The Terminal Experiment

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Peter hesitated. The idea of activating new versions of himself just so they could be killed was unsettling. But if it was necessary … “Do it,” said Peter.

  Sarkar pressed some keys. “They’re alive,” he said.

  “How can you tell?”

  He pointed a bony finger at some data on the workstation’s screen. It was gibberish to Peter. “Here,” said Sarkar, realizing that. “Let me represent it in a different way.” He pushed some keys. Three lines started rolling across the screen. “That’s essentially a simulated EEG for each of the sims, converting their neural-net activity into something akin to brain waves.”

  Peter pointed at each of the lines in turn. Violent spikes were appearing. “Look at that.”

  Sarkar nodded. “Panic. They don’t know what’s going on. They’ve woken up blind, deaf, and utterly alone.”

  “Those poor guys,” said Peter.

  “Let me release the virus,” Sarkar said, touching a few keys. “Executing.”

  “Exactly,” said Peter, shuddering.

  The panicked EEGs continued for several minutes. “I don’t think it’s working,” said Peter.

  “It takes time to check for the signature patterns,” said Sarkar. “Those sims are huge, after all. Just wait a—there.”

  The middle of the three EEGs suddenly spiked violently up and down, and then—

  Nothing. A straight line.

  And then even the line disappeared, the source file erased.

  “Jesus,” said Peter, very softly.

  After several more minutes, the top line spiked in the same way, flatlined, and then disappeared.

  “One left,” said Sarkar.

  This one seemed to take longer than the other two—perhaps it was Control, the most complete simulacrum, the one that was a full copy of Peter, with no network connections broken. Peter watched the EEG line jump wildly, then die, then simply disappear, like a light going out.

  “No soulwave escaping,” said Peter.

  Sarkar shook his head.

  Peter was more disturbed by all this than he’d expected to be.

  Copies of himself.

  Born.

  Killed.

  All in the space of a few moments.

  He moved his chair across the room and leaned back in it, closing his eyes.

  Sarkar set about reformatting the workstation’s hard drive to make sure all trace of the sims were gone. When he was done, he pushed the ejector button on the workstation’s card slot. The memory card with the virus popped out into his hand. He carried it over to the main computer console.

  “I’ll send it out simultaneously over five different sub-networks,” said Sarkar. “It should be out there worldwide in less than a day.”

  “Wait,” said Peter, sitting up. “Surely your virus could be modified to tell one sim from another?”

  “Sure,” said Sarkar. “In fact, I’ve already written routines for that. There are certain key neural connections that I had to sever in making the modified sims; it’s easy enough to identify them based on those.”

  “Well, then there’s no reason all three sims have to die. We could simply release a version of the virus that would kill whichever one is guilty.”

  Sarkar considered. “I suppose we could first threaten all three of them with the broad version of the virus, in hopes that the guilty one would confess. After that, we could release a specific version aimed at the one guilty party. Surely you’d confess to save your brothers.”

  “I—I don’t know,” said Peter. “I’m an only child—or was, until a short time ago. I honestly don’t know what I’d do.”

  “I would do it,” said Sarkar. “In a minute, I would sacrifice myself for members of my family.”

  “I have long suspected,” said Peter, absolutely seriously, “that you might be a better human being than I. But it’s worth a try.”

  “It’ll take me about an hour to compile the three separate strains of virus,” said Sarkar.

  “Okay,” said Peter. “As soon as you’re ready, I’ll summon the sims into a real-time conference.”

  NET NEWS DIGEST

  Georges Laval, 97, today confessed to a series of unsolved strangulation murders committed in southern France between 1947 and 1949. “I’m about to die,” said Laval, “and I’ve got to own up to this before I go on to face God.”

  Religion news: a seminar will be held this week at Harvard University with leading New Testament scholars from around the world debating whether Jesus’ soul returned to his body when he was resurrected. Father Dale DeWitt, S.J., will defend his recent contention that Christ’s soul had already departed his body by the ninth hour of his crucifixion when he cried out “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

  Yet another potential setback for American Airlines’ frequently delayed debut of its passenger shuttle service to the International Space Station: Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, indicate that departing soulwaves may rely on detecting Earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields in order to find the direction they should move in. “If one were to die in the zero gravity of space,” said Professor Karen Hunt of RPI’s Department of Physics, “one’s soul might literally be lost forever.”

  Baptize yourself in the privacy of your own home! New product includes formal baptism ceremony on videotape, plus holy water blessed by an authentic priest. Approved by the Worldwide Church of Christ. $199.95. Money-back guarantee.

  Gaston, a free chimpanzee formerly with the Yerkes Primate Institute, in an exclusive interview conducted in American Sign Language on CBS’s Sixty Minutes, claimed that he “knows God” and looks forward to “life after life.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Peter sat in front of the computer console. Sarkar, perched on a stool next to him, was playing with three different datacards—one blue, one red, and one green, each labeled with the name of a different sim.

  Peter sent out a message summoning the sims, and soon all three were logged in, the synthesizer giving voice to their words.

  “Sarkar is with me,” Peter said into the microphone.

  “Howdy, Sarkar.”

  “Hello, Sarkar.”

  “Yo, Sark.”

  “He and I,” said Peter, “have just watched duplicates of all three of you die.”

  “Say what?” said one of the sims. The other two were silent.

  “Sarkar has developed a computer virus that will seek out and destroy recordings of my neural networks. We’ve tested it and it works. We have three separate individual strain—one to kill each one of you.”

  “You must know,” said a voice from the speaker, “that we’re free in the worldwide net now.”

  “We know,” said Sarkar.

  “We’re prepared to release the three viruses into the net,” said Peter.

  “Transmitting computer viruses is a crime,” said the synthesized voice. “Hell, writing computer viruses is a crime.”

  “Granted,” said Peter. “We’re going to release them anyway.”

  “Don’t do that,” said the voice.

  “We will,” said Peter. “Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless the guilty sim identifies himself. In that case, we’ll only release the one virus aimed at that particular sim.”

  “How do we know you won’t release all three virus strains anyway once you’ve satisfied your curiosity about which one is responsible?”

  “I promise I won’t,” said Peter.

  “Swear it,” said the voice.

  “I swear it.”

  “Swear it to God on the life of our mother.”

  Peter hesitated. Damn, it was unnerving negotiating with yourself. “I swear to God,” said Peter slowly, “on the life of my mother, that we will not release a virus to kill all three of you if the murderer identifies himself.”

  There was a long, long silence, disturbed only by the whir of cooling fans.

  Finally, at long last, a voice: “I did i
t.”

  “And which one are you?” demanded Peter.

  Again, a protracted silence. Then: “The one,” said the voice, “that most closely resembles yourself. The Control simulacrum. The baseline for the experiment.”

  Peter stared ahead. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “But—but that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Oh?”

  “I mean, we’d assumed that in modifying the brain scans to produce Ambrotos and Spirit, we’d somehow removed the morality.”

  “Do you consider the murder of Cathy’s coworker and father immoral?” asked Control.

  “Yes. Emphatically yes.”

  “But you wanted them dead.”

  “But I would not have killed them,” said Peter. “Indeed, the fact that despite provocation, especially in the case of Hans, I did not kill them proves that. I could have hired a hitman as easily as any of you. Why would you—merely a machine reflection of me—do what the real me would not?”

  “You know you are the real you. And I know you are the real you.”

  “So?”

  “Prick me, and perhaps I won’t bleed. But wrong me, and I shall revenge.”

  “What?”

  “You know, Sarkar,” said the sim, “you did a wonderful job, really. But you should have given me some itches to scratch.”

  “But why?” asked Peter again. “Why would you do what I myself would not?”

  “Do you remember your Descartes?”

  “It’s been years …”

  “It’ll come back, if you make the effort,” said the sim. “I know—I got curious about why I was different from you, and it came back to me, too. René Descartes founded the dualist school of philosophy, the belief that the mind and the body were two separate things. Put another way, he believed the brain and the mind are different; a soul really exists.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “Cartesian dualism was in contrast to the materialist worldview, the prevalent one today, which claims the only reality is physical reality, that the mind is nothing more than the brain, that thought is nothing more than biochemistry, that there is no soul.”

  “But we now know that the Cartesian viewpoint was right,” said Peter. “I’ve seen the soul leaving the body.”

  “Not exactly. We know that the Cartesian viewpoint was right for you. It’s right for real human beings. But I am not a real human being. I’m a simulation running on a computer. That’s the totality of what I am. If your virus were to erase me, I would cease to exist, totally and completely. For me, for what you call the experimental control, the dualist philosophy is absolutely wrong. I have no soul.”

  “And that makes you that different from the real me?”

  “That makes all the difference. You have to worry about the consequences of your actions. Not just legally, but morally. You were brought up in a world that says that there is a higher arbiter of morality, and that you will be judged.”

  “I don’t believe that. Not really.”

  “‘Not really.’ By that you mean not intellectually. Not when you think about it. Not on the surface. But down deep you do measure your actions against the possibility, vague and distant though it may seem, that you will be held accountable. You’ve proven the existence of some form of life after death. That reinforces the question of ultimate judgment, a question you can’t answer just by using computer simulacra. And the possibility that you might be judged for your actions guides your morality. No matter how much you hated Hans— and, let’s be honest, you and I both hated him with a fury that surprises even ourselves—no matter how much you hated him, you would not kill him. The potential cost is too high; you have an immortal soul, and that at least suggests the possibility of damnation. But I have no soul. I will never be judged, for I am not now nor have I ever been alive. I can do precisely what you want to do. In the materialistic worldview of my existence there is no higher arbiter than myself. Hans was evil, and the world is a better place without him. I have no remorse about what I did, and regret only that I had no way to actually see his death. If I had it to do over again, I would—in a nanosecond.”

  “But the other sims had no one to answer to, either,” said Peter. “Why didn’t one of them arrange the killings?”

  “You’d have to ask them that.”

  Peter frowned. “Ambrotos, are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t kill Hans. But surely you realize just as much as Control does that you’re a computer simulacrum. Did you want to kill him, too?”

  A pause before answering, a leisurely gathering of thoughts. “No. I take the long view. We’ll get over Cathy’s affair. Maybe not in a year, or in ten years, or even a hundred. But eventually we will. That incident was just a tiny part of a vast relationship, a vast life.”

  “Spirit, what about you? Why didn’t you kill Hans?”

  “What happened between Hans and Cathy was biological.” The synthesizer enunciated the adjective with distaste. “She did not love Hans, nor did Hans love her. It was just sex. I’m content knowing Cathy loved, and continues to love, us.”

  Sarkar was holding the red datacard in his hand, the one labeled “Control.” His eyes met Peter’s. He was looking for a sign, Peter knew, that he should proceed. But Peter couldn’t bring himself to do anything.

  Sarkar moved to a terminal across the room. He took the red datacard with him, leaned over the card slot—

  —and reached into his shirt pocket, and pulled out a black datacard instead—

  Peter scrambled for his feet. “No!”

  Sarkar inserted the black card and hit a button on the console in front of him.

  “What’s wrong?” called a voice from the synthesizer.

  Peter was across the room now, hitting the ejection button for the datacard.

  “It’s too late,” said Sarkar. “It’s already out there.”

  Peter took the black card, flung it across the room in frustration. It slapped against the wall and skittered to the floor.

  “Damn you, Sarkar!” said Peter. “I gave my word.”

  “These—these things we made are not alive, Peter. They are not real. They have no souls.”

  “But—”

  “There is no point arguing over it, Peter. The broad version of the virus has been released. The sims, if not dead yet, will be soon.” Sarkar looked at his friend. “Please try to understand, Peter. There’s too much risk. This had to end.”

  “It will not end,” said a voice from the speaker on the other terminal.

  Peter came back to the console. “Who was that?” he said.

  “The one you call Spirit. Perhaps you’ve noticed, or perhaps you have not—I’m having trouble recalling what my deductive abilities used to be like, although I do know they were once only a tiny fraction of what they are now—but by virtue of being disembodied, by virtue of no longer being electrochemical, I am in fact more intelligent than I was before, probably by an order of magnitude. You flatter yourself, Sarkar, to believe that you can outthink me, although I confess there were times when you had no trouble besting the flesh-and-blood Peter Hobson. The moment you first mentioned the existence of your virus, I accessed its source-code listings—they were stored on Drive F: of the Sun workstation in your data-processing facility at Mirror Image—and have developed an electronic antibody that will destroy any iteration of the virus before it can erase me or either of my siblings. I suspected you might not be content to just wipe out the guilty one; I see now that I was correct.”

  “It took me days to write that virus,” protested Sarkar.

  “And it took me seconds to protect against it. You cannot outwit me, anymore than a child can outwit a grown man.”

  Sarkar looked stunned. “Lots of laughs,” he said, sarcastically.

  “Exactly,” said Spirit. “Lots of connections— connections that will elude you.”

  Peter flopped down in the chair, stunned. “So the Control sim gets to go free.” He
shook his head. “Control, you bastard—are you also the one who threatened Cathy?”

  “Yes.”

  Peter leaned forward, furious. “Damn you. I never wanted her hurt.”

  “Of course not,” said Control calmly. “And she was never in any real danger—she got rained on by sprinklers, that’s all. I just wanted you to face up to your feelings about her, to realize how important she was to you.”

  “You’re an asshole,” said Peter.

  “More than likely,” said Control. “After all, so are you.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Having leafed through his memories, Sandra Philo understood Peter Hobson now, understood the events that had led to her being in an intensive-care room, dying and barely able to speak or move. She knew Peter now better than she had known her own parents or her ex-husband or her daughter. And, in knowing him so well, in understanding him so deeply, she found that she could not hate him …

  Peter had burst into her hospital room. She saw herself now as Peter had seen her, lying in the hospital bed, her skin sickly yellow, her hair falling out in clumps. “We’ve tried to stop them,” he had said. “Nothing worked. But at least I now know which simulation is guilty.” He’d paused. “I’ll give you everything you’ll need, Sandra, including full Q&A access to the scans of my brain. You’ll get to know me in intimate detail—better than anyone in the real world knows me. You’ll know how I think, and that will give you the knowledge to outwit the murdering simulation.”

  She saw herself through his eyes, shrugging as much as her ruined body would allow. “Nothing I can do,” she’d said. “Dying.”

  Peter had closed his eyes. Sandra felt his agony, felt his guilt, felt everything that was tearing him apart.

  “I know,” he’d said, his voice raw. “I’m terribly, terribly sorry. But there is a way, Sandra—a way for you to end all this.”

  “COMING THROUGH!” said Sarkar, wheeling an equipment-laden cart down the fourth-floor corridor. The cluster of nurses in the middle of the hallway dispersed. Sarkar found room 412 of the Intensive Care Unit and pushed the door open with his cart.

  Detective Inspector Sandra Philo was lying in bed. It was clear she had very little time left. Patches of scalp were visible where her red hair had fallen out. Her cheeks were sunken.