Busy Dying

  Brian Stableford

  HE COULDN’T REMEMBER whether he’d ever been to that particular spot before, but the open plaza looked vaguely familiar. As he climbed the ugly centerpiece of the fountain, aiming for the pagoda-like roof above the bug-eyed gargoyles, he seemed to be reaching for familiar footholds. They were already shouting his name, but that didn’t mean a thing; he supposed that he’d be recognized in any of a hundred cities, in any of four hundred malls. He was quite a celebrity.

  By the time he reached his selected coign of vantage a thousand people were converging on the fountain. The design of the atrium was such that the crowds on the second, third, and fourth floors had as good a view as the people at ground level, and the escalators were crammed with excited gesticulators hoping that the moving stairways wouldn’t carry them too far before the show began.

  He checked his watch. Give it ten, he thought, beginning to count down.

  He knew there were a dozen security cameras on him and that anyone in the crowd with a camcorder would be pointing it at him already, but the CNI were probably all ready to go with an injunction against any mall in this or any other city, and you couldn’t trust amateurs to produce A-1 footage even with today’s technological aids. He figured that ten seconds ought to be enough to bring down a few newsdrones. Even the networks posted drones in mails these days, and not just because of him. Malls were the commercial arteries of the nation, and mallnews was always a big item in the human interest slots.

  At five he uncapped the can, and threw the cap into the crowd so that the kids could fight over it. At seven he began to pour, so that he would be ready to drop the can into the rippled pool of the fountain at nine.

  Smoothly, with practiced competence, he struck the match with his fingernail. Is that slick, or is that slick, he asked himself. He had always cared about matters of style.

  His sneakers were still squelching and the legs of his pants were soaked from his dash across the pool, but he knew it wouldn’t matter. The rest of him was soaked with something infinitely less inclined to dampen the spirits.

  The flames came up about him with an audible whoosh, and black smoke billowed forth. For a second or two — but it might have been an olfactory illusion — he thought that he could smell his own flesh burning.

  Wow, he thought.

  Wow! Wow! Wow!

  When her bleeper went off Margaret Percik woke up with a sudden start, surprised and slightly guilty about the fact that she’d nodded off.

  She didn’t need to check her wristphone; it was Emily signaling that Walter Murray was recovering consciousness. She hurried, intent on arriving before he removed the skimskin sealing his eyelids, but she needn’t have bothered. The monitoring devices had blown the whistle on him but Walter was playing possum.

  He hadn’t moved a muscle; he was probably playing for time while he tried to figure out who and what and where he was. Thanks to him, doctors now knew that death usually caused temporary amnesia, and he had had enough practice dying to have developed habitual methods of dealing with the condition.

  As she checked the instruments she felt sure that he was tracking her movements with avid ears. He flinched, though, when Emily checked his waste-disposal tubes. She carefully peeled the skimskin away from his eyes, and he opened them, blinking against the light. He had to close the lids again for a second or two, but when he could keep them open they focused readily enough on her face: no lasting damage there.

  He looked up at her without recognition. Emily moved to the head of the bed so that he could study them both. She and Emily were as handsome as one another but not in the least alike, in spite of the fact that they were wearing severely clinical white coats. Margaret was dark and stem and so comprehensively imaged for authority that she was almost austere; Emily was fairer and softer and decorated. Nobody was supposed to be able to tell a woman’s age anymore, but that was bullshit. Wrinkles or no wrinkles, Margaret knew, it was obvious to anyone with half an eye that Emily was an absolutely authentic twenty-one, whereas she herself was fifty-five and then some.

  Margaret darted a quick glance at Emily, to make sure that she was paying attention. It was important, according to their agreed procedure, that they both looked at him without the slightest trace of sympathy or admiration.

  “Can you remember who you are?” Margaret asked.

  There was a twenty second gap before he replied. Finally, he said, “I seem to have temporarily misplaced my name. I’m sorry.”

  “You were very lucky, Mr. Murray,” she said. “If you hadn’t fallen into the fountain… . “

  That drew a slight reaction — as if the horror of it had hit him like a punch in the gut, although he couldn’t quite fathom out why the thought was so horrible.

  “What fountain?” he said, in a puzzled fashion. “Murray, you say? Is that my name — Murray?”

  “You shouldn’t play with fire, Mr. Murray,” said Margaret, as sternly as she could. “It isn’t like the knives and the ropes. We can regenerate burned brain-tissue, but not the field-states which inhabited it before it was burned.

  Try this one again, Mr: Murray, and you might come back first cousin to a cabbage. I guess you already qualify as a zombie ten times over, but this time you were just a few seconds away from being a hundred-forty pounds of fresh meat with vacant possession. As I said, if you hadn’t fallen into the fountain… .

  “

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  She did her level best to look at him as though he were some kind of insect crawling around the drawer where she kept her underwear.

  “Yes, Mr. Murray,” she said sourly. “You know me. And you also know Mr.

  Stepanova. He’s waiting for a call to tell him that you’re awake. He has some news for you.”

  She picked up a remote from the instrument-console beside the bed and punched out a sequence; the wallscreen at the far end of the room flickered blue, displayed the relevant codes, and then dissolved into a picture.

  Stepanova had been waiting to make the call; Emily had bleeped him at the same time she’d bleeped Margaret. He was looking straight into the camera, as purposefully as any man could. He’d been chiseled for it, but it wasn’t an overly impressive job. Every man of a certain age went in for that kind of power-dressing of the features, and it rather nullified the effect.

  “You’re busted, Murray,” said Stepanova, with a bitter wrath he did not need to feign. “This is the end. We’ve got an injunction from the Supreme Court banning you from making any further use whatsoever of any product manufactured by the Confederation which is not on open sale. I have a court order requiring you to hand over all the nanotech equipment which you removed from our laboratories.

  Your lawyers may have built an effective dam against the possibility of your being certified insane and straitjacketed, but this is nice and simple and utterly unbreakable —and to be quite honest, I think your guys are losing heart now that your bank account is in the doldrums. One more suicide and you are under house arrest for ever and ever a-men. You’re out of it, Murray

  —understand? It’s over.”

  “I’m sure you mean well,” said Murray, mildly. “But I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do I know you?”

  Stepanova frowned, as if he suspected that he was being ribbed and didn’t like it — although Margaret had told him exactly what to expect. She keyed the cut-off on the remote, lest Stepanova should start a pointless argument with her patient. Then she handed over the instrument to Murray. He looked at it for a second or two, but then nodded, as though he were glad to find it perfectly familiar. He handed it back. “That I recognize,” he said.

  “But not me?” she countered.

  He shook his head. “I’m Dr. Percik,” she said, still straining to be as stem and cold as possible. The theory was that she had to avoid providing any comfort that might be construed as approval, and thus as encouragement to repeat the behavior that had brought him to this; apparently it was still standard practice in welcoming attempted suicide victims back from the brink. Personally, she had no faith whatsoever in its efficacy in Walter Murray’s case, but she was under some pressure here from her peers and other interested parties, who were far more interested in making him stop than in figuring out why he kept doing it.

  “How am I, doctor?” he asked, flatly.

  “As well as can be expected,” she retorted, bluntly. After a slight pause, during which she nodded an answer to Emily’s unspoken question, giving the nurse permission to leave the room, she added: “Stepanova means it, you know. By the time I’ve collected my fees you’ll be as near to flat broke as you can get. The media won’t bail you out this time; CNI have them all tied up in red tape. No one wants to talk to you — no one who’ll pay you for the privilege, anyhow.

  Your lawyers aren’t even going to try to fight CNI’s injunctions. You’ve finally succeeded in cutting off your nose to spite your face. You may be famous, but you’ve no job, and if you do anything — I mean anything — which involves the use of prototype nanotech you’ll be off the net for a long long time. Have a little patience, Walter, and you may be able to live happily ever after. Kill yourself one more time, and they’ll see to it that you die of old age. I have no axe to grind, you understand — I’m out of it too. That’s the last face you’ll ever get from me. From now on, you get your medicaid on credit. Basic treatment, for which you have to stand in line.”

  “You have a great bedside manner,” he remarked. It was impossible to judg e how disoriented he was, and how much he understood of what was being said to him.

  The idea was to get the message across before he recovered his memory and his resistance.

  “It’s difficult to be polite to a king-sized pain in the ass,” she told him. She narrowed her eyes speculatively, and she said: “If you have got more stolen nanotech squirreled away, you’d better hand it over. However you came by it originally, it’s no longer legal for you to have it in your possession. Just tell me where you stashed it, and I’ll take it from there.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Everyone’s closed ranks, Walter,” she said. “We’re not going to let you die again. We’re not going to let you destroy yourself. This time, you really have to get your head together, okay?”

  He just looked at her, meekly, as if he couldn’t understand why she was talking to him that way. She couldn’t tell whether, or to what extent, he was putting it on. Perhaps, she thought, it might be best if his memory didn’t come oozing back; maybe all he needed was a fresh start. She felt slightly ashamed of the thought which came immediately afterward, which was: But then we’d never figure out just what the fascination was. Damn Stepanova and his injunctions — there’s a mystery here which we ought to be trying to solve.

  She tried to look daggers at him one more time, just for luck, and then stalked out of the room.

  WHEN THE bleeper sounded again she woke up without a start, filled with a dull sense that there was no escape. This time it was the automatic signal which told her that Murray had activated the telescreen in his room. She had arranged a tap, in the interests of scrupulous medical care.

  The face which was staring out of her own telescreen inevitably seemed to be looking her in the face, although it wasn’t. It wasn’t even looking Walter Murray in the face: it couldn’t, because it was a recording, doubtless programmed to call him in the early hours of the morning, when no one was supposed to be eavesdropping.

  “Hello, Walter,” said the caller — who wore, of course, Walter’s previous face.

  “Who the hell are you?” the real Walter replied, his voice slightly distorted by the bug she had placed to catch it.

  “I’m your answerphone AI,” replied the caller. “Extensively elaborated and reprogrammed by your good self, for exactly such emergencies as this. Don’t worry — you just have a slight touch of amnesia. At least, I hope it’s slight.

  It’ll probably all come back to you in a day or two, but I’ll give you all the help I can. That’s what I’m here for. Mostly I’m just a playback device, but I’m rigged for simple questions and answers. Interrupt me whenever you need to. Your name is Walter K Murray; the K doesn’t stand for anything longer, it’s a one-letter middle name in its own right. You used to work for CNI — that’s the Confederation of Nanotechnological Industries — on the Safety Commission. Your official title was Volunteer Subject, but in everyday parlance you were a guinea-pig or a stunt man. You got fired a year ago for excessive attention to duty — at least, that’s your version. Stepanova cooked up a charge sheet which had everything from petty pilfering to reckless endangerment and bringing the good name of the organization into disrepute, but it was mostly false. Are you with me so far?”

  “Not quite,” said the real Walter, awkwardly. Margaret wished she could see his face, to judge how he was taking it in, but it hadn’t seemed worthwhile to plant a spy-eye in a darkened room. The image on the screen flickered slightly as a new subroutine engaged.

  “It’s okay,” said the AI, gently. “Take your time. I guess you really messed up the old brain cells this time. What did you do?”

  “I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “Something about playing with fire and falling into a fountain. My doctor isn’t very helpful.” He sounded sincere, but Margaret knew that it might be an act.

  “You should watch the news,” said the AI. “All you need to do is call up the relevant vidclippings. All your suicides are on tape.”

  “All my suicides? How many are there — and why aren’t I dead?”

  “You’ve killed yourself ten times to date,” reported the AI, dutifully.

  “Why would I do that?” said Walter, who should have known better than to confuse an AI with a new question while one still remained unanswered. Anyway, AIs were a lot better with whats and wheres and whens than they were with whys — all he was going to get was more data, not expert psychoanalysis.

  “Your duties as a volunteer subject,” said the AI, painstakingly, “involved prototype medical nanotechnologies whose purpose is to enhance the body’s powers of self-repair. Their function is to assist in the rebuilding of damaged tissue, to promote the healing of wounds and the regeneration of lost material. To put it simply, your job was to sustain injuries of gradually increasing degrees of seriousness, so as to explore the capacities and the limits of the nanomachines that had been injected into your bloodstream. These included anesthetic enems as well as the repair enems. You were good at your work. You liked it better than most — maybe better than anyone. You were part of an elite group, working with the most advanced prototypes.

  “When you first began to exceed your brief the guys in charge were enthusiastic

  — they encouraged you. The back room boys were quite delighted with you, and probably still are. The company men were avid to go with the flow, and the CNI let them; they didn’t see any harm in the media attention you got. The first time you came back after being certified dead the euphoria was universal. The CNI brass were as interested as everyone else. It wasn’t until the fifth that Stepanova stepped in, talking about turning the CNI into some kind of circus. He was too late, but he’s certainly tried to make up for lost time. Do you need more detail on all of this? I’ve got two more programmed levels, if you do.”

  “No,” said the man in the bed, faintly. “I think it’s coming back now, a little.

  Testing the limits. That’s what it was all about. Testing the limits. Exploring the unknown. Boldly to go where no man… They’re trying to stop me, aren’t they? They want to stop me.”

  “Yes they do,” answered the AI. “They’re trying to stop you, now. But it’s okay.

  You’ve always been one step ahead of them. Don’t worry about a thing. They’ll have to send you home in a day or so. Once you’re back home, we can sort everything out. Just hang in there, and take it easy. That’s all you have to do.

  Do you want more information?”

  There was a long silence before Walter said: “No. Not now. Thanks … I mean .

  . . yeah, that’s all. Sign off, okay?”

  “We’ll talk again,” promised the AI. “Come home as soon as you can.”

  The image cut off abruptly.

  Margaret pursed her lips as she lay back on the pillow. The AI was tight; she had to send Walter Murray home once he was okay physically. Amnesiac or not, he was perfectly lucid. There was no way she could have him put under restraint, as Stepanova had more than once asked her to do, even if she wanted to — and she didn’t. That wouldn’t be a solution, to Walter’s problem or to hers.

  She sighed, and lay down in the darkness once again. What is it about dying, she asked herself, although the unanswered question had long ago gone stale, that keeps beckoning him? Why is it that every time he gets his memory back he also recovers all his determination, all his cunning, and all his secretiveness! Just what the hell is going on inside that strangely twisted mind — and what does it augur for the future, when the products he’s been testing come marching triumphantly into the marketplace!

  She wondered if similar questions were going through Walter’s still-confused mind — and whether he was finding it as difficult to slip away into sleep as she was.

  Margaret let Walter Murray have a whole day to himself before she went to see him again. She didn’t monitor him continuously, but the tap she’d placed in his house-system gave her a summary of everything he’d been doing, and it had all been recorded in case she needed to take a closer look. It was nearly nine in the evening when she showed up at the house.

  “Well, Walter?” she said, when she’d checked his physical condition. “What do you think of your past life?”

 

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