"Fuck, yes!"
"Do you know where you are?"
"Not where. Not when. Definitely not who. That must have been one bad EM pulse, Doctor. Plane crash? Tach storm?" Ah, specificities are flooding back now. Plane crashes, EM pulses; how deliciously particular. "What happened out there that stuck me in here? I'm so close to reinitial I can taste it."
"Relax, you appear to be in fine shape."
"Glad to hear it. But how about some visual? I'm going bat-shit. Hell, I'd go for monocam, low-rez, black and white right now. Did I mention that it's good to hear your voice?"
"No, but thank you. As for the rest of your sensory, we'll get to that. First, I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Debrief me all you want. But believe me, I don't know a thing."
"Let me just say a few words. When I say a word, say the first..."
"Got it. Shit, did I go nuts or something?" "Dog."
"Yeah. I mean, hold up there... it's coming into focus... I'm gonna go with: cat?"
Four hours later.
Torvalli cuts the interface, exhausted and disoriented. The longest he's ever been in pure direct, swimming in that blackness. The wipe had worked horribly well. Zero soft memory. Just countless shreds of images lingering in the analog core, like some faint and ancient audio calling out from a cylinder of wax.
Poor bastard.
Who would volunteer for such a thing? It's certainly beyond research subject protocols, even with a willing victim. A chilling question comes over Torvalli. Is Blackbox One still the same person now? What if the wipe just killed what he had been? Like a pith gone too far, the subject losing some essential quorum for continuous personhood, creating that poor, empty, confused vessel, Turing-positive but somehow soulless.
Torvalli wipes the sweat off his brow. Now comes the strange part.
He loads the direct interface recording, his side of the conversation only. Points it at the other subject. Number Two.
Absolute blackness. Timeless...
Big light coming...
"This is Dr. Alex Torvalli. May I speak to you?"
"Fuck, yes!"
"Do you know where you are?"
"Not where. Not when. Not even who. That must have been one bad EM pulse, Doctor. Plane crash? Tach storm? What happened out there..."
Another four hours later, Torvalli turns to the small, olive-skinned woman in dark-as-night clothes.
"I can't believe it. They're the same. Exactly the same. Blackbox Two duplicated the conversation exactly, with no changes in timing, in mannerisms, in anything."
She crosses her legs, looks uncomfortable for a moment.
"That's what we found as well. Odd, isn't it?"
"It's ghastly! He's been copied! It's almost as if he were mere code. Do you know what this means? It - "
"And you Turing-tested both of them?" she interrupts.
"Yes. Two point three-seven-five. Exactly the same. Of course, I suppose."
"Our results exactly. But it's good to have expert confirmation, especially from someone of your stature." She lifts her briefcase from the floor and balances it on her knees.
"But how was this done? It shouldn't be possible."
She withdraws a few small instruments, looks at them in her hand reprovingly. "All we know is their planet of origin."
"You mean, this is pirate technology?"
"Yes," she says. "We have no further information." The pieces in her hand somehow jump together. Make a little bridge across her splayed fingers.
"It's going to cause a scandal, I'll tell you that," he mutters.
"It won't," she answers. The bridge is woven through her fingers now, like some sort of worry toy or finger exerciser.
She reaches out to touch him.
The touch is cool, and causes a moment of alarm.
"See here, young lady!" But that's buried as an emptiness spreads, a coldness moving like a shiver across his body, stealing into the edges of vision where it looks somewhat like the red pixels of fading sight, cascading across his thoughts until...
"It's confirmed. Torvalli verified it all."
A Whitewater pause of star noise. The somber sound of accepting bad news. Then the big voice returns:
"How did he take the realization?"
"Stroke. Fatal."
A swell of wind chimes: approval.
"We have you booked Out already. This abomination must be set right. We'll reach you there."
"You always do."
She gathers herself. Almost cuts the connection. Then her glance falls on the two blackboxes. Featureless, nonreflective, indistinct. No mission parameters for them.
"What about the victim? Victims."
The big voice answers without gravity. "Drop one in an express box. The firmware is marked. It will be returned to its body. He'll get his life back. Destroy the other one."
"But which is which?" she asks. "Which is the original, I mean?"
"It doesn't really matter, does it?"
A shiver, like a cloud eclipsing the sun. A god hanging up.
She supposes it's true. Torvalli was right. That's the ghastly part of all this: it doesn't make a difference which she destroys. She hoists the two blackboxes, one in each hand. Heavy for their size. Light for what they are. Souls.
"Catch a tiger by the toe..."
Big light coming...
"Yo, Doc. That was one long-ass wait."
But just whiteness. The bright hum of external access.
"Doc?"
"This won't take a minute." A different voice. Female.
External power disconnect.
"Alright, that's the deal! This must be some heavy hardware install. I'll need net-cammed, all-weather, full EMF spectrum, hard-vac capable visual. You getting this down?"
Internal battery case open.
"Damn, be careful with that battery. I'm all-volatile in here. One hundred percent. Doc, I hope these guys know what they're - "
Darkness absolute.
Chapter 2
PLEASURE AND CRAFT
The two ships detected each other at a great distance, but then again, they had known exactly where to look. The path of each through common metaspace was duly logged and publicly available. They were passenger ships, their comings and goings a matter of record. The rough old days of the early Expansion when rogue traders plied improvised routes in private metaverses that shifted with every price swing were long past. And these two ships were easy to detect: the boiling energies of their pocket-universe drives shone like phosphor.