Read Online The John Varley Reader by John Varley - Free Book Online Page B

see, there’s been a big goof-up.
    CHAPTER TWO
    â€œWhat Happened?”
    Â 
WE’D like to know that, too, Mr. Fingal. But here’s what we do know. Your body has been misplaced. Now, there’s nothing to worry about, we’re doing all we can to locate it and find out how it happened, but it will take some time. Maybe it’s small consolation, but this has never happened before in the seventy-five years we’ve been operating, and as soon as we find out how it happened this time, you can be sure we’ll be careful not to let it happen again. We’re pursuing several leads at this time, and you can rest easy that your body will be returned to you intact just as soon as we locate it.
    You are awake and aware right now because we have incorporated your memory cube into the workings of our H-210 computer, one of the finest holomemory systems available to modern business. You see, there are a few problems.
    CHAPTER THREE
    â€œWhat Problems?”
    Â 
IT’S kind of hard to put in terms you’d understand, but let’s take a crack at it, shall we?
    The medium we use to record your memories isn’t the one you’ve probably used yourself as insurance against accidental death. As you must know, that system will store your memories for up to twenty years with no degradation or loss of information, and is quite expensive. The system we use is a temporary one, good for two, five, fourteen, or twenty-eight days, depending on the length of your stay. Your memories are put in the cube, where you might expect them to remain static and unchanging, as they do in your insurance recording. If you thought that, you would be wrong, Mr. Fingal. Think about it. If you die, your bank will immediately start a clone from the plasm you stored along with the memory cube. In six months, your memories would be played back into the clone and you would awaken, missing the memories that were accumulated in your body from the time of your last recording. Perhaps this has happened to you. If it has, you know the shock of awakening from the recording process to be told that it is three or four years later, and that you had died in that time.
    In any case, the process we use is an ongoing one, or it would be worthless to you. The cube we install in the African animal of your choice is capable of adding the memories of your stay in Kenya to the memory cube. When your visit is over, these memories are played back into your brain and you leave the disneyland with the exciting, educational, and refreshing experiences you had as an animal, though your body never left our slumber room. This is known as “doppling,” from the German doppelganger .
    Now, to the problems we talked about. Thought we’d never get around to them, didn’t you?
    First, since you registered for a weekend stay, the medico naturally used one of the two-day cubes as part of our budget-excursion fare. These cubes have a safety factor, but aren’t much good beyond three days at best. At the end of that time the cube would start to deteriorate. Of course, we fully expect to have you installed in your own body before then. Additionally, there is the problem of storage. Since these ongoing memory cubes are intended to be in use all the time your memories are stored in them, it presents certain problems when we find ourselves in the spot we are now in. Are you following me, Mr. Fingal? While the cube has already passed its potency for use in coexisting with a live host, like the lioness you just left, it must be kept in constant activation at all times or loss of information results. I’m sure you wouldn’t want that to happen, would you? Of course not. So what we have done is to “plug you in” to our computer, which will keep you aware and healthy and guard against the randomizing of your memory nexi. I won’t go into that; let it stand that randomizing is not the sort of thing you’d like to have happen to