Permutation City

was all a matter of pride; she couldn't let a second go by without reminding him that she hadn't been seduced by his ideas. Computer junkie, artificial life freak; she still had her feet planted firmly in the real world. His vision of an Autoverse biosphere had impressed her -- when she'd thought he'd understood that it could never be anything but a thought experiment. And all the work he'd done on the TVC universe was ingenious -- however ultimately pointless it was. In a way, she even admired his stubborn refusal to give in to common sense and accept his delusions for what they were.

She just couldn't bear the thought that he harbored the faintest hope that he'd persuaded her to take the 'dust hypothesis' seriously.

+ + +

At three minutes past ten, the money ran out -- all but enough to pay for the final tidying-up. The TVC automaton was shut down between clock ticks; the processors and memory which had been allocated to the massive simulation were freed for other users -- the memory, as always, wiped to uniform zeroes first for the sake of security. The whole elaborate structure was dissolved in a matter of nanoseconds.

Night had turned the windows of the flat to mirrors. No lights showed in the empty office towers; if there'd been cooking fires from the squatters, they'd been extinguished long ago. Maria felt disconnected, adrift in time; the trip north across the harbor bridge in sunlight seemed like a distant memory, a dream.

The individual components of the Garden of Eden were still held in mass storage. Maria deleted her scan file, carefully checking the audit records to be sure that the data hadn't been read more often than it should have been. The numbers checked out; that was no guarantee, but it was reassuring.

Durham deleted everything else.

The recordings of the spy software remained, and they viewed the last brief scene of the Copy at work -- and then replayed the whole two-minute recording.

Maria watched with a growing sense of shame. The individual fragments had barely affected her, but viewed without interruption, the Copy took on the air of a deranged sect leader driving a bus full of frozen billionaires straight toward the edge of a cliff -- accelerating euphorically in the sure and certain knowledge that the thing would fly, carrying them all off into a land beyond the sunset. She clung to her rationalizations: the Copy's limited separate identity, his joyful demise.

When the replay stopped in mid-experiment, Durham closed his eyes and let his head hang forward. He wept silently. Maria looked away.

He said, 'I'm sorry. I'm embarrassing you.'

She turned back to him; he was smiling, and sniffling. She wanted to embrace him; the urge was half sisterly, half sexual. He was pale and unshaven, obviously drained -- but there was more life in his eyes than ever, as if the fulfilment of his obsession had liberated him from his past so completely that he faced the world now like a newborn child.

He said, 'Champagne?'

Maria hardened her heart. She still had no reason to trust him. She said, 'Let me check my bank balance first; I might not have anything to celebrate.' Durham giggled, as if the very idea that he might have cheated her was preposterous. She ignored him, and used the terminal. The six hundred thousand dollars he'd promised had been deposited.

She stared at the digits on the screen for a while, numb with the strange truth that the simple pattern of data they represented, sanctified as 'wealth,' could travel out into the living, breathing, decaying world . . . and return, enriched beyond measure: imprinted with everything which made Francesca human.

She said, 'One glass. I'm cycling.'

+ + +

They emptied the bottle. Durham paced around the flat, growing increasingly hyperactive. 'Twenty-three Copies! Twenty-three lives! Imagine how my successor must be feeling, right now! He has the proof, he knows he was right. All I have is the knowledge that I gave him that chance -- and even that's too much to bear.' He wept again, stopped abruptly. He turned and gazed at Maria imploringly. 'I did it all to myself, but it was still madness, still torture. Do you think I knew, when I started out, how much pain and confusion there'd be? Do you think I knew what it would do to me? I should have listened to Elizabeth -- but there is no Elizabeth here. I'm not alive. Do you think I'm alive! If a Copy's not human, what am I? Twenty-three times removed?'

Maria tried to let it wash over her. She couldn't feel simple compassion -- she was too tainted, too culpable -- so she tried to feel nothing at all. Durham had systematically pursued his beliefs as far as they could take him; he'd either be cured by that, or ready for another round of nanosurgery. Nothing she could do now would make any difference. She started to tell herself that by helping with the project -- without ever conceding its premise -- she might have helped him exorcize his delusions . . . but that wasn't the point. She'd done it all for the money. For Francesca. And for herself. To spare herself the pain of Francesca dying. How dare the woman think of refusing? Copies, like funerals, were for the benefit of the survivors.

Durham suddenly went quiet. He sat down beside her, disheveled and contrite; she wasn't sure if he'd become sober, or just moved on to a new phase. It was half past two; the opera had finished playing hours ago, the flat was silent.

He said, 'I've been ranting. I'm sorry.'

The two swivel chairs they'd been sitting on all day were the only furniture in the room besides the table; there was no sofa she could sleep on, and the floor looked cold and hard. Maria thought about heading home; she could catch a train, and collect her cycle later.

She stood; then, barely thinking about it, leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.

She said, 'Goodbye.'

Before she could straighten up, he put a hand on her cheek. His fingers were cool. She hesitated, then kissed him on the mouth -- then almost recoiled, angry with herself. I feel guilty, I feel sorry for him, I only want to make up for that somehow. Then he met her eyes. He wasn't drunk any more. She believed he understood everything she was feeling -- the whole knot of confusion and shame -- and all he wanted to do was smooth it away.

They kissed again. She was sure.

They undressed each other on the way to the bedroom. He said, 'Tell me what you want, tell me what you like. I haven't done this for a long time.'

'How long?'

'Several lives ago.'

He was skilled with his tongue, and persistent. She almost came -- but before it could happen, everything broke down into isolated sensations: pleasant but meaningless, faintly absurd. She closed her eyes and willed it, but it was like trying to cry for no reason. When she pushed him gently away, he didn't complain, or apologize, or ask stupid questions; she appreciated that.

They rested, and she explored his body. He was probably the oldest man she'd ever seen naked; certainly the oldest she'd ever touched. Fifty. He was . . . loose, rather than flabby; muscle had wasted rather than turned to fat. It was almost impossible to imagine Aden -- twenty-four years old, and hard as a statue -- ever succumbing to the same process. But he would. And her own body had already begun.

She slithered around and took his penis in her mouth, trying to psych herself past the comic strangeness of the act, trying to grow drunk on the stench of it, working with her tongue and teeth until he begged her to stop. They rearranged their bodies clumsily so they were side by side; he entered her and came at once. He cried out, bellowing in obvious pain, not histrionic delight. He gritted his teeth and turned ashen as he withdrew; she held his shoulders until he could explain. 'My . . . left testicle went into spasm. It just . . . happens sometimes. It feels like it's being crushed in a vise.' He laughed and blinked away the tears. She kissed him and ran a finger around his groin.

'That's awful. Does it still hurt?'

'Yes. Don't stop.'