The Terminal Experiment

by Robert J. Sawyer

“Then where did you meet her?”

  “Oh, sometimes the gang from here would go out for a drink.”

  Sandra consulted her notes. “Every Friday,” she said. “Or so I’ve been told.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Sometimes his wife would show up for a bit.”

  Sandra watched her carefully. “So you did socialize with Hans, then, Ms. Hobson?”

  Cathy lifted a hand. “Only as part of a group. Sometimes we would get a bunch of tickets to a Blue Jays game, too, and go down for that. You know—tickets given to the company by suppliers.” She covered her mouth. “Oh! That’s not illegal, is it?”

  “Not as far as I know,” said Sandra, smiling again. “Not really my department. When you saw Hans and his wife together, did they seem happy?”

  “I can’t really say. I suppose so. I mean, who can tell, looking at a marriage from the outside, what’s really going on?”

  Sandra nodded. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  “She seemed happy enough.”

  “Who?”

  “You know—Hans’s wife.”

  “Whose name is …?”

  Cathy looked confused. “Why, D … Donna-Lee.”

  “Donna-Lee, yes.”

  “You said it earlier,” said Cathy, a bit defensively.

  “Oh, yes. So I did.” Sandra tapped the cursor keys on her palmtop computer, consulting her list of questions. “On another matter, a couple of the other people I’ve interviewed here said that Hans had a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man.”

  Cathy said nothing.

  “Is that true, Mrs. Hobson?” For the first time, Sandra had said “Mrs.,” not “Ms.”

  “Uh, well, yes, I suppose it is.”

  “Someone told me he had slept with a number of the women here at this company. Had you heard similar things about him?”

  Cathy picked some invisible lint off her skirt. “I guess so.”

  “But you didn’t feel it worth mentioning?”

  “I didn’t want …” She trailed off.

  “Didn’t want to speak ill of the dead. Of course, of course.” Sandra smiled warmly. “Forgive me for asking this, but, ah, did you ever have a relationship with him?”

  Cathy looked up. “Certainly not. I’m a—”

  “A married woman,” said Sandra. “Of course.” She smiled again. “I do apologize for having to ask.”

  Cathy opened her mouth to object further, then, after a moment, closed it. Sandra recognized the drama playing over Cathy’s face. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

  “Do you know of anyone he did have a relationship with?” asked Sandra.

  “Not for certain.”

  “Surely, if he had that reputation, word must have gotten around?”

  “There have been rumors. But I don’t believe in repeating gossip, Inspector, and”—Cathy rallied some strength here—“I don’t believe you have the authority to compel me to do so.”

  Sandra nodded, as if this was completely reasonable. She closed the lid on her palmtop. “Thank you for your candor,” she said, her tone so neutral as to make characterizing the remark as either sincere or sarcastic impossible. “Just one more question. Again, I apologize, but I have to ask this. Where were you on November 14 between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.? That’s when Hans died.”

  Cathy tilted her head. “Let’s see. That was the day before we all heard about it. Well, I would have been on my way to work, of course. In fact, now that you mention it, that would have been the day I picked up Carla and gave her a lift to where she works.”

  “Carla? Who’s that?”

  “Carla Wishinski, a friend of mine. She lives a couple of blocks from where Peter and I do. Her car was in the shop, so I agreed to give her a lift.”

  “I see. Well, thank you very much, Ms. Hobson.” She glanced down the list of names. “When you go back out, could you ask Mr. Stephen Jessup to come in please?”

  CHAPTER 29

  Getting rid of Hans Larsen had been easy. After all, why worry about covering one’s tracks? Yes, the police would certainly investigate the crime, but they’d soon find that there were dozens of people who might have wanted to see the philandering Hans dead in the same poetic-justice fashion.

  For the second elimination, though, the sim knew he would have to be more subtle. Something untraceable was called for—something that didn’t even look like murder.

  With health-care costs spiraling ever upward, most developed countries were turning toward inexpensive prevention rather than catastrophic treatment. That required identifying risks particular to each patient, and for that a detailed knowledge of family history was invaluable. But originally not everyone had had access to such information.

  In 2004, a group of adults who had been adopted as children successfully lobbied Canada’s provincial and federal governments to establish the nationwide Confidential Medical Records Database, or “MedBase.” The rationale was simple: all health records should be centralized so that any doctor could access information, with the names removed to protect privacy, about relatives of any of their patients—even if, as was frequently true in the case of adoption, the individuals in question didn’t know they were related.

  The sim had to try more than twenty times, but it did eventually manage to find a way into MedBase—and, from there, a roundabout way to get the information it wanted:

  Login:

  jdesalle

  Password:

  ellased

  Welcome! Bienvenu!

  Health and Welfare Canada Santé et Bien-être social Canada

  MEDBASE

  [1]

  for English

  [2]

  pour Français

  > 1

  Enter patient’s province or territory of residence

  (L for list):

  > Ontario

  Enter patient’s name or Health Card number:

  > 33 1834 22 149

  Hobson, Catherine R. Correct? (Y/N)

  > Y

  What would you like to do?

  [1] Display patient’s record?

  [2] Search patient’s family history?

  > 2

  Search for? (H for help)

  The sim selected H, read the help screens, then formulated his query:

  > Familial risk, heart disease

  There was a pause while the system searched.

  Correlations found.

  The computer proceeded to list records for six different relatives of Cathy who had had heart problems over the years. Although no names were given, the sim had no trouble figuring out which one belonged to Rod Churchill, based on the age at which the coronary trouble had first occurred.

  The sim asked for the full record for that patient. The computer provided it, again without listing the patient’s name. He studied the medical history minutely. Rod was currently taking heart medication and something called phenelzine. The sim logged onto MedLine, a general medical-information database, and began searching the literature for information on those drugs.

  It took some digging, and the sim had to continually access an online medical dictionary to be able to wade through it all, but at last he had what he wanted.

  FINALLY, THE LONG DAY of interviews at Doowap Advertising was over. Detective Sandra Philo drove slowly back to her empty house. On the way, she took advantage of the car’s phone to check a few things. “Carla Wishinski?” she said into the dashboard mike.

  “Yes?” said the voice through the speaker.

  “This is Inspector Alexandria Philo of the Toronto Police. I’ve got a quick question for you.”

  Wishinski sounded flustered. “Uh, yes. Yes, of course.”

  “Were you by any chance with Catherine Hobson on the morning of November tenth?”

  “With Cathy? Let me bring up my scheduler.” The sound of keyclicks. “On the tenth? No, I’m afraid not. Is she in some kind of trouble?”

  Sandra turned the car onto Lawrence West. “Did I say the tenth?” she said. “M
y mistake. I meant the fourteenth.”

  “I don’t think—” More keyclicks. “Oh, wait. That’s the day my car was in for service. Yes, Cathy picked me up and took me to work—she’s a sweetheart about things like that.”

  “Thank you,” said Sandra. It was a standard technique—first determine that the person won’t issue a reflex lie to protect her friend, then ask the real question. Cathy Hobson apparently had a valid alibi. Still, if it had been a professional hit, the fact that she’d been somewhere else when the deed was done proved little.

  “Is there anything else?” asked Carla Wishinski.

  “No, that’s all. Were you planning on leaving town?”

  “Umm, yes—I, ah, I’m going to Spain on vacation.”

  “Well, then, have a nice trip!” said Sandra.

  She never tired of doing that.

  SPIRIT, THE LIFE-AFTER-DEATH SIM, probed the net, looking for new stimulation. Everything was so static, so unchanging. Oh, he could absorb a book or a news-group quickly, but the information itself was passive, and, ultimately, that made it boring.

  Spirit also wandered through the computers at Mirror Image. Eventually he found Sarkar’s game bank and tried playing chess and Tetris and Go and Bollix and a thousand others, but they were no better than the interactive games on the net. Peter Hobson had never really liked games, anyway. He much preferred devoting his energies to things that actually made a difference, rather than to silly contests that in the end changed nothing. Spirit continued to search, going through file after file.

  And, at last, he came upon a subdirectory called A-LIFE. Here, blue fish were evolving, the ones judged most fit getting to breed. Spirit watched several generations go by, fascinated by the process. Life, he thought.

  Life.

  Finally, Spirit had found something that intrigued him.

  CHAPTER 30

  Enough time had elapsed, Sarkar felt, for the sims to have adapted to their new circumstances. It was time to start posing the big questions. Sarkar and Peter were both tied up with other things for the next couple of days, but finally they got together at Mirror Image, and ensconced themselves in the computer lab. Sarkar brought Ambrotos into the foreground. He was about to begin asking it questions, but thought better of it. “It’s your mind,” Sarkar said. “You should ask the questions.”

  Peter nodded and cleared his throat. “Hello, Ambrotos,” he said.

  “Hello, Peter,” said that mechanical voice.

  “What is immortality really like?”

  Ambrotos took a long time before replying, as if contemplating all of eternity first. “It’s … relaxing, I suppose is the best word for it.” Another pause. Nothing was rushed. “I hadn’t realized how much pressure aging put on us. Oh, I know women sometimes say their biological clock is ticking. But there’s a bigger clock affecting all of us—at least people like you and me, driven people, people with a need to accomplish things. We know we’ve only got a limited amount of time, and there’s so much we want to get done. We curse every wasted minute.” Another pause. “Well, I don’t feel that anymore. I don’t feel the pressure to do things quickly. I still want to accomplish things, but there’ll always be tomorrow. There’ll always be more time.”

  Peter considered. “I’m not sure I’d consider being less driven an improvement. I like getting things done.”

  Ambrotos’s reply was infinitely calm. “And I like relaxing. I like knowing that if I want to spend three weeks or three years learning about something that strikes my fancy that I can, without it somehow reducing my productive time. If I feel like reading a novel today instead of working on some project, what’s wrong with that?”

  “But,” said Peter, “you know, as I do now, that there’s some form of life after death. Don’t you wonder about that?”

  The sim laughed. “You and I never believed in life after death. Even now, even knowing that, yes, something does survive the physical demise of the body, I’m not attracted to whatever afterlife there might be. Clearly, it would be beyond physical existence—it would involve the intellect but not the body. I never thought of myself as a sensualist, and we both know we’re not very athletic. But I like sex. I like feeling sun on my skin. I like eating a really good meal. I even like eating lousy meals. I’d miss my body if it wasn’t there. I’d miss physical stimulation. I’d miss— I’d miss everything. Gooseflesh and being tickled and cutting a really good fart and running my hand over my five-o’clock shadow. All of it. Sure, life after death might be forever, but so is physical immortality—and I like the physical part.”

  Peter was guarded; Sarkar was listening intently. “What about—what about our relationship with Cathy? I guess you think the whole marriage is just a tiny blip in a vast life?”

  “Oh, no,” said Ambrotos. “Funny—despite that crack Colin Godoyo made, I’d thought that an immortal would rue the day he’d sworn to do anything until death do us part. But I don’t feel that way at all. In fact, this has added a whole new dimension to marriage. If Cathy becomes immortal, too, there’s a chance—a real chance—that I may finally, actually, completely get to know her. In the fifteen years we’ve been living together, I’ve already gotten to know her better than any other human being. I know what sort of risqué jokes will make her giggle, and what kinds will turn her right off. I know how important her ceramics are to her. I know that she’s not really serious when she says she doesn’t like horror films, but that she is absolutely serious when she says she doesn’t like 1950s rock music. And I know how bright she is—brighter than me, in a lot of ways; after all, I’ve never been able to do The New York Times crossword.

  “But, despite all that, I still know only the tiniest fraction of her. Surely she’s every bit as complex as I am. What does she really think about my parents? About her sister? Does she ever silently pray? Does she really enjoy some of the things we do together, or just tolerate them? What thoughts does she have that, even after all this time, she still doesn’t yet feel comfortable enough to share with me? Sure, we exchange little bits of ourselves every time we interact, but as the decades and centuries go by, we’ll get to know each other better. And nothing pleases me more than that.”

  Peter frowned. “But people change. You can’t take a thousand years to get to know an individual any more than you can take a thousand years to get to know a city. Once all that time has elapsed, the old information will be completely obsolete.”

  “And that’s the most wonderful thing of all,” said the sim, not pausing at all this time. “I could spend forever with Cathy and never run out of new things to learn about her.”

  Peter leaned back in his chair, thinking. Sarkar took the opportunity for a turn at the mike. “But isn’t immortality boring?”

  The sim laughed. “Forgive me, my friend, but that’s one of the silliest ideas I’ve ever heard. Boring, when you’ve got the totality of creation to comprehend? I’ve never read a play by Aristophanes. I’ve never studied any Asian language. I don’t understand anything about ballet, or lacrosse, or meteorology. I can’t read music. I can’t play the drums.” Laughter again. “I want to write a novel and a sonnet and a song. Yes, they’ll all stink, but eventually I’ll learn to do them well. I want to learn to paint and to appreciate opera and to really understand quantum physics. I want to read all the great books, and all the trashy ones, too. I want to learn about Buddhism and Judaism and Seventh Day Adventists. I want to visit Australia and Japan and the Galapagos. I want to go into space. I want to go to the bottom of the ocean. I want to learn it all, do it all, live it all. Immortality boring? Impossible. Even the lifetime of the universe may not be enough to do all the things I want to do.”

  PETER AND SARKAR were interrupted by a call from Sarkar’s receptionist. “Excuse me,” said the little Asian man from the screen of the video phone, “but there’s a long-distance video call for Dr. Hobson.”

  Peter lifted his eyebrows. Sarkar motioned for him to have a seat in front of the phone. “I’m here, C
hin.”

  “Patching through,” he said.

  The screen image changed to show a middle-aged red-haired woman: Brenda MacTavish, from the Glasgow Chimpanzee Retirement Home. “Ah, Peter,” she said, “I called your office and they said you’d be here.”

  “Hi, Brenda,” Peter said. He peered at the screen. Had she been crying?

  “Forgive the state I’m in,” she said. “We just lost Cornelius, one of our oldest residents. He had a heart attack; chimps normally don’t get those, but he’d been used for years in smoking research.” She shook her head in wonder at the cruelty. “When we first spoke, of course, I dinna know what you were up to. Now I’ve seen you all over the telly, and read all about it in The Economist. Anyway, we got the recordings you wanted. I’m sending the data over the net tonight.”

  “Did you look at it?” said Peter.

  “Aye,” she said. “Chimps have souls.” Her voice was bitter, as she thought about her lost friend. “As if anyone could have ever doubted that.”

  THE SIM’S FIRST THOUGHT was to tamper with the prescription database at Shoppers Drug Mart, the pharmacy chain used by Rod Churchill. But despite repeated attempts, he couldn’t get in. It was frustrating, but not surprising: of course a drugstore would have very high security. But there was more than one way to skin a gym teacher. And there were lots of low-security computer systems around …

  Since the 1970s, immigration officials at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport had used a simple test whenever someone arrived claiming to be a Torontonian but whose papers weren’t entirely in order. They asked the person what the phone number was of a famous local pizza delivery chain. No one could live in Toronto and not know that number: it appeared on billboards, countless newspaper and TV ads, and was sung incessantly as a jingle in radio commercials.

  As the decades passed, the chain widened its array of deliverable meals, first adding other Italian dishes, then submarine sandwiches, then barbecued chicken and ribs, then burgers, and, eventually, a whole range of cuisine from the pedestrian to the exotic. Although they’d kept their trademark phone number, they eventually changed their name to Food Food. But even back in its humble pizza days, the company prided itself on its state-of-the-art computerized ordering system. All orders were placed through the one central phone number and then transferred to the whichever of the over three hundred stores throughout Greater Toronto was closest to the caller’s home, allowing the food to be delivered within thirty minutes—or the customer got it for free.