Perceptions and DeceptionsChapter 61
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Ankh free porn video
There was a soft, timid knock on the door. Director Howard looked up from
his computer to see his assistant, Grey, in the hall outside. "Come in."
Grey stepped into the office quickly and shut the door behind him. "Mr.
Director, there's a situation brewing here that requires your immediate
attention. I would have brought this to your attention sooner, but I
wanted to make sure that I had all the details correct first. I don't want
to waste your time." Howard nodded, and Grey set a small file on Howard's
desk. The file was labeled ANKH Co, STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL in glowing red
letters. Howard placed his thumb along the edge of the file. The letters
turned green, and the file opened. The first item in the file was a
picture of a young girl, who looked to be about 16.
"This picture is recent?"
"Yes, sir. Taken 10 hours ago, before we started the rez process."
"She looks healthy enough."
"Perfectly healthy, sir. But that's not the problem. You'll see on the
first page there..." Howard nodded, and Grey allowed his voice to trail
off. After two or three minutes of reading, Howard frowned deeply.
"You are sure about this?"
"Yes sir, as I said, I waited to bring this to your attention until I
could confirm the details."
Director Howard looked over the file one last time, then nodded. "Very
good, Grey. I'll see to this myself. She's in Room 187?"
"Yes, sir. A councellor is with her."
"And you're absolutely certain that we have no exposure here?"
"I checked with legal not more than five minutes ago. We've got all the
liability waivers in order. The only potential damage is PR."
"Then let's go."
***
Director Howard pushed the door to Room 187 open, and stepped inside
quickly. The rooms were soundproof, as a standard guard against privacy,
and Howard had the feeling that he would be particularly grateful of that
fact today.
The girl was seated on a couch on the far side of the room, legs curled up
under her, hugging herself. Her eyes were staring. There was a blanket
draped over her shoulders. 'Marvelous,' Howard thought to himself, 'she's
in shock.'
The councellor was seated on a chair next to the door. She stood quickly
at Howard's entry. "Mr. Director, it's good to see you here, sir."
"How long has she been in shock?"
"About fifteen minutes ago she gave out yelling and just started sitting
there like that. I was going to rouse her, but when I heard you were
coming, I figured I'd wait for you."
"Get her up then."
The councellor pulled a small tube out of her pocket, and walked up to the
girl. She pressed the end of the tube against the girl's arm and stood
back. Several seconds ticked past in silence, then the girl blinked and
turned to look at Howard. "About fucking time," she muttered.
"Good morning, Ms. Webster," Howard smiled, taking the seat the councellor
recently vacated. The councellor was about to protest, then thought better
of it, and stood aside.
"Don't call me that," the girl shouted. "I'm not Jillian Webster, I have
no idea who Jillian Webster is!"
"Then what should I call you?"
"I'm Charlie. Charlie Galvin. I've told that to five different people now,
and they keep sending in idiots to ask me again, when I've told them a
million times -"
"Charlie, then," Howard said quickly, cutting off the girl - Jillian,
Charlie, whoever - before she could get any momentum behind her rant. "I
am Frank Howard, Director of Operations for this Rez station."
"Listen, Frank -"
"Please call me Mr. Howard, or Director."
"Great," the girl laughed. "Some fucking suit with delusions of grandeur.
Just what I need."
"Charlie," Director Howard said, "I realize you're upset. That's
understandable. But I did not come here so you can yell at me. If you want
to yell at someone, I will leave, and you can yell at the councellor here.
It's her job to take your abuse, not mine. My job is to understand your
situation and discuss your future. If you are capable of having a
discussion, then we will discuss. If not, I'll leave. You don't want me to
leave."
The girl stared at Howard, processing that information, then nodded.
"Very good. And one more thing. I am not 'some suit with delusions of
grandeur.' I am not deluded. I am just as important as I believe that I
am, and I believe I am very important. You were just brought back to life,
Charlie, and I brought you back to life. So as far as you are concerned,
that makes me God. Are we clear on that point?"
The girl sat up straight with shock and a look of extreme indignation
crossed her face. But after a second, she sat back, sighed, and nodded.
"Now tell me your story. Take it slow, start from the beginning, and don't
leave out any details. And yes, I already know everything you've told our
staff members, but I want to hear it from you."
The girl licked her lips, then began speaking.
"My name is Charlie Galvin. I started working for Ankh about sixty years
ago-"
"When, exactly? The year, Charlie."
"The year? I forget exactly. Sometime in the mid-thirties."
"The 2130s?"
"Yes, of course. Ankh wasn't around in the 2030s, Im not that old."
"Of course not. Pardon the interruption. Please, continue."
"Right. Well, I started in the mid-30s. I started entry level, of course,
doing database maintainance on the memory banks, and after twenty years or
so I was working midlevel, doing coding on the memory compression
algorithms. See, when someone gets brought in here to get their memories
copied over, we do the whole thing. We get the whole brain, every synapse.
That's a lot of damn data, Mr. Howard. A whole hell of a lot. And storage
space is cheap, relatively speaking, but still... it's a whole hell of a
lot. I was working on compression algorithms that would make it so we
could keep a person's brainscan at 100% fidelity, but reduce the storage
requirements. By the mid-fifties we had gotten the storage space required
for a full brain scan down 31%.
"My compensation was standard at the time. I was making 200 a year, which
is pretty slim, I know, but I got a full upload every month, and they
started making my clone when I had been working at the company for about
two years. I got the standard Time of Your Life package."
"Time of Your Life package?" Howard asked.
"What, you don't do that deal anymore? Or maybe you just call it something
different. Anyway, I got 20 to 40 for as long as I worked for the company.
Scan and die whenever my body turns 40, and they'll upload my memories
into a clone when the clone turns 20. Then they clone the 20-year old me,
and by the time the clone turns 20, I'm 40, so I scan and die again, and
wake up 20. I'd be in my 20s and 30s forever. The way I figured it, that
was a pretty good deal. I wouldn't be getting a big house any time soon on
my salary, but I'd get immortality, and that seemed like a pretty fair
trade.
"So anyway, I died the first time as soon as my clone hit 20. Don't know
how I did it. They told me they had the info available, but I didn't want
to know. I'd had my scan a week before, so for all I knew, I just went to
sleep and woke up a few days later, 20 years younger. I don't really want
to think about the older version of me killing himself. It's just not a
pleasant thought. I went for 15 years as the second Charlie, but I lost
the next five. They told me it was a car accident; I didn't want to hear
anymore. But they had my monthly scan from two weeks before the accident,
and when my clone turned 20, I was born again. So I lost five years, but
hell, it was worth it. Better than dead forever, am I right? I went the
full twenty on that body, and my clone had just turned 20. I got my scan.
That's the last thing I remember. The last thing before a few hours ago,
when I wake up and the councellor here tells me I'm some... fuck. Miss
Webster? You dumped me in the body of some little god damn GIRL, and I
want out. I'm Charlie Galvin. Now, Director, if you would, PLEASE, stick
my mind into my actual damn clone. Thanks."
Howard nodded, and frowned. This was the story he'd seen in the file.
Either Jillian Webster had gone completely insane, or something had just
happened that was, well, unprecedented. Howard had no idea how to deal
with a psychotic, so he decided to assume, for the moment, that the girl
was telling the truth.
"Charlie, what year do you think this is?"
"2193, why? Is it not 2193? Did I lose a few years?"
"If you're telling the truth, you lost about eighty years. It's 2276."
"Eighty years?" The girl looked shocked.
"Eighty-three. We checked our records. We do have records of a Charlie
Galvin that worked here during the time you described, and in Memory
Warehousing. According to our files, Charlie Galvin quit the company
shortly after his third resurrection, in November 2193. No reason cited.
His fourth clone had not even been born yet, and with the end of his
contract, the clone was terminated, in vitro. All of Charlie Glavin's
memory backups were erased, per contract. As of December 2193, there was
no longer any trace of Charlie Galvin at Ankh, either genetic or memory
file. All wiped because, as you say, storage space is expensive. According
to police records, Mr. Galvin was murdered two weeks later. The case was
never solved."
"That's impossible," the girl gasped.
"I know." Howard gave the girl a penetrating look. "Entirely impossible.
Unless you have any theories?"
"None. Oh, god, are you serious? Eighty-three years? No clone. Oh god."
Howard opened the file he had brought with him and began reading. "Jillian
Webster. Born, oddly enough, in 2193. She worked her whole life as a
waitress to save enough money for an Ankh rez. Finally got the money in
March 2260. She died eight months later. No living family. Her request was
a rebirth at the age of 16. Sixteen years later, as soon as her clone is
old enough, she is reborn, per contract. She immediately begins claiming -
wildly, implausibly - that she is Charlie Galvin, former Ankh employee,
dead these eighty years. Ms. Webster, we have ourselves a situation here."
"This is impossible..."
"In the event of a corrupted data file or incorrect upload, our standard
procedure is to wipe the mind of the clone, and re-implant. This was done
a total of seventeen times over the course of four hours, using the main
imprint file and each of the four backup files. All mental files match.
All are confirmed as belonging to Jillian Webster. All other mental files
uploaded in 2260 are cross-referenced, with no matches for Jillian Webster
found. All files, backup files, and archives are checked for record of
Charlie Galvin. No mental files found. The only entry is in our historical
archive, which contained no memory imprints, and only the sketchy
biographical information that I just conveyed to you. You now know as much
as we know."
"How.... I can't.... What now?" The girl was on the verge of going into
shock once again. Her breathing was becoming rapid and frantic. The
Director nodded in the direction of the councellor, who approached the
girl once more, pulling the small tube out of her pocket and pressing it
against the girl's arm. Her breathing returned to normal.
"Now," Howard said, once we was confident he had the girl's attention
again, "here is what is going to happen. I have here all the proper
Resurrection Identification for Jillian Webster. It's yours. You can
remain here for as long as you wish, to collect your thoughts. The
councellor here has been cleared to work with you on accepting your new
identity during this time."
"No," the girl spoke up. "I can't. This isn't who I am. I'm charlie
Galvin. I'm not this. I'm not this... I'm not a girl. Please. If you don't
have any of my original genetic data or a survivng clone, at least put me
in the body of a man. Give me that much."
"I'm afraid that's impossible. All clones and other genetic material
present at this and any other Rez Station are the sole property of their
originators. Should Ankh appropriate any body other than this one for your
use, we will be committing genetic theft. You could go to jail. I could go
to jail. The entire company could be shut down. That cannot happen."
"But that's only if people know, right? I won't tell anyone if you do it,
I swear. Just clone someone now, and you can wait another 20 years to
download me. Hell, I already lost eighty. What's another twenty?"
"I'm afraid that's out of the question. What if, twenty years from now,
you were to encounter the person whose genetic material you had taken? Or
one of their family, or friends? They would almost certainly sue. The odds
of that happening are, I admit, not large. But it's a risk we can't afford
to take."
"Someone will sue? Someone will sue? I'll sue! I swear, you lost my body -
"
"Were you listening at all? Charlie Galvin terminated his contract with
Ankh eighty years ago. Even if you were to convince a jury that you are,
in fact, Charlie Galvin, Charlie Galvin has no legal claim on Ankh. So far
as anyone can tell, you are Jillian Webster, a young girl who was brought
back to life, exactly per contract, with perfect memory transplantation,
but is having an unfortunate psychotic episode. I'm still not sure that
that's not what's going on."
"But I'm not Jillian Webster, I'm not. I swear! How can I prove this to
you?"
"You cannot. It's impossible. Charlie Galvin is dead, and the only
information left on him is in some rather impoverished historical files.
For that matter, Jillian Webster also died some time ago. We have searched
and searched, and all that we have found that remains of her is a memory
file and a clone body. That body, and your memory file. And that's how
things stand."
"I can't be this." The girl was starting to sob. She scrubbed at her eyes
as she tried to regain her composure. "I'm not... I can't..."
"You are. This is who you are. You should try to accept that. It's not so
bad, really. You have your youth and your health. And I don't know if you
bothered to notice before, but you're actually quite beautiful." Howard
set his jaw. He knew it was coming to this from the beginning. After
hearing the
girl's story, after seeing her reaction, he could almost believe that this
really was Charlie Galvin, his memory file somehow returned after all
these years. But there was nothing to do about the situation. His legal
obligations were clear.
"Please..." She had a desperate look in her eye. "Please..."
"In compensation for your - uh, discomfort - Ankh is willing to offer you
the - what did you call it again? - Time of Your Life deal? We will clone
and resurrect you, free of charge, for as long as you want. You don't even
have to work for the company anymore. The only condition is your promise
of secrecy in this matter. Don't go to the papers, don't go trying to find
some man whose clone you can buy. This condition is in your interest, too.
You should know that the Supreme Court ruled some time ago that any
attempt to take the body or cloned body of another person, even with their
consent, is in strict violation of the Right of Persons Act, and you could
spend the rest of your life in prison. Your one life, that is."
"I... I don't have a choice, do I?"
"I'm afraid not. You are Jillian Webster - now and, if you want, forever."
"I... OK."
"Then here you are." Howard pulled the ID info for Jillian Webster out of
the file, and handed it to the girl. She took it hesitantly.
"That concludes our business."
Jillian Webster burst into tears. The councellor moved forward to comfort
her. Director Howard stood and left the room. He did not look back.
Lesley
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