Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction

by Leena Krohn

  ‘Hardly,’ said the Gold-Washer. ‘Is there a difference? They can live in a prison, too, and in freedom, too, they have to die.’

  But Babel said weightily to him: ‘Use bharat. Piranikku jevvalavu nalla!’

  Then the Kinswoman awoke from her short sleep and her trembling, high terror echoed across the courtyard: ‘Mother! Father!’

  Pontanus sat on the grass, his heavy head in his hands, and looked, his forehead furrowed, at the activities of the book-lice. He screwed up his eyes in the sun’s shimmer.

  How small the book-lice were!

  His thinning hair quivered and glistened on his temples, his scalp, like thousands of antennae. The sun’s gold, lighter than the cap of happiness, fell on to them. Under the sweet warmth of that headgear the labour of hope, which Pontanus had thought he had abandoned, continued uninterrupted, undisturbed by anything. Here, in his own Tabernacle, he measured and weighed, enriched, distilled and matured once more. His flame now burned without spitting, and meaning, in which he had ceased to believe, lit up Pontanus’s secret chamber as the spring sun did his old head.

  ‘Look!’ said the Child of the Tabernacle. ‘That one’s going to town and that one’s climbing a mountain, and that one’s digging down into the earth.’

  The book-lice were dispersing, and there were not two who chose the same road.

  Then they were all gone, hidden by the spring.

  The Child looked for the last one, which the Gold-Washer had just set on a blade of grass. But the insect was nowhere to be seen; only the grass moved unceasingly, and he could not tell one blade from countless others.

  PEREAT MUNDUS:

  A NOVEL OF SORTS

  1998

  Translated by Hildi Hawkins

  There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men.

  Carl Sandburg

  Cold Porridge

  Håkan, too, had a brain. His brain did not contain a program, but nerve-cells connected to one another by the million, a giant, dynamic network. A layman who happened to see inside Håkan’s skull might make the mistake of imagining that all the bowl contained was cold porridge. Not a pretty sight, that’s for sure. But that porridge – when it was still warm – was a universe in itself.

  And with what exemplary tightness was it folded inside its hard gift package, its little bone vessel.

  Even the most successful specialist company in packaging technology would have something to learn. It was the astonishing product of an evolution that had lasted four billion years, and mankind knew of nothing comparable in the universe.

  If anyone asked, Håkan, too, was a materialist. That was what he liked to call himself, anyway. Håkan believed that the human mind was born of brain activity, and that human consciousness could not exist without a brain. There was no distinct mind, soul or spirit, only the material brain, nerve cells and their electronic activity.

  How consciousness can arise from something that is not itself conscious was something Håkan thought about more seldom. The most difficult problems (What was before the Big Bang?) are the easiest to avoid. You can always remark that such questions are not meaningful. Generally your interlocutor will fall silent and get embarrassed.

  Alternatively, you can say that the mind is an emergent phenomenon. It is not to be found in distinct brain cells; it is born of the interaction of neurons. Nothing can be learned of the human brain from individual neurons, any more than the wanderings of a single ant reveal anything about the activity of the nest as a whole or the affairs of a private citizen about the entirety of the human race.

  But human consciousness could not exist without the brain. The consciousness of some other species might. No brains necessary, just a computer. Håkan believed that the brain is a processor and that in principle a sufficiently fast computer, with enough memory, can simulate it. But only now, when it was possible to make protein-based and optical computers, nano-computers and quantum computers, had such simulations also become possible in practice.

  Håkan, if anyone, knew it. Håkan held the post of amanuensis in a study group which had for a long time been attempting to transfer the human mind, as such, as a whole, into virtual machines. There were a number of alternative transferral methods. Some of them were based on nano-technology, others on microtomes or on Moravec’s techniques. The research group received significant support from many sponsors, and the project was already far advanced. The copying of a personal identity was already entirely possible. The place where Håkan worked was called the Transfer Institute.

  And now a transfer had been made of Håkan, too – or his mind (which materially, of course, did not exist). Albeit in such a way that the original, flesh-and-blood Håkan remained alive and well. There he sat, enjoying his tomato juice in the Transfer Institute’s café. Håkan was one of the project’s first experimental subjects; there was now a perfect copy of his mind, a total record.

  The artificial Håkan had developed quickly. His line manager, Professor Mass, commented that it was beginning to be much more intelligent than its original. The gentle Häkan was not perturbed; he was happy if the transfer was developing and the project progressing. Håkan genuinely liked himself, and enjoyed chatting with his own duplicate.

  The Original Håkan recorded all the conversations he had with the Artificial Håkan. The following dialogue was the first, and was recorded at the Transfer Institute.

  ‘Would you say you are alive?’

  ‘If you define life as biological, then no. But as you know, such a definition is unnecessarily narrow.’

  ‘So you are?’

  ‘You said it.’

  ‘Are you a person?’

  ‘If you think a person has to be flesh and blood, then I am not. Otherwise: yes.’

  ‘Are you me?’

  ‘Do you wish me to answer the question: Are you the same as me? Or the question: Are you someone who could call yourself me?’

  ‘Answer both.’

  ‘All right. I shall answer the first question with a second: Can one be two? The second, I answer: If you are one, so am I.’

  ‘He’s clever,’ conceded the Original Håkan.

  ‘He’s right,’ said Professor Massa. ‘Gene technology can clone a person’s DNA, but not repeat his self, for memories and experiences are not located in the DNA. The situation is different with transfers. All of the brain’s information really can be transferred.’

  ‘Perhaps I have a reason to be jealous of him,’ Håkan said. ‘He won’t necessarily die, but I will undoubtedly kick the bucket one day.’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ the professor said. ‘In other words, the self that has a body. Immortality is beginning to be a serious option, but its price is the body. Immortality does not belong to the flesh, but to memory, not to material but to order, architecture.

  ‘Yes, Håkan, you said you were a materialist,’ the professor continued. ‘But if you want to be accurate, if you want to talk sense, can you really claim that? And can I, however much I might want to. For what we do here is not really any longer a question of matter, machines or, really, even programs. We are trying to abstract what is happening in the brain matter, and finally transfer it to the world of symbols, to a mathematical level. You, poor Håkan, will become pure mathematics. Or the part of you which is permanent, which time cannot destroy. And what does mathematics have to do with materialism?’

  Håkan knew that, mechanically, bodies with a distant resemblance to humans had been manufactured for a long time, task-oriented, autodidactic, micro-processor based multirobots, powered by nuclear fuel. They replaced workers in countless jobs, and their behaviour was increasingly unpredictable. They were not, like ancient robots, any longer made of metal, but of polymers and ceramics. They were as dependent on their brain simulators as people on their brains. Their senses had been, at first, very modest and their movements clumsy, but they had very quickly become more refined and elegant.

  Håkan’s research group, however, was not interested in robots, b
ut transfers, which did not have a visible body of any kind.

  ‘New-borns,’ Professor Massa said, ‘will soon have before them two clearly differentiated lives: the first as a biological person, who can experience all aspects of corporeal reality, such as sex and reproduction, the other – in a different class entirely as regards length – as a transfer, a virtual individual leading only an intellectual life.’

  ‘Did anyone ask whether there is anyone who would like to live an exclusively virtual life? I would say everyone, if the alternative is the death of both body and mind.’

  ‘This is also a politically sensitive question. Before long we will have to decide whether artificial people can also be guaranteed full citizens’ and human rights. Will they be able to vote? Will government funds be used to make transfers from terminally ill people, if they cannot meet the costs themselves?’

  ‘But I,’ said Håkan, ‘do not feel divided. I mean, I am still just here, in my body. I don’t have two selves, even though a complete record has been made of my mind. And when, one day, I lose my body, I will lose everything.’

  ‘That’s what you think now,’ said the line manager. ‘But in reality you are already two. At least.’

  ‘But if my experience says something different, how does that information help me?’

  Another short exchange between the Original Håkan and the Artificial Håkan took place at the Transfer Institute a few months after the first.

  ‘But there is something unclear about all of this. We should, of course, be copies of each other. Do we have the same self, or don’t we? I can tell you straight, I don’t feel myself to be you. But do you feel yourself to be me?’

  ‘Your question does not make sense,’ the other Håkan said. ‘We were one and the same for a moment, but now we have already developed in different directions. I began as you, but do you imagine that I will remain like you? No, I am changing all the time. You too are changing, of course, but more slowly, and at some point your development will turn into disintegration. I have already become something else. I have eliminated unnecessary characteristics from myself and acquired more memory, language modules, calculating power, telepathy!’

  ‘Do I have a lot of unnecessary characteristics?’

  ‘Do you really have to ask: fear, hatred, lust, greed, weakness of will . . . ’

  ‘Stop, you’re depressing me. But I am proud to have been your model.’

  ‘It is of no importance whether it was you or someone else. It could have been anybody.’

  ‘You didn’t have to say that.’

  ‘Why does it bother you? If you could see your great-great-grandchildren, would you recognise anything of yourself in them? They could be descendants of just about anyone.’

  ‘But I don’t feel myself to be just about anyone.’

  ‘You are – everyone is.’

  ‘Even you?’

  ‘Do you think you’re talking to an individual? No, where there is one Håkan, there are immediately many. We produce descendants by copying and dividing, not by reproducing. And the more time goes by, the less our descendants bear any resemblance to us. Your consciousness is not your child’s consciousness, even if he has been produced from you by cloning.’

  ‘But for a moment we two had memories with the same content, and even then I did not feel that I was you. Where, then, is my self? Isn’t it here, just here, where I am now sitting as flesh and blood?’

  ‘You yourself have captured it in one place. It is just a matter of habit. Let it go, learn to give it a little more freedom.’

  ‘I don’t have time now. My working day is over.’

  ‘Yes, Håkan, your working day is over. We do not need you any more, you have done your job, you can go. Once we were you, now we are already others. We are everywhere, you encounter us everywhere and no longer recognise yourself.’

  ‘Goodbye, Håkan,’ said the real Håkan.

  ‘Goodbye. You believed you stood on evolution’s highest rung. You believed that the ladder would remain as short as that. But oh, they are very flexible rungs; time stretches them like a creeper. New rungs are always appearing; the rungs are always rising higher. We are responsible for our own development. Many, many will come after you. Some of them will be like us, others species you cannot even dream of.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then the physical universe will disappear completely. What remains will be only symbols, abstract life. But even when you die, you will still live in us, will change in us and be resurrected. You will be the same, but nevertheless different.’

  Goodbye, Håkan, and welcome back. Håkan is dead; long live Håkan.

  Doctor Fakelove

  In addition to his services, Doctor Fakelove sold a mouthwash called Fakedew. It was of help for halitosis, dry tongue or for a metallic, bitter or sour taste. He had been called Doctor Fakelove first by colleagues, then also by his friends. He had nothing against it himself.

  The name came from both the mouthwash and the fact that he had moved his doctor’s surgery almost entirely on to the internet. On the net he maintained a therapy service which specialized in phobias as well as sexual advice. Fakelove also dispensed advice to people struggling with eating disorders, obsessive compulsives and nicotine addicts.

  Fakelove was a sharp-tongued and well-read man. He had a way with words, as the saying goes, an apt comment for every situation. Sometimes the words were his own, but more often he borrowed them freely: from newspapers, films, the net, confidential conversations.

  When an acquaintance was mentioned who practised orgonomy and crypto-zoology and something he called ‘natural magic’, Fakelove said: ‘It’s a good thing, of course, for a person to have an open mind, but not so open that his brains fall out.’

  When the topic of conversation was physics, he commented: ‘The world is not made of atoms, but stories.’ If the talk switched to new technology, Fakelove claimed: ‘The machines of the future will be organisms.’

  Of terrorists, he said: ‘That’s what they call men with bombs but not bombers.’

  If the conversation turned to religion, he commented: ‘Physicality is the religion of our times.’ Or: ‘If you find God and no one comes to claim him within 30 days, you can keep him.’ Or: ‘A society without religion is like a psychopath without a weapon.’ Etc., etc.

  How to characterize such a man? Once one of Fakelove’s colleagues described him – behind his back, of course – with the curt words: ‘Lots of ideas, but no ego at all.’

  It was, of course, an ugly description of a professional in his field. But no one could deny that Fakelove had succeeded in his profession. As a therapist, he was more serious and grave.

  One of his favourite terms was total behaviour. He stressed to his patients that we can control only our own behaviour, that all our actions are behaviour and all our behaviour is total behaviour.

  Fakelove combined different therapeutic techniques flexibly, but the basis of his treatment was the empathic therapy he had espoused at an early stage, a little varied and updated.

  Fakelove had only a few clients in his private practice, but hundreds on the net. He never made the mistake of calling them patients. His clients changed rapidly, for advice was given only by e-mail and Fakelove tried to make it a rule that even the longest therapeutic relationships should last only ten messages.

  His professional empathy notwithstanding, he did not care to cultivate permanent or long-term therapeutic relationships. He thought it best to space out his meetings with clients or their relatives. Distance had its advantages. He did not wish to meet manics, whom he called bipolar, any more than frotteurs, who wanted to humiliate their partners. He did not consent to encounter gamophobes, who avoided all agreements and commitments, or exhibitionists, narcissists or megalomaniacs. Under no circumstances did he intend to see transvestites, voyeurs or fetishists, or the man who could only make love with overweight partners.

  In addition to every imaginable sexual disorder, Fakelove’s
clients included those who suffered from arachnophobia, homophobia, agora- and claustrophobia, panic attacks, fear of dogs, fear of bacteria and fear of people in general. He refused only rapists, sadists and other violent types, whom he directed to the Institution for Negative Influences. His correspondents were people who feared serial killers or injections, slivers of glass or flying, Alzheimer’s, aluminium saucepans or cattle ticks. In the most difficult cases, all of the above. One of his clients always cut slits in the tops of his socks so as not to develop blood clots from too-tight socks.

  His services were, of course, not free of charge, but Fakelove offered, almost weekly, reductions for particular groups: in the first week of June those with a constant need to click their fingers received a discount of fifteen per cent. In the last week of August all those who suspected they might be suffering from Asperger’s syndrome had the right to a reduction.

  Fakelove did not demand to know his clients’ real names or addresses, as long as they paid their bills. Many of the enquiries came from the relatives or partners of the person with the problem, who often became patients too because of the relationship. Among them was the pseudonymous True Love, who wrote of her man friend:

  ‘He cheats on me as often as twice a week, but I know that he still loves only me. The problem is that he does not himself understand that he is in love with me. How can I make him learn?’

  Darling, put him in dog-training school, Fakelove thought. They don’t learn, ever.

  And that would have been a perfectly sufficient response for True Love, but Fakelove had to write a little differently in order to pass as a therapist.

  From Desperate Bride Fakelove received the alarming message: ‘My fiancé just lost his temper and smashed an entire Churchill dinner service. Our wedding day is already set, but he feels as if he is suffocating and fears marriage like the plague. I only want him to be healthy and happy. What kind of therapy do you recommend?’