Mindscan (33 page)

"If you say so," I said.

Smythe nodded emphatically. "I do. The snapshot becomes a moving picture when the black and white pixels become animated. But they don't do that on their own: they have to be given rules to obey. You know, turn white if three of your neighbors are black, or something like that. But the rules aren't innate to the system. They have to be
imposed
upon it. Once they are, the cellular automata keep permuting endlessly — and
that's
consciousness,
that's
the actual phenomenon of self-awareness, of inner life, of existence being
like
something."

"So how do you add in rules that govern the permutations?" I asked.

Smythe lifted his hands. "We don't. We can't. Believe me, we've tried — but nothing we can do gets the pixels to start doing anything. No, the rules come from the a
lready
conscious mind of the subject being scanned. It's only because the real, biological mind is initially quantally entangled with the new one that the rules are transferred, and the pixels become cellular automata in the new mind. Without that initial entanglement, there is no process of living consciousness, only a dead snapshot of it. Our artificial minds don't have such rules built in, so if the consciousness ever halts in a copied mind, there's no way to start it up again."

"So if one of us were to fall asleep—" I said.

"He'd die," said Smythe simply. "The consciousness would never reboot."

"So, why is this a big secret?"

Smythe looked at me. "There are more than a dozen other companies trying to get into the uploading business; it's going to be a fifty-trillion-dollar-a-year industry by 2055. They can all do a version of our Mindscan process: they can all copy the
pattern
of pixels. But, so far, we're the only ones who know that quantum entanglement with the source mind is the key to booting up the copied consciousness. Without linking the minds, at least initially, the duplicate never does anything." He shook his head. "For some reason, though, your mind
does
reboot when it's shut off."

"I've only blacked out once," I said, "and that was just after the initial boot-up. You can't know that it always happens."

"Yes, we can," said Smythe. "Copies of your mind manage to generate rules for their cellular automata spontaneously, on their own, without being linked to the original. We know, because we've instantiated multiple copies of your mind into artificial bodies here on the moon and down on Earth — and, no matter when we do it, the copies spontaneously boot up. Even if we shut them down, they just boot up again later on their own."

I frowned. "But why should I be different from everyone else in this regard? Why do copies of my mind spontaneously reboot?"

"Honestly?" said Smythe, raising his platinum eyebrows. "I'm not sure. But I
think
it has to do with the fact that you used to be color-blind. See, consciousness is all about the perception of qualia: things that only exist as constructs in the mind, things like bitterness or peacefulness. Well, colors are one of the most basic qualia. You can take a rose and pull off and isolate the stem, or the thorns, or the petals: they are distinct, actual entities. But you can't pull off the redness, can you? Oh, you can r
emove
it — you can bleach a rose — but you can't pluck the redness out and point to it as a separate thing. Redness, blueness, and so on are mental states — there's no such thing as redness on its own. Well, by accident, we gave your mind access to mental states it had never experienced before. That initially made it unstable. It tried to assimilate these new qualia, and couldn't — so it crashed. That's what happened when Porter first transferred you: it crashed, and you blacked out. But then your consciousness rebooted, on its own, as if striving to make sense of the new qualia, to incorporate them into its worldview."

"It makes you an invaluable test subject, Mr. Sullivan," said Brian Hades. "There's no one else like you."

"There
should
be no one else like me," I said. "But you keep making copies. And that's not right. I want you to shut off the duplicates of me you've fraudulently produced, destroy the master Mindscan recording, and never make another me again."

"Or…?" said Hades. "You can't even prove they exist."

"You think messing with the biological Jacob Sullivan was hard? Trust me: you don't want to have to deal with the
real
me."

Oh, my God!

"What?"

Oh, my God! Oh, Christ…

I hadn't heard a voice in my head like this for over a century. I'd thought they were gone for good.

I don't believe this!

"Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?"

I know they said it might be strange, but — but…

"But what? Who is this? Jake? Is this another Jake?"

What the — hello? Who's that?

"It's me, Jake Sullivan."

What?
I'm
Jake Sullivan.

"So am I."

Where are you?

"Lowellville."

Lowellville?

"Yes. You know: the largest settlement on Mars."

Mars? We don't have any settlements on Mars…

"Of course we do, for thirty years now. I moved here over a decade ago."

But … oh. Ah. What year is this?

"It's 2147."

Twenty-one forty seven? You're pulling my leg. It's 2045.

"No. You're a century out of date."

But … oh. Really?

"Yes."

Why'd you go to Mars?

"The same reason so many people came to North America from Europe ages ago.

The freedom to practice our own brand of humanity. Mars is a catch-all for those who march to a different drummer. We were being denied our identity down on Earth. We took it all the way to the Supreme Court in the U.S., but lost. And so…"

And so, Mars.

"Exactly. We're in a lovely community here. Lots of multiple marriages, lots of gay marriages, and lots of uploads. Under Martian law — created by those of us who live here, of course — all forms of marriage are legal, and out in the open. There's a family three doors down that consists of a human woman and a male chimpanzee who was genetically modified to have a bigger brain. We play bridge with them once a week."

I shrugged, although there was no way the other me could know I was doing that. "If you can't change the old constitution, go somewhere fresh and write a new one."

Ah. That's … wow. My, that's something, isn't it?

"It is indeed."

I — Mars; wow. But, hey, wait! I'm not on Mars, and yet there's no time lag.

"Yeah, I encountered this before when one of us was on the moon. Whenever a new me boots up, it seems to become quantally entangled with this me; quantum communication is instantaneous, no matter how far apart we are."

And we're very far apart.

"What do you mean?"

Akiko Uchiyama said she was sending me to 47 Ursa Majoris.

"And where's that?"

Ninety light-years from Earth.

"Light-years! What are you talking about?"

She said she was sending me — you know, transmitting a copy of my Mindscan — to
o
ne of the worlds they were studying with the big SETI telescope on the moon's
f
arside.

"Jesus. And you agreed?"

They, ah, didn't actually offer me any choice. But that must be where I am. And
i
t's incredible! The sun — the star here — looks gigantic. It covers maybe an eighth
o
f the sky.

"And you think it's still 2045? Is that when you were … were transmitted?"

Yes. But Akiko said she wasn't just sending me; she was also sending instructions
f
or building a robot body for me.

"And are you instantiated in that body?"

Yes. It doesn't look quite right — maybe they had a hard time making some of the
p
arts — and the colors! I have no idea if they're right, but I can see so many colors
n
ow! But, yes, I've got a humanoid body. Can't see my own face, of course…

"So there's intelligent life on this other world? What's it look like?"

I haven't seen it yet. I'm in a room that seems to have been grown, like it's made
o
ut of coral. But there's a large window, and I can see outside. The giant sun is a
c
olor I don't know what to call. And there are clouds that corkscrew up vertically.

And — oh, something's flying by! Not a bird; more like a manta ray. But…

"But no intelligent aliens yet?"

Not yet. They must be here, though. Somebody built this body for me, after all.

"If you really are — my God — ninety light-years away, then the aliens took twelve years to reinstantiate you after receiving the transmission."

It might have taken them that long to figure out how to build the artificial body, or
t
o decide that it was a good idea to resurrect me.

"I suppose."

Can you contact Dr. Smythe? He'll want to know…

"Who?"

Gabriel Smythe.

"That rings a vague bell…"

He's with Immortex. The head psychologist, I think.

"Oh, right.
Him
. If he hasn't uploaded, he must be dead by now; I'll see if I can find out."

Thanks. I'm supposed to try to send a radio signal back; I'll have to ask the natives
a
bout that. Proof of concept: Akiko and Smythe wanted to show that human
c
onsciousness could be transmitted, that … that
ambassadors
could be sent to
o
ther worlds at the speed of light.

"Are you going to send the radio signal?"

If the natives here — whoever they are — let me, sure. But it'll be ninety years before
i
t'll get back to… what the heck do you call it? Sol system, no?

"I guess. So, tell me: what else can you see?"

Man, this is weird…

"Jake?"

Sorry. It's a lot to absorb at once. Connecting with you; full-color vision; where I
a
m; the passage of time.

"What else can you see?"

Vegetation — I guess that's what it is. Like umbrellas turned inside out.

"Yes. And?"

Some vehicle going by, shaped like a pumpkin seed. There's something alive
i
nside, under a transparent canopy…

"My God! An alien! What's it look like?"

"Dark, bulky, and — damn, it's gone."

"Wow. An actual alien…"

Are you going to tell people? Tell humanity that you're in contact with a distant
w
orld?

"I — I don't know. Who would believe me? They'd say it was a hallucination. I've got nothing to show them, and any confirming signal you send won't get here for the better part of a century."

I suppose. Too bad. I've a feeling this is going to get interesting.

"There is
one
person I can share it all with."

One's better than none. Who?

"Karen Bessarian. You actually met her. She was the old woman we spoke to at the Immortex sales pitch."

That was Karen Bessarian, the writer?

"Yes. And she's still writing. In fact, she's back to writing
DinoWorld
novels — the characters went public domain thirty years ago, but readers recognize that Karen is their creator, and the books she's doing about them now are selling better than the originals."

Good for her. But what's happening with us? How's the family business?

"Fine. They even brew Old Sully's here on Mars now."

Great! What else? Are we married?

"I am, yes."

Oooh, I know! To Rebecca Chong, right? I knew that eventually—

I smiled. "No, not to Rebecca. She's been dead for over fifty years, and, um, she didn't think much of uploads."

Ah, well, then I guess I don't know who we—

"It's Karen," I said simply. "Karen Bessarian and I are married. The first Mindscans ever to tie the knot."

"Her? But she's so old! I never would have thought…

"Yes, her. But we can talk about that later. Tell me more of what you're seeing."

I must be under some sort of observation; I can't imagine they'd activate me
o
therwise. But so far, there's no sign of the natives here, except that vehicle that
w
ent speeding by the window. The room is big, and it has something that must be
a
door, but it's almost twice as high as I am.

"Any other clues about the aliens?"

Well, there are markings on the walls. Spirals, circles. Writing, I suppose. God
k
nows what it says. There's an elevated work surface in the room, but nothing
t
hat looks like a chair.

"Sitting is overrated."

Yeah, perhaps. I'm standing myself. It's all very — the door! The door is opening,
c
rumpling aside like an accordion, and—

"Yes? Yes? What do you see?"

Hello? Hello! Um, my name is Jake. Jake Sullivan.

"What do you see? What do they look like?"

I guess we'll have to learn each other's language, eh? That's okay…

"Jake! What do they look like?"

We're going to have some interesting times together, I can see that…

"Jake? Jake?"

Like I said, my name is Jake, and I guess I'm here to tell you a little bit about what
i
t means to be human.

There was a pause, presumably while the other me thought things that weren't articulated in words, then:

But, you know, I'm in contact with somebody else, and I think he knows even more
a
bout being human than I do. Let's see what he has to say…

Consciousness is back, baby! For most of the twentieth century, brain studies avoided any discussion of consciousness — the feeling of subjective experience, the apprehension of qualia, the sense that it is
like
something to be you or me. But in the last decade, the issue of consciousness has very much moved to center stage in the exploration of the human brain.

Although I touched on the nature of consciousness in my 1995 novel
The Terminal Experiment
, and again in 1998's
Factoring Humanity
, I find myself drawn back to this fertile ground once more, in large part because consciousness studies are so multidisciplinary — and I firmly believe it's the interplay of disparate elements that makes for good science fiction. Whereas twenty years ago, you'd be hard-pressed to find
any
academic talking seriously about consciousness, these days quantum physicists, evolutionary psychologists, neuroscientists, artificial-intelligence researchers, philosophers, and even lowly novelists are engaged in the debate.

(Indeed, one could argue that novelists were the
only
ones who took consciousness seriously for much of the last century: we strove, however ineffectually, to capture the stream of consciousness in our narratives, and to explore the limitations and richness of constrained points-of-view and subjective experience … all while the Skinnerian behaviorists were telling the world that such things were meaningless.)

The resurgent interest in consciousness is perhaps best summed up by the existence of the essential
Journal of Consciousness Studies
, published by Imprint Academic.

JCS
is subtitled "Controversies in Science and the Humanities," and refers to itself as "an international multidisciplinary journal." You can learn more about it at www.imprint.co.uk/jcs.

I own a complete set of this journal, which is now in its twelfth year, and consulted it extensively while writing
Mindscan
. However, the papers in it are often very technical; for those interested in popular discussions of consciousness, I recommend the following books, which also influenced me while I was working on this novel.

Carter, Rita.
Exploring Consciousness
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. An excellent introduction.

Carter, Rita.
Mapping the Mind
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. A good overview of how the brain works.

Crick, Francis.
The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul
.

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994. Crick — the co-discoverer of the helical structure of DNA — believed that consciousness didn't really exist.

Dennett, Daniel C.
Consciousness Explained
. New York: Little Brown, 1991. Often referred to by those who think there's something special about human self-awareness as "Consciousness Explained Away."

Freeman, Anthony.
Consciousness: A Guide to the Debates
. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2003. A fascinating look at the various controversies.

Jaynes, Julian.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990 [reissue; originally published in 1976]. An enchanting, if ultimately unprovable, hypothesis that true human consciousness didn't emerge until Classical times; utterly fascinating.

Kurzweil, Ray.
The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
. New York: Viking, 1999. A fascinating, optimistic look at thinking machines and uploaded minds; see also my dialog with computer scientist A. K. Dewdney about this book at www.sfwriter.com/brkurz.htm.

LeDoux, Joseph.
Synoptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are
. New York: Viking, 2002. A good look at the neuronal nature of human minds.

Moravec, Hans.
Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence
. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988. A classic about artificial intelligence.

Ornstein, Robert.
The Evolution of Consciousness: The Origins of the Way We Think
. New York: Touchstone (Simon Schuster), 1991. Makes clear that Darwin has a lot more to teach us about consciousness than Freud.

Penrose, Roger.
The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and
t
he Laws of Physics
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. A classic proposing that human consciousness is quantum mechanical in nature.

Penrose, Roger.
Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Among many other fascinating things, explores the possible relationship between microtubules and human consciousness.

Pinker, Steven.
How the Mind Works
. New York: Norton, 1997. A fine overview of modern cognitive science, mostly from an evolutionary-psychology perspective.

Richards, Jay W., ed.
Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I.
Seattle, Washington: Discovery Institute Press, 2002. Precisely what the title says.

Searle, John R.
The Mystery of Consciousness
. New York: New York Review of Books, 1997. The originator of the "Chinese Room" problem cited in this novel spells out his beliefs about the ineffable nature of human consciousness.