The Replicant,the Mole & the Impostor,Part 3
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 6: January.
—A Private Discussion Stretched Over Two Continents—
On a snowy afternoon in Vienna, Manfred gets a phone call from Montréal, a city that’s truly frozen over.
“Hi Léa,” Manfred Kafka says. “What brings me this honor?”
“Hi Manfred,” Léa Truchon says. “It’s about Who Is the Replicant.”
“Contacting me about it, even in our spare time,” Manfred says. “Isn’t that a bit over the top?”
“Of course it is, Manfred,” Léa says. “You’re just as obsessed about it as me, admit it.”
“It’s a guilty pleasure, indeed, “Manfred admits, “which distracts me but all too often from my real work. And your call isn’t helping.”
“I know, but I’ve been noticing something—something strange,” Léa says, “and I trust your judgment.”
“What is it?”
“Maybe it’s only a hunch, and I know we’re not supposed to talk about it to keep our voting objective,” Léa says, pausing for breath, “but either way, we’re doing it wrong, or our votes are not correctly tallied.”
“What makes you think that?” Manfred says. “We’re scientists from different fields. Of course our opinions can differ, quite a bit.”
“Let’s look at the way we approach it—or better—fail to approach it,” Léa says. “If you look at it smartly—with the intention to find the replicant as soon as possible, then, during the five moths we’re supposed to vote for a human being, it makes much more sense to vote for the person most likely to be the replicant.”
“That’s not in the spirit of the show,” Manfred says. “We’re supposed to select who we think are true humans first.”
“Because the producers have a vested interest in making this last as long as possible,” Léa says, “but we don’t have to play that game. The sooner we unmask the replicant—even if accidentally on purpose—the better it is for our scientific reputations.”
“Absolutely true, and I’d be lying if I hadn’t been thinking along similar lines,” Manfred says. “So you put your most likely replicant candidates right on top of your voting list?”
“Every time, and I suspect I’m not the only one,” Léa says, “as any scientist with even the slightest knowledge of game theory would immediately figure that out, as well.”
“Alright, you got me,” Manfred says. “I plead guilty, as well. So who should have been topping our list, then?”
“Well, most definitely not Katja, Esteban or Kristel,” Léa says. “Everybody with more than two brain cells can see they are thoroughly human.”
“Agreed,” Manfred says. “So you’re thinking more like Akama and Omar?”
“And Dewi and Olga.”
“Not Rahman?”
“Dog no,” Léa says. “He’s like a fish out of water and out of his league. He might be a good decoy for the public at large, though.”
“And definitely not Piotr,” Manfred says, “our proud Polish working man.”
“Whose biases—often based on bigoted stereotypes—make him but all too human, as well,” Léa says. “No, we should’ve put up those four, one by one, right from the start.”
“I suspect Piotr’s prejudices are more due to lack of information rather than bad intent,” Manfred says. “I think he’ll come around. But not replicant material, far from it. So that leaves?”
“Akama,” Léa says. “There’s something strange about him. He’s hiding something beneath all his affability, synesthesia and easy-goingness, I tell you.”
“Possibly,” Manfred says. “I rate Olga. She does give Katja a lot of good advice, countering our champion’s naiveté with a healthy dose of world-weariness. But on the other hand, she can be unreadable, utterly opaque.”
“Maybe a defense mechanism—especially in today’s Russia—maybe not,” Léa says. “And there’s Omar. Initially he barely slept at night—due to Rahman’s snoring—but had plenty of energy to burn at night. He has perfect recall and never gets angry. All very indirect evidence, I know, but still.”
“Which finally brings us to Dewi,” Manfred says. “Since she’s basically a colleague scientist, I expected her to be more relatable. Yet she is so convinced of her own truths that she—subconsciously or not—manipulates everybody towards them. Aren’t we scientists supposed to be suspicious of easy truths, and test those thoroughly before accepting them?”
“Maybe because she’s a lecturer and trusts those that have come before her,” Léa says, “and right now she has no opportunity to do research, herself, so makes it up as she goes along.”
“Possibly, as I’m not certain of my own suspicions,” Manfred says, somewhat self-deprecatingly. “I do agree that those four should have been featured more prominently on our list. Do you think the other four vote like we do?”
“I’d expect more of them to think like us,” Léa says, “but I can’t be sure. So either they actually vote for the human every time—”
“Or the votes are manipulated,” Manfred says. “Or Kobayashi’s program doesn’t work. I certainly hope it’s the very former.”
“Or the very last,” Léa says, “otherwise we have a whole different problem on our hands.”
—In the Camp—
In December, to ensure the weakest got shelter first, the most effort was aimed at building neo-homesteads in the women and children section of the camp. Many of them are finished now and their inhabitants are astonished at the metamaterials’ qualities.
For one, the metamaterial walls, floors, ceilings and roofs have controlled heat flow. This means that during a hot day, they can be set to prevent heat from coming in—they’re near-perfect insulators—while at night they can be reversed to let the inner heat—built up by the people living inside and their equipment, together with the heat inevitably entering the house through doors as people enter and leave the house—out again.
In the winter, they are set to keep the heat in and—in case it gets drastically cold—to let heat from the earth in through the floors. This only happens if people inadvertently leave a door or window open, as the insulating properties are such that a small heat source—like active humans—normally suffices to warm up the whole neo-homestead.
The windows are made of a different type of metamaterial. They can be made fully opaque, perfectly transparent, or anything in between, such as polarized sunglasses on an extremely sunny day. Their insulation properties are much less than that of the metamaterial walls, so they’re triple-layered with vacuum in between.
On top of that, all the walls and windows are basically displays—to be activated or de-activated over programmable sections at will. As such, it’s possible to set up the living room, or any bedroom, or the kitchen as a jungle, a desert, a tropical beach, a mountainside lake, or the middle of a bustling metropolis. With AR-gear the immersion can be perfected, the illusion made complete. The world inside your house.
To simplify and expedite matters, the neo-homesteads are not supplied with toilets and showers, as these are already in plentiful supply, and because laying all that plumbing would have delayed finishing the neo-homesteads by months, after the winter when they’re needed most. They do have a kitchen with a cooker and room for a refrigerator. Also, as the strength of the metamaterials has not been extensively tested, nor approved, all the neo-homesteads only have a single floor. And the first heavy rains have shown them to be fully waterproof.
Nevertheless, the difference they make for the quality of life for the refugees is immeasurable. Everybody is already very happy to be able to sleep in dry circumstances, and is even happier to find that they can control the temperature inside their new homes as well. Children sleep so much better, and this alone lowers the amount of juvenile illnesses. Women begin to catch up with their sleep deprivation as well, and as the latest neo-homesteads are planned to be finished before the end of January, the men will be able to as well.
Kristel visits her friend Nyandeng in her neo-homestead, which she shares with a few other female refugees.
“I’m probably not supposed to say this,” Nyandeng says, “but ever since I moved into the neo-homestead I share—with a single bedroom of my own—my productivity has gone way up.”
“Because you can use the walls, as well?” Kristel asks.
“Not only that,” Nyandeng says, “but Magdi is finally sleeping well. That alone does him a world of good. And I’ve set up virtual school classes for him, to complement the home teaching I do. And when he’s off to the playground—I still cannot thank Salam Abdulrashid enough for that—or sleeping, I can fully concentrate on my work, which is now generating some serious income.”
“So happy to hear that Magdi is sleeping well,” Kristel says. “How is his health?”
“Thanks to the medicines he’s been getting regularly, I think he’s—as far as I can determine—healthy, back to normal,” Nyandeng says, “but I’m keeping a stash of the medicines just in case.”
“To be on the safe side, you could make an appointment with the doctors who arrived last month.” Kristel says. “They’re here solely for the refugees.”
“Really?” Nyandeng says, thunderstruck. “Somehow I missed that.” In a flash, she puts up her AR-gear.
“There,” she says, sounding very happily surprised. “I’m making an appointment right now.”
“Yeah,” Kristel says, “that’s what they’re here for. Is Nzinga also doing well?”
“She’s so cute,” Nyandeng says, “and Magdi and her are inseparable. I think her presence alone accelerated Magdi’s return to normal.”
“Well, I’m happy to hear your boy is doing well,” Kristel says.
“Maybe even too well,” Nyandeng says. “One night, I heard noises coming from his bedroom while he should have been sleeping. When I checked, I found he was watching a movie displayed on the ceiling, after he’d hacked the metamaterials.”
“Just like a normal kid,” Kristel says, “fluent with new tech.”
“I told him to go to sleep, but he protested, wanted to finish the movie,” Nyandeng says, “and Nzinga even meowed as if she agreed. They are so close. So I had to improvise. I told him he could finish the movie, but then—since he was watching movies at home anyway—he was not allowed to go to the open-air screenings anymore.”
“You wouldn’t,” Kristel says, slightly taken aback.
“Of course not,” Nyandeng says, “but it worked. He immediately switched it off and became demure: ‘Nzinga and I can keep going to the movies, please, Mum?’ He went to sleep after that, while I spent quite a few hours making our home system hack-proof.”
“So he can’t do this again?” Kristel says. “It was pretty smart, you have to admit.”
“True, and I considered that,” Nyandeng says, “so I kept the functionality, but with parental controls, so he can watch a cartoon or Sesame Street when he’s been good.”
“Makes sense. And I see you’re even wearing those AR-glasses indoors?” Kristel wonders. “I already tire of them after a few hours.”
“Well, I hear there will be other ways to access AR-spaces than the usual AR-glasses,” Nyandeng says. “They’re developing smart contact lenses. Once those work, we’re done with wearing these awkward AR-glasses.”
“But then nobody will know if you’re connected to AR-space,” Kristel says. “Isn’t that a violation of a person’s privacy?”
“As far as I know, there won’t be cameras in the contacts,” Nyandeng says. “So I won’t be filming anybody against their wishes. And how I spend my time—AR/VR or not—is up to me.”
“Won’t they impair driving?” Kristel says.
“Who needs to drive?” Nyandeng says. “Aren’t driverless cars about to happen?”
“Or bicycling? Or even just walking?” Kristel says, holding on to her argument.
“It’s just like smartphones,” Nyandeng says, “people have to act responsibly. Don’t use your smartphone while biking, so don’t use a too intense AR-overlay while biking. Or walking. On the other hand, it can make sure you don’t get lost.”
“If the maps it’s using are correct,” Kristel says, “and updated.”
“Which is true for smartphones, as well,” Nyandeng says, “just use common sense.”
“Well then, if our wearables become so small that nobody can see them anymore,” Kristel says, “how do we then distinguish the people from the, well, cyborgs?”
“Is that important?” Nyandeng says with a shrug.
Author’s note: in many novels, duologies and trilogies (and in movies) there is the so-called ‘muddle in the middle1’. The part where the action slows down to a crawl as the characters consider their motivations, backgrounds and options. This becomes necessary because all that information wasn’t pre-loaded in the beginning, as the reader must be captured by intense action scenes or other high-stakes chicanery.
In this duology I decided to do it differently; that is, gradually pre-load all the info about the stakes and the characters at the very beginning, which gives the whole the feeling of a slow burn. Which it is.
However, this means that we are now in the fast-paced part of the narrative hurtling towards the pay-offs (yes, there will be many more than just one). Pay-offs that will feel much more earned because you—the reader—have made so much investments in them. Stay tuned, dear readers, as your rewards will come, hard-fought and well-earned. Many thanks for reading!
Even if the term originates from anthropology, where Home heidelbergensis classification is so disputed that the Middle Pleistocene is often called the ‘muddle in the middle’;