The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  Without making eye contact, Major Somers slid two tablet computers across the table—one for Zora, one for Curtik.

  Curtik said, “I really don’t know anything about mind transfer.”

  Major Somers snorted. “Pretty good with murder though.”

  Ned held up his hands. “Hey, we’re all on the same side here.”

  Zora turned to Curtik. “None of us knows much about mind transfer. That’s why it’s called the Cambridge Experiment.”

  Curtik said, “You’re the genius at computer systems and data transfer.”

  “I need your help. Devereaux needs your help.”

  “I should be leaving with Ned to track down leads.”

  Major Somers said, “You’re not allowed to leave. Be thankful we don’t arrest you for trying to blow up half the world.”

  Zora said, “We’re sorry. We were under a compulsion.”

  Major Somers shook his head. “I don’t care what kind of programming they put into you. You still killed millions. He pointed to the tablets, which were linked to the holo-projections. “Your controls are there. If you want to disconnect from the conversation at any time, you just—right, you’re geniuses. You’ll figure it out.”

  Zora fought the urge to beat him senseless.

  His face went pale and his eyes widened as he sat back in his chair. He looked at Ned, who had quietly stepped up behind Zora and put his hand on her shoulder. Zora unclenched her fists and forced herself to breathe normally. She refused to pummel him, no matter how good it would feel. Surprisingly, Curtik seemed unbothered by the major’s words. Zora would have thought he would take offense, or maybe he was flattered.

  Ned spoke quietly, “Everyone’s a little tense. Just try to relax.”

  “Do your jobs,” Major Somers said. “Be professional.”

  Ned backed away. “Right. I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  Zora engaged the audio connection. As soon as the channel was open, Dr. Poole said, “Hello, Zora, Curtik, how are you?”

  “Fine,” Zora said. She pointed to the robot behind Devereaux. “Is that the Asimov Assembly?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Poole replied, “an organic mobile computer.”

  “I still don’t understand why you need me,” Curtik said. “You’ve got all the Cambridge Experiment scientists there.”

  “Yes, but we’re not perfect. We might have missed something. I want you and Zora to look at the sequence we’ve projected. Study the pattern and see if there’s anything that looks off to you. This is similar to what you were doing on the Moon.”

  “Yes, and Zora was really good at it—pattern analysis and infiltration. It’ll take me hours to get up to speed.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Curtik,” Lendra said. “You may be able to offer some helpful insights.”

  “We’ll be proceeding slowly,” Dr. Poole said, “with the Mars Project scientists taking the lead. Transmissions each way take sixteen minutes and twenty-two seconds, so we’ll have plenty of time to answer any questions you might have. I suggest you begin with the first three processes, make sure they’re okay, then work your way forward from there. That way we can get started more quickly.”

  Zora said, “I assume we’re doing a copy and not a wipe?”

  “That’s correct,” Lendra replied. “However, we may only get the opportunity to do this once.”

  “Devereaux’s body has begun to shut down.” Dr. Poole pointed to the next holo-projection, where Quark and the surgeon-technicians now slid Devereaux’s shoulders to the side and shifted his head so it rested on a white pad. Zora glanced down at her computerized model of the machine—a Stelzie-Hanson Digital Collector and Descrambler or DCD. Devereaux’s head rested atop a receptor plate.

  Dr. Poole continued: “He might not last the night. If we don’t move now, we could lose his entire mind.”

  One of the Cambridge scientists turned to the cameras and said, “Dr. Tanaka here. We’re initializing receptor series two-one-eight-alpha—preparing for digitized transfer. But we’ll need him fully awake and the anesthetic removed.”

  The surgeon-technicians surrounding Devereaux adjusted the machines keeping him alive as Quark stepped forward and gently took hold of Devereaux’s head. Doug began rubbing Devereaux’s hand. Everyone in the holo-projections, except for those on Mars, went still, staring at Devereaux. His eyelids began to flutter; his mouth opened and closed. When his eyes finally opened, he stared about him, confusion on his face until he spotted Doug and Quark.

  “It’s okay,” Quark said. “We’re going to copy your mind into an Asimov Assembly.”

  Devereaux’s head moved slowly back and forth against Quark’s massive hands. He said, “I’m not sure about this.”

  “We discussed it,” Quark said. “You told me to make sure you went through with it. You said I shouldn’t let you change your mind.”

  “So I’m dying?”

  “No!” Doug said. “You’re not gonna die.”

  Quark touched Devereaux’s cheek with the back of his hand. “We don’t know.”

  “Terrible pain,” Devereaux said as he winced. “Blinding.”

  Why should there be pain? That made no sense. The brain has no pain receptors—unless the virus was killing him more quickly than they knew.

  “I’m sorry,” Quark said, his voice quavering slightly. “We have to save your mind.”

  “I don’t want to live forever, not even as a clone.” Devereaux shuddered, either from fear or pain. “And I’d rather be dead than have people read my mind.”

  How horrible that would be, Zora thought, to have your private thoughts available to everyone. What terrible secrets was Devereaux hiding? How would she feel if people could read her thoughts about Jeremiah? She felt her face grow hot and sank a little in her chair.

  “We don’t know if that will even be possible,” Dr. Tanaka said.

  “No one will be able to access your thoughts,” Quark reassured him. “I’ll make certain of it.”

  Devereaux grimaced. “You won’t be able to stop them.”

  He might be right, Zora realized. People like Lendra would do whatever they felt necessary to save themselves, even if it meant destroying Devereaux’s privacy. They would likely justify it by saying that the robot wasn’t Devereaux, but only a clone and therefore it had no rights.

  “We still need you,” Doug pleaded. “Only you can save us.”

  “Without you,” Lendra added, “we have no chance of finding a cure for the virus.”

  “So this will be my afterlife?” Devereaux asked. Sadness entered his voice. “Stuck inside a robot?”

  “You’re not gonna die,” Doug said, his voice breaking, his head dropping to settle on Devereaux’s shoulder. “This is just a precaution.”

  “Of course,” Devereaux said. He pulled his hand free from Doug’s grasp and ran it across the top of Doug’s tightly shaved head. Devereaux’s face paled. He clenched his teeth as if trying not to scream.

  Even now, knowing he was dying, Devereaux was looking out for others. Zora wanted to shout out to everyone to leave him alone, to just let him die. Her breathing came faster; her palms began sweating.

  “We can begin now,” Dr. Tanaka said. “There should be a tingling sensation on the right side of your head.”

  “I feel it. More like scraping away part of my brain.” Devereaux twisted his head to look at the empty robot behind him, then up at Quark’s face. “Can I trust you?”

  “Absolutely,” Quark said. “You don’t even have to ask.”

  “If I were to ask you to stop?” Devereaux said. “To just let me die in peace, without pain?”

  “We need your help,” Lendra said. “We can’t take the chance that we’ll lose your mind forever. Please don’t make me choose.”

  Zora shivered. They were essentially forcing him to
do this. And if he died soon, his cloned mind would continue inside that robotic body. How would they treat it? As property? Would Devereaux exist only as a computer after this? Would they be able to compel him to work against his will? She glanced at Lendra and Dr. Poole, then at the Cambridge scientists. At least they looked uncomfortable, squirming as they prepared to disregard his wishes. Were they really saving him?

  One of the surgeon-technicians said, “Think of your parents—a happy day—Christmas or a picnic.” She looked at a screen and said, “Good. Wait, I’m seeing an increase in pain levels.”

  Quark leaned over Devereaux, tears running onto his mask, and said, “I’ve got you. Trust me.”

  Zora stared at the massive Escala. He looked to be in almost as much pain as Devereaux.

  “Zora,” Dr. Poole said. “Zora!”

  Zora looked at her.

  “You and Curtik let us know if you find anything that seems off. Anything at all.”

  Zora nodded. She watched Quark caressing Devereaux’s face as the old man began moaning, then screaming. Doug and Quark cried openly. Even Curtik looked uncomfortable. Lendra wore a stoic expression—no surprise there; she cared about no one but herself—while Dr. Poole looked nauseated. Zora felt an overwhelming urge to help. And yet nothing she did would save him. They were going to transfer his mind no matter what. Quark had obviously reached the same decision. As Devereaux thrashed about on the gurney, Quark stroked his face gently, a deep moan rumbling from his throat, while Doug continued to hold Devereaux’s hand. The great man’s mind belonged to people like Lendra now. Fighting that would only get Zora exiled. Very well. She would do her best to make sure the procedure was a success.

  Suddenly the sound stopped.

  Curtik said, “I couldn’t take that anymore.”

  “Thanks,” Zora replied.

  “He’s dying, you know. That’s the only explanation for the increase in pain.”

  Zora nodded. “Let’s get to work, at least do what we can. How awful would it be if only part of his mind made it through?”

  Curtik said, “I thought I was cruel. But Lendra . . .”

  Zora turned to the tablet in front of her. As she studied the process, her message chime sounded. Zora activated the holo-projection’s audio and looked up at Aspen, who said: “Zora, I’ve been so worried about you. I’m glad you’re looking well.” Aspen wrung her hands together. “I told them you were better at this sort of thing than me, which is why they’ve asked you to help.” Aspen smiled hesitantly. “When are you getting a new implant? It would be nice to hear from you once in a while.” Now Aspen looked off camera for a moment. “We’re still not certain whether the Patterson Formula applies, and whether the favored patterns of Devereaux’s mind will conflict with the organic computer, resulting in a decrease in the efficacy of future growth that will eventually become a retardation. Check the latest data on Guffie, the Earth rat, and perhaps you’ll see something I’m missing. I hope you’re taking care of yourself.” Aspen’s voice dropped slightly. “I miss you, immensely.”

  Major Somers snorted softly, but when Curtik cleared his throat, Somers held up his hands and quieted.

  Zora sighed. She liked Aspen. But they’d always been somewhat different—Aspen harsher and more judgmental than either Zora or Rendela—and their days of cuddling for comfort on the Moon were long over. Plus, every contact with her reminded Zora of Rendela, who sacrificed herself so that Zora might live.

  She took a few moments to compose a message in her head: We’re on different worlds now, with different challenges and responsibilities. I put you in charge because I know you can handle the problems you’ll encounter. I have great faith in you. Please take care of the others, and yourself.

  But she simply said: “Aspen, I miss you too.”

  She glanced at Curtik as she sent the message, but he kept his head down. Major Somers looked at the floor.

  Zora went back to work on her tablet, pulling up the latest data on the rat named Guffie, comparing the scans to those previously conducted on Mars. She tried to immerse herself in the statistics, go into a kind of trance, where nothing from outside intruded. She used to be able to focus this way, poring over the smallest details, memorizing and integrating them into a larger pattern, spotting those weak points that indicated a wrongness or a possible avenue of attack. She’d attempted that last night, but the sounds coming from the room next door had distracted her too much.

  They kept the volume muted so they wouldn’t hear Devereaux’s screams of pain. But every time Zora looked up at the holo-projection, she saw him writhing on the table, Doug and Quark doing their best to comfort him.

  Concentrate, Zora told herself. Ignore everything but the data. It showed certain vulnerabilities—decaying memory and corruption of mental processes in human-to-computer transfer projections. But that made no sense. With a newly initialized organic computer, the mind transfer ought not to result in a decline in cognitive acuity or agility. Something felt wrong. Zora couldn’t identify the problem specifically. She just knew that a step was missing. Perhaps this was what all the other scientists sensed too: something beyond the scientific: that the end result would likely achieve a sum less than the total of its parts.

  She closed her eyes, finally managing to place herself into a full hypnotic trance, letting her eidetic memory take over as she re-examined the data. What kept coming back to her was the disconnect in the pattern itself—the disparate ways brains and computers function—with brains leaping intuitively in directions often chosen for purely emotional reasons, while computers followed a perfectly logical one-zero paradigm. As difficult as it might be to transfer a mind to another person’s brain, the challenges involved in housing a mind inside a computer for long periods of time presented another order of magnitude altogether.

  Still, if she ignored that problem for the moment, what idiosyncrasies remained?

  She submerged herself in the details, delving deeper into the mathematics and physics, letting herself drift in the trance, examining each step in the mind-transfer procedure for any tiny flaw. She sensed time passing abstractly, as if she were unaffected by its current. She felt a kind of joy at her apartness—a rock in the stream of time, breaking down processes and sub-processes and sub-sub-processes, getting ever closer to the ultimate truth, working almost like a computer herself, one problem at a time, experiencing something like delight.

  As the possibilities began to narrow, the solution approaching from a distant point, she felt a nudge on her shoulder. She ignored it, concentrating only on eliminating impossibilities, while the pleasure that came with rightness intensified. Then she felt a slap on her cheek. Although it annoyed her, she maintained her trance, furiously discarding wrongnesses. Just as the answer began to dawn on her, she felt a pressure tapping her on the forehead: a cold, blunt object that repeated itself in a series of impacts—dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot. Over and over she felt the irritating tapping: an emergency code that distracted her sufficiently that she finally opened her eyes and saw Curtik’s face before her. His frown of concern faded as he stopped tapping her forehead with a mechanical finger. Behind him, Major Somers exhaled heavily.

  “Thank goodness,” Major Somers said.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Zora asked.

  Curtik pointed to the holo-projections. “You were out for over an hour. Major Somers tried to wake you. He even slapped your face.” Zora noted the tingling of her left cheek and stared at Major Somers.

  “Dr. Poole insisted I wake you,” Major Somers said, holding up his hands.

  “There was a lot in that slap,” Curtik said with a shrug. “I thought he deserved the opportunity to hit you. You were in one of your deep trances. Almost into brain lock. And without your implant to revive you, you might have been stuck there until you passed out, or . . . .”

  Zora reached up and rubbed her chee
k. “Thanks, I guess. But you woke me too early. I almost had the answer. I still might have gotten enough . . .”

  Dr. Poole said, “Are you all right, Zora?”

  “I think so.” She turned to the Cambridge scientists and said, “What kind of filter are you using for the mind transfer?”

  “A Roth algorithmic diffuser,” Dr. Tanaka answered.

  “Why do you ask, Zora?” Lendra interjected.

  “I think it needs to be modified with a series of electro-magnetic pulses to realign the stabilization vectors as the indicators approach point-three-seven. If you look at the mind transfer between the two rats—Hugh and Guffie—you can see what might be an increased resistance to the inflow of data at that point in the procedure. But it only manifests itself later. In the earlier experiment, it was at eight minutes for the Mars rat and fourteen for the rat on Earth. If we extrapolate that out to a human brain, we see that a similar resistance to data flow will occur at approximately four hours and thirty-five minutes, with a seismic schism resulting in a declination of function by nearly twelve percent.”

  “Twelve percent?” Dr. Tanaka said. “That’s too much. That could be enough to ruin the upload completely.”

  “Will we lose a specific part of the mind?” Lendra asked. “Memories? Logical thinking skills? Or will there just be a general decline of function?”

  “I don’t know,” Zora answered. She noted that Devereaux’s pain had lessened. He lay mostly quiet, his face still pinched and pale, Doug holding his hand and feeding him an occasional ice chip. Was that a good sign or did it mean Devereaux was now beyond recovery?

  “But we’ll lose part of Devereaux’s mind in the process of copying it,” Quark answered in his deep voice. “And perhaps we’ll lose the best part.”

  “Check with Aspen and Dr. Wellon,” Zora said. “When they receive this transmission, I think they’ll be able to verify what I’m saying.”

  Devereaux suddenly spasmed on the gurney. Quark bent over him as two of the surgeon-technicians began manipulating the life-support machines.