Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

After all, although the current robot bodies were superior in many ways to the slab-of-flab ones—how soon he’d adopted that term!—they still weren’t as physically sensitive.

Sex—the recreational act, if not the procreative one—was possible, but it wasn’t quite as good. Synapses were fully reproduced in the nano-gel of the new brain, but hormonal responses were faked by playing back memories of previous events. Oh, an orgasm was still an orgasm, still wonderful—but it wasn’t the unique, unpredictable experience of a real sexual climax. There was no need to ask, “Was it good for you?,” tor it was always good, always predictable, always exactly the same.

Still, there were compensations. George could now walk—or run, it he wanted to—for hours on end without feeling the slightest fatigue. And he’d dispensed with sleep. His daily memories were organized and sorted in a six-minute packing session every twenty-four hours; that was his only downtime.

Downtime. Funny that it had been the biological version of him that had been prone to downtime, while the electronic version was mostly free of it.

There were other changes, too. His proprioception—the sense of how his body and limbs were deployed at any given moment—was much sharper than it had previously been.

And his vision was more acute. He couldn’t see into the infrared—that was technically possible, but so much of human cognition was based on the idea of darkness and light that to banish them with heat sensing had turned out to be bad psychologically. But his chromatic abilities had been extended in the other direction, and that let him see, among other things, bee purple, the color that often marked distinctive patterns on flower petals that human eyes—the old-fashioned kind of human eyes, that is—were blind to.

Hidden beauty revealed.

And an eternity to enjoy it.

* * *

“I demand to see a lawyer.”

Shiozaki was again facing the flesh-and-blood shell that had once housed George Rathburn, but the Japanese man’s eyes seemed to be focused at infinity, as if looking right through him. “And how would you pay for this lawyer’s services?” Shiozaki asked at last.

Rathburn—perhaps he couldn’t use his name in speech, but no one could keep him from thinking it—opened his mouth to protest. He had money—lots of money. But, no, no, he’d signed all that away. His biometrics were meaningless; his retinal scans were no longer registered. Even if he could get out of this velvet prison and access one, no ATM in the world would dispense cash to him. Oh, there were plenty of stocks and bonds in his name … but it wasn’t his name anymore.

“There has to be something you can do to help me,” said Rathburn.

“Of course,” said Shiozaki. “I can assist you in any number of ways. Anything at all you need to be comfortable here.”

“But only here, right?”

“Exactly. You knew that—I’m sorry; Mr. Rathburn knew that when he chose this path for himself, and for you. You will spend the rest of your life here in Paradise Valley.”

Rathburn was silent for a time, then: “What if I agreed to accept your restrictions? What if I agreed not to present myself as George Rathburn? Could I leave here then?”

“You aren’t George Rathburn. Regardless, we can’t allow you to have any outside contact.” Shiozaki was quiet for a few moments, and then, in a softer tone, he said, “Look, why make things difficult for yourself? Mr. Rathburn provided very generously for you. You will live a life of luxury here. You can access any books you might want, any movies. You’ve seen our recreation center, and you must admit it’s fabulous. And our sex-workers are the best-looking on the planet. Think of this as the longest, most-pleasant vacation you’ve ever had.”

“Except it doesn’t end until I die,” said Rathburn.

Shiozaki said nothing.

Rathburn exhaled noisily. “You’re about to tell me that I’m already dead, aren’t you ? And so I shouldn’t think of this as a prison; I should think of this as heaven.”

Shiozaki opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again without saying anything. Rathburn knew that the administrator couldn’t even give him that comfort. He wasn’t dead—nor would he be, even when this discarded biological container, here, in Paradise Valley, finally ceased to function. No, George Rathburn lived on, a duplicated version of this consciousness in an almost indestructible, virtually immortal robot body, out in the real world.

* * *

“Hey there, G.R.,” said the black man with the long gray beard. “Join me?

Rathburn—the Rathburn made out of carbon, that is—had entered Paradise Valley’s dining hall. The man with the beard had already been served his lunch: a lobster tail, garlic mashed potatoes, a glass of the finest Chardonnay. The food here was exquisite.