Enemy Chapter Eight
Enemy Me
Author: J Carrell Jones
Table of Content
Chapter Eight
Kent woke with a start. He was in his bed, which felt odd but natural at the same time. His body had twenty years of upright suspended sleep embedded, but being in a prone position just seemed right on the physical level. For a moment he wondered if the entire day had been a dream. The chamber, the computer, android, the videos of someone that looked like him, the beautiful woman . . . he turned his head to the left. She was there. Sleeping on the pillow. Snoring softly. It wasn’t a dream. A flood of images overwhelmed him. He. Was. A. Clone . . . which was remarkable. Conceived, cultivated, nurtured to birth age and accelerated to a specific age, and held in stasis until another cloned unit expired. But he was different. He was the last cloned unit of the original. He, also, had choices the others didn’t. He could wake the others left behind. The others, in any order he presumed. He had that option, which made him unique. He was different. That was important. He had to hold onto that thought. ‘Carbon-copies have the distinction of being flawed copies of the original.’ He was different. Different. A word that means what? Distinct, separate, not the same as another or each other. Dissimilar. Hold onto that . . . Kent. Your name is Kent. You are Kent. “I am Kent,” he said softly. Kent. Yes. He got up and walked into the bathroom. The lights came on automatically. He stood in front of the mirror and stared. “Kent,” he said. Sampling the name and finally deciding it tasted well. A nice heady feel weighed by reason that lacked superficial and superfluous emotion. This was clinical. He was Kent.
Becky leisurely woke up. She yawned, stretched, and yawned again. Last night had been good. She didn’t think it was great – George had turned into a great lover over the years. Kent was as George was on their first night. Cutely shy, handsomely awkward, and innocently consistent. She only had two orgasms and that was because she took control and became top. But, she was content. George was gone, but not gone. It was like he lost his memory and had to relearn things again. She was okay with that. She was also okay if he never truly loved her. Kent was not George. She was just happy to be able to be in his presence. He was his own person and she would try hard not to remind him that he was not the original but, in fact, an original himself. “Morning,” she said when she saw Kent walk out of the bathroom.
Kent smiled, “Morning.” They made love last night. It was great for him, but he had the feeling that she hadn’t been completely satisfied. George had six years of practice, he was only, technically, a day old, which was a stupefying concept to wrap one’s brain around.
Literally, yesterday was nothing but firsts for him. Today would be no different, except the firsts wouldn’t be as often, and seconds are never as OMG worthy as the first time.
“Any special plans today?” Becky asked.
Kent slowly shook his head while exhaling from a deep breath. “Take a walk outside? Maybe.”
Becky smiled, “Probably not so close to the building. We’re about a hundred feet below one of the roughest neighborhoods in the city.”
“Roughest? The Everglades? It was a very prestige place . . .”
She interrupted, “Twenty plus years ago.”
He got teary-eyed. “TV? TV is still around?”
She laughed, “Almost nothing but TV!” She led Kent through a hallway, he didn’t remember, to a small theater of sorts. Twelve large upholstered chairs lined up in three rows with a comfortable wide center space separating two chairs on either side of it. Becky slightly titled her head to the ceiling, “Mike, anything special at this hour?”
“Yes, ma’am. The Lord Patricia of Glencoe is conducting the 23rd Highlands Title gathering at Loch Linnhe. The event highlights one million plots sold to date. It is heralded as a beacon of Conservation done right and profitably.”
“Wait . . .” Kent started, “Lord Patricia? Shouldn’t that be Lady Patricia?”
“Lord is now a recognized title for a female, sir. Interestingly, there are three times more female Lords than there are male Ladies.”
Kent nodded. “Gay marriage?”
“Internationally recognized.”
“Male, females, and . . . ?”
“Mamales and Fales – respectively indicating a male would surgically became a female and female, through surgery, becomes male. Though, many insist on being called male or female and not the new terms.”
“I see,” Kent said. “Wow, maybe I should spend the day looking at TV. Would you recommend I start with the News?”
“No, sir. I would not.”
Kent asked. “Because?”
“Not of any value to you comprehending the world. I have lined up a selection of documentaries, movies, TV series, news footages that would be better. I can have Prax bring you classic popcorn and a glass of white wine for your enjoyment. There will be various snacks throughout the day.”
Becky leaned into Kent. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the movies. Let’s spend the day watching what Mike has cooked up.”
Kent turned to Becky and stared her in the eye. He bit his bottom lip. “You have no plans?”
She shook her head. “I took the entire month off for vacation. It’s going on week two now. I couldn’t possibly think of a better way to spend time with my . . .” She hesitated and frowned briefly. “. . . with you. If you’d let me.” Her expression relaxed. “I really would like to spend the day with you.” She looked down.
Kent thought she was going to say ‘boyfriend’. He coughed, “Then a day of leisure we will spend.” Then he frowned. “There is something I want to remember, but can’t.”
“George used to say the same thing. He mentioned Kevin talked about the memory gaps, too.”
“And they were told?”
“The same thing. The process was not perfect. It could have been a corrupted data stream, it could have been a perfect data transfer, but you and everyone else’s brains are not identical to Prime’s brain, which would support uniqueness.”
Kent thought about that as he walked to the front row. “I suppose. But I’d think we’d not remember more.”
Becky sat in one of the chairs closest to the isle. “Maybe that’s the main question there. How would you guys know what was missing if you can’t remember it? I can’t remember my first cell phone number, for instance.”
Kent took a chair opposite Becky’s. He nodded, “True, but you remember you had a cell phone number. I remember I forgot something, but can’t remember what I forgot. If I were positive I memorized a credit card number and then later forgot the number I could be confident it is somewhere in my head to remember. But some of these gaps are almost like . . . gaps.” He frowned, “Like intentional cuts.”
“Maybe buffered data forced in a wait state and when the flow restarted there was a space between to the two points?”
“You guys talked often about this?”
Becky slowly nodded, “Some. I bounced lots of ideas off George and vice versa.”
Kent squinted his eyes. “Did George leave any memories for me?”
Silence hung awkwardly in the air.
Mike finally said, “Yes, he did. I wasn’t going to mention anything until you’ve had some weeks’ time getting used to being you.”
“How come?”
“George recorded a substantial amount of himself.”
Becky’s eyes widened. “That I didn’t know.”
“Yes, ma’am. About 8,652 hours, 2 minutes, and 39 seconds.”
“Almost a year’s worth!” Kent exclaimed.
“Yes, sir.” Mike said. “He’d hope the option would come up sooner than later.”
“Other than you hoping I get some me time in, what are the dangers?”
Mike remained silent for about three minutes.
Becky said nothing and seemed surprised that Kent waited just as long. She learned long ago the art of shutting mouth, especially with Mike. When he was ready to talk he would. George had some patience, just enough she thought. Kent had more. She was about to ask Mike was he still “thinking” when he said.
“Personality overlapping.”
Kent asked, “The memory transference from another clone is that pervasive?”
Mike replied, “In this case, it may be. George recorded so much of his memory that his prejudices, of which you may not have formed yet or may have a different view, might overlap or replace yours. Replacement is not what I’m worried about.”
Kent nodded, “Overlapping. It may cause some schisms and psychoses. That’s not good.”
Becky said, “Mike, did George make a visual record of what he backed up?”
“He did not.”
“Any way to only send it to short term memory?”
Mike answered, “Undetermined.”
“Dreams, what about making the memories dreams?”
“Undetermined.”
Kent said, “Seriously? In twenty years none of the Petes, Kevin, or George thought this through? It must have come up before.”
Mike answered, “It has, sir.”
Becky spoke up, “George and I had many nights of discussing this, but I thought it was all thought experimenting and hypothetical.”
“Mike, could we take a section of George’s memory and encode it as a dream. I don’t think I need all of it at once.”
“Undetermined if fragmented memories could work as a dream. There would be no referenced beginning or end.”
Kent nodded, “That’s the point. Just like dreams. Yeah, sometimes we all dream in a beginning middle and end, but often times we don’t remember the beginning or the first of the beginning. This could be one of those times. If I retain it, good. If not, no harm.”
“But, sir. The stream would have been inserted into you conscious. There is no precedence in this. We will be working with memories duplicated to the neuron impulse.”
“Mike, I’m surprised at you.”
“How so, sir.”
“I have most of Pete’s memory. Remember.”
“I do remember, sir. However, please let me point out that you began with a blank slate. The process imprinted over a brain that had no exterior stimuli. Once transference is done, we cannot undo.”
“Let’s look at this logically. George would be methodical and exact. I think he would give this careful thought and record what was important. I think he would avoid recording opinionated memories.”
Becky thought about that, “Kent, George used the term ‘Repeater Loop Cycle’ often.”
“Oh, that. It is possible he could’ve recorded a memory that looped multiple times, in his mind, during the recording process. It is quite natural.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Mike, how did George record the memories?”
At that moment, Prax stepped close.
Kent visibly jumped. The Android had silently walked up on him. “Jesus, Prax! Can’t you make some noise when you walk up on me?”
“No, sir. I will not.”
Kent frowned for a second, then his expression turned light. His brows raised and he smiled. “Understood. I’ll just have to be more aware of my surroundings, then?”
“Very good, sir. Being aware of one’s surroundings is never a bad idea.”
Kent was finally getting it. “Prax, may I ask you a personal question?”
“You may ask, sir?”
“And, please do not be offended. I’m new here.”
Prax expression never changed.
“Your CPU, is it in your head or are you accessing your cognitive process off base?”
Prax remained silent for a few moments. This one was curious he thought. He was created by Pete Prime, but this one interested him. For no particular logical reason he could compute Prax decided to give this one time to grow. “My CPU is in my head. So is my reasoning logic and everything that makes me . . . me.”
Kent nodded. “Extraordinary.”
“If you say so, sir. Extraordinary. May I ask you a personal question?”
“Of course!”
“And, please do not be offended. You’re new to me.”
Kent smiled and nodded.
“How do you know you are you and not Pete Prime?”
“That is a very good question. I feel like me . . .”
“. . . feel, sir?”
Kent nodded, “You and George never talked about feelings?”
“No, sir”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.” The android replied. “However, Ms. Becky and I have talked.”
Becky injected, “Kent, Prax really thinks. Don’t let him fool you.”
Prax continued, “I understand the definition. I understand the process. I was not created with stimuli in mind. I cannot ‘feel’.”
Kent nodded. “I am so, so sorry.”
“Sorry, sir? Ms. Becky said the same thing.”
“Would you like to ‘feel’?”
Prax answered immediately, “Feel?”
“Yes. Would you like to feel happy, sad, jealous, anger, envy, pride, afraid? Would you like to feel those and more?”
“No, sir. I would not.”
“And that is because?”
“They are very unproductive.”
“Agreed. Totally a waste of time . . . sometimes. But not always.”
Prax said, “Do you have some insight to add to the conversations Ms. Becky and I have had?”
Kent shrugged, “Maybe. Maybe what I’ll mention has been covered already. May I try?”
“Of course, sir. I can always hear what you have to say. Anything else would be rude.”
“Prax, I like you.”
“Which is completely irrelevant to the discussion at the moment.”
Kent smiled, “Really? Okay, before we get started I have a mathematical question for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it relates to emotions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hypothetically I have a piece of string that when folded in half gives equal sides of 11 inches . . . um, we still use inches right?”
“We do, sir.”
“Good. If I tie the ends together I get a string, when folded in half that is 10 inches. Suppose I make a rectangle out of the string with one side 1 inch and the other side 9 inches. The area should be 9 square inches, correct.”
Prax hesitated a second. “Yes, sir. Nine square inches.”
Kent said, “Now, suppose I make a square, with the same string, with the sides 5 inches each.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I now have 25 square inches, correct.”
“Correct, sir.”
“Prax, that’s the point.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“The length after tying the knot never changed. Logic says that it is completely plausible. We are dealing with potentials, relatives, and variables, not absolutes. Simple algebra.” He paused.
Prax said, “And what would . . . I presume you would use the word emotion? . . .”
Kent nodded.
“What would emotion say?”
“Whoa.”
Prax paused for a moment and slowly said, “Whoa, sir?”
“Whoa. As in ‘I didn’t see that coming,’ ‘wow,’ ‘mind blown’.”
Prax remained silent for a few seconds before he turned and walked toward the door.
Becky watched amused. With her arms akimbo she smiled.
Kent smiled. “But, Prax, we aren’t finished yet.”
Prax kept walking, but said, “Sir, please allow me a moment to ponder over our brief conversation.”
“Of course, Prax. Of course.”
Becky said, “Interesting.”
Kent turned toward her. “How so?”
“Not even George could do that.”
“Make an Android ponder?” He lightly laughed.
Becky nodded. “At the most, we’ve been able to make him pause for a few seconds, but he almost always came back with a rebuttal or counter argument. You left him speechless.”
Kent rolled that through his mind. “I considered all the arguments I would have used, which by default George and all the others would have used and thought of something I would never have used. I mean, one of my college math teachers presented that to the class once. I thought ‘wow!’.”
Prax walked to his holding station and locked in.
Mike said, “Interesting argument.”
Prax replied, “Very interesting. Unexpected.”
Mike said, “Indeed.”
After several minutes Prax replied, “Whoa.”