Permutation City - Greg Egan

Partial Excerpts (antilibrary)

STREET SCENE

There were cyclists and pedestrians on the street -- all recorded

When Paul reached the corner, the visual illusion of the city continued off into the distance; but when he tried to step forward, the concrete pavement under his feet started sliding backward, like a treadmill. He was on the edge of his universe

Into a mute crypt, I Can't pity our time Turn amity poetic Ciao, tiny trumpet!

PROLOGUE (Rip, tie, cut toy man) JUNE 2045

He closed his eyes and let his mind grow blank -- and then caught himself, suddenly uneasy, without knowing why. He'd done something foolish, something insane, something he was going to regret, badly . . . but the details remained elusive, and he began to suspect that it was nothing more than the lingering mood of a dream.

trying to keep his mind blank, waiting for the panic to subside. And eventually, it did -- to be replaced by one simple, perfectly coherent thought: I don't want to be here. What he'd done to himself was insane -- and it had to be undone, as swiftly and painlessly as possible. How could he have ever imagined reaching any other conclusion?

No doubt it would pass; it seemed too bizarre a state of mind to be sustained for long. Certainly, none of the other Copies had reported anything similar . . . but then, none of them had volunteered much useful data at all. They'd just ranted abuse, whined about their plight, and then terminated themselves -- all within fifteen (subjective) minutes of gaining consciousness.

If he hadn't felt more committed than ever -- if he hadn't been convinced that he was, finally, prepared to see the whole thing through -- he would never have gone ahead with the scan. But now that he was "no longer" the flesh-and-blood Paul Durham -- "no longer" the one who'd sit outside and watch the whole experiment from a safe distance -- all of that determination seemed to have evaporated.

He'd rot in this prison, jumping through hoops, carrying out Durham's precious research -- while the man lived in his apartment, spent his money, slept with Elizabeth . . . Paul leant against the cool surface of the interface, dizzy and confused. Whose precious research? He'd wanted this so badly -- and he'd done this to himself with his eyes wide open. Nobody had forced him, nobody had deceived him. He'd known exactly what the drawbacks would be -- but he'd hoped that he would have the strength of will (this time, at last) to transcend them

he'd also been taking secret comfort in the knowledge that he would "remain" on the outside -- that his future, then, still included a version with absolutely nothing to fear. And as long as he'd clung to that happy truth, he'd never really swallowed the fate of the Copy at all.

Ninety-eight percent of Copies made were of the very old, and the terminally ill. People for whom it was the last resort

Despite this, fifteen percent decided on awakening -- usually in a matter of hours -- that they couldn't face living this way.

And of those who were young and healthy, those who were merely curious, those who knew they had a perfectly viable, living, breathing body outside? The bale-out rate so far had been one hundred percent.

He finally reached the emergencies menu -- which included a cheerful icon of a cartoon figure suspended from a parachute. Baling out was what everyone called it -- but he didn't find that too cloyingly euphemistic; after all, he could hardly commit "suicide" when he wasn't legally human

He pulled the lever. After a few seconds, he emitted a constricted sob -- a sound more of confusion than any kind of emotion -- and opened his eyes. The lever had come away in his hand. He stared dumbly at this metaphor for . . . what?

Feeling -- at last -- truly dreamlike, he unstrapped the parachute, and unfastened the neatly packaged bundle. Inside, there was no illusion of silk, or Kevlar, or whatever else there might plausibly have been. Just a sheet of paper. A note.

you know how important it is to me that you -- that we -- succeed this time. I trust you’ll understand, and I'm confident that you'll accept the situation with dignity and equanimity.

But as for making a Copy, and then -- once its future was no 'longer his future, no longer anything for him to fear -- taking away its power to escape . . . and rationalizing this hijacking as nothing more than an over-literal act of self-control . . . It rang so true that he hung his head in shame. Then he dropped the note, raised his head, and bellowed with all the strength in his non-existent lungs: "DURHAM! YOU PRICK!"