04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (14 page)

It would have been simple to add Johnson to their team, except that her personality profile was all wrong. She was a blabbermouth, for one thing, and she wasn't a very good actress who could easily pretend to be something other than what she was and hope to fool anyone for long. Nor were her own ethics likely to stand up to this kind of work if the subjects weren't volunteers. Still, she had great skill and aptitude for 7000-series operations, as was demonstrated by her work with Coydt. They didn't want to lose that if they didn't have to.

The space station itself was a barren-looking series of interconnected tubular modules that resembled an abstract sculpture or a young child's first attempt with an erector set. One large tube jutted off from the main mass, and inside of it was a Borelli generator and the Kagan 7800 computer. So nervous were the experimenters with this new device that there was at the connection of the computer to the space station proper a series of explosive bolts that could even be hand-fired, and a propulsion unit beyond that was not under the computer's control at all. If the computer tried anything strange, it could be fired off into space with the throw of a switch by a human hand at literally a half-dozen points.

The computer itself, though, had been, so far, everything its company claimed it could be and more, and extremely well behaved. Experienced Kagan operators, trained to sense any wrongness in computer-human interfaces, found the machine somewhat disconcerting. Some computer shells were cheerful, or playful, or downright cold and, well, machine-like, but the 7800 seemed to be oddly reflective. Monitor after monitor received the odd impression that the computer would never consider being more than a help to humans, but that it seemed obsessed with attempting to understand human beings and really relate to them. It was as if the humans were as totally alien to it as it was to them, and while humans simply didn't have the capacity to ultimately understand what was going on in the depths of the great machine, it was certain it had the ability to ultimately understand humans— and a driving need to do so. Not for conquest, or supremacy—it was too alien to consider that worth thinking about. The early machines who had revolted were created in man's image; the Kagan 7800 was created by machines. They gave up trying to understand it, but no one who interfaced with it ever felt the least bit threatened.

Now they handed the machine something they would have hesitated to hand any computer under less secure circumstances. They handed it their whole problem, and answered all the questions they were asked on human behavior, particularly irrationalities, as well as they could.

Ultimately, it asked for a live subject, and they fed it Marsha Johnson. She was lightly sedated with a specific chemical the computer could identify and filter out, then taken to the small duplicate lab they had, with its lone digitizing tube, and there she was stripped, coded and converted into electrical impulses.

The computer could not explain, nor could anyone grasp it if it could have, just what it did and how it arrived at its conclusions, but arrive at them it did.

"Itis a great paradox,"
the computer noted.
"In some way the whole is greater than its parts. The interrelationships are too complex to fully trace. By reading her entire biochemical makeup and then correlating it with her cultural, psychiatric, and life records, I am able only to reach a superficial understanding of her. There is a logic to her sum, yet it cannot be attained by any mathematical manipulation of the parts. To go further would require a new mathematics, and I haven't sufficient grounding in what is required to create it."

That startled them, yet pleased them, somehow, too. The thing wasn't god. The human being was, in most ways, far inferior to the computer, yet it was based on a complexity, a mystery, that the computer could divine but not solve.

"She is, however, relatively simple to manipulate,"
the computer added. They did it all the time themselves—fitting artificially created chemicals to neural receptors, by conditioning, by a host of factors that were only the high-tech versions of things used to shape and control individual and mass human beings since civilization began, and which were, in their own right, only artificially induced and enhanced versions of the natural processes by which humans were socialized and given cultures.

The key, the computer noted, was that even the most illogical belief system could be imposed by conditioning and personality-reorganizing drugs and acculturations. Because of the digitizing process, this could be dispensed with, the process accelerated. It was merely a matter of decoding the parts—each and every complex element and its meaning—as filed in the brain, then intercepting and diverting what was needed. The weapon was a series of mathematical strings that would translate into things as real to the subject as if they had been placed there naturally. The old would not be gone, but it would be inaccessible. Identify objects and actions, and make the proper substitutions, then reinforce it by cranial biochemistry.

There were limits to this. An entire life history was impossible—that new mathematics got in the way. The parts wouldn't add up to the desired whole. The trick was in the twin commands of redirection and suppression. The less complex you wanted the whole to be, the better.

They let the computer have its head, interested to see what would result. The computer had the predetermined objectives. They wanted Johnson's technical skills and work experiences to remain, along with a drive to continue along those lines, but they wanted them to be in someone totally loyal and obedient to higher authority and absolutely secure, and in someone who would not let old friendships and feelings interfere with that dedication.

It gave them a pretty-looking girl of no more than eighteen with fair, unblemished skin and long silky hair and big blue eyes, slim, athletic, and well-proportioned. It looked nothing like Marsha Johnson, but it was, in more than a literal sense. It was the idealized form that Johnson, as a teen, had fantasized she looked like. And the form was also genetically correct.

She did not seem at all troubled by her nudity, nor at all shy or confused about waking up in a strange place with . strange people looking at her. "Hello," she greeted them in a soft and silky voice.

Dr. Patricia Suzuki, chief psychiatrist and chief Overrider on the 7800 project, was startled. "Uh-hello. Do you know where you are?"

"No," came the reply, as if it didn't matter. The new Marsha turned and looked over the place. "This is a Kagan 7000 series operations lab, isn't it?"

Suzuki was startled again. "Yes—it is. I'm Dr. Suzuki, in charge here. What is
your
name?"

The girl laughed. "Oh, I don't have a name yet, but I'm sure you'll give me one I'll like."

"Urn—do you remember
anything
about yourself?"

The laugh again. "No. Why should I want to?"

She was so innocent, they named her Eve. She was the subject of extensive study, and the object of every test known to medical science. She suffered all the tests patiently and without complaint, and seemed to know many of them. The results were eerie and disconcerting.

She had no past memories whatsoever. That was one thing. But she had no curiosity about that past, nor interest in it. Yet, she had every single bit of practical and technical knowledge she'd attained over the years. She could read, write, knew complex math, knew more than most of them about computers and about the very processes and operations that created her. She liked pretty clothes and all the rest— cosmetology, jewelry, and the like—yet had no modesty at all. She even understood how she came to be this way—someone had been digitized and read into the computer with a series of parameters, and she was the result.

What disconcerted them the most was that she accepted it without question, and had absolutely no problems with it. She was perfectly content with the way she was, so why worry about what she had been?

Her learning ability was amazing as well. While she had no memory of anything or anyone, she didn't forget anything she was told. She knew they were going out to colonize a new world using the computer technology she understood so well, yet she had no idea of Earth, or Titan. She did, however, have a vision of her future. She wanted to work with the computers, to find out all they could do. She did, however, have an idealized vision of someone in her mind, someone who represented love, power, all the things of greatness, a sort of godlike figure whom she seemed to worship in some mystical, quasi-religious way. She was certain that this figure existed, and she would do anything for her deity, anything her deity commanded, unhesitatingly and without question. God was very real to Eve, and absolute. The computer had, as it said it would, taken the most direct way to arrive at the sum. It had begun with the sum and worked backward, eliminating anything and everything that did not agree with the objective. This had produced an incomplete human being, but one that worked and met all the requirements. And to ensure loyalty, the computer had fallen back on the oldest and simplest device around: religion. A terribly simple, very basic religion with one object, no rules, and no complications.

It was two weeks before some bright assistant noticed, almost offhandedly, that "Eve's" description of her deity looked one hell of a lot like Brigadier Coydt.

The pattern, once established, was filed for future use. The staff at Site K referred to it as the Frog Princess program, and the name stuck. It became, in fact, something of a template for Security's major problems, producing nice-looking, obedient, loyal, but highly intelligent new people with computer skills added for those like Jimmy Okieda, who had no real skills of their own to save. They had a particular affinity for the human-computer interfaces as well, smoothing a lot of semantical problems. This, in fact, caused the professional paranoiacs of Security to worry that these creations were actually in some way controlled by the computer, a device to circumvent the two human safeguards by putting its own slaves at both positions. They actually arranged for "Eve" and "Ginny" to have sole access to these positions alone and unguarded—but not, of course, unwatched, with much monitoring going on and firm hands on blast switches—but in fact nothing happened.

The computer could, of course, be simply playing subtle—it knew, certainly, the sort of folks it worked for—but as the template people remained and adjusted, they began to develop more regular human personalities. Rather dull ones, to be sure, but people stopped thinking of them as creatures or freaks.

Suzy Watanabe could not be handled so easily, nor was she a problem the 7800 could comfortably and confidently solve. The best it could do was suggest a system which the psychiatrists could have accomplished chemically, but less certainly. Ultimately, her problem areas were emotional, not intellectual, and the only real solution to her salvation as herself was by redirecting those emotions. Faith and love were powerful antidotes to guilt and shame, after all.

And thus it was that Suzy Watanabe had a religious experience so real and so personal that she could neither deny nor doubt it. It was built from her own mental images, after all.

She knew that she was in some sort of hospital, and had been for some time, but time had little meaning to her in her drugged state. One night, however, with the lights dimmed for sleep, she awoke, feeling suddenly clear of mind and so awake that every sound seemed magnified.

She lay there, trying to collect her thoughts. She'd stepped into the tube, and Michiko and Carolyn had taken their positions, and she'd seen the big light go on and then felt a tingling throughout her whole body. Things had passed by her in a haze, then—suddenly she'd been lying on the floor of a darkened lab, a strange medic hovering over her, and she'd just started to ask what was going on when he'd administered a sedative. Why?

She suddenly sat up in bed and did a physical inventory.

She couldn't see her face, but the rest of her looked normal. No strange deformities, no odd signs or colorations. What had happened in between?

She was about to take some action when she thought she heard voices. She froze, then frowned. More like whispers, really, and not from outside the door. More like—right in the tiny room!

She turned with a start and saw nothing at first. Yet the whispers
did
seem to be coming from the corner, getting louder, nearer all the time. A vent, perhaps? Or a radio?

She could make out what the voices were saying now, a man's and a woman's voice, familiar voices. . . .

"Etsuko! Etsuko!"

She started and instinctively shrank back against the wall. What kind of trickery was this? No one had called her by that name, even
knew
that name, since . . .

Shapes shimmered in the semi-darkness, then resolved themselves into human-sized forms. They were barely visible, transparent, and bereft of great details, yet she recognized them both immediately. Her father's bright, piercing eyes and big white moustache; her mother's delicate features and unnatural grace and beauty . . .

Either I've gone mad or some son-of-a-bitch psychiatrist from Security Command is playing a dirty fucking game with me,
she thought, not sure which was the truth.

"Please do not shrink from our presence," her mother said in a voice she worshipped and thought never to hear again. "This is difficult for us and despite our pleas our time is short." She spoke in Japanese. They both did.

"Listen to your mother," her father said, a trace of characteristic impatience in his voice.

"I—I do not believe that you are here," the scientist managed, her voice hoarse and nervous. "This is a trick."

"We have no time to be convincing," her father grumbled. "Just listen, and form your own conclusions. You are as pigheaded as ever, which is why this is necessary."

"Please—it is not when and where you think," her mother said hesitantly. "Listen and we will tell you the truth of things."