Sleeper by Jo Walton Page B

is what Stanley would think Essie wants, if he knew she was accessing Matthew’s simulation tonight—either that or that she was checking whether the simulation was ready to release. If he finds out, that is what she will tell him she was doing. But she isn’t exactly doing either of those things. She knows Matthew’s secrets, even the ones he never told anybody and which she didn’t put in the book. And she is using a phone to call him that cost her a lot of money, an illegal phone that isn’t connected to anything. That phone is where Matthew is, insofar as he is anywhere.
    â€œYou were in Cambridge in the nineteen thirties,” she says, with no preliminaries.
    â€œWho is this?” Matthew asks, suspicious.
    Despite herself, Essie is delighted to hear his voice, and hear it sounding the way it does on so many broadcast interviews. His accent is impeccable, old fashioned. Nobody speaks like that now.
    â€œMy name is Esmeralda Jones,” Essie says. “I’m writing a biography of you.”
    â€œI haven’t given you permission to write a biography of me, young woman,” Matthew says sternly.
    â€œThere really isn’t time for this,” Essie says. She is tired. She has been working hard all day, and had the meeting with Stanley. “Do you remember what you were reading in the paper just now?”
    â€œAbout computer consciousness?” Matthew asks. “Nonsense.”
    â€œIt’s 2064,” Essie says. “You’re a simulation of yourself. I am your biographer.”
    Matthew sits down, or imagines that he is sitting down, at the telephone table. Essie can see this on the screen of her phone. Matthew’s phone is an old dial model, with no screen, fixed to the wall. “Wells,” he says. “When the Sleeper Wakes.”
    â€œNot exactly,” Essie says. “You’re a simulation of your old self.”
    â€œIn a computer?”
    â€œYes,” Essie says, although the word computer has been obsolete for decades and has a charming old fashioned air, like charabanc or telegraph. Nobody needs computers in the future. They communicate, work, and play games on phones.
    â€œAnd why have you simulated me?” Matthew asks.
    â€œI’m writing a biography of you, and I want to ask you some questions,” Essie says.
    â€œWhat do you want to ask me?” he asks.
    Essie is glad; she was expecting more disbelief. Matthew is very smart, she has come to know that in researching him. (Or she has put her belief in his intelligence into the program, one or the other.) “You were in Cambridge in the nineteen thirties,” she repeats.
    â€œYes.” Matthew sounds wary.
    â€œYou knew Auden and Isherwood. You knew Orwell.”
    â€œI knew Orwell in London during the war, not before,” Matthew says.
    â€œYou knew Kim Philby.”
    â€œEveryone knew Kim. What—”
    Essie has to push past this. She knows he will deny it. He kept this secret all his life, after all. “You were a spy, weren’t you, another Soviet sleeper like Burgess and Maclean? The Russians told you to go into the BBC and keep your head down, and you did, and the revolution didn’t come, and eventually the Soviet Union vanished, and you were still undercover.”
    â€œI’d prefer it if you didn’t put that into my biography,” Matthew says. He is visibly uncomfortable, shifting in his seat. “It’s nothing but speculation. And the Soviet Union is gone. Why would anybody care? If I achieved anything, it wasn’t political. If there’s interest in me, enough to warrant a biography, it must be because of my work.”
    â€œI haven’t put it in the book,” Essie says. “We have to trust each other.”
    â€œEsmeralda,” Matthew says. “I know nothing about you.”
    â€œCall me Essie,” Essie says. “I know everything about you. And you have to trust me