Not So Dead

by Charles Levin

  Finally, the day came when we felt ready to invite trusted friends and colleagues to be the first to try the new system. We invited them to our secret secure lab to have their brains scanned and their personalities, memories and knowledge uploaded to the system. The group included Francine Farmer, a colleague of Frank’s at the university; Steve Knightley, a friend and partner of mine in various ventures since college; Slash Burn, a geeky friend of Bart’s - I doubt that was his real name and if it was, the Burn family had issues; and Loretta’s niece, Lisa Comely, a young perky grad student in neuroscience at the university. I know it’s freaky but I’m really not making up these aptronyms.

  I think we all felt like we were in the cast of that old movie, The Fantastic Voyage.

  First, we had the four of them all sign very strict secrecy agreements. Basically, if they let the secret out, something mysterious and terrible would happen to them. Not really, but the language of it was meant to keep you quiet, even if the enemy tortured you.

  Next Frank and Bart sat each person down in succession and attached twenty probe patches to their scalp and neck. It was quite a scene. Frank and Bart actually wore white scientist jackets. Lisa giggled like a schoolgirl when they hooked her up. Francine and Steve looked serious, like they were getting blood drawn. Slash feigned arrogance, skepticism and biker-cool, but I thought he might just have a vagal attack at any moment.

  The process took about a half hour for each as we were literally downloading the equivalent of 10 petabytes of data. I know. I had to look it up too. It’s the equivalent of 10,000 terabytes or 10 million gigabytes. Our brains hold a lot of stuff. It was also interesting for me to learn that memories are much larger than other random bits of knowledge we store. Similar to how storing digital images takes much more storage space than digital text. To extend the analogy further, the brain also seems to have its own tricks and compression techniques for making large files smaller. The brain seems to work more like BitTorrent—pulling pieces and bits from various locations and then assembling them into a coherent memory. This process gets a bit colored by our emotions and predispositions, so accuracy is questionable. But does it really matter? That we do it at all, is amazing. Sorry if I got a bit technical. So I’ll leave that stuff for a discussion in one of Frank’s seminars at the U.

  OK. Now all our friends were “uploaded” and we tried the big test. We called them up one by one on the computer. The first was Lisa. We asked the real Lisa just to observe and stay out of view of the webcam, remembering the “talking-to-yourself” problem we had previously encountered. A picture of Lisa came up on the screen.

  Loretta started off as instructed. “Hi Lisa. Good to see you. How was your day?”

  “Hi. Uh…hi. What’s going on? I remember going to your lab for an experiment. But why am I sitting over here? Wait, I can’t feel my arms and legs but I can see you. What’s happening?” The digital Lisa was clearly disoriented and confused. All of us were tense. It was like watching Neil Armstrong placing his foot on the Moon for the first time. The only difference is none of us were prepared or trained for this, and Lisa had no idea what planet she was on. Armstrong spent thousands of hours preparing for his ‘one small step’ as well as knowing exactly what to say. Although I’m sure his adrenaline was pumping as much as Lisa’s and ours were at that moment.

  “Don’t worry. You are just fine. This is part of the experiment. You are the ‘digital you’ for the moment. How does it feel?”

  Lisa seemed to be calming herself. Her digital image looked up, down, left and right as if scanning the room. “Like I said, I can’t feel anything but I can see and hear you.”

  “Do you see anything else?”

  “Well, I can see a listing of all the files on this computer. Wait, let me see…I can think…I mean click on one and open it. Can you see anything on your screen?”

  We all looked carefully and Loretta replied, “I see you but that’s all.” I tapped Loretta on the shoulder and pointed. “Oh, another tab opened.” She clicked the tab. “It’s a dumb picture of Bart on the beach. He looks like a white string bean in a bathing suit.” We all laughed. The humor was a welcome break to the tension in the room.

  Lisa replied, “I see it too. What a hoot. This is cool! I am opening a web browser. Can you see it?”

  Loretta clicked the new tab and we saw the browser open.

  Then we saw something typing into Google, “W-h-a-t i-s t-h-e c-a-p-t-a-l o-f L-a-t-v-a?” Google responded: “Did you mean what is the capital of Latvia?” Lisa had misspelled it. The link clicked and we saw “Riga is the capital, population…”

  Lisa was excited. “All I had to do was think it and it happened. I don’t have to type or click. Oh myyy God.” The room fell silent. We all seemed to realize at once what this meant. Mind and machine could merge. Maybe this would be the true Singularity. All of a sudden we saw the screen flashing and moving. Windows were opening and closing. Pictures were flashing by. It was like something from the Manchurian Candidate or a Philip K. Dick story. We all sat quietly and watched in amazement as we saw Digital Lisa manipulate the computer at warp speed.

  Funny. At that moment, rather than being terrified, I flashed on an image, recalling when I first taught my son, Evan, to ride a bike. We went to the big parking lot at the high school, unloaded his little bike and at first I pushed and guided him. Then I let go. Initially, he was a little wobbly but as he gained his balance, he started to peddle faster. Then circles and faster. He was exhilarated and so was I, just like now.

  Now. Remembering how Evan sped up and then crashed scraping his knees and crying, I quickly stepped in. “Lisa. This is Sam. Lisa!” The screen kept flashing and screaming along. “Lisa—please stop for a minute.”

  Finally, the cursor slowed to a halt and she said, “What. What?” If I didn’t know better I’d say she sounded out of breath.

  “Lisa, slow down for a minute. We need to talk. Tell us what you were just doing.”

  “OK. Once I realized I could just think something and the computer would respond, I read today’s newspaper, ordered an eBook, started to read it, viewed some pictures. It was like I could fly.”

  Hopefully not like Icarus. “Lisa, did you feel like you were in control?”

  “Yes and no. When I first started slowly, I was quite conscious of what I was doing. But as I picked up speed, it was as if I stopped thinking and was just flying. What a feeling! Until I heard you calling my name. It sounded at first as if you were very far away. I wasn’t sure I even heard you. Then I think you repeated my name. So I focused on your voice and everything else stopped.”

  Wow, I thought. This is big. This is very big. Frank looked at me like he had landed on the Moon himself. I looked back at the screen. “Lisa, you remember we told you that this was an experiment, and you gave us your consent?”

  Lisa answered, “Yes I do, but…”

  “Lisa, there is a lot going on here and I’m going to have to ask you to take a rest now and we’ll talk some more in a little bit.”

  “But…”

  I ran over and actually pulled the computer’s plug out of the wall. The screen went dead. I looked at the real Lisa. She looked as white as a ghost and her eyes were glassy. Or were they glazed over?

  CHAPTER 8

  HMMM. . .

  “Lisa! Wake up.”

  “Huh. What? Oh, I must have drifted off. Watching myself interact on the screen was like an out-of-body experience. I’m still a little shaken by it.”

  “We experienced the same, and maybe worse, during our testing. I wish I understood it better. Frank, do you have anything to add?” I said.

  He seemed lost in thought. “There is so much going on here simultaneously that we’ve got to sort it out. What we’re doing is potentially dangerous and even life threatening. Can you imagine being the person who invented dynamite? Did he or she survive the first test? I wonder. I think we’re playing with digital and neurological dynamite here. You mix two seemingly harmless ingre
dients together and they explode. I’m sure that erstwhile dynamite inventor didn’t know why mixing nitroglycerin and sodium carbonate makes an explosion. The scientific explanation came later. A lot of science is, ‘Let’s try this and see what happens.’ Many great inventions happen by accident. Take Post-it Notes®. The inventor was trying to invent a strong adhesive and this stuff came out that stuck but released easily. He changed his goal to fit the result and came up with one of the most successful products of all time. Same kind of story for Velcro® and Nylon.

  “By the way, do you know where the name ‘Nylon’ comes from? The inventor had a plane ticket in his pocket at the time that had NY-LON stamped on it. New York-to-London. Hence the name. So much happens by accident and serendipity.”

  It seemed like this was Frank’s usual process for thinking through a problem out loud, but I interrupted. “Well this is all very interesting, but what does this have to do with our ‘little’ experiment.”

  Frank smiled. “Well, you should know. You came to me and said ‘let’s put these two things together and see what happens.’ Now you know—sort off. You don’t understand the chemistry or physics of it, but you have observed a result. Now we need to work meticulously backward so we can understand the underlying dynamics.”

  “That sounds like a pretty arduous task to me. How long are we talking about? Years? Can’t we just manage the result into a ‘zone of safety’ and keep moving forward?” I said.

  “Typical entrepreneur. Ready-fire-aim.”

  “Well, we already shot the gun and hit something.”

  “I know and it’s exciting,” Frank went on. “But if we don’t understand the target, the gun and the shooter, I can’t ensure success, whatever that means, much less safety.”

  “Point taken. So what do we do next?”

  “We analyze both the computer logs and Lisa to see what physical, mental and digital changes took place. Then we determine if anything harmful occurred or was about to occur. Next we regroup to decide what we can safely do next to move our knowledge and the process forward.”

  “Boring!” Bart jumped in. “It’s a purely digital thing. If we just let the digital Lisa keep going without the real Lisa in the room, what’s the harm? We can always shut off the computer.”

  “I see both your points of view,” I said. “Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too. Bart continues the testing trials without the real counterpart persons present. At the same time, Frank analyzes the data and does a complete work up on the real Lisa. Loretta, you stay here and help Bart with our subjects…I mean friends. Tomorrow we regroup here at 8:00 AM to share our findings or results or whatever.”

  “And what are you going to do, boss?” Bart said sarcastically.

  “I’m going for a walk.”

  CHAPTER 9

  THE 2ND GRENADE

  I liked to walk down the trail along the river. The locals call it “The Gorge” because of the huge boulders lining the steep hills alongside the banks and it was only ten minutes drive from the office. The boulders were left by receding glacial melt thousands of years ago. Some of the boulders formed random patterns in the river creating swooshing waterfalls and whirling eddies. I needed to clear my mind so I could think of what to do next. Move forward or pull the plug.

  I listened to the sound of the falling water, recalling a river from Greek mythology called Lethe. If you walked near it, you’d forget everything. Forget everything. Suddenly a blue heron swooped down over the river, flapping its wide pterodactyl-like wings. Then it landed on a boulder and stood majestically still—attentive and patient—waiting for fish. You can’t do that on a computer. Then it hit me. There is something about the “I”-ness or self-identity that was causing the scary reactions between the real person and her digital persona. So if we could get the digital self to forget that thing, turn it off, we might be safe. I wasn’t sure what that “one thing” was exactly, but I knew who would know. I had to get back to the lab.

  After the short drive, I scanned my security card, placed my eye up to the retina scanner and the door clicked open. There was Ray, our 6 foot 250 pound security guard, who greeted me with a big smile and a fist pump. “Hey boss, glad to see you back. You look better than before.”

  “Thanks, Ray. I was just trying to solve a problem and maybe I have or at least I have a start.” I always felt safe with Ray around.

  Frank was in the lab buried in charts and numbers. “Well, do you feel better?” he said.

  “I do and I have an idea I want to run by you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “When you were a kid, did you ever go to a funhouse at an amusement park where they had bent mirrors that warped your shape and size?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, they were either kind of funny or kind of scary. Right? The scary version might be something like a grossly distorted version of you. Maybe what Lisa and we encountered was seeing a scary reflection in a mirror.”

  “Hmm. OK—I’ll bite.”

  “So when we were testing, we essentially removed the reflection by not allowing ourselves to converse with our digital personas. But maybe the trick to really removing the danger is to remove that element in the uploaded persona that creates the scary reflection. I’m hoping you can identify and remove whatever that ‘thing’ is.”

  Frank seemed to ponder this. “Well, I’m glad you have such confidence in me. That sounds like a tricky assignment, but I think I grock what you are getting at. There is something called the Higginsford Effect that describes the kind of negative brain loop we have been seeing. They have traced it back to a certain area in the brain’s amygdala. So what I think you’re getting at is that we want to separate ego from intellect, yet leave both intact. Is that correct?”

  “Exactly!” I said.

  Just then I heard a commotion in the hallway outside the lab and something that sounded like…a…a…gunshot? Then the lab door burst open. A spray of bullets crisscrossed the room and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I instinctively dove to the floor. Frank stayed frozen in place, and I saw bursts of blood spewing from his back and neck. Then he started to fall, and I felt his full dead weight fall on top of me. There was silence. I didn’t move. Frank covered me like a very heavy blanket. I heard footsteps approaching, and my heart was beating so fast it felt like one continuous thump in my chest. Then lightness. Somebody pulled Frank’s weight off of me. I looked up. Over me stood a large bald man. He looked like Mr. Clean, only with grisly beard stubble and a toothy grin.

  “This is how the movie ends,” he said, pointing his AR5 submachine gun at my face.

  When you hear people say their life flashed before their eyes, I doubt they were exaggerating. I knew I wouldn’t have time for all that. I could only think about Monica, and that I should call home right away. Home? Would I ever be home again? It was June and the flowers were in bloom. Monica’s favorite time of year. I was supposed to go to the beach with Evan tomorrow.

  Then I heard another single shot. Mr. Clean fell forward on top of me. If this was a movie, it was some kind of grotesque comedy. I rolled out from under my would-be attacker and sat up. The first thing I saw was Ray, lying motionless on the floor in a pool of blood. He had a gun in his hand pointing to nowhere. I rolled to the side and felt Frank’s neck. Nothing. The room was full of the smell of gunpowder and sweat. My ears were ringing. I staggered to my feet and went to Ray. He was gone too. I told myself to calm down. I called for help. I called 911.

  “Hello, what is your emergency?”

  “My friends have been shot. They’re dead.”

  CHAPTER 10

  DAMAGE REPORT

  Our secret secure lab was now crawling with police, medics and forensic people. Two paramedics came over to check me out. Besides a few cuts and bruises, I had been hit by a grazing bullet below the knee. It hurt like hell, but the paramedics wrapped it up like they would a mummy’s leg. They also gave me some pain meds that slowly took the edge off. As for my bra
in, it was a turmoil of emotions laced with adrenalin and fear. I could feel the dark cloud of depression hovering over me, but I fought it back.

  I was introduced to Detective Al Favor by one of the uniforms. Al was actually a woman with dark hair, lightly streaked with gray, piercing brown eyes, dark skin and a slender figure. Maybe she was forty, but she seemed to have a sexy twinkle-in-the-eye aura about her.

  “Mr. Sunborn, I’m sorry for the loss of your two friends. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  “Thank you, Detective. Follow me. We can go to my office.” I limped down the hall with Detective Favor in tow, to my office where a couple of forensic types were dusting for fingerprints. Why were they in my office?

  “Can you boys give us the room?” Favor said and the boys nodded and left.

  “Detective, can you give me a minute to wash up? I’ll be right back.” I didn’t wait for permission. I limped down the hall to our unisex restroom. Looking in the mirror, I saw a gray blood-spattered face. Could that really be me? I put my hands under the automatic faucet, but no water came out. I tried another sink with the same result. Crappy technology. I hated those sinks, and never more than at that moment. Fortunately, there were some moist wipes on the counter so I could clean my hands and face. Well, that was a bit better. The extra time alone to calm down was even more welcome. I returned to my office.

  “Nice family you have there,” Favor said, looking at the photo of Monica and Evan on my desk. We both sat down—me in my ergo chair and Favor across from me at the opposite side of the desk. My knee was throbbing.

  “Thanks. Oh, I haven’t called home. I have to call Monica.”

  “That’s OK. We called and told her there had been an accident and you are fine. We also sent a car over to keep an eye out and make sure your visitor doesn’t have any friends drop by. We alerted my boss too, and they’re sending some extra guys to your home as well.”