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For a small extra fee, most veterinary insurance policies cover cloning your pet dog or cat in event of
their accidental and distressing death. Human cloning, for reasons nobody is very clear on any more, is
still illegal in most developed nations but very few judiciaries push for mandatory abortion of identical
twins.
Some commodities are expensive: the price of crude oil has broken sixty euros a barrel and is edging
inexorably up. Other commodities are cheap: computers, for example hobbyists print off weird new
processor architectures on their home inkjets, middle-aged folks wipe their backsides with diagnostic
paper that can tell how their VHDL levels are tending.
The latest casualties of the march of technological progress are: the High Street clothes shop, the flushing
toilet, the Main Battle Tank, and the first-generation of quantum computers. New with the decade are
cheap enhanced immune systems, brain implants that hook right into the Chomsky organ and talk to you
using your own inner voice, and widespread public paranoia about limbic spam. Nanotechnology has
shattered into a dozen disjoint disciplines, and skeptics are predicting that it will all peter out before long.
Philosophers have ceded qualia to engineers, and the current difficult problem in AI is getting software to
experience embarrassment.
Fusion power is still, of course, fifty years away.
* * *
The Victorians are morphing into Goths before Manfred's culture-shocked eyes.
You looked lost, explains Monica, leaning over him curiously. What's with your eyes?
I can't see too well, Manfred tries to explain. Everything is a blur, and the voices that usually chatter
incessantly in his head have left nothing behind but a roaring silence. I mean, someonemugged me. They
took his hand closes on air: something is missing from his belt.
Monica, the tall woman he first saw in the hospital, enters the room. What she's wearing indoors is
skin-tight, iridescent, and, disturbingly, claims to be a distributed extension of her neuroectoderm.
Stripped of costume-drama accoutrements, she's a twenty-first century adult, born or decanted after the
millennial baby boom. She waves some fingers in Manfred's face: How many?
Two. Manfred tries to concentrate. What
No concussion, she says briskly. 'Scuse me while I page. Her eyes are brown, with amber
raster-lines flickering across her pupils.Contact lenses? Manfred wonders, his head turgid and
unnaturally slow. It's like being drunk, except much less pleasant: he can't seem to wrap his head around
an idea from all angles at once any more.Is this what consciousness used to be like? It's an ugly, slow
sensation. She turns away from him: MEDLINE says you'll be all right in a while. The main problem is
the identity loss. Are you backed-up anywhere?
Here. Alan, still top-hatted and mutton-chopped, holds out a pair of spectacles to Manfred. Take
these, they may do you some good. His topper wobbles, as if a strange A-life experiment is struggling to
escape from its false bottom.
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Oh. Thank you. Manfred reaches for them with a pathetic sense of gratitude. As soon as he puts them
on, they run through a test series, whispering questions and watching how his eyes focus: after a minute,
the room around him clears as the specs build a synthetic image to compensate for his myopia. There's
limited net access too, he notices, a warm sense of relief stealing over him. Do you mind if I call
somebody? he asks: I want to check my backups.
Be my guest. Alan slips out through the door; Monica sits down opposite him and stares into some
inner space. The room has a tall ceiling, with whitewashed walls and wooden shutters to cover the
aerogel window bays. The furniture is modern modular, and it clashes somewhat. We were expecting
you.
You were he shifts track with an effort: I was here to see somebody. Here in Scotland, I mean.
Us. She catches his eye deliberately. To discuss sapience options with our patron.
With your he squeezes his eyes shut. Damn. I don'tremember . I need my glasses back! Please.
What about your backups? she asks curiously.
A moment. Manfred tries to remember what address to ping. It's useless, and painfully frustrating. It
would help if I could remember where I keep the rest of my mind, he complains. It used to be at oh,
there .
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