The Replicant, the Mole & the Impostor, Part 7
Part 2—the conclusion—of a duology where a reality event held in a refugee camp on a Greek island unfolds in an utterly unexpected manner. There will be 50 parts. Chapter 7: February.
VII: February
The real change-bringer might not be an intelligence that we build from the ground up, but something like an uploaded healing consciousness that we then augment with the sort of artificial intelligence we already have.
William Gibson
The next chapter in this near-future chronicle of how things could change for the better. Events are intensifying and accelerating, so stay tuned!
—At the Residence—
Akama’s trying to recall the strange dream he had. He’s not the earliest riser like Esteban—his roommate—or Agnetha, or Piotr, but also not a morning temper monster like Dewi, or a late riser like Rahman and Kristel. Indeed, like Katja and Omar, he rises at relatively normal times—or whatever goes for normal in this motley crew.
Anyway, since Esteban’s already at breakfast, Akama has a few minutes to recall the hallucinations of REM sleep before they fade from his short-term memory and are encoded in his procedural memory (if he understood Dewi’s explanation correctly). The dream was a very strange mix of the mundane and the weird. He was back at his farm, in one of his pastures to check on his cows, leaning on the fence he’d made to separate his cows from the neighboring sheep, as one of his cows started talking to him.
“Is the grass really greener in Greece?”
This shocked Akama out of his reverie. “What?” was all he could say as he looked at the cow in question. But she didn’t talk anymore, only let out a “moo” as if to emphasize her question. Akama scratched his head and accidentally looked at one of his neighbor’s sheep, which started talking as well.
“Do replicants dream of augmented sheep?”
Akama was still too surprised to react. He just stared at the sheep that, subsequently, remained quiet. A hare crawled out of its hidey-hole, turned its head toward Akama, and said:
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
Then Akama was searching for truffles with his dog. Admittedly, his sows were even more sensitive to the smell of the highly valued, subterranean fungi. Unfortunately, they couldn’t resist eating the delectable booty once they found it. His dog stood to attention, nose sniffing the undergrowth, tail standing straight up, indicating she’d found the treasure. But instead of barking triumphantly, she lifted her head and started to speak.
“The best things are often hidden, but they shouldn’t remain hidden,” his dog, his faithful truffle partner, said. “They should be revealed for everybody to see.”
“If everybody could find truffles so easily,” Akama answered—not in the least surprised by his dog talking, “then they wouldn’t be special.”
“No,” his dog said. “They would be even more prized, as it’s their rarity that counts, not their visibility.”
It’s almost as if he’s played this scene before, it’s so strange yet familiar. But like a lot of dreams, it had its own logic, which went way over his head.
While he’d be damned if he understood this dream, it does give him a deep longing for his farm—and his partner. On the other hand, he’s both happy and proud about the improvements he and his fellow candidates have helped implement in the refugee camp. He hopes they can continue for the full ten months of the reality TV show, even if it means he’ll have to obfuscate who the replicant is until the very end (not that he has any clue as to who it is, despite the field being reduced by half), because what they’re doing, what they—the refugees, many of the locals, many of the contributing audience and the candidates including him—are achieving is much more important than the unveiling of an intelligence that—as far as he is concerned—is so close to an actual human being that the difference becomes moot. And he can certainly sympathize with the need to stay undercover.
Anyway, his thoughts are too clear now to be a dream. Even though they demanded his attention to such an extent that he barely noticed that he’d opened his eyes, he might as well succumb to the inevitable: he’s awake. He should get dressed.
Akama enters the communal room, still lost in thought, as he sees that everyone’s gathered around something that looks like a door. Which makes little sense, as it’s in the middle of the room, not connecting to any other room. Agnetha stands right next to it, gesticulating and talking. The rest are encircling it. Akama joins them.
“Ah, there’s Akama,” Agnetha says, pointing to the rectangular frame in which no actual door is visible, only a thin, transparent film that shimmers with rainbow colors like a soap bubble. “So I’ll repeat it: this is the door of the future. Here today, in the camp tomorrow.”
“The door of the future?” Akama says. “What’s wrong with the current ones?”
“Once open, they let everything in,” Agnetha says, shaking her head ruefully.
“Isn’t that how they’re supposed to work?” Akama fails to see her point.
“That’s pre-coronavirus thinking,” Agnetha says. “Allow me to demonstrate. Anyone care to volunteer?”
“Alright,” Esteban says, stepping forward. “Will it let heavy metal fans through?”
“Most of them,” Agnetha says, winking. “Please walk through the door.”
“Morituri te salutant,” Esteban begins, as he moves towards the newfangled door.
“Indeed,” Agnetha says, barely suppressing a giggle.
“What?” Esteban says, suddenly suspicious.
“Trust me,” Agnetha says, “I’ve walked through it, many times. You’ll have to experience it for yourself.”
Esteban looks at Agnetha with a wary eye, swallows, and then walks through the door. At first, he seems to drag the transparent film with him. But then, the film moves over Esteban’s body and snaps back into place—albeit silently—once Esteban passes the doorway.
“Interesting,” Esteban says, “very interesting.”
“In what way?” Omar wants to know.
“Only one way to find out,” Esteban says, double-daring Omar, “you next.”
Omar rolls his eyes toward the heavens, as if to curse his big mouth. Then he walks toward the flimsy doorway, and through it.
“Oi,” Omar says, in disgust, “that door sucks.”
“It’s supposed to do that,” Agnetha says.
“What?” Esteban and Omar say, in unison.
“It’s a semi-permeable membrane with a soapy, alcoholic lubrication that disinfects 99%—or more—of known bacteria and viruses.”
“Shouldn’t one then pass through it naked?” Esteban says, only half-joking.
“Preferably,” Agnetha says. “So we finally get a nudist society.” She waits a little bit to let that sink on, then continues: “Just joking. Walk through it as you are. It’s supposed to disinfect your bare skin and your clothes, shoes, glasses, whatever.”
“Sterilizing all surfaces on which a virus like COVID-19 could stick,” Dewi says, understanding. “But what happens if the stuff gets into your eyes? Or if one ingests it?”
“It’s a soap/alcohol amalgam that is as dangerous as soap or alcohol,” Agnetha says, “that is, only problematic if ingested in great quantities. Furthermore—like alcohol—it evaporates quite quickly.”
“Don’t we use up the, well, working ingredients by walking in and out?” Olga says.
“There’s a little refill tank,” Agnetha says, pointing at a small pink receptacle mounted about half-height on the vertical part of the doorframe.
“Now I see the business case,” Esteban says, “like a printer: you get the hardware almost for free, then pay through the nose for refills.”
“Once mass-produced—and the recipe will be open source—it’ll be as expensive as soap,” Agnetha says, “and nobody complained about the price of that during the coronavirus pandemic.”
“It still feels like you’re walking straight through a liquid gel made from disinfectants,” Omar says, not quite convinced yet.
“First we have to make it work,” Agnetha says, “then we can add artificial taste and smell additives to improve the experience.”
“Yuck.”
“That’s what they said of the first condoms without taste, all-membrane face masks, and full-body PPE for medical personnel,” Agnetha says. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Like the two-meter-society?” Kristel says. “I’d hoped we left that behind.”
“It’s always looming in the background,” Dewi says. “If we can avoid it with technological innovations like this, I’m all for it.”
“With your family, neighbors, friends being sucked through a sterile condom?”
“Better than staying home alone.”
“Nice,” Piotr—always the practical one—says, “but how is it supposed to lock? A door before the door?”
“Very good, Piotr,” Agnetha says, grabbing her smartphone and opening an app. “Now I will lock the door.” The moment she taps a button in her app, the membrane starts to shimmer with a neon-blue glow, making crackling noises.
“Cool effect,” Piotr says, “but how’s that going to stop me going in?”
“Be my guest,” Agnetha says with a wide smile, gesturing toward the scintillating doorway.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Piotr says, yet he walks toward the door. He stops before it, but instead of trying to walk through, he extends his hand toward it. There’s an audible zap as his fingers touch the glowing membrane, followed by Piotr’s curse.
“Yow!” Piotr screams. “It’s like an electric fence.”
“Exactly,” Agnetha says. “High voltage yet low amperage. Painful, but far from lethal.”
“But that won’t stop anybody from sprinting or jumping through it,” Piotr says.
“True,” Agnetha says, “but keep in mind that no practical door—we’re not talking atomic bomb shelters here—can keep a determined person, like, say, a burglar, out. And there will be an alarm when that happens. We’re thinking about further discouraging measures like pointing a focused sound wave beam with agonizing levels and frequencies at the intruder.”
“But how about energy efficiency?” Katja says. “Won’t your door let out a lot of heat in winter?”
“As a single membrane, it does,” Agnetha admits, “but if we use a double membrane and fill the area in between with a noble gas like Argon, Krypton or Xenon—all non-toxic with an extremely low asphyxiation danger at the volume we’re using—then we can achieve better insulation than triple glazing.”
“But your door does consume energy,” Katja says, “unlike an old-fashioned one.”
“It does,” Agnetha says, “but an old-fashioned one loses heat—or lets in heat in summer, when you try to keep cool—every time the door is opened. We’ve calculated that our novo-portals will be more efficient if you open and close a regular door more than six times per day, if the average temperature difference between in- and outdoors exceeds five degrees Celsius.”
“That’s probably only a fraction of what the solar-receptive walls of a neo-homestead generate,” Dewi says, making a mental estimate, “even on a cloudy winter day. Win-win. I love it.”
“It gets even better,” Agnetha says, “we are testing sterilizing agents like ozone and UV between the two door membranes, adding an extra source of disinfection.”
“Ever since COVID-19, society has become much cleaner,” Olga says, “or at least became more aware of certain behaviors. I’m not sure if the pendulum now swings too much to the other side.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Agnetha says, “and I say that coming from a country that needed to learn the hard way. I lost an uncle to the coronavirus.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Olga says, “my sympathies.”
“Thanks,” Agnetha says, “but didn’t we all lose somebody we loved to COVID-19?”
Silently, everybody in the room nods.
—In the Camp—
In the women and children section of the camp, Hind is a bit surprised as Katja and Olga show up quite early in the morning. “You’re here already?” She says.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Katja says, “and when I got out to have a super early breakfast, Olga was already there.”
“Dewi was snoring stupidly loud,” Olga says, “much more than normal.”
“Why don’t you just kick her?” Katja says.
“Well, she worked very late last evening with Agnetha,” Olga says, “and she was busy with a ‘secret project’ with Rahman and Akama.”
“Really? Never mind us,” Katja says to Hind, before her curiosity gets the better of her. “How are you?”
“Not bad, all things considered,” Hind says. “No more fights over food, we have a house over our heads, the camp is cleaner and safer—thanks in no small part to Nyandeng’s AvoidThis app—we even have a playground.”
“Oh, thank you,” Katja says, “so all this work has not been for nothing.”
“Of course not,” Hind says, “eight months ago I thought we were in, well, if not Jahannam, at least A’raf. Now, it almost feels like a community.”
“Nevertheless, you’re only meant to be here temporarily,” Olga says.
“Some of us have been waiting more than two years,” Hind says, “and some find that uncertainty even worse than the traumas they’ve experienced, including the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Which initially mostly spared the Greek islands,” Olga says, “but unleashed another economic crisis, which now—among other things—slows down the handling of asylum applications.”
“Unfortunately, that’s one thing we cannot influence much,” Katja says. “Although we’ve appealed to the Greek authorities to expedite the asylum requests. How’s Kassim?”
“He’s improving,” Hind says, “especially after I incorporated two avatar sessions into his daily routine.”
“He’s inside?” Katja says. “It’s promising to be a nice day today.”
“Now’s his morning session,” Hind says, “and that means he has to stay there, come what may.”
“Really?” Katja says.
“Autistic children need a high dose of regularity in their lives,” Olga says. “They get very upset by a change of routine.”
“Indeed,” Hind says, “and the app really started taking off when enough autistic children joined.”
An alarm rings on Hind’s smartphone. “I’ve got to go in now,” she says, “his exercises are starting.”
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Author’s note: March, so far, is being a difficult month on the private front. Suffice to say that I’ve heared some bad news with regards to my family, which affects my ablity to post here regularly. Consider it a bump in the road, as I will keep posting, just not as often as I’d like.
Hopefully things will clear up in the future. Welcome to a new subscriber and follower, and many thanks for supporting me and reading!