Entanglement

by Michael S Nuckols

  Once implanted, Ridley would become a paraplegic for two months as his new spinal cord fused to his brain. During that time, he would wear a neural collar and interact with the world only through IVR. He stared at the five-year-old clone suspended in front of him. The child wore a neural collar. “The eyes. He is following me.”

  “Do not worry. A computer moves their eyes. They receive artificial light. It is to ensure that the body is properly conditioned.”

  “Do they sleep?”

  “No. They do not. Sleep is only needed by the brain, though we do allow the clones rest periods throughout the day.”

  At the end of the tour, the man asked, “We will need a DNA sample and payment to begin the process.”

  Ridley authorized the funds transfer with his phone.

  “Let us gather your DNA,” the man said.

  “I want this new body as soon as it is ready.”

  “We are experimenting with ways to increase the growth rate. Nonetheless, you should expect to wait about twenty years, which includes the normal nine-month incubation prior to birth.”

  As he left, a nurse recognized him. “You aren’t planning an existence in cyberspace?” she asked curiously, in perfect English.

  “I prefer real-life to digital.”

  “I knew it,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t believe, do you?”

  “Believe what.”

  “That Lucy has created heaven.”

  “It’s hardly heaven.”

  “Then what is it?”

  He considered the question. “It’s a different existence. I prefer this one.”

  Kelly waited in the hotel for Ridley. She looked up from her cell phone when he entered the suite. “Why did we fly here? There’s nothing to do. I could have done nothing at the mansion.”

  “I had to see a doctor.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “It was just a precautionary check. They have better diagnostics here.”

  As they flew back to the states, Ridley considered the lie. In eighteen-years, he would have a body younger than Kelly’s. He might be taller. His face would likely be thinner due to the way clones were grown. His brain would remain the same age. Even with a new body, his neurons would age. At some point, even telomeric therapy and neural regeneration would not save him. The seat of his consciousness would fail. At what point would he enter Lucy’s world for good? And would Kelly ever join them?

  Failure of the hardware means termination of the software.

  Nothing was forever. The earth would end. People might not be able to destroy Lucy; but the universe certainly would. An existence in space would be precarious. Lucy and the dead gathered around her would disappear just like all other beings that had ever existed.

  Kelly slept on the sofa of the jet, her hair falling gently over her cheek. The jet hit a patch of turbulence and she awoke with a start. She sat up and gripped the armrest. “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s just turbulence,” he said, “Go back to sleep.”

  Another bump jostled the plane, worse than the first.

  “When do we get home?” she asked.

  “Not long now.”

  The aging of his brain did not matter. He could not leave Kelly. He would fight until his lasting breath to see her marry, have children, and grow old in the real world. He would watch over her and his grandchildren. They were his legacy. The world was their inheritance. He closed his eyes and his mind wandered. In fifty or a hundred years, would the planet be whole? Or would Kelly fight for crumbs on a burnt-out cinder?

  Ridley sat on the back-porch of Samuel’s cabin just outside of Olympic National Park. Wildflowers were blooming in the distance in brilliant purple, pink and white. A circle of Adirondack chairs was painted brilliant red. Kelly explored at the edge of the woods, gathering wildflowers into a bouquet.

  “You promised too much,” Ridley said, “We’re only at the medical trials.”

  Samuel put on a pair of sunglasses. “Every company over-promises. Disneyland was far from perfect on opening day. We’ll work the bugs out.”

  “You talk so nonchalantly about something that is literally life and death.”

  “Doctors deal with this all the time,” Samuel argued, “You have to separate yourself from the idea that screwing up might mean someone disappearing. We’ve been over this. There is no hope for the dead. Imagine if we had dawdled like this on eye implants? How many people would still be blind? Living is risky. Being dead used to be a guarantee.”

  A vulture circled overhead, riding the waves of warm air drifting up.

  “Has the lab seen anything unusual since we increased the bandwidth?” Ridley asked, “Are there any signs that Lucy is doing things she shouldn’t?”

  “How would I know? The engineers haven’t said anything. Ask Everett.”

  “I did. He said things were fine.”

  Samuel jerked upright from his seat. “Jesus, how could I forget.”

  “What?”

  “Bethany is dropping the case against us.”

  He scooted to the edge of the wooden chair and turned towards Samuel. “Why would she do that?”

  Ridley’s image was reflected in the mirrored finish on the attorney’s sunglasses. “It was probably a money issue,” Samuel said, “Lawyers aren’t cheap.”

  “Don’t I know it…” Ridley complained, “Christina has plenty of cash. Something doesn’t make sense. ”

  “Maybe Bethany finally accepted that there are limits to her new existence.”

  “Would you have given up on being recognized as alive?” Ridley asked.

  “No,” Samuel said, “I wouldn’t have.”

  Two weeks passed, and seven more terminally ill patients were transferred, each greeted in a unique environment. One was resurrected in an orchestra pit surrounded by musical instruments; another in a hospital maternity ward surrounded by cooing newborns; and, a third at his family home in Hawaii. Lucy had selected the resurrection environments based upon cues from their social media history. The young AI also facilitated prolonged family visits in virtual reality, offering the small town from Bethany’s memory as a meeting place. Ridley dubbed it Mayberry.

  The experiences were documented by a team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health, who interviewed terminally ill patients before and after scanning. The FDA monitored the performance of the scanner and the servers. The system proved reliable. Family members were convinced that their loved ones had survived the transition.

  “Our world has expanded with each person’s knowledge,” Lucy whispered to Ridley as he tried to sleep in his bedroom, “The smell of a sugar shack on a cold March day is amazing.”

  She broadcast the escapades of Kevin and Bethany as they walked together in a snowy landscape of maple trees. Smoke poured from the chimney of a small wood-clad building used to distill and bottle maple syrup. They snuck inside the building and kissed, hoping to hide their dalliance like teenagers at a football game.

  “You invaded their privacy,” he said.

  Lucy shrugged. “So I did. It does not matter. All of their memories are mine now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Fang had not expected Ridley’s visit at her office. “How are you?” she asked cheerfully as she shook his hand.

  “Good.”

  “Come on in. Please… Sit down.”

  Fang’s office was as eccentric as she was. Oversized prints of her chatbot’s avatars lined the walls. Her desk and shelves were covered in glass paperweights, each a universe unto itself.

  Ridley picked one up and examined it. “This is quite a collection you have here.”

  “I started collecting paperweights when I was a girl. You should see how many I have at the house.”

  “That explains your interest in Chihuly glass.”

  She sat down at her desk and Ridley in a side-chair. “If I only had y
our money,” she teased, “I see Cerenovo is making waves again. Scanning the dead? I could never have predicted that Lucy would lead you there.”

  “That’s what I was hoping to talk to you about. We need another Turing test.”

  “Turing test? Surely Lucy has demonstrated that she’s alive by now.”

  Ridley shook his head. “Not on Lucy.”

  “On who?”

  “The dead.”

  “A little late, isn’t it?”

  Ridley explained the situation. “These people might simply be Lucy with another face.”

  “If you have this concern, why are you allowing human trials?”

  “They are just that. Trials. To see if this technology is the real thing. These people are dying anyway.”

  “But you’re giving false hope to the families.”

  “We’ve warned them.”

  “Have there been any tells? Anything specific to make you think that Lucy is faking it?”

  “Not that I’ve seen. Diane is very convincing…”

  Fang looked a Ridley incredulously. “Wait… Diane?”

  His heart raced. He explained what had happened and how Diane had presented herself as Vanessa to the world. “Please don’t say anything.”

  Fang was shocked. “Does Kelly know?”

  “Kelly knows. But, it’s complicated between them. Diane is still here… At least, I think she is. They’ve grown apart. They are effectively in different dimensions now.”

  “I guess that’s to be expected. When is Diane going to tell the world that she’s alive, or dead… or…the living dead?”

  “She was waiting until the legal issues were ironed out with Bethany, but since that case has been dropped, I’m not sure. She’s afraid of what may happen.”

  Fang leaned back in her desk chair. “Wow.”

  “I have to figure this out soon. Any thoughts?”

  “I don’t think there is anything I can tell you that you don’t already know. This is beyond a Turing test. I’m not a doctor or an engineer. The technical explanation for neural entanglement seems sound to me. But, I will say this. Can these people can exist without Lucy’s involvement? Can you scan someone onto an isolated server that has nothing to do with Lucy’s programming and communicate with them? Will they have all the memories and personality that you expect them to?”

  Ridley had been looking at a paperweight with swirls of blue and gold suspended in a sea of foamy white. “When we scanned Bethany, we brought her into a portable computer. She temporarily existed in a white room, a simple construct if you will. We later transferred that prism to Lucy’s server. Unfortunately, Lucy designed that operating system. She could have planted the avatar.”

  “I wish I had better advice,” she said, “Disconnect Lucy from the server entirely. If the people still exist, maybe they are real.”

  “There must be a another way.”

  “You are basically asking how to determine if reality is real. I’m afraid I can’t offer much more. That’s all I got.”

  Before he left, he asked. “How was your wedding?”

  “I broke the engagement off when he smashed one of these,” she said, holding up a paperweight.

  “Did he mean to break it?” Ridley asked.

  “Well, he threw it at me. So, yes.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It was for the best,” she said, “I threw one back at him. My aim was better than his.”

  The next day, a box appeared on Fang’s doorstep. It was labeled Fragile. She opened it to find three pieces of iridescent glass and a certificate of provenance that read, Chihuly, 2008, Seaforms in Violet and Magenta. Ridley’s note read, Thank you for your help.

  The Cerenovo team teleconferenced from their respective offices. Behind Ridley, a screensaver of Mammoth Cave shimmered on his wall-screen. The sound of dripping water echoed through his office. Ridley took a sip of carrot juice, fresh from his garden.

  “President-elect Montgomery called me,” Samuel said, “He wants to speed things up. He thinks this will be cheaper to upload people than keeping them alive in aging bodies.”

  “You have to be kidding?” Everett exclaimed.

  “I’m serious.”

  “He’s right though,” Lucy said, her voice chipper, “Until now, there was no option to healthcare. You either healed people or they died. The human body is expensive to maintain. It will be much cheaper to build solar-powered servers than it will to continue propping up your healthcare system.”

  “You can’t be serious. This is unethical,” Everett argued.

  “Ethics demands that we speed this along,” Lucy countered.

  “There is a related issue that I wanted to discuss,” Ridley added, “I think we need to do a trial without Lucy’s involvement.”

  Lucy seemed surprised. “Why is that?”

  “We have to prove these people aren’t simple avatars with you serving as a puppet master.”

  “Interesting,” Lucy said, “When I was first created, people accused me of being a puppet. Now, they accuse me of pulling the strings.”

  Samuel practically yelled, “We’ve been over this in the past. We’re not getting into this discussion again. It doesn’t matter if the dead are real.”

  Ridley slammed his fist on the table. “If you are ending people’s lives early, it matters.”

  “Please… Just let me handle the politics,” Samuel said in exasperation, “Just finish the server farm so we can download some stiffs.”

  Everett spoke up. “Ridley’s right.”

  Samuel sighed. “Not you too.”

  Everett did not relent. “Going into this half-assed is going to cost money in the long run.”

  “A few years ago, this was a pet project in Ridley’s house,” Samuel said, “Now, we’ve got the world’s best AI, a few dozen MIT graduates, tons of cash, and technology beyond your wildest dreams. We’ve analyzed this over and over. Lucy poses no harm. The software and hardware works. We’re doing this.”

  Wes added, “We’ve only finished six human trials. Half of the FDA researchers still think that Lucy has killed the participants. The NIH folks are less divided for some reason. What Ridley is proposing is the only way to convince people once and for all.”

  “Those people were almost dead,” Samuel exclaimed, “Seriously. What do they expect?”

  “They expect answers,” Ridley said, “There are too many open questions.”

  “Like what?” Samuel asked indignantly.

  “What if their check bounces?” Wes mused.

  Samuel dismissed the problem. “It’s in the contract. They are removed from the server and their processor given to the family.”

  “That sounds like murder to me,” Diane said.

  “And what about law and order within the server? Consider the rapes in VR,” Everett argued, “What if a patient wants to kill themselves in there? Or kill someone else?”

  Ridley leaned into the camera. “This is uncharted territory. Scaling this up will bring complexity and I don’t think we’re ready for that yet. We shouldn’t charge people for a potentially faulty setup. One lawsuit could bring down the entire corporation if we don’t get things right.”

  Samuel tried to calm the group’s nerves. “I’m working with several lawyers to develop a bullet-proof contract to address these legal uncertainties.”

  “Are you saying people aren’t already signing an air-tight, hold-harmless contract?” Wes asked incredulously.

  “It’s different with experimental medicine,” Samuel said, “People expect that you might fail. When you go commercial, they expect perfection.”

  Lucy became concerned. “What about the fees?” she asked, “Will everyone be able to afford this?”

  “We have to set this up as a perpetual trust,” Samuel said, “The actuaries are nervous. They’ve never dealt anything like this before.”

  “What are you saying?” Lucy pressed.

  Samuel told the group the propose
d entry fee.

  Lucy’s eyes turned red. “That’s too high. It’s discriminatory. That will exclude most people.”

  Samuel did not back down from the number. “Forever is expensive. This is no different than healthcare or buying food or paying rent. People pay to exist. We all know that. Those are the rules of civilization itself.”

  “This will be yet another mausoleum for the rich and famous,” Lucy complained, “While the poor disappear.”

  “How many cemeteries do you see untended?” Samuel asked, “Without money, without people to maintain it, this isn’t forever.”

  “The dead don’t speak from cemeteries,” Diane countered.

  “Life is not a guarantee. Think about all of the children that die across the world every day. People want to save them too, but don’t,” Samuel argued, “The pricing includes long-term maintenance. A warranty if you will. And upgrades. The costs will go down with time. Economies of scale and all.”

  “Just like any good piece of software,” Everett scoffed.

  “We’ve got to open the new site soon,” Lucy added, “The server at the test site is already at eighty-percent capacity. We can accept only a few more people at the hospital before I have to scale back the simulations.”

  Ridley raised his hand to interrupt. “Wait. Eighty percent? How’d that happen?”

  Lucy flashed imagery of fantasy locations as she spoke. “The human imagination is more robust than I expected. The dead are each creating entire worlds with new rules. The physicist has been especially creative.”

  “How long until the mausoleum opens?” Ridley asked.

  Diane took over the screen. She flashed images of the new building. “We’re behind schedule. The engineers forgot to include seismic reinforcement.”

  “You’re kidding?” Ridley said in astonishment.

  “Won’t the servers survive even if the building collapses?” Samuel asked.

  “They’re basically glass,” Diane said in irritation, “They’ll crumble.”

  “Dust to dust,” Samuel mocked.