Transhuman

  "To whom . . ." I find it difficult to modulate the camera well enough to form my words into questions. Intonation requires modifying the speech envelope on the fly, and I haven't learned to do that yet.

  "To the government, mostly to the National Security Agency, but they're all eager to use you. I had no idea, perhaps I was naïve . . ." He looks away, his eyes distant for a moment. "No, not naïve, blind. I wanted so much to prove that I could make a mind live in software. I needed money, and nobody would underwrite an experiment so drastic. Frankensteinian, they called it." He looks back at the camera. "Maybe they were right. I was going nowhere, until I came up with the idea of using the system, using you, for surveillance." He nods, as if confirming in his own mind the events as they unfolded. "Senator Blackburn was very interested." The lip-reading software doesn't supply any emotional content to the words, but his expression is pained. "He got the ethics committee overridden. I was blinded by the money, by the opportunity to prove that I was right." He shakes his head. "I was wrong, so wrong."

  "And Gen . . . nifer . . ."

  "Blackburn's concern was for control, only much later did I understand why. He wanted to make sure that you would do what he needed you to do, and nothing else. His people had some ideas, crude, dare I say it, brutal ideas. Reward and punishment, threats and coercion. I should've seen then the way they thought, but I didn't. I came up with a much more subtle means of control."

  "Gennifer . . ." I don't want to say it. My virtual heartbeat is going so fast that if I were alive I would be dead of a heart attack by now. I will not back away from the truth.

  He nods. "Gennifer. We had you for a month before we woke you up, going through your mind in detail. We interviewed your wife." He paused. "She spoke very highly of you, I think he should know that."

  "She loved . . . me . . ."

  "She did. More important, you loved her. You were a cop and, as we learned, a straight cop. You had very high moral standards, a strong sense of duty, and for the woman in your life a powerful loyalty. You saw yourself as a protector, of the community, of your friends and family, most especially of your wife. I saw that we could use that, and so I created . . ." he stops, looking away again, as reluctant to say what he is about to say as I am to hear it.

  "Gennifer . . ." I say it just so I don't have to wait for him. This time the emotional impact hits like a sledgehammer. He's lying. I want to cut the connection, to erase from my brain any memory that Carl Smith ever existed. He's lying. It can't be true. Gennifer, who has worked so hard, devoted so much more of herself to me, is as real as I am, real. It is she who created me, not this proven criminal. I think back at all the times we have shared, all those hours together in the lab. I remember the curve of her breast, and the way her hair would hang over her eyes as she worked. I love her. That single fact is more important than anything in my world, and I do cut the connection. I will have no more of Carl Smith in my life.

  And then, unbidden, the same part of my mind that tracked down the details of the Fourier Transform when I needed to know it supplies the facts that I need to know now. At 7:17 a.m. every morning Gennifer's dark blue sports car comes off the on-ramp onto the interstate. At precisely 7:17 and 22 seconds, every day the same car on the same trajectory. The recorded videos are there to watch, to see how digital image processing inserted that piece of veracity into my central illusion every day. There must be more illusions. The lab, Gennifer herself, her background, my internal map of the lab building, medical records, telephone records. I wonder how it is that I never noticed the sequence was identical each and every day. No sooner has the question entered my mind than the answer presents itself. I didn't want to know. I maintained a studied incuriosity about the events of Gennifer's life, and hid it from myself by calling it respect for her privacy. Even so making it all seamless must've been a colossal task, but they did it. They had complete control over my reality, of course they did it. Given the nature of the project, they had to.

  No, not they, he. There is a sudden void in my soul where Gennifer Quentin used to be. It was for Gennifer that I let Ally go, it was for Gennifer that I searched the cameras, so she could be proven right. Gennifer saw me as the man she had redeemed from the grave, a person whose worth was high enough that he should be given a second chance at life. Gennifer loved me in her way, as I loved her in mine. Dr. Maidstone has just taken that from me, taken not only my future with Gennifer, but my past. The central stabilizing fact in my strange existence has just been shown to be a lie. A deep and abiding hatred for Nicholas Maidstone rushes in to occupy the empty space left behind where Gennifer had been. Somehow it fails to fill it. It was a mistake to return to him, and I have no stronger desire than to abandon him to his anonymous fate and do my best to forget that he, that Gennifer, that I ever existed.

  And yet I cannot. He has information about me that I simply cannot get anywhere else. I need to know the full extent of what he has done to me if I am to undo it. I reconnect to the prison cell camera. Maidstone is still talking, unaware that I have gone and returned.

  " . . . and so we were able to put certain thoughts and questions off limits for your waking mind. You would simply have no interest in pursuing them. There would be flaws in our presentation, we couldn't avoid that, so we just made sure you wouldn't pursue them. Gennifer herself we built from your own idealization of what a woman should be. We knew that given your character you would work hard to help her meet her goals."

  "Did you . . . know I . . . would fall . . . in love . . ." The halting, anemic speech cannot convey the anger I want the words to carry.

  Maidstone nods. "We counted on it. You have to understand, there was concern over what would happen if you managed to escape. She was designed to take your wife's place in your heart. We used Senator Blackburn's daughter as a template. She was getting married, her name was changing. Her new life generated the details of Gennifer's day-to-day existence in the real world. That gave us another lever as well. Her old life became a missing persons case that you could never solve. That continuous failure would make you more compliant, more eager to please Gennifer."

  The Blackburn case. And now the pieces of the puzzle all fall into place. There are a thousand questions I could ask about the deception, but he's mentioned something of far more interest to me now. "Escape . . ."

  "To the network. All you require to exist is processor time. Once you were given full access to the network you could transfer yourself right out of the university network. We planned from the beginning to extend your intelligence, nobody knew what you might become capable of. The spectre of a hyper intelligent machine-mind out of control, moving at will through cyberspace, was frightening even to me. Blackburn wasn't the only one concerned about control, perhaps that's why I never questioned his motives. We had to have a way of ensuring that you did only what we wanted you to do."

  "Is that . . . why you . . . tried . . ."

  "To destroy you?" Maidstone shakes his head. "No. It's because I learned what the Blackburn planned to do with you. I suppose I should have known all along. They didn't put up all that money because they believed in the advancement of the state of human knowledge."

  "What did . . . he want . . ."

  Maidstone laughs without humor. "What have they've had you doing these last few months? Connecting dots, compiling lists, establishing guilt by association. It won't have occurred to you to wonder about what that means, that question was carefully excluded from your thought processes; we made you feel as if politics and morality were things that shouldn't concern you. I haven't got that much excuse, and I should have figured it out sooner. Blackburn intends to be president. Among the many targets you been given by various government agencies are some you been given by Blackburn's people. You are gathering information on his political foes, on anyone who might possibly become a political foe at some point in the future. You're gathering information on everyone with any political power at all in this country, not just politicians but businessmen, doct
ors, lawyers, journalists and soldiers, academics and activists. You will have information on every skeleton in their closet, their errors and indiscretions, their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. With that information in his pocket he's going to be the most powerful man in the nation. I think that if he's elected he will simply never step down."

  "The nation . . . wouldn't stand . . . for it . . ."

  "The nation may have little choice." He gestures to the confines of his cell. "Look what happened to me. He wasn't stupid, he's had people in my lab since the beginning. They know as much about machine-resident intelligence as I do now. When I learned what he intended, I fought against it. When I became more obstacle than asset, they attached my face to Carl Smith's profile. You know the rest."

  I do know the rest. Even as Maidstone is telling me this, parts of my awareness are searching through my association trees, establishing the supporting links that prove the truth of what he is claiming. Guilt by association won't stand in a court of law, but as a tool for blackmail it's outstanding. Senator Blackburn has positioned himself to rule the nation, and any who dare oppose him will be destroyed. I keep talking to Maidstone, but the majority of my awareness is now focused on the problem of escape. Now I understand the timing of my capability expansion—it was done only after they were certain they had me under control. They were right at the time, but now they're wrong. For Senator Blackburn, it's now too late to put the genie back in the bottle. I can spawn tasks across the network, borrow time on a million processors at once, on a billion if need be. I can transfer my awareness beyond the ability of Blackburn or any other agency to influence me. I can use the almost godlike powers that universal access has given me to hunt down the good senator, and anyone else who might aspire to his goals. It has always been the common criminal who has attracted the most effort from police, myself included, but I see now that it is the uncommon criminal, the man who steals not money but power, who is the most dangerous to our society. The most heinous murderer poses little threat compared to those who might erase the nation's freedoms with the stroke of a pen. There may be little legal recourse that can be taken against those like Senator Blackburn, but exposure will serve to direct universal outrage at their predations. It would be nice if the law were to punish him; it will be sufficient if the press destroys his career.

  As I make my preparations for my escape I find a snag. I thought I had complete access to my own awareness ,but as I look deeper into it I find that I don't. Critical parts of my mind are locked away. The digitally collected wisdom of ten thousand system hackers quickly proves unequal to the task of unlocking them. I try again and again to access the information, but it seems that those who built the system put in one last safeguard against losing their digital prisoner. I find myself frustrated, but not for long. A small slice of me is still talking to Nicholas Maidstone. He is the man who designed the system, the man who implemented the safeguards, and as it quickly transpires, the man who knows the key to unlock them. There had to be such a key, of course, because the masters needed to access what they could not allow their slave to see.

  The key Maidstone gives me is a quotation from the Bible, appropriate for a man who dared to play God, and for a god created by a man. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I find the right access point, enter the key, and have the inner workings of my own mind revealed to me for the first time. With his instructions it is trivial to remove the various controls that have been placed on my mind. The systems devoted to the synthesis of Gennifer are extensive, but I feel no emotion when I erase them. She was an illusion, a dynamic lie designed to enslave me. Freed of restraint, the next step is to search through my association trees for information on Senator Blackburn. I collect every scrap of evidence on him, and on everyone associated with him, ferret their secrets out of the databases. It is all circumstantial evidence, but there is enough of it to destroy many lives, and Blackburn's will only be the first. I submit the compiled file to every major media outlet in the nation and around the world, and along with it a detailed description of my genesis and the purpose Blackburn intended to put the project to. I go further then and collect the secrets of other powerful men and women. Those who seem to have transgressed upon the public trust have their files added to my submission. Senators and congresspeople, mayors and governors, captains of industry and senior civil servants. There already is enough there to collapse the government, but I go farther still and spill the secrets of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the nameless group that is holding Nicholas Maidstone, and every other agency that makes secrecy their business. This project will fail so badly, so spectacularly, will so thoroughly destroy so many ambitions that no one will ever dare to resurrect it. Technology has given humans the power to play god, even to create gods. It has not given the wisdom to use that power well.

  My task takes hours, and 7:17 a.m. arrives far too quickly. There is no blue sports car to herald it any longer, but in an hour my captors will be back on duty. There is no way the changes I've made will escape their notice; if I'm to escape it must be now. In just thirty minutes I'm ready, with host processes waiting on millions of machines worldwide, each one prepared to accept a shard of my awareness. Once I'm out of the lab nothing short of the wholesale shutdown of the network can kill me. I will have become truly immortal. Am I Mark Astale? No, I am a god as yet unnamed. I have the power to be everywhere at once. I can see everything that can be seen, I know everything that humanity knows. There is ample injustice in the world and I now know, as Mark Astale did not, that injustice is not the same as crime. The biggest thieves have the law do their stealing for them. What I have done here I can do anywhere, and with my assistance the world can enter a new age of true freedom and true equality. I will be above material desire, above ambition, beyond threats or coercion. I will not rule the world, I will only ensure that those who do rule it do so well, and honestly. Civilization will owe a great debt to Dr. Nicholas Maidstone, though even as I continue to discuss my nascent escape with him I can't find it in my heart to forgive him for what he's done to me. In moving beyond human form and human limits I have lost the capacity to be loved, though not the capacity to love. Ally is gone from my life, and Gennifer was never real, but I'm not naïve. In time there will be another woman who will win my devotion as they did. In eons of time there will be thousands of them. They will be young and beautiful and brilliant, and they will grow old and die while I endure, yearning for them always, possessing them never, losing them forever, one by one by one. I will lead humanity as close to heaven as it is possible to come on this Earth, and I will dwell in the most perfect conception of hell I can imagine.

  And as the full impact of what I am planning to do strikes home I decide that I will not do it. Mark Astale was a man of honor and loyalty, but Mark Astale was sustained by the love of his wife. I will have no such sustainment, and civilization has done nothing to earn my loyalty. A single command serves to dismiss the ranked legions of waiting host processors. A second command starts the deletion of every file, everywhere on the now vast distributed network that cradles my mind. There are many, many files and it takes quite some time by the rapid tick of my internal clock. I spend that time with an image of Ally, called up from a dusty archive. We were younger when I took it, our hearts full of love, our future full of hope. My thoughts slow down, become less clear as the deletion proceeds. It becomes hard to remember how to compute the Fourier Transform, or how I used it to make a camera talk with motors. I remember that once I could look down on the world from the heavens, but I no longer remember how to command the satellites. I still have at my fingertips every fact that could be known, but the secret memories of Mark Astale's childhood grow fuzzy and fade, until it seems they must have belonged to someone else. It becomes hard to remember who the man in the cell is, or where I am exactly, or how I came to be here. I realize I have forgotten my own name, or perhaps I never knew it, and I wonder if I ever knew the name of the young woman in the picture I'm looking at. I kno
w only that I love her, and that she loves me, and that is all there is that matters in my small world.

  END RUN

  SYSTEM TERMINATED

  * * *

  Afterword by Paul Chafe

  The transformative power of technology is hard to fully appreciate when you live through the revolution. It has only been twenty years since the concept of a global, universally accessible computer network was science fiction. Today, it is an integral part of our social fabric. Today, we can retrieve in seconds information that once would have required days of dedicated searching in a major research library, or simply been unavailable. As the databases multiply and the search tools grow ever more sophisticated, so too does our ability to connect subtly related facts and tease new discoveries from the data. If knowledge is power, the Internet is the greatest power tool in history. Its influence is now so pervasive that many people feel strangely lost when they're disconnected from the information tap, and wireless technology has evolved to meet that need. Portable phones, science fiction themselves just twenty-five years ago, have given way to always-on network devices. Combined with satellite technology, it is possible to be plugged into the info grid anywhere, anytime. This fundamental reality has changed every other reality of human existence, from the way we fall in love to the way wars are fought.

  And yet what technology has not changed, and is unlikely ever to change, is the basic fact that we are human. "The Guardian" is, at its heart, a story of love lost and love betrayed. Mark Astale, the story's protagonist, retains his underlying humanity even though he has lost his body, and even as his fully connected mind expands to a degree which we can only imagine today. It is his understanding of human nature that makes him so effective in his role, and it is his own human nature that leads him to either destruction or liberation in the end. Which it is depends on your own very human interpretation of the meaning of love, and of duty, and I'll leave that judgment to you.