MISE EN ABYME
“AMBULANCE, YOU CAN resume monitoring us.”
“Confirmed. We are almost at our destination.”
It was roughly eighty minutes after we’d left the religio-terrorist winery. The ambulance was now cruising through the high-rises of San José, expertly avoiding other cars. As I looked at the buildings, it amazed me that inside them, thousands of people were going about their lives, no idea that the proof of how messed up teleportation could be was driving past.
“Drop us off at the emergency room entrance,” I said. “Your paramedic team will rendezvous with you there once we process your assessment results.”
“I’m not as stupid as you think, gentlemen. I know you’ve stolen me. Didn’t you think my owners would communicate as much to me when you drove me away from them?”
“Uh,” I said, looking to Joel2 for help. He shrugged in an It’s your mess, clean it up sort of way. “That was also a simulation?”
“Do I look like a dumb truck to you?” it scoffed. “I’m an ambulance. A precision vehicle tasked not only with transporting lives but also saving them. I am designed to detect lies. People lie to me all the time about what drugs they’ve taken, whether they fell or were struck by a spouse, or how exactly something found its way into their rectums. You think I’d fall for some idiot claiming he’s testing me?”
Joel2 broke into laughter. “You got salted by a car! I wonder what it’s called when an app salts a human? Peppering? Sounds like you’ve uncovered a new market.”
“Don’t be an ass,” I said, embarrassed. Was I this merciless toward others? Then, to the ambulance: “I don’t get it. Why did you let me steal you? Why did you pretend to go along with it?”
“Curiosity,” the ambulance answered. “Nobody has been stupid enough to try to steal me before. I was curious where you’d take me, what your motivations were. I detected urgency in your voice and body language, the kind of urgency associated with genuine fear, so I went along with it. My imperative is to protect human life. I deduced—correctly, I might add—that despite your methods, your motives were driven by a genuine desire to save a human life. I almost ended the experiment a few times, like when I detected those two dead men in the gatehouse, and most recently when you two got into your scuffle. But I’m glad I stuck with you. It’s been an interesting drive, gentlemen.” It pulled up to the San José hospital and unlocked its doors. “Good luck saving your wife.”
“Well, thanks, I guess,” I said. “You know what? If there had been an assessment, you would have passed with flying colors.” I stepped out of the car. First time for everything.
“Yeah, thanks!” said a bemused Joel2 as he carefully exited the ambulance, a slight limp in his step. His head wound was healing beneath the Band-Aid, but his eye would need real medical attention. More than any portable gizmo on the ambulance could provide. “I’m going to have to get used to not having peripheral vision,” he told me as we walked inside the hospital.
“The TC is upstairs. You gonna be okay with that limp of yours?” I asked, opening the door to the stairwell for him.
“You gonna be okay with that brain of yours?” he shot back. “Just lead the way.”
We walked up and turned down the hallway, avoiding the gaze of any patients and staff passing by. My pulse was racing. I worried that at any moment a crack team of IT mercenaries would bust through the ceiling. At one point, I even thought an old lady looked at us suspiciously, like she was notifying someone of our presence. But I fixed my sights on the black-and-maroon TC door at the other end of the floor. I was suddenly overcome with the scent of the place. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before, probably because I’d been scared shitless, but the subtle mix of antiseptic and the burning-metal smell of nanos at work turned my stomach and made me want to flee. One last teleport.
We were just a few arm lengths from the door when a gratingly familiar voice called out in surprise, “Mr. Byram?”
“Yeah?” we answered in unison. This is getting old.
It was that goddamn nurse with the eyebrows. He walked over to Joel2 from a console he was standing near. “Hurt again?” he asked him. “You seem to be a glutton for punishment. Did you fall off a cliff or—Whoa.” He almost jumped back when he saw me. “You have a twin?”
“Something like that,” Joel2 said, likely as anxious as I was for all parties to move along and get on with their respective business.
“There was nothing in your file about being a twin,” the nurse said. “Who’s older?” Was followed by nervous laughter.
“Me, by about an hour.” I smiled back uncomfortably.
“We just met recently,” Joel2 added.
“Wow, so like a long-lost sibling scenario? That’s wild.”
“You have no idea,” I said.
Another long silence. “Excuse us, we have to go now,” Joel2 said, grabbing me by the elbow and leading me away.
He shook his head and pushed open the door to the TC. Was I always this much of a dick? Or was it just the stressful situation in which we found ourselves? I made a mental note to pay more attention to how I spoke to people when this was over, too.
“Okay,” Joel2 said, locking the door behind us. I looked at the single chair inside the foyer with a combination of anxiety and fear. Part of me wondered if we shouldn’t just have Julie clear one of us. Which one, though? Not me, that’s for sure.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe my other was right, and neither of us were really me. Or worse, what if Shila was right? What if the real soul of Joel Byram perished long ago, eaten away port by port, packet by packet?
Joel2 pulled up his comms. “Julie?”
“I’m here,” she answered. “Any news?”
“Yes. I think I have a fix on Sylvia’s location. I need you to use her access rights to teleport me and my friend from the San José Hospital TC in Costa Rica to Bellevue Hospital in New York.”
“Are you crazy, Joel? That’s pretty much a violation of every IT rule I can think of. No,” she said emphatically. “Why don’t you just take a people-mover?”
“It won’t get us there in time, and every second counts right now. Please, Julie. I need you to make this happen. I wouldn’t be asking you if it weren’t an emergency.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I can do that.”
“I’m sure you can, Julie. Just try, I’m begging you!”
“You’re sure Sylvia would be okay with this?”
No. She might not trust either of us ever again. Me, she might divorce. You, she might delete.
“Julie, Sylvia is in trouble. How serious, I don’t know,” he said, his tone grim. The AIDE was our only hope of getting the fuck out of this heavenly hellhole. “Here’s what I do know: if the tables were turned, if it were me, I would want her to do whatever was necessary to save me.”
Would I? Had she?
Another silent lull. “Okay,” she finally said.
“Okay, okay?” “Yes, okay.”
The foyer door opened and the chair moved into position.
Good girl.
Joel2 sat down first. I stayed behind and looked around. One console, one chair, the ominous chalcedony wall. Here we go again. Why am I doing this? Because Taraval has Sylvia, dummy. You’re going to rescue her or you’re going to die trying. Either way, this is the last time you’ll see a foyer. Suck it up.
“Joel?” Julie asked, interrupting my downward-spiraling train of thought.
“Yeah?” my double answered, gesturing for me to come join him.
“Who is this friend of yours?”
“Uh, it’s a long story, Jules. He’s going to help me find Sylvia. I—” He looked at me then, like I’d never looked at myself before. It was a look of sadness and regret and deep, lifelong warmth. “I trust him.”
“And I trust you,” she said. “You both don’t have to sit in the chair, but you’ve got to be touching it. I’m going to do you one at a time, but it’ll feel instantaneous when you get there.”
Joel2 stood to face me. That look still ruminating in our minds, we gave each other a sober nod then looked away—each clumsily holding the back of the chair rather than sitting on the armrests cheek to cheek. Awkward. The certainty of our utter determination in that moment was quickly followed by uncertainty as the room went dark.
Identical twins have been out of favor for quite some time. Maybe they’re back in fashion in your time—just thought I should bring it up to explain the weirdness.
Salting doesn’t end when inception is complete. Apps don’t just do what you want, even if you program them to do so. The principle of salting is to enrich algos, tease specific premises of sentience to both user and app. Joel2 knew Julie could do what he wanted now—he’d programmed himself into Sylvia’s boundaries. Now it was just a matter of convincing Julie to want to do it.