Digital Soul

By Zoe Cannon

Your tech knows you better than you know yourself…

 

What is reincarnation when immortality is as easy as uploading our consciousness to permanent storage? Where does the algorithm end and our true desires begin? What does identity mean when someone else has the ability to rewrite our code?

 

Technology can help us learn about ourselves and the people we care about… sometimes more than we want to. And it can change how we see the world… sometimes more than we're aware of. Fans of Black Mirror will love this twisty, shivery collection of six standalone stories about how the tech we use makes us who we are.

 

This collection contains the following stories:

The New Me

The Happiness Algorithm

Stasis

Lost in Translation

Hearth Fires

Exactly Like She Was

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zoe Cannon
• Release date: Dec 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201110000

Book preview

Digital Soul

A Science Fiction Collection

Zoe Cannon

© 2021 Zoe Cannon

http://www.zoecannon.com

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Introduction

As technology gets more and more advanced, there’s a lot of talk about how we’re living in a science fiction future. The way I see it, it’s more like we’re living in a fantasy novel. Magic books whose words change with a touch? Incantations that make light or music appear from empty air? Scrying mirrors that not only let us see what’s happening on the other side of the planet, but communicate in real time across that same distance? Looks like wizardry to me.

You can definitely see those ideas in some of the stories in this collection. One story, for example, looks at how reincarnation would work in a world where immortality is as simple as uploading your consciousness. Another is a very modern take on a haunted-house story.

But it doesn’t stop there. Because really, what it comes down to is a shift in perspective. What’s the difference between high magic and high-tech? A lot of it comes down to the story we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves a lot of stories every day, even when we think we’re simply seeing the world as it is. And technological innovations have the potential to disrupt them all.

Sometimes it’s a fun game to play with ourselves—am I a wizard every time I hop on a video call or ask my digital assistant to turn on the lights? But sometimes the stakes are a lot higher, the questions more uncomfortable, the answers more dangerous. And nowhere is that more true than when it comes to the stories we tell ourselves about our own identities, and the people around us.

Are we the same as our digital footprint? What does identity mean when someone else has the ability to rewrite your code? When technology can give us deeper insights into the people we love, and show us a truer version of them than they would choose to show us, do we actually want to know them that well? Do we want to know ourselves that well?

Those are the questions that these six stories explore. They all take place in worlds more advanced than our own, but some of them probably already feel familiar. The questions do, too. I hope you enjoy the stories, and that if they give you a shiver or two, they’re the good kind. Mostly.

The New Me

The floor was sideways, and pressed up against my face, and I didn’t understand how it had gotten that way. My leaf-green mug—the one Hugh had told me was my favorite—lay in pieces in front of me, surrounded by puddles of coffee. By some miracle, none of the coffee had landed on me. No, I realized a second later, that wasn’t right. My cheek felt too warm, and so did my right arm. But it was only warmth, not burning heat. The sensation was muted, like someone had turned down a dial in my mind to lessen the intensity.

I searched my memory for how I had gotten here, and found only fuzzy static. A feeling I was all too familiar with since the accident. Hugh had said my doctor had warned me there could be brain damage, although I couldn’t remember that either, or any of my weeks-long stay in the hospital. According to Hugh, he had cautioned me about the possibility of lost memories, even personality changes. He hadn’t been wrong. Hugh talked about patching up the holes in my memory, as if my brain were a moth-eaten sweater, but more often than not I felt like my memory was one big hole, without even a few ragged strings of yarn to hold it together.

But normally the memories I couldn’t find were from the time before the accident. Not just a few seconds in the past.

Hugh’s heavy shoes clomped across the kitchen and around the broken mug. When I looked up at him, his frown of disapproval sent a shiver through me. A flash of memory burst into my mind like lightning. Hugh shoving me hard against the counter. Coffee sloshing out of the mug to sear my arm. The pain—not muted, the dial turned all the way up—making me lose my balance, and then—

And then the images stopped. The world rearranged, like everything had flipped sideways a second time, and I realized the look on Hugh’s face wasn’t disapproval. It was concern.

Annika? Are you okay? He bent down and reached out a hand to me.

I took it. As his fingers closed over mine, a shiver swept over me, like a presentiment of danger. Then the cold shiver turned into one that was warmer and more pleasant as he drew me into his arms.

Cleaner, Hugh barked over my shoulder. Clean up this mess.

The silver humanoid cleaner bot obediently glided up on her wheeled feet. She carefully avoided the liquid as she bent and picked up the mug shards one by one with her pincer hands. Not that she was really a she. Some people named their cleaner bots, but Hugh had never been that sentimental. And if I had been once, I couldn’t remember it now. But I still thought of the bot as female, probably because Hugh thought it was funny to keep her in that French maid’s outfit he had bought.

Hugh drew me out of the bot’s way as a sponge extruded from between the two sides of one of the pincers to mop up the coffee. You need to be more careful, he said in my ear.

What happened? I asked.

You tripped.

I looked down at the white tile floor, which had been empty before the mug had fallen. I didn’t like clutter, or at least that was what Hugh told me. That’s it? I tripped?

I think you had another lapse. That was what he had taken to calling it whenever he mentioned a piece of our past and I couldn’t call up the memory, or when I couldn’t remember something simple like my email password. I knew it was just shorthand for memory lapse, but the word still felt like a moral judgment.

It’s never happened like that before. It’s never made me fall. Or forget something right after it happened.

Another flash. Hugh walking into the kitchen, his eyes landing on the mug in my hand. What is that? You don’t drink coffee, you stupid bitch. How many times do I have to tell you before you get it through your useless scrambled brain?

But as I stared up into his warm brown eyes, I knew beyond a doubt that the man I loved had never said any such thing. I didn’t even know how my imagination could have come up with it. Even before the accident, he had never so much as raised his voice to me. I might have lost almost everything about my former life, but that part, I did remember. And ever since the accident, he had treated me like a precious crystal vase, fragile and breakable. As if the slightest harsh word, or the briefest second without his eyes on me, would send me shattering into a million pieces.

So where had those flashes come from? Was the damage getting worse? Had my mind moved beyond simple lapses to start creating false memories?

Not only that, but what Hugh had said in the flash was true. I didn’t drink coffee. Hugh had reminded me more than once that I had always liked a glass of lemon water in the morning, cool and crisp with a hint of tart, and that I used to gently tease him for his reliance on caffeine. I didn’t know what had made me prepare a cup for myself. Curiosity, maybe. With my old self gone, and the chances of getting her back looking slimmer by the day, why shouldn’t I try something new?

Unless that impulse was, in itself, a sign that I was getting worse. That the last fragments of who I used to be were fading away, beyond hope of recovery.

Maybe I should call my doctor, I said against Hugh’s chest.

I felt Hugh shake his head. His stubble scraped against my scalp. Not yet. We’ll keep a close eye on it.

But if something is wrong…

You were so miserable, all those weeks in the hospital. Every time I saw you, you begged me to take you home. And the way your doctor treated you… He drew in a deep breath. You told me you didn’t want to go back there, not ever, not unless you were dying. Don’t you remember?

Of course I didn’t remember. But the words sounded like a test. I remember, I lied.

Hugh drew back enough for me to see his approving smile. He clasped my hands in his and squeezed them hard. You can beat this on your own. I have faith in you. His smile grew mischievous, crinkling the corners of his eyes. And if you don’t, well, I guess we’ll just have to replace you. He jerked his chin toward the cleaner bot. I hear they’re making good companion models these days.

Just a joke, and one we had shared before. He looked at me expectantly, inviting me to join in. But another cold shiver ran up my spine.

We can’t have anything less than perfect in this house, after all, said Hugh. Isn’t that your rule? Never make a mess, never forget a birthday, keep every square inch of space pristine and perfect?

I looked down at the mess I had made—nothing pristine or perfect about that. But the cleaner bot had already made the mess disappear. And beyond that spot, the kitchen was all gleaming white and silver, without a single cereal box on the counter or dish in the sink to mar the sleek, sterile landscape. In the cabinets, I knew I would find the dishes arranged by size, and the spices alphabetized. I didn’t remember being the person who had done those things, but the evidence of it was right there for me to look at any time I wanted.

I felt the sudden urge to apologize, even though I didn’t know what for. For whatever mess or missed birthday I had criticized him for before the accident, maybe. For whatever had put that edge into his voice.

Instead, I met his smile with one of my own, and told him what he wanted to hear. You’re right. I can do this.

His face softened. He folded me into his arms again. I couldn’t have broken free if I had wanted to. Although I didn’t even understand why that thought had come to me—why would I ever want to?

You’d better, he murmured into my hair.

* * *

Tell me about the accident, I said, when we were lying in bed that night.

I had been the one to decorate the bedroom, he had told me. It had been my sanctuary, my happy place. I found that hard to believe. The silvery-gray sheets made me feel like I was living inside a cold, barren spaceship. The crisp white walls were blank except for a single abstract painting that took up most of the wall that faced the bed. The painting looked like the contents of a toilet bowl after a night of drinking too much. Its sharp red and blue lines gave the room its only color. Every time I saw the painting, I wondered about the person who had chosen it, and whether I really wanted to be that person again.

I glanced over to see Hugh’s brows draw together. His face closed down, the warm spark vanishing from his eyes. The same thing that always happened when I brought up the accident.

We have so many good memories between us. There’s no need to bring up a bad one. His smile took visible effort. Do you remember when we first met?

He kept going over this one with me. He liked it when I recited it back to him, even though I was pretty sure he knew I still didn’t actually remember. I was working at a bakery, I said, beginning the familiar ritual.

"The Merry Morning Bakery," he reminded me. He always insisted I get the smallest details right. As if he thought maybe one of them would jog my memory.

The Merry Morning Bakery. Only it wasn’t morning, it was nighttime. I was just hanging the closed sign on the door when you burst in, panting like you had run the whole way.

He smiled at that, as if we were sharing the memory together. Maybe he thought we were.

As soon as you got your breath back, you asked me whether we had any angel food cake, I continued. Because your mother was pregnant, and—

Just like that, his smile disappeared. My sister, he said flatly. My sister was pregnant.

Your sister was pregnant, I corrected myself. And she absolutely had to have angel food cake, and not from a mix. You had tried three other bakeries, but they all had bots doing the baking. And your mother—I mean your sister—had this superstition about bots and pregnancy—

"How could