This is the public log of DeeDee 'dzyjak' Jackson, a fictional character. DeeDee lives and works aboard a space station which orbits Saturn, and sometimes he writes about it.

2007-01-12

Personal Space, pt 1

Doc asked me to take two days, my Submind vac-suit, and find a nice quiet place to hold Relativity One for four hours and 48 minutes. My suit grew a weird sensor array for the purpose, so I didn't bother arguing about it. With the time dilatation, it was only a few hours for me.

"Forty-eight hours exactly," Doc said. "Give or take a fraction, that works out to Relativity One. You've got a good start. Congratulations."

"Thanks," I said. "Are these Submind options, or talents or whatever, are they 'memory sets' like you and Paula go on about?"

"Not exactly," Doc said. "Those are personality memes." Her speech patterns changed a bit, which I figure means Submind (more than Doc) is speaking.

"Oh. I've heard you talking about those too." I was starting to think it might be over my head.

Doc shrugged. "A personality meme is a like a memory fragment, a doorway to a skill, and it must be summoned by a thought or desire. You do this when you call the sky.

"A memory set is a what we give the chimpanzees," Doc said. "It's an entire range of skill sets, built on the host's existing social and cultural structures. It requires physiological and neurological modification, with obvious benefits for those who accept the symbiont."

"Huh? What about the spiky cats?" I asked.

"That is a specialized personality meme," Submind said. "You may call it a morphological meme if you like."

"You're saying they remember having magnetic spiky quills?"

"Something like that," Doc said unhelpfully. "The point is, DeeDee, your force of will is driving your discoveries--your 'Submind options' as you called them. Your natural suspicion of mental influence has put you way ahead of the curve. I would have never predicted this."

"Really?" I asked. "Why not?"

"I used to think you were a bit slow," Doc said. "Not stupid, exactly, and certainly not inclined to take any grief about it, but slow."

"And now you don't think that, and I should be full of joy and sugar?"

"You should be full of joy and sugar when I think of you at all," Doc said. "You seem to have two or three active processes running at all times, as if you think too fast to keep up. Joe says it makes him twitchy. "

"It keeps my mouth from running," I said.

"Ah." Doc said. "You're even smarter then I suspected."

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