The Colonel Read Free Page B

coaxed into the open if he’s hungry and if the Colonel is very still; he still recoils at physical contact. The Colonel indulges him, and pretends not to notice the ragged fraying of the armrest on the living room couch. He doesn’t even have the heart to get the socket removed from the patch of twisted scar tissue on Zephyr’s head. No telling what post-traumatic nightmares might be reawakened by a trip to the vet.
    Now he fills the kibble bowl and stands back the requisite two meters. (This is progress; just six months ago he could never stray closer than three.) Zephyr creeps into the kitchen, nose twitching, eyes darting to every corner.
    The Colonel hopes that whoever inflicted that torment went on to try more exotic interfaces once they got bored with mammals. A cephalopod, perhaps. By all accounts, things get a lot less cuddly when you go B2B with a Pacific octopus.
    At least Human hives can lay claim to mutual consent. At least its members choose the violence they inflict on themselves, the emergence of some voluntary monster from the pool of all those annihilated identities. If only it stopped there. If only the damage ended where the hive did.
    His son’s candle slumbers in its own little corner of his network, a pilot light in purgatory. Zephyr glances around with every second bite, still fearful of some Second Coming.
    The Colonel knows how he feels.
    *   *   *
    They meet on a patio off Riverside: one of those heritage bistros where everything from food prep to table service is performed by flesh-and-blood, and where everything from food prep to table service suffers as a result. People seem willing to pay extra for the personal touch anyway.
    â€œYou disapprove,” Dr. Lutterodt says, getting straight to the point.
    â€œOf many things,” The Colonel admits. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
    â€œOf us. What we do.” She glances at the menu (literally—it’s printed on dumb stock). “Of hives in general, I’m guessing.”
    â€œThere’s a reason they’re against the law.” Most of them, anyway.
    â€œThere is: because people get scared when things they can’t understand have control over their lives. Doesn’t matter how rational or beneficial any given law or a policy might be. When you need ten brains to understand the nuts and bolts, the unibrains get skittish.” The sock puppet shrugs. “The thing is, Bicam hives don’t make laws or set policies. They keep their eyes on nature and their hands to themselves. Maybe that’s why they’re not against the law.”
    â€œOr maybe it’s just a loophole. If anyone had seen meat interfaces coming down the pike, you can bet we’d have defined technology a bit more explicitly.”
    â€œExcept the Interface Act passed a good ten years ago and they still haven’t got their definition right. How could they? Brains rewire themselves every time we have an idle thought; how do you outlaw cortical editing without outlawing life at the same time?”
    â€œNot my department.”
    â€œStill. You disapprove.”
    â€œI’ve just seen too much damage. You put such a happy face on it, you go on and on about the transcendent insights of the group mind. All the insight to be had by joining some greater whole. Nobody talks about—”
    What the rest of us pay for your enlightenment—
    â€œâ€”what happens to you afterward.”
    â€œA glimpse of heaven,” Lutterodt murmurs, “that turns your life to hell.”
    The Colonel blinks. “Exactly.” What must it be like to be given godsight only to have it snatched away again, to have your miserable baseline existence plagued by muddy, incomprehensible half-memories of the sublime? No wonder people get addicted. No wonder some have to be ripped screaming from their sockets.
    Ending a life suffered in the shadows of such incandescence—why, that