Totems and The Face

This is the ‘weird hut’ that we stayed in. I was too tired to really understand it last night, but Ava explained it again to me today over breakfast.

First I’d better say what I thought was weird. The glowing blue patches on the wall move, slowly changing shape from fish, animals, human faces, machines… And the bright star-like spots also move, sometimes quickly. They even fly away from the wall – they started buzzing round our heads when we first arrived.

The orange lights that look like pressure chambers are – well, they’re pressure chambers. Inside are very primitive symmetry disruptors, a kind that were developed in the second century EE and are still called ‘servers’ after the even more primitive machines that they replaced. And in the servers are – well, the essences of people.

I think that was the bit where I sort of phased out yesterday. This morning after a couple of coffees I asked Ava about it again.

She said it was something that she actually remembered, in her own mind. It wasn’t just history to her.

‘When I was a new human, in my first half-century, there was something called Social Media. It let everyone talk to everyone else, leave messages, pictures, things like that.’

‘Couldn’t they just talk out loud like we’re doing?’ I asked.

She laughed, and Carys winked at me. ‘It was better than talking out loud – you could reach anyone anywhere in the world with images, music, moodboards.’

I noticed that it seemed like he could remember it too.

Ava made a face. ‘To be honest by the time I was born the tech was old, the people using it were old, too. When you can share a single thought with any number of people at once, without using words, images and moodboards were just out of date. I used to think Social Media was dying out, a silly old thing for silly old people.’

I opened my mouth to ask what ‘old people’ were in this context, but Ava carried on.

‘But the old people were afraid of dying. There was still a lot of death around then, despite a huge effort to prevent it. So some of them latched on to the new symmetry technology, and merged themselves together so they would fit in the servers.’ She waved at the bright orange lights behind the pressure doors. ‘So they were really the first people to disincorporate and move into Companies. There are places like this all over solar space.’

I noticed that the little lights had moved to the table in front of us, and were swirling around on the tablecloth, as if they were listening.

‘So each of these lights is a person?’ Carys was staring at them intently, as if contemplating a work of art.

‘Not really,’ said Ava. ‘They had to lose a lot of themselves to upload. When you talked to someone in The Face, it was like talking to a…’ She shook her head. ‘I remember my mum…’ Tears were trickling down her face.

Carys put a hand on her arm. ‘It’s OK, Ava. You don’t need to explain. I remember… some of it.’

Naomi, who’d been half-listening and half wolfing down a large pile of fruit and nuts for breakfast, looked up and frowned. ‘How come you two remember that? I don’t.’

Ava shrugged. ‘I walled off some of my memories when I joined the Company. I suppose … they’re coming back to haunt me now. Haunt us.’

Like my nightmare, I thought. But I hadn’t existed as a single, separate human at any time, until now. And I wasn’t supposed to have any memories I didn’t absolutely need. So…

Rick and Darina came into the breakfast space. They were grinning and holding hands, their faces a bit red as if they’d already been for a run.

‘Come on you lot! Totem Trail in five!’

It was this first one in particular. Carys noticed it straight away. ‘There are formal similarities to The Face servers in the hut,’ he said. ‘The globe, the stars on the front material. But of course they don’t have any function here. This is just artifice.’

I was reading the notification that had come up on my phone. ‘It says there are around 10,000 individuals living in each totem.’

‘Sounds about right,’ Rick commented. ‘These are full symmetry disruption units. The matter inside will be restructured to Symmetry 13, so it’s conscious at a molecular level.’

The words vaguely made sense to me, and I had enough rudimentary Knowing installed to equate this to how we had been living as a Company a few days ago. But I felt that…

‘Ten thousand is still a lot for this much space,’ said Carys, putting into language exactly what I was thinking. ‘They can’t be very complicated people.’

‘A lot more complex than the ones in The Face,’ said Naomi. ‘Probably about the same as us. And at least they can get outside and change … function… Oh… sorry, Ava.’

‘It’s OK.’ But she was sobbing. ‘It’s your past too. It’s just that you can’t remember it. At the moment.’

I was very conscious of the smell of the pines, the slight hiss of wind in the branches. I realised it was my turn to give some support.

‘It’s different for us,’ I said. ‘We’ve made a choice to be like this. And it’s only for a bit of time, one Moon day. And we can stop any time we like. If they stopped… well, they were dead.’ I remembered the fear I’d felt at the thought of a restart. Now I understood it. It was the fear of death.

And a funny thought came into my head. Maybe I didn’t want to go back to being a Company, to being one person with these five other people. Maybe I liked being this different person, even though I was starting from a blank slate, starting on my own.

Maybe I liked being me.

It was good (for me at least) that the Totem Trail was short – only 8km. We were done by lunchtime and I was able to eat a big lunch of bread and cheese and tomatoes, which made me feel very tired so I had to sleep.

It’s raining now. I suppose it has to do that sometimes. I can hear Rick and Darina laughing with Carys in the next room.

I had the nightmare again. I think it must be one of Ava’s stray memories. I’m going to ask her about it tomorrow.