“See?” said Porter. “A very simple rule. But from out of such rules, complex patterns appear on the grid. For instance, you can get boomerang shapes made up of a consistent pattern of squares that actually move across the grid—every time the basic rule is applied, the whole cluster might move one space to the left. You also get shapes that devour other shapes, and big shapes that split into two smaller, but otherwise identical shapes.” We all watched as these things happened on the screen.
“Now, consider that,” said Porter. “The patterns are responding to stimulus in the form of the rule that is being applied. Well, response to stimulus is one of the standard criteria for life. The patterns are moving, and, again, movement is also one of the standard criteria of life. The patterns are devouring other patterns, and, again, eating is a third standard criterion of life. And the patterns are reproducing, and, of course, doing that is also one of the standard criteria of being alive. Indeed, cellular automata are one form of what’s long been called artificial life, although I’d argue that the word ‘artificial’ is unnecessary. They are life.”
“And so your Mindscan process copies the patterns of cellular automata?” said Deshawn.
“Indirectly, yes.”
“Indirectly? If there’s a chance that you’ve missed something—”
“No, no. We get the information copied with absolute fidelity, but it’s physically impossible to actually scan the configuration of cellular automata.”
“Why?”
“Well, as I said, we record the configuration of the neural networks—the positions and interconnections of every neuron in your brain—but we don’t record the pattern of cellular automata on the surface of the microtubules within those neurons. See, tubulins—the little kernels that make up the microtubule cob—can flip between two states, which I’ve been showing as black and white in the graphics, here, so that they make the complex animated patterns you’ve seen on the surface of the microtubule. But the two states aren’t really black and white. Rather, they’re defined by where an electron happens to be—in the tubulin’s alpha subunit pocket, or in its beta subunit pocket.” He smiled at the jurors. “I know, I know—it sounds like gobbledygook. But the point is that this is a quantum-mechanical process, and that means we can’t even theoretically measure the states without disturbing them.”
Porter turned back to face Deshawn. “But as our quantum fog condenses into the nanogel of the brain, it is briefly quantally entangled with the biological original, and so the cellular-automata patterns precisely match. And, if microtubules are indeed the source of consciousness, then that’s when the consciousness is transferred to the duplicate. Of course, the entanglement quickly breaks down, but by the time it does the rules are being applied again in the new cellular automata, so that, to go back to our earlier metaphor, the squares are flipping back and forth from state to state.”
Porter looked now at Karen, sitting at the plaintiff’s table. “So whatever it is that makes up consciousness—neural nets, or even cellular automata on the surface of microtubules—it doesn’t matter; we make a total, complete, perfect transference of it. The new artificial brain is as self-aware, as real, as conscious as the old—and it is every bit the same person. That lovely woman sitting there is, without a doubt, Karen Bessarian.’
Deshawn nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Porter. No further questions.”
I’d been told we’d never be allowed any contact with people back on Earth, but for once Immortex was bending its vaunted rules. As I sat in a chair in Dr. Ng’s office, the chiseled, bearded face of Pandit Chandragupta looked up at me from her desktop monitor. He was now back in Baltimore—on Earth, lucky bastard—while I was still stuck up here on the moon.
“You should have said something sooner, Mr. Sullivan,” he said. “We can only treat that which is brought to our attention.”
“I’d just had brain surgery,” I replied, exasperated. “I thought headaches went with the territory.”
I waited while my words reached Earth and his made their way back to me. “No, these should not be occurring. I suspect they will indeed go away. The cause, I think, is a neurotransmitter imbalance. We have radically altered the blood-flow pattern to your brain, and I suspect that reuptake is being interfered with. That can certainly cause headaches of the type you’ve described. Your brain will adjust; everything should go back to normal eventually. And, of course, Dr. Ng, I’m sure, will prescribe something for the pain, although that will treat only the symptom, not the underlying cause.” He shifted his gaze to look at the woman seated next to me. “Dr. Ng, what have you got there?”
“My thought would be to give him Toraplaxin, unless you can think of a reason why it’d be contraindicated in this case.”
A pause again, then: “No, no. That should be fine. Say 200 milligrams to start, twice a day, yes?”
“Yes, yes. I’ll get our dispensary to—”
But Chandragupta, down on Earth, hadn’t intended to yield the floor, I guess, because he was still talking. “Now, Mr. Sullivan, there can be other problems associated with large fluctuations in neurotransmitter levels. Depression, for one. Have you felt any of that?”
Anger was more like it—but my anger, of course, was fully justified. “No.”
The time-lag pause, then a nod, and more words: “Another possibility is sudden mood swings. Have you experienced any signs of that?”
I shook my head. “No.”
The pause, then: “Any paranoia?”
“No, nothing, doctor.”
Chandragupta nodded. “Good, good. Let us know if anything like that develops.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
The trial had recessed for lunch—or at least for a noontime break; neither Karen, nor I, nor Malcolm ate anything, of course, although Deshawn downed two cheeseburgers and more Coke than I would have thought it possible to fit in a human stomach. And then it was Maria Lopez’s turn to take a whack at Porter.
Porter seemed implacable, although, as always, his eyebrows were in constant motion. He also had the advantage of being a good half-meter taller than Lopez; even seated, he seemed to loom over her.
“Mr. Porter,” she began—but Porter cut her off.
“Not to go into picayune distinctions,” he said, smiling at the judge, “but it’s Dr. Porter, actually.”
“Of course,” said Lopez. “My apologies. You said you are an employee of Immortex, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Are you also a stockholder?”
“Yes.”
“How much is your Immortex stock worth?”
“About eight billion dollars, I think.”
“That’s a lot of money,” said Lopez.
Porter shrugged amiably.
“Of course, it’s all on paper, isn’t it?” asked Lopez.
“Well, yes.”
“And if Immortex stock takes a hit, your wealth could evaporate.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” said Porter.
Lopez looked at the jury. “And, so, naturally, you want us to believe that the Immortex process actually does what you say it does.”
“I’m sure if you have experts that disagree with me, you will call them to the stand,” said Porter. “But, in fact, I do believe—as a person, as a scientist, and as an engineer—everything I testified.”
“And yet you testified that you don’t know what consciousness is.”
“Correct.”
“But you’re sure you’re copying it,” said Lopez.
“Also correct.”
“Faithfully?”
“Yes.”
“Accurately?”
“Yes.”
“In its entirety?”
“Yes.”
“Then, tell us, Dr. Porter, why don’t your robots sleep?”
Porter was visibly flustered; his eyebrows were even quiescent for a moment. “They’re not robots.”
“Well,” said Lopez, all people sleep. But I’ll withdraw the term. Wh
y is it that reinstantiations of human minds in your artificial brains do not sleep?”
“It’s—it’s not necessary.”
“So we’ve been told by Ms. Bessarian—who doubtless read that in your sales literature. But what is the real reason they don’t sleep?”
Porter looked wary. “I—I’m not sure I understand.”
“Why is it that your uploads don’t experience sleep from time to time?”
“It’s as I said: they don’t need it.”
“Perhaps that’s true. But they don’t need to have sex, either—after all, they cannot reproduce via that method, or any other. And yet your uploads are prepared to have intercourse, aren’t they?”
“Well, people enjoy sex, and—”
“Some people enjoy sleeping, too,” said Lopez.
Porter shook his head. “No, they don’t. They enjoy being restored to their previous state of vigor, but sleep in and of itself is just unconsciousness.”
“Is it, Doctor? Is it really? What about dreaming? Is that an unconscious state?”
“Well …”
“Come now, Doctor. This can’t be a novel question in your field. Is dreaming an unconscious state?”
“No, it’s not generally classified as such.”
“Deep, dreamless sleep with steady delta waves and no rapid-eye movement is an unconscious condition, isn’t that right? But dreaming is not, correct?”
“Well, yes.”
“There’s a sense of self in dreaming; there’s an awareness.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“You’re the brain specialist, Dr. Porter, not I. Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“Dreaming is a form of conscious activity, correct?”
“Well, yes.”
“Because there is an identifiable sense of self, correct?”
“Yes.”
“But your robots—forgive me, your reinstantiations—don’t dream?”
“Not all forms of conscious activity are desirable, Ms. Lopez. It’s my fervent hope that none of our reinstantiations experience terror or have a panic attack, either—and those are conscious states.”
“Oh, very clever, Dr. Porter,” said Lopez, making a show of clapping her hands slowly. “Bravo! But, in fact, you’re avoiding the question. Dreaming is different from other conscious states in that it’s entirely internal, isn’t that true?”
“More or less.”
“Much more than less, I think. Dreams are the very essence of our inner life, no? Real consciousness, the kind that the biological Karen Bessarian had, included the ability to conceptualize internally in the absence of environmental cues. And your creations fail to have that sort of consciousness.”
“That’s not—”
“Isn’t it true that you don’t let them sleep, because were they to sleep, they’d expect to dream, and when they awoke, and remembered nothing of their dreams, it would soon be apparent that they did not dream? That the most intimate part of our inner lives—dreaming—is completely absent? Isn’t that true, Dr. Porter?”
“I … it’s not like that.”
“But if they were, in fact, accurate copies, they would dream, wouldn’t they? You said they’d answer any question exactly as a human would—that’s what you won that fancy medallion for, right? But what if you asked them about their dreams?”
“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill,” said Porter, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
Lopez shook her head. “Oh, I’d never dream of doing that. But I would dream of other things—unlike that construct over there pretending to be Karen Bessarian.”
“Objection!” said Deshawn. “Your honor!”
“Save it for closing arguments, Ms. Lopez,” said Herrington.
Lopez bowed graciously toward the bench. “Of course, your honor. No further questions.”
CHAPTER 26
I went back to my rooms—I couldn’t bring myself to call it my “home”—at High Eden, and took the first of the Toraplaxin pills. I then lay down on my couch, rubbing my forehead, hoping the medicine would help. At my spoken command, the image of Lake Louise disappeared from the wall and was replaced by the CBC News. I wondered if Immortex monitored what shows we were watching. I wouldn’t be surprised. Why, I bet they even—
Suddenly my heart jumped so hard it felt like I’d been kicked in the sternum.
They were doing a story about Karen Bessarian.
The other Karen Bessarian.
“Bookmark this!” I snapped into the air.
The dateline superimposed on the screen said, “Detroit.” A white female reporter was standing outside an old building there. “A bizarre battle is taking place in this Michigan courthouse,” said the woman. “The son of bestselling novelist Karen Bessarian, author of the megapopular DinoWorld series, is being sued by an entity claiming to be Karen Bessarian …”
I watched, riveted. It took me a moment to recognize Karen: she’d opted for a substantially younger face. But, as footage of the trial ran, it was clearly her—or, at least, the uploaded version of her.
And her claim to being the legal, actual Karen Bessarian was being challenged in the courts! The reporter wasn’t offering an opinion about which way she thought the trial would go, but the mere fact that this charade might come tumbling down buoyed me immensely. Surely Brian Hades couldn’t keep me here much longer! Surely he’d have to let me return to Earth, let me resume my old life! To do anything else, why, that’d be tantamount to holding me hostage …
“The plaintiff calls Tyler Horowitz,” said Deshawn, rising.
I could see Karen shifting uncomfortably in her seat next to where Deshawn was now standing.
Tyler looked defiant in the witness stand, as Deshawn began his questioning. “Mr. Horowitz, your advocate somehow knew your mother’s personal identification number. Did you have a hand in that?”
“Umm, I, ah, I take the Fifth.”
“Mr. Horowitz, it’s not a crime to know someone else’s PIN. If they’re careless enough to make it discoverable, that’s their problem, not yours. Unless, of course, you’ve used it to fraudulently gain access to your mother’s funds, in which case, of course, your assertion of your Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination should stand. Is that your wish?”
“I haven’t touched a cent of my mother’s money,” said Tyler, sharply.
“No, no, of course not,” said Deshawn, who waited the perfect beat before adding, “Yet.”
Lopez was on her feet. “Objection, your honor!”
“Sustained,” said Herrington. “Watch it, Mr. Draper.”
Deshawn tipped his shaved head toward the bench. “My apologies, your honor. Mr. Horowitz, if you want me to leave your ability to dip into your mother’s bank account alone, I will.”
“Damn it, you’re twisting everything,” said Tyler. “I—look, years ago, my mother mentioned that her PIN was the extension number of where she’d worked when she was pregnant with me; she’d worked in fund-raising for Georgia State University then. When Ms. Lopez asked, I called the archivist there, and got him to look up an old internal telephone directory. So you see, nothing nefarious.”
Deshawn nodded. “Of course not.” He was quiet for several seconds, and finally Judge Herrington prompted him. “Mr. Draper?”
Deshawn started to sit down, as if finished with his direct, but before his bottom touched his chair, he rose again, and said, in a ringing voice, “Mr. Horowitz, do you love your mother?”
“I did, yes, very much,” he said. “She’s dead now.”
“Is she?” said Deshawn. “You don’t recognize that the woman sitting here beside me is, in fact, your mother?”
“That’s not a woman. It’s not a human being. It’s a robot, a machine.”
“And yet it contains the memories of your mother, does it not?”
“Supposedly.”
“Are those memories accurate? Have you ever noticed her failing to get the details ri
ght about something that you yourself also recall?”
“No, never,” said Tyler. “The memories are indeed accurate.”
“And so in what way is this being not your mother?”
“In every way,” said Tyler. “My mother was flesh and blood.”
“I see. Now, let me ask you some specific questions. Your mother, as we’ve learned, was born in 1960—and so grew up with twentieth-century dentistry.” Deshawn shuddered at the barbaric thought. “I understand that she has fillings in some of her teeth, correct?”
“Had fillings,” said Tyler. “Yes, I believe that’s true.”
“Now, the mere fact that parts of the natural enamel of her teeth had been replaced with something called ‘amalgam,’ an alloy of silver and mercury—mercury!—didn’t make her any less your mother, in your eyes, correct?”
“Those fillings were all done before I was born.”
“Yes, yes. But you didn’t view them as alien or foreign. They were just part of your mother.”
Tyler narrowed his eyes. “I suppose.”
“And I understand your mother also had a hip replacement fifteen years ago.”
“That’s true, yes.”
“But the fact that her hip was artificial—that didn’t make her any less your mother, did it?”
“No.”
“And I understand your mother has no tonsils—more twentieth-century barbaric medicine, ripping out parts of the body willy-nilly.”
“That’s correct, yes,” said Tyler. “She had no tonsils.”
“But that lack didn’t make her anything less than a complete human in your eyes, did it?”
“Well—no. No, it didn’t.”
“And, isn’t it true that your mother had laser-k surgery to modify the shape of her eye, in order to improve her vision?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Did that change your view of her?”
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