Seven

They were two thousand feet beneath the earth's surface, beneath whatever remnant of a normal life any of them had once led. Kleinman could call the elevator whatever he wanted. John called it the Bullet Train to Hell.

The elevator door opened once again, and the seven strangers spilled out into a corridor, and its comparatively fresh air. John kept his breakfast down by breathing slowly and popping his ears. Jay wasn't so lucky. He dashed several feet down the hallway before spewing his scrambled eggs and sausage across a wall.

Jay dragged the back of his hand across his chin and looked up at the group. "Sorry."

"Dig the smell," Dr. Mike said.

Dr. DeFalco laughed, a low ho-ho. General Hill cleared his throat, and Kleinman nodded.

"Don't worry," the old man said. "We'll call someone to clean it up. Let's go."

They walked down the corridor. The institutional look was now replaced with a subterranean feel; fewer lights, dark stone walls, and dark metal support beams. This part of the complex wasn't as well polished as the upper decks. Not many folks made it down here, John reckoned.

They then came to another large door. It was circular. Kleinman turned and took a moment to look each of the seven clones in the eyes--John, Jay, Dr. Mike, Kilroy2.0, Father Thomas, Jack, Michael. He nodded, and General Hill approached a retina scanner on the wall. Metallic bolts inside the door released, and the metal door swung outward, like that of a bank vault.

"This is where you were born," Kleinman said.

The clones hesitated.

"Go inside. See."

They stepped through the metal portal, into a circular room with walls at least forty feet high. Old gymnasium-style lights hung from the ceiling. One of them flickered, buzzing like a furious wasp.

An enormous metal contraption mounted on the ceiling hung toward the floor, dominating the center of the room. It resembled a clutching seven-fingered human hand, or an upside-down steel flower. The base attached to the ceiling was at least fifteen feet wide. John gasped. The only things he'd ever seen that closely resembled this were those gyrating, eight-armed carnival rides called the Tarantula or Spider--the ones painted black, with the red capsules that swung madly from each arm.

But this Tarantula was shimmering and inverted . . . as if it had been plucked up by a titan, spun 180 degrees on its axis, and pressed into the ceiling. On the end of each of the seven arms was a large, hollow orb, connected and locked in place by four multiknuckled steel talons. The orbs were a pale translucent green, at least eight feet in diameter. Crisscrossing clusters of hoses and cables snaked down from the ceiling to the seven arms, then into the spheres. Seven computer consoles--each armed with four boxy monitors and keyboards--curved around the perimeter of the Tarantula.

"Jesus Christ," Jay said.

John looked numbly at Jay, then at the others. Father Thomas stared at the machine, awestruck. Jack and Dr. Mike stood side by side, mirroring each other's horrified expressions. Michael's mouth was frozen in a nervous smile, as if his expectations had suddenly derailed. Kilroy2.0 gazed at the Tarantula with wonder, childlike.

"This floor is called the Womb, but this is only one facet of it: the cloning chamber," Kleinman said from behind them. The old man nodded to the Tarantula. "This is where, sixteen years ago, we transferred the seven samples of cloned tissue from the original John Michael Smith--John Alpha. The spheres you see were filled with a nutrient-rich facsimile of embryonic fluid and a growth-acceleration compound."

Cloning chambers, John thought. Jesus, look at them.

"A cell sample was placed in each," Kleinman continued. "It was here where you were all born, in body. You were grown to midteen maturity in just two years."

Above them, the rogue light buzzed maniacally. John's mind buzzed right along with it. He looked at the mammoth device suspended from the ceiling. Tarantula. Spider. Step right up. What had he been expecting to see here? Not this.

Kleinman, from far away: . . . spheres coated inside with a conductive substance that assisted in bioelectric delivery for accelerated growth . . .

This. This made it more than a midnight, caffeinated conversation. This made it more than identical faces, identical eyes, identical photographs on cafeteria tables.

. . . see the small speaker in each, which we used to replicate the sounds of the in utero experience . . .

This made it real.

This was real.

Real.

* * *

An explosive bang started John from his thoughts. He looked over his shoulder, across the room. A door--a nearly seamless part of this room's curved wall just seconds ago--had propelled itself upward into a slot in the doorframe. Kleinman stepped inside and beckoned them all to enter, like a fun-house barker. John fought the cold, oily fear squirming in his stomach.

John walked--it was more like sleepwalking--toward the doorway. He didn't want to go inside. This was enough. He didn't want to see.

He couldn't not see.

He moaned as he stepped past the others and saw what was inside this smaller room. His focus was not on the wall of computer screens and keyboards, or the black, spiral staircase descending into the floor, or the anaconda cables that slithered from the walls to a looming metal cabinet with wink-wink lights.

It was the plane of seven square, metal doors in the wall facing him. Shimmering stainless steel, about four feet from the floor. Each door sported an old-time refrigerator handle, cocked on the side. They gleamed like knives in the fluorescent light.

He knew what kind of doors those were. Morgue cold drawer doors. With a number--1 to 7--stenciled on each.

Kleinman stepped over to one of the doors and yanked its silver handle, popping it open. The old man tugged on something inside, and out rolled a metal slab.

"What the hell?" Jack muttered.

The slab's reflection glowed in Kleinman's trifocals, a silver rectangle grinning at the seven visitors.

"This is where you were truly born. Born, in mind," the old man said. "Despite its appearance, this compartment brings life. More significantly, it records life."

John's mind formed the question, but it was Michael who asked it.

Better start getting used to that, Johnny-Boy.

"What're you talking about?" the marine asked. "That's a dead man's bed."

"What you see here is not as important as what you don't see," Kleinman said. "Inside this compartment are the sophisticated devices and sensors that record human memory. Behind this wall resides the computer system that can 'upload' and 'download' a lifetime of human memories in just seconds."

Michael shook his head, confused. He doesn't get it, John thought. Ha. We don't get it.

"Think of the human brain as a computer disk," Kleinman said. "This"--he pointed inside the dark hole--"is the disk drive. When you were removed from your cloning chambers, we placed each of you inside this. We then downloaded the memories of John Alpha . . . the memories we'd recorded from his mind just after the car accident when he was fourteen . . . into your brains."

"When we were fourteen," Dr. Mike insisted quietly.

"No," Kleinman said. "You were never fourteen."

Mike stood there, his mouth hanging open as if someone had given it a good yank.

Kilroy2.0 began to laugh, an effeminate hee-hee that made John jump. Gooseflesh rushed over his arms.

"We're computers!" the lunatic cried abruptly. "Computers! Data! One-oh-oh-one-one-one-oh-one-ohhhhh--"

"Shut that crazy fucker up," Dr. Mike snarled.

The fool kept going, like a busted Bag of Laughs toy. Incensed, Dr. Mike dashed over to Kilroy2.0 and grabbed the fat man's shirt, shaking him, stretching the yellow fabric in his clenched fists, tearing it.

"SHUT UP! SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH! Not real, none of it's--"

"Hee-heeeeeee! One-oh-one-oh-oh-one!"

Two soldiers descended upon them, yanking Dr. Mike from the madman. Mike still clawed at Kilroy2.0 from behind the soldier. John found himself thinking this was all quite like an episode of The Jerry Springer Show.

"Keep them separated," General Hill commanded. He glared at Mike. "I've had enough of your bullshit."

Dr. DeFalco stepped between them and said, "In a way, Kilroy2.0 is right. Human memory can be stored as digital information. The MemR/I chamber can read memories stored in the brain, translate it into binary code, and transfer it to a . . . ah . . . a 'hard drive.' "

"Which in turn can be translated and downloaded into another human brain," Kleinman said.

Jack took his gaze away from the glimmering morgue table and looked at the old man.

"You cloned memory. How."

It wasn't a question. It was a demand. As punctuation, Jack removed his wire rims and glared at Kleinman.

"Human genetic cloning is possible, Jack. You know that," Kleinman replied. "Any geneticist worth his salt these days knows that. But this is different. What if I told you that a person--you, me, anyone--could remember everything they had ever experienced? Not just the milestones. Not just the so-called important things. I mean everything. Anything."

"Impossible," interjected Michael, the marine. "I don't care how well trained somebody is. We forget."

Kleinman raised a professorial finger. "Do we? Do we really?" He gave a knowing smile, one John wasn't entirely comfortable with. "Michael, surely you've had a long-lost memory rush into your mind that felt so fresh, so real--so important, even--that you marveled at how you'd ever forgotten it in the first place. A childhood teacher's name. A debt. A phone number, an address."

A line of concentration formed on Michael's brow, identical to the one above Jack's eyes, John noticed.

"Of course you have," Kleinman said, his grin wider now. He winked. "Right now, you're probably recollecting some of the memories you'd once remembered after forgetting them."

Michael smiled slightly.

"That's good," Kleinman said, nodding. "So imagine if your brain could not only recall all of the things you remember--and the things you remembered after 'forgetting' them--but all of the things you may never, ever remember. Imagine if the brain stored every moment of your life--dreams, conscious and unconscious memory--for just such an occurrence: for the possibility of future recollection. Not short- or long-term memory. All-term memory."

"That'd be one helluva noggin," Michael said.

"Indeed it is."

Jack shook his head. "That doesn't answer my question, Kleinman. How?"

Kleinman stepped over to Jack. "Genetics is your science. You know that DNA is absolute: a blueprint of the body, plans for a skyscraper that--given the correct circumstances--will be built, live, and thrive. DNA defines the appearance of a person, genetic predispositions, potential physical ailments, perhaps even behavior. DNA is what it is. It cannot be undone."

"Crude, but accurate," Jack replied.

Kleinman smiled again.

"The human memory works the same way, only in reverse," the old man said. "The quadrillions of stimuli we encounter every day pass through the hippocampus, the brain's gatekeeper for future memories. Those memories are then stored in the mind for future reference, predispositions, and behavior. Now, neurologists say the most important stimuli we receive are saved in various regions of the brain by creating 'highways' of neural connections. The unimportant stuff is stored for a while and then discarded as irrelevant, they say. Forgotten. The blueprint is drawn--and the skyscraper built--as life unfolds. Memory, like life, is truly a work in progress.

"But the unused hallways and floors of your neural skyscraper . . . those supposedly unimportant stimuli . . . are never truly discarded, Jack. They, along with every other sliver of stimuli you've ever ingested--even your internal thoughts and emotions--still reside in the gatekeeper. The hippocampus. The hippocampus remembers everything even if you never do. It's like a recording. More important, the hippocampus facilitates a critical function in recollection. Its special breed of memory--a type of neuroelectric 'flash' memory--exists so that important and long-forgotten irrelevant information can be accessed and remembered in picoseconds. What is memory if not a neural blast from the past?

"Like DNA, this breed of memory cannot be undone," Kleinman continued. "It's always there, like the foundations of a skyscraper, like hiss in a tape recording, just waiting for the right circumstance to be remembered: a whiff of perfume, a song, a visual stimulus. Every creature with a complex, hippocampus-based brain has this 'memory DNA.' We here call it Memory Totality."

John's gaze numbly followed Kleinman's hand as it waved back to the dark hole in the wall.

"In there," Kleinman said, "is a machine that is not unlike an EEG. We call it the MemR/I--Memory Retrieval/Installation--chamber."

Mem-ree, John thought. Got it.

"By attaching electrodes to a person's head," the old man continued, "the device scans the electrical waves of a living brain and searches for the hippocampus's unique Memory Totality brain wave; this tape hiss. It's well below other brain waves, a subliminal, working wave that is active every moment we live. It's more than that, Jack. It is memory in its entirety. Do you understand?"

Jack scratched his beard and nodded his head slowly.

John found his mouth saying the sentence before he could stop himself: "So the contraption in there reads the hippocampus wave and records it."

"Yes," Kleinman said. "It's indecipherable to us, of course. Gibberish. Brainspeak. We could never analyze it the way we can conventional data, like the contents of a spreadsheet file. But the computer system behind this wall does the work of--"

"--translating the gibberish into binary code," John said.

"That's right. This is critical during the 'upload,' the Memory Totality recording process. It also translates the code back into brainspeak as it's downloaded into another mind."

"How do you know all this?" Jay asked. "How did you know how to do . . . all of this?"

"Brilliant thinkers." Kleinman gazed into space for a moment. His voice became soft, distracted. John noticed the old man's hands tremble. "Brilliant, brilliant thinkers."

The seven stood in silence, staring into the dark square, into the place where their memories--their history--were installed into fresh brains like computer software. The history of a stranger, the history of me, John thought. We weren't fourteen. We were never fourteen. Someone else was. Someone else who looks like us. No--we look like him. John Alpha. Heeee. Mad, mad fun. We're number 10010101.

"So where do the recorded memories go?" Father Thomas asked. He looked just as numb as John felt.

"I'll show you," Kleinman said.

Eight

The group descended the spiral staircase at the far end of the cramped room--this one undoubtedly leading to another circle of hell, John thought--and stepped into a corridor with a second theatrically large door.

"The impetus for Project 7th Son began just after the Second World War," John heard Kleinman say. "The project's creators envisioned the overall design of this facility during that time, based on the projected needs of the program, and the technologies that would inevitably come. This was, of course, before microprocessors began to revolutionize the way we store computer information. Even when we built this MemR/I Array Vault in the 1980s, we weren't sure how much hard-disk space we would need to store a Memory Totality--an entire human memory. One might say we overprojected, though I insist we defaulted on the side of safety. Better to have too much hard-drive capacity than not enough."

Kleinman pressed a series of switches on the metal panel next to the door, and it opened with a groan of pressing pistons and spinning gears. The door slid into the ceiling. John and the rest of the clones--yes, it's safe to call us clones now, send in the clones--stepped through the door, onto a metal catwalk.

The MemR/I Array was gargantuan, at least the length and width of three football fields, dimly lit by more buzzing fluorescent lights. The catwalk upon which they stood hovered above clusters of curved, densely packed, ten-foot-tall, black metal containers. Each container was C-shaped, and the width of a minivan. The air was filled with a deep, throbbing hum and the chilly whoosh of air conditioners. There were hundreds of these black containers. Hundreds, all aligned in barely touching semicircular patterns, rows of giant C's, obsidian chain mail extending to the horizon.

Jay turned to Kleinman. "Are those hard drives?"

Kleinman nodded. "That's the best term for them. They're more complex than any computer storage medium you're familiar with. Hard drives, yes."

Jay pointed to a cluster of whirring black containers beneath them. "How many?"

"Two thousand," Kleinman said, his voice grave.

"Never seen anything like this," Kilroy2.0 said. Beside him, John flinched; it was the first normal thing the freak show had said. "They look like Crays. Old-school. Way back."

Kleinman's assistant nodded, smiling. "They are and they aren't," Dr. DeFalco said. "We used the brilliant horseshoe design of the Cray-1 supercomputer as inspiration and added our own modifications to fit the needs of the system. These custom-built 'quasi-Crays' weren't manufactured for number crunching and high-speed processing, as the original Cray-1s were. These are used purely for data storage. Connected, the Q-Crays behave as a massive hypercomputer. It's rock solid, cooled by an elaborate system beneath this level. The MemR/I Array has never been switched off, has never been rebooted--and it never crashes."

"Electricity bills must be through the roof," Dr. Mike murmured.

John raised his hand; this was like a school lesson, after all. "Why would it matter? Why would it matter if you switched it off?"

Kleinman's eyes crinkled behind his trifocals. "For the same reason why you can never switch off your brain without disastrous results. If there were ever an interruption in power--a glitch, a crash--it would damage the data stored inside these Q-Crays. You're gazing at the mechanical equivalent of a hippocampus, John. Memories. A computer crash would be the equivalent of blunt trauma, complete with ensuing brain damage and memory loss."

Kilroy2.0 nodded out into the humming horizon. "How much storage capacity? Just how much data can you store here?"

"The entire MemR/I Array can store one exabyte of digital information--that's one quintillion bytes, millions of times more data than personal computers can store," Kleinman said. "Of course, if we'd known about DNACs back then, our physical storage needs would have been much, much smaller."

"Dee-what?" Michael asked.

Kilroy2.0 opened his mouth to speak again.

"Forget it," General Hill said. "If you're going to tell them, hacker, do it later. We've already spent too much time here."

The lunatic closed his mouth, then stuck out his tongue when the general looked away.

"The consciousness of John Alpha--each of you--is stored in these machines, from birth to the age of fourteen," Kleinman said. "Since it's digital information, there's no degradation of the data. We could upload them into another mind even now, if we chose to. The memories would be just as fresh--just as real--to the recipient of those memories as it was for each of you sixteen years ago."

"Would be disconcerting, done today," Kilroy2.0 murmured. "Walking anachronism. Heh."

"It's remarkable," Dr. DeFalco said.

"Remarkable," the hacker repeated.

"Is it alive?" Father Thomas asked. The others turned to face him. "Are the memories, you know, aware? That they're imprisoned?"

DeFalco served up another low Santa Claus ho-ho. "Does a word-processing file know it's a 'prisoner' in a personal computer?" the bearded doctor asked. "Of course not. It merely is. The data is static; information is neither being added to nor subtracted from it. It's software that can be transferred again and again. No change. No sentience."

"But what about the soul?" Thomas asked. "You've incarcerated a person's s--"

"Enough," Hill said.

John felt sick again. The hum of the hard-drive containers was boring into his mind. More John Smiths could be born here. More.

He blinked himself away from the dark army of hard drives and cleared his throat. "You said you 'overestimated' when you built this place. What's that mean?"

"Indeed I did," Kleinman said. "We overprojected the storage needs for our Memory Totality recording system. After we stored the digital information from John Alpha's brain, we learned the hypercomputer here could store at least three other complete human memories. It was an exciting discovery."

"Exciting?" a voice snapped. John turned. It was Jack, the geneticist. Jack's face was turning scarlet beneath his beard. He clutched the catwalk guardrail, knuckles glaring white against the black metal. "Did you record any more memories? Did you clone anyone else, you son of a bitch? Did you play God with anyone other than me? Us?"

Kleinman stepped back, startled. One of the soldiers clomped forward, his bootheels ringing out into the void, but Jack raised his hands in surrender.

"No," Kleinman said. "Of course not. We haven't touched the MemR/I Array since . . . since we cloned you. Since John Alpha."

The old man removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Alpha," he muttered. He glanced at General Hill. "It's time to brief them."

Nine

The colossal thirty-inch flat-screen monitor glowed bright in the domed room's darkness. Data cascaded across on-screen windows; video flickered from numerous Web sites. Kilroy2.0--the drooling, walking insane asylum that he was--might appreciate the scene, were he here.

But "here" was hundreds of miles away from the 7th Son facility . . . and while Special(k) was familiar indeed with the notorious cyberprophet, "here" was the very last place he'd want Kilroy2.0 to be.

It's poor manners to invite the man whose doom you're planning into your home, you see.

Special(k) snatched the warm can of Red Bull from his workstation and guzzled its contents. He grimaced. The stuff tasted like horse piss, but it kept his twentysomething body running, brain petrol, he called it, and when you live the hacker life and follow the prophet's mad online rantings, you must embrace the caffeinated lifestyle.

He chucked the empty can over his shoulder, and it clatter-clanged against the grated floor. The noise echoed in the cavernous, windowless room. Special(k) turned his attention to the video streaming on the LCD, and his eyes went hungry and half-lidded again, drinking up the writhing bodies, the improbable positions. God yes, he could believe this was art.

He leaned closer, craving to see it all, and hear more of the moans and primal cries. The homemade footage glowed against his pale face, accentuating his sharp features, a beaklike nose. He felt himself grow hard again and smiled.

On-screen, the man moaned as he lay in a bed, spent. A woman knelt nearby, her impossibly long tongue extended at the thing in her hand. She gave it a long lick.

Then she plunged the knife into the man's chest a fourth time. Then a fifth. More blood sprayed across the once-white sheets. She laughed and looked at the screen now, at the video camera recording from some hidden locale, and licked the knife again, sliding its bloody hilt between her breasts, apparently delighting in the mayhem she'd created.

Special(k) certainly was. He marveled, unblinking. You can find anything on the Internet if you look hard enough. Photos. Movies. Subcultures and communities. And people who will do things for money. Not fake things such as you see at multiplex. Real things, with real blood.

Special(k) nearly purred as his eyes flitted to another window. Then another. They weren't all snuff films, though those were his favorites. Reality TV, each your heart out. (And Special(k) had seen that video, too, yes, he had. He'd paid a great deal of money to obtain it.)

God bless America, the land of opportunity . . . and the desperate, and depraved.

He was edging--it was exquisite, delicious, prolonging the orgasm--when the phone rang. The caller ID forced it all from his mind.

"What does the prophet say?" John Alpha's voice said on the line.

"The prophet says nothing," Special(k) replied, as he minimized the on-screen windows. "We are apparently a go. His 'radio silence' implies that he no longer has a keyboard with which to type."

"So they have him."

The hacker nodded. "Absolutely safe to assume that, yes. I know him better than you do these days."

This was true. Years ago, Special(k) had come into the good graces of the messianic mad hacker and had scored membership in the cyberprophet's instant-messaging broadcasts. He later became a trusted ally, a priceless thing in conspiracy-theorist circles. Special(k) had been spying on the mad prophet--and scoping his system--ever since.

"He spews his conspiracies from various sites all day long," the younger man continued. "If you're a true believer, you know where to go, where to look. He hasn't made a peep since yesterday. The faithful are screaming for him, concerned."

"Tremendous," Alpha said. "Ticktock clockwork. I appreciate the update. I'll want more."

Special(k)'s eyes gazed at the bar of minimized content on his monitor. He licked his lips. "I want more, as well."

Alpha chuckled. "Hungry soldier." Special(k) heard the chk! of a cigarette lighter. "Texting you a link to the newest video right now. Quite a performance. That's the last one."

The hacker held his breath. "Did you go all the way?"

Alpha inhaled a drag and whispered, "Nuh-uh," as he exhaled. "My friend, when we're through, the words going all the way will be redefined. We must be patient."

Special(k)'s instant-messenger program gave a beep. He piloted the mouse to the application and clicked the video link Alpha had sent. He clicked play.

The air wrench was loud in the little room. But it wasn't as loud as the screams.

"Enjoy," John Alpha said. "And do watch for the prophet when he finally emerges. You must be there to cheer. And . . . to steer."

Yes, Special(k) thought as he watched the horror on-screen. Yes. Yes. Oh, God, yes.

Next: Part 4