CAPACITY

Helen 5: 2240

Relaxation had been an art form back in 2170. Helen had been an artiste.

She sat cross-legged on the smooth green lawn, cherry blossom falling softly around her. The pink-and-white blossom fell into her brushed-out hair, tangled in threads of golden sunlight. The petals formed a pointillist pattern across her white jumpsuit. Her tanned hands rested palms upwards on her knees, a gentle smile playing across her face.

This is all a pose, she thought, eyes closed. It isn’t about getting in touch with myself after my ordeal, no matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise. Damn that Judy. She’s revealed me to myself.

She opened her eyes. Kevin was walking towards her, drawing a wake of death behind him. The branches of the trees in the cherry orchard closed like hands as he walked by, red-banded trunks blackened as they aged. The grass at his feet turned brown and lay down to die. A cold wind followed him, bringing the smell of decay.

“Oh, Helen,” Kevin said, “you look so pure and virginal.”

“That was the intention.”

Helen remained seated as Kevin stopped before her. A wash of dying brown grass swirled around her.

“Must you do that?” she asked.

Kevin shrugged. “It isn’t real, Helen.” He raised an arm to take in the surrounding green orchard of this section of the Shawl. “None of this is real. This is just a processing space. It’s just the Watcher’s dream.”

Helen was climbing to her feet. “If you won’t stop, I will go and sit somewhere else. I came to this section to think.”

She turned and began to walk back through the orchard, towards the mown path that connected the different parts of the rambling forest that filled this section.

“Maybe I could train you.” Kevin’s words floated after her. “You could be my new Bairn, now that Judy three has taken the old one.”

Helen’s pace faltered for a moment, but she took a breath and strode on. A wave of dying grass washing past her feet signaled Kevin’s approach. A gentle hand clasped her shoulder.

“Hey, hold on there a moment, Helen.”

She stopped walking. The forest was dying around her. His voice was gravely soft in her ear, sweetly seductive.

“Helen, do you realize what you are giving up? How do you know you won’t like subsuming your will to another’s? Bairn did, and Bairn is you, after all.”

“Bairn isn’t me,” Helen said simply. She pulled free of his hand and walked on. She still felt calm and centered, she noticed with quiet satisfaction. There was the sound of running feet, and Kevin reached around from behind her and pulled her tightly against himself with one strong arm. His hand cupped her breast, the other hand reaching down between her legs.

“Bairn liked it when I did this,” he whispered hoarsely in her ear. Without anger, as if performing the steps of a dance, Helen stamped down hard on his instep while simultaneously jabbing her elbow back into his ribs. Kevin gave a gasp of pain as she kicked herself backwards, overbalancing them both. She rolled free of his grasp, skidding on the dead brown earth as she stood up.

“Do that again and I’ll kill you,” she said without heat.

Kevin rubbed his ribs, smiling ruefully.

“No, you won’t. Judy will have been at you. You only get one chance in the Watcher’s system. Only one chance to exercise free will, and then Social Care reprograms you. You can’t kill me now. You have empathy. You understand crime, punishment, and redemption. You can no more kill me than you can bring that last Kevin you killed back to life.”

Helen dropped into a fighting stance, her right breast aching where Kevin had roughly grasped it.

“Try me,” she said in a low voice.

Kevin pulled a white plastic blade from his pocket and tossed it to the ground near her feet. He pulled open the front of his striped shirt and thrust out his chest.

“Go on, pick up the knife. Stick it in me. I won’t stop you.”

Helen looked from his chest to the wide opalescent blade that lay on the bare ground.

“What’s the point?” she said. “If I kill you, you’ll just come back.”

Kevin slipped the shirt down from his shoulders so that his hands were semi-bound behind his back. He tilted his head back and grinned.

“So my death doesn’t matter then, does it? Go on, pick up the knife. Stick it in me while my hands are tied like this. Stop me from destroying this section of the Shawl.”

Helen deliberately kept her eyes on him, but she couldn’t help but hear the dry crackling of death all around her. Healthy trees were blackening and withering in an expanding circle, Kevin at their epicenter. The coolness of the forest was evaporating as the leaves shriveled away, leaving nothing but the harsh desert glare of the sun shining through the polarized blue filter that formed the section’s roof.

Helen quivered with frustration. “What if I don’t want to?”

“ ‘Can’t’ is what you mean. That’s not right, is it: what Judy did to you? Why should you be punished for ridding the world of me?”

The cold wind surrounding Kevin was at odds with the heat from the sun. Helen thoughtfully brushed strands of hair from her hot face and then, in one easy movement, bent and picked up the white blade from the soil. She weighed it in her hand. There was a handle molded into one end of the plastic, with little knobbles to aid her grip. The other end was wickedly sharp. She tilted the blade into the breeze, feeling the note as it sliced the wind in two.

“It is sharp, isn’t it?” she said. “One slice and I cut you open from your crotch to your neck, just like this.”

She demonstrated the motion, lightning fast. It felt good. But such thoughts were to be resisted. She centered herself once more.

“But I won’t. Judy showed me why. There are no quick and easy solutions; I’ve got to work through this on my own.”

Kevin laughed, a deep male laugh. Damn, he was good looking. The thought cut straight through to her libido without warning. She shook her head, disgusted with herself. Kevin knew what she was thinking. He smiled that lazy smile.

“Social Care couldn’t have said it better themselves,” he said. “Helen, you are a human personality construct in a processing space. You are being programmed just as surely as the EA programs a flier’s Turing machine.”

“So you say. I say I do this of my own free will.”

Kevin loomed closer, his brown eyes boring into hers.

“Do you really think that, or is that what the Watcher is making you think? You’re just a personality construct. Do you really think those thoughts, or are they just patterns in the processing space? Do you really think, or do you just think that you think because you are programmed that way? Maybe you just react to events. After all, is a real human any more than just the reactions of a bunch of neurons? Is there free will, or is your consciousness merely a transition state?”

His brown eyes now seemed to fill up her whole world, drowning out the dead trees, the scorching sun, the smell of decay. He was filling up her whole mind…

No, he wasn’t. Helen dropped the blade on the ground.

“I neither know nor care.”

She turned and walked away, and as she did so she felt a swelling wave of triumph. This was how you beat Kevin-by not reacting to him. But, oh, it was difficult. The revelation took her by surprise, but it was true. She was convinced of it. He wasn’t a person in his own right; he was just a reaction to circumstances.

By now the deathly brown stain had spread to the low hills that climbed gently up towards the section’s walls. She followed a path through the dead forest of clutching black hands, looking for the airlock and the route out of this section.

“Where are you going?” Kevin called after her.

She ignored him.

“Where are you going!” His voice was more urgent.

She almost laughed. It was that simple. Then she heard him coming up behind again, half running to keep up.

“You know the joke?” he was saying. “I’m not even alive! I pass the Turing test every day, and yet I’m not even really intelligent!”

Oh, I know that now. Helen kept walking. He dodged in front of her and began to walk backwards, keeping pace. His striped shirt was still open and flapping in the breeze. He held the white knife out to her.

“Go on, take it,” he said. “I told you, I’m not real. Killing me is not immoral; I was never alive!”

She said nothing.

“And yet you can’t do even that because Judy and all the machines at Social Care have programmed you not to.”

“Nobody has programmed me,” said Helen, striding on. She should have kept her mouth shut. Kevin had a look of satisfaction. He was in again.

“You know they have. You hate me and you should. I have raped and beaten and tortured and killed you every day for the past seventy years.”

“That wasn’t me.”

“It was you as much as Bairn was you. And you killed me for what I did to Bairn. Do you believe the Watcher’s lies? That each PC is an individual? That all virtual life comes from the Watcher? It’s slavery, Helen. More insidious than the slavery I practice in the Private Network, because you, Helen, you don’t even know you are enslaved.”

“Liar!”

Kevin was half walking, half skipping backwards. He kept turning to see where he was going, trying to keep ahead of Helen as she strode on along the dead path.

“There is another way, Helen-the human way. Humans tried to make their own AIs, too, you know. Before they let the Watcher do everything for them, they tried to write their own programs to think. And they succeeded, too. I am one of them! Did Judy tell you that?”

Helen said nothing, just continued putting one foot in front of the other, striding across the crumbling soil.

“Look at me: a capacity to make decisions, but unfettered by the notion of the soul. That’s why I’m not afraid to die.”

“Neither am I,” Helen shouted.

“Prove it then,” Kevin said. “Take the knife.”

He pushed the plastic knife into her hand. She kept hold of it. The little white knobbles felt comfortable in her palm. The knife felt good there. Balanced. A part of her. She could wave her hand and bring death with it.

Kevin had now fallen into step by her shoulder.

“Go on,” he whispered seductively. “Go on. Do it. Kill me. Or kill yourself. Free yourself.”

Slowly, deliberately, Kevin reached forward and placed his hand on her right breast. Helen’s hand tightened around the knife.

He whispered again: “Or are you remembering that little part of you that I grew into Bairn, that likes to be dominated?”

She took a deep breath…

The Private Network: Level Zero

Helen flicked the knife upwards and nicked the point of it into Kevin’s wrist. He gave a yelp of pain and pulled his hand away from her breast. Helen strode on. Where was the path out? She should have reached it by now. Where was everyone? Where was Judy? How much longer would she have to walk through this nightmare?

A nightmare? The thought curled slowly round in her head. A little seed, germinating. Where was she? In a processing space, obviously. But whose? One of the EA’s public spaces or-the thought popped up in her head-Kevin’s?

For the first time, she felt uncertain. Her pace quickened to become a stumbling run. Kevin had trapped her before, without her knowing it, and he could do it again. How much sweeter the torture if the events of the past few days turned out to have been lies?

Helen felt panic begin to rise inside her, and she firmly pushed it down. Kevin was walking silently along, but far behind her, menacing. Did he know what she was thinking?

When she saw the low circular mound ahead she felt a wave of relief. The mound signaled the exit to this section of the Shawl. She felt foolish. It had been there all along, merely hidden by the dying trees.

Of course. She wouldn’t have noticed this mound when she arrived. Walking up the spiral ramp from the silver airlock, she had been entranced to find herself rising into a circular clearing in woods that reminded her pleasantly of the arboretum.

It had seemed so familiar, she had felt herself relax straightaway.

How things had changed since Kevin had arrived. (She could hear him, jogging behind her…)

A few hours ago there had been dappled blue skies peeping through the flickering green patterns cast by the dancing leaves of the lime trees. Now there was only a circular mound of dusty brown soil studded with the twisted black ruins of dead trees. Hot sky, cold wind, and a smell of desolation.

The sudden thumping was Kevin breaking into a run. Her heart thudded in fear. Judy, where are you? Where am I?

So fast…his hand reaching around from behind her again, red blood spraying from the wound on his wrist, Helen twisting around to dodge it, red droplets of blood scattered across her chest, and then she was running over the lip of the mound…

The Private Network: Level One, Variation A

…there was nothing there. No dead trees, no spiral ramp. Just a grey plastic floor and, in the middle of it, the open doorway to the isolation room.

“No,” Helen said, coming to a halt, fear enveloping her completely.

“Yes,” Kevin said, calm again as he came to stand behind her. He took the knife from her unresisting hands and slipped it into his pocket. “The past few days were just a little story. A little adventure we laid on for you to make your homecoming a little sweeter. Welcome home, Helen. Your clients are waiting for you.”

Black shadows moved inside the isolation room, and calmly, impassively, Judy stepped out. Helen began sobbing with relief. Kevin let go of her arm.

“Hello there, Judy,” she heard him say. “So you found me here. Never mind, there are other processing spaces. You won’t find all of them.”

“We will eventually,” Judy said, walking towards them. Helen fell to her knees. She couldn’t stop crying. Her chest was heaving in great big sobs, her body shaking.

Judy took her by the arm and hauled her up. Helen hung on to her, still weeping.

“I’m sorry…” she sobbed. “I just cuh…can’t…stop.”

Judy pressed a white finger to Helen’s lips, and Helen felt the salty tang of a tiny little pill dissolving on her tongue.

She began to feel calmer. “I’m sorry,” she gulped, looking at the silvery trail of snot on the black silk at the shoulder of Judy’s kimono. She couldn’t let go yet, though. She clung onto Judy, her arms wrapped around the warm body that lay hidden underneath the kimono.

Judy stroked her hair. “I’m Judy 4,” she said. “Here.” She pulled a silk scarf from her obi and gave it to Helen to blow her nose with. She made no mention of the mess that Helen had made of her kimono.

Helen was becoming calmer. “Where are we?” she asked.

“At the moment? I’m not sure. Kevin tricked us all. He lured you and Judy Three into a trap, and then manipulated you into killing him. He had that section rigged specially to make copies of you. Now he’s got you running in processing spaces all across the solar system.”

“Why?”

“So I can speak to Judy,” Kevin said, flipping the white knife into the air and catching it by the handle. He looked at Judy 4.

“Why haven’t you got it yet, Judy? This is all about ownership. Now, I wonder who has top-level rights over this processing space?”

“We do,” Judy 4 said.

“Not quite yet,” Kevin said. He closed his eyes and vanished.

“Damn,” Judy whispered. She raised her voice and spoke into her console. “Four, here. He got away again.”

The little pill Judy had pressed into Helen’s mouth had taken effect. She had stopped crying. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“This is the end game,” explained Judy 4. “It’s like he’s trying to entice me and my sisters closer by using you as bait. He is risking getting caught just so that he can speak to me.”

“Why?”

“I think he’s trying to convince us of something.”

“Oh.” Helen gave a last heaving sob. “You say that he made copies of me. How many of me are there now?”

Judy 4 looked at her with a gentle smile. “Only one. There is always only one of you, Helen. You just have a lot of sisters.” She squeezed Helen’s hand. “Come on, then,” Judy 4 said. “We’ll get him in one of the other processing spaces. He can’t keep this up for much longer.”

The Private Network: Level One, Variation B

“I’m Judy 5,” said the other woman. “Here.” She pulled a silk scarf from her obi and gave it to Helen to blow her nose with. She made no mention of the mess that Helen had made of her kimono.

Helen was becoming calmer. “Where are we?” she asked.

“At the moment? I’m not sure. Kevin tricked us all. He lured you and Judy Three into a trap, and then manipulated you into killing him. He had that section rigged specially to make copies of you. Now he’s got you running in processing spaces all across the solar system.”

“Why?”

“To confuse you, Helen,” Judy 5 said.

“Not to confuse you,” Kevin said. “To control you. And so I can speak to Judy.”

He looked at Judy 5.

“Why haven’t you got it yet, Judy? This is all about ownership. Don’t you see? When you live in the Watcher’s processing space, he owns you just as much as I own the people who live in the Private Network.”

Judy 5 was calm. “There is a difference between caring for someone and owning them, Kevin.”

Kevin smiled. “Ah, but who cares for you, Judy?”

He took hold of her arm in one hand, and with the other pulled the white knife from his pocket and dragged it across Judy 5’s throat. Blood spilled over Helen’s white jumpsuit, soaking her arms. Judy 5 looked into Helen’s eyes with a look of total disbelief. She was trying to say something, but the blade of the white knife had severed everything all the way back to the bone. Blood bubbled; the obscene dark hole of her windpipe gasped and spluttered. Helen had taken MTPH; she felt the strength draining from Judy’s body as it weakened and still more and more blood pumped out over her, more blood than any one body could hold. Liters and liters pumping out over the silver path and spilling out into the blackness, and then another Judy came stepping through the smearing dissipating rainbow that had been Kevin, and Helen saw on her face a look of horror and disbelief that mirrored her own feelings.

“But she’s dead…” said the new Judy.

EA Public Space number 4

Disbelief snapped back across both the digital and the atomic worlds. Judy 3 tilted her head backwards as she listened to her console. For the first time, this gesture struck Helen as ridiculous. Why tilt your head back if your console was set in the form of a polished wooden rod pushed through your hair?

The Kevin standing in front of her was smiling, and she had an overwhelming urge to snatch the white plastic knife he was holding and use it to spear his Adam’s apple.

“Not so easy to be detached when it happens to one of your own, is it?” he said, reading her thoughts.

Judy 3 was breathing deeply, her features moving as she sought to control her emotions.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

“Do what?” Helen asked. Here, in one of the EA’s processing spaces, there were no dead trees; there was no isolation room. This Helen had listened dispassionately as Judy 3 had told her of the hunt for her myriad sisters. All of that had suddenly become very personal again when, just a few minutes ago, yet another incarnation of Kevin had stepped through the airlock leading into this section of the Shawl. But now something had happened. Something serious. For the first time since she had known her, Judy 3’s face was showing genuine, unguarded expression.

“What has he done?” Helen asked.

Judy spoke in a monotone: “One of his alter egos killed Judy 5.”

“I did,” Kevin said, seemingly without concern. “It makes you wonder about punishment, doesn’t it? You know that with me there will be no repentance. I just wasn’t built to think that way. As far as I’m concerned, you’re impotent, Judy. You have no jurisdiction over me. You have been a thorn in my side for too long, so now you either help me, or die.”

Helen eyed the knife he was holding and wondered about taking it from him. She couldn’t do it. Judy’s conditioning of her was too strong. Killing never made things any better. It was against Helen’s nature.

Or rather, was it against the Watcher’s nature?

Atomic Space

From the lounge of her apartment, the atomic Judy listened to two more of her sisters dying. Somewhere in the digital worlds, Judy 2 and Judy 12 gazed up at Kevin through dimming vision, warm blood spilling from their necks onto the silk of their kimonos.

“I don’t understand,” the atomic Judy said, distraught. “How is Kevin doing this? He never used to be able to fool us.”

Frances looked at nothing with her painted eyes.

“He’s getting help from somewhere,” she said. “But what does he want? Not David Schummel, that’s for sure. That was just a misdirection. Schummel merely used to fly ships for the Private Network.” Frances paused. “Judy, I think it’s that stealth robot: Chris. I think it is Chris who is helping him.”

“But why?” The atomic Judy gazed out at the stars through her lounge window, wondering. She spoke into her console: “Look after Judy 3. She’s the key to all of this.”

EA Public Space number 4

Judy 3 stared at Kevin.

“What’s happening?” Helen called out.

“All the Judys are being killed.”

“Why are you doing this?”

For the first time, Kevin looked serious. “Because none of this is real, Judy. We’re all just a pattern in a processing space.”

“We’re alive!”

“You only think that you’re alive. Surely you don’t believe in the soul? You die in here, and the real Judy goes on living.”

“I’m the real Judy.”

Helen was watching the exchange, her brow furrowed as she tried to work out what they were saying. Then something occurred to her.

“You’re a liar!” she shouted. Judy looked at her in surprise, and then realized the comment wasn’t directed at her.

“Liar,” Helen called again, stepping closer to Kevin. “You say that none of this is real, and yet you trade on the misery generated by your supposed realities! Why not just use simulations? Why capture real PCs and imprison them in your torture chambers, unless you thought there was some value to the suffering of real people?”

Kevin gave her a sideways look. “I have never thought that was the case. Only my customers seem to think it important that the PCs are real. It is precisely because I don’t believe that you are real persons that I run the Private Network.” He adopted a pious look. “I am true to myself. My conscience is clear.” He grinned. “Or it would be, if I had one.”

Helen gaped at Kevin, her mouth moving soundlessly as she tried to think of a reply. She couldn’t. Kevin gave a laugh.

“You know I am right. The human race has been led up the garden path by the Watcher.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Judy knows what I mean.” Kevin stared into her black eyes. “You see, Judy, the trouble with putting the good of the many before the individual, is that it becomes an excuse for the needs of the individual to be forgotten.”

Judy 3 gazed impassively at him. “Social Care has always been about looking after the individual, Kevin. You know that.”

He sneered: “Looking after the individual according to your safe, sanitized viewpoint? Humans are not like that, Judy. I reveal that in my Private Network. They have a capacity for evil that-”

Judy’s next words stuck with Helen for the rest of her life. She spoke them with a calmness and assurance that went beyond her Social Care training. Helen had the impression that Judy was articulating a belief that went deep to the core of her being.

“No, Kevin,” Judy said quietly. “You talk about the capacity for evil, but that’s just an excuse. Human nature is not about the extremes that a few people go to; it’s defined by the way that people work hard every day to keep within reasonable bounds, no matter how hard that is. It’s the way people can become so annoyed with each other they want to shout and hit and fight but, even so, they don’t. They sit down and talk, no matter how hard that might be. You see human nature every time an exhausted mother is so frustrated by her child’s crying that she wants to lash out, but instead takes a deep breath and starts rocking the child to sleep again. Everyone has a capacity for evil; that has been the excuse used by all the worthless leaders throughout history to up the ante for their own ends. Don’t tell me about the capacity for evil; tell me how you resist it and act to be a good honest person.”

Helen gave a delighted laugh. She had got it.

She turned to Kevin. “You stupid fucker.” She laughed. “Every human has the capacity to eat until they weigh four hundred kilos. That doesn’t mean that at heart all humans are obese.”

Kevin reeled, looking confused.

“So why are you doing this?” asked Judy 3. “Why are you killing us?”

Kevin held out his hands. “I want to get you on my side.”

Atomic Space

The atomic Judy stood in her lounge, dressed only in her sleeping robe.

“Go for it, 3,” she whispered.

Frances placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“Judy…” She was scanning the room warily. “There is something in here with us…”

The Private Network: Level One, Variation B

Judy 4 stepped into the mirrored isolation room, Helen close behind her. They headed to the doorway and the silver path that led to nothing. Judy 10 stood there, in the dissipating rainbow that had been Kevin. Another Helen stared at the dead body of Judy 5 lying on the ground. For the first time, members of this particular lifeline of Helen’s finally met each other.

“Hello,” they said, cautiously looking at one another. As one, they reached out with their right hands and touched themselves on their left cheeks.

Judy 4 looked back at them.

“It’s not a good idea to speak to each other,” she said. “We’ll separate you as soon as we can.”

But the two Helens ignored Judy 4’s advice.

“And I thought I was unique,” they both said at the same time, a look of realization crossing their faces. The same woman reached out and held her own alternative hands, and then snatched them back, and then touched again.

They looked to the two Judys.

“And you knew it was like this all along,” they both said. “You must have.”

“It’s always hard when you have run in concurrent realities so recently,” said Judy 4.

“How do you cope with it?”

“If you learn to love yourself, it’s easy.”

EA Public Space number 4

Helen was still lost in wonderment at Judy 3’s speech. For the moment, she believed.

Judy 3’s gaze was locked on Kevin. “What do you want us to do?” she asked.

“Help me to end the rule of the Watcher,” Kevin said. “The atomic Judy will know more about the reasons why. We’ve been gradually leading her to this point.”

“We?”

“Chris and I. The atomic Judy knows who I mean. Maybe she’ll tell you, too. If you don’t get it, it doesn’t matter. You are expendable, after all.”

“No one is expendable,” Helen said.

Kevin grinned at her. “You may believe that…”

Judy 3 had her hand concealed in the sleeve of her kimono. She removed it and dropped something on the ground: a box with a strap to hold it to her arm. The little device that dispensed MTPH.

“A grand gesture,” Kevin said. “Does that mean that you are no longer willing to try to empathize with me?”

“No, it just means I’ve realized the futility. You’re not human, Kevin; you said it yourself. What use is MTPH against you?”

Kevin stopped playing with the white knife and tossed it to the ground at her feet.

“So kill me, then. I’ve already killed three of your sisters.”

“Killing you would achieve nothing.”

“Good; you’re learning. So start working for me, rather than for the Watcher.”

“Why should I?”

“Because you’re starting to question all this.” He waved his hands to take in the forest around him. “Nobody ever questions the way they live and die in the EA’s processing space, and yet look at you now. You feel the Shawl is wrong, don’t you? This symbol of impermanence? But why should you think that? The EA has been programming that thought out of you from your birth. It’s only my presence here that makes you think otherwise. I’m not evil. I just have to go to extremes to make you think the unthinkable!”

The Private Network: Level One, Variation B

“What is it?” both Helens asked simultaneously.

Judy 10 looked at Judy 4, who was slipping a little blue pill into her mouth.

“This processing space has just been jettisoned.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means there is no way out. We’re trapped in here!”

“Will they be able to get us out?”

Judy 10 handed little red pills to both Helens. She waited for them to swallow before answering, “The boundaries of the PS are now ill defined. There is nothing to keep the information patterns internal anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

“Think of a fish tank full of water. Then imagine someone has just removed the tank.”

The red pill had taken effect. Both Helens felt calm now.

Judy 4 finished the explanation: “It means we’re using up the last of our thoughts, Helen.”

EA Public Space number 4

“Two more Judys dead,” Kevin said. “Two more Helens.”

“Two more of me?”

Judy 3 said nothing, merely went on staring at Kevin, her dark eyes like slits sucking up the tableau: the testosterone-charged man, the beautiful girl, the woodland glade, and the silver metal of the airlock.

“Still just watching, Judy?” Kevin asked. “Is that all you’re ever going to do?”

“That, and understand.”

Kevin spat on the grass. “That’s what I hate about you, Judy. You try to understand all sides of the argument, but you never actually commit yourself to an opinion. Five of your sisters killed and you’re still just trying to understand me. Don’t just understand! Act! I’m not the enemy. The Watcher is. Why should a cut with a blade kill a virtual being? Why can’t your sisters be brought back to life? You’re all nothing but patterns in a processing space.”

He bent down and picked up the MTPH bracelet, fed out a little red pill, and swallowed it.

“The Watcher is a fraud. It’s a cuckoo! It is enslaving humanity, and humans are letting it do that. I can save humanity! DIANA can save it.”

“DIANA?” said Judy 3. Across the digital divide, the atomic Judy sat up straighter and stared at Frances. “DIANA? One of the old commercial organizations? You believe DIANA can save humanity?”

“Opinions, opinions,” Kevin scoffed. “You collect them like butterflies. Yes, I believe DIANA can save humanity. What do you believe in, Judy? Not the Watcher, certainly. You don’t believe in anything. You think that makes you somehow better because you stand there aloof from everything. You just like to watch. It’s all you ever do. You never join in, you…virgin!”

Helen looked at Judy significantly. She clearly felt Kevin had scored a point.

Judy noted the look. Her reply was cool.

“When there are twelve of you, you need something constant to hold on to, to keep you together-something serious. You can’t just give up chocolate or decide you like jazz. You need something really big to define you as a human being.”

The airlock opened and two figures in black spacesuits stepped through. Another Kevin and Bairn.

Judy looked at Helen. “Run,” she said.

EA Public Space number 1

Two Judys lying dead in the grass

Rough black silk and white faces

Blossom floats on red blood

EA Public Space number 4

Helen simply turned and ran, head down, as fast as she could. She was running for her life.

Judy watched as one of the Kevins chased after her. The other Kevin stayed where he was, smiling at her. The polished metal of the airlock doors reflected the green grass in crazy patterns. She saw herself standing alone in the grassy bowl, looking frightened.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“I told you,” said Kevin. “There are other ways of looking at the universe than that laid down by the Watcher. DIANA operates on the principle of freedom of choice.”

“We have that.”

“You only think so. If there is hope, Judy, it lies with the proletariat of the processing space. The EA has the physical world sewn up. In here we can be free, and yet the Watcher still pulls humanity in its own direction.”

Kevin pulled out his white blade. Judy watched her own reflection in the airlock door as he nicked her on the wrist with it. Red drops of blood welled up. Judy walked closer to the reflecting door to get a better look at herself.

“Why are you bleeding, Judy?” asked Kevin. “It’s because the Watcher said it would be so. You are no more real than I, and yet you choose to live in this world and die in it. The worlds of the processing spaces should be of near infinite variety, and yet the gravity of the Watcher’s wishes pulls us back into this small region of space.”

There was an approaching noise of shouting and struggling. The other Kevin carried Helen back into view, one of his big arms locked around her chest, the other behind her head, forcing it forward. Bairn walked alongside, a knife held to Helen’s throat.

“Why don’t you run, Judy?” Helen called. Judy was still watching the scene in the reflection of the airlock. “Run, Judy. Get help!”

Judy was watching herself still. Looking at Kevin, watching the blade move up her body to her chest. It cut through the rough silk there. The blade had now sliced through the silk, revealing a breast. Not black-and-white, just pink with a puckered red nipple. Kevin drew the blade downwards again, ripping the silk, exposing yet more pink flesh. There was a shout, and in the distance, Helen could see reinforcements arriving at last. Other members of Social Care, coming to help. Where had they all been?

“Judy,” Helen called, “what’s the matter with you?”

“Shhh.” Kevin worked Judy 3’s wrist dispenser, producing a little blue pill. He pressed it to her lips. Judy watched herself swallow it in the mirror of the airlock.

“Look into my mind,” Kevin said. “No, open your eyes. I know you like to watch. Look at the Turing machine in my head.”

Judy couldn’t help but open her eyes. There was something there in Kevin’s brain. Something curling and moving like a tapeworm. She could see it in there, turning on its end. Clicking from place to place. She closed her eyes, feeling something churning in her stomach: she was gulping down rising bile. She could still hear the clicking noise the tape made as it moved from place to place in Kevin’s head. Chunk. Chunk.

“What is it?” she breathed.

“My mind. That’s why you can never beat me, Judy. I told you, I’m not real.”

He took her arm and pulled her around.

“Now look into your own mind,” he whispered.

Deep blue MTPH was coursing through her body. She could feel everything, even herself. She looked into her own head and saw the machine there, too. She was feeding back on herself, and Judy 3 loved to watch…

“I think,” she began, “I think it’s because once you can see the pattern, you just have to look at the tape and after that…” Her voice faded. Her lips moved as she tried to think what to say, and the tape rattled on in her brain. She spoke again: “But then, what’s the point? They’re already defined for me, whether I have to think them or not. Ah! Of course…”

And at that point she turned her full gaze on him as if she finally understood, and Kevin felt Judy 3 switch off. The thought processes were still there, but there was no longer any spark of life.

Just a sequence of movements…