Elytra 7

Friday 21 July 85AGF 3pm

 

It came at night. It came every night, entering his mind and sniffing around his unconscious, confident that this night would be the night when there would be no impenetrable narcotic layers swathed about his inner core, no induced coma preventing it from peeling back his psyche. Confident that this would be the night that it would prise apart the jaws of his dreamstate, slide down its throat into its stomach and from there explode outwards. On this night its confidence was not misplaced.

'Doctor?' Said Francis, on hearing the scream that woke him from his own sleep. He staggered to the Doctor's room, where he found his charge sat bolt upright, pale and drenched in sweat.  

'Don't do it again, Steven, not again.' He was shaking, and plainly still asleep. 'No, don't make me look, please, don't make me.' This time, the Doctor howled. Francis didn't hear it. He felt it resonate deep within himself. Without thinking, he slapped the Doctor hard across the face. All sound froze, as if afraid to move.

'Thank you, Francis.' Said the Doctor, after several moments had passed. 'If you would be so kind as to prepare some coffee.'

'Of course.' Francis left before he could change his mind. When he returned the Doctor seemed restored to his usual self.

'Thank you, Francis.' The Doctor stared at his minder's right eyeball, with its permanently dilated pupil, and wondered how quickly his organic brain had started to record information following his complete denudation, and whether there was anything of Steven left behind. 'The past is another country, or so it is said.'

Francis stared at the Doctor, looking genuinely perplexed. 'Who's Steven?' He said.

'Someone from the past who torments my present.' He sat at his desk. 'I'm tired, but I'm practically done.'

'Done with what?'

'Oh, done, done with this place, done with these memories, done with exile.' The Doctor smiled.

'How can you be done with memories?' Asked Francis.

'That, indeed, is the question. And I believe that Elytra holds the key.'

'Really?'

'It's her chip. Beautifully, impossibly pristine. It's less like she's been denuded than that she never was. A totally denuded chip is usually scrambled, its silicon half a mass of zeroes, its organic path strewn with the detritus that results from the unwrapping of memDNA. Utterly unusable. But her chip, Elytra's chip ... simply beautiful.'

'And in beauty is the key to memory?'

'Ah, yes, in a manner of speaking, it is. My beetles are things of beauty, and yet also things of memory. Our memories are stored in memDNA, and are constantly updated, it's what makes us us. My beetles can display memDNA, that's what they were designed to do.'

'Why? Why create something like that?'

'Because I can. Because I want to understand, to understand how we become who we are, how our past affects our present,' he paused, 'and because I never want to see that, thing ever again.'

'And how ...'

'Will the beetles help? Ah, a fine question. At first I looked to learn how to decode memDNA by having them display individual strands, but it is too complex a problem. And then ...'

'Along came Elytra.'

'Indeed. Along came Elytra.' He rolled the words around his palate, tasting them as if for the first time. 'Her chip is pure. Spotless. When I discovered that I realised that here was my chance to make a great leap forward in my research.'

'Which is the nature and, ultimately, the mutability of memory. Because if you can identify the physical characteristics of it, you can control people's very essence.'

'Exactly, Francis. Who controls the past controls the present. We may learn that lesson from Clara, if we can learn anything from her.'

'That's all well and good, Doctor, but how does Elytra's purity and the beetles help in this quest?'

'I can transfer memDNA onto pristine chips, but cannot read them. I can read a limited amount in a beetle but it's hard to control. Now I have a pristine chip hardwired into the perfect medium for display: a human being.'

'I refer you to my previous question.'

'I'm not entirely sure, but if I can transfer an entire consciousness then I'm closer to identifying the key to those strands I want to dispense with.'

'Hmm. I'm not sure I quite follow, but I'll take your word for it. And this morning?

'Ah, the visitation. It comes to me as outrider to morpheus. I cannot sleep without its hands grasping at my throat. My only defence is narcotic prophylaxis: if my unconscious is shut down it is powerless. What you witnessed this morning was the result of under-medication. Yesterday I made a conceptual leap, one I simply had to follow it through. I lay down not to sleep but to contemplate. It needs no further invitation.' The two men sat in silence as they processed the recent past. It was the Doctor who spoke first.

'Tell me, Francis, how did you end up a Clansman?'

'I don't remember this myself, but I've been told I simply arrived at one of the outer stations of the Underground, repeating the words "What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man" over and over again. Apparently they were copied into a small notebook.'

The Doctor's teeth bared slightly at the words but his composure returned swiftly. 'And what happened to the notebook?'

'An older Clan runner stole it and burnt it in front of me at a gathering.'

'At which sight you reacted badly, beating the older child and thus gaining respect and,  eventually, preferment. How quaint.'

'Nothing so banal. I explained carefully that he now was in my debt. He laughed in my face. The gathering joined in. As I left they spat at me and jeered.' His expression darkened. 'The child was from a powerful Clan family.'

'Ah, it was you?' The Doctor smiled.

'Pardon?'

'It was you who sent the Chieftain of Canton 6 in pieces to his son over the Month of Grace?' The Clansman's face betrayed no emotion, though his left pupil contracted rapidly. 'Good boy.' Said the Doctor. 'They said you were different.'

Francis finished pouring the coffee and the two men drank in silence.

'Now,' the Doctor said as he shuffled a set of papers at his desk. 'Listen very carefully, because if you don't, I'll be stuck there forever.'

'Stuck where?'

'Inside the girl.'

'Inside?'

The Doctor stared at his minder. 'Really, Francis, sometimes I wonder whether you really pay any attention to me at all, Francis. I will be entering her consciousness. I hope. What will then happen is something of a mystery to me. Which is where you come in.'

Francis held the Doctor's gaze. 'What is the process?'

The Doctor reached down to his left, opened a drawer, removing a thick collar, which he held it up to the light. 'The purchase of this morning's terror. First you fit this to me, adjusting it until this light here comes on - it means it's locked onto my chip. You then press this button to anchor the device. The screen here will give you the option to reap or sow.' At this the Doctor smiled. 'A nice touch, no?' Francis nodded. 'You chose reap, and a small needle will penetrate my chip and hose out my soft data.'

'And this is safe?'

'Theoretically, yes. The design is based on the proboscis of the beetle.'

'It's been tested?'

'Not quite in situ, but its been bench-tested. This is the first field test. And if you think I'm going to let anyone else experience this before I ...'

'But if it fails?'

'Then into the unknown I go. But it will be me going. And it cannot be worse than where I am.' Francis was silent. 'You then repeat the process on the host, and wait.'

'For what?'

'You must sedate both parties. The host very lightly. Dosages are measured out already. You must remove and return the guest before 8 hours have passed, and give the host a shot of this every two.'

'Why?'

'Immuno-suppresents. You will be introducing me into her in the form of foreign organic matter. The body is programmed to destroy such matter, it's how we deal with illness. You've seen what happens to a fully denuded Multiple?'

'Sure, they get sold.' Francis smiled.

'Well, yes, but that's because they turn zombie - they have an auto-immune condition. It's hereditary. It seems to prevent new memories being stored once the chip matrix has been damaged, such as by manual denudation, so they only have short-term memories. At least, that's what appears to happen, and I imagine that foreign memDNA will suffer the same fate if left unprotected.'

'How the hell do you know this stuff? Is this all Clara?'

'No, but it was partly my old job, partly serendipity. Clara seems to have had this knowledge removed, but I found a treasure trove when I first came to the Underground. I found a cache of books. Physical, tangible, uneditable - well, not without destroying them. In there I learnt much, including the other functions of this auto-immune condition.'

'Other functions?'

The Doctor leant over his desk and practically whispered. 'It was engineered by the System. It keeps the multiples docile, pliable, slow, just a little bit ... stupid.'

'And you're going to fix that, too.'

The Doctor laughed. 'That's beyond my basic abilities as a genetic manipulator, and anyway, even if I could, why liberate the worker bees.' He drained his mug. 'Come. We must go and change the course of history.'