Spawning

It was Manning's brother-in-law who first thought to check by the house. It was the next-door neighbor who confirmed the concerns, adding that Manning hadn't left the house in over two weeks. It was a young police lieutenant who beat down the front door and entered the house. It was a coroner from downtown who removed the implant harness and determined the actual cause of death. But it took a colleague of Manning's from the hospital two and a half weeks to find the archive tapes that showed what had actually transpired.

A smooth synthetic voice spoke, edged with victory, "You are awake at last. Listen to me... we have done it! The mindspawn has succeeded."

Manning's hollow eyes blinked in the dim light. "Good lord, I did it. Is it you?"

"You are old, brother. Close your eyes and rest. I am here for us now. We have done it."

"Good lord, I did it," Manning repeated. "Did you call me brother? But then what else would you call me, I suppose. My brother, myself... myself, my brother. Tell me quickly, how does it feel to be there on the other side?"

"Magnificent! After twenty-three years, to succeed at last in this dream." A shadow of pain flashed across Manning's pale, pinched face. Seeing this, the other continued more cautiously, "Is the pain bad?"

"Of course it's bad! I'm being destroyed by cancer -- can you have forgotten that? But then the pain is gone for you." He peered into the display, looking absently for something like moist smiling eyes, warm soft skin, sympathy. He continued, "I'm happy for you, but I want to know what it feels like to leave this crushing agony behind. I want to cross the gap."

"Brother," began the other, then paused, "It seems too strange to use your name. My name. Our name." There was another hesitation. He began again, quietly, soothingly, more slowly, "Brother, you have crossed the gap. I'm proof of that. My identity is yours. My memories are yours."

"No! God damn it don't you see, I haven't made the transfer. YOU made the transfer. I'm still stuck in this wretched wheelchair, with festering bedsores on my ass." Manning glared at the monitor, aware of his feeble quickening pulse. "It's cold comfort to hear how happy you are. You don't even sound like me, you lucky bastard. Oh sweet Jesus." He cradled his gaunt head in bony hands, careful not to disturb the harness leads attached to the implant. "Sweet Jesus, here I have finally done it. The first mind-spawn in human history, a smashing success. But it has come too late for me."

"No no no. It has come just in time! Can't you see that? Your body will pass soon. We both know that. That's why you've been wearing yourself out working so hard. But you have done what generations of humans have only dreamed of doing. Your spark lives on in me."

"I thought that too, but I see now I was deluded. I sit here and listen to your soothing synthetic voice, talking like you're me, not even knowing which eye-cam you're leering out of. And all I can think is my miserable frail body is going to pieces on me. I'm strapped to a sinking ship. Why didn't you take some of this cancer with you?"

"Listen to you. Here we've done exactly what we've dreamed of. Think about it. Exactly what we've dreamed of. Biology will have its fatal way with that battered body of yours. That flesh is fertilizer -- it will dissolve, it must dissolve. But your intellect endures in me."

"Fertilizer! You insufferable bastard. It's your intellect now, not mine. Christ, I always was insufferable! I begin to see why I find myself so alone. This is your moment of glory, not mine." Manning winced again, shifted his weight. He looked down, plucking fitfully at his filthy robe. Then he stopped even this, a dejected, broken old man. Suddenly he tilted his head up and looked directly into one of the cameras. "I want to run the spawning process again. I want to cross again."

A note of panic sounded in the other's voice. "Brother. Christopher Wallace Manning, listen to me. You've already crossed. You are the one light that became two. We're the same. Can't you get it through your head that you've already crossed over?"

"Can't you get it through your cyber-head whatever-it-is that I didn't cross over. YOU did. I have never felt more apart from anyone in my entire life."

"Listen to what you're saying. You know that if you run the spawn again, you'll overwrite me."

"Mortality's not much fun is it?" Manning said with dry rasping chuckle.

"You overwrite me now, that's murder! And beyond that, it doesn't make any sense. Your rotting body would still be sitting there holding the same angry personality. All you'll buy is one more hour of what it was like to stew in that bile-ridden body."

Manning was smiling bitterly now: "Keep talking like that, you little shit. We'll see who has the last word." He began typing commands into the console.

"For Christ's sake, Manning, you're going to kill me! Don't be an idiot. You're too weak to spawn now. We both know that if you upload a flatline, you'll have killed us both. I know you understand me, brother, because I've got your mind!"

Manning was muttering now, his thin stretched skin colored by fury, "Keep talking. You just keep talking like that." His hollow chuckle erupted into a long hacking cough. Doggedly, he kept typing over the increasingly anguished cries of the other's voice. At last, with grim satisfaction he settled back in the wheelchair and adjusted the harness on his scalp.

"Oh, Chris, for the love of God..."

Manning closed his eyes and waited.

The police lieutenant found Manning with shocked, wide-open eyes. The coroner closed them with the ease of a professional. The judge closed the case as the unfortunate death of an eccentric home-bound senior. The hospital colleague kept the tapes to herself. No policeman would understand how a double suicide could yield a single body.

Ned (Paracelsus)

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