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measured_words) wrote2006-02-26 05:41 pm
Pieces Part Eleven
Another week, another installment. I am fairly pleased with this though it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do, and to find my focus. I hope that my readers find it enjoyable. I also hope that it will help open up more possibilities for future installments. I actually have a few ideas about what I can do next, which gives me things to work on for the next couple of weeks.
Also, I want to mention a couple of songs that I find really appropriate for this serial: Duran Duran - Ordinary World, Faith and the Muse - Whispered In Your Ear and Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (although I actually have the Rasputina version). There are others, but I'll start with these. And without further introduction...
Other Pieces
I have not had the dream again, but I have talked to Anna. She told me about herself, and her life now. I was right – she is with someone else. She is happy enough, but she is not sure that she is in love. She told me this without my asking. I think she feels guilty, and confused. His name is Grant, and he is one of them. She lives in their community now, which is a complication I half expected. They have a commune, of sorts. Anna teaches school in the morning, and spends her afternoon help caring for their livestock. The life she has is simple, and fulfilling. I have nothing to offer.
They know that I have contacted her, but she has decided to continue this contact despite their advice to the contrary. She thinks they are worried for themselves, and their secrets. Grant, she tells me, stands by her, and thinks that our conversations are an important healing process for her. He seems more confident in her attachment to him than she is herself, or else he had another agenda.
She still talks like she wants to see me in person. I told her that it is important to me to see her, but that I don't want to pressure her into something that she is not ready for. I can be patient, though in this case it is not what I want. I know that it will be easier if she gives herself the time she needs. It will be easier if already she trusts me. There is no question of my trusting her – there is no other option. Her family is another matter, but it isn't my intention to cause them any avoidable problems. Xi implied that he will leave them alone if I am willing to cooperate with him on some level. This leaves me with a dilemma, however, as I don't want to me involved in any of his operations. If I continue to evade him, however, he clearly has enough information to cause serious problems.
I have been considering my options for dealing with Xi since our meeting, but if Anna is serious about meeting in person then I need to deal with the situation soon. I don't know if it was coincidence or not that he first approached me after we failed to meet in Portland, but the timing makes me suspicious. I don't like any of my options, and I hope that the one I have selected will not end up being a terrible mistake. I am at least confident that at this point I am familiar enough with my neighborhood to notice any abnormal activity.
I have a laptop, but I haven't used it to connect to the internet. It is not paranoia, though I acknowledge an element of that. I simply haven't needed it for anything. This will be the first time I've connected since I came west. I have a wireless uplink, and I am confident that in a neighborhood with so many students it will not be difficult to access a network.
I am not disappointed. There are several to choose from. This computer is powerful enough to amplify even a fairly weak signal, and even if it wasn't, I could probably boost my reception regardless. The protection on the networks here is minimal, and easy to bypass. I will not be using enough bandwidth to be a problem, and again, the connection speed is not beyond my control either.
I am looking for another member of the amalgam I supervised in Seattle before I was withdrawn from Anna and that team. He was also an experiment – a progenitor clone, in fact. His name is Victor Brown, and he was created to test the effects of compartmentalized identity on clones. Our Victor knew he was a clone, and knew his function within the Union. He also had full memories of a fictional family, life experiences, his recruitment, everything. He had received extensive mental conditioning which allowed him to draw on whichever set of memories, and therefore, which ever preprogrammed set of reactions, were most useful in any particular situation. It made him an extremely effective field agent, who was also able to function well in society. The administrators overseeing the operations felt that the two projects were complimentary, and therefore assigned him to my amalgam.
Brown seemed to handle his situation well, but the schism in his personality could be disconcerting. He was easily the most ruthless and efficient agent on my team, and yet also very charming and mingled easily with others. In the end, however, his experiment failed, and he was reassigned to work with Iteration X. The progenitors had always intended his agent programming to dominate, but he consistently responded poorly to simulations designed to test his responses to conflicts of interest. He also proved resistant to reprogramming attempts – he preferred to think of himself as human.
Brown is also the only agent from my amalgam with whom I had any contact after I was reassigned. His own transfer actually occurred later than my own. Once he was securely placed in Iteration X, he sought me out, and told me what had happened. I didn't understand why he would take the trouble, at the time. I didn't know what had been done to me, though, and I didn't remember Anna. I was hardly the same person, and he must have grasped that fairly quickly. I think he would be sympathetic if I can find him. And if that encounter wasn't simply an orchestrated test. I am certain, at least, that his transfer was legitimate, and I imagine that the Progenitors purposefully instilling in him the deep sense of betrayal he seemed to feel, nor the resentment of his new Convention.
He made an effort to stay in touch with me, but I was never able to respond with the same kind of personal correspondence. I don't think that I was capable of it, and consequently, I don't know why he persisted. I believe he felt isolated in is new position, and that I was a safe contact – someone he could confide in without the administration objecting.
I search the internet first for signs of him, using what I know of his created background, and am not surprised to find an intermittently updated blog under the handle 'labrat'. No real name is given, and the entries are fairly generic – excitement about new developments at work (with an unnamed experimental technology developer), complaints about personality conflicts with workmates, discussion of some hobbies (mostly online games, it seems), and so forth. I can't be sure that it is him, of course, but it seems feasible. The personal information given fits what I know, and the writing style is similar. It is also just the sort of thing that he would do, in order to maintain a presence in the world outside of his work.
I leave him a short comment on a post from three days ago. "V: It's been along time. How can we get in touch? – DG." If I am wrong, then no harm done. I expect that it will take a t least a day to hear back from him.
Since I am online, I decide to check some news sites. I have taken out subscriptions to some newspapers, but the variety of viewpoints available on the internet are always interesting to consider. Spend some time hunting though some links, reading various political assessments of the situation overseas. I wish I knew more about what happened in India, and what condition the Union is really in these days. When I was brought in for my initial debriefing after my time on Nas Unara, I also heard rumors of a collapse, or at least major restructuring, within the Syndicate. Resources are definitely strapped. Technology is the Union's major boon and bane – it is expensive, and they can't operate without it. Everything I've heard indicates that India was a major operation, but of course there is little to be gained from mundane news sources. They report that a major disaster wiped Calcutta from the map, but details vary.
It is so difficult to distance myself from the Technocracy. I don't believe in them, and I don't trust them, but they are so much more familiar than anything else. It's a trap. It would be easier if I could see it as a faceless organization, but I also now that there is more to it than that. There is a real human element involved, for better and for worse. It is unlikely that any particular human element will divulge the information I am looking for, in any case. I need to accept that the details, though intriguing and potentially useful, are not essential.
It is not something that I am happy to accept, but I do have other matters to attend to. I need to set up a post office box – somewhere I can receive mail without it coming to this address. With that in mind, I log off.
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Typos:
"responded poorly to simulations designed test" - designed *to* test
"are always interesting t consider." - to consider
I'm curious what the suggested reasons are for Calcutta's disappearance!
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As for Calcutta, well... I am not really sure how much ot that I plan to drag in, but I think I will have to put in more stuff at least in the background. I do know how I plan to do that at least :)