Permutation City

She couldn't see why Durham would refuse to talk to the police, unless he was involved in something dubious enough to have him thrown out of his job, at the very least. Fuck him. He might not have intended to cheat her, but he'd screwed her nonetheless. She wouldn't get a cent for the work she'd completed; other creditors would have no call on the trust fund if Durham merely went bankrupt -- but if the money was the pro-ceeds of crime . . .

Lorenzo the Magnificent. Yeah.

The worst of it was, for all she knew, Hayden believed she was a willing accomplice. And if Durham intended to remain silent, she'd have to clear her own name.

How?

First, she had to find out about the scam, and untangle her role in it.

She said, "What exactly is he promising these Copies?"

"A refuge. A place where they'll be safe from any kind of backlash -- because they won't be connected to the outside world. No telecommunications; nothing to trace. He feeds them a long spiel about the coming dark age, when the unwashed masses will no longer put up with being lorded over by rich immortals -- and evil socialist governments will confiscate all the supercomputers for weather control."

Hayden seemed to find the prospect laughable. Maria suspended judgement; what mattered was how Durham's clients felt, and she could imagine Operation Butterfly making a lot of Copies feel threatened. "So they send their clones in, and slam the door, in case the originals don't make it through the purges. But then what? How long is this "dark age" supposed to last?"

Hayden shrugged. "Who knows? Hundreds of years? Presumably Durham himself -- or some trustworthy successor, several generations later -- will decide when it's safe to come out. The two Copies whose executors filed complaints didn't wait to hear the whole scenario; they threw him out before he could get down to details like that."

"He must have approached other Copies."

"Of course. No one else has come forward, but we have a tentative list of names. All with estates incorporated overseas, unfortunately; I haven't been able to interview any of them, yet -- we're still working on the jurisdictional red tape. But a few have made it clear already, through their lawyers, that they won't be willing to discuss the matter -- which presumably means that they've swallowed Durham's line, and now they don't want to hear a word against him."

Maria struggled to imagine it: No communications. Cut off from reality, indefinitely. A few "Solipsist Nation" Copies might relish the prospect -- but most of them had too little money to be the targets of an elaborate scam. And even if Durham's richest, most paranoid clients seriously believed that the world was on the verge of turning against them . . . what if things went so badly wrong, outside, that links were never restored? The humans guarding the sanctuary could die out -- or just walk away. How could any but the most radically separatist of Copies face the risk of being stranded inside a hidden computer, buried in the middle of a desert somewhere, with no means of discovering for themselves when civilization was worth rejoining -- and no means of initiating contact in any case?

Radioisotope power sources could run for thousands of years; multiply redundant hardware of the highest standard could last almost as long, in theory. All these Copies would have, to remember reality by, would be the information they'd brought in with them at the start. If it turned into a one-way trip, they'd be like interstellar colonists, carrying a snapshot of Earth culture off into the void.

Except that interstellar colonists would merely face a growing radio time lag, not absolute silence. And whatever they were leaving behind, at least they'd have something to look forward to: a new world to explore.

A new world -- and the possibility of new life.

So what better cure could there be for claustrophobia than the promise of dragging an entire planet into the refuge, seeded with the potential for developing its own exotic life?