Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

  "I’m sorry to have to bother you, George, but we’ve well, we’ve got an emergency. Your old body has taken a hostage here in Paradise Valley."

  "What? My God . . ."

  "He’s saying he will kill the woman if we don’t let him talk to you."

  George wanted to do the right thing, but . . .

  But he’d spent weeks now trying to forget that another version of him still existed. "I..um…I guess it’d be okay if you put him on."

  Shiozaki shook his head. "No. He won’t take a phone call. He says you have to come here in person."

  "But . . . but you said . . ."

  "I know what we told you during counseling, but, damn it, George, a woman’s life is at stake. You might be immortal now, but she isn’t."

  Rathburn thought for another few seconds, then: "All right. All right. I can be there in a couple of hours."

  The robot-bodied George Rathburn was shocked by what he was seeing on the vidphone in Shiozaki’s office. It was him just as he remembered himself. His soft, fragile body; his graying temples; his receding hairline; his nose that he’d always thought was too large.

  But it was him doing something he never could have imagined doing holding a surgical blade to a woman’s throat.

  Detective Lucerne spoke toward the phone’s pickups. "Okay," he said. "He’s here. The other you is here."

  On the screen, Rathburn could see his shed skin’s eyes go wide as they beheld what he’d become. Of course, that version of him had selected the golden body but it had only been an empty shell then, with no inner workings. "Well, well, well," said G.R. "Welcome, brother."

  Rathburn didn’t trust his synthesized voice, so he simply nodded.

  "Come on down to the hospital," said G.R. "Go to the observation gallery above the operating theater; I’ll go to the operating theater itself. We’ll be able to see each other and we’ll be able to talk, man to man."

  "Hello," said Rathburn. He was standing on his golden legs, staring through the angled sheet of glass that overlooked the operating room.

  "Hello," said GR-7, looking up. "Before we go any further, I need you to prove that you are who you say you are. Sorry about this, but, well, it could be anyone inside that robot."

  "It’s me," said Rathburn.

  "No. At best it’s one of us. But I’ve got to be sure."

  "So ask me a question."

  GR-7 was clearly prepared for this. "The first girl to ever give us a blowjob."

  "Carrie," said Rathburn, at once. "At the soccer field."

  GR-7 smiled. "Good to see you, brother."

  Rathburn was silent for a few moments. He swiveled his head on noiseless, frictionless bearings, looking briefly at Lucerne’s face, visible on a vidphone out of view of the observation window. Then he turned back to his shed skin. "I, ah, I understand you want to be called George."

  "That’s right."

  But Rathburn shook his head. "We you and I, when we were one shared exactly the same opinion about this matter. We wanted to live forever. And that can’t be done in a biological body. You know that."

  "It can’t be done yet in a biological body. But I’m only forty-five. Who knows what technology will be available in the rest of our of my lifetime?"

  Rathburn no longer breathed so he could no longer sigh. But he moved his steel shoulders while feeling the emotion that used to produce a sigh. "You know why we chose to transfer early. You have a genetic predisposition to fatal strokes. But I don’t have that George Rathburn doesn’t have that anymore. You might check out any day now, and if we hadn’t transferred our consciousness into this body, there would have been no immortality for us."

  "But we didn’t transfer consciousness," said GR-7. "We copied consciousness bit for bit, synapse for synapse. You’re a copy. I’m the original."

  "Not as a matter of law," said Rathburn. "You the biological you signed the contract that authorized the transfer of personhood. You signed it with the same hand you’re using to hold that scalpel to Dr. Ng’s throat."

  "But I’ve changed my mind."

  "You don’t have a mind to change. The software we called the mind of George Rathburn the only legal version of it has been transferred from the hardware of your biological brain to the hardware of our new body’s nano-gel CPU." The robotic Rathburn paused. "By rights, as in any transfer of software, the original should have been destroyed."

  GR-7 frowned. "Except that society wouldn’t allow for that, any more than it would allow for physician-assisted suicide. it’s illegal to terminate a source body, even after the brain has been transferred."

  "Exactly," said Rathburn, nodding his robotic head. "And you have to activate the replacement before the source dies, or else the court will determine that there’s been no continuity of personhood and dispose of the assets. Death may not be certain anymore, but taxes certainly are."

  Rathburn had hoped GR-7 would laugh at that, hoped that a bridge could be built between them. But GR-7 simply said, "So I’m stuck here."

  "I’d hardly call it ‘stuck,’" said Rathburn. "Paradise Valley is a little piece of heaven here on Earth. Why not just enjoy it, until you really do go to heaven?"

  "I hate it here," said GR-7. He paused. "Look, I accept that by the current wording of the law, I have no legal standing. All right, then. I can’t make them nullify the transfer but you can. You are a person in the eyes of the law; you can do this."

  "But I don’t want to do it. I like being immortal."

  "But I don’t like being a prisoner."

  "It’s not me that’s changed," said the android. "It’s you. Think about what you’re doing. We were never violent. We would never dream of taking a hostage, of holding a knife to someone’s throat, of frightening a woman half to death. You’re the one who has changed."

  But the skin shook his head. "Nonsense. We’d just never been in such desperate circumstances before. Desperate circumstances make one do desperate things. The fact that you can’t conceive of us doing this means that you’re a flawed copy. This this transfer process isn’t ready for prime time yet. You should nullify the copy and let me, the original, go on with your with our life."

  It was now the robotic Rathburn’s turn to shake his head. "Look, you must realize that this can’t ever work that even if I were to sign some paper that transferred our legal status back to you, there are witnesses here to testify that I’d been coerced into signing it. It would have no legal value."

  "You think you can outsmart me?" said GR-7. "I am you. Of course I know that."

  "Good. Then let that woman go."

  "You’re not thinking," said GR-7. "Or at least you’re not thinking hard enough. Come on, this is me you’re talking to. You must know I’d have a better plan than that."

  "I don’t see. . . ."

  "You mean you don’t want to see. Think, Copy of George. Think."

  "I still don’t . . ." The robotic Rathburn trailed off. "Oh. No, no, you can’t expect me to do that."

  "Yes, I do," said GR-7.

  "But . . ."

  "But what?" The skin moved his free hand the one not holding the scalpel in a sweeping gesture. "It’s a simple proposition. Kill yourself, and your rights of personhood will default back to me. You’re correct that, right now, I’m not a person under the law meaning I can’t be charged with a crime. So I don’t have to worry about going to jail for anything I do now. Oh, they might try but I’ll ultimately get off, because if I don’t, the court will have to admit that not just me, but all of us here in Paradise Valley are still human beings, with human rights."

  "What you’re asking is impossible."

  "What I’m asking is the only thing that makes sense. I talked to a friend who used to be a lawyer. The personhood rights will revert if the original is still alive, but the uploaded version isn’t. I’m sure no one ever intended the law to be used for this purpose; I’m told it was designed to allow product-liability suits if the robot brain failed shortly after transfer. But regardless, if you
kill yourself, I get to go back to being a free human." GR-7 paused for a moment. "So what’s it going to be? Your pseudolife, or the real flesh-and-blood life of this woman?"

  "George . . ." said the robot mouth. "Please."

  But the biological George shook his head. "If you really believe that you, as a copy of me, are more real than the original that still exists if you really believe that you have a soul, just like this woman does, inside your robotic frame then there’s no particular reason why you should sacrifice yourself for Dr. Ng here. But if, down deep, you’re thinking that I’m correct, that she really is alive, and you’re not, then you’ll do the right thing." He pressed the scalpel’s blade in slightly, drawing blood again. "What’s it going to be?"

  George Rathburn had returned to Shiozaki’s office, and Detective Lucerne was doing his best to persuade the robot-housed mind to agree to GR-7’s terms.

  "Not in a million years," said Rathburn, "and, believe me, I intend to be around that long."

  "But another copy of you can be made," said Lucerne.

  "But it won’t be me this me."

  "But that woman, Dr. Ng: she’s got a husband, three daughters . . ."

  "I’m not insensitive to that, Detective," said Rathburn, pacing back and forth on his golden mechanical legs. "But let me put it to you another way. Say this is 1875, in the southern US. The Civil War is over, blacks in theory have the same legal status as whites. But a white man is being held hostage, and he’ll only be let go if a black man agrees to sacrifice himself in the white man’s place. See the parallel? Despite all the courtroom wrangling that was done to make uploaded life able to maintain the legal status, the personhood, of the original, you’re asking me to set that aside, and reaffirm what the whites in the south felt they knew all along: that, all legal mumbo-jumbo to the contrary, a black man is worth less than a white man. Well, I won’t do that. I wouldn’t affirm that racist position, and I’ll be damned if I’ll affirm the modern equivalent: that a silicon-based person is worth less than a carbon-based person."

  "I’ll be damned,’" repeated Lucerne, imitating Rathburn’s synthesized voice. He let the comment hang in the air, waiting to see if Rathburn would respond to it.

  And Rathburn couldn’t resist. "Yes, I know there are those who would say I can’t be damned–because whatever it is that constitutes the human soul isn’t recorded during the transference process. That’s the gist of it, isn’t it? The argument that I’m not really human comes down to a theological assertion: I can’t be human, because I have no soul. But I tell you this, Detective Lucerne: I feel every bit as alive–and every bit as spiritual–as I did before the transfer. I’m convinced that I do have a soul, or a divine spark, or an élan vital, or whatever you want to call it. My life in this particular packaging of it is not worth one iota less than Dr. Ng’s, or anyone else’s."

  Lucerne was quiet for a time, considering. "But what about the other you? You’re willing to stand here and tell me that that version–the original, flesh-and-blood version–is not human anymore. And you would have that distinction by legal fiat, just as blacks were denied human rights in the old south."

  "There’s a difference," said Rathburn. "There’s a big difference. That version of me–the one holding Dr. Ng hostage–agreed of its own free will, without any coercion whatsoever, to that very proposition. He–it–agreed that it would no longer be human, once the transfer into the robot body was completed."

  "But he doesn’t want it to be that way anymore."

  "Tough. It’s not the first contract that he–that I–signed in my life that I later regretted. But simple regret isn’t reason enough to get out of a legally valid transaction." Rathburn shook his robotic head. "No, I’m sorry. I refuse. Believe me, I wish more than anything that you could save Dr. Ng–but you’re going to have to find another way to do it. There’s too much at stake here for my people–for uploaded humans–to let me make any other decision."

  "All right," Lucerne finally said to the robotic Rathburn, "I give up. If we can’t do it the easy way, we’re going to have to do it the hard way. It’s a good thing the old Rathburn wants to see the new Rathburn directly. Having him in that operating room while you’re in the overlooking observation gallery will be perfect for sneaking a sharpshooter in."

  Rathburn felt as though his eyes should go wide, but of course they did not. "You’re going to shoot him?"

  "You’ve left us no other choice. Standard procedure is to give the hostage-taker everything he wants, get the hostage back, then go after the criminal. But the only thing he wants is for you to be dead–and you’re not willing to cooperate. So we’re going to take him out."

  "You’ll use a tranquilizer, won’t you?"

  Lucerne snorted. "On a man holding a knife to a woman’s throat? We need something that will turn him off like a light, before he’s got time to react. And the best way to do that is a bullet to the head or chest."

  "But . . . but I don’t want you to kill him."

  Lucerne made an even louder snort. "By your logic, he’s not alive anyway."

  "Yes, but . . ."

  "But what? You willing to give him what he wants?"

  "I can’t. Surely you can see that."

  Lucerne shrugged. "Too bad. I was looking forward to being able to quip ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips.’"

  "Damn you," said Rathburn. "Don’t you see that it’s because of that sort of attitude that I can’t allow this precedent?"

  Lucerne made no reply, and after a time Rathburn continued. "Can’t we fake my death somehow? Just enough for you to get Ng back to safety?"

  Lucerne shook his head. "GR-7 demanded proof that it was really you inside that tin can. I don’t think he can be easily fooled. But you know him better than anyone else. Could you be fooled?"

  Rathburn tipped his mechanical head down. "No. No, I’m sure he’ll demand positive proof."

  "Then we’re back to the sharpshooter."

  Rathburn walked into the observation gallery, his golden feet making soft metallic clangs as they touched the hard, tiled floor. He looked through the angled glass, down at the operating room below. The slab-of-flab version of himself had Dr. Ng tied up now, her hands and feet bound with surgical tape. She couldn’t get away, but he no longer had to constantly hold the scalpel to her throat. GR-7 was standing up, and she was next to him, leaning against the operating table.

  The angled window continued down to within a half-meter of the floor. Crouching below its sill was Conrad Burloak, the sharpshooter, in a gray uniform, holding a black rifle. A small transmitter had been inserted in Rathburn’s camera hardware, copying everything his glass eyes were seeing onto a datapad Burloak had with him.

  In ideal circumstances, Burloak had said, he liked to shoot for the head, but here he was going to have to fire through the plate-glass window, and that might deflect the bullet slightly. So he was going to aim for the center of the torso, a bigger target. As soon as the datapad showed a clean line-of-fire at G.R., Burloak would pop up and blow him away.

  "Hello, George," said the robotic Rathburn. There was an open intercom between the observation gallery and the operating theater below.

  "All right," said the fleshy one. "Let’s get this over with. Open the access panel to your nano-gel braincase, and . . ."

  But GR-7 trailed off, seeing that the robotic Rathburn was shaking his head. "I’m sorry, George. I’m not going to deactivate myself."

  "You prefer to see Dr. Ng die?"

  Rathburn could shut off his visual input, the equivalent of closing his eyes. He did that just now for a moment, presumably much to the chagrin of the sharpshooter studying the datapad. "Believe me, George, the last thing I want to do is see anyone die."

  He reactivated his eyes. He’d thought he’d been suitably ironic but, of course, the other him had the same mind. GR-7, perhaps suspecting that something was up, had moved Dr. Ng so that she was now standing between himself and the glass,

  "Don’t try anything funny," said the
skin. "I’ve got nothing to lose."

  Rathburn looked down on his former self–but only in the literal sense. He didn’t want to see this . . . this man, this being, this thing, this entity, this whatever it was, hurt.

  After all, even if the shed skin wasn’t a person in the cold eyes of the law, he surely still remembered that time he’d–they’d–almost drowned swimming at the cottage, and mom pulling him to shore while his arms flailed in panic. And he remembered his first day at junior-high school, when a gang of grade nines had beaten him up as initiation. And he remembered the incredible shock and sadness when he’d come home from his weekend job at the hardware store and found dad slumped over in his easy chair, dead from a stroke.

  And that biological him must remember all the good things, too: hitting that home run clear over the fence in grade eight, after all the members of the opposing team had moved in close; his first kiss, at a party, playing spin the bottle; and his first romantic kiss, with Dana, her studded tongue sliding into his mouth; that perfect day in the Bahamas, with the most gorgeous sunset he’d ever seen.

  Yes, this other him wasn’t just a backup, wasn’t just a repository of data. He knew all the same things, felt all the same things, and–

  The sharpshooter had crawled several meters along the floor of the observation gallery, trying to get a clean angle at GR-7. Out of the corner of his robotic vision–which was as sharp at the peripheries as it was in the center–Rathburn saw the sharpshooter tense his muscles, and then–

  And then Burloak leaped up, swinging his rifle, and–

  And to his astonishment, Rathburn found the words "Look out, George!" emitting from his robotic mouth at a greatly amplified volume.

  And just as the words came out, Burloak fired, and the window exploded into a thousand shards, and GR-7 spun around, grabbing Dr. Ng, swinging her in between himself and the sharpshooter, and the bullet hit, drilling a hole through the woman’s heart, and through the chest of the man behind her, and they both crumpled to the operating-room floor, and human blood flowed out of them, and the glass shards rained down upon them like robot tears.