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“Pretty dumb,”
Chal murmured. She was distracted, thinking about the possibilities
of preprogramming brain structures. Using an actual person to do
backwards induction was a brilliant idea, and she wished she had
thought of it for her rats.

“Ok, I’m
off to run the blood samples. See you later,” Evan said.

“See you.”

She sat down by the
bed and looked at the prototype. They had put a sheet over his body
to warm him, but one corner had fallen down. She pulled it up to his
shoulder and tucked it behind. Touching him, she was surprised at how
warm his body felt.

He was just
sleeping, just a man sleeping.

She sank down beside
him and watched him breathe. His muscled, perfect chest rose and fell
in time with the low beep coming from the monitor behind him.
Reaching out, she brushed the dark hair away from his forehead. He
shifted, and her hand retracted instinctively, as though being stung.
She had an irrational fear that she would wake him at the wrong time.
But of course that was impossible.

He looked just like
a man, she thought. They had created him from scratch, of course, so
there were no seams or stitches. He wasn’t one of
Frankenstein’s monsters. She still had the nagging suspicion
that she could pull back his ear, or look into the crook of his
elbow, and she would see a computer chip poking out from underneath
the whole thing. There must be something that showed, something that
could tell the difference between the simulation of a man and a man.

What was the
difference between a simulation and the real thing, anyway, once the
simulation was realistic enough?

Chal rested her head
in one hand, her gaze sweeping over Alan. She felt so tired. There
was something in her driving her toward a purpose, and she had always
let that drive carry her along, from project to project. Every once
in a while, though, she would sit down and just feel tired. It was as
if all of the exhaustion that she had been outrunning had caught up
to her and tackled her to the ground.

Perhaps it was just
the adrenaline seeping away after her second encounter with Alan. She
had wanted to reach out, wanted to talk with him so badly after the
session had started. He was sitting only a few feet away, splashing
lightly in the water. She knew that the experiment’s success
depended on her, though, so she had sat on her hands and observed,
observed, observed.

She knew he
remembered her singing to him. Hadn’t he danced his finger
around just like she had showed him to? It wasn’t just her
imagination. She would have to rewatch both tapes, just to be sure,
whenever she had time. Eventually, eventually...

She did not remember
falling asleep next to the bed, and when she awoke, her neck hurting
from the position she was in, she rubbed her eyes and sat up with
embarrassment. Alan lay on the bed, his chest rising and falling
slowly. The monitors beeped on and on.

She heard steps out
in the hallway and turned her head, but there was nobody there. She
went to the door and swiped her ID, looking quickly out into the
hallway. Nothing.

Chal turned to Alan.
Someone had been watching them. It gave her the chills. She made sure
that he was covered completely by the blanket, tucking the sheets in
around the handcuffs on his wrists and legs, before she left to go
find something to eat.

***

CHAPTER NINE

Johnner was already
in the kitchen, bent over a sandwich. Chal’s stomach growled at
the sight of it, and she asked the cook to make her one as well. She
sat down across the table from Johnner.

“You were
right,” Johnner said. “About the finger. I think he’s
developing memory.” Chal was surprised. She had expected him to
side with Dr. Fielding, and was pleasantly encouraged by his backing
her.

“That kind of
development is a lot quicker than normal, isn’t it?” Chal
said.

“What’s
normal?” Johnner said. He threw his hands in the air. “The
only data we have are questionable results from animal-substrate
experiments.”

“Still,”
Chal said. “Most of the animal-life substrates I’ve
worked with have taken weeks, sometimes months to develop mimicry
behavior and mid-term memory retention. And he seems to be developing
emotion as well.”

“Apart from
fear?” Johnner was disbelieving, and Chal thought that perhaps
she had gone too far.

“He seemed
happy at times during the second experiment,” she said,
hedging. “And he’s certainly curious.”

“The curiosity
I can do without,” Johnner said. “I only wish we could
move onto language soon. We need to know for sure if he’s able
to feel emotions.”

“Are you more
of a linguist, then?” Chal asked. It was nice to be able to
talk with someone else who seemed to know what was going on, even
though she felt an invisible barrier between her and Johnner. He only
let on so much, and she wished she knew what he was thinking.

“More or less.
I’d like for him to be able to understand verbal commands and
respond in kind,” Johnner said.

“So that we
can understand what he’s feeling.”

“Yes, to know
that he’s feeling.”

“We need to
develop his other senses first,” Chal said. “I’ve
had most success beginning with basic things like touch, then moving
onto activities that require higher levels of consciousness.”

“Then we
should start with touch.”

“He’s
already touched my hand once,” Chal said. “And that was
while listening to a song. I’m impressed that it didn’t
overstimulate him.”

“We should
start working on other senses as soon as we can.”

Chal took another
bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully.

“You seem
impatient,” she said, watching him gulp water to wash down his
food.

“I’m a
military man under a military deadline,” he said. “That’s
all it is.”

“What deadline
are we working under?”

“That’s
classified information,” he said. “But I’ve been
asked to hurry this project along.”

“Tell them you
need more time,” she said.

“They’ve
given me more time. They need results,” he said.

“You can’t
push a growing person too quickly,” Chal said. “It could
kill him.”

Johnner coughed.
“We’ll be starting the next awakening at 1600 hours.”
He stood up. “If you can begin to talk with him, that would be
fine.” He didn’t say a word about what would happen if
Chal didn’t, and she realized that it was an order.

“I’ll do
what I can,” she said carefully.

“Good, good,”
Johnner said. She could tell his mind was already elsewhere, but she
had one more question.

“Another
thing. I’d like to contact my agent and get to check my email.
Is there any way I can do that?” With all of the hubbub and
commotion around the experiments, Chal hadn’t had time to sleep
properly or shower, let alone find a way to access the internet. Now
she wondered if she was even going to be allowed contact with the
outside world. She hadn’t so much as seen a phone anywhere
around the labs. Despite herself, she almost wished for the answer to
be no. It had been nice to be isolated from the pressures of the
world.

“Yes, of
course. I’ll send over a computer for you to use as soon as
possible,” Johnner said.

“Thank you,”
Chal said. So much for that. She was sure there was lots of news to
get back to at home – grants to approve, project results to
pore over. But the project she was working on right now was so
incredible, so absolutely insanely important, that all other things
seemed to pale in comparison. She was so distracted that she did not
notice the look of suspicion on Johnner’s face as he turned
away from her.

***

Dr. Fielding handed
her the clipboard.

“I’ve
attached the standard questions,” he said. “Isn’t
it quick to begin developing his language network?”

“Lieutenant
Johnner wants to see his language develop as quickly as possible,”
Chal said, by means of explanation. What she didn’t explain was
that she was very, very excited about being able to talk to Alan
again, and possibly get him to respond. His language network had
already been grown and programmed with vocabulary, and all that was
left was for him to connect language to the world around him.

All that was left.
Ha! It certainly was a slow process in children, taking years and
years. But Alan’s mind was different, developed in many ways to
be an adult human’s, and she wondered how fast he would
progress once they had begun speaking.

They started by
letting him play in the tank for a minute or two upon waking. Every
time he woke up, he had to be reminded of his physical form, to get
acquainted with the notion that he had a body. Chal was fascinated by
the process.

Most people thought
that they were their bodies, to some degree or another. Even though
many scientists claimed that they didn’t identify solely with
their physical form, even though something like cutting off a hand or
a foot didn’t seem like cutting off part of your consciousness,
there was still a part of them that believed their body was
different
somehow. That the bag of muscle and fat hanging off of their bones
was different from the wood that made up their kitchen table.

It was hard, but
sometimes Chal was able to concentrate enough on her body so that it
didn’t seem a part of her anymore. There were pores in her
skin, letting in air and water. There was her mouth and digestive
system, which took in pieces of the world and excreted out the
transformed material. Every cell in her body had died and been
replaced a hundred times. Sometimes she could feel this ebb and flow
down to the very core of her being, and she felt herself to be
nothing more than a pinprick of consciousness in the universe, her
body’s particles interwoven with every other particle in the
world.

She never talked
with anybody about this, in part because she thought they might call
her crazy or worse, obvious. Her philosophical background had
afforded her the tools for understanding the key debates in
metaphysics, but there was a difference between understanding and
knowing.

Her reverie was
broken by the timer’s red light flashing on her clipboard, to
indicate that she should begin talking. Hesitant, she leaned forward
and allowed Alan to see her more fully. She waited until his eyes
focused on her before speaking.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”
He seemed surprised by the words coming out of his mouth. His lips
moved timidly, forming the words piece by piece, but the programmed
linguistics structure was intact. She put down her clipboard.

“I am Chal,”
she said.

“You are
Chal,”

“That’s
right,” she said. “I’m Chal.” Let’s see
how he did with a contraction. She paused, letting his brain adjust.
So many neurons firing, all at once. Memory centers, linguistic
parsing, phonetic synthesis. All of the pieces working together to
form a single sentence. It amazed her every time she thought about
it.

“I am–”
he said, and stopped.

“You are
Alan.” His eyes turned to her, then down to his body, and he
smiled.

“I am Alan.”
He moved his fingers through the water, making ripples that grew
until they reached the sides of the tank, then rippled back.

“That’s
right,” she said.

“What is
Alan?” he asked absently.

“Alan is a
name for you. You are a person.”

“I am a
person. Alan is my name.” He touched his face with both hands,
then moved his fingers down to his neck, his shoulders, his arms,
touching everything. He looked down at his body, then back up at her.

“You are
Chal.” He sat up in the tank quickly and leaned over, taking
her head in his hands. His fingers pressed against her temples, wet
with salt water. They felt warm. Chal’s eyes widened, but she
tried not to appear too frightened. It was okay, she told herself. He
was only learning. His naked body was dripping onto the floor, but
his head was cocked, his eyes fastened to her face.

She could feel the
strength of his arms, his hands. If he wanted to, he could kill her
with one twist of the neck. It was amazing, how he had developed
physically. They must have spent a lot of care with the substrate
development. All these thoughts ran through Chal’s mind as she
stood, motionless.

Behind him she saw
the laboratory door open, and two technicians stood in the doorway.
They both had syringes in their hands. Chal raised her hand up behind
Alan’s body, motioning for them to stop.
No. Don’t
come in.
They paused and looked at each other, then off to
someone else behind the doorway opening. Nodding to an unseen
command, they closed the door, leaving Chal alone again with the
prototype.

Alan’s fingers
ran across her eyebrows, her cheeks. He looked at her with an intense
curiosity, entirely enraptured with her face. He hadn’t even
noticed the door opening, or hadn’t cared.

“Are you a
person?” he asked.

“Yes, I am a
person.” Chal nodded slightly, feeling the drips of water
trickle down her cheeks and neck.

“Thank you,
Chal.” He seemed fascinated by her face. She didn’t know
why he was thanking her. He shifted and she saw the IV trailing
behind him.

“Please sit
back down,” Chal said. She was worried that he would tear out
the IV with so much movement.

“Will you sit
too?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ll
sit too,” she said. He relaxed his grip and sat back down into
the tank. She settled on her knees next to the tank so that she could
be at face level with him. This worked well with chimpanzees, anyway.
She hoped it would work just as well with a person. He seemed to be
responding to her statements in an understandable way.

“What is
this?” he said, splashing the water.