“A citizen can see three hundred, with good augmens and cellular therapy.” Damassis’ eyes acquire the distant glaze of data immersion as she interfaces with the mainframe. “The average is roughly two hundred and twenty; I don’t have census data to hand.”
Peculiar, the duelist thinks. Someone like Damassis should be connected at all times, with access to most information no matter its classification. “Two hundred and twenty! In my days, we could barely teach telomeres to hold on for longer than a hundred and eighty-five. Their Majesties aside, of course, may their mighty souls have found heaven’s light.”
“When Tiansong fell, much was lost; if its reconstructive advances and altar-ghost system were still intact people could live to half an eon, perhaps more, preserve themselves truly in virtuality and reincarnate as needed. Even the clan-altars on Tiansong today are a sad mockery of what they once were.”
“Envoy,” the duelist says with a shocked little laugh, “are you berating a world for not allowing its conqueror to appropriate its advancements? Are you berating me for not having stolen the tech when I gave you Tiansong?”
“Your monarchs and magistrates scorched the earth to spite us. They didn’t think what that would do to their descendants. Or yours. What history does Tiansong have left?” Damassis looks up from the mainframe, the irises of her eyes playing lamp-glass to the light of optical overlays. “If they had their way there would be nothing of the world but a handful of stellar dust.”
“That isn’t wrong—their pride shone like the sun, blinded more than their warships ever did—but why tell me? I was never involved in those decisions.” Jingfei cants eir head at the duelist; they exchange a glance. “You plugged me into this because I was the only compatible, willing body at the time. It’d have served you better to capture an imperial engineer or an empress, but you were a little scared of them, weren’t you? Back then the Hegemony was little and weak. Each of our rulers seemed to you a god or a demon, full of teeth and nightmares. You could have no rest until all of them were exterminated.”
The mainframe’s surface trembles, liquid, a sigh of ancient code knitting shut over the laceration of a glitch. The envoy draws away, disconnecting. “I’ve finished the calibrations. Your next bodies should have a normal span, two hundred years or more.”
“My thanks. It was getting distressing, having new bodies that barely live past ten years. I’m fortunate—fifty, eighty years to go.” Jingfei wrinkles her nose. “The one just decanted will see, what, six months? So tragic.”
“You feel no terror at her imminent death?”
“Envoy,” the adolescent says, “the terms of my sentence specifically forbid network implants. When I want to talk to myself, I have to do it face to face. We can’t even synchronize what we see, let alone what we feel. Even if we did, what’s death? We have died so many times. It’s stopped being scary or novel.”
“Do you consider yourselves separate individuals then?”
“When you make a decision, you choose out of many forks in a path. I like to think that’s how it is with us. Not distinct individuals, no, but—” Jingfei waves a hand. The adolescent watches her out of the corner of eir eye, sly, wary. “I take it your engineers have had no luck reproducing the system?”
“Some.” Then, reluctantly, “There’s always a critical flaw, causing data loss. The identity and memories never carry over perfectly; concurrent instances can’t be maintained beyond two or three. The subject’s identity, sooner or later, fragments. None of the … selves is a complete person. They function more like organs, and not very well even then.”
“For what it’s worth, this isn’t all that good or elegant a trick. In my time—” Here Jingfei stops again. Flutters one hand, as though to apologize for a wandering mind. “If you can’t get this information out of me, what then?”
Damassis’ jaw tautens. When she speaks again her voice is low and harsh, and she flinches as if scalded by her own anger. “Then nothing. I’m disposable in ways that you are not. You are unique, the altar-ghost that keeps you alive the same.”
“And because of that, I’m a prisoner here, will always be. It’s not much of an existence, envoy. To the last aristocrat and scholar, those I served would prefer a single glorious life over countless rebirths fulfilling no point save to endlessly stew in defeat.” Jingfei reaches toward the aegis, holds short of touching it. “I would’ve thought you’d be satisfied when I sold you my birthworld. What haven’t you taken? What haven’t you won? Even my rulers weren’t so hungry—they left some meat on the bones of their subjugated, some spirit on their subjects.”
To that the envoy makes no response.
* * *
Jingfei sits in a room of mirrors. In the fortress there are many like this, cells to trap and torment, back when Jingfei was still being interrogated, but her torturers soon struck an impasse. They could destroy her instances, but her bodies were innumerable and disposable. They could not demolish the mainframe, a unique artifact as yet impossible to replicate. They had nothing to threaten her with.
And so, envoys: the title a euphemism, but also not. Hers is likewise. She has always asked them to call her what she is—traitor of Tiansong, its final betrayer—but they insist on that piece of politeness, that negation of verity.
Because every fraction of her recall is preserved, collected at the moment of death so it carries over to the next instance, she never forgets. The evening was colorless when she landed on the hot, dry soil of a distant shore. The scales of her ship crumbled to jade chips and silver filigree, as though no longer able to bear the weight of her decision. A choice like molten lead in her heart and in her hands, dense and searing, blackening all that she touched.
Once her treason was finalized—the negotiations finished—it was almost a relief.
She has her eyes shut when the envoy enters. Jingfei knows her own gait, the rhythm of her footsteps and the rustle of her robes. This is different, a harder beat to the boots, a sleeker whisper to the fabrics: gossamer collars, chitinous sleeves. “Your colleagues learned long ago that there’s no point torturing me,” she says. “But that didn’t stop some of them. One shattered my fingers, then my wrists, then my ankles. Another vivisected me and planted fractal seeds in my stomach so I’d feel every bud and shoot of circuit-flowers. The problem with remembering everything, envoy, is that I remember everything. The trauma doesn’t overwhelm the rest because the mainframe won’t let one set of data overwrite another, but there’s been more bad than good. The mind defends itself by forgetting, Damassis Ingmir. Take away that survival trick and what do you think remains?”
“I can’t be held accountable for their actions. But I offer my—” Hesitation briefer than the writhing flare of space-time pinned down. “My sympathies.”
“Where are you from exactly? From your original name I’d guess Salhune, but I’m too out of touch to guess much else.”
“My origins are irrelevant.”
Jingfei opens one eye. Her images and those of Damassis overlap, warping and melding at intersections of glass. “When did you marry into Iron Gate? You must have duties beyond this; your predecessors always let me in a little on their lives, on current fashion, on the latest planets brought into Hegemonic peace. Even their favorite games or hobbies. It’s my sole connection with the outside world. Come, must I beg?”
“I don’t see the point of taunting you with details of a life you’ll never have again.” Damassis unholsters her gun.
The duelist moves. The edge of her palm cracks against the envoy’s wrist and the gun falls. A low hum of velocity shadow, music to her after so long, and the fang of her blade comes to rest at the envoy’s throat.