{"id":2347,"date":"2022-01-12T13:53:57","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T13:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2347"},"modified":"2022-01-15T12:17:42","modified_gmt":"2022-01-15T12:17:42","slug":"you-and-whose-army-by-greg-egan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2347","title":{"rendered":"You and Whose Army? by Greg Egan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You and Whose Army?<\/em><\/strong> by Greg Egan (Clarkesworld<\/em>, October 2020) gets off to a fairly leisurely start with Rufus meeting a woman who knows Linus, his brother: it materialises that Rufus and Linus share memories, and that he has disappeared. We also learn, later on in the story, that there are four brothers (the others are Caius and Silus), and that they were originally part of a cult that biologically modified them as a part of an attempted hive-mind project that was later shut down by the authorities (we find most of this out when Rufus consults a PI called Leong about his brother\u2019s disappearance):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leong paused expectantly, giving him a chance to explain what he meant, but when he remained silent she tried prompting him. \u201cYou live in Adelaide, right? So do you meet up in person regularly?\u201d
\u201cNot in person.\u201d Rufus clenched his fists and inhaled slowly. \u201cWe have neural links. All four of us. We share each other\u2019s memories. They took us off the boat when we were eight.\u201d
Leong was clearly thrown for a moment, but she retained a professional demeanor. Rufus guessed she was in her early forties, so mid-twenties when the story broke. Unless she\u2019d been living in a cult of her own, she\u2019d know exactly what he was talking about.
\u201cYou were born on the Physalia<\/em>?\u201d
\u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d Rufus had to give her full marks for not only recalling the name, but pronouncing it correctly.
\u201cAnd you and Linus are quadruplets?\u201d
\u201cYes. The others are overseas, studying.\u201d No idiotic blather confusing them with \u201cclones.\u201d Rufus\u2019s experience had set the bar low, but he felt entitled to a small celebration at every sensible word that came out of her mouth.
\u201cForgive me if I\u2019m not clear on exactly how this works,\u201d Leong said. \u201cWhen you say you share each other\u2019s memories . . . ?\u201d
\u201cWe wake up recalling what the other three did,\u201d Rufus replied. \u201cWhen we sleep, as well as consolidating our own experience into long-term memory, we receive enough data to do the same with the others\u2019. We remember being them, as well as ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The rest of this piece is, essentially, a missing person story. When Leong produces a picture of Linus leaving Sydney airport the brothers don\u2019t have the money to fund a worldwide search, so they create a social media app that scans submitted photographs for evidence of their brother in the background. Eventually (spoiler), they track him down to a college in France where he has won a scholarship. Further investigation reveals that Linus is being sponsored by an aging billionaire called Guinard (who may have part-funded the Physalia<\/em> project).
Caius flies to France to question Linus (the point of view moves through all the four brothers during the story), and discovers that Guinard is sharing his memories with Linus and grooming him to become his successor (this is portrayed as a form of immortality for Guinard).
Events then see the three brothers attempting to kidnap Linus when they can\u2019t convince him to spend some time on his own, unconnected to either them or Guinard\u2014so Linus can learn to be himself, neither in their shadow, as he complains, nor as a receptacle for Guinard.
The kidnapping attempt fails when it is stopped by Guinard\u2019s security, and the story ends with Linus thinking to himself that he doesn\u2019t intend to be a receptacle for Guinard, only his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, and that he cannot reveal this deception to his brothers until the billionaire dies.
This is pretty good in parts\u2014there is commentary about personhood, and some dry humour\u2014and it is generally interesting, but the ending doesn\u2019t really convince, and a lot of the story is taken up with inter-brother relationship tensions. Although this is a solid story, it struck me as Egan on cruise-control.
*** (Good). 13,050 words. Story link<\/a>.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You and Whose Army? by Greg Egan (Clarkesworld, October 2020) gets off to a fairly leisurely start with Rufus meeting a woman who knows Linus, his brother: it materialises that Rufus and Linus share memories, and that he has disappeared. We also learn, later on in the story, that there are four brothers (the others […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[250],"tags":[296,24,622,251,604,623,7],"class_list":["post-2347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greg-egan","tag-296","tag-3-2","tag-clarkesworld","tag-greg-egan","tag-immortality","tag-memory-sharing","tag-novelette"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2347"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2422,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions\/2422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}