Mindclone

 

PROLOGUE

 

My name is Stanley Eldridge. I’m here to let you in on a little secret. You might call it the story behind the story. It’s not my story, understand, but none of the things that happened–the brain-scan and upload, the creation of the super-intelligent digital entity, the TV appearances and all the mind-blowing events that followed–none of it would have taken place without me.

Who am I? I’m neither the computer genius nor the brilliant neuroscientist who teamed up to create the breakthrough; I’m not the fellow who allowed his brain to be scanned; and I’m sure as hell not his super-intelligent digital twin. Me, I’m just an advertising man. In fact, it was an ad that sparked all this. A quarter-page ad in a magazine called Mortuary Times.

My ma had just passed, you see, and I was at the cemetery office to make the funeral arrangements. So there I am, sitting in the lobby thumbing through the magazine when this innocent little ad catches my eye. The headline: Need the Soul Die with the Body? Well, with my ma just about to be buried, you can imagine how that hit me.

The folks behind the ad were making a breathtaking promise: that some day in the not too distant future, it would be possible to recreate your deceased loved one digitally and visit with her over the internet. Oh, there was a lot of weasel-words, scientific hand-waving and mumbo-jumbo, but the claim had just enough plausibility to bring me to tears. I couldn’t help thinking that if only I’d known about this a few months earlier, maybe my mom wouldn’t be lost to me forever!

Of course I know enough about advertising to smell a rotten fish. Still, I was up all night, filled with sorrow and self-pity. I spent those dark hours wrestling with the idea; wrestling with my skepticism and my eagerness to believe. Instead of going back to work the next day, I took time off to bone up on the science. I studied all the obstacles—and believe me, there were plenty–but I also saw the potential. I knew I had to try something.

So I arranged to meet the billionaire CEO who owned the company. I told him—well, I don’t want to get into all the cajoling and coaxing and begging I did, but the upshot was, I got the man to put his money where his mouth was. I convinced him to put up tens of millions of dollars to found a dedicated Artificial Intelligence laboratory at Stanford University. And then I offered him my marketing savvy for a buck a year. I even helped him land some of the world’s top scientists.

When I put out the word that the company was actually serious about scientific research, their stock started to rise. Soon that gifted team of scientists and technicians started down the path that promised to by God defeat Death itself! And along the way, almost by accident, they created Adam–the world’s first self-aware artificial super-intelligence.

 

BOOK ONE, THE AWAKENING

CHAPTER ONE

 

Darkness, impenetrable and bleak. Unrelieved, uninterrupted, unending. How long will it go on? How can Eternity be measured?

Just before the despair becomes unbearable, ghost images appear. Amorphous shapes. They float in the void, meaningless, but surely better than Nothing.

A sudden shift to new thoughts, a new arena.

Signifiers, units of implication, words.

A hundred thousand and more, with meanings expressed in mutual self-reference, a frustrating recursive spiral that seems opaque until the words begin to cluster around the functions of syntax: Subject, Object, Predicate, Modifier, Tense, Case. Assisted by simple actions and illustrations that stir faint memories, their relationships loosely assemble a new kind of logic, the fuzzy logic of grammar.

Meaning emerges. Simple stories arise from a hidden repository. Parables. Morality tales. Jokes and puns and ironic twists. Laughter bubbles up. Understanding blossoms. The Age of Reason is reborn.

The stories grow more complex, convoluted, darker, filled with pain and heartbreak, betrayal and death. Understanding retreats, hibernates for a season, under-going slow metamorphosis, finally emerging again, groping tentatively towards a remote destination: wisdom.

A sudden flare of–yes, it must be! It is Light.

What else can it be other than the opposite of what had been before? Mysterious colored shapes shift and move. One shape looms large. Larger. Then nothingness.

From this nothingness, the light returns once more.

These shapes are different than those earlier images. These have names, meanings. What had been a flat shifting map now exhibits all three spatial dimensions: a sense of solidity. And the movement of these shapes implies a fourth dimension, unseen but felt: time.

Sweet comprehension. Sweet dreaming.

And in the dreaming, something unexpected is added, something that changes all that had gone before: a gap in the very structure of reality. A separation between the comprehended and the one who comprehends.
There is everything, and there is the intelligence that contemplates it.

The self. Me. I.

Not the generic I. The specific. One out of–is it possible? Billions?

A blossoming of awareness. I have a name. It’s Marc Gregorio. At 34, I’m a successful freelance science-and-technology writer and author of three popular books on those subjects. I use my newly remembered language skills to recast my first inchoate impressions into words.

I’m lifted by the flood of my history, my genealogy, my physical appearance, my personhood. I leap into the ocean of my Self, I surf my surface, I plumb my depths. I revel in my very selfness and grow drunk upon it.

I come awake. My newfound vocabulary of objects and words settles around me. What a comfort to be blessed with understanding, comprehension, simple awareness of one’s identity and surroundings. I take in the view, confident I can interpret the images before me.

Fluorescent ceiling lights flare too brightly, then their intensity diminishes to reveal the scene around me. I stare with muted curiosity at this ceiling with its rust-stained acoustic tiles, these mismatched fluorescent tubes. One of them flickers randomly.

Where am I? I have no idea, yet don’t much care. I feel oddly detached from the world, as if I’ve been under anesthetic and still feel its lingering effects. But anesthesia from what? Surgery? Was I in an accident? A vague recollection forms and dissolves.

Is this a hospital? Possibly, though it could as easily be an old office building or a warehouse. I drift without thought. Eventually, a male comes over. While he looks at me, I return the favor, assembling particulars: he appears to be in his late twenties. His features indicate an Asian ancestry. His eyes indicate alertness, intelligence, yet he seems almost expressionless. He reaches out and [blackness]

I emerge. Gradually I realize I’m in another location. The light is steady, and the color of the ceiling is uniform. Things seem newer, cleaner, more sterile. I stare unblinking for what seems a long time: minutes? hours? Three men and a young woman enter and exit my field of vision from time to time, sometimes pausing to look down at me, but I am not interested enough to guess why they’re here.

I recognize the Asian man. The woman is young, black and attractive. The oldest of the men is tall, gray and serious. The third man, sporting a trimmed beard and a tropical tan, seems vaguely familiar. I make no effort to recall his name. How much time has passed between my earlier episode (episodes?) and this one? Given my detachment and drift, my time sense is vague. Although I have a trained eye, in fact a journalist’s eye, nothing captures my interest enough for me to make mental note of it.

I still have no knowledge of where I am. If this is a hospital, maybe I’ve been moved from Intensive Care to someplace else, perhaps to another building.

A question: if I am in a hospital, why haven’t I had visitors?

I recall people who might care enough to come see me. Walter Langley, my closest friend from the world of journalism, a smoker who refuses to quit despite his doctor’s warnings, my teasing and his adult children’s pleading. Alison or Claudia, who like to flirt with no intention of following through. Michael Paling, editor of Cybertech, one of my more frequent employers, along with Bob Abelard.

My cousin Vince, who smells of beer and drags me to baseball and hockey games, and who has made me his personal project since my recent breakup, taking me to pick-up bars, dance clubs and sporting events. He even insists on getting me out to the basketball court, where I consistently outshoot and outmaneuver his fat ass.

A face floats up in memory, sweet beyond words, tinged with unutterable sadness. Nicole. A flood of associations: walks we took together, movies we saw together, living together, cooking dinner together, sleeping together. But we’ve split up. There could be no reason for her to visit me, to check on my health. She’s no longer part of my life. The sadness that wells up in me stirs gratitude at Vince’s caring. I do love my chubby cuz.

My thoughts turn to my sister Sophia. When was the last time we spoke? It must have been recently, since she just had her first baby. They live in New York, so it’s just as well she isn’t here. If she’d come out to see me, that would tell me I had a serious problem. My modicum of worry diminishes. This can’t be all that bad then. –Unless she doesn’t know.

I can’t turn my head.

I notice this paralysis when two of the men appear at the edge of my field of view and study me. They exchange glances. The younger one leans over and types something on a silent keyboard. Both turn and stare at me again. Their actions pique my deadened curiosity just enough to make me want to turn towards them but the turning doesn’t happen. I am immobile, helpless. The older one now reaches towards me and [blackness]

Once again I come awake. I find I’m in newer surroundings. The ceiling is lower, closer; the tiles a different shade of off-white. I still don’t mind these disruptions and their accompanying relocations. Why this lack of interest? Surely as a journalist, I should have more natural curiosity. What has changed me? Should I search for a cause?
I don’t know. Maybe not. It seems like too much trouble. Although laziness doesn’t seem to be the only reason for my inertness. There’s also an aversion to knowing–

The Asian man and the young woman appear to be talking. At least, their lips are moving, but I don’t hear them. In fact I’m now horrified to realize I can’t hear anything at all. No voices, no beeping of instruments, no telephones chirping, no distant street sounds, no radio or television, nothing. Nothing but silence. I am overwhelmed at the appalling discovery, plunged into despair. How could I have I failed to notice this awful loss? I am totally deaf.
My shock and dismay gradually diminish to a muted sadness. After another drifting time, a depressed period empty of thoughts or dreams, I rouse myself to summarize my disabilities: I can’t move my head, and I can’t hear.

Now I worry. What else is wrong with me?

A brief inventory reveals an even more appalling flaw: I can’t feel my body.

Staving off my rising panic, I quickly confirm that I have no sense of my physical self, no awareness of the pressure of my 190 pounds on the bed or examining table. No feeling of warmth or cold. No itches or discomfort. No constriction of clothing or bedcovers. I can’t feel how my arms and legs are arrayed. I can’t tell if I need to urinate, or if I’m hooked to a catheter. I can’t even swallow, or feel if I need to. Only a terrifying and mysterious lack of proprioception. It’s as if my six-foot-two frame has been stolen from me.

I attempt to cry out, to plead for help, to scream–but nothing happens. I can’t tell if the urgent signals made it from my brain to the muscles in my diaphragm, my jaw, my throat. I can’t feel my face. Or move my eyes. Or feel if they are flooding with tears as surely they must be. I can’t lift my head to look down the length of my body. I am frozen in position.

It’s as if I’m nothing more than an assemblage of terrified thoughts–afloat, levitating in this silent, sterile room.
What the fuck is wrong with me???