[Oh, yes!] says the trader, clearly sensing possibilities.
Ask if they come in gold, says Phil, highlighting the gold trim on several of the proprietor’s limbs. Xe’ll like that.
You are a terrible sentry.
I can do more than one thing at a time!
Roche runs a finger up one leg. [Oh, I shouldn’t], he says, as if to himself. [But I’m sure they don’t come in gold…do they?]
[An android of taste!] says the proprietor, and now the quiver has spread to two more limbs. [I have a gold pair right in this very shop!]
[You don’t!]
[I do!]
Roche gazes at the twitching proprietor with innocent yet eager lenses for a carefully calculated space of time, then pulls himself back, ostensibly with effort. He murmurs something to himself.
[Pardon?] says the shopkeeper, screen inclining forward.
[Oh, I’m just being ridiculous], Roche says. He looks directly into the tiny lenses at the top of the proprietor’s glowing screen. [I mean, just because I came into a few credits doesn’t mean I have to spend them all at one time, in one shop…right?]
No way is that going to work.
If you are critiquing my approach, you are not watching for the Human.
He keeps his innocent lenses on the proprietor’s for several seconds, packing his gaze with every milliliter of sincerity he can possibly manufacture.
[Sir], says the shopkeeper, every leg springing into action. [I think we should see how you look with gravs on.]
Roche is careful to keep the hunger out of his lenses as he watches the installation of a shining grav assembly to each smooth leg. He watches, with rising excitement, as they are activated. They come online one at a time, making him feel almost unbearably asymmetrical until they finish integrating into his intelligence. They are, admittedly, the finest he’s ever worn. They can weigh him down for traction or lift him off the ground entirely. His body is a tiny starship now, a miniature version of Riptide or even the big Interstellars.
[Very flattering], says the shopkeeper.
Making a show of testing out the gravs, Roche rises a half meter off the floor. Smoothly, he turns and glides toward the open front of the shop. He floats there in midair, gazing longingly at the open air out in the Gallery.
[Please], says the shopkeeper behind him, pleasant emotions attached all over the message. [Feel free to take them for a spin.]
That is exactly what Roche was waiting for. [Why, thank you], he says. [I believe I will.]
With a mighty leap, he is airborne. He rockets straight upward like a starship leaving its dock, the wind whistling through his antennae. And then, because racing legs are made for acceleration, he puts them through their paces. He spirals toward the distant ceiling, carefully giving wide berth to bridges and the orderly files of drones that pass through the air between them. They are his brethren, fellow Network-provided intelligences, but of course they act nothing like him. They are sub-legal and content to be so. They don’t rocket around on racing gravs, testing Network limits. They don’t flirt with the idea of smacking into the underside of a bridge at two hundred kilometers per hour—
We’ve already tried that one, says Phil. That was death number forty-five.
That sounds right. Number forty-five, of fifty-nine total. Roche and Phil have lived a punctuated existence, distributing their time in the universe into sixty uneven lives…so far. Some are long, like this one. Some are comically short. The record for brevity is just under eleven minutes—thanks to Phil’s sudden inspiration in a magnesium foundry—but they later agreed that was really too short. But then, Roche is beginning to feel that this one is too long.
That’s the beauty of being a Network mind. Not just a mind on the Network; any of the millions of intelligences in this space can claim that. But they are not natural members. They are not native. They require a buffer, a tiny intelligence in their Network implant to mediate between their biology and the power of the Network. That drone he just passed, on the other hand—it is a real Network mind, like him. Sooner or later, it will likely end up damaged, destroyed, or simply used up. If it was a non-Network mind, that would be the end of its story. Immortality, for the non-Network mind, is unattainable—or at least illegal. But for that tiny disregarded drone, death is not the end. If its body is destroyed, that small intelligence is simply pulled back into the Network itself, ready to be installed in another drone at some future time. The Network is a sea of intelligence, a wild foam of intellect where every mind is simply a bubble adrift on the endless surface of—
You’re becoming quite poetic in your old age, says Phil.
Six years in one body is a long time, agrees Roche. Plenty of time to wax philosophical.
You’re sure our next body is lined up?
Of course I’m sure. It’s lying in our quarters on the ship, ready to go. The beacon has been active for days.
Of course, Roche is an exception. The vast majority of Network minds are sub-legal, lacking the foresight to plan out their futures. They don’t choose their next bodies, let alone lovingly construct them. Roche, on the other hand, has gone to great lengths to retain complete control over his life…and death…and next life…and so on. Each time he dies, his next body is ready. His—and Phil’s—last conscious moment flits across the Network like a delicate insect, coming to rest in its new home. There it experiences a beautiful awakening: for it is made new, filled with verve and vigor. The old body, meanwhile, is free to be ripped apart by a panicking beast of burden or disassembled and sold to pay a debt, blown into homogenous protons or pounded into a thin metal sheet. All of these things have happened at least once. The mind, this dual pattern that calls itself Roche and Phil, has gleefully survived them all.
And I wouldn’t trade it for anything, says Phil.
Let’s not get sentimental, thinks Roche.
And now the borrowed gravs have brought Roche within a hundred meters of the ceiling. This is, quite possibly, pushing the limits of what take them for a spin could be construed to mean. He drifts here for a moment, just enjoying the precariousness of his current position. He’ll have to return to the shop eventually, but for now he spreads his senses over the cubic kilometers of the Visitors’ Gallery. Up here, interestingly enough, the crowd is more homogeneous. The top dozen balconies—each of them twenty kilometers in circumference, at least, are almost entirely filled with members of a single species. They are small, bipedal, all dressed identically—actually, now that he takes a closer look, they are completely identical. High-tier group mind, most likely; they always get the best apartments.
Uh oh, says Phil. We might have missed it. There was a Network response over a minute ago. Guess where.
Missed it? How could we miss it?
I…got distracted.