Transhuman

  We experience a model in our heads created from simple coded "digital" data fed into our brains from our sense organs. Development of sophisticated AIs is likely to muddy these waters ever further, to the point where the wholly imaginary becomes almost real, but, when love and life are concerned, "almost" doesn't quite do it. I suspect that technology-enhanced supermen and women will have all the same basic drives and goals as do modern people or, indeed, ancient people. The biological programming hardwired into us on the plains of Africa is not going to alter anytime soon.

  I didn't know what to call this story until David Drake suggested "In Command," which was perfect. Superficially, the story is about military command and the relationship between the pilot and the ship's AI but, at a deeper level, it is also a story about how a high-tech society might be governed. Are the machines or the people in charge? At what point do the machines cross the line from being useful servants to controlling masters, and does it matter? Is it possible to create a stable partnership between the organic and the machine?

  G@vin45

  Daniel M. Hoyt

  Screen names and avatars let us be anything we want when we're online. Other people, of course, have the same power. When enough people and things cover themselves with layer upon layer of identities, how do you know what's real? And does it matter? Read on for an interesting take on those and other, related questions.

  "Vet my face, will you, Krusher? I think it's workable now."

  I felt the mind snag from Gamer at the same time as his voice boomed in my head. Blowing across a hot cup of hazelnut tea, warm mist rising in my face, I flashed a Do Not Disturb answer to the commbots attached to my brain. Putting the finishing touches on a new virtual reality face of my own at the time, one I named G@vin45, interruptions like this were not appreciated, and Gamer should know that. "Not now, Gamer," I said aloud, to make sure he got the message.

  "Aw, c'mon, Krush, it'll just take a min," Gamer whined behind me.

  I tapped into the vidlinks around the office, selected one behind me and slightly to the left, and flashed a replace instruction to my brain bots, targeting the image of my dad inside a silver picture frame near me on my curved work surface. Instantly, my dad's likeness changed to a live video feed of Gamer peering over my right shoulder. Glancing at the vid, I sighed.

  "What is that—Gavin?" Gamer whispered in my ear. "Geez, Krush, get real. You can take a min for me. Gavin One was a worldwide best seller, what makes you think Gavin Six Hundred or whatever it is will fail?"

  "Forty-five," I said, irritated, glaring at the vid and frowning, sure Gamer would be tapped into one of the office vidlinks facing me. "And Forty-four's sales curve down-turned, so I've got to get this one right or there won't be a Forty-six, much less a Six hundred." I flashed a restore instruction to my brain bots, and my dad's picture returned in my field of vision.

  I could still feel Gamer's warm breath on the back of my ear, and another snag tingled in my mind, blocked by my DND. He was going to keep at me—again—until I gave in, during which time I'd get nothing productive done with his constant interruptions. Closing my eyes to mark the transition to my new, unwanted task, my dad's pic, my desk, the office all disappeared from view, leaving a host of Gavin-related views, my brain bots intercepting my retinal image and combining the Gavin views into my view of the real world, which was now nothingness. I flashed a standby and they went dark, too. As the afterimages faded from my retinal image, and my brain bots waited for new instructions, I opened my eyes to the real world—blank, we called it—and spun my chair around to face Gamer.

  He jumped back at my sudden movement, then smiled. In the standard-issue nondescript white lab coat that most of us in the VR creation industry wore over our normal clothes—no wasting cycles filtering out patterns when we replaced the images on each other's clothes—Gamer's dark brown eyes jumped out against his short-cropped pale blond hair. My brain bot's standard replacement algorithm for Gamer kicked in as soon as his face was recognized, and the white lab coat was instantly replaced in my head by the image I'd assigned to him: khaki cargo pants and a black T-shirt with "Sk8rBoi" emblazoned in large, neon green letters. I didn't actually know what it meant, but I'd read that the outfit had been part of pop culture once, many years ago, and it seemed to fit Gamer—or at least the face he showed at work.

  With instantly replaceable real-time imaging embedded into everything we saw, and new tech coming faster than ever, the faces we created were more important than ever. My principal face, Kru$hr29, was pretty much public now, so that's what I used. G@vin1 went so big, so fast, and I'd made the mistake of signing my Kru$hr29 face on G@vin1's credits, so everyone who ran G@vin1 knew my K-face.

  Which meant pretty much everyone I ran into anywhere I went.

  I'd tried another face at the office, but coworkers kept asking me if I knew where to find Kru$hr29. I think Gamer put them up to it; he pretty much worshipped me back then—or at least my success with G@vin1, which put my solo VR design business on the map and gave me the money to make it a full-blown company. Until G@vin1, personal VRs didn't exist. I guess I was the first to think of a total world experience replacement, though I certainly didn't realize it at the time. I was just taking what I thought was the next step in the real-time video replacement ladder. At any rate, G@vin1's been credited with starting the industry.

  Besides being my first employee, Gamer's been my biggest fan ever since he ran G@vin1.

  Gamer grinned wide as he snagged me again. I canceled the DND and our brain bots tunneled a private connection over the snag.

  "I call the face Jaemz," Gamer said as his face downloaded.

  "Isn't there already one out there?"

  "Maybe. How about Jaemz1?"

  "Might be okay. Check on it first." I ran it in test mode, just to be safe. The last time I had a bot crash at work, it shut down my entire botbrain until I could get it reloaded. Took most of my afternoon and several attempts to restart. I was blank the whole time. I can take it for a moment while I mark transitions, but that length of time was torture. I was just glad it happened in a controlled environment, rather than the real world. The thought of being blank out there made me shudder.

  Honestly, I don't understand how some people can do it. There's a group of blanks—like my own father—who've never been modded with the brain bots. They say it's not right to play God with ourselves.

  I don't know; I don't feel like I'm playing God at all. Just increasing my efficiency. I can process faster and more efficiently than a computer; with sight and sound mods, I can tailor my experience in any situation to make it positive and rewarding. What's wrong with that?

  Blood pressure rising slightly from this imaginary argument with my father—one I knew I'd have again in reality soon enough—it took me a second to realize Gamer was still waiting for me to vet Jaemz1. I glanced around at my familiar surroundings, looking for the sight mods in his Jaemz1 face. Gamer was wearing a formal black tuxedo with white ruffled shirt and a black bow tie. He held a martini, and a weapons alert targeted his left breast coat pocket, with what I was pretty sure was a Walther PPK outlined in flashing red.

  "Uh, Game? Is this what I think it is?"

  "I know what you're thinking, Krush, but it's not."

  "Are you sure? You can't do that face, you know. That face has been around almost as long as Gavin, and they'll come after you for infringement."

  "It's okay, Krush. Trust me. The resemblance is intentional, of course, but there's no infringement. Just trust me and go with it."

  "Make sure, okay? They're worse than Disney. After Gavin, some yahoo did a face he called DubleODude, remember? Even had the face of that Desmond Decker guy—the hugely popular actor who played the thirteenth one—right down to that dimple on his right cheek only and the mole in the middle of his left eyebrow. They went after him the same day and then put out their official JamesBond007 face a week later. Last I heard, that yahoo was designing party faces for kids somewhere in Alaska. Y
ou don't want to go there."

  "I remember. It's just to set the initial mood. Tuxedos aren't copyrighted, last I checked."

  "Or Walther PPKs. That's true. But if you do anything with the studio's storylines, Fleming's or the Broccoli offshoots—"

  "I didn't," Gamer reassured me. "Just check it out. Save the lecture for later. If you still think it's needed."

  Nodding, I looked around. My test display noted that sound mods had occurred. Gamer had modded our conversation, and I'd been too wrapped up in my censure to notice. "Hang on a min while I replay the mods in dual. Didn't notice them before." I gave my brain bots the dual mode command, which brought up five new test views, one for each sense, each with an inset for the real-world views.

  Snickering—which the sound mods dropped, and the sight mods changed to a playful smirk—Gamer shook his head. "Ye of little faith, Krush. I learned from the best, you know."

  The sight mods were pretty good—although I shouldn't have been surprised, considering I'd taught him the trade personally. The taste and smell mods seemed a bit thin, though; I made a note over the tunnel, along with a reminder that smell mods could influence taste. Still, all of it together gave the intended feel of intrigue and a glamorous environment without any trace of infringement that I could spot. Ye of little faith replaced by Your suspicious nature is evident; Please inspect my work instead of Check it out; They'll come after you for infringement modded to They're fiercely protective of their legal interests. Our exchange sounded more like the vaguely interrogative banter Jaemz1 might engage in at a cocktail party for billionaires. I looked forward to talking to a woman with this face—I was pretty sure our conversation would end up with a planned liaison.

  Susan, a recent VR design intern, obliged me almost on cue. Coming from my left, she veered directly in front of me for a step, smiled seductively, and waved to catch my attention. The smile seemed out of place for Susan, and it was. The sight inset showed the anxious expression of a person interrupting a superior, unsure of the reception. I never felt a mind snag from her; instead, she spoke aloud. "Krusher, I can see you're busy, but can you spare a bit? Jan sent me over."

  The sound mod was more interesting than the real world. I wouldn't say no to some assistance, and Jan assured me you'd oblige. In the sight inset, Susan simply stood before me in her white lab coat, waiting, her brown hair pulled back severely into a bun more befitting of a librarian. Not in the mods. In the sight mod, Susan's long blond hair hung loosely over an elegant red silk dress with a plunging neckline and a hemline far above sexy, strappy leather six-inch stilettos. She stood so close in the mods, when she licked her lips and leaned into me slightly, I caught a spicy whiff of cinnamon on her hot breath and felt the light caress of her silk-covered, barely restrained breast brushing my arm.

  I was only half surprised when the sight view for Jaemz1 flashed a suggestion for Nude Mode and Susan's elegant red dress disappeared for a second, flashing the image of a voluptuous body I couldn't imagine Susan being able to hide under her white lab coat.

  Nicely done, I noted to Gamer over our tunnel, opting for normal mode. I'll keep Jaemz1 going for a while. Stay in the tunnel, and maybe you'll learn something.

  Behind me, Gamer snickered. I instructed my brain bots to replace my dad's image with the vidlink aimed at my front for a few seconds and watched Gamer go back to his work area.

  I picked up my cup, took a sip of cold tea, and grimaced. Making a mental note to mod the cold tea later, instinctively I shut my eyes to mark the transition, then realized I couldn't mark while facing Jaemz1. I signed and opened my eyes again.

  Turning to the blonde siren in the red dress, I said, "Sure, Susan. What do you need?"

  Cre8R#1 netcasted, "We go live two weeks from Tuesday."

  Hundreds of thousands caught that net, decided that the subject was uninteresting, and moved on. Most of them, since they were already in Cre8R#1's net scanned the rest of his 'cast, then dropped it and caught the net of someone else more interesting.

  About forty thousand rushers—who ran faces in accelerated time to keep up with the increasing flood in the market—stayed in Cre8R#1's net, but would never admit they didn't understand his comment. They viewed him—or maybe her, nobody knew for sure—almost as a demigod among rushers; it was rumored that he'd rushed every face in existence, starting with G@vin1 and even including the illegal faces you could only get on the black market. Some rushers even claimed he'd rushed some secret government faces that could only be accessed with the highest security clearance.

  Two hundred and thirty one fans knew what Cre8R#1 meant and made some old fashioned vidlink calls to a specific group of friends, all of whom would be appalled if they knew the truth about this person they had been hearing so much about over the last few months, this person known only as Creator, champion of the blanks.

  "Look, Dad, I've had a long day," I yelled, my throat raw. "I'm not asking to cut off your balls here. I'm just saying they can fix your heart. You nearly died from that heart attack last week, don't you understand that?"

  Glaring at me, Dad sniffed, "Not interested, Simon. If it's my time to go, it's my time, that's all there is to it. Doc fixed me up with a stent. I'll be okay for a few more years. Or at least a few weeks."

  Fuming, I shut my eyes and turned off my sight mods. Through clenched teeth, I said, "It doesn't have to be that way. What is with you blanks? We can fix this kind—"

  "Not interested, son," Dad repeated.

  "—of thing now. No surgery. Just some nanobots injected into you, once a day—"

  "Not interested," Dad said, sighing.

  "—for about a year. You'll have a heart like a twenty-year-old—"

  "No."

  "—and never have to worry about it again."

  "You're not listening," Dad said patiently. "I don't care. I don't want to be an—"

  He looked away quickly.

  I knew what was on his mind. "An abomination? That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?"

  Dad looked down, never met my angry gaze.

  "I am not an abomination, Dad! I'm simply more effective with the enhancements."

  His head snapping up, Dad's eyes blazed with passion for the first time in twenty years. "You think what you want, Simon. I'm just glad your poor mother didn't live for this. It would have killed her to know you'd rejected the body she gave you, just as sure as my feeble mind is no match for your . . . enhanced one. But what's next, Simon? What's next when you run out of space on the inside? Do you start attaching things on the outside then?"

  "Don't be silly. Moore's law—"

  "Which isn't a law."

  "—formed the basis of the coming Singularity—"

  Dad rolled his eyes. "Poppycock. You'll see on Tuesday after next."

  "—and it's held true with the nanobots. Why should we expect—"

  "I don't expect anything, son. You do."

  That stopped me in my tracks. "What?"

  "We . . . blanks, isn't it? . . . don't expect anything from your technology. That's the point. This Singularity is fantasy, don't you see? Humanity enhancing themselves to the point of being so different we don't recognize ourselves anymore? That's ridiculous." He shook his head sadly.

  "But, but," I stammered, a billion thoughts racing through my brain, supplied by billions of brain bot synapses firing simultaneously, too fast for my mouth to catch up. "A caveman wouldn't know . . . we'd be like gods . . . magic to a medieval person!"

  "I'm sure that would make more sense to someone with those brain bugs of yours," Dad said sarcastically.

  "It would, actually," I yelled. "We'd just snag a tunnel with our bots! This is exactly what I've been talking about. Our bodies are too slow for our minds. So we fixed our bodies and make them better, faster, younger. No more osteoporosis, no more glaucoma, no more heart attacks—"

  Dad struggled out of his chair and stood ramrod straight. "We. Are. Not. Gods. We don't have the right to fix ourselves like that." He gr
imaced and squeezed his eyes shut. His left arm hung limply by his side, and, clutching his chest with his right arm, he sank to his knees and tumbled forward.

  I vaulted forward and caught him before his face smashed into the floor, then laid him on his back. I put out a 911 on my brain bot's emergency channel and let the bot handle the details while I tended to my dad.

  He wasn't breathing. His expression had relaxed, and Dad looked peaceful for the first time in years. My brain bot alerted me with the CPR sequence. Bots were automatically allocated to the task, and they drove my muscles to do it while my birth brain numbly observed. Chest compressions, breaths with his nose pinched, more chest compressions, more breaths.

  No response.

  Emergency personnel came after what seemed like an eternity, but they told me it had only been a few minutes.

  "We still have time," said one of them hunching over Dad. Tall even while kneeling, a skinny man with a short fuzz of red hair and close-cropped beard. "His brain hasn't been deprived of oxygen for more than five minutes yet. We can dose him."

  "No," I said softly, without thinking, while my brain bots were still engaged elsewhere. I tried to say yes, but it never came out.

  "Prepare 50cc of QRN and 100cc of FRHC," the redhead said to one of his companions, who had torn my dad's shirt apart to expose his chest.

  "No," I said louder, confused by my tongue's sudden independence. My brain bots protested, needling me with a warning.

  Red picked up a syringe, filled it, and squeezed the excess air out. "Go directly into the heart with the FRHC; I'll do the quick bots into the carotid and manually compress."

  "No!" I screamed, surprised, and grabbed Red's wrist.

  Red looked at me quizzically. "Even if we shock him, he's only fifty-fifty without the bots."