The Chronicles of Brendan Earle, Apprentice Mage.

House

Day Four

Memory Accession: Sample 776

Accession justification:

I am curious. Why did so many of them enter this simulation? What attracted them? What do they know and think of it, and of me?

“Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it – an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis – it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.”

“That was written by Simon-Pierre Laplace,” David told me. “Philosophers refer to the thing that could do all that as Laplace’s Demon. Some think that it’s a good description of God. You do realize that is one way of looking at the thing they are trying to build, don’t you?” he asked me. “They’re building a God-game where the humans won’t get to play the God.”

What does this make me?

Adam

It’s years since I was last in a hospital ward, and the last one looked nothing like the place I woke up in next morning. Trevor was sleeping on a perch for a start, not something the NHS goes in for much I think. Somehow all still instantly recognizable, though.

 Malaika was there to talk to me and had brought me some breakfast. I had the impression that she’d been waiting for a while, though it was still early. My body felt well rested after a long sleep, but I was still feeling flat. I’d screwed up yesterday, repeatedly. I’d nearly lost myself in the falcon, and whatever I’d done in McGregor’s class had brought me here. I also thought - and I really couldn’t work out the order of importance on this - that I’d made a fool of myself in front of Aki, though that one, at least, I had a sort of out on.

Me behaving like that would have been different; Brendan Earle was the one that looked the besotted little idiot. The fact that we were both the same person was what bent the whole thing out of shape. Anyway, as far as that went, I could tell myself that what happened in sensorium-interactive immersion media stayed in sensorium-interactive immersion media.

Meanwhile a bit of grovelling around Phoebe looked sensible. I’d heard enough yesterday about how well she was doing to know that she was ahead of me. Well, let’s face it; I wasn’t in a position to cluck around her sick-bed, was I? Her not being regularly comatose by itself put her ahead. She knew about this place; she was the only one I could talk to about my problems, and she’d practically got the hot-line to God with her crystal and her book. Twelve-year-old or not, she was voting herself onto the next episode of our little reality show, while my surviving to the commercial break was looking questionable.

Put all this into my early morning mind, and the fact that she was a bit hesitant and apologetic about something struck me as odd. After a bit of ‘how-are-you-feeling’ and ‘don’t-worry-about-going–back-to-class’ type beating around the bush, she came out with the story.

“Look, the truth is that there was a meeting about you yesterday. Most of the Elders were there and they asked me to sit in ‘cos I’m your cohort leader. They’re all a bit worried about you.”

“Well, ego te absolv’em, say I. I’m more than a bit worried about me too.”

“No, they’re worried you might be some kind of spy for Maldon.”

I was about to tell her to get real, when I realized that she was dead serious.

“Why?”

“Well, you have powers that no one of your age should have, and you don’t act like your age.”