Sublimation(88)

* * *



“I didn’t tell you how the conversation between Drew and I went, when we were trying to figure out what to do with Mitosis. Drew wanted to take the product to market before reporting it. The whole package. Total capabilities. And I wanted to take everything to IIS, so they would bury it,” Megan says. “I hadn’t thought what we’d develop would be so … deployable. So unobtrusive. It’s the sort of tech that can be hidden in doorways. In lampposts. Hell, you could get two guys to hold them while walking down the street. So, we argued about it. Me, Drew, a couple of others, but really mostly just me and Drew. Because the concept of taking the whole thing to market was his baby. He wanted to follow the tech playbook: Move fast, break things, change the world, or at least secure your exit before the authorities have a chance to regulate. I thought this would get us all put in jail. And, you know, I didn’t want to work in a world where Drew was in charge of the entire phenomenon of instancing. Like, would you even trust Drew with a kid at the airport?”

“I might trust him at an airport. He seems to know airports.”

“Fine, a kid in like, a mall. Kid walking down Fifth Avenue. Anyway, long story short. I won. We brought everything to IIS. Mitosis in all its glory.”

Megan looks away from the fish diorama. She shrugs a little, wry smile on her face as she continues the story.

“And that’s when IIS got interested. Not in shutting it down. In getting a first cut.”

She describes what happened in clinical detail. There were a series of negotiations which had ended with: IIS would continue funding the project, in return for a temporary moratorium on the public knowledge of Mitosis’s full capabilities. Meanwhile, IIS would quietly install Mitosis gates at strategic border control points, checkpoints, airports and ports, simultaneously with the public release of the consumer service, which would be bolstered with all the goodwill and branding that Mergebreak had earned in the last few decades. And at the five-year mark, Mergebreak would be allowed to sell full-capacity Mitosis machines to various foreign governments on an approved list, and then would finally be given the right to sell the full-capacity service to individuals. Mergebreak would get what was effectively a state monopoly, in return for cooperating with the IIS.



* * *



Imagine a world where the choice to instantiate is decided through a checklist. Through an interview. Through clean governmental decisions based on the current geopolitical climate. A world where every checkpoint has a machine that neatly severs the past from the present. Imagine a world where an application must be accepted to divide the self. Imagine how neat the world is, here, how the agony of uncertainty is so sweetly removed.



* * *



“So, I was angry,” Megan says. “Like, existentially pissed. We were going to be colluding with the federal government on deceiving people? I was going to write a really scathing op-ed and try and get it in the New York Times or the Atlantic or something. And then I got a job offer from the IIS. They wanted a liaison. So, you know. Now I’m here.”

“You changed your mind that quickly?”

For a moment, she looks ashamed. Then some muscle in her mouth tightens.

“It was going to happen with or without me,” Megan says. “It didn’t matter what I wanted. What mattered was what was going to happen.”

You imagine the world with Mitosis deployed as Megan suggests. First, quietly at the borders. Then, in a series of advertised revelations. Services sold to consumers. Mitosis gates sold to other countries. Until it becomes the unspoken norm of public society, the same way that taking your shoes off at the airport was a norm, or checking a passport at the border. Mergebreak was going to make so much money. Their stock price was going to go through the roof.

Megan starts walking to the next diorama. YJ follows her. This one is a double-wide. A school of small silver fish, being corralled by a few larger, predatory fish.

“So that’s it. That’s everything,” Megan says.

“This shouldn’t be legal,” YJ says. “No—I know what you’re going to say. It’s not illegal, so it’s legal until proven otherwise.”

Megan nods. “Like crypto, or the internet. Or cloning. Or, like the invention of the airplane. They haven’t created legislation around Mitosis yet, because they don’t know what it can really do. To quote Drew, ‘We’re getting in on the ground floor.’”

The silver fish must have been individually mounted. That’s a tremendous amount of work. A tremendous number of dead fish.

“So, what do you want me to do about it?” YJ asks, turning to Megan.

“This is an option,” Megan says. “You don’t have to say yes. If you don’t say yes, then we never need to talk about this again. And that’s okay! Seriously, it’s okay. I gave you what I gave you because I thought it was unfair you were being put in your position. I’ll still back you, if Drew pulls anything. Okay?”

“Okay,” you say.

“But if you’re game, I want you to publicly leak this information, in a few years. After the rollout. Everything but the schematics—the extent of the full capabilities, the government backing, the deal that Mitosis has with IIS. And I want you to point at Drew as the one who agreed to make the government agreement happen, behind the public’s back. I want the board to have a good reason to force Drew out.”