Mindscan

4

I looked around my living room one last time.

Of course, one version of me would return here. But for the other—the biological original—this would be its final chance to see it.

I lived alone these days, except for Clamhead, my Irish setter. There’d been a few—all right, two—women who’d moved in and out of my life, and my various homes, over the years. But no one shared this particular house. Even the guest bedroom had never been used.

But it was my home, and it reflected me. My mother, on the rare occasions she came here, always shook her head at the lack of bookcases. I loved to read, but did it with ebooks. Still, no bookcases meant no spaces on the shelves in front of the books for knickknacks, which was just as well, because I couldn’t be bothered to dust them, and yet—yeah, yeah, I’m anal, I know—whenever the Molly Maids came in, I was always upset that all the little things that did have to be dusted got rearranged in the process.

No bookcases also meant that I had lot of exposed walls, and those, in the living room, were covered with baseball jerseys, mounted behind glass. I was a demon at electronic auctions, and baseball memorabilia was what I collected. I had every permutation of Toronto Blue Jays jersey—including the lamentable ones from the zeros, when they’d temporarily dropped the “Blue” from their name; blue was one of the few colors I saw, and I liked the fact that the rest of the world and I apparently agreed on what the team’s name meant.

My pride and joy, though, was an original Birmingham Barons jersey that had actually been worn by Michael Jordan in his brief stint in baseball; he’d joined the White Sox, but they’d bumped him down to their minor-league team as number 45.

Jordan had signed the jersey on the right sleeve, between two of the pinstripes.

I had a suitcase open on the couch, containing some clothes. I was supposed to fill it with things that I wanted to take with me to the moon, but I found myself torn. Yes, this biological me was going to head to the moon tomorrow, never to return. But another me—the Mindscan version—would come back here in a few days; this house would be its—my—home. Anything the old me took from here would be missed by the new me—and the new me would have decades (I still couldn’t easily think “centuries” or “millennia") to enjoy it, while the old me…

That was the one thing that I had packed. It wasn’t a perfect solution, since if I did end up a quadriplegic or in a vegetative state, I wouldn’t be able to administer it myself. But the little vial of drugs in that small unlabeled box would finish me off if need be.

People sometimes wondered why I didn’t leave Canada and move to the States, a land with lower taxes for the rich. The answer was simple: physician-assisted suicide was legal here, and my will specified the conditions under which I wanted to be terminated. In the States, ever since the Buchanan administration—Pat, not James—doctors were legally obligated to keep me alive even if I had severe brain damage or couldn’t move; they’d keep me alive despite my wishes.

But, of course, on the moon, there were no national laws to worry about; there were just a few scientific outposts and private-sector manufacturing facilities there. Immortex would do what I wanted. They had every client swear out an advance directive, describing precisely what to do in case they became incapacitated or ended up in a persistent vegetative state. If I could do it myself, I would, and the kit I’d packed, a kit that had lived in my night-table drawer for years, would do the trick.

It was the one item I knew the artificial me wouldn’t miss.

I set up the robokitchen to take care of feeding my dog while—well, I was about to say, “While I was gone,” but that’s not quite right. But it would feed her during the changing of the guard…

“Well, Clamhead,” I said, scratching the old girl vigorously behind the ears, “I guess that’s it. You be a good girl, now.”

She barked her agreement, and I headed for the door.

Immortex’s facility was in Markham, a high-tech haven in the northern part of Toronto. I drove out to my appointment, heading east along the 407—somewhat irritated that I had to do the driving. Where the hell was the self-driving car? I understood that flying cars would likely never exist—too much potential for major damage when one came crashing out of the sky. But when I’d been a boy, they’d promised there would be self-driving cars soon. Alas, so many of the things that had been predicted had been based on the school of thought known as strong AI—the notion that artificial intelligence as powerful, intuitive, and effective as human intelligence would soon be developed. The complete failure of strong AI had taken a lot of people by surprise.

Immortex’s technique detoured around that roadblock. Instead of replicating consciousness—which would require understanding exactly how it worked—the Immortex scientists simply copied consciousness. The copy was as intelligent, and as aware, as the original. But a de novo AI, programmed from the ground up, such as Hal 9000—the computer from that tedious movie whose title was the year I had been born—was still an unfulfilled fantasy.

Immortex’s facility wasn’t large—but, then, they weren’t a high-volume business. Not yet. I noted that the entire first row of parking spaces was designated for handicapped visitors—far more than Ontario law required, but, then again, Immortex catered to an unusual demographic. I parked in the second row and got out.

The wall of heat hit me like a physical blow. Southern Ontario in August had supposedly been hot and muggy even a century ago. Little incremental increases, year by year, had all but banished snow from Toronto’s winters and had made high summer almost unbearable. Still, I couldn’t complain too much; those in the southern U.S. had it far, far worse—doubtless that was one of the reasons that Karen had moved from the South to Detroit.

I got my overnight bag, with the things I’d need for my stay here at Immortex, out of the back seat. I then walked quickly to the front door, but found myself perspiring as I did so. That would be another advantage of an artificial body, no doubt: no more sweating like the proverbial pig. Still, I might have been sweating anyway today, even if it hadn’t been so bloody hot; I was certainly nervous. I went through the revolving glass door, and took a nice, deep breath of the cool air inside. I then presented myself to the receptionist, who was seated behind a long granite counter. “Hi,” I said, surprised at how dry my mouth was. “I’m Jacob Sullivan.”

The receptionist was a young, pretty, white woman. I was just as used to seeing men holding that job, but the clients of Immortex had grown up in the last century—they expected eye candy at the front desk. She consulted an air screen, holographic data floating in front of her. “Ah, yes. You’re a bit early, I’m afraid; they’re still calibrating the Mindscan equipment.” She looked at my overnight bag, then said, “Do you also have your luggage for the moon?”

Words I’d never thought I’d hear in my life. “In the trunk of my car,” I said.

“You understand the mass-allowance limits? Of course, you can take more, but we’ll have to charge you for it, and it might not go on today’s flight.”

“No, that’s fine. I ended up not bringing very much. Just a few changes of clothes.”

“You won’t miss your old stuff,” said the woman. “High Eden is fabulous, and they have everything you could possibly want.”

“Have you been there?”

“Me? No, not yet. But, you know, in a few decades…”

“Really? You’re planning to upload?”

“Oh, sure. Immortex has a great employee plan for that. It helps you save for the Mindscan process, and the expenses of keeping your original alive on the moon.”

“Well … um, see you in…”

The woman laughed. “I’m twenty-two, Mr. Sullivan. Don’t take this personally, but I’ll be disappointed if I see you again in anything less than sixty years.”

I smiled. “It’s a date.”

She indicated a luxuriously appointed waiting area. “Won’t you have a seat? We’ll get your luggage later. The airport van doesn’t show up until mid-afternoon.”

I smiled again and walked over.

“Well, look who’s here!” said a voice with a Southern accent.

“Karen!” I said, looking at the old, gray-haired woman. “How are you?”

“Soon to be beside myself, I hope.”

I laughed. I’d had butterflies in my stomach, but felt them being dispelled.

“So, what are you doing here?” asked Karen.

I sat down opposite her. “I’m—oh. I never told you, did I? I have a condition—they call it an arteriovenous malformation: bad blood vessels in my brain. I—that night, I was checking out the procedure for myself.”

“I kind of thought so,” said Karen. “And you’ve obviously decided to undergo it.” I nodded. “Well, good—”

“Excuse me,” said the receptionist, who had walked over to join us. “Mr. Sullivan, would you like something to drink?”

“Um, sure. Coffee? Double-double.”

“We can only give you decaf before the scanning. Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

“And Ms. Bessarian,” asked the receptionist, “would you like anything else?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

The receptionist moved away.

“Bessarian?” I repeated, my heart pounding. “Karen Bessarian?”

Karen smiled her lopsided smile. “That’s me.”

“You wrote DinoWorld?”

“Yes.”

“DinoWorld. Return to DinoWorld. DinoWorld Reborn. You wrote all of those?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Wow.” I paused, trying to think of something better to say, but couldn’t. “Wow.”

“Thank you.”

“I loved those books.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean, I really loved them. But I guess you hear that a lot.”

Her wrinkled face creased even more as she smiled again. “I never quite get tired of it.”

“No, no. Of course not. I actually own hardcopies of those books—that’s how much I like them. Did you ever think they were going to be so successful?”

“I never even thought they were going to be published. I was as surprised as anyone when they became as big as they did.”

“What do you think made them such huge hits?”

She lifted her bony shoulders. “That’s not for me to say.”

“I think it’s that kids could enjoy them and adults could, too,” I said. “Like the Harry Potter stuff.”

“Well, there’s no doubt that I owe a lot of my success to J. K. Rowling.”

“Not that your books are anything like hers, but they’ve got that same broad appeal.”

“ ‘Finding Nemo meets Harry Potter by way of Jurassic Park’—that’s what the New York Times said back when my first book was published. Anthropomorphic animals: my intelligent dinosaurs seemed to appeal to people the same way those talking fish did.”

“What did you think of the movies they made of your books?”

“Oh, I loved them,” said Karen. “They were fabulous. Fortunately, they made my movies after the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films. It used to be that studios acquired novels just so they could butcher them; the end product was nothing like the original book. But after Harry Potter and the Tolkien films, they realized that there was an even bigger market for faithful adaptations. In fact, audiences got angry when a favorite scene was missing, or a memorable line of dialog was changed.”

“I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking to the creator of Prince Scales.”

She smiled that lopsided smile again. “Everybody has to be somewhere.”

“So, Prince Scales—he’s such a vivid character! Who’s he based on?”

“No one,” said Karen. “I made him up.”

I shook my head. “No, no—I mean, who was the inspiration?”

“Nobody. He’s a product of my imagination.”

I nodded knowingly. “Ah, okay. You don’t want to say. Afraid he’ll sue, eh?”

The old woman frowned. “No, it’s nothing like that. Prince Scales doesn’t exist, isn’t real, isn’t based on anyone real, isn’t a portrait or a parody. I just made him up.”

I looked at her, but said nothing.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Karen asked.

“I wouldn’t say that, but—”

She shook her head. “People are desperate to believe writers base our characters on real people, that the events in our novels really happened in some disguised way.”

“Ah,” I said. “Sorry. I—I guess it’s an ego thing. I can’t imagine making up a publishable story, so I don’t want to believe that others have that capability. Talents like that make the rest of us feel inadequate.”

“No,” said Karen. “No, if you don’t mind me saying so, it goes deeper than that, I think. Don’t you see? The idea that false people can just be manufactured goes to the heart of our religious beliefs. When I say that Prince Scales doesn’t really exist, and you’ve only been fooled into thinking that he does, then I open up the possibility that Moses didn’t exist—that some writer just made him up. Or that Mohammed didn’t really say and do the things ascribed to him. Or that Jesus is a fictional character, too. The whole of our spiritual existence is based on this unspoken assumption that writers record, but they don’t fabricate—and that, even if they did, we could tell the difference.”

I looked around the waiting room, here at this place where they mated android bodies with scanned copies of brains. “I’m glad I’m an atheist,” I said.