close your eyes, both of you,” the Doctor
said. “And 5…4…3…2…1…Go.”

The room began to flash lights. Perhaps they
were in Karl’s head. He felt drugged, euphoric, nauseated at the
same time. Very disoriented, and images swam in his head. He had
strange thoughts, Seeker’s thoughts.

Living in a cave in the mountains, studying
under a man with a long, white beard. Standing at a door into
space, closing it without entering, knowing that choice would seal
off the door to the human realm. Growing up on a farm in Nebraska,
bored, desperate to leave. Running away to see the world. Finding
out about the human realm. The images were jumbled in time,
haphazard. Karl lost himself, remembered himself, wondered what
Seeker was seeing, lost himself again in Seeker’s life.

Panic! He opened his eyes.

“NO!” The Doctor yelled.

Everything stopped. He vomited, but got it
all outside the box.

“Am I there?” He looked at
his hand the same hand. The same rubber man stood behind the glass.
He doubted the Doctor looked like that in
Mansworld
.

“Anybody?”

“Yes, Karl. I am here. You cannot open your
eyes during the transfer.”

“Sorry, I panicked.”

“Yes, I can see that on your graphs. Not
completely unexpected. There were other problems, anyway. I need to
make some changes. We’ll try again tomorrow. Maybe two days.”

“Two more days?” said Seeker. “I must leave
this place.”

“It would be best to do it as soon as
possible,” the Doctor said. “I will try to be ready by tomorrow.
16:00 hours.”

Karl watched a movie and read magazines. He
didn’t want to read a book, because he thought he might not be able
to find the same book in Mansworld if he didn’t finish reading it.
He managed to sleep some, but not much. Usually he slept very well.
He exercised in the morning to pass the time.

16:00. Ready to go. He knew his way around
Lab 11 now and found his way back to the q-box room. The Doctor
told him that it was important to limit human contact as much as
possible. And zero contact was possible since Sarah’s part was
finished.

“Are you prepared?”

Karl wanted a friendlier sounding
Doctor.

“Ready.”

“Ready and eager,” Seeker said. “Karl, keep
your eyes closed today, OK?”

“I’ll try.”

“Now, Karl. Look at this photo. It is a
photo of Seeker. You must feel yourself and see yourself in his
body. Seeker, here is a photo of Karl. Do the same. One of the
panic points, especially for you, Karl, but you as well, Seeker, is
leaving your body.”

“It’s also frightening…no, bewildering… to
experience someone else’s memories as if they were your own.”