Transhuman

  I felt Red's mind snag, but put up a DND. "I know," I said softly, with the sudden realization of why I'd intervened. "But he's a blank; he wouldn't want it."

  Red and his assistants stopped. Red stared at me for a second, then at my dad, then back at me. Slowly, he said, "It's procedure. You sure you want to refuse it? I'll need consent. Are you a family member?" He glanced at his watch impatiently.

  "Six minutes," one of them said.

  Red's mind snagged me again. I took down the DND and reverse-snagged him to record the proper consent. As the tunnel engaged, my own heart twisted. In a sense, I was consenting to my father's death. With the Quick Repair Nanobots, he'd almost surely survive. Without them, using only the old CPR and defibrillator techniques, his chances of survival were dropping every second. But it had only been a few minutes since my dad had made it quite clear he didn't want the bots, even if it meant his death. I couldn't disobey him, not now, not ever.

  Red and his crew switched to CPR almost immediately, but they'd lost precious time already. One of Red's crew quickly shaved two large patches of Dad's chest hair, one above his right nipple and the other on his left, just below the rib cage, then attached adhesive electrode patches.

  I'd never seen the old techniques at work before. It occurred to me that since we'd starting dosing with nanobots, there was no need to update the old techniques, and they were virtually identical to the methods employed decades ago.

  "Clear." Red's crew, kneeling at Dad's sides, shuffled back a few inches, still on their knees. The shock hit Dad seconds later, but he remained unresponsive. They did it again.

  At some level, I knew it was pointless. It had been too long; I knew it, and Red knew it. Even if Red's crew got Dad breathing on his own at this point, his brain might not survive as a working organ.

  And that's the one thing we can't regenerate with bots. There were rumors of soldiers being regenerated almost completely from the ground up—I'd actually seen an entire arm regened—but they still had their brains to work with. Johnny with his leg blown off, we can fix that, but Johnny with his head blown off had no chance.

  Red shocked Dad again, but nothing happened. He pulled off the electrodes slowly. "Take him, Mark," Red said softly to one of his crew members, and they took Dad's body away while I numbly stood and watched.

  Red stood and stared at me intently. "We could have saved him," he said, turned and walked away.

  "You know I hate it when you change me into a woman," my cat, S0kr@teeZ, mind snagged me. He rubbed up against my leg and purred.

  "Relax, Socrates," I said. "We buried Dad today, remember? I need someone to talk to right now, and I'll face you any way I want."

  "We can talk. Isn't that why you modded me?"

  "Yeah, but I really need to see a human woman. Just don't lick me, okay?"

  "Hey, if you'd stop smelling like you've been rolling in flowers, I wouldn't have to groom you."

  "It's the shampoo, Socs. How many times do I have to tell you? It's normal for humans." I picked up Socrates and put him in my lap to stroke him. In my C@rolJD3 face, he modded to a redhead with a tear-streaked face snuggling up to me. We held each other for a while, her quiet sobs rattling against my chest.

  "I let him die, Socs," I said. "I tried to let them dose him with the nanobots, but something else took over and told them not to. I'm not sure what happened, but I wasn't in control."

  "It's not your fault," C@r0l3 said through the snag tunnel. "It's what he wanted. You know that."

  "Yeah, I know," I admitted. "A part of me knows, at least. But there's something else."

  We talked for most of the evening like that, Carol and I, without resolving anything, but afterward I felt better.

  Shutting down C@r0l3, I snagged S0kr@teeZ. "Thanks, Socs, I needed that. I think I figured out what's been bothering me."

  "What—the death part? Things die all the time." Socrates licked his right forepaw and wiped his face with the damp fur.

  "No, not that. The control part. I wasn't in control, consciously, and my brain bots weren't, either. It was almost like some kind of . . . I don't know—"

  "Instinct?" S0kr@teeZ suggested, and looked up at me.

  "Yeah, maybe. But what is that? What was in control? We mapped the brain years ago, and I don't know of anything in there that accounts for instinct. We attribute that to dumb animals—"

  "Hey!" Socrates turned away from me and started grooming his hind legs.

  "Sorry, Socs. But we don't attribute instinct as a rational process." I cocked my head and stared at Socrates. "On the other hand, you acknowledged instinct just now. How did you do that? Your brain was mapped, too."

  "Obviously, since you modded me."

  "And there was no instinct in that map. Yet we both understand instinct almost . . . instinctively."

  "Well," S0kr@teeZ said haughtily, "speaking just for us dumb animals, of course we understand instinct. It's not a function of a specific part of the brain, it's the whole package. There's physical reactions, too. Muscle memory that tells you how far to flex to jump a certain distance. Running away when you're scared. Eating when you're hungry so you don't starve to death. You don't have to think about some things, you just do them. Those reactions are instinct; they won't show up in your brain map."

  "Maybe you're right. But we humans have always drawn the line at intelligence. That's what separates us from the animals."

  "Yet you mapped my brain."

  "It's not the same. I mapped your brain, personally, off the record, as an experiment. You're an anomaly. I designed the bots in your system; who knows if they'd work on another cat? I wrote the translation program our tunnel uses. Without it, this conversation would be more like, 'Jump-longer, scared-run, eat-no-starve.' Your particular brain works by loose associations; we translate back and forth."

  "And have an intelligent conversation," S0kr@teeZ said flatly. "Which implies I have intelligence, too."

  Frowning, I admitted he was right. "It's a different kind of intelligence, though."

  "But still intelligence, Simon. Just not the same as yours. Maybe more . . . instinctive than yours, even, but still intelligence. And when you start mapping all the other dumb animals—maybe even other cats—what will you find?"

  I paused for a moment and engaged all my spare brain bots on this philosophical question. Idly, I wondered if my heart bots, my stomach bots, my bicep bots were pondering as well.

  "I think," S0kr@teeZ said, "that you'll find far more intelligence in the world than your own. And then where will the dividing line be?"

  "An intriguing thought. Even with our bot-enhanced brains, which have essentially multiplied our collective human intelligence several orders of magnitude in only a few years, we still haven't found intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Some critics claim it's because we're not looking for another type of intelligence. But how do we know what to look for if it's not like our own? How do we translate?"

  "Like you did with me. You learn the patterns, and relate them to your own."

  "But what does a rock think like?" I said, automatically, before realizing the impact of what I was suggesting: that inanimate objects might be intelligent somehow.

  "I'm going to bed now," I said, quickly, before my brain bots analyzed that suggestion, and shut down the snag.

  "Kru$hr29?" Ga^^er20+ snagged me urgently at work the next morning, startling me in the middle of my first sip of Kona coffee, burning my tongue. I set down the coffee, making a mental note to run taste and touch mods on it later, after it went cold.

  "Thanks for your feedback on Jaemz1. I pumped up the taste and smell mods like you said. You want to try them out?"

  "No. I trust you."

  "Did you hear about the demonstration the blanks are planning?"

  "No. What's it about?"

  "They're urging us to go blank for a day. Just one day. Someone said people used to do this with something they called television."

  "Yeah, I've heard of TV,"
I said through the tunnel. "Primitive form of two dimensional VR; not very immersive, though, sight and sound only."

  "Said they used to do a No TV day every year, back in the day. The blanks are trying to do the same kind of thing, I guess. Calling it Blank Day. Not sure what purpose it serves."

  I knew. "To show us that our enhancements are unnecessary." I felt a tear well up. "Dad and I were arguing about it the day he died."

  "I'm sorry, Kru$hr29," Ga^^er20+ snagged. "I didn't know."

  "It's okay."

  "Anyway, it's next Tuesday. A week from today."

  Tuesday? My brain bot alarmed me and put up a replay view of my dad arguing with me. Poppycock. You'll see on Tuesday after next.

  Did he mean this Blank Day? Was Dad somehow involved in this? I had to find out. "Parallel with me, Ga^^er20+," I said. "I need to know what this Blank Day is."

  "Done." Our brain bots sent out millions of queries each. A few seconds later, we'd gathered, collated, and shared the responses.

  "Not good," I said. "It looks like the blanks were up to something more. There are a bunch of references to some guy they called Creator, who seems to have planned the whole event. And this Creator seems to think that going blank for that long will be permanent. That the nanobots would go impotent somehow, run out of symbiotic power or self destruct or something."

  "Creator also tells them that it's inevitable, anyway," Ga^^er20+ said, "that if we don't go blank, we'll all lose control to our botbrains and go crazy afterward."

  I shut down the snag and jerked around to face Gamer across the room.

  His brow crinkled in obvious worry, mirrored by a reflective frown. He shuffled over to me, dazed. "Do you think they're right?" he whispered conspiratorially, his eyes darting around the room. "That we'd all go crazy without our enhancements?"

  Narrowing my eyes, I leaned toward him and whispered back, "Have you ever gone blank before? Even for a few moments?"

  Gamer shook his head slowly.

  "I do it to mark transitions. Kind of like a bookmark. But it's only for a moment."

  Gamer's eyes widened, as if I'd just told him his parents were orangutans.

  "I was blank for an afternoon once, after a bot crash from a bad face. Took about two dozen restarts to get my botbrain running again. Nerve-wracking, yes, but if I'd thought for a moment that it might not ever start again, I don't know what I would have done."

  "You think it's a psychological ploy by this Creator, then?"

  My botbrain's instant analysis sent a chill up my spine. "Yes. Just telling people they won't get their botbrains restarted after going blank might be enough to induce panic. A couple of failed restarts and they'll believe it. Creator's got to be stopped somehow."

  "Agreed. But how? What can we do?"

  "Not we. Me. I fight back with the same weapon. Disinformation."

  "You've been hearing about Blank Day everywhere, too?" Gamer asked me in the blank a couple days later. No dual mode voice and snag conversations—or even just snags—only our real voices. We'd taken to talking this way since Tuesday, just to make sure we weren't going to hurt anyone.

  "I have," I said. "Relax. Gavin's ready. QC has it now."

  G@vin45 was going out on Friday with a new feature, never before seen in a face: Blank Mode. You set the countdown timer, drop into Blank Mode, and the face automatically restarted when the counter hit zero. Simple to implement, it gave the impression of going blank, but was completely under the face's control, so there was no danger of a failed botbrain restart.

  Better, G@vin45 was set to hit the market with a timely Be ready for Blank Day pitch that even the sales force didn't know about.

  I kept it secret, even from my own VR design company; the advertising was only in the face's trial mode—which would probably get about five million hits, based on Gavin's current user base—and would only appear on Monday. I cloaked it from Quality Control, too, in their licenses, so they would never ever see it before it hit the streets. The rushers, who could be counted on to run trial faces the minute they hit the market, would quickly find the undocumented Blank Mode, buried deep in the command stack, and their reviews would flood the infoways over the weekend, naturally mentioning the cool new Blank Mode, just in time for Blank Day.

  The uproar on Monday, once the stockholders figured out what was happening, would be deafening. But by then it would be too late. And they'd forgive and forget because it was my decision, and in effect I was the company, and they all knew it. I wasn't stupid; just because I let other people run the company didn't mean I hadn't maneuvered a majority stake in it. So I'd be able to take the hit, careerwise.

  Without Gavin's prior success, I'd never have been able to pull off this kind of dissemination. Ironically, if it worked, I had Dad's death to thank for it. I winced at the thought.

  "It'll work," Gamer whispered reassuringly. "Once QC approves it, we're in the clear. And the doctored QC license virtually assures that. Don't worry; it's foolproof."

  Nodding, I muttered, "It better be. If Creator wins, we lose. Permanently."

  Creator started rushing the new G@vin45 face real-time, even as it was downloading, mere seconds after its release.

  "Nice," he muttered to himself as the G@vin45 face kicked in and the initial sensations hit. He injected himself with a batch of highly customized rushbots, timereleased and self-burning, designed to accelerate the perception of time, extrapolating experiences along the way to fill in the blanks. A simple greeting between friends in reality could transform in the face under the influence of these rushbots into a several hours long, drawn-out philosophical discussion, possibly involving a trip to the beach, closing down several bars, a few rounds of sex and arguments, or whatever else the rushbots determined was appropriate to the discussion.

  "Oho, what's this?" Creator said aloud when he found the new mode hidden deep in the command stack. "Blank Mode?"

  Timer set for only a couple seconds, which in rushbot time would seem like an hour, Creator dropped into Blank Mode.

  "Whoa! Intense," was all he said after it was over, and ignored his brainbots while they chewed over their analysis.

  Creator smiled, and continued rushing G@vin45.

  "Are you going blank today, Krusher?" the intern, Susan, asked me first thing Tuesday morning, her brown eyes sporting practiced innocence, a sharp contrast to her nervous tone. I got the impression she was fishing for an answer, but not to the question she asked.

  "What?" Gamer broke in. "Asking the pariah for advice? Don't you know what happened yesterday?"

  Susan looked away, embarrassed, and lied, "I was away."

  Gamer and I glanced at each other. He raised an eyebrow and smirked.

  I sighed. "You're a nice kid, Susan. You know; just ask me."

  She looked back, her eyes full of shock. "It's true, then? You intentionally released a trojan?"

  It was my turn to look away, embarrassed. I hadn't thought of it that way when I put in the code, but Susan was right. "I did it, yes." Screwing up my courage, I looked her in the eyes and resisted glancing at Gamer when I said, "Nobody else knew about it until yesterday."

  "Why?" she asked, betrayal flashing in her eyes.

  I couldn't blame her. As the founder of the company, when I made the shocking decision to continue working in the trenches, I accepted a responsibility to uphold the image of the face designer I'd created. As an intern in my company, she looked up to that image—that face—as a role model. And I'd let her down.

  Taking a deep breath, I continued, "I'm not going to sugarcoat my actions, or explain them, either. I will tell you that I took advantage of my position to do it, I had a good reason for doing it, and that you'll understand better tomorrow."

  Susan's eyes softened, and she nodded before turning away.

  "And Susan?" I called softly after her.

  She stopped, but didn't turn around.

  "You were right to question me, when you saw that I did something wrong. Nobody is above re
proach, not even me. Thank you."

  Susan nodded slightly, her back still turned, then rushed off.

  "Nobody is above reproach, not even me," Gamer said, in a fair imitation of my voice.

  I couldn't face him, but my voice started shaking as I admonished him, "Should I have told her it's okay for her or someone else here to do what I did?"

  Gamer softly padded back to his work area in the embarrassed silence.

  * * *

  One by one, they went blank. All through Blank Day they turned off their mods—most of them while facing G@vin45—just to see what it was like.

  Most of them had forgotten the real world, and were glad when it was over. Some even tried it a second time, or a third.

  Very few went blank for the entire day, at least intentionally. A handful of brave souls went blank without facing G@vin45 and without knowing how to restart their brain bots, or that it might take several attempts. If anyone did go crazy, it wasn't reported.

  Blanks were out in droves all day, carrying slogan signs and aggressively demanding participation, oblivious of what was going on behind closed doors, singlemindedly pursuing their goal.

  Life is Blank—Fill It.

  Better Blank Than Dead.

  Respect Life.

  Man 1, Machine 0.

  A Day Without Bots Is A Human Day.

  I left work early and decided to go blank on the way home. Facing G@vin45 on my way out the door, the Blank Mode timer set for the time it would take me to walk home at a brisk pace, I told myself I owed it to my dad.

  A crowd of blanks chanted just outside my office building. "Blank, Blank, Blank, Blank," thundered through the air. I steeled my nerves and headed for the knot of swarming bodies.

  Hands grabbed at me as I pushed through. "Blank, Blank," boomed in my ears. Rough fabric scratched at my face and my exposed arms as I passed. Blank, Blank. Ripe human sweat overpowered my nose, and I longed for a smell mod to counteract the reek. A rough hand clamped on my arm and jerked me to a stop. I spun my head to face the assailant.