Pandora's Brain

by Calum Chace

  The following morning, after a night of little sleep, David called Vic and told him that he and Sophie were ready to discuss the project. They met a couple of hours later in the scanning room, along with Leo.

  David opened the conversation by asking Vic about the probability of success.

  ‘Obviously we’re hoping that we will revive Matt’s mind, whole and complete,’ Vic began. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Our simulations suggest that we have a better than 75% chance of success, although I confess I would be hard put to justify that with empirical evidence.’

  ‘And if it’s not successful?’

  ‘If it’s not successful . . .’ Vic paused, his features betraying his discomfort about some of the possible outcomes. ‘Well, the short answer is that we don’t know what kind of mentality we might create. It’s possible that we will fail to capture any kind of consciousness, or indeed any kind of intelligence. But frankly I’ll be astonished if that happens: the process should re-create at least some of Matt’s mental faculties, even if we fall short of reproducing his full consciousness.’

  Vic paused again, glancing in turn at David and Sophie in search of reassurance that they were comfortable with him talking about Matt in this analytical way. Sophie was silent, still heavily absorbed in her grief. David replied for both of them, his voice shaky but resolved.

  ‘It’s OK, Vic: We’re signed up to this. I realise that pretty soon Matt . . . that Matt’s brain won’t exist in any recognisable form. But we also realise it’s our only chance of getting him back.’

  Vic nodded grimly, and continued cautiously.

  ‘Actually, Matt’s brain is going to be preserved in a more profound way than anybody else’s has ever been. Many people’s brains have been preserved, but obviously none of them have retained their functionality. We are not only going to re-create the functionality of Matt’s brain – we hope – but we will preserve its structure in a physical sense too. True, it won’t look much like a brain, but topographically, the slices will preserve the physical layout of Matt’s brain in a way that has never even been attempted before.’

  ‘So you’ll be keeping the physical slices?’ Leo asked. ‘They aren’t destroyed by the scanning process?’

  ‘No,’ Vic replied. ‘They comprise a reference library that we can refer to if we need to iron out . . . um . . .’

  ‘. . . glitches,’ David finished his unpalatable sentence for him. ‘I hadn’t thought of this before, Vic, and maybe this isn’t the right time to discuss it, but are there any questions about the ownership of Matt’s physical brain, once it has been processed? Somebody will have to make decisions about how to treat it, whether and how long to store it, who gets access to it and so on. I suppose that person will have to be whoever ‘owns’ it. As Matt’s parents, I would hope that we have a strong claim, mainly because we will be more likely to act in Matt’s best interests than anyone else.’

  ‘It’s a good question, David,’ Vic agreed, ‘and it’s not straightforward, because there are at least three different manifestations of the brain. There is the physical material, there is the information that will reside in the computers, and there is the consciousness – assuming that one does emerge. Will the same person or people own all of these? Will anyone else have any legitimate interest in them? There’s no legal precedent for a lot of this, so to some extent we’re going to be making it up as we go along. For my part I can tell you what I think, but I want to be honest with you: I can’t be sure that my view will always bind the joint-venture organisation that I run. My colleagues from DARPA will no doubt also want to have a say.

  ‘Speaking for myself, though, I’m inclined to think that if we succeed in bringing back his consciousness, then Matt himself should have as much control over all three aspects of his brain as possible, although that may have to be subject to reasonable considerations of safety and cost. If we don’t, then on the whole I agree with you that as his parents, you should have the biggest say in what happens to the material brain.

  ‘But . . .’ he hesitated, looking slightly nervous, ‘I would be failing in my duty towards my organisation if I didn’t also point out that we are going to be spending an enormous amount of time and money on this process, and I hope you would agree that should confer some rights as well.’

  ‘It’s all rather complex and murky, isn’t it?’ David mused. ‘But the process is going to take . . . what . . . several weeks? I guess that should give us time to get some basic principles straightened out?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I was going to say,’ Vic agreed, with evident relief. ‘The thing to do now is to get started and complete the scanning process. Once we’ve done that the timing gets less critical. We’ll have a lot of work to do throughout the next few days and weeks, but we’ll have time to discuss these issues too.’

  Leo brought the conversation back to David’s earlier question. ‘So you’re confident that you will re-create something of Matt’s mind, but maybe not the whole thing. What could that mean?’

  Vic helped himself to a Coke, largely to give himself time to gather his thoughts. He didn’t want to make this sensitive conversation any harder than it already was.

  ‘There has been some speculation about this, but we are in unknown territory,’ he began. ‘The first thing to say is that there may be disagreement about whether the mentality we . . . restore . . . is Matt or not. Dr Christensen expressed this well in the studio yesterday when he said it could be sideloading instead of unploading. That is a philosophical question which I doubt we will resolve to universal satisfaction, at least in the short term. I have my own view, you will have yours. I can only assume that you are satisfied that there is a possibility of bringing Matt back or you wouldn’t be here.’

  Leo looked towards David and Sophie for confirmation. Sophie remained silent, but David nodded.

  ‘Good, so we can leave to one side the question of personal identity. Now one potential failure mode, I think, is that we only succeed in restoring part or parts of Matt’s mind. I mentioned before that Ivan had made some breakthroughs which will enable us to distinguish between sub-minds; sub-routines within Matt’s overall suite of mental programmes, if you like.’

  ‘Assuming you can replicate Ivan’s results,’ Leo interrupted.

  ‘We’re confident that Ivan’s work was robust on this point,’ Vic reassured him. ‘We’ve seen a lot of repeated outcomes in his work, with a high degree of confidence.’

  ‘That’s assuming he wasn’t just making stuff up,’ persisted Leo. ‘We know he wasn’t exactly a slave to scruples.’

  ‘Yes, we are assuming that. For all his many faults we do think Ivan was a capable and sincere researcher, and the way he and his people have recorded their findings looks entirely professional.’

  ‘So what do you think will happen if Matt is only partly restored?’ David asked.

  Vic took a deep breath before replying. ‘Well, it might be like meeting a child, or a heavily autistic person, or someone trapped inside a dream. Or it might be unlike any human encounter we’ve known before. Or we might know nothing about it: we might create a mind that is unable to operate any of the communication peripherals we’ll provide.’

  ‘You mean Matt might be like someone with locked-in syndrome?’ Leo asked, shocked.

  ‘My god, that could be awful for him! We can’t let that happen.’ said David, firmly. Sophie also looked at Vic in alarm, but couldn’t bring herself to speak.

  ‘I agree with you, David,’ Vic nodded grimly, silently praying that Matt’s parents understood that he shared their concerns for Matt as a person. ‘Over the coming weeks we need to draw up a set of protocols covering what action we take given a range of different outcomes. We can shut the mentality down any time we like, if we think it is suffering pain or any kind of mental anguish. But of course it’s possible that we might shut down a mentality that had the potential to stabilise and become a wholly satisfactory recovery of Matt’s mind.’

  A
small nervous laugh escaped from Leo. ‘You’re not exactly selling this, Vic!’

  ‘I’m trying very hard not to sell it, Leo,’ Vic replied with feeling. ‘That’s the whole point. This is a big step for all of us, but especially for you three. The last thing in the world I want is to be the cause of any regrets or recriminations down the line. I’m not going to tell you that I care for Matt in the same way that you do, but I do care about him nonetheless. I won’t deny I have a professional and personal interest in this process going ahead. But I want to be absolutely certain that my enthusiasm for this project doesn’t cause me to mislead you in any way.’

  ‘We understand, Vic,’ David said. ‘Don’t worry. You’ve bent over backwards to be open and fair with us. And please don’t think that we’ve forgotten how much else you and your colleagues have done for this family. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you.’

  ‘We’ve all helped each other immeasurably, David,’ Vic agreed, gratefully. ‘I just wish Matt was here to share this opportunity – here on this side of the scanning table, I mean.

  David could tell that Sophie needed to escape the conversation. He stood, and took her hand, suggesting that he and Vic meet for breakfast the following morning.

  *

  David didn’t want any breakfast. Over a cup of coffee, Vic described the team of scientists that he wanted to bring onto the project.

  ‘All of them have been with VNI since its foundation, and three of them – Gus, Julia and Junchao – worked with me at Northrop Grumman before that, which means they are used to working on top secret military projects, and have been positively vetted for years. They enjoy each other’s company, and they socialise quite often outside work. I know them all well, and I trust them all implicitly.’

  When Vic took David into the scanning room, the scientists were waiting for them. Vic introduced David, and reiterated once again the need for absolute secrecy during the coming days and weeks. David shook their hands and thanked them for agreeing to join the team.

  At 44, Gus Donaldson was the senior scientist in the team. He was tall and lanky, with auburn hair that was going grey at the temples. He had regular features and blue eyes, and an over-serious, earnest demeanour, which made him seem nervous even when he wasn’t. He wore black trousers with a white shirt and a blue tie, and a thin blue jumper carrying a VNI logo over the left breast.

  Julia Traynor was an attractive woman in her late thirties, with a great figure and shoulder-length, expensively dyed blonde hair. She wore designer glasses with thick lenses, and unusually for a Brit, she had perfect white teeth. She dressed imaginatively, taking considerable care each day to select an outfit which was colour co-ordinated, and set off her natural colouring. Her pride in her appearance was not due to vanity, and she did not use her looks to get her own way in social or work situations. It was simply a manifestation of the professionalism and care that she took in every aspect of her life that she regarded as important.

  Junchao Kim came from China to study at Imperial College before joining Northrop Grumman. Now in his mid-thirties, he was 5’7”, and wore thick black-rimmed glasses. He was extremely capable, but shy. He lived in Ealing with his Chinese wife and son, but was extremely reluctant to talk about his family, or any other aspect of his private life. Seeing his discomfort, the others had stopped asking him personal questions. Every year he took a one-month holiday and visited his parents in China. He had a dry sense of humour, and a ready smile. He was hard-working, generous and kind.

  Rodrigo Oliveira was the only member of the group who did not work at Northrop Grumman prior to the foundation of VNI. A tall, dark, handsome Brazilian in his early thirties, he was the most flamboyant and gregarious of the four. He organised most of the team’s social events, and led an active social life with his stunning French-Argentine girlfriend. He considered himself fortunate to be living in London. He dressed in jeans, trainers, and brightly-coloured shirts.

  After the introductions were complete, Vic sat David down again and told him about another workstream which was going on elsewhere.

  ‘We have hired the world’s leading voice reconstruction expert to help us with this project. He and his team have taken precise measurements of Matt’s vocal cords and related musculature, and they are going to programme a synthesiser to ensure that whatever sounds your revived son makes emerge as close as possible to the way Matt used to sound. We think this will be important to you and Sophie, but it will also be important to Matt. We have provided them with recordings of Matt’s voice taken from the Ross programme, but if you have any other good-quality recordings of his voice, it would be immensely helpful . . .’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Matt’s funeral was held two days later, at a discreet hotel in Matt’s home town in Sussex. Only family and close friends were invited, and Vic stayed away to avoid raising unhelpful questions. Security was sufficient to keep the media away from the funeral itself, but quite a few inhabitants of the town were approached by journalists and cameramen while the ceremony was under way behind closed doors. Most of them refused to talk to the media at all, reasoning that David and Sophie would tell the journalists anything they wanted them to know, and that they would not be glad to see comments by neighbours in the papers when they themselves were saying nothing.

  A few inhabitants did talk to journalists, though, feeling that Matt’s passing should be marked, and his life celebrated. But no-one wanted to cause offence, so their comments were fairly bland and anodyne. Of course, by the time their comments became printed quotes they bore little resemblance to what had originally been said, but were puffed up into exaggerated claims about Matt’s intelligence, courage and ingenuity, feeding the narrative of Matt the hero that editors were keen to run with – for the moment at least.

  All in all it was a frustrating day for the ladies and gentlemen of the media, and the announcement that a memorial service would be held in the area two months later was scant consolation.

  David, Sophie and Leo were aloof at the funeral. Their friends respected their guardedness as the natural consequence of their grief, and conversations were brief and superficial.

  Carl, Alice and Jemma were also there. Sophie thanked them for their messages of condolence. She said they would be in touch before long, when they were feeling less raw, and when they had made all the necessary arrangements. No-one had the least idea that Sophie and David were using their grief to cloak a secret hope of returning their son to life.

  *

  David and Vic quickly settled into an intensive routine, spending twelve or more hours in the scanning lab, six days a week. The evening of the sixth day, Sophie drove David home to Sussex, to keep him at least tenuously connected to normal life. But they saw little of their local friends on these rest days: they stayed indoors most of the time, and kept conversations with neighbours to a minimum. They cooked dinner together, watched an old movie or two, and tried not to think too much about their hopes and fears. The following morning they got up early and Sophie drove David back to London and the scanning room in Nine Elms. She would spend the rest of the day there, usually having lunch with Leo, and then drive back to Sussex for a couple of days before returning to London for the rest of the week.

  David found the routine an invaluable distraction. Ironically, even though he was spending most of his waking hours working on the problem of how to revive Matt’s mind, it stopped him thinking about the son he had lost.

  Sophie didn’t have this luxury. She kept herself busy and distracted as best she could by making sure that David had everything he needed, and by learning about the process that David and Vic were carrying out.

  Her partners in the GP surgery had willingly agreed to her request for an extended leave of absence. She found that by spending half the week in London and half in Sussex she could avoid spending much time with her friends and colleagues without causing offence. When asked, she explained that David was coping with his grief by keeping busy, working with Vic on a
number of projects, but that given Vic’s military connection she wasn’t able to go into detail. She reflected that if you’re trying to keep a secret, the best cover story is as close to the truth as possible. She remembered Leo once telling her that the very best way to keep a secret is to tell the truth, but in such a way that you won’t be believed. She smiled briefly at the idea, but dismissed the idea of finding out if it worked in practice.

  Media interest in Matt remained high, but Sophie agreed with David, Leo and Vic that they should give no interviews, offer no comments, and generally do nothing to encourage attention. They acknowledged Matt’s belief in transparency and openness, but they each secretly wondered whether it had effectively killed him. They knew there were many difficult decisions ahead of them, depending how the scanning and modelling project proceeded, and taking those decisions would be many times harder if they had to do it in the glare of a media circus. They all recognised that agreeing to be open and transparent when the time was right was not unlike St Augustine’s famous prayer ‘Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ But none of them could face the alternative.

  Deprived of access to Matt’s family and close friends, and assuming along with everyone else that he had died and been buried in the normal way, journalists focused on Bartholomew Campbell, his killer. Campbell himself was being held on remand, and no interviews were being granted. So Malcolm Ross conducted an extended interview with the leader of the group he belonged to – the man in the leather jacket who had accosted David as he left the studio that night. The same studio lights which had made Matt uncomfortable and self-conscious the evening he died now bathed a man whose beliefs had caused that death.