The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

  Now I heard a loud snore. I tickled Wendy’s ribs. As always, she rolled slightly but did not awaken. The snoring stopped.

  “Our role,” Malinkov droned on, “is merely to enforce the following objectively quantifiable principles:

  “(1) Total freedom of the press.

  “(2) Universal free trade.

  “(3) The legal right of every human being to full protection under the law, with all laws uniformly enforceable upon all individuals throughout all regions.

  “(4) The constitutional responsibility of every…”

  Glancing at my photon-microscope screen, I noticed in the sample a dendritic texture I’d never been able to link. Maybe something to do with muscle constriction?

  That was when I stopped hearing Malinkov’s words or noticing his face in front of me. I became too engrossed in the work, my only reliable escape from grief that could otherwise still overwhelm.

  Human gray matter had become, to me, the most fascinating substance in the universe, a marvel of complexity. I tried to fathom the sheer magnitude: Each brain actually contained about six-hundred quintillion of molecular machines, an amount ten times greater than the number of connections required to link all eight billion people on Earth to every other person! No wonder humans had always refused to think of themselves as mere machines. The brain was far too complex to fathom in those terms. It would be like describing the Sistine Chapel as an amalgam of wood and paint.

  The study of the brain was nanotech’s critical frontier. Scientists had long ago discredited the tenets of vitalism: that humans possessed souls apart from physical matter. The brain’s enormous complexity was now deemed finite, and therefore ultimately fathomable.

  Near-death experiences, for example, had been synthesized decades earlier by carefully depriving volunteers’ brains and eyes of blood flow. These had been categorized into seventeen distinct types. Now AI machines could actually predict which type of “NDE” any individual’s rods and cones would project into their ebbing consciousness.

  There was no apparent reason why evolution would have induced dying human brains to dream of the tunnel and the white light. Yet so many of them did. Perhaps, I thought, NDEs were simply one of humanity’s many gifts from God.

  The newest science continued to suggest that personality, identity, and all long-term memory were recorded through the continuous reorganization of protein molecules in the brain’s neurons. Perhaps some short-term memory was energy-related, or recorded at the subatomic level, but that hypothesis seemed unlikely. Probably, every facet of human thought boiled down to the quintillions of protein molecules, or at worst, the atoms composing them. Hopeful tidings indeed for anyone who happened to lie frozen in soft-nite.

  August 14, 2051

  —Lunar Power Systems announces plans to build 41,600 additional collectors on the moon’s surface. LPS already supplies 29% of the earth’s energy needs, and the new construction will double its capacity. CEO Rob Campbell explains, “The moon’s an ideal environment for collecting solar energy, since it has no atmosphere and the iron and silicon needed for solar power collectors are abundant.” Once collected, the energy is converted to microwaves and transmitted to receivers on Earth.—Reacting to public uproar over six irreversible deaths caused so far this year by intoxicated or sleep-deprived pilots, Raytheon announces it will add competence sensors to all its gyrocopters within 24 months. The new devices will prevent the machines from starting unless the operator is sober, drug-free, and alert.

  Now forty-five years of age, I’d never felt pressure to marry. Of course I knew the AI shrinks would blame such inconstancy on childhood loss of both parents and the inevitable fear-of-attachment such tragedies produce. My few relationships with women had been pleasant, tender, and brief.

  But Wendy was a different story.

  For sixteen years I’d brought Wendy-girl everywhere with me: to the lab, to meetings, to conferences around the world. Giants of international science were no doubt bemused by the spectacle of this well-known nanoscientist, on hands and knees on the conference floor, coaxing my golden retriever to walk on hind legs, or to lift her snout and sing along with me.

  That is, until the day, three months ago, when the decay of her advanced age had forced me to place her in biostasis.

  Coincidentally, Wendy’s suspension took place the day after the Armstrong Aging Models had been released. The foremost software genius of the twenty-first century had spent the previous two decades working with an array of state-of-the-art AI machines to produce the most intricate programming in history, allowing biologists and other researchers to perform quantifiable cyberspace experiments on human aging.

  Of course, Randall Petersen Armstrong’s work was readily applicable to canines, a nuance not lost on me.

  Even before Wendy’s suspension, I’d begun studying the phenomenon of aging with an obsession matching my previous delvings into nanotech and neuroscience. My own appointment with death-or-ice seemed too distant to warrant preparation—my present prebiostasis life expectancy was at least 110—but the impending demise of my first golden retriever had filled me with an overwhelming sense of urgency.

  Over the previous half century, even as medical knowledge expanded exponentially, the fundamental theories of aging had changed little. Most specialists still believed that aging arose from a combination of three factors:

  (1) Ionization damage to molecules and DNA caused mainly by natural oxidation, primarily free radicals. Most of this damage was redressed by the body’s natural systems, but over time the cumulative damage to DNA diminished this ability to self-repair, and eventually overwhelmed it.

  (2) Hormonal decline, and degradation of body tissue through processes such as glycation, when proteins and surplus sugars combine to form a crust that can block arteries, stiffen joints, and pollute organs and other vital structures.

  (3) A natural aging “clock” built into all mammals. After a certain number of cell divisions, telomeres would shorten, rendering cells incapable of further reproduction. Many decades earlier, scientists had hoped that this seemingly simple phenomenon was the root cause of cellular death. But, unfortunately, it was merely one symptom of what turned out to be an astonishingly complex problem.

  I considered myself qualified to work on anti-aging research, since nanotech seemed the most promising vehicle for overcoming all three of aging’s presumed causes. The body was, after all, a machine, not unlike a very complicated computer.

  To repair a damaged computer, a technician needed only to identify the defective parts, remove them, rebuild or replace them, then put them back where they belong. No other scientific discipline seemed equal to the task. Imagine trying to accomplish computer repair using chemicals (medicines), or tools a billion times larger than the parts being replaced (microsurgery). Yet pharmacology and microsurgery remained the only tools available to fix a damaged “human machine.”

  I reasoned that eventually nanotech, in tandem with ever-advancing AI systems, would change that. And somehow, I would be part of it. In fact, the day the Truth Machine trillionaire had released the Armstrong Aging Models, I obtained a copy of the software and set to work.

  Three days after Wendy’s suspension, I purchased another golden retriever puppy. Sure that someday Wendy-girl would emerge from the ice, I wondered whether my affection for this new pet would ever match the love I’d felt for my first. Upon Wendy’s reanimation, how would I divide my love between the two? Would they love one another as sisters, or would there be tantrums of jealousy?

  After careful consideration, I decided to name my new, second puppy—what else?—Wendy.

  June 3, 2064

  —Avon Cleaner’s landmark location on Lover’s Lane in Dallas Texas reopens as a 20th century clothing museum. The dry-cleaning establishment closed its doors nearly two decades ago, a casualty of the pervasiveness of self-cleaning apparel.—After 16 months of difficulties and delays, the supersonic elevator to WASA’s orbiting Copernicus-6 space obs
ervatory is finally declared operational. Because the fusion-powered hoverstation remains in perfect sync with the Earth’s rotation, WASH AIs deemed Copernicus 6 the ideal first recipient of this ground-breaking technology. The 96-mile edifice, composed almost entirely of carbon-based nanotubes, twelve times stronger and eight times lighter than steel, is by far the tallest structure in the world.

  I turned to Edgar Phillips, my operations manager, and began grilling him. Here I was, fifty-eight years old, never married, as driven and obsessed with work as I’d been at any time during my life-yet also hoping for an excuse, any excuse, to procrastinate. “How close is the Villard Group in Geneva to doing a cat?”

  “Just had a minor setback. I figure at least six more months.”

  Good. “What about Rostanov in St. Petersburg? They solve the axonial transport problem yet?”

  He nodded slowly. “Stephanie knows one of the principal investigators. Says they’re very close to a breakthrough. She couldn’t tell whether that meant a week or ten weeks, though.”

  “And that Microsoft spin-off in Melbourne?” I asked him.

  “I’m worried about them. They’ve been quiet, too quiet, for nearly a month.”

  “Oh, crap. You’re not making this any easier for me.”

  “It’s your call, Trip,” Edgar said.

  I held my (second) Wendy-girl close. As she snuggled in my arms, she discharged a sound that was part sigh, part grunt, the very essence of contentment.

  How could I do this? I thought. Then: How could I not? The “subject” had to be well-taught, with a wide range of responses and a significant recognition-range of vocabulary. It was also best that the subject be of a certain age, with all the inevitable costs to brain and body.

  I rocked Wendy II in my Roswell chair. So little time was left. So little time. Thirteen years ago she’d come to me at seven weeks of age, a frolicky vessel of joy. I’d loved her well and had found the gift more than requited.

  But there was really no choice, was there? Not when we’d come this far…

  The first hurdle we nanoscientists had cleared in our efforts to reverse biostasis was the challenge of building machines that could operate at liquid nitrogen temperatures. This problem had been solved by assembling the first machines from molecules more versatile than the proteins they were designed to repair.

  Other protein machines had been programmed to work like enzymes, bonding molecules together one by one, assembling exact, predesigned metallic and ceramic structures. The first such machines, assembled in 2029 by the Zyvex Corporation of Dallas Texas, were operated by simple on-board computers with tiny but flawless memories and ten million times human speed-of-thought.

  By 2037, Zyvex engineers had constructed the first disassemblers, composed of a mechanical computer roughly six microns cubed, the equivalent volume of about one-fortieth of a human cell, and a casing about sixty times larger than the computer, with eight arms composed of iron atoms. The first disassemblers could remove molecules from a structure, layer by layer, recording the identity and content of each molecule.

  Redundant systems limited the pace of the earliest nanomachines to a glacial 2,500 molecules per second, too slow for cellular repair by a factor of at least two orders of magnitude (100 times). At that speed, except at subfreezing temperatures, decay would occur faster than repair, and the machines were too large for deployment in frozen organisms. Yet at least two million removals per second seemed achievable.

  In 2043, the first replicating assemblers had been built. These devices could not only assemble molecules based on instructions received via radio-like devices from any compatible AI system, but could also reproduce themselves. Parts were never a problem, since atoms do not require premanufacturing. Thus assemblers had suddenly become cheap—virtually free—spurring an explosion of nanotech research and efficiencies.

  Still, numerous safeguards had to be built into the original programming to prevent anyone from building anything dangerous, and these safeguards had slowed the machines’ performance. They’d also kept their sizes too large for most medical applications.

  Throughout the successive twenty years, nanomachines had gradually become faster and smaller. Over the past half decade, I’d assembled my own team of eight nanotech and AI engineers and scientists, mostly fellow VR phobes. Perhaps I’d already recognized that the amount of work a person could accomplish tended to be inversely proportional to his or her VR consumption. More likely, I simply gravitated toward people who were most like myself.

  After five years, we’d built a series of replicators and disassembler/assemblers that seemed suited for biostasis reversal; the first units capable of both dis- and reassembly that were also small enough to penetrate frozen bloodstreams. The D/A’s each contained a tiny computer capable of holding slightly more information than human DNA does. These in turn were connected by acoustic communication devices to a network of much larger central computers.

  By law, we’d been required to design replicators devoid of survival skills, and with redundant systems that automatically repaired mutations. The machines could reproduce themselves, build the D/A’s to specification, and nothing more. It was an irritating law, I’d often mused, but a sensible one.

  Also required, and equally rational, was that all nanotech experiments be performed in palm-sized sealed laboratories using Molecular Reconstruction Software. We could hook these mini-workshops into any two-way screen and actually build every nanomachine we designed, using an array of sample atoms and molecules right there in the lab. We could even insert genetic materials to test the machines. But if anyone tried to unseal the lab to remove the physical machines, electrical charges would vaporize the contents. Thus we could design and test nanomachines, but the machines themselves could never be unleashed until their capabilities had been analyzed and cleared.

  Last week, the World Government Nanotech Agency had finally issued a permit and instruction code enabling us to build the replicators outside our sealed labs.

  Now we were ready to rock and roll.

  Gathered in my living room, the entire team watched the demonstration.

  “Wendy,” I said in what I hoped was an uninflected conversational voice, but I did not—could not—look at her. “May I have my remote activator, please?”

  Wendy II slipped from my arms, found the device under a pillow, picked it up between her teeth, and gently placed it on my knee.

  “Wendy, I’d love a ginger ale.” I activated the remote.

  The dog’s footfalls receded. I heard the gentle whirring of the kitchen assembler as it spun mostly hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon atoms into my favorite formula. Then I heard the custom tray being assembled and lowered to dog level, and Wendy’s paws against the floor as she returned, tray in jaw. Within sixty seconds, the refreshment had been delivered.

  I placed the soda on the nearest wall shelf, lifted Wendy-girl into my arms, and walked stiffly toward the door. We all took the first elevator down to the lab. Although the ride lasted nearly forty seconds, I would be unable to recall any of it. I can assure you that such unreality is wholly unfamiliar to a man grounded in the world of absolutes.

  Later that evening I would view the AudioVid record, and watch in horror as my assistant, Paul Adler, had reached to take the dog from my arms. I would see and hear myself—me, Trip Crane—bellowing, “No!” then releasing her despite my own protestations. Such lapse of decorum; such lapse of memory. Had it really happened?

  Wendy II now lay frozen to minus 196 degrees C, where she would remain for twenty-five more days, perhaps having already suffered irreversible brain damage. Because she’d trusted me. Had I betrayed that trust over a mere theory?

  June 28, 2064

  —Nanoreplicators devour several acres of Central Park in New York City! What begins as an apparent suicide by a professor of nanotechnology, recently denied tenure by New York University, escalates into a crisis of world concern. At 7:48 P.M. EST, Dr. Robert Kermel simply lies down in full vie
w of public cameras, swallows a pill of approximately one cubic centimeter, and vows his intention to “kill myself and take the entire goddamned world with me.” Hundreds of citizens report the incident, and when medevacs arrive minutes later, Kermel is already dead. Two emergency response workers and one bystander are irretrievably consumed in a puddle of foraging replicators, and a second bystander, whose affected limbs were amputated in time, will need to have both arms and a leg regrown. All others in the vicinity appear to have escaped, at least for now. Meanwhile, the lake of “gray goo” continues to spread quickly, doubling in volume every sixteen minutes, while World Government nanocrisis officials attempt to devise an emergency strategy.—Compaq stock soars after the company demonstrates, to rave reviews, its new Artificial Bloodhound documentation upgrade. The product can be added to any wristband PC to record odors as accurately as PCs now document by sight and sound. AB continuously samples air in the vicinity, and analyzes it, recording scents, trace elements, even DNA from people who exhale near the user. Experts predict that most new wristband PCs will carry the enhancement by early next year.—The World Parenting Department issues its one millionth license, since the agency’s inception in 2045, to raise clones of deceased relatives. Most such permits have been granted within the last four years.

  The work on Wendy II began promptly at Six A.M., although most of us had been there since five-thirty. As for me, I’d been unable to sleep at all during the previous twenty-three hours. Today’s outcome would be critical, and there were simply too many unknowns. Notions of potential disasters had jolted my brain like dozens of tiny alarm clocks.