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Perhaps the largest
issue that eventually had to be faced head on was that leading
cognitive scientists refused–absolutely, positively, one
hundred percent refused–to believe that biological substrates
were necessary for the creation of intelligent life.

In the late 1980s
and 1990s, mathematician Roger Penrose had argued that the laws of
physics as we know them were insufficient to explain consciousness.
He proposed a theory along with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff
called the Orch-OR model which depended upon the quantum
characteristics of microtubules in the brain. It was soundly rejected
by physicists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists across the
board as being unlikely, even radical.

As one scientist
sarcastically put it: “It’s reasonably unlikely that the
brain evolved quantum behavior.”

Penrose had made his
name as a brilliant mathematician, and his contributions to that
field were beyond dispute. This foray into neuroscience, however, was
seen by all as an ill-conceived failure. Mathematicians were
disappointed that he had devoted his attentions to a different field
of science, and everybody else treated him with condescending
indifference. He wasn’t a neuroscientist, after all, so what
the hell was he doing studying the brain? He wasn’t a
physicist, so how could he possibly come up with a major development
in quantum field theory? To say that scientists were skeptical of his
claims was to put it kindly. Some of his close friends whispered
privately that the man had gone off his rocker.

Two decades later,
Penrose re-examined his initial theory in a paper titled
“Consciousness in the Universe: Neuroscience, Quantum
Space-Time Geometry and Orch OR Theory. The paper began with the
following sentence:

“
The nature
of consciousness, its occurrence in the brain, and its ultimate place
in the universe are unknown.”

He went on to
evaluate the shortcomings of the brain-as-computer viewpoint that
continued to gain popularity in the early days of cognitive science,
mentioning the hard problem of consciousness as a sticky issue for
those who shared that viewpoint. He also criticized those who
searched for the origins of consciousness in the brain, noting that
the best measure of consciousness (gamma synchrony EEG from 30 to 90
Hz) didn’t derive from neuronal firings at all. The paper was
largely ignored in scientific circles.

One hundred years
after Penrose’s first book on the Orch-OR theory of
consciousness was published, Chal Davidson was born. Twenty years
after that, she ran across Penrose’s paper while researching
the origins of quantum physics in one of her college classes in
scientific history. It was this paper that caused her to abandon her
degree in physics and turn instead to philosophy.

Penrose was right,
she thought. Physics was broken; there must be something deeper
driving the fundamental laws of the universe. Something
more
.
It had been years since she had last prayed to God, but when she read
Penrose she felt an odd stirring inside of her that hearkened back to
sunny Sunday mornings spent in churches.

Faith.

In year 2131, the
year in which Chal Davidson was contacted to assist in Project
Paragon, the nature of consciousness and its ultimate place in the
universe was still unknown.

***

Chal woke to find
Lieutenant Gray Johnner leaning toward her, her binder clasped
loosely in his lap. She raised her head and peered outside of the
van. They were moving: dark, empty fields flew by in the window, and
in the moonlight she could see barbed wire haphazardly strung along
the side of the road.

“We’re
almost there, Dr. Davidson. You dozed off.” Johnner sat back in
his seat.

“Almost
where?” She had been to Phoenix before; this wasn’t it.
This wasn’t a city at all. The mesas outside were dotted with
sagebrush, and in the cold blue light the desert resembled an alien
landscape.

Johnner seemed
relieved that she was awake and talking. “M.I.D. headquarters.
It’s almost a hundred miles south of Phoenix.” He handed
her back the binder full of her files and she took them clumsily,
still half-asleep.

They pulled off of
the highway, the van bouncing on the dirt road at a speed that Chal
was not entirely comfortable with.

“Can we slow
down? Jesus,” she said, as they hit a pothole, her body
lurching upward in her seat.

“It’s
urgent that we reach headquarters as soon as possible,”
Lieutenant Johnner said, no trace of an apology in his voice now. “We
still have to undergo decontamination procedures. And you’ll
need to view the videos of the failed prototypes.”

“Prototypes of
what?” Chal asked, her heart beating a bit faster. This was the
good stuff.

“Emotional
intelligence in a biological substrate.”

“Rats or
chimps?” Chal had worked with both types of substrates, and
found benefits and drawbacks to each one. It was universally
acknowledged that rat neurons were the easiest to replicate in terms
of memory retrieval processes, but chimp tissue had become
increasingly popular in studies that focused on neurotransmitters,
the chemistry of chimp brains being much more similar to those of
people’s brains. She was curious to know what the military had
decided upon, but Johnner’s answer surprised her.

“Neither,”
he said.

“I’m
sorry?”

Johnner cleared his
throat. “The M.I.D. is working with human substrates.”

Chal’s mouth
dropped open, and for a second she didn’t know what to say.

“That’s...that’s
illegal,” she finally sputtered. “The MacLaurin
Conventions–”

“The
indigenous Tohono people have never recognized the MacLaurin
Conventions,” Lieutenant Johnner said. “None of the
native tribes have.”

“And we’re
on a Tohono reservation now.” It wasn’t a question. Chal
simply couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“That’s
right.” The van raced along the bumpy road, and in the distance
Chal could see a ranch house. Its aluminum roof reflected the
moonlight brightly.

“So you’re
making
humans
?” Chal asked. “Implanting
intelligence into
actual human-substrate bodies
?”

“It’s
not implanting,” Johnner said. “That’s been tried,
but implantation is only really good for memory chips, learning
modifiers, and the like. Consciousness doesn’t work quite that
way.” Chal realized that he knew much, much more than she had
first believed. Johnner wasn’t just a stuffed suit after all.
“It’s more like...growing. Around a digital core.”

“Growing.”
Chal repeated tonelessly. “You’re growing
digitally-controlled brains.”

“In human
substrates, yes.”

“Making men.”
Chal looked at the ranch house looming before them as the van slowed.
“Jesus Christ.”

“Well, we’re
trying.” Johnner’s voice was impassive on the surface,
but Chal could tell that he was tense underneath. “We’ve
come across some unexpected issues with the prototypes that have led
to two failures in a row.

“That’s
why you need my help.” It was beginning to make sense.

“Of course,
this work is classified, and I trust that you’ll be able to
handle this with discretion.” Johnner looked worried, and Chal
remembered what he had mentioned earlier.

“You talked
about the implications of my work,” Chal said.

“That’s
right,” Lieutenant Johnner said, as they pulled to a stop
outside of the deserted ranch. “It would be very bad if word of
this project were to get out.”

“Because of
the MacLaurin Conventions?”

“Because of
the political implications,” he said cryptically. Chal had no
idea what he was talking about. She opened her mouth to ask another
question, but he waved her ahead toward the building. Whatever the
political implications were, they would have to wait.

***

The MacLaurin
Conventions had been developed at the insistence of the European
consulates after the digital Divide, which had resulted in nearly a
third of European countries rejecting digital technology within their
borders.

It came as no
surprise that many nations had decided to rein in their intelligence
research, especially after the second millennial digital expansion
and the ensuing backlash. Fears of digital surveillance and ethical
qualms about intelligence programs spread rampantly among many
first-world populations at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
What was surprising was how entirely and totally the post-Divide
nations abandoned intelligence work altogether.

Some people called
these countries backwards, and Chal Davidson had been one of them.
Her own mother lived in West Catalonia, a newly-formed nation state
that had decided, along with a dozen other countries, to abandon
digital intelligence technology and revert to old analog/electrical
systems or digital systems without any intelligence components. Old
technology was hard to find or manufacture. Countries created rigid
customs inspections to deal with the hazard of importing goods, and a
national review board decided the borderline cases. Life reverted to
that of the late twentieth century.

Some dissented, of
course, but the costs of their emigration balanced fairly with the
increased revenue of whole immigrant tribes like the Amish. With huge
governmental subsidies provided to move people across the dividing
lines, there were few who put up too much of a fight.

The United Nations
deemed it necessary to protect these countries from external
interference, including digital intelligence warfare against which
they would have no possible recourse. Many who lived in the
non-digital nations pushed for global conventions that would support
their isolation and keep them safe from attackers in adjacent digital
nations.

The digital
intelligence boom had come on the heels of a great number of military
advances that bulked the automated machine armies of just about every
major nation state to annihilation-level proportions. Once cognitive
advances made the machines intelligent, political scientists warned
that if any nation state at all with an A-level army began an
invasion, it would be impossible to prevent global war and mutual
destruction.

Because of this
threat, a UN subcommittee drew up the first drafts of what would
eventually be known as the MacLaurin Conventions. They consisted of
three treaties that established for the first time the standards of
international law for the treatment of digital intelligences both in
and out of warzones.

Ethical
considerations of creating life had been worked out across many
medical ethics boards some time back. Ever since digital
intelligences in biological substrates became used in widespread
applications, concerns about whether or not they should be treated as
different from normally developed animals had flown back and forth
across ethics boards. The treaties were quickly drawn up.

The first treaty
banned creation of any digital intelligences designed to kill
emotionally conscious beings, where consciousness was determined to
be a base level of at least +1 on the modified Freitas consciousness
quotient spectrum.

Many disputes arose
over this definition. Conservative pundits argued that allowing
carnivorous plants to be defined as “conscious” was too
liberal and could be misused by environmental activists. A coalition
of pesticide companies lobbied to place certain weed varieties under
exemption, ridiculing the treaty’s language that classified
plant life as “conscious.”

Eventually it was
agreed that a liberal interpretation was necessary, and the UN
amended the draft to include concessions for lower-level biological
life. But anything that could feel – with the liberal Freitas
interpretation of “feeling”– was safe from digital
warfare.

One military leader,
vehemently against the MacLaurin Conventions, was quoted in a
national newspaper:

“The liberal
pansies writing this document have no idea of what reality is like.
We can’t drive an automated car across the border without being
worried that we’ll crush a bug. We’re being forced to
trash all of our smart machines for no reason at all.” His
words, echoed by many, were nonetheless ignored by the UN. The armies
of all digital nations cut back their forces to non-intelligent
machinery.

Many panentheistic
religious groups, believing that all of nature possesses
consciousness in some form, would not ratify the MacLaurin
Conventions because they felt the first treaty was not liberal
enough
. Native American tribes such as the Tohono asked
Washington to extend the first treaty to forbid the destruction of
any form of nature by digital intelligences.

Washington privately
laughed at the request, which would outlaw logging, mining, basically
all resource management whatsoever, since those industries had long
since stopped using human workers and moved over to digital
intelligence machines to do their dirty work. Publicly they issued a
statement encouraging Native American tribes to pass their own
extensions to the MacLaurin Conventions. This, of course, was
financially implausible for the tribes, and would only have protected
the dwindling reservation lands anyway.

The second and third
treaties in the MacLaurin Conventions established basic rights for
digital intelligences which possessed consciousness. As nobody had
ever created such intelligences and there was no reason to believe
they would, these two treaties passed under the radar with very
little comment. A few hard science fiction fans irritated the hell
out of Washington leaders by giving their own interpretations of the
treaties and filibustering the public forums, but that was all.

It was tacitly
understood in Washington that the second and third treaties were
simply a catch-all for any possibilities of developing conscious life
in order to satisfy the conditions of the previously existing Geneva
conventions. It didn’t make any difference one way or another.