(Cont)
The risks weren’t ours alone. So at odds was this venture with our culture of safety first, last and always, where danger only occurs by design, that only true eccentrics could be considered. Despite five generations of genetic tailoring and breeding strictly by licence, not to mention phased social conditioning up to the age of twenty, there were still those who squirmed in their velvet shackles, wouldn’t engage with Consensus and had an appetite for aggression which persisted when the game-pads came off.
By your standards, they were regular guys with a normal set of responses. By ours, they were dangerous if biddable lunatics, lunatics we’d unleashed upon a dozen worlds, possibly including yours. Naturally, they had an enhanced suite of physical enhancements, so I’m sure a great many will have survived anything they came across that didn’t too far exceed design parameters.
They can’t breathe underwater indefinitely, will melt in a lava flow or freeze during an Antarctic night, and would eventually lose the battle with a car crusher. They’ll just laugh at anything else, high velocity rounds included, then indulge in recreational violence until their physical integrity is assured.
Not that I want to cause you undue anxiety. Frankly, it’s a little self-indulgent to tell you this much when we control the flow of information. For all I know, the survivors of the first batch may have settled into lives of quiet contemplation, perhaps even experimenting with such eccentric concepts as marriage, employment or team games. On the other hand, the sudden absence of Consensus may have allowed their super-egos to wither and their ids to flourish. Perhaps we’ve led a technologically enhanced Mr Kurtz into the dark heart of your dimension.
Imagine you were cast adrift in another world with no conceivable connection to your own. Anything you loved or linked with, feared or admired, must be considered forever out of reach; all consigned to a different universe, which in the terms of your new home means non-existent. Your knowledge and capabilities so far outstrip those of your new neighbours that it’s tempting to view them as a slightly lower form of life and therefore unfit to dictate your limits. Before you know it, you’ve coined a new morality and re-invented God in your own image.
Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll admit I’m rehashing the argument I pitched into Plebiscite when Portal was in the concept stage. Then, my adopted swathe of opinion failed to derail the programme. However, this didn’t stop Portal remembering me fondly when we were proved right, and persuading Consensus that I was a good candidate for the second set of insertions. With a rare flash of drollery, it was christened Operation Coppola.
TBC (maybe)
