by Larry Leonard 

Nelson IX was troubled by other people’s memories.  A perfect physical clone of Nelson VIII, he had known from very early on the life experience and beliefs of the previous eight Prime Ministers of Earth.   He had implants in his brain that let him remember the lives of the last four Nelsons so clearly that he frequently had hormonal responses  to events five hundred years old.  The earlier versions he got from the training and independent study of the first Nelson to get the implants.
     He had been two when they had installed them.  From that day on he had understood it all. 
    As soon as his physiology had allowed him to speak clearly, he had been given political control of three planets and four moons. For nearly a hundred and fifty years he had administrated while those implants also recorded his experiences for the next Nelson. 

    He looked at his reflection on the glass-topped desk.  It was the face of a forty-year-old.  There was just enough age in it.  An American president, Ronald Reagan, had been the physical model.  They got the image from a war film.  Reagan had been an actor before he went into politics.  A few wrinkles.  A touch of gray in the hair at his temples.  His aging could have been stopped earlier, of course, but humans still reacted to ancient stimuli.  Age suggested wisdom.  Maturity.  Judgement.  Impulses under control.
     But, were they, actually?
     His dislike of the Venusians was visceral, not intellectual.  They had never harmed anybody, but he didn’t trust them.  Nobody did. They weren’t human.  You couldn’t read them.  We can’t read them, he thought with a rueful smile.  Since Nelson IV, leaders, for the first time, had a logical reason to refer to themselves in the third person royal.  

     “Nelson,” said a pleasant voice.  “The delegation from Venus is here.”
     Well, he thought, there were ecosystems around deep sea volcanic vents.  The creatures there fed on sulphur compounds.  Why not life comfortable with clouds made of battery acid?

     The discovery of intelligent life on Venus had been something of a shock.  The Russian landers that had photographed the surface eleven centuries before his time had dissolved in a few hours, eaten by the atmosphere.  Ancient myths about an oceanic planet rich with life had dissolved with them.  Humans had turned away for other, more possible, tasks.  Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.  Methane rain was a simple problem compared to Venus.  So few probes were sent to Earth’s nearest neighbor that it had remained an unknown quantity for a millennia. Oh, the surface had been mapped from orbit. a couple of times.  The nomadic tribal groups didn’t put a blip on those maps. The last probe sent there was in 2135.  Since then, nothing.  

     A thousand years later, on his 84th birthday, a satellite popped out of the Venusian clouds, and all Hell broke loose.  Had it not been sending radio signals, it might have circled the planet for decades before somebody noticed.  But, it was emitting EMR, and caught the attention of an amateur radio astronomer who was at the time using Venus as a gravity lens to get a look at a distant galaxy.  Nobody believed the guy, at first, of course.  He didn’t have a doctorate.  Neither, Nelson recalled, did Einstein.  Not a real one, anyway.
    Communications ensued. Ten years later, they arrived.
    “Send them in,” he said.

     They were silica-based, and had metallic joints that needed no lubricant since they were composed of electromagnet pairs that floated a couple of molecules apart.  They moved about by altering the fields.  Solid state life forms with steel elbows and knuckles was how he thought of them.. They looked, ironically enough, like ancient transistors.  Giant, flat spiders. Three digits – flexible claws, really – on each of their six legs.  Their mathematics were based on the number six.  They combined the front three legs into six fingers and three thumbs.  That’s how they were able to make things.
    Rockets.  Weapons, maybe.
    “Greetings, Nelson,” said the ambassador.
    You listened to them on an FM radio.

    “Greetings, Xylo,” replied Nelson into a microphone sitting on his desk.  He felt like a talk show host.  If Xylo ever said “dittos,” Nelson planned on resigning his position. He would go trout fishing for a century and take up woodworking.

    Nelson VI had once visited a ghost town in the American West.  There, he had seen a drinking establishment that had practiced taxidermy.  Like the animal heads protruding from the walls, the most notable customers had been stuffed and dressed in their favorite garb, then attached to some point of the structure adjacent to their favorite interior spot.  The last recording played on the music device had the title “When I die, prop me up beside the juke box.”  Historians had argued for centuries about that item.  Some felt it was a name for the music machine, itself.  People back then, apparently, danced to the tune of a machine.

    “You are looking well, today, ambassador,” he said.
    “That is what you call humor, is it not?” retorted Xylo.
    “Yes,” said Nelson.  “A human weakness, and sometimes strength.”
    “What evolutionary purpose does it serve?” asked Xylo
    “I don’t know,” said Nelson, surprised.  He had never thought about the subject in quite that way.  His doctorate was in molecular biology, not psychology.  Nelson VII had been a psychologist.  Freud had been debunked by the late 20th Century, but returned with the work of Christophersen, who had genetically altered cellular amino acids in a Coelacanth, thus causing it to become attracted to its mother.
    Xylo had remained quiet as Nelson drifted, but now spoke.
    “Which one is speaking?”

    Nelson VIII’s doctorate was in physics.  He was the reason Nelson thought of Xylo as a transistor. Nelson II had gotten a doctorate in the history of literature.  His thesis was on the scientist and science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke.  The introduction to a novel called Venus Equilateral, which was supposed to be a communications relay station between that planet and Earth came to mind.  Clarke, a friend of the author had written a foreword.  It had to do with the fact that the station in the story used vacuum tubes.  Clarke, himself the inventor of artificial satellites, said that none of the famed prognosticators, including himself, had foreseen the transistor. Nelson wondered why the author hadn’t just had them remove the glass tubes and let the works operate in free space. Vacuum is vacuum.

    “Which one?” Xylo repeated.
    “Two of them live,” said Nelson, “and one as a reference made by one of the live ones.”  He was irritated.  They were jumping in more each day.  They got so busy at times that he thought to get even with them he might commit suicide.
    “Our study of your species, Nelson, indicates that you are thinking like a woman.”
    “A – woman?”
   “Your males think in a linear fashion.  One thing at a time.  Your women think in parallel.  That’s what the books say.”
    Nelson VI nodded in there.  He was the last Nelson to have a wife.
    “This is worse,” said Nelson..  “They argue with each other.”
    “We have a suggestion,” said Xylo.

     That caught Nelson off guard.  “Why?” he said.
    “Our negotiations would go more smoothly if you were not so distracted.”
     “He’s right,” said Nelson V.  “We’re driving you crazy.”
     “Yes,” said Nelson VII.  “You’ve been getting quirky, lately.  I said during my time that having three in there was problematic.  You’ve got five, Nelson.”
    “For God’s Sake, leave the man be,” exclaimed Nelson VIII.  “The man’s trying to deal with an XT.  Nelson, ignore these idiots.”
    “Who are you calling an idiot, you bumbleheaded boob?” sneered Nelson V.  
    Nelson was feeling dizzy.  He needed a moment.  “What’s your suggestion,” he asked the ambassador. 

    “We do not reproduce sexually.  We grow in strata where the conditions are right.  Like crystals.  We think we can help.”
    “This has nothing to do with our business,” said Nelson.  
    “We think it does.  The treaty is about trade.  We think we finally have something to trade.”
    “Medicine?  What – herbs and potions from Venus?”
    “Of course not.  But, we can now control our formative crystals.  Your term for it was eugenics.  You outlawed it even before DNA was discovered.”
    “So?”
    “We can breed, for want of a better term, versions of ourselves for specific purposes.  We think we can fix your problem.” 
   “Which is?”

    “Biomechanical multiple personality disorder would be a good term for it.  You are implanting these two-way memory devices in your children, now, aren’t you?”
    “We have been, yes.” said Nelson.  The technology had eliminated the need for schools.  But, there had been problems. “What’s your idea?”
    “In essence, a mental internet. Memories accessible only on demand.  A radio frequency connection implant that can talk to personality servers.  Every citizen of your culture could plug in or disconnect with a mental command.”
    
    The people in his head argued about it for weeks.  The big problem was a question about the true intent of the Venusians.  If they got control of the top dog, well …
    “You don’t want a bunch of aliens inside your skull,” said Nelson VII.  
    “He already has that and we’re driving him nuts,” Nelson VIII said.
    “How the hell did we become anything more than memories?” asked Nelson VI
    Nelson VII said, “He did it to himself.  His brain did.  It interprets input.  We’re here all the time.  We appear to be him, so have been integrated into his frontal lobe as aspects of his personality.  That gave will to us.  Sentience is the step above automatic reaction.  Decision, it’s called. I have options, therefore I am.  Here, watch.  I’ll move his finger.”

    Nelson’s finger moved, uncommanded, like an epileptic petit mal.
    “How did you do that?” asked Nelson VI
    “You see that dark area over there?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Tell it to move.”
    Another twitch.  “Kind of like driving a steam shovel,” said Nelson VI
    “I just had a thought,” said Nelson V, who had been silent up until now.
    “That’s all you are,” said Nelson VIII.  “A thought.”
    “Well, you know what I mean.”
    “Okay, what is it, this thought?”
    “What’s going to happen to us?”
    There was a moment of silence.
    “You just gave me a great idea,’” said Nelson.  

    His head had been blessedly quiet for two weeks, now.  When the Venusian ambassador came in, Nelson got up and walked around his desk to shake its claw.  “Xylo!  Good to see you.”
   Xylo retrieved the microphone from his desk and asked him to repeat himself. He did so.
    “I am not sure about this agreement, Nelson,” the ambassador said.
    “It makes us feel better,” said Nelson.  “Us humans.  My species.”
    “Yes, but it’s – they’re – strange.”
    “Some human once said that the perfect bargain is when nobody’s happy.”

    “What are you unhappy about?" asked the ambassador. "They're gone from your brain and inside mine.”
    “With the removal of those implants, I’ve lost five hundred years of instantly available human recall, Xlylo.  You’ve got it all.  With them in your, uh, head, for now, we’ve got everything you know.  Five former prime ministers have confirmed that you’re okay.  No secrets, no lies.”
    “This thing called sex, Nelson.  What a mess.  I had no idea.”
    “Yeah.  How are they doing in there?”
    “I’ll let you talk to them.”

     “Hello?”
     “Which one are you?”
     “Nelson eight..  Is that you, Nelson?”
     “Right.  How’s it going?”
     “Well, six is pretty grumpy, but Xylo just told him he’s going to get his own transistor.  We’re all going to get one.  Robo Nelsons.  They’ll have to breed them just for us, so we’ll stay plugged into Xylo for the time being.  Can you get the techs to jury rig some audiovisual sensors?”
     “Xylo?” said Nelson. “Something that’ll work on both planets?”
     “I’ve just learned about a shrug,” said the ambassador.  “If I had shoulders, I’d do it.  In time, we’ll figure out the equipment.  We’re pretty good at solid state electronics since we are one.”

     “Humor!” exploded Nelson.
     “A bit shaggy, perhaps,” said Xylo.  “But, now I understand its evolutionary purpose.  It’s tied to fear, isn’t it?  Humor is a way of surviving with fear.”
     “Your, uh, species doesn’t know fear?” said Nelson.
     “Not until now,” replied the ambassador.  “But, understanding it, I believe we have been fortunate that the first ones we met beyond our planet were people who could provide us with the concept.  Frankly, it never occurred to us that you might destroy us.  The next strangers we meet might not have been so kind.”
     “So, I’m a bit lonely and you’re a bit afraid.  Sounds like a good bargain to me.”
     “Sadly,” said Xylo, “I have to agree.”
 

(C) copyright 2001 Larry Leonard