Pandora's Brain (17 page)

David, Sophie and Leo hardly heard the rest of what the doctor told them. He spoke softly and slowly, well aware that they were lost in a haze of shock and grief.

‘He passed very quickly; he will hardly have felt anything. The bullet caused sufficient trauma to stop his heart almost immediately. You will want to ask questions later, but for now you will probably just want to stay here quietly for a while. You can stay in this room as long as you like. My name is Doctor Parfit, and you can contact me on this number any time.’

He passed a card to Sophie, knowing that she was a doctor.

‘I will leave you now, but if you need anything just ask the nurse at the station outside. I am so very sorry. Matt was a wonderful young man.’ Doctor Parfit’s arms hung awkwardly by his side, and he looked down, hesitating slightly before turning and walking slowly towards and out of the door.

The three of them sat in silence for several minutes when the doctor had left. Then David looked at Sophie.

‘Could they have made a mistake? Should we go and check?’

Sophie looked at him blankly, but said nothing and let her face turn back down towards the floor. She was slumped forward, her elbows on her knees. Leo placed a hand on hers. She began to shake with little sobs.

‘I don’t believe it. It can’t be true,’ she whimpered. ‘Not Matt. He can’t be . . .’

The small word was too big, too terrible. She couldn’t get anywhere near saying it.

‘What was he saying to me? It’s not . . . It’s not what? It’s not fair! Not my Matt. Not my Matt!’

Her sobs became fuller. Leo looked at David, hoping that he would find the energy to hold his wife. David’s head was made of lead, but he sensed Sophie’s need and somehow managed to respond. He moved next to her and put one arm around her shoulders, and with the other took hold of one of her hands. He leaned his forehead onto her temple. They sat that way for several more minutes, with Sophie still sobbing quietly.

Leo stood up and paced the room. Tears welled in his eyes and his throat felt constricted and metallic. He was moving beyond shock and denial into anger. He started to have fantasies about tracking down Matt’s killer and gouging his eyes out with his bare fingers. He wanted to punch, to kick, to hurt. His brain was spinning, its wheels out of gear: he started thinking about whether he had any contacts within the police who could enable him to get close to the killer. No doubt he was in custody, being questioned in some anonymous windowless room. Were they being polite to him? Were they giving him cups of tea? Was he laughing at them? Was he gloating?

He looked down and noticed that he was trying to drill a hole through his palm with the fist of his other hand. He put his hands up to his face and pressed it into them. He knew he would not see the killer again before they all went to court. He knew these thoughts of revenge were irrational and unhelpful. And he also knew they would not go away.

When he saw Vic open the door his anger flared anew. He could not protect Matt, he could not get revenge for David and Sophie. But by god he could protect them from . . . from outsiders. He strode over to Vic and between clenched teeth he whispered urgently, menacingly,

‘It’s not a good time, Vic!’

Vic looked at Leo sympathetically, and nodded.

‘I know. I know, Leo. But I have something to say that David and Sophie are going to want to hear.’

As Leo started to say something else, Vic put his hand up.

‘And it can’t wait.’

David looked up from where he was still cradling his stricken wife. His voice was lifeless.

‘What is it, Vic?’

‘I want to tell you how sorry I am for your loss, and how much I came to respect and admire Matt in the short time I knew him. And I will do that, but not now. I know that most of all you need to be left alone right now. But I can’t, because I have to offer you something. If you don’t want it I will go away immediately. But I have to give you this opportunity.’

‘What on earth are you talking about, Vic?’ Leo interrupted, incredulous. Could Vic really be crass enough to be negotiating a job offer at a time like this?

‘David. Sophie. I need you to know that we think we could upload Matt.’

He left his statement hanging in the air. Sophie frowned, and her head tilted slightly, still looking down. David looked up at Vic. At first his face was blank, but then a touch of life leaked back into it.

‘You mean you found something in Ivan’s work. . . ?’

‘Exactly!’ Vic said, relieved that he had penetrated David’s grief. ‘Ivan was absolutely right to think that his team and ours have each made breakthroughs which would push the other forwards. There’s no need to go into the details right now, but if we move quickly, we think we have a chance of uploading Matt successfully. I admit it’s a long shot, because we are still at the exploratory stage. But it is a real possibility.’

He looked meaningfully at Leo and then back at David and Sophie, who was still looking down, show
ing no sign of having understood. He spoke urgently.

‘Here’s the thing. This is a really big decision for you guys and I wish there was time for you to think about it. But there isn’t. If we’re going to do this we have to move Matt’s body to our own medical facility immediately. If we don’t it will be sent to a police lab for forensic investigation because of course there is going to be a murder enquiry. Once that happens we will have lost the opportunity forever. I’ve spoken to
someone senior at the Embassy who confirmed that
he can get your government’s co-operation in releasing the body to us. I’m not sure whether they would do it by arranging a retrospective cryonic contract, or by you claiming the right to carry out your own autopsy, but we don’t need to get into that; the bureaucratic stuff can be sorted out later. But we have to act now.’
As he spoke he made short stabbing movements
with his hands. When he finished he clenched them together.

Sophie was now looking blankly at David. David wondered whether they should dare to hope. He looked back at Vic.

Leo was watching David and Sophie, concerned. ‘I can see why you would want to jump at this,’ he said. ‘And I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t. But it could build up your hopes only to dash them again. Can you stand to go through all this twice?’

Vic glanced at Leo, acknowledging the point. But he quickly turned back to David and Sophie and pressed on.

‘Look. If we get the ball rolling and get Matt to our facility, that doesn’t commit us to actually initiating the process. We will have to start fairly soon, before the neuronal structure and fibres start to degrade. We have quite a few hours before then, although the sooner we start the better. But – and I can’t tell you how sorry I am to have to press you on this – what you do have to decide right now is whether to get the body taken out of the coroner’s process. You have to make that call now.’

David came quickly to the decision that there was only one possible answer to Vic’s offer, but he couldn’t tell how Sophie would respond. He looked back at her and although her face was turned down again he saw that realisation was dawning on her, and with it the first flush of hope. But he could see that it was accompanied by fear, and also confusion. He was still holding her hand, with his other arm around her shoulder. He waited.

After what seemed an age, Sophie inhaled deeply, as if making an enormous effort to push heavy words out of herself.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, and then stopped.

‘What is it, love?’ David asked gently.

‘I don’t like it,’ she continued, her words falling from her mouth like stones. Working out how to express a thought was like being an exhausted explorer taking yet another weary step through deep snow. ‘Our son has just . . . our son has just died and we’re talking about using him as the subject of . . . of an experiment.’

David nodded silently. ‘I know,’ was all he said. Leo and Vic said nothing. The silence was oppressive, and at the same time, fragile.

‘I know you want to go ahead,’ she continued at last, addressing David, but not looking at him, still looking down. ‘And I know it offers some hope . . . some hope of bringing Matt back. But what if it goes wrong, and all we do is create a creature of pain?’

Vic walked to Sophie, and squatted down to sit on his haunches in front of her, his face level with hers.

‘You don’t have to make any final decisions now, Sophie. You just have to decide to keep Matt . . . to keep the body away from the coroner. You can decide whether to go ahead with the procedure later. It can wait until tomorrow.’

Finally Sophie looked up, tears in her eyes, turning her face sideways towards David rather than straight ahead towards Vic. ‘I don’t know. I can’t think. You can’t expect . . .’

Vic stood up quickly and stepped back as Sophie started to move. She got up shakily and walked out of the room, tears streaming freely down her face.

David nodded gently to himself. He looked slowly across at Vic, his face grim and ashen. ‘I’ll talk to her. I think we should do as you suggest and get Matt out of the coroner’s process. Then we’ll need some time to make the big decision.’

Vic nodded, frowning but relieved. ‘I’ll make the arrangements to take the body to our facility at the new Embassy complex. We’ll be ready to go as soon as you give the word.’

Half an hour later, Matt’s body was on its second ambulance journey of the day. The van hustled west past the MI6 building, round the gyratory system at the southern end of Vauxhall Bridge, and on to Nine Elms.

Sophie had agreed to have Matt’s body transported to Vic’s facility, but not without a fight. Leo had winced as he listened to Sophie’s protests in the corridor outside the hospital waiting room. Biting down on his pain to find lucidity, David reasoned that transferring Matt’s body was the sensible thing to do, that it preserved their options, and that they didn’t need to make the diffi
cult decision yet. Sophie responded by shouting angry
accusations that David was being cold and clinical, and that he was willing to allow a stranger to carry out unnatural experiments on their son just hours after his death. Leo knew these accusations were unfair, and that Sophie was just lashing out furiously in response to their tragedy. But he also knew that they would be cutting David to the quick.

Sophie’s outburst subsided as quickly as it began, and Leo went outside to find her in David’s arms, her head on his chest, sobbing loudly. Tears welled up in his own eyes as he walked away from his best friends, looking for Vic to tell him the news.

No-one spoke as they climbed into the ambulance again.
The silence in the van felt to Vic like an accusation; he sought to ward it off by assuring them of the quality of the facilities available at the compound. He spoke rapidly, nervously.

‘The equipment that is being installed in the new Embassy complex here is the best in the world. This site is going to be the outer skin of the USA. As far as Uncle Sam is concerned, this will be the single most important piece of real estate outside the continental USA. It will be our eyes, ears and our fingertips. The equipment in Grosvenor Square is impressive, but this is taking things to a whole new level.’

Leo shared Vic’s feeling that silence was unhealthy. ‘There wasn’t too much difficulty extricating Matt from the hospital.’

‘No. My government is grateful for the assistance extended by all of you, and people were only too happy to accede to the request we made on your behalf – even though we didn’t tell them exactly what we plan to do. People in your government clearly felt the same way.’

Sophie said nothing. Her attention was focused on
Matt, her hand wrapped around his. His skin was aston
ishingly cold. She had touched the skin of dead people during her medical training, but she was still shocked by the contrast between the colour that remained in her son’s peaceful face and the complete absence of warmth in his hand.

‘So tell us, Vic,’ Leo asked, hoping to nudge David’s and Sophie’s thoughts away from the subject of their grief for a moment or two. ‘What have you found on Ivan’s ship that you think will have such a big impact on your work?’

‘A lot of things – much more than we expected.’ Vic replied gratefully. ‘And it’s not just his ship. His
crew members and his financial backers are falling
over themselves to be co-operative, and we are investigating several other installations which are gradually yielding
up their secrets. It turns out that Ivan was working along the same lines as us in many ways, but had taken differ
ent routes in others. It will take us a while to understand exactly what he achieved, but we can already see that he has solved a number of thorny problems for us.’

‘Such as?’ Leo prompted.

‘Such as how to distinguish between different sub-minds. You know how when you drive a car you can focus on a conversation or a radio programme, for instance, and when you reach your destination you have very little memory of the driving?’

‘Yes,’ Leo said. ‘Especially if you know the route well.’

‘Exactly. Well, it has long been thought that the brain divides itself up into sub-minds, or modules, and assigns different tasks to different modules. We didn’t know to what extent those modules were permanent features, and to what extent the brain would clump together different communities of physical neurons each time it needed, for instance, an automatic pilot.’

‘And Ivan answered that question?’ David asked, lifting his gaze from his son for a moment.

‘Yes he did – partly, at least. The answer – as always – is fuzzy. Some modules are mostly permanent and others are always ad hoc. But more importantly, he seems to have found a way to identify and define boundaries for certain types of modules. Some of the modules perform functions which an uploaded mind won’t need – at least not at first. Such as the ones which control the breathing process.’

‘The modules? Plural?’ Leo asked.

‘Oh yes. There are several modules permanently involved in breathing, and others are assembled from time to time when additional mental horsepower is required, such as when you decide to hold your breath and swim underwater. The oldest module is the one that tells you to breathe out. Breathing is actually driven by expelling carbon dioxide, so it’s much harder to refrain from breathing out than it is from breathing in.

‘We reckon that being able to identify a bunch of modules that we don’t need to upload will mean a significant saving on modelling and hosting. We’ll scan them all anyway, in case any of them do turn out to be mission-critical to consciousness and general intelligence. But assuming they aren’t, we could have a saving of between 15 and 40% of the work.’

Then Sophie broke her silence, in a tremulous voice. ‘Very well. I won’t stop you.’

David looked at her in surprise. ‘Darling . . . ?’

Sophie looked and David, and then past him at Vic. ‘Go ahead and prepare him. My son is dead and you can’t do him any more harm with surgery. But David and I are going to have a lengthy discussion before we get anywhere near approving an activation of whatever it is you create inside your computer.’

‘I understand,’ Vic nodded. ‘I’ll make the preparations when we arrive, but I give you my word that I won’t proceed further than you have agreed.’

There was a lengthy pause as everyone digested the significance of the moment. Then Vic continued, plainly uncomfortable.

‘David, there is one other thing I’m going to have to ask you. I suspect you have already realised what it is, and if you like we can have this conversation offline. But your family will need to know about it at some point.’

‘I know what it is,’ said Sophie, quietly. She was looking down at her son again, but she reached for David’s hand and addressed him without looking at him. ‘If you can do it, you should.’

David’s lips pressed together in a grim, grateful approximation of a smile. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

Turning to Vic, he added, ‘You want me to help you scan my son’s brain.’