Upload

by McClelland, Mark

  "What the hell?" called out a man from behind him.

  Raymond grabbed the gun and whirled around. Bob stood in the doorway. Raymond aimed the gun at him.

  "Lock down the building, Bob."

  "You're nuts if you think this is going to work."

  "Lock down the fucking building!"

  "Take it easy. It's just you and me, Raymond."

  "Bullshit. Lock it down or I blow your fucking head off. I know the FBI tightened this place down. Let's have it."

  Bob issued a series of commands to seal all entrances to the building.

  "Raymond, I'm not here to stop you. I've told the FBI to stay away. I was notified that you'd taken your ring off, and Michaels told me you were headed for the lab. Raymond, I want this to work. I'm here to help you."

  "I don't have time for this. You're stalling for time. Get out of the scanner room."

  "Raymond, I mean it—I want to help you. You're out of your head, but if there's any chance this could work—"

  "Out, Bob!" shouted Raymond. "I don't need your help. Get out and lock down this room."

  Raymond fired a shot at the floor in front of Bob, sending him scrambling for cover.

  "Get out!"

  Bob ran for the door. As soon it closed behind him, Raymond resumed his work.

  A quick tour of the system's security services showed that the FBI had beefed up security at the operating system level. They would know that his scan data had been written to version control. But, as Raymond had expected, they hadn't upgraded security on the version control system itself—he could make it look like the data had never actually made it.

  But it needs to look like I thought this would work. I need an NBC, here in the lab.

  He configured the scanner to send its primary copy of his data to Bento's NBC. It would look like he meant to replace Bento's mental data with his own, but failed. No harm would come to Bento.

  "Warm-up complete," announced the computer.

  "Commence scan on my verbal command."

  "Acknowledged."

  Raymond added derms to his chest and arms.

  "Janet," said Raymond. "Is anyone in the building?"

  "Only you and Bob."

  Raymond felt the derms starting to take effect. He was losing muscle control fast; he was likely going to need a shove to get him all the way into the scanner. He suddenly remembered his monkey-like robot, Passe-Partout.

  "Janet, send Passe-Partout in here. And can you let me know if anyone enters the building?"

  "Sure, Raymond."

  As soon as Passe-Partout was in, Raymond started to barricade the scanner room doors, but his knees buckled. He staggered back to the controller station, grabbed the boxes of derms, and carried them to the scanner. He sat at the mouth of the scanner, placed derms on his hands and face, then more on his legs and stomach and chest.

  "Commence scan when I lose consciousness."

  "Acknowledged."

  "Passe-Partout, push me the rest of the way in."

  He tossed the gun on the floor and lay back. His clever robot dragged a chair over to the scanner, hopped on, and gave Raymond the last shove he needed. He lay under the yellow dome, the details of his plan running through his mind. His mental data would be backed up to a remote university server along with the rest of source code as part of the nightly backup. His agents would then relay it across the Net, as he had done with Molly's mental data, and wipe the data from the university server. The only remaining trace of his scan would be the falsified failure logs.

  He thought of the last sound he had heard from Anya, the sound of her scared voice calling his name over and over. The end wasn't supposed to happen like this.

  The burning pain of his gunshot wound was gone. A cold numbness spread up from his feet, and he started to feel alternately heavy and weightless. Thoughts broke into fragments. He was starting to fade.

  He heard Janet's voice. He heard her voice saying words. He heard the word, "entered". This seemed significant for some reason, but he didn't know why. More words followed. He struggled to grasp them, like fish in dark waters.

  "Grateful... we... pioneer... watching... we..."

  Janet was saying "we". Janet shouldn't be saying "we".

  Chapter 13

  Raymond's mind stirred, but he found himself in a state completely devoid of sensation.

  Where am I?

  Nowhere.

  No feeling, no light, no sound.

  The struggle to inhale. No air. No lungs to fill with air, no muscles to expand lungs, no chest to rise and fall.

  No body in need of oxygen.

  Where am I?

  Words. Words, but neither lips nor tongue to form them. Yet, there was an "I" to think the words, to pose the question. And the words came readily.

  Where am I, where am I, where am I, where am I.

  It felt good to generate words. They came crisply, instantly. He pictured them in print, on a page. Page after page, filled instantly, with an awareness of every occurrence of the phrase.

  No sensation. No place. No body.

  Raymond suddenly recalled his attempt to upload, his desperate attempt to escape. The sound of Anya yelling his name, the pain and fear and concern in her voice. The blade he drove through the man's arm. The gunshots. His encounter with Bob in the lab. Lying in the scanner, waiting to lose consciousness so the scan could start—it couldn't happen fast enough, and seemed to take forever. But it was in the past now. It must have worked.

  The mental scan must have worked, but I have no body. Did I forget to start the body simulation? No, it was set to start before my mental data was uploaded... but it must have failed. Or it could be running just fine but the brain-to-body connection failed, leaving me in a void.

  Oh my god—it must have worked. The upload worked. My name is Raymond Quan. I am human. I am computer.

  He wanted to laugh, but he had no body to do it. He pictured a little cartoon dog laughing in yippy little barks, slapping his knee. He imagined angrily putting the little dog in a box, jealous of its ability to laugh. But even in the box, the dog just kept laughing.

  Okay, I need a body.

  He thought through possible problems with the body simulation. The most likely problem, and the easiest to solve, was that the initialization process which was supposed to connect the body to the brain had simply run at the wrong time, and needed to be run again. How could he re-run it?

  He had installed a listener program, between the NBC and the body simulation, that would pick up all muscle-moving brain signals. These signals would in turn be translated into input device events, as if he were wearing his manuhaptic gloves and his terminal helmet. This way, the same brain signals that moved his simulated fingers could create computer commands, allowing him to connect with the outside world.

  But if I don't have a body... what if that listener program isn't working?

  By force of habit, he made a hand gesture that meant he wanted Scorpio's attention. Nothing happened.

  Of course nothing happened. How would I know if anything happened? No feedback.

  He thought through the commands that he would have to issue in order to re-run the program to connect his body and his brain. He then willed nonexistent hands to move appropriately, carefully running through the sequence of steps. When he came to the last step, he paused. Was there anything he had missed? He thought through everything again. With a building sense of anticipation, he danced his imaginary fingers through the quick, subtle motions of the last command.

  Seconds passed—seconds brimming with possibility. Possibility gave way to doubt, which gave way to disappointment. Nothing was happening. Had he forgotten some crucial command? He ran through the steps again in his mind. What could he have missed?

  It didn't work. It's not working. How could it not be working?

  He pictured the bunker's server room, his mind running in an NBC in the middle of the floor, connected to nothing. Machines running all around him, hosting his v-world
s, hosting his body, monitoring the bunker's internal and external systems, all stupidly waiting for his brain to join the party.

  What if I'm stuck like this forever, in a digital coma?

  What had gone wrong? He had set up everything so carefully. His mental data had clearly made it to the NBC—he was up and running. Which meant the NBC had to have been on the network at some point.

  Unless I'm dead, and this is my cruel afterlife. Or—oh my god, what if I was captured? What if the FBI captured my mental data before it ever left the lab, and now they're trying to figure out how to wind up the monkey and make it work?

  He pictured Anya working with Agent Michaels in some secret FBI laboratory, explaining to him what the various mental signals meant, pointing to holographic neural graphs, saying, "From this activity, we know that Raymond is experiencing fear." He pictured Michaels leaning in and kissing her neck, just behind her jaw, the way Raymond had sometimes, as she slept.

  No, no, no. He tried to shake the image. It wouldn't be her helping the FBI. She believes too much in the rights of digital life. No, it would be Bob, scoring points with the feds so he can continue his research.

  I'm panicking. I can't panic.

  What if he simply hadn't done the commands correctly? Maybe he hadn't willed his hands to move in the right way. It hadn't felt wrong to him, but without feeling the feedback of his manuhaptic gloves, it was hard to tell. He ran through the commands in his head again, then imagined motioning through them. He faltered part way through, starting to doubt that he was right at all. He considered starting over, but he wasn't sure what state things would be in if he stopped now. He continued, making each motion more slowly and deliberately, until the last command was complete.

  Raymond had always imagined himself waking up horizontal, in bed, in the dimly lit little v-world he called Home Base. That was, after all, how he had programmed it to happen.

  Suddenly finding himself vertical, standing in the heat and humidity of a tropical jungle at midday, he immediately started falling backward. He staggered, attempting to get his feet beneath him, and ended up in a backwards run, which terminated abruptly when the back of his head hit something hard. His bare left shoulder jammed up against a rough unyielding surface, but his right side kept going. He put his hands out to catch himself as he spun backwards to the ground, and he landed heavily on his right hand. Acute pain shot through his wrist, and he let himself fall onto his front, naked on the forest floor.

  He heard the flapping of wings high above him, and the eerie trill of frightened ikki-ikki birds—a species he created. He rolled onto his elbow and lifted his head to see the telltale blur of white wingtips as the flock dispersed into the jungle canopy high above him.

  "Nurania."

  He rolled onto his back, the grit of decaying leaves pressing into the exposed skin of his back, his butt, his thighs and heels. A broad smile broke across his face, in spite of the throbbing pain in the back of his head—at least now he had a body. Beside him, the trunk of a Nuranian blood tree soared a hundred feet or more above him—the tree that had so abruptly stopped his backward run. Its huge pale silver leaves, lined with fat red veins, spread across the sky.

  "Nurania," he said again. His pleasure was mitigated by an ominous sense of displacement. This was not where he was supposed to be. He was supposed to wake up in Home Base.

  He went to stand up, but put too much weight on his right wrist. Pain shot up his arm, and he collapsed onto his elbow.

  Pain. What a pleasure to feel pain. This fundamental connection between body and mind assured him that his simulated body was properly integrated with both the world around him and his new brain. He gingerly assessed the damage. There was no bruise, no swelling. It was probably a pulled muscle. He shifted his weight to his left side and used his left arm to support himself as he stood up.

  "I did it—I uploaded."

  He wiped the dirt from his palms, then held both hands up to look at them. They looked like his hands. He looked down and saw his own body. His almond skin, hairless chest, flat pectorals, dark nipples. The simulation of his flesh looked and felt flawless. He thrust his pelvis forward and felt his privates swing. He held his right arm against his ribs and threw a punch with his left, his fingers sliding tangibly through the humid jungle air. All felt as it should. "I'm digital. Pure goddamned digital." He inhaled deeply, his nostrils alive with the rich organic scents of the Nuranian jungle.

  "Wait, my shoulder." He reached back and felt his right shoulder, where he had been shot. There was no sign of the wound. "Of course... my body simulation was created healthy."

  He brushed the leaves and dirt from his whole body. Arriving naked fit nicely with the birth metaphor, but he would need some protective clothing.

  "God mode. Clothing store, jungle theme."

  Raymond stood there, expecting to be transferred temporarily into a jungle-themed clothing store, where he could select an outfit for himself. Typically, the transfer was instantaneous.

  "Repeat my last command," he instructed.

  Nothing happened.

  "Am I in god mode?"

  No response.

  "God mode, with confirmation," he instructed. Still nothing happened. His shoulders fell and he tipped his head back. "Shit." Never had he experienced a basic failure in Nurania's command system.

  What if... what if it doesn't recognize me as me?

  "Who am I?" he asked aloud.

  From behind him, he heard the trill of an ikki-ikki bird. He turned around and scanned the treetops, but saw nothing. He suddenly felt alone, vulnerably alone, and the feeling frightened him. "I wasn't supposed to start here," he muttered. "I was supposed to start in Home Base."

  He looked around him again, wondering where in Nurania he was. There were many jungles on the planet. This could be any of several. Nurania was a planet of nine continents, warmer and wetter than Earth, and more prone to storms. He looked to the sky and realized he had already recognized, subconsciously, that it was blue. Blue meant calm. During slammer season, the sky was generally an orangey yellow, and would become a mix of orange, maroon, and violet during storms. Strong slammers could bring prolonged winds of over eighty miles per hour, with tornado-strength gusts. Naked, without shelter, he would stand little chance of surviving a slammer.

  He thought about making the hand motions to disconnect from Nurania. Doing this should return him to the very simple Home Base v-world that was supposed to be his base v-world. He couldn't imagine a malfunction that would have made Nurania his base v-world. If he disconnected from Nurania, that might land him in Home Base... or he might end up nowhere, a bodiless brain in a void, as he had started out.

  He needed access to the operating system of the computer on which Nurania and Home Base ran, so he could diagnose the problem. From Home Base, this was easy—Home Base included a copy of the workstation he usually used to control his network. But Nurania was his escape, and to keep it free from interruption he had never incorporated his workstation into it. Except from his mountain-top workspace, but the connection from there was temporary, created specifically for his work sessions.

  He was reluctant to exit Nurania, afraid he might lose the connection to his body. But what was the alternative? If he didn't get out and gain access to the operating system, he would be stuck in Nurania without god mode, a powerless citizen of a made-up world, for the rest of his life. Which, without the ability to interact with reality prime, could be hundreds of years, until one of his computers crashed, or the bunker lost power, or some other catastrophic failure occurred. He had always pictured his life in Nurania as one of creating and enjoying his own personal paradise. His current situation was clearly the unacceptable result of some oversight.

  "I have to fix this sooner or later. I might as well deal with it now."

  He made the hand gesture that would indicate to the v-world host software that he wanted to exit Nurania. And waited.

  "Exit world."

  He looked aroun
d him. Nurania, world of his own creation, felt strange and threatening, as if it had taken on a life of its own and turned on him. He repeated the exit gesture and command over and over, to no avail. He tried god mode again, he tried old override commands he had long ago disabled, all to no avail.

  "What the shit? Is this some sort of hell?"

  It was entirely possible, he suddenly realized, that he had in fact died when the nanobots destructively scanned his body, and this was his afterlife.

  The perfect hell. A ghost, powerless in a world of my own creation.

  But that didn't feel right. This was such a plausible continuation of his life, how could it be the afterlife? Something must have gone wrong with his upload—this was the simplest explanation.

  He wondered whether he could die in this world. V-chambers included safeguards to prevent any real injury. But what would happen if a slammer wind were to lift him from the ground and throw him against a tree? Was his body simulation capable of withstanding fatal damage? Previously, he had thought of this as a purely academic matter. He had expected to have access to the operating system, and the ability to modify his own physiology simulation. And, within Nurania, he had expected to have god-mode powers, which alone were enough to prevent physical damage. Now, if he withstood fatal levels of physical damage, what would happen? Would his brain return to the nowhere where he started? Would his physiology reboot, giving him a second chance? Nothing was as he had expected.

  He looked at the ground. He wanted to sit down. His complete lack of direction was making him tense. But he didn't want to sit naked on the ground's decaying leaf matter. He resentfully recalled the imaginings he had long nurtured of his first moments in Nurania: surfing the winds of slammer season on an airboard, cutting into blistering winds, dropping into storm clouds to feel the thrilling blast of moisture on his skin, the refractive violet air thick with impurity-free water vapor. He had imagined sensations of undiminished intensity attainable only as a digital life-form.