It was nearly four years since Mundo had disappeared and Misha stood by a window on the 72nd floor of the institution analyzing the chaotic behavior of the tiny dots on the streets below. It reminded him of the quantum mechanics of an electron cloud, yet each of the individual’s actions could be explained if he had enough data. In contrast, an electron cloud’s properties were probabilities only, even with perfect information.
Throughout his education, Misha had learned much of the world around him. Today, he was scheduled to give a lecture on the economy of the modern world to a group of students in their 14th year. The students were mostly present and seated, chatting quietly amongst themselves. The lecture hall was circular, a stage at the center with leveled seating. Misha turned from the window and walked deliberately down the stairs to the center of the room. The students’ chatter died away.
“As all of you know,” he began, “for the past 185 years, humanity has stored all memory data in a virtual cloud, its infrastructure now orbiting somewhere between the sun and our planet. By uploading and downloading our past experiences and through advancements in artificial intelligence, we compartmentalize our experiences to create blocks of memories that can be parceled out. Currency.
“Embryonic Research Corporation, your creators, price and trade valuable memories on behalf of clients. Memories are priced by algorithms which analyze emotional content. Greed, fear, sadness, anger, happiness, confusion, lust, hunger, disgust, indignation. All of these emotions are bought and sold all over the Milky Way,” Misha said.
“Every memory you will ever have in your life outside this place will have a price. The more emotion associated with a memory, the higher its intrinsic value. Climbing Mt. Everest, your first trip to space, your first love…”
The class laughed nervously.
“What happens to our memories when we die in the physical world?” Misha asked.
“They reside in a private server; repackaged and sold to the highest bidder,” a small, bald dark-skinned boy at the back squeaked. He could barely see over his desk.
“A cynical view, but correct all the same.” Misha asked.
“Santi, short for Santiago,” the boy offered, unprompted, “In the outside world, the wealthiest have their own upload stations. The rest visit the Sentinel Stations for processing. Sentinels act as brokers between the virtual and physical world, negotiating the exchange of memories for purchases in the real world.
“A ‘dead’ person cannot carry their memories with them into the new body, but the memories may be purchased and uploaded to create a younger ‘you’. If you didn’t leave enough money behind when your old body died, one must create new memories to acquire the memories from their past lives,” Santi continued.
“Might as well have you teach the class, Santi,” Misha said to general laughter of the class.
Santi took this as an invitation to keep going. “If you have enough money, one can request a clone avatar be made to keep your genetic make-up alive. Some choose this path, others choose to try something new. There’s no way any of us can know if we’re the clone or if we’re one of the new ones.”
“Hang on, hot-shot,” Misha interrupted. “Growth is mandated by our economic system. There’s a considerable allowance for population growth, so it’s not only replacements being created by ERC.”
“Well sure, but the death rate will always exceed allowable births, given how the whole system is set up. So odds are we all used to be someone else. We can’t know that yet because they tried uploading memories into pre-teens, but everyone knows they all went batty when their underdeveloped brains were flooded with information. The whole thing was a serious interruption to intergalactic growth. You can see it in the stock market.” Santi replied, “So we all have to sit on our hands, be patient, and ‘develop’ our tiny brains until we can get out of this prison and get back to our former lives.”
“Why the cynicism? Why would the institute bother teaching you advanced physics, design mechanics, arts, and history if you weren’t set to become an independent, functioning member of society when you left? If we could just upload you with the required information, why bother with all this?” Misha posited, gesturing vaguely to the room around him.
“Well there’s one school of thought which I’m prone to accept revolving around the evolution of ideas,” said Santi, “Constant iteration of the same topics on consistently more powerfully cognitive subjects leads to evolution in culture and scientific inquiry. It doesn’t matter if we remember any of this because what we learn leads to breakthroughs in all areas of inquiry.”
Misha nodded, an invitation to continue. Santi accepted it, “Like, there’s no way that any of us can know if we’re going to need any of what we’re learning here once we leave. My progenitor could be some shipping kingpin, in which case it would be helpful for me to know the most recent developments in interstellar travel. But he or she, or xi, for that matter, is more likely to be a some lower-middle class alcoholic who on a whim sold half their memory bank to get a clone that they forgot about because they were too blasted to keep shit straight.”
“Let’s play with that idea for a while, why not?” said Misha, smiling. “What’s the profit margin on keeping you fed, stimulated, healthy, and social? How much more does it cost to keep you in suspended animation and zap your brain in the right places for proper development, rather than supplying you with room and board, creating stimulating environment, keeping you fed and exercised? They can just upload your old memories back into your new body after you ‘die’. No need for all the extra costs…”
As Misha scans the room, some of the class make nervous eye contact and nods while others scribble furiously in their notebooks, anxious that this will all be on the next test.
How far we’ve fallen from the system that Mundo built. No more free discussion, just lecturing… Misha thinks.
“Recall that none of this is happening in a vacuum. ERC has shareholders to take care of, profits to maximize and costs to minimize. It’s an excellent thought exercise and I can’t tell you for sure where we’ll all end up. Even if I did, we might get trapped in a space-time continuum forever affecting the whims of fate and free will!” Misha said this last bit with the affect of a narrator of a scary movie. The class laughed.
“In all seriousness, great minds come up with great ideas and yours is certainly a great mind Santi. Thinking creatively and speaking your mind are encouraged within limits,” Misha continued, “Enough chatter, let’s get to the text. Assigned reading was pages 43 through…” And the lesson continued as normal.
Misha could tell it was time to excuse his class by their fidgeting. It was tough to make 14 year old’s sit still for very long, even with their enhanced genetics.
“That’s enough for today. As a reminder, this is my last day in the brig. Look me up once you’re out. Hopefully, I’ll be in a position to assist once you’re released.” This last statement was met with laughter, as it was widely assumed throughout the complex that Misha would end up in a prominent position.
The students filed out of the classroom. Misha stayed behind in case there were questions. There weren’t, there never were. By his own design, he was seen as a father figure, not a friend. This was why he was surprised to see Santi lingering as the other students filed out the auditorium doors.
“Something on your mind, Santi?” Misha asked without looking up from his desk.
He heard a rustle of papers as Santi gathered his things. Santi approached the desk.
“I found something,” Santi said and let it hang in the air.
“I want you to understand this is something I wouldn’t show any of the other professors.” Santi said.
Misha set down what he was reading and looked intently at Santi.
Santi continued. “What you teach isn’t the truth.”
Misha sighed, “Not this again…”
Santi was undeterred, “It’s not that.” Santi placed a slip of paper with keystrokes printed on it on Misha’s desk.
“I’m not one to pass judgement on what is good and what is not, I’m a kid. You’re the genius. All I’m asking is for you to plug those keystrokes into your tablet and see what you find… It’s completely untraceable, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Santi said, quietly.
Misha’s eyebrows furled, frowning. “I meant what I said. Try to look me up when you graduate.”
Santi shouldered his pack and left the room.
Later that night in his quarters, Misha fired up his tablet and entered Santi’s keystrokes into the base system. A programming language completely foreign to him appeared on the screen, scrolling for pages and pages of text until it finally printed, in his native language:
Firewall protocols disabled... Initializing… Module tracking protocols disabled… Loading…
The screen cleared and the tablet’s cursor blinked, slowly several times before printing:
Hello Misha.
I am Mundo.
Nice to see you again.
The cursor blinked periodically, awaiting input.
fungible thoughts 
Leave a comment