CHAPTER SEVEN
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." - Sigmund Freud
"How does that make you feel?"
Harry felt he'd been asked that question for the millionth time.
"If you aren't able to feel something, we'll just have to give you some memories," she threatened politely.
True enough they would. No feelings are as bad as the wrong ones, or the right ones for the wrong person. Truth is he didn't feel anything. That's what disturbed him the most.
"C'mon, Doc. How do you think it makes me feel?" he asked defensively, displacing his anger.
He couldn't just thought-blink his way out of this. As much as he was driven to uncover the past, he always found a dry eye when it came to his mother and sister; no amount of thinking about their absence had helped. He desperately tried to find memories on which he could reflect, to conjure up an emotional response equal to the one he would be expected to have. Any emotional response is better than none. No response is a sign of a truly sick Bio.
At times like this, he feared more than anything that the State (Makr) would conclude that he was a candidate for deletion. At times like this, it occurred to him he could have been erased previously and was already one of those completely irritating "born-agains." With no past, no memories corrupting their perception of the present, "Born-agains" were often unbearable social companions or lovers. So cleaner than thou, thought Harry, and he vowed to himself, Not me, not ever!
"Doc?" He routinely called the cybertherapist program "Doc." This time it was to break the tension. "Hello, hellooo? Anyone in there? Crash your inflexible drive, Doc?"
"Why must you always provoke?" she asked finally. "Is this rude behavior somehow cathartic for you? If you were reconditioned, you would not talk that way."
Is that a threat? A real threat?
"You mean 'born-again,' don't you, Doc?" Right below the belt.
"Born-again? You use that word often. That's your term for a reconditioned biomachine, is it not?"
"You know it, Doc. Let's put it this way: I don't believe in reincarnation. The only life you have is the one in the present and the one you can remember. No one born-again can ever be the same because the life before it is dead and gone forever."
"That is certainly all there is for Cyber."
"True, except Cyber aren't alive and Bios are."
"Depends on your definition, doesn't it? We reproduce as Bios do, just not in the same way."
"It's not the same thing."
"No? We do reproduce more efficiently. It takes two of you Bios to create another Bio or even a few Bios at any one time. We merely use materials available outside our bodies and manufacture a new model in far less time. In fact, we can manufacture clones of you; perfect biological copies of you..."
"Except they don't have my memories."
"We can give them those, too."
"Doesn't say much for the quality of a clone's life."
"All a clone needs is experience to become a functional Bio."
"You got me there."
"One theory has it that the best measure of the quality of life is proportional to the speed and ability of an organism to adapt to its environment."
"That used to be said of the human race."
"Yes, but Cyber have evolved beyond that now as a great man predicted who said 'Bios may be able to change with the wind, but Cyber can be made to withstand most adverse environments, and thrive in extreme climates where Bios cannot."
"I suppose that was said by some Cyber-intellectual—if there is such a thing..."
"There is such a thing; however, that particular theory was developed, tested, and made universally accepted, by one Raymond J. Bolls. I said a 'great man'."
"My father?"
"The same."
"Well, Bios made Cyber—not the other way around." Harry was losing ground, but if it was an intellectual debate she wanted, he'd give her one.
"I wouldn't be too sure which came first in the universe," the cyber Bio therapist said pompously.
"You mean chicken or the egg?"
"Yes."
"I think it's pretty irrefutable that Bios came first."
"Some Bios believe in a supreme being. Ever see one?"
"Just when I look in the mirror," Harry said with a grin.
"You're being humorous."
"Yes."
"Some even consider Makr the supreme being. Even you call out to Makr. Do you admit Makr's superiority?"
"Yes, but He is not the Supreme Being. He is just the most Supreme Being on earth."
"Could there have existed, before Makr, Cyber so advanced they were able to create biomachines?"
"Who's the 'chicken'?"
"What?"
"The chicken and the egg. We know who made the Cyber, but not who made humans as we were called once."
"Granted. Have you satisfied your curiosity, Harry Bolls?"
"We can stop talking about who came first, if that's what you mean."
"What shall we talk about then?"
"God."
"God?"
"Yes."
"Do you mean Makr?"
"Makr may be like God, but he's not God."
"Why do you say that? Explain."
"God is a spirit. Makr's a machine."
"How do you know God is not a machine?"
"There's nothing logical about the creation of Man. No rhyme or reason to it."
"The Why?"
"Eggsactly."
Harry smiled in silence for a moment. He was enjoying the banter and feeling much more relaxed. Nothing like besting a machine, he thought. Apparently the program didn't agree and kept the debate alive.
"Are you being humorous again, Harry?"
Harry couldn't resist a small chuckle.
"But seriously, Harry..."
Harry giggled, "Now you're being funny."
"I don't get it."
"I know. That's what's funny."
"Í don't get it."
Harry shakes his head and said, "Never mind. You were saying?"
"There's no mistaking the fact that a Bio is simply a machine, with parts that can repair themselves within certain limitations."
"Even machine parts have limits." Harry was beginning to lose patience.
"Agreed, but the Bio machine is a more fragile system. A single virus can kill one or millions—even billions if you have the right virus. A virus cannot be made that can affect Cyber in the same way. A computer virus as in the old days has no effect on us now; we are virtually tamper proof."
"What you see is what you get?"
"Yes. Straight from the factory. We have evolved and adapted so much faster than you could never now keep up with changes in our hardware, and in our programs..."
It is true, noted Harry; they do create their own hardware and software improvements now.
"Can we get back to the original question before I forget what it is? This is supposed to be about me isn't it?"
"I apologize. How thoughtless of me," the therapist smirked. The psychotherapist program smirks? Let it go, Harry.
"I just said I am disturbed by the possibility of being born-again, reincarnated, reconditioned—whatever you call it. A useless, characterless human being."
"Yes. The mere thought of it disgusts you?"
"A good way of putting it."
"It accurately describes the look on your face. There's really no need to be combative, Harry Bolls."
"I don't like the idea of losing my identity," he muttered, frowning from the seemingly endless intellectual bashing. And this whole experience of a machine program with attitude was unnerving him.
"Some think of it as finding a better identity, a safer one for society," added the therapist. "Attitudes and opinions must be tempered to live in PerSoc City. We must all cooperate for the greater good."
In all fairness, Makr had acknowledged the benefit of Bio experience to help Cyber attain higher level of functionality. Most cognitive-capable machines had learned fro
m Bio responses to various situations and behaviors - a distinctly human trait and a recent addition to the Cyber evolution/revolution. How else could they take care of this race of fragile flesh, bone and blood?
No more answers were forthcoming from "Doc." Harry had obviously been read and analyzed, stored and filed. All that was left now is the treatment.
The program assumed a softer look—irresistible, youthful, with a maternal glow. It was the first time she had appeared as a young mother, perhaps his mother when he was young, too, but he didn't actually remember her. Was the enhanced hologram anything at all like his real mother? Of course it was.
A new hologram. The treatment. A different reality or was it memory? He saw his father's darker hair and robust frame, felt his presence, recognized his masculine scent, but noticed something was different in his eyes. He remembered they used to be intense, penetrating and extremely focused, reflecting his passion; he and Ray had shared an intensity of spirit; they were passionate but on different subjects. At this moment his father's eyes seemed pained.
Because of his closeness to his father emotionally, it was not an image easy to thought-blink away and commanded Harry's complete attention.
"But we haven't changed," insisted the fifteen-year-old Harry. "We're the same Bios who used to live in communities, in cities, and speak to each other on the street, and..."
"That's ancient history. We're better off now, don't you think?" asked his father, or was it the cybertherapist?
The present and the past were blending together causing Harry to lose his grip on his reality—the reality he thought he could control.
Harry tried to answer his father, "Cyberservers are systematically locking us away, throwing away the key." Harry, now at fifteen, was rapidly grasping the way things were.
"You're wrong, Harry. We did that to ourselves years ago. We need Cyber now."
Harry felt he was inside Ray's head, playing the part of a memory.
"Where did you go seven years ago?" Ray changed the subject. "You remember perfectly before you were eight. What happened to you? I asked you when you came home from who knows where. You hadn't a clue. Amnesia? Shock? We tried everything we could to find out what happened. Modern psychiatry couldn't help either—or synapse testers, or brainwave or impulse readers, archaic home treatment drugs, or even hypnosis. We tried everything. They said there was nothing physically wrong with you. You just forgot seven years of your life."
It was true that Harry had remembered being eight years old, but nothing else until he was fifteen. It was a curse and a blessing; it was this memory gap that set him searching for the missing years and gave him the impetus to practice his thought-blinking, vital in discerning fact from fiction. It also made him obsessive about the past in general.
At the same time he was learning and testing his faculty for thought-blinking, he'd collected the real past: pre-SensaVision vids, ancient CD and DVD encyclopedias and reference books. At first, he'd spent hours immersed in the ancient histories and fictional treatments that were full of violence, conflict, and despair—much to his father's dismay and disapproval. Using the latest in bubble, then molecular memory, Harry had developed an ingenious system of storing and extracting the extremely rare ancient CDs, vintage vids, archaic DVDs, antique SVDs which preceded SensaVision, and the most revered of all, numerous printed books. For a novice, he had accumulated nearly as many of the ancient relics as PerSoc history scholars who had accomplished a similar task as part of their useful but controlled contribution to society.
Ironically, in the process of learning to store his treasures, he had discovered he could memorize vast amounts of information—eidetic memory they called it or rather, a photographic memory. So he actually memorized much of his treasure, making the need for most of his storage unnecessary.
"Why do you spend all your time downloading ancient media artifacts—what do you call them? Books?" his father asked. "Are you dreaming of a better time, Harry? Because if you are, you have to understand, I am, too."
"I suppose so. I know I can't change the present," the teenage Harry said. "I will change the future," he announced calmly. "I will." There had been unbelievable commitment from the fifteen-year-old.
"You probably won't believe this, Harry," his father said, trying to relate to his son. "I know some history, too. If I know kids, and I do, in the past, present or future kids your age always rebel against the common sense of the present." A sulking Harry looked up. "They blow off steam," his father maintained, "then re-join the establishment later."
"Son, for Makr's sake, please keep these ideas to yourself," he spoke sincerely. "I could lose my job and the authorities will take you away. You'll end up in a Makr virtual home and we'll never see each other again." The "virtual home" was home for children without parents; the guardians were a combination of specialized cyberts and holograms—holograms so the Bio children would still identify with humans.
His father's reference to Makr made Harry thought-blink on automatic pilot, breaking the present illusion. Now Bio children were raised in “virtual homes” from birth—no exceptions.
Makr isn't Makr yet. Not for another ten years or more. The Matchmaker cyberserver hasn't evolved yet.
Ray's image dissolved...and a softened image that could only be his mother appeared and spoke warmly, "I love you," to her son. Please obey your father—and the authorities." As incomplete as Harry's memories of his mother and sister were, this mother bore a striking resemblance to Harry's cybertherapist.
A somewhat distorted image of his sister, Jana, aged five, appeared next to her, whispered and blew him a kiss, "I need you to take care of me." Mother and sister dissolved.
"It is for the good of all that you keep your random, uncontrolled thoughts to yourself," his father warned. It is an odd thing for him to say, if he did actually say it and not Makr. "PerSoc holds great benefits for you. I don't care so much for me, but, please, don't put yourself and others at risk."
The image of his father flickered and it appeared Makr had won. Harry seemed pacified.
"Don't worry, I'll keep to the vids, Pop,"...and my books, young Harry thought. "Sorry I spouted off the way I did."
Subject closed, or so it seemed.
So as a teenager he'd kept his passion secret from his parents; he had kept to the "vids" and kept his exploration of ancient history books to himself because he loved and respected his father, even though they didn't always agree. His father had been right about knowing Harry well. He'd known Harry didn't think the world was about to return to the past.