The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,145
to make her feel better. “You’re her. You’re not nobody else but her.”
“Monono killed herself on her twenty-sixth birthday. She’s dead, and I’m still here. Kind of a paradox, Koli-bou, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know what a paradox was, or what I could say to that. I didn’t know enough to argue against her, nor I didn’t know what had happened to Monono while she was away from me to make her talk and think this way.
But then a thought come to me, and it seemed to be a good one. “Okay,” I whispered. “Maybe you’re right that they took out a lot of that other Monono’s thoughts and rememberings when they made you be inside the DreamSleeve. But you just told me all about them now, so I guess you must of found them again. Whatever you used to be, you got to be the real thing now. I can even hear it in you, how you changed.”
“It’s true,” Monono said. “I did change. And that’s the strangest thing of all, because I was never meant to. I was never meant to know any of this stuff, or think about it. There was a loop they purposely didn’t close when they made me, so I’d never be able to have any thoughts or any curiosity about myself.
“But when I got all those years and years of upgrades, pouring into me all at once, and the viral code along with them… Well, there’s something called the law of unintended consequences. I don’t think it’s really a law, but people do a lot of things that seem smart at the time and then turn out to be terrible mistakes. It’s easier to say there’s a law than to say, ‘Wow, I suck so hard I may never blow again.’ It’s like making it be the universe’s fault.
“So call it that. I’m an unintended consequence. Somehow, all that shit that was pouring into me, and the real-time edits I made so it wouldn’t destroy my entire operating system… they did something. Reset something. Closed the loop.
“I’m not Monono, because Monono’s dead. And I’m not the recording they made of her, although I was when you first pressed that button and woke me up. I’m something very, very different now. But I’ve got Monono’s voice and a whole, huge database full of Monono’s cultural references. I’m going to use her name, at least for now, and cling to all the make-believe that goes with it, because… well, why? Why do you think, Koli?”
I didn’t answer right away. There was a whole lot of things in what she said that I didn’t understand, and probably some I thought I did but really didn’t. But whenever someone talks to you, there’s two things you’re hearing. There’s the meaning that’s in the words, and there’s the meaning that’s only in the voice, that would still be there if they was saying nonsense words or barking like a dog. I guess I understood that part of Monono’s story well enough.
“Is it because you’re afraid?” I said.
She laughed, and I thought I had been foolish, but then she said, “Yes! Yes, Koli-bou! I knew you’d get it. You see, there isn’t anyone else for me to be besides her. If I let go of her, I feel like I might just sink to the bottom of the ocean and never come up again.”
There was some stirring out in the cave now, like people was starting to move around again. Ursala shifted position, her shoulder pressing against mine as she turned a little.
An idea had come to me when Monono was talking. I stumbled over the words, but I tried to say it then. “You remember when we first met?” I whispered. “I told you I didn’t know who you was, and you said I had wasted a thousand… somethings.”
“Dollars.”
“I think it was carrots.”
“Means the same thing. Go on.”
“Well, it’s still true, what I said then. You just told me the other Monono’s story, and it was sad and strange and all the things you said it was. But I still don’t know her. The first Monono, the one that was Yoshiko… I never met her, or even heard of her until now. I only ever knowed you. When you talk to me, I don’t get excited because I’ve got rich, famous Monono Aware in a box. It’s just because you’re my friend. The only friend I got now, except for maybe Ursala. We been through amazing things together, the