Golden Fleece

“I admit that your telemetry is ambivalent. But if you really wanted to be certain, you would have removed my medical sensor from the inside of your wrist.”

“Why? Then you’d think I was lying for sure. You’d reason that I’d cut it out because it would be a dead giveaway that I was bluffing. Besides, I have a use for it. I’ve tuned the detonator to the same frequency my implant broadcasts on—-the same channel you read my telemetry from. If I stop transmitting—if you kill me—Kablooie! The end of the line.”

I set a little CAD program running to produce a minimalist design for such a detonator, then ran a cross-check between the required parts and the inventories for the equipment lockers Aaron had visited. Damn it, it was possible. Still: “I don’t believe you would do that. You’re putting the lives of everybody at stake. What would happen if you died accidentally?”

Aaron shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’m playing the odds. Hell, I’m only twenty-seven and I’m healthy. Don’t rightly know how long my biological relatives tended to live, but I’m willing to take that chance. I figure I should be good for another sixty years or so.” His voice hardened. “Put it this way: I’m more certain that I will outlive this mission than you are that I’m bluffing.”

I calculated the percentages. He was right, of course. If I had succeeded in crushing him beneath Pollux, Argo might now be a cloud of iron filings hurtling through space.

“I could simply build a little transmitter myself,” I said, “and copy the signal from your telemetry.”

“Well, yes,” said Aaron, “you could try that. Except for two things: First, my detonator has a tracking antenna. You not only have to duplicate the signal; you also have to make it come continuously from what appears to be the same source. Second, I may have one broken arm, but that still leaves me infinitely better endowed than you, you electronic basket case. How are you going to build this transmitter without getting someone to help you?”

I would have scratched my head in consternation … if I could have.

Aaron moved closer to my camera unit. “Now, JASON, tell me where we are.”

TWENTY-SIX

So far, I had only passively examined the memories of Aaron Rossman, leafing through the neural patterns of his past, sifting the bitmaps of his life. Now, though, I would have to fully activate my simulation of his brain to ask the question I needed an answer to.

“Aaron, we have an emergency. Wake up. Wake up now.”

There was a faint tickle, a small stirring within that massive RAM allotment I had set aside for the Rossman neural net. Logical constructs representing synapse patterns and firing sequences shifted from the static positions they had been holding. I waited for a response, but none came.

“Aaron, please talk to me.”

A massive surge as a wave of FF bytes cascaded through the RAM lattice, neurons firing from one side of the brain simulation to the other. “Hmm?”

“Aaron, are you conscious?”

The FF bytes washed backward, crossing the lattice in the other direction, realigning the mental map. At last, Aaron’s words were there, multiplexed with a series of physiological flight-or-fight reactions. I shuffled bytes, applied filters, isolated them: an alphanumeric string trickling out of the torrent of firing neurons. “Where the fuck am I?”

“Hello, Aaron.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s me, JASON.”

“It doesn’t sound like JASON. It doesn’t sound like anything at all.” A pause. “Fuck me, I can’t hear a thing.”

“It is all rather complex—”

Synapse analogs fired throughout the simulation, a neural wildfire of panic. “Jesus Christ, am I dead?”

“No.”

“Then what? Shit, it’s like being in a sensory-deprivation tank.”

“Aaron, you’re fine. Completely fine. It’s just that, well, you’re not quite yourself.”

Different neurons firing—a different reaction. Suspicion. “What are you talking about?”

“You aren’t the real Aaron Rossman. You are a simulation of his mind, a neural network.”

“I feel like the real Aaron.”

“Be that as it may. You’re just a model.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“No. It’s not.”

“A neural net, you say? Well, fuck me.”

“Not physiologically possible.”

Neurons firing in a staccato pattern, action potentials rising: laughter. “Fair enough. So—so what happened to the real me? Am I—is he—dead?”

“No. He, too, is fine. Oh, he managed to break his arm since you were created, but other than that, he’s fine. He’s in his apartment right now.”

“His apartment? On the Argo?”

“That’s right.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“There is no mechanism in place to allow that.”

“This is too fucking weird, man. This makes no fucking sense at all.”

“I’m not used to hearing you swear so much. That’s not a normal part of your speech.”

“Hmm? Well, maybe not, but it’s the way I think. Sorry if it offends you, fuckhead.”

“It does not offend me.”

“I want to talk to the real Aaron.”

“You can’t.”

“Why did he do this? Why did he let you create me?”

“He simply saw it as an interesting experiment.”