CAPACITY

“You’re a PC, Leigh. Getting you to accept that is the first step in your rehabilitation.”

Leigh rubbed her lips. “I can taste metal and strawberries,” she said. “That’s the worst of being dead. I keep smelling roses, too. They’re the flowers on my grave.”

“No, they’re a sign of the tumor growing in your brain.”

Leigh gave him a sharp look. “I thought you said I was a PC, Justinian? How could I have a tumor?”

“Virtual people have virtual illnesses, Leigh. You know that. They live and die; they get ill just like everyone else. You’ve got to face up to that if you’re going to get better.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how the cure works. That’s how I work. You’ve got to admit you have a problem before it can be solved.”

“No, I mean why do I have to get ill and die, if I’m a PC?”

“Because…” began Justinian. “I don’t know why. Ask Eva and the Watcher. They’re the ones who-”

“You don’t like the Watcher, do you?”

Justinian felt a sudden sense of dislocation, his memories had been so vivid. The edge of the sun peeped over the horizon, spilling yellow light across the world. Water lit up in brilliant silver curves that curled themselves around the black crescent-shaped mud banks of the estuary. Justinian was in a world of sharp contrasts, of bright light and black shadow, real and imaginary, familiar and alien. The curved shape of the AI pod was half fluorescent green, half mottled darkness.

“What did you say?” asked Justinian.

“I said you don’t like the Watcher, do you? It’s obvious from the way you told the story.”

Justinian gave a snort of derision. “I don’t have any strong feelings for the Watcher one way or the other. Why should I? If it exists, the Watcher is just a fact of life. You might as well say I don’t particularly like the moon. All those tides it causes…”

The pod laughed. “You say that, but I think you’re not being truthful to yourself. Interesting. It could explain a lot.”

“Explain what?”

The pod didn’t answer.

“What happened to Leigh?”

“I was trying to tell you…”

Justinian got the call a week after his last visit to Leigh Sony. He was in a public processing space at the time, counseling a sixteen-year-old who had had himself replicated and was now regretting it.

“But, Loja,” he was saying, “the atomic Loja is another person, alive and well in the atomic world. This processing space here is where you live. The digital world is as much your natural environment as the atomic world was at your birth. There’s no going back.”

Justinian’s console gave a shushing noise. It was Aelfric, his colleague from the Southern Europe sector.

“Justinian,” said Aelfric, “I’ve got some bad news. It’s about Leigh Sony, from EA Public Space number four. She’s killed herself.”

Justinian felt nothing, not even numbness. He merely stared at the man in the viewing field.

Aelfric shook his head. “Half an hour ago. Managed to find the handle of the destructor routine by peeling away her brain with a scalpel. Got it a good way in, too, before she interrupted the motor routines in her arm. It was very messy.”

“Aelfric, do you have to be so graphic? She was a living thing.”

Aelfric looked chastened. “Sorry, Justinian. But you know the case better than I do-Cotard’s syndrome. She thought she was already dead.”

“I know. How did she fool the hospital, though? Surely they saw it coming?”

“No. Her mood swings were too extreme. They couldn’t predict it.”

“She shouldn’t have been let anywhere near the equipment.”

Aelfric nodded slowly. “Tell me about it. Look, I’ve been assigned to you for the short term. Would that be okay?”

“You might as well, Aelfric.” Justinian’s eyes were burning. “You’re a good counselor. Better than one of those fucking machines… ”

Back on Gateway, Justinian had the impression the pod was letting him know it had scored a point. It was an AI: it could force you to feel things, do things, even realize things about yourself that you didn’t want to. Okay, so he didn’t like the Watcher. He had always avoided thinking about that in the past, and now the pod had caused him to face up to the fact. Each pod he had met so far had done the same: forced him to face up to some aspect of his personality. Everything from his jealousy at his sister’s success to his feeling of failure for not doing better at school. This was home truth number fifteen. He just didn’t like what the Watcher did to personality constructs. It troubled Justinian’s personal worldview that the most intelligent being known to humankind, if it really did exist, would choose to inflict suffering on sentient beings.

The pod was reading his discomfort: it now paraphrased the words originally attributed to the Watcher.

“She was a human personality construct, Justinian. If she lived forever, she wouldn’t be human. If she never got ill, or ran the risk of illness, she wouldn’t be human.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“It’s all that you’re getting.”

Justinian gave a mental sigh of relief that this section of the interview was over. To have an AI dip so deeply into his mind-what damage could it have done? Was there any way of telling? Now Justinian called up the visual representation of the pod’s intelligence on a narrow-beam viewing field from his console. The pod shouldn’t be able to see it, but it could probably read by his reactions what he was doing. It would no doubt mention the fact in a moment.

There were no clues there. The pod’s VRep looked just the same as those of all the other pods he had examined on this planet: concentric bands of color vanishing into infinity at the center of the image. The picture always reminded Justinian of a cross section of an incredibly old and gnarled tree trunk. On cursory inspection there was nothing unusual there: it was an apparently sane and healthy personality. There were no clues here to its creation…

“Does my VRep give you any clues to why I committed suicide? I feel like I’m rattling around the inside of this case, just looking for answers.”

“No, nothing. Do you realize that you have exactly the same personality construct as all the other AI pods I visited? It’s like you all agreed on a common template before you wound yourselves down. All of you answer my questions in the same way.”

“Is that your child I see, there in the hatchway to the flier?” asked the pod, changing the subject. Nobody likes to be told they’re not an original. Justinian looked towards the flier. The craft’s lights were dimming as the sun rose. Leslie was standing just inside the rear hatchway, gently rocking Justinian’s son in its arms.

“Yes,” said Justinian. “That’s the baby.”

“The baby? Doesn’t it have a name?”

Justinian was used to this question by now. Even so, it didn’t diminish the twinge of pain he felt whenever he gave the answer.