vN The First Machine Dynasty(69)

Atsuko made her way to Sarton's chair. She wrapped her arms around him. His face pressed into her belly. Atsuko rubbed his back in gentle circles, but focused her gaze on Amy as she spoke. "He can't hurt you any longer, Daniel. He's locked up, far away."



"Shit," Javier murmured. "Oh, Jesus. I'm sorry–"



"Perhaps this Dr Singh person was lying. Or perhaps he was merely misinformed. But Amy simply must be wrong."



"No, I'm not." Amy took a step closer to Sarton. She did her best to ignore Atsuko's heavy glare. "I don't know how he hurt you, Dr Sarton, and I'm sorry it happened. But he ordered someone to execute my mom. I watched her clademates – my aunts – eat her alive. I'm only alive because Javier escaped and found me."



Sarton withdrew from the folds of Oxford cloth. "He did?" He straightened, leaned back a little, and examined Javier. "That's… unexpected."



Javier rocked on his heels. "I'm full of surprises."



"Tell me about LeMarque," Amy said.



Sarton leaned back in his chair. He pulled his glasses off, cleaned them with the hem of his scarf, pinched his nose, and began speaking. "He was an awful man, obviously, on some levels." Sarton rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. "But on others, he looked at innovative technology as a kind of ministry. He thought that better design would make a better world. He wanted humans to examine God's intelligent design, and emulate it in their own works. And more importantly, I think that he believed in the possibility of autonomous, realistic humanoids more firmly than any of the specialists working in the field at the time."



Javier snorted. "I suppose we should feel grateful."



"Of course we should. Without LeMarque, and without his followers, we wouldn't exist at all." Atsuko folded her arms. Despite wearing only a shirt and no underwear, she managed to maintain an intimidating posture. Amy wondered if she could ever stand that tall and proud while being naked. After her experience in the Cuddlebug, she rather doubted it.



You can do something she will never do, Portia reminded her. So she has wifi in her head. So she's still drinking New Eden's special Communion  -Aid. Her mind will still fry if she even contemplates the things we take for granted.



Dr Sarton cleared his throat. "Well. I didn't bring you here to air out the family laundry. I want to help you, Amy."



He gestured at the tiny lights swarming across the darkness on the display.



"When I left Redmond, I left a back door. This is a map of your mind taken during your in-game experience last week. That was its purpose – to evaluate which sectors of your memory activated to different stimuli. Each of those dots represents ten nanometres of your memory. I've filtered out some common to all vN; heuristics, locomotion protocols, things like that. I was looking for the failsafe. The organization of those bits is proprietary to the firms that designed each program, so they're easy to screen out. Those are the dim ones."



Amy nodded. "OK. So what are the bright ones?"



Dr Sarton made a pulling motion, like he was tightening a knot. The green dots jumped into focus. "As near as I can tell, this is Javier. I had to dig around to find which firms designed his add-ons, but once you figure out the patterns you can search them throughout the whole system. See how his information is distributed throughout various sectors? His markers are all over your systems; they're acting like patches, subtly altering your normal processes. It's probably because his particular clade is so specialized – originally, his model had none of the bells and whistles that you now share. The photosynthesis, the arboreal stuff, the tactility upgrade – all of that is very specific, very designer. Haute programming, if you will." Dr Sarton raised his eyebrows. "In other words, you have excellent taste."



"Portia told me to bite him. I didn't know who he was."



Dr Sarton clicked his tongue. "Well. Moving on." He vanished Javier's information, then pulled forward another set, these a sort of periwinkle blue. "These are your individual memories. This is where things get tricky. Each of your memories has a marker similar to the ones on Javier's add-ons; the firm that designed your mnemonic organization left a watermark. Unfortunately, Portia shares that watermark, so her memories also come up. And without screening them individually, there's no way I or anyone else can tell which is which."



Amy nodded slowly. This visualization of her mind was surprisingly beautiful, and she couldn't help but stare. Until this moment she had expected that any scientist poking around inside her consciousness would find something as ugly and broken as Portia herself. But from this very distant view, it glowed like the night skies she had seen over the Sheep. It was deep and alive and real, and it could be cultivated and altered and experimented with.