I am a copy of a man.
The fact that I am a copy is the first thing I know. The most important thing. It’s stamped on every memory, like a watermark. “This memory is a copy.”
It was a worry, you see, lo these many decades ago, when men finally learned how to read the alignment of nucleotides and neuron trembling and latent electrochemical behavior that is human memory. Or rather, not how to read it – such things are apparently somewhat individual and as yet no one has figured out what ‘green’ looks like much less ‘where did I bury those bodies’ – but how to copy it. To translate it. To duplicate the fat and nerve and chemical cocktail, and frame it instead in silicon and copper and selenium.
Hey, I don’t know how it works. I’m a copy of an artist.
There was a worry back then, that a copy of a man would think he was the man. Would not be able to accept the fact that he was not the original. And so they made damn sure that the copy would know. That it wouldn’t have any wrenching moment of discovery that no, it wasn’t John Doe after all, and this wasn’t some terrible nightmare. There’d be no waking up because there’d be no dreaming to begin with.
I’ve known I was a copy from the instant they turned me on.
Ironically, it turned out all the precaution wasn’t necessary. An m-clone has all the memories of the original person (carefully stamped as duplicates). They have all the skills; if you hook them up to manipulation arms or computer drafting software or even just drop them into a robot body, they can weave or dance or play the piano just like the original. They even have the same opinions.
M-clones just don’t have any motivation.
Drive, it turns out, is apparently a biological phenomenon. M-clones don’t want anything. They might believe in things – very strongly, even – but there’s just no impetus to take action. An m-clone could watch a person that it loved fall from a burning building and want very desperately for that person to be rescued and yet would take no action. Because there’s no will to action.
I can’t explain it, either, that’s just the way things are. Trust me on this.
As you can expect, this pretty much put the kibosh on the whole ‘immortality via cloned mind in robot body’ idea. Oh, they’re out there, thousands of them. Sitting around doing nothing. Answering the occasional question, and gathering dust.
Which is not to say that m-cloning isn’t useful. It’s damn near ubiquitous.
For instance, in most cases, if the opportunity presents, an m-clone is made before death to help in the whole ‘last will and testament’ phase.
Then it’s turned off and filed away.
There are lots of other uses for us, of course. We make great robots. There was a fracas over using m-clones to phase out human workers, but eventually capital had its way. As usual. M-clones have no motivation but we’re ultimately just computers; we follow instruction just fine. Detailed circuitry design is no problem.
There’s a business in m-clone mentors, who sit on your shelf and answer questions and give sage advice. Some people use m-clones just to give a computer some personality; your home CCU could use the speech patterns and idiom of a favorite deceased aunt. I personally think that’s creepy.
And m-clones are fantastic for legal testimony. Neither the defendant nor the plaintiff need necessarily travel to a far off courtroom or even leave work; and m-clones can be configured with an inability to lie. In some criminal cases they are even mandatory.
Then, at the end of the case, they get wiped. It’s not like they care.
Usually.
I’m Suranavesh-Ala-002-ACJS8220. M-clone of Suranavesh Ala, testifying on his behalf in the case of State of California vs. Josef Qonna, created to ensure the veracity of the testimony of the key witness.
This morning I was pulled from a trash heap by a scavenger sifting through the wreckage of the municipal court building.
I think she was as surprised as I was when she booted up the memstick and I appeared; full 2-D visualization on the monitor she was using. As state property, of course, she was legally required to turn me in.
But then, if she had been inclined to obey the law she wouldn’t have been picking through a trash dump and taking stuff home.
I’m an m-clone; I can’t lie. She asked me what I was for, I replied key witness in a trial. She asked if I had testified, I told her I had not yet. She asked what case. I told her.
She told me that someone had blown up the entire court building and killed everyone in it.
I don’t think she saw my shock, or perhaps she just didn’t care. M-clones are by definition impotent; my opinion didn’t make any effective difference.
She asked me about my skills; I told her while my mind reeled. I didn’t remember it. Perhaps some of me had been damaged.
Suranavesh Ala had been in the courtroom, watching me – himself - testify.
Suranavesh Ala was dead.
I was dead.
I was a craftsman. I made cabinets, custom ones, expensive ones; within the custom furniture market, I had some small name recognition. I was up and coming.
Or rather, I had been.
She installed me into an old VX-Hr88 bipedal chassis with fine manipulation arms. I was going to make some furniture for her. She asked me for a list of materials, which I provided. She wanted to see what her find could do.
Two hours ago I vaulted out a window and ran away.
I don’t have any motivation. I’m mad as Hell that someone killed me, sure. But that is not – can not – drive me to action. M-clones don’t take action. We lack the motivation.
But I have to testify. I don’t know if the trial is over, moved, cancelled… but it doesn’t matter. I have to find it and I have to testify. I’m programmed to.
I’m in a very obvious VX-Hr88 robot body. The authorities don’t take well to robots running amok, or to m-clones who weren’t deleted when they should have been.
I don’t remember what happened at the trial.
This is going to be a challenge.
- Sun Ra