Join (41 page)

“Okay,” the woman tries to keep her voice cheerful. She gathers up the personal display that had rested on her lap and slips it into her purse. She gives Chance an appreciative smile. “Bye,” she says, and offers a half wave.

Chance Nine lifts a hand and nods back at her.

“Good luck,” the woman says. “You did well.”

And as she reaches the door, she says, “If you have to tell your other drives what I just told you, I guess it's okay. I wouldn't want you to lie.”

She winks at Chance and passes through the door.

PART SIX

Join addresses the challenges of overpopulation by turning the tables on mortality. We reduce the population by defying death.

—Excellence, CEO of Vitalcorp,

Secretary of Join Affairs

 

All that I wanted was to be whole and know my purpose in the realm of my self.

—Joseph Rex,
Poe's Mission
, Book III

As Chance exits the join-licensing
office, a pod hisses into position outside the beige double doors. Chance Nine has just spent a useless hour and a half waiting for a meeting.

A drive who introduced herself as Ursa Three finally appeared and apologized profusely, walking through a tortured explanation about information firewalls, security requirements, and a regular rotation of positions meant to ensure no one got too comfortable in the office manager's job.

Everything is explained and sorted out now, she said, and there was no need to take any more of Chance's time. They were very sorry they had inconvenienced Chance.

That was it. There was no more conversation; there were no questions. “As far as this office is concerned,” Ursa Three said, “your file is closed.”

Chance doesn't mention the woman she ran into in the waiting area, who was an impostor, passing as a solo. What would be the point? The Directorate may have engineered the whole visit solely to let Chance know she's still of interest. Message received.

Chance Nine directs the pod to the spire apartment in New Denver, expecting to arrive about twenty minutes before Chance One, Four, and Five. One will be leaving work shortly. Four and Five are shopping. Chance Two is sleeping off a long flight at the house in the Olympic Archipelago.

The last couple of weeks have been difficult, and Chance plans to spend the evening mixing the drives. Each has a dose of restless energy, and Chance is feeling a kind of irritability that sex often dispels. At least after a good mix, drives are more likely to sleep through the night.

The pod's low whine sounds almost companionable as Chance Nine rises to her lane and then accelerates toward home. The external lights on the spires are muted, tainted with color so that the whole of the cloud-darkened night is alive with a fusion of vaguely shifting blue, green, and orange hues.

Chance relaxes, concentrates on breathing—the long breaths of Chance Four and Five walking through the leafy shopping arcade, past the central waterfall—and the shallow breath of Nine in transit.

Chance Nine's pod arrives at the house, cruising to a stop with imperceptibly slight shifts in momentum. The stillness of the surrounding world rouses Chance, and Chance Nine steps out of the pod, onto the spire balcony and into faint, pooled light at the door of the apartment.

And then stops. The glass door is open.

“Please don't use comms.” From inside, a familiar voice, frightening. “Really. It just wouldn't be a good idea.”

Chance Nine stands motionless outside the door.

“C'mon in,” the voice says. “It's your house.”

All of Chance's drives become still. Chance Two, in the house in the Olympic Archipelago, is suddenly awake and listening.

“I know you're probably scared. Don't be. Come in.”

It's the voice of the drive Chance last encountered as Apple One, the waitress. Which means that Rope is waiting inside.

Chance Nine steps slowly into the entryway. The interior lights come on, but only slightly, so that the room remains half in shadow. Rope is standing to the left of the door, leaning against the wall. Only one of Rope's drives is visible.

As Chance enters, Rope straightens, walks casually to a cushioned love seat in the adjoining living room, and sits down. She's holding a pistol in her left hand. With her right hand she motions toward the wooden chair across from her. An invitation for Chance to sit. Rope's face is half masked by shadow.

“Why are you here?” Chance asks.

“I'm joined with all of my other friends.”

“Then you don't need me,” Chance says.

The shadows around Rope shift. Her head turns slightly. “I think you still deserve an opportunity to play the game.”

“I don't understand that. I never really have.”

Rope says, “I'm talking about the place where a join and a death are the same thing.”

Chance takes a step into the room. “That's you. You're the only one who's ever said that.”

“Yeah,” says Rope. “I know things no one else knows.”

Rope sits forward, suddenly moving out of shadow as if responding to an internal cue. She turns and watches Chance. She says, “I never liked pods.”

“What?”

“They seem vulnerable. The mass calculator for the energy translators is a ticking bomb. When I was killing my drives, I crashed quite a few.”

Chance Four and Five had been about to summon a pod. They don't.

Chance asks, “Why are you here?”

“Just sit down,” Rope says.

Chance Nine walks across the room and sits down slowly in the wooden chair. Rope says, “Thank you.” Chance doesn't answer.

Rope leans back, into shadow. “I know it's uncomfortable, my existence. This vision of your future. You have to get past that. You don't get to decide whether light comes from the sun. You don't get to choose what happens when hundreds of minds join. I'm just a fact.”

“But you choose to be who you are.”

Rope's laugh is short and harsh. “Maybe. It doesn't always feel that way. An individual choice can seem independent, but if you look at a whole population, thousands, millions of individuals, the outcomes are always predictable. I'm like that. I make lots of choices, but in the end I'm completely predictable.”

“I don't see the connection.”

“Chance,” Rope says, sounding disappointed. “I thought we were going to be honest with each other.”

Chance Nine is breathing shallowly. Her hands are shaking. Her voice is unsteady as she says, “Your experiment was misconceived. Flawed from the start.”

“Oh?”

“You assumed you could remove time. Hurry things forward, to solve the problem. Time is the solution.”

“Chance, you're getting excited. You're not going to talk me out of here, so relax. I'm not going to go away just because you have an idea.”

“When I join,” Chance says, then she takes a moment and draws a short breath, trying to calm herself, “one plus one is two. I become two people. Psyches integrate quickly, but over time they
unify
. I'm
one
person. You didn't have the research then, but it should have been obvious. Over time, I become one person again, and I'm Chance. Then I join again. In ten thousand years, if I'm eight hundred people, that'll be okay. Those people will continue to be me, every one of them, because they'll have had the
time
needed to change—to change me and to become me. You're trying to force everyone together at once. That's what doesn't work. That's what's grotesque.”

“I'm . . . you think I'm grotesque? Okay. That's fair. But as for your—of course, I've thought of that. Other people have said that before. Do you think you get to say that, and it's a new idea, and that just wastes all my work? Is that what you think this is, a dream of some kind where your ideas make everything right? You just . . . do you really believe that?”

“Do you?”

“You know, you kill me, Chance. And I probably mean that in a good way. I thought we were going to be friends and play the game. But you really don't believe that my work's been worthwhile. You don't think it's worthwhile to expose the violence that the very idea of Join does to us, to what we are. Let's say you're right, and your rehashed, third-tier objection handling has a sliver of truth. Because it does, doesn't it? What is that truth exactly? Each individual in a join gets twenty years of having an opinion? Eventually, each one is still just an observer. If you even exist, you're only along for the ride. Is it worth trading your identity for a sightseeing ticket into the future, as if life were an amusement park ride? So, no, you don't get to ignore my work. You don't get to dismiss it, unless there's no value in any individual life. Nothing important at all about any beautiful, whole, single thing with a beginning and an end. No need for any more of those. Chance, you don't get to ignore death and remain a person.”

“That's not what I'm saying.”

“Okay. That's not what I'm saying either, then.”

“I want you to leave.”

“You know, Hamish cured me.”

“What?”

“I flipped, a couple of years ago. Hamish cured me.”

Chance Nine's fingers are folded together. She squeezes them and then pulls her hands apart. She says, “He said he didn't.”

“Hm. Chance, we're a kind of animal that lies. Even Hamish will lie. Don't hold it against him.”

“But why?” Chance's throat is dry, her voice faded.

“Would he lie about that? Well, think about what I've been doing. I don't think Hamish wants to be associated with me.”

“You had a flip?”

“Yes.”

“And the flip was cured? You're okay?”

Rope laughs again, this time with warm, genuine amusement. “No one's said
that
to me for a while. If you mean physically healthy, then yes. That's the good news for you, isn't it. It worked.” After a pause, she continues, “And I was offered the same deal you were—join in Arcadia, where they're, you know, still practicing, or get taken care of by the Directorate's best. I chose Arcadia. Actually, come to think of it, that join was with—well, at the end of it I had one of the drives you met, at breakfast that morning. The big male.”

“Why did you choose Arcadia?”

“Yeah, I could have died, right? Even with Hamish, they're still not very good at joining there. But I didn't want to be part of giving subnet tech to the Directorate. Hamish, he's a little oblivious sometimes.”

Chance flinches away from Rope. She almost stands, almost surrenders to an impulse to run, but then sees the gun resting on Rope's thigh, pointed at her, and settles back in the chair.

Rope says, “Oh, that stings, huh? Yes, your help has brought the whole world one step closer to my reality.”

“Not to your reality,” Chance whispers.

“No, that's true. The subnet is a little different. Close enough, though.”

“You were doing it too, trying to remove the twenty-drive limit.”

“Was I?”

“I want you to leave.”

“I'm working on that.”

Chance doesn't respond. Rope says, “Don't feel too bad. It would happen anyway. Every single join is eventually going to have hundreds of minds. Things get really tricky with that many people in your head.”

Rope suddenly sounds frustrated, almost desperate, the edge gone from her voice. She leans forward, pulling the gun down beside her thigh. “Chance, I've been trying to make a difference. I thought you might want to help. Join can be wonderful, a miraculous experience. But we can't transcend death. We're all still part of the natural world. And subnets, the hive mind, me . . . it's all . . . just a different kind of death. The Directorate isn't listening. They want a single network. They want to colonize other planets. Chance, we've got a perfectly good planet.”

The shadows are tightening. In an odd, petulant voice that surprises even Chance, Chance Nine says, “You're not dead.”

Rope sits back again, and her face slackens. She closes her eyes and rolls her head. Then she hefts the gun, as if idly measuring its weight, and stands up. “I told you I was working on that.”

“Look,” Chance says quickly, “don't—you don't need to do anything right now. I'm talking, like you asked. I'm being honest. And if you want to know, do I want to help, then yes, I want to help. And I understand you, what you're
saying
. I just don't want to
be like you
, I don't want anyone to—”

“No. You're scared. You don't mean any of that.”

Starting in her gut and chest, a touch of nausea and dizziness radiate through Chance. “Please,” she says quietly, her voice cracking, “please don't. I'm not strong now, I'm—”

Rope's hand moves very quickly, coming out of shadow. Chance sees the gun in it, and as the barrel sweeps upward Chance looks for the briefest moment straight into it. Chance hears herself cry out.

Then Rope presses the gun under her own chin, and the report—a surprisingly quiet
pop
—sounds. Rope's head snaps back, and its body hits the floor.

For four and a half
years after that final encounter with Rope, Chance doesn't add any drives. Given the dramatic reduction in the price of licensing, the fact that Chance still maintains only five active drives occasionally raises eyebrows.

Many smaller joins have united, but there has also been a run on high-quality solos. They weren't too difficult to secure at first. A successful join could seal the deal with an “all this can be yours” sort of pitch, which actually went more like “I'm healthy, brilliant, immortal, have physical and intellectual capabilities beyond your wildest dreams, want for just about nothing, and am literally offering you my life.” Eventually, the better-quality solos started realizing their value and becoming more selective about who they wanted to be for eternity.