Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [320]
The virtual conference was held in an impressive virtual venue, loosely based on Tienanmen Square; Reid, appearing on a large screen at the front, in the position of the Chairman. Thousands of three-dimensional renderings of people – prisoners and succubi – stood in the square, talking freely amongst themselves for the first time. Some of them must have been in the solitude of their onboard minds for years; others present were prisoners who’d not died and been uploaded, but had served their time in their own bodies – around the ship and habitats rather than the wormhole’s environs, I guessed. These still-embodied people were also, in reality, dispersed around the ship, but were telepresent with the rest of us.
When Reid spoke, his voice carried perfectly. Everyone heard it as if they were a few metres from him.
‘We’ve done it!’ he said. ‘We’ve reached a new world, under a new sun. We did it by our own efforts, of our own free will. Some may say that the macros did it, but I say we used them like any other tool. And when our tools turned in our hands, we discarded them. We can be proud.
‘You all have another reason to be proud. You’ve all earned your freedom. I never promised you this, but I give it to you now. A new world, a clean slate. You’re all free, and together we’ll live in freedom.’
Everybody around me shouted a cheer that overloaded the system and appeared momentarily on the sky as giant letters: ‘AAAAAAAAHHHHH’. I myself was unmoved, partly because I wasn’t a prisoner, and partly because I could see that Reid had little choice in the matter. If there were to be slaves here, they would have to be machines.
Reid waited for the din to subside, and smiled.
‘Thank you. And now, my friends…We’re here not as agents of some company, or as refugees. We’ve brought with us, I assure you, all that we’ll need to make New Mars not just habitable, but better than Earth. We’ve brought the genetic information to seed this planet, over time, with a rich diversity of life. We have the technology to make our lives as long as we desire. And we’ve brought the dead, who will live again, with us.
‘I’ll talk about the dead in a moment. But first, let me tell you about yourselves. Most of you are, of course, among the dead, but unlike the great majority of the dead, you are still in a sense alive. Your minds, and your characters, have developed and, if you ask me –’ he smiled ‘– improved since your deaths. Furthermore, for the bodies of every one of you – I’ve checked – we have not just the stored information in the bank, but actual genetic material, frozen cells. Over the next months and years…’
He paused. We all leaned forward slightly.
‘We’ll have to do something about the calendar,’ he said, in a stage aside. Everybody laughed.
‘OK, the good news is, we’ll be able to download you back to clones of your own bodies. In the case of the succubi, any bodies you choose, although I’d recommend the ones you’re, ah, modelled on, for the sake of –’
Whatever he said next was completely lost in a tumult of applause. To my amazement I found myself yelling, hugging Meg, clapping complete strangers on the back and leaping in the imaginary air.
Eventually the crowd quietened down. I began to understand Reid’s reasons for setting up this event, rather than broadcasting to us all in our individual machines – he wanted to create a shared occasion of common memory. This was his speech – to the assembled masses, I thought with a grin – in the plaza after the revolution, his founding moment of