Geosynchron by David Louis Edelman

"I don't know. You're acting out the choice, I
suppose."
    "Sure. But who says your mind can't continue onward? While your
body is hitting the ball and running for first base, why can't MultiReal
just keep calculating further into the future? Why not keep going for
a whole sixty seconds-and why not stay sixty seconds ahead of
everyone else?"
    The entrepreneur has no answer.
    "If you did this continuously, without stopping, then you'd effectively be living in the future, wouldn't you? One minute in the future.
As long as life conforms to the probability calculations in your head,
the outside world would unspool in `real time' behind you. All of your
interactions with the people around you would happen ahead of time
in that collaborative virtual space. Even when unpredictable things do
happen, the program can usually just back up and weave those things
into the virtual fabric. MultiReal can erase those nascent memories, so
nobody would be the wiser-including you."
    "It's a neat trick," says Natch, "but I still don't see how that's
going to reverse-" He stops short.
    Petrucio's face blooms into a massive smile. "You're starting to see
it, aren't you? Anything that happens during that sixty secondssomeone shooting you with a dartgun, someone pushing you off a
ledge-"
    "Frederic cutting off my head with a samurai sword," grumbles
Natch.
    11
-it hasn't really happened yet, right? It's just a possibility you're
exploring in your head. A collaborative fantasy. You've still got time
to alter your path and avoid that future. So back to our original
analogy. If you're a multi projection standing in a building when it collapses, the system cuts you off and brings you back to reality. Same
thing here. If someone decapitates you with a sword ..."

    "You get snapped back to `real' time, one minute in the past."
    "Exactly."
    Natch stands up abruptly, tries to pace in the cramped hoverbird
cabin. Now that he's caught the scent, his mind is charging ahead, galloping through the possibilities with furious speed. From the pilot's
chair, Hiro starts to turn around to see what's going on, then thinks
better of it and disappears back into his mocha grind haze.
    "You told me MultiReal-D erases nascent memories," says Natch.
"Then why do I still remember Frederic swinging that sword at my
neck?"
    "Did you see the syringe he injected you with?"
    "Yes."
    "Modified OCHREs, for testing. So you'd remember the whole
thing."
    Natch's mind is reeling. It's insane, ludicrous, borderline nonsensical-but if he accepts the original premise of MultiReal, where's the
logical break? There is none. It follows. And furthermore ...
    "A bio/logic program can't really know when you're about to die,"
he says over ConfidentialWhisper, more to himself than to Petrucio.
"All MultiReal-D can do is guess. All it can do is take your sensory
input and calculate the probability of death, based on the factors it's
given."
    "Correct."
    "So if someone shoots you in the back, or poisons your food, or
pushes you over a cliff when you're not looking ... If you can't see the
assassin coming, and he's not looped in to your collaborative process,
then MultiReal-D provides no defense."
    Petrucio purses his lips thoughtfully. "True."
    "Yet if you can see death coming ... somebody could take advantage of that. That person could set up a SeeNaRee environment where you're completely surrounded by certain death. Every time you get
close to the edge of the room, a guillotine comes down from the ceiling
and cuts you in half. It's not a real guillotine, but you don't know that.
As long as your brain thinks you're going to die, MultiReal-D will keep
yanking you back a minute into the past-into the present-every
time. The potential memories would get erased. You'd be trapped."

    Petrucio extends his hands behind his head and puts his heels up
on the seat that Natch has just vacated. He seems extraordinarily
pleased with himself. "Clever, isn't it?" he says.