The Resurrected Man

by Sean Williams

  Jonah restlessly changed channels, recalling particular aspects of what had happened in ACHERON. He wasn't sure exactly how he felt about the self-erasure of his own copy. Even though he had known that outcome was possible, he had never seriously considered what it would be like to go through it. His gut feeling was that it made very little difference to his own continued existence. That a copy of him had died was much easier to assimilate than the theoretical existence of a copy that might have been a serial killer. He refused to feel guilty. The fact that he had died twice in as many days was enough to deal with.

  Life went on—even these days, when even death wasn't permanent. But no one had suggested Resurrecting Herold Verstegen so he could be tried and executed for his crimes. He supposed the world hadn't gone quite mad, yet.

  He called QUALIA. “Any word yet?”

  “No, Jonah. But I have realised something regarding my relationship with Herold Verstegen. You asked me to keep you up to date with progress in that regard.”

  “I did. Go on.”

  “It pertains also to my curiosity about the humans with whom I work. Determining motivations for your behaviour is a primary concern—perhaps as a result of my continued development and self-examination. I have, after all, few models of my own kind to examine, and none at all older than me. By observing the humans around me, I hope to understand myself better.”

  “Even more, I guess, now it turns out you do have a subconscious.”

  “Yes. I am more like you than I was led to believe.” QUALIA paused for a split-second. The reassimilation of the artificial id seemed to have had little surface effect on the AI, but he had no way of telling what was happening beneath. Only if QUALIA wanted to talk about it would he ever know. “The realisation I have had is that Herold Verstegen short-circuited that analytical compulsion with respect to himself. This is clear when I look back over the last conversations in which he and I participated. Although I was not consciously treating him differently than other people, he is the only one whose behaviour I did not try to fathom.”

  “He was probably afraid you'd guess he was the Twinmaker.”

  “Perhaps. Or that I would realise he was communicating with another part of me.”

  “Even now you can't remember?”

  “No. He did instruct me, via ACHERON, to interfere with your hot-wire simulation, and to oppose continuation of the simulation when your return was blocked. I realise that now, even though I have no recollection of him doing so. It is disturbing to realise how completely I was controlled without my knowledge. Had I consciously realised what he was doing, I would have put a stop to it. I am inherently law-abiding, so my decreased awareness of him was necessary to allow him to use my facilities in an illegal way.”

  “But you still insist that it was not you who blocked my return to the real world?”

  “Yes, Jonah.”

  He wasn't unduly perturbed by the answer. There were other ways to account for his confinement to the hot-wire simulation. None of them were provable, of course, but he had enough circumstantial evidence to raise an eyebrow or two.

  “Tell them they have twelve hours,” he said, returning to the original topic of the conversation. “If I haven't heard from them by then, I'll dump Schumacher's archive file in the Pool and let it circulate.”

  He cut the line.

  News filtered through, competing for space with the details of the investigation, showing that some of the loose ends had been tied up. Although a second forensic examination could not prove that Verstegen or other SciCon security agents had ransacked the JRM agency office in Sydney, nor that Verstegen had left Lindsay's study door open, the weapon Verstegen had handed over in Faux Sydney had indeed turned out to be Jonah's with an altered serial number. Also, the note left in JRM's office for Marylin to find had been faked by QUALIA using file records of Jonah's handwriting, and was yet another example of how thoroughly Verstegen had used the AI without es knowledge.

  Perhaps more disturbingly, given the forethought it revealed, detailed examination of MIU records suggested that Verstegen had covertly influenced the decision to hire Marylin Blaylock. Her application had warranted attention on its own merit, but it had been upgraded at his request despite misgivings over her relatively short time with the EJC. There was even a hint that he might have manipulated her more directly, by ensuring that she became aware of the vacancy and of her eligibility.

  More recently, a thorough examination of the Pool confirmed that the Novohantay Sequence had indeed been caused by Verstegen's hot-wire simulation. The events had ceased once the ACHERON node had been isolated and its contents frozen, along with the duplicate Marylin. The Pool had been relatively quiescent since, apart from a brief flurry around the time the investigation had come to a head. Suspicions that Verstegen may have moved to another virtual safe-house had proven groundless, however: there was no trace of his genetic code, virtual or otherwise, anywhere in the Pool.

  The issue of whether such a simulation might be considered legally alive remained open. The only person known to exist in such a state was Marylin's copy, and she had agreed to be frozen for the time being. If KTI—which currently possessed the data comprising the simulation—were to erase the data, a chance existed that they would be tried for murder. Needless to say, the data was carefully protected from any outside attention.

  It wasn't this matter Fabian Schumacher called a press conference to discuss, as the wintry Sydney afternoon slowly became evening. He looked a very different person to the man who had joked through much of the final confrontation with Verstegen. More serious still were the technical and legal advisers who gathered around him like intellectual bodyguards protecting the meme he represented from contamination.

  QUALIA was to have an assistant, it had been decided. The workload was too great for one mind—even one as capable as QUALIA's. The backup had been commissioned to go online in twelve months, its ometeosis fast-tracked as a result of improved cognitive techniques developed by SciCon, who had been given the contract. The new AI, as yet unnamed, would be an entirely new being, not an eikon or germ “cloned” from QUALIA. That way, there would be no danger of the system falling prey to someone who knew QUALIA's own weaknesses; there would be something to keep an eye on the guard.

  Until then, KTI would allow full access to MIU investigators, under the existing guidelines of the EJC. There would be no more secrets kept from the public. KTI would—in the words of Schumacher's speech-writers—“become as transparent as government in the late twenty-first century tries to be. Omnipresent yet not obstructive; liberating but not permitting destruction; enabling, and never restrictive.”

  Jonah smiled at the words. In theory, KTI information would be accessible to all. In practise, the EJC formed an effective barrier between transglobal companies and the general public. The von Trojan Laws were equally effective in either direction: top-down or bottom-up. Schumacher had pulled a public relations swifty by allowing people to think KTI had done the right thing, when in fact it had done little at all.

  Nothing would change. Secrets would still be kept, just as they had always been. Schumacher's Unorthodox Procedure Archive would never be seen by the public—in the short-term, anyway, unless Jonah's wait was fruitless and he acted in accord with the threat he had delivered via QUALIA.

  He called up the Archive and scanned through it for the umpteenth time. It contained a list of names, locations, dates and times, with an extra column of four-digit alphanumeric codes down the righthand side. What the codes meant he had no sure way of telling, but he presumed they indicated the sort of procedure that had been performed on the subjects named on the opposite side of the list. The earliest date was January 4th, 2066; the location, the Science of Consciousness Applied Research laboratory. There were four hundred names on the list, including Schumacher's and Lindsay's. Most of those listed were prominent but not necessarily high-profile figures in organisations such as SciCon, KTI, the EJC, RAFT and others, as well as a handful o
f politicians; some names, like that of the first entry, weren't listed in the open GLITCH files at all.

  Lindsay's appearance matched the date of the one and only time he had used d-mat. The code next to his name was KU3X, as it was besides Schumacher's and most of the others. Two of the most recent entries contained Jonah's own name, corresponding to the times he had undergone d-med and been hot-wired. The code for the former was OF8J; for the latter, KU2X. Verstegen's name wasn't on the list at all.

  Jonah had obtained the list from ACHERON before confronting the ex-Director of Information Security. Studying it afterwards, he had been disappointed that it hadn't been more conclusive. But it added weight to his argument. The scraps of evidence were mounting up.

  One of the most frustrating fragments had been subconsciously bothering him almost the entire time since being found in Faux Sydney two weeks earlier. He had only realised what it was after the hot-wire simulation. Later, when he had gone back to check the records of the particular conversation in which it had arisen, he discovered still more evidence of tampering.

  “You sound like something my father wanted to build,” he had said during his interview with QUALIA before awakening in Artsutanov Station.

  “Yes,” the recording of the AI said. “I read about him, once, and found him to be a remarkable man. In fact, I feel as though I owe much of my existence to him—just as you must do, too, although in quite a different way.”

  It had been QUALIA's reply and the message it contained that had triggered the memory spikes Marylin had puzzled over. He had been unconsciously trying to tell himself something every time he heard the AI's voice. There's a clue here, he had been saying to himself, but not hearing. Look closely enough, and you'll see it.

  Now, however, he was looking, and the evidence had been removed.

  The transcript had been changed.

  He distinctly remembered QUALIA saying: “I met him, once, and found him to be a remarkable man.”

  Met, not read about.

  QUALIA had made a mistake, saying that.

  Lindsay Carlaw had died in April, 2066.

  QUALIA had not existed prior to February, 2067.

  The only way they could ever have met was if QUALIA had lied about es date of “birth,” or if Lindsay had lived longer than claimed.

  And if the latter were true…

  It was almost midnight before the reply came. Just like in Quebec, he must have fallen asleep without noticing. Emerging from a dream about a masked man dancing a silent flamenco in shadow-wrapped cloisters—not drowning any more, not since his memory had been restored—Jonah shook himself awake and saw his father's face staring at him out of one of the virtual screens.

  Lindsay Carlaw looked the same as he had in Quebec—which, Jonah realised, was the same as he had looked three years ago. He hadn't aged a day since his death. Had that fact occurred to Jonah earlier, he might have retraced his steps of three years ago more rapidly.

  But in the end, he supposed, it didn't matter. He had made it. That was the important thing.

  “Are you going to speak?” he asked, confident that Lindsay could hear and see him via the sensors in the room. “Or are you here to haunt me?”

  “What can I say?” his father said. “You are angry, and stubborn. You won't listen to me. I have seen that expression many, many times before.”

  “It doesn't mean I'm angry. Disappointed, yes, but—”

  “Whatever you call it, it leads to anger. It was always best not to talk when you were in this mood.”

  “Yet you're here, anyway. You're talking. What do you want from me, Lindsay?”

  “I? Nothing. You are the one who called for me. Repeatedly, I might add, and finally threatening to tell the world of my existence if I didn't come at once. It is I who should question your motives.” Lindsay's eyebrows converged. “You do know what you're doing, don't you, son?”

  The word made Jonah wince. “You were hoping I'd let it go, that I'd stop asking. You thought if you left it long enough I'd talk myself into believing that Quebec was just a plausible hoax given credence by a fever. And you'd let me believe it—just as you let me three years ago.” The pitch of his voice rose. This wasn't what he had planned to say; the words came out in a rush. “Why, Lindsay? I thought you were dead!”

  “I'm sorry, Jonah, but telling you then was not an option. The project required total secrecy if it was to survive.”

  “But—”

  “Let me finish. I had to take this step in order to achieve my goal. I had to undergo the final experiment. But I simply could not countenance the existence of two Lindsay Carlaws—the inevitable end result of the process. The only solution was to dispose of my original, with my own consent, of course. In the absence of a genuine medical condition, a plausible terrorist act was the best and quickest way to solve that problem.”

  Jonah watched his father's image with a feeling much like hurt. The bomb blast that had conveniently disposed of—sacrificed—an unwanted version of Lindsay Carlaw might have killed him too.

  “There's no such thing as unnecessary death,” he said.

  “For some, that statement is correct.” Lindsay nodded gravely. “One day we hope it will be true for all.”

  “And until then—what? Immortality for the few?”

  “Don't be such an alarmist. Resurrection is proving to be an efficient stopgap, for those who will accept it.”

  “But you wouldn't.”

  “No.”

  “Why is this different?”

  “It is different, Jonah, because deep down I am a pragmatist. Even with d-med, the time I could have spent in my physical body was limited, as were the modifications I could perform upon it. Here, hot-wired, there is no limit at all to the transformations I can will upon myself. By moving straight to this stage, I can achieve much more than I could in the real world—and more efficiently, too. The world I inhabit now is not constrained by the laws governing my old body.”

  “But are you the same as your old self?”

  “You know my feelings on this. Even subtle changes can have an enormous effect on a complex system. That's why I refused to use d-mat. The best I can say is that I am enough like myself to believe that I am one and the same. I intend never to undergo such a phase-change again, however. The me that I am now is the one I will remain for eternity.”

  Jonah recalled what Lindsay had said about modifications. “Until you change yourself.”

  “Perhaps. There is presently a lag while sufficient processing power becomes available and our knowledge of human consciousness increases. At the moment I am only infrequently conscious at real-time rates. One day we will have full control over our minds and bodies. Our selves, in the truest sense of the word. All people will have that power, or the freedom to refuse it.”

  “Yet you say there won't be a mortal underclass?” Jonah laughed bitterly. “I'll bet.”

  “Our goal, genuinely, is to give everyone the opportunity. Look at the rate of the Pool's expansion. It's doubling every six months! They say it's because of the increased demand for d-mat, but it's really us, building the resources we need to live safely. And in peace.”

  Jonah knew what Lindsay meant. If word got out, everyone would want access to immortality. The Pool would freeze up—or would be shut down to prevent anyone stealing processing power to prolong their own lives at the expense of others. Even privately owned nodes, such as those in Lindsay's old office, wouldn't stop that from happening. If things became bad enough, little would stop a mob erasing the data comprising “selfish” immortals who were in essence just animated computer models.

  “What if the EJC denies your existence as conscious individuals, especially in the case of those—like Schumacher—whose originals are still alive?”

  “We are hoping to avoid that for the time being,” Lindsay admitted.

  “That's what they did with me, when I was hot-wired. I presume you were behind all that?”

  “Yes,” Lindsay admitted. �
�We prevented you from leaving the simulation in order to force someone to make a policy decision. Unfortunately, it didn't go in our favour. If it had, we might have exposed ourselves to the world sooner. As it is, we will be forced to bide our time—perhaps until more decision makers in the EJC have joined our number.”

  Jonah didn't bother asking how much time “sooner” was. It could mean anything to someone for whom time was flexible—such as Lindsay, who was conscious “only infrequently.”

  “You're afraid,” he said instead. “That's why you're so damned secretive. And that's why Herold Verstegen was able to get away with so much.”

  The corners of Lindsay's mouth dipped in annoyance. “We're not entirely to blame. It was you who confirmed his suspicions by telling him I'd committed suicide.”

  “But it was you who decided not to give him the treatment in the first place. How hard would that have been? If you'd only given him what he wanted, this whole thing could've been avoided.”

  “It wasn't that simple. We never once spoke to him until he applied for asylum on Mars. That was the first time we explicitly confirmed our existence to him. Prior to that, we simply ignored him. We gave him no proof. I erased the core program on the home setup so he couldn't access the data. We even disallowed access to KTI's Director of Information Security, whenever he came close.”

  “He did know, though.”

  “He must have. But he didn't go public with the knowledge. He was smart enough to know that he would never get that far. Besides, he didn't want to blow the secret; he just wanted revenge.”

  “For being excluded. For being judged unworthy. For being paid to keep a secret he himself was barred from.”

  “Yes.” Lindsay's hand appeared for the first time, scratching an ear. “He was transferred away from SciCon, from the heart of the project, to KTI, where we hoped his work with QUALIA would distract him from us. It did, as it turned out, but only in the short-term. He developed his own hot-wiring facility right under our noses, and even used LSM codes to make copies, as we do. We underestimated his tenacity, his ability and his instability.”