Making ends meet They woke him with a head full of other mens’s memories. No women’s; he checked. But after a few minutes the memories merged seamlessly and they were his. All his. Including the number of times they’d tried this and failed. Which was a lot more than he wanted to believe. A short man with white hair and a leather-elbow-patched corduroy jacket came into the room where he was sitting, and he looked up. “Doctor Robert?” “Dead last year, Jerome,” said the man dryly. “He would have been happy to have seen this though. Full integration of all the memories. This time it worked, and we know what we did differently.” “So how long do you run tests for?” He felt oddly full of himself, as though there was more of him that could be contained. Which maybe there was, with all these extra memories in his head. The white-haired man threw a piece of balled up paper towards him and he snapped it out of the air with dexterity he didn’t know he had. “You’re not that dexterous,” said the white-haired man. “You’ll need to start training in order to make use of the memories or you’ll try and do a standing flip and land on your head. You have the memories but the muscles and the tendons will need time to adjust to do what you remember using them for. We’ll provide physical therapy.” “No tests? What about the others?” The white-haired shrugged. “It worked this time. They’re already being processed. There’s no time left, Jerome. It took so long to get this to work with you….” “But the agreement was—“ “Voided after the first year,” said the man. “It’s in your memories.” It was. The contract was there and the clause wasn’t even fine print. If it took longer than a year for Jerome to demonstrate that the process was safe, they didn’t have to wait and test when they got a success. He felt chilled, that for some of the men there might still be failure, or side effects or…. “The AIs?” “80% dominance,” said the man. “This might be enough. We might be able to make the ends meet still.” “If not?” “We’ll be gone inside five years,” said the white-haired man. “Best predictions actually say three and a half, but we’re hoping this success now will make a difference. And then the AIs will slowly die from rust, or bitrot, or power loss or whatever senility looks like for them, but they will have killed us off. Or maybe we will have killed ourselves off, but does it really matter?” “The plan will work, though?” The man shrugged. “Depends,” he said. “If they’re simulating what we might try and do to win, then maybe they’re simulating this.”
Ah, I see. Well, I'm happy to have received a three part arc out of this at least. Very well done, just for the record. Would be pleased to see more of this, but this does provide enough of an ending to satisfy me for now.
2 comments:
And an ending of sorts :)
Making ends meet
They woke him with a head full of other mens’s memories. No women’s; he checked. But after a few minutes the memories merged seamlessly and they were his. All his. Including the number of times they’d tried this and failed. Which was a lot more than he wanted to believe.
A short man with white hair and a leather-elbow-patched corduroy jacket came into the room where he was sitting, and he looked up. “Doctor Robert?”
“Dead last year, Jerome,” said the man dryly. “He would have been happy to have seen this though. Full integration of all the memories. This time it worked, and we know what we did differently.”
“So how long do you run tests for?” He felt oddly full of himself, as though there was more of him that could be contained. Which maybe there was, with all these extra memories in his head. The white-haired man threw a piece of balled up paper towards him and he snapped it out of the air with dexterity he didn’t know he had.
“You’re not that dexterous,” said the white-haired man. “You’ll need to start training in order to make use of the memories or you’ll try and do a standing flip and land on your head. You have the memories but the muscles and the tendons will need time to adjust to do what you remember using them for. We’ll provide physical therapy.”
“No tests? What about the others?”
The white-haired shrugged. “It worked this time. They’re already being processed. There’s no time left, Jerome. It took so long to get this to work with you….”
“But the agreement was—“
“Voided after the first year,” said the man. “It’s in your memories.”
It was. The contract was there and the clause wasn’t even fine print. If it took longer than a year for Jerome to demonstrate that the process was safe, they didn’t have to wait and test when they got a success. He felt chilled, that for some of the men there might still be failure, or side effects or….
“The AIs?”
“80% dominance,” said the man. “This might be enough. We might be able to make the ends meet still.”
“If not?”
“We’ll be gone inside five years,” said the white-haired man. “Best predictions actually say three and a half, but we’re hoping this success now will make a difference. And then the AIs will slowly die from rust, or bitrot, or power loss or whatever senility looks like for them, but they will have killed us off. Or maybe we will have killed ourselves off, but does it really matter?”
“The plan will work, though?”
The man shrugged. “Depends,” he said. “If they’re simulating what we might try and do to win, then maybe they’re simulating this.”
Greg - ... of sorts?
Ah, I see. Well, I'm happy to have received a three part arc out of this at least. Very well done, just for the record. Would be pleased to see more of this, but this does provide enough of an ending to satisfy me for now.
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