Calculating God

22

It had come to me while sleeping, doubtless because of the recording I’d made for Ricky: a version of me that would live on after my body had died. I was so excited, I got up and went downstairs to tap repeatedly on the holoform do-decahedron, in hopes of summoning Hollus. But he didn’t come; I had to wait until he appeared in my office of his own volition the next day.

“Hollus,” I said, as soon as his image had stabilized, “I think I know what they’ve buried beneath those warning landscapes on all those dead worlds.”

Hollus locked his eyes on me.

“It’s not nuclear waste,” I said. “As you said, there are no markings related to nuclear waste, and no need to worry about such things over million-year timeframes. No, they buried something they wanted to preserve forever, not something they wanted to get rid of. That’s why the Cassiopeians went so far as to shut off plate tectonics on their world by blowing up their moon — they wanted to be sure what they had in their subterranean vault never subducted.”

“Perhaps,” said Hollus. “But what would they want to preserve so carefully while at the same time trying to frighten anyone away from digging it up?”

“Themselves,” I said.

“You propose something like a bomb shelter? Seismic soundings suggest there is not enough volume in the vault on Mu Cassiopeae A Prime to house more than a small number of individuals.”

“No, no,” I said. “I think they’re all down there. Millions, billions; whatever their entire population was. I think they scanned their brains and uploaded themselves into a computer world — and the actual hardware generating that world, the machines they didn’t want anyone messing with, are stored beneath those horrendous landscapes.”

“Scanned . . . ,” said Hollus’s left mouth, and “scanned . . . ,” ruminated his right. “But we only found three worlds with artificial landscapes designed to frighten off the curious,” he said. “The other worlds we visited — Eta Cassiopeae A III, Sigma Draconis II, and Groombridge 1618 III — had simply been vacated.”

“On those worlds, the computer hardware may have been shot into space. Or else those races may have decided that the best way to avoid detection was simply to do nothing at all. Even a warning marker attracts the curious; maybe they decided to hide their computing hardware with no indication of where it is.”

“But why would entire races do that?” asked Hollus. “Why give up physical existence?”

That was a no-brainer for me. “How old are you?” I asked.

“In subjective Earth years? Forty-seven.”

That surprised me. For some reason, I’d expected Hollus to be older than I was. “And how long will you live?”

“Perhaps another eighty years, assuming an accident does not befall me.”

“So a typical Forhilnor lifespan is a hundred and thirty years?”

“For females, yes. Males live about ten years longer.”

“So, um — my God — so you’re female?”

“Yes.”

I was stunned. “I hadn’t been aware of that. Your voice — it’s rather deep.”

“That is just the way Forhilnor voices are — male or female.”

“I think I’ll go on calling you ‘he,’ if that’s okay.”

“I am no longer offended by it,” said Hollus. “You may continue to do so.”

“Anyway,” I said, “you’ll live a total of about a hundred and thirty years. Me, I’m fifty-four right now; if it weren’t for the adenocarcinoma, I’d live another twenty-odd years, if not thirty or forty.”

Hollus’s eyestalks moved.

“But that’s it. And, again, even if I didn’t have cancer, a lot of that time would be in declining health.” I paused. “Do Forhilnors age gracefully?”

“A poet on my world once said, ‘It is all eclipsing moons’ — a metaphor that means much the same as your expression ‘it is all downhill’ — from the moment you are born. Forhilnor bodies and minds deteriorate over time, too.”

“Well, if you could assume a virtual existence — if you could live inside a computer — starting in the prime of youth, you could go on forever, without any deterioration.”

“Immortality has always been a dream of my people,” Hollus admitted.

“Mine, too. In fact, many preachers use a promise of life everlasting, albeit in some other realm, as their main inducement for good behavior. But although we’ve extended our life spans a great deal through improved health care, we are nowhere near immortal.”

“Nor are we,” said Hollus. “Nor are the Wreeds. But both they and we harbor hopes of making eternal life possible.”

“We thought we’d made a breakthrough a few years ago when we discovered how to put the end caps back on DNA.” Chromosomes have little protective bits at their ends, like the plastic-wrapped tips of shoelaces; every time a chromosome divides, the tips — called telomeres — are shortened. After enough divisions, the tips are completely gone, and the chromosome can’t divide anymore.

“We discovered that, too,” said Hollus, “almost a hundred years ago. But although replacing telomeres can make individual cells divide forever in the laboratory, it does not work in an integrated organism. When an organism reaches a critical mass of cells, division either halts after a set number of repeats, just as if the telomeres had been diminished, or reproduction becomes uncontrolled, and tumors form.” His eyestalks dipped. “As you know, I lost my own mother to cancer of the vostirrarl, an organ that serves much the same function for us as does the marrow in your bones.”

“Leukemia,” I said softly. “We call cancer of the marrow leukemia.”

Hollus was quiet for a time.

Yes, I could surely understand the appeal.

To be uploaded.

To be divorced from the physical.

To live without tumors, without pain.

If the opportunity were presented to me, would I do it?

In a minute.

“It’s certainly a great incentive to give up physical existence,” I said. “Living forever in the good health of youth.” I looked at Hollus, who was standing on just five legs; he seemed to be giving the sixth a rest. “In which case, perhaps your people have nothing to fear. Presumably, soon enough your race will develop the same ability — it seems every race does. And then, if your people want, they will . . . will transcend into a new form of existence.”

Hollus said nothing for several seconds. “I am not sure that I would look forward to that,” he said.

“It must be very tempting, if race after race has chosen that route.”

“I suppose,” said Hollus. “My people have been making considerable progress in brain-scanning technology — it is somewhat more difficult for us than it will be for your people, since our brains are in the centers of our bodies and since the integration of the two halves will doubtless pose some problems. Still, I imagine we will be able to upload a combined Forhilnor consciousness within a few decades.” He paused. “But this does explain the phenomenon I observed in those science-fiction videos you showed me: why alien races that encounter each other in the flesh are always at about the same technological level. There is, it seems, a narrow window between when interstellar flight is developed and when a race ceases to have corporeal existence. It also explains why the search for extraterrestrial intelligence via radio telescopes usually fails; again, there is only a short time between the development of radio and the abandonment of its use.”

“But, as far as you’ve been able to determine, none of the races you’re aware of, except our three, have existed simultaneously.” I paused. “Our races — the three of us — may be the first chance the galaxy has ever had for a . . . a planetary federation.”

“Interesting thought,” said Hollus. “Do you suppose that is why God intervened on our worlds? To bring us to technological sophistication simultaneously so that we could form some sort of alliance?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Although I’m not sure what that would accomplish. I mean, it might be good for our races, but what does it do for the creator?”

Hollus lowered his sixth foot. “That is a very good question,” he said at last.

Later that night, after we’d put Ricky to bed, and I’d read to him for a bit, Susan and I were sitting on the couch in the living room. I had my arm draped around her shoulders, and she had her head resting on my chest.

“Have you ever thought about the future?” I asked her. I lifted my arm a little bit. “I don’t mean the near future.” I’m sure she’d been giving that much thought. “I mean the far future — thousands, or even millions, of years from now.”

I couldn’t see Susan’s face. I hoped she was smiling. “I won’t be around to see that.”

I was quiet for a moment; I didn’t know if I really wanted to broach this topic. “But what if there was a way,” I said. “A way to live forever.”

Susan was sharp; that’s one of the reasons I’d married her. “Has Hollus offered you that? Immortality?”

I shook my head. “No. He doesn’t have any better idea of how to make it work than we do. But his race has found evidence of six other species that seem to have perhaps discovered immortality . . . of a sort.”

She shifted slightly against my chest. “Oh?”

“They seem to have . . . well, the word we’ve been using is ‘transcended’ into another level of existence . . . presumably by uploading themselves into computers.”

“That’s hardly ‘living forever.’ You might as well be a corpse preserved in formaldehyde.”

“We presume the uploaded beings continue to exist within the computer, acting and reacting and interacting. Indeed, they might not even be able to tell that they don’t have material existence anymore; the sensory experience might be comparable to, or better than, what we’re used to.”

She sounded incredulous. “And you say whole races have done this?”

“That’s my theory, yes.”

“And you think the individual consciousnesses continue on forever inside the computers?”

“It’s possible.”

“Which means . . . which means you wouldn’t have to die?”

“Well, the flesh-and-blood me would die, of course, and I would have no continuity with the uploaded version once the scan had been made. But the uploaded version would remember having been me, and would go on after I’d died. As far as it — or those interacting with it — would be concerned, it would be me. So, yes, if we had access to the technology, in a very real sense I wouldn’t have to die. I assume that one of the big reasons for people uploading themselves was to overcome the limitations imposed by growing old or ill.”

“This isn’t on the table?” asked Susan. Her heart was pounding; I could feel it. “You really haven’t been offered this?”

“No,” I said. “Neither the Forhilnors nor the Wreeds know how to do it — and, for that matter, we’re only assuming that this is what really happened to the other races. It seems that every intelligent species either destroys itself shortly after discovering nuclear weapons, or that it survives maybe a hundred and fifty years longer, but then decides to transcend.”

Susan lifted her shoulders. “If it were on the table — if it was something you were being offered right now — my response might be different. You know that . . .” She trailed off, but I knew she’d been about to say that she’d do anything to keep from losing me. I squeezed her hand.

“But,” she continued, “if it weren’t for that, if it weren’t for what we’re facing, I’d say no. I can’t imagine it being something I’d want.”

“You’d live forever,” I said.

“No, I’d exist forever. That’s not the same thing.”

“It could all be simulated, of course. Every aspect of life.”

“If it isn’t real,” said Susan, “it isn’t the same.”

“You wouldn’t be able to tell that it wasn’t real.”

“Perhaps not,” Susan said. “But I’d know it wasn’t, and that would make all the difference.”

I shrugged a little. “Ricky seems just as happy playing Nintendo baseball as he is playing the real game — in fact, he plays the computer version more often; I don’t think his generation is going to have the conceptual problems with this that we do.” I paused. “A virtual existence does have its appeals. You wouldn’t have to grow old. You wouldn’t have to die.”

“I like growing and changing.” She frowned. “I mean, sure, I sometimes wish I still had the body I’d had when I was eighteen, but I’m mostly content.”

“Civilization after civilization seems to decide to do this.”

Susan frowned. “You say they either upload themselves or blow themselves up?”

“Apparently. Hollus said his people faced the same sort of nuclear crisis we’re still facing.”

“Maybe they decide they have no choice but to trade reality for a simulation, then. If, say, the U.S. and China were to go to war, we’d all probably die, and the human race would be over. But if this were all a simulation, and things went bad, you could just reset the simulation and go on existing. Maybe unreal existence is the only long-term hope for violent races.”

That was certainly an intriguing thought. Maybe you didn’t outgrow your desire to blow each other up. Maybe it was inevitable that some nation, or some group of terrorists, or just some lunatic, would do it; as Hollus had said, the ability to destroy life on a massive scale becomes cheaper, more portable, and more readily available as time goes by. If there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle — whether it’s nuclear bombs, biological weaponry, or some other tool of mass destruction — then perhaps races transcend just as soon as they can, because it’s the only safe thing to do.

“I wonder what humanity will choose when the time comes?” I said. “Presumably, we’ll have the technology within a century.” No need to state it dramatically; Susan and I were in the same boat on timeframes that long. “You and I won’t live to see it, but Ricky might. I wonder what they will choose to do?”

Susan was quiet for a few moments. She then started shaking her head slowly back and forth. “I’d love for my son to live forever, but . . . but I hope he, and everyone, chooses normal existence.”

I thought about that — about the pain of skinned knees and broken hearts and broken bones; about the risks flesh was susceptible to; about what I’d been going through.

I doubted there was any way to reverse the decision. If you copied whatever you were into a computer, you presumably couldn’t go back. If the biological version of you continued on, it would have a separate existence from the moment the scan was made. There’d be no way to reintegrate the two versions later on; it would be like trying to force identical twins to inhabit a single body.

There were no intelligent lifeforms left on any of those six worlds Hollus’s starship had explored. Perhaps all races terminated the biological versions of themselves once the electronic ones were created. Indeed, perhaps that was the only sensible thing to do, preventing any possibility of terrorist disruptions of the virtual world. Of course, at least on Earth, there were those who would never agree to be voluntarily uploaded — the Amish, Luddites, and others. But they might be scanned surreptitiously, moving them into a virtual world indistinguishable from the one they’d left, rather than leaving any flesh-and-blood beings around whose descendants might vandalize the computers.

I wondered if any of the races that had transcended regretted their decision?

Susan and I got ready for bed. She eventually drifted off to sleep, but I lay awake, staring at the dark ceiling, envying the Wreeds.

Shortly after I’d been diagnosed, I’d walked the few blocks from the ROM to the Chapters flagship store on Bloor Street and had bought Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying. She outlined the five stages of coming to terms with death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance; by my own reckoning I was now well into number five, although there were occasional days on which I felt as though I was still mired in number four. Nonetheless, almost everyone went through the stages in the same sequence. Was it surprising, then, that there were stages whole species went through?

Hunter-gatherer.

Agriculture or animal husbandry.

Metallurgy.

Cities.

Monotheism.

An age of discovery.

An age of reason.

Atomic energy.

Space travel.

An information revolution.

A flirtation with interstellar voyaging.

And then—

And then—

And then something else.

As a Darwinian, I’ve spent countless hours explaining to lay-people that evolution doesn’t have a goal, that life is an ever-branching bush, a pageant of shifting adaptations.

But now, perhaps, it seemed as though there was a goal, a final result.

The end of biology.

The end of pain.

The end of death.

I was, on some visceral level — an appropriate metaphor, invoking guts and biology and humanity — dead-set against the idea of giving up corporeal existence. Virtual reality was nothing but air guitar writ large. My life had meaning because it was real. Oh, I’m sure I could use a virtual-reality device to send me on simulated digs, and I could find simulated fossils, including even breakthrough specimens (such as, oh, I don’t know, say, a sequence showing in a thousand graduated steps the change from one species into another . . .). But it would be meaningless, pointless; I’d just be a glider shooting out of a gun. There’d be no thrill of discovery — the fossils would be there simply because I wanted them to be there. And they would contribute nothing to our real knowledge of evolution. I never know in advance what I will find on a dig — no one knows. But whatever I do find has to fit into that vast mosaic of facts discovered by Buckland and Cuvier and Mantell and Dollo and von Huene and Cope and Marsh and the Sternbergs and Lambe and Park and Andrews and Colbert and the older Russell and the younger, unrelated Russell and Ostrom and Jensen and Bakker and Homer and Weishampel and Dodson and Dong and Zheng and Sereno and Chatterjee and Currie and Brett-Surman and all the rest, pioneers and my contemporaries. It was real; itwas part of the shared universe.

But now, here I was spending most of my time with a virtual-reality simulation. Yes, there was a real flesh-and-blood Hollus somewhere, and yes, I’d even met him. But most of my interactions were with something computer-generated, a cyberghost. One could easily get sucked into an artificial world. Yes, one surely could.

I hugged my wife, savoring reality.