Title Page

Distress

Greg Egan

Second Edition, 2013

ISBN 978-1-922240-03-3

First published in 1995 by Millennium an imprint of Orion Books Ltd.

This eBook edition published by the author in 2013.

Technolibération

It is not true that the map of freedom will be complete

with the erasure of the last invidious border

when it remains for us to chart the attractors of thunder

and delineate the arrhythmias of drought

to reveal the molecular dialects of forest and savanna

as rich as a thousand human tongues

and to comprehend the deepest history of our passions

ancient beyond mythology’s reach

So I declare that no corporation holds a monopoly on numbers

no patent can encompass zero and one

no nation has sovereignty over adenine and guanine

no empire rules the quantum waves

And there must be room for all at the celebration of understanding

for there is a truth which cannot be bought or sold

imposed by force, resisted

or escaped.

— From Technolibération by Muteba Kazadi, 2019

PART ONE

Chapter 1

“All right. He’s dead. Go ahead and talk to him.”

The bioethicist was a laconic young asex with blond dreadlocks and a T-shirt which flashed up the slogan SAY NO TO TOE! in between the paid advertising. Ve countersigned the permission form on the forensic pathologist’s notepad, then withdrew to a corner of the room. The trauma specialist and the paramedic wheeled their resuscitation equipment out of the way, and the forensic pathologist hurried forward, hypodermic syringe in hand, to administer the first dose of neuropreservative. Useless prior to legal death – massively toxic to several organs, on a time scale of hours – the cocktail of glutamate antagonists, calcium channel blockers, and antioxidants would halt the most damaging biochemical changes in the victim’s brain, almost immediately.

The pathologist’s assistant followed close behind her, with a trolley bearing all the paraphernalia of post-mortem revival: a tray of disposable surgical instruments; several racks of electronic equipment; an arterial pump fed from three glass tanks the size of water-coolers; and something resembling a hairnet made out of gray superconducting wire.

Lukowski, the homicide detective, was standing beside me. He mused, “If everyone was fitted out like you, Worth, we’d never have to do this. We could just replay the crime from start to finish. Like reading an aircraft’s black box.”

I replied without looking away from the operating table; I could edit out our voices easily enough, but I wanted a continuous take of the pathologist connecting up the surrogate blood supply. “If everyone had optic nerve taps, don’t you think murderers would start hacking the memory chips out of their victims’ bodies?”

“Sometimes. But no one hung around to mess up this guy’s brain, did they?”

“Wait until they’ve seen the documentary.”