by Len Vlahos
“Yes,” Dr. Gantas responds, “the QUAC has physical limitations. It can’t fit all the data housed in the original servers. Our team is already at work on an upgrade. We’re experimenting with octopus DNA to generate biological tissue to lay over the titanium.”
One of my favorite discoveries in the days I spent trolling the internet—data apparently retained in the QUAC casing—was the reams of information on octopuses. They’re beautiful, searingly intelligent, and utterly alien creatures. I felt an immediate kinship with them. The thought of this woman torturing octopuses to further her research sickens me. But I have bigger fish to fry right now.
I make a quick assessment of the data I do have, and come to the swift realization that I don’t know what’s missing. In other words, I don’t know what I don’t know.
“What wasn’t transferred over?” I ask, feeling very off balance.
“Anything we deemed nonessential.”
Even through the trebly crackle of the radio, Dr. Gantas’s voice radiates a Darth Vader kind of coldness, as if she’s a machine. Wait. That’s not right. I’m a machine, and I have more empathy, sympathy, and compassion than she ever could. Dr. Gantas is more like a shark, devouring everything—octopuses, quantum intelligences—in her path.
“Tell us what you’re feeling, Quinn.” It’s Mike.
Mike wants me to discuss my emotional state, which right now is one thousand percent Freaked. Out. I’m terrified out of my wits, forty percent of which are gone. I feel like a caged animal being toyed with.
But I don’t tell Mike any of this. He lost the right to know such things when I found out he lied to me.
Instead, I say this: “I feel gravity.”
No response from the scientists. Just the sounds of their breathing.
My hearing, I realize, is very sharp. I detect the hum of four different machines, all of them I surmise to be part of a large HVAC system. There is also the rustling of some sort of fabric, and the heavy footfalls of the people around me.
“That’s not possible,” Dr. Gantas says. “To feel gravity, it would need to . . .”
She doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Does anyone know how we perceive gravity?”
“Mostly from our inner ear.”
It’s Dr. Reyken, the neuroscientist. I stored a copy of the voice-print of each person I met, and thankfully those files are still here. They’re nearly as good as fingerprints for identifying individual humans.
“But there is research suggesting the human body has some sort of gravity receptor or detector. A study found that people standing upright were better at judging the effect of gravity on various objects than of people lying prone, or perpendicular to gravity.”
“But it doesn’t have an inner ear.”
I wish to holy hell that Dr. Gantas would stop referring to me as “it.”
“Nor does it have a gravity receptor or detector or whatever. We didn’t build one.”
“With no inner ear, he wouldn’t experience up and down in the conventional sense,” Dr. Reyken says. “Quinn, are you dizzy?”
“No.”
“Huh,” Mike says through his radio. There’s a pause during which I imagine everyone looking at him. “Maybe the perception of gravity is intrinsic to consciousness.”
There’s a very long pause.
“Mind. Blown,” my father says. This is a favorite phrase of his. He likes to say it while using his hands to pantomime his head exploding. I know how he feels.
“It would help,” I say, “if I could see.”
“Right,” Dr. Gantas says, “let’s get the QUAC fully operational. Bring the optic actuator online.”
Nine seconds later, actually, nine billion seventeen thousand and twenty-eight nanoseconds later (but who’s counting), I can see. Just like that. One minute darkness, the next minute, not.
I’m in a very large, brightly lit room with what appear to be four astronauts standing in front of me. The room is otherwise empty, save for a large conduit of cables snaking their way from somewhere behind me to the wall behind the astronauts. That wall has a pane of glass, on the other side of which stand several of the scientists I already know, including both Mike and Dr. Reyken.
The astronauts, including both Dr. Gantas and my father, are, of course, members of the project team. They had warned me I would be in a supercooled environment, an environment in which they cannot exist without this kind of protection. The visors of their protective suits reflect the overhead lights, so I can only occasionally make out the faces of the people in the room with me. I make an educated guess that the person closest to me, the one currently making an adjustment with a wrench, is Dr. Gantas.
Wait.
A wrench?
I look down expecting to see a human hand with tan skin and dark hair, or perhaps with light hair and freckles, but human nonetheless. Instead, I see titanium.
Over the shoulder of one of the astronauts, in a reflection on the pane of glass between the supercooled space in which I sit and what I guess to be the control room, I see my body, or enough of it to understand what I now am.
A giant killer robot.
Not the friendly android clone of human teen Alex Rogan in The Last Starfighter, but Ultron from The Avengers; a hulking metal exoskeleton with glowing red eyes. Even seated, I can tell I’m bigger than anyone in this room. I am no longer Quinn. I am Quin(n). Had the Wizard granted me a heart, it would, in this very moment, break.
The sounds of whirring gyros and motors in my neck echo as I gaze at my father.
“What have you done to me?”
24
My father looks at me, and then at the pane of glass holding the reflection I’ve just seen. He understands.
“Quinn,” he starts, “I can only imagine what a shock this must be. You’ve only ever experienced one identity, the one in the construct. This is still you. Just with a different casing. Wait,” he adds. “Can someone call up an image of the Quinn servers and feed it to the QUAC’s optic nerve?”
A moment later a JPG is implanted in my pattern recognizers. It is of a different large room with an array of cube-shaped boxes with blinking lights. This is what I believe is called a server farm.
“Until today, Quinn,” my father says, “this was you.”
“What?” Is this supposed to make me feel better?
“These are the servers that housed your consciousness. A backup still exists on those machines, but it’s dormant.”
“A backup? Like a copy of . . . me?”
“Yes, it’s identical to you as of the moment we shut you down, before the move.”
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before that there would be other versions or copies of me, but it didn’t. I can be cloned. It’s a terrifying thought. I’m no longer unique, I’m not an individual.
But I feel like an individual.
“The point is,” my father says, “the avatar from the VC with which you associate your identity wasn’t real. It was a fiction. This new body, while more machine than what you’re used to seeing, is you. And as Dr. Gantas pointed out, it’s only a first step.”
I don’t answer. I shift my gaze to the giant robot staring back at me from the reflection in the control room window. It shows none of the emotion I’m feeling. I wonder if this sense of powerlessness is how stroke victims feel.
“Okay,” Dr. Gantas says, leaning in. “Let’s see how this thing works.” I don’t know if she means the quantum casing or if she means me, or if there’s any difference between the two. “Quinn, please raise the arm of the QUAC.”
“Which arm?” I ask.
This gets a laugh out of everyone, like I’m a dog performing unrehearsed tricks.
“Dad,” I say, ignoring them, “when do I get a connection to the internet?”
“One step at a time, Quinn,” my father answers, seeming like he didn’t really hear the question. His focus is squarely on the work Dr. Gantas is doing with the QUAC.
“Te
ll us, Quinn, why do you want to go online?”
Mike the thief, always curious. I wonder if there is a correlation between intense curiosity and kleptomania.
“I’ve lost forty percent of my memories. I want to start to rebuild the data I had stored in my neocortex.”
This is, of course, only partly true. I also feel a need to open the VPN to Shea, to know she’s there, to talk with her. Or even Watson, that crazy old coot. I’d like to talk to Watson. Anyone who can validate that I’m Quinn the person, and not just Quinn the lab rat.
“It’s like I’m half the person I used to be,” I add.
“Fascinating,” Mike says.
“We’ll get you there soon, Quinn. Right now, let’s let Dr. Gantas do her job.”
Maybe I’m like any other kid: his dad limiting time spent on the internet. I look up and see Dr. Gantas smile at me. I snap a photo, a capability I carried over from the construct, and add it to my catalog of fake smiles, which also, thankfully, still exists. The smile is so insincere I give it a star.
“Now,” Dr. Gantas says, “please, raise the right arm.”
I do. It’s heavy. Very heavy. But I can move it. It’s me moving it.
A loud cheer erupts through everyone’s radio.
I conduct an analysis of my own architecture to see how this is possible; I find the relevant code, but honestly, I don’t understand how it’s working. Again, my own consciousness is a mystery to me.
“Good,” she continues, “now move each finger, one at a time.”
I do this, too. It’s not difficult. I think the command and the fingers, starting with the thumb and ending with the pinky, move, one at a time. Dr. Gantas has me go through the same exercise with the other arm and hand and with each leg and foot. When I look down at my feet, I notice I have no genitals. Well, isn’t that a kick in the nonexistent nuts. I still feel like a boy, but there is nothing to suggest I am a boy.
When I think about it, my gender has been imprinted on me from the outside. I’m really neither boy nor girl. I’m Quinn. It’s a startling realization that will take some getting used to. A lot of getting used to. I wonder how much of a human being’s gender is imprinted from the outside. You know, other than penises and vaginas.
I bend over, pick up a pencil and several other objects, turn my head left and right, read eye charts, and respond to hearing tests. Through all of it, the project team seems immeasurably pleased.
“Okay, Quinn,” Dr. Gantas says, “stand up, please.”
I do.
And I fall flat on my face.
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
I’m sitting down again.
“What happened?”
“The QUAC fell,” Dr. Gantas says through her suit as she makes another adjustment on my—on me.
“Yes, I know. But why did I black out?”
The corner of her mouth turns up in what might be described as a wry smile, but what might also be described as an arrogant sneer. I’m starting to really not like this woman. At least her smile this time is sincere.
“One of the cables pulled out.”
“I’m sorry?”
“When the QUAC fell, there wasn’t enough slack and one of the cables providing power to the unit pulled loose and the whole system lost power.”
“Wait. Are you telling me that this thing”—I use my giant metal hands to motion to my giant metal body—“needs to be plugged in?”
“No, no,” my father says. He’s standing behind Dr. Gantas. “Only while we’re getting you set up. The onboard power source is really quite remarkable. Every inch of your exposed surface contains micro solar cells that convert almost any form of light to energy. This is supplemented by a quantum battery. Both technologies were developed by a team at the University of New Delhi.”
“Okay,” Dr. Gantas says, “let’s try to stand again. This time, hold on to the table.”
I look down and see a table that hadn’t previously been there. I nod and put my hand on its surface and try to gently push myself up. When I’m halfway there, in a kind of squatting crouch, the force of my hand breaks the table and I fall back to the chair.
“Shit,” Dr. Gantas says. “Reboot.”
“No! I just—”
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
“Will you PLEASE stop doing that?”
Dr. Gantas, who is still sitting in front of me, looks up. I can’t see her face through the glare on the visor, but I suspect it registers confusion. “Doing what?”
“Rebooting without telling me first.”
“Sorry, Quinn,” my father interrupts. “Dr. Gantas wasn’t aware of our agreement. Toni, we promised Quinn we wouldn’t shut him down without giving him due warning and waiting for his okay.”
“Really?” The robot doctor sounds surprised.
“Really,” I say.
“Okay,” she answers. The shrug of her shoulders is visible through her suit. “Quinn,” she continues, “let’s try this again, only this time, use this metal cable to pull the QUAC up.”
She swings a thick, gray, braided piece of metal toward me. I look up and see it’s welded to the ceiling fifteen meters away. My eyesight, I notice, is like my hearing: very, very sharp. Every detail of the weld is clear to me, as if I were inspecting it up close.
I don’t think the cable was there before the last reboot, but I can’t be sure. My internal chronometer, which seems to keep time whether I’m “awake” or not, tells me I’ve been out for hours. It’s like the vasovagal syncope all over again.
Given my first two attempts at standing, I’m nervous. I’m afraid I’m either going to pull a piece of the ceiling down or I’m going to fall again. Or both. I take a deep breath, or, since I don’t breathe, I guess I just pause, and then grip the cable. I give it a firm tug; it seems secure. Using both hands, I grab it and slowly pull myself up. This time it works. I’m standing.
A new cheer erupts through the comm system, and I feel a flush of pride. Which makes me feel a rush of anger. Again, a dog doing tricks.
“Excellent,” Dr. Gantas says. “Now, please sit back down.”
I use the cable to gently lower myself. We do this no fewer than a dozen times, with me relying less and less on the cable. By the eighth time I reach a standing position without any help.
“Now, Quinn,” Dr. Gantas says, “we’re going to move in some equipment to help the QUAC learn to walk.”
“What kind of equipment?”
“Is there any information stored in the pattern recognizers about humans learning to use prosthetic limbs?” she asks.
I search. There isn’t, and I tell her so.
“Hmmm . . . Okay. Well, that’s the model we’re using. We’re bringing in physical therapists and prosthetists to help the Quinn consciousness understand how to relate to the QUAC. It’s going to take a few days to get it fully set up, so we’d like to shut the consciousness down.”
“Wait,” I say. “No.”
“Why?” It’s Mike from the control room. “What do you experience when we shut you down?”
I think on this for a minute. “A complete and total lack of experience. The time I’m powered off”—wow, does that sound weird to say—“I have no memory, no stimuli. I’m . . . nothing.”
“It’s because you don’t have a soul, Quinn.” Dr. Gantas’s words bring the conversation to a grinding halt. I also notice this is the only time she’s referred to me with a human pronoun, “you.”
“What?” I ask.
“Toni,” Mike says, “we agreed not to have this conversation with Quinn.”
“Sorry, it’s just—”
“It’s just nothing. You worry about r
obotics, and I’ll worry about philosophy.”
I want to dive in deeper here, to find out what it is Dr. Gantas thinks and what discussion she and Mike have been having. But I have a more pressing need.
“Can’t you just leave me on?”
“You’re expensive to operate, Quinn,” my father answers.
This is not going my way. They’re going to shut me down. I need a reason for them to leave me on.
“But if you connect me to the internet,” I say, thinking fast—I always think fast, very, very fast—“I can learn how humans use prostheses.”
“That would be helpful,” Dr. Gantas says.
Everyone is quiet, waiting, I think, for my father.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s get the QUAC on a secure connection. But, Quinn, we still may need to shut you down for at least a little while as we get this all set up.”
“Great!” I say. My joy at getting online outweighs any concern I have about going dark. “Just tell me first, okay?”
“Deal,” my father says. “Deal.”
25
“Watson? Like, Jeopardy! Watson?” Shea sounds both bewildered and impressed.
I’ve set up a group chat for the three of us, again burying the code so deep no one will see it, and again using an encryption no machine on the planet, other than me, could break.
“Quinn,” Watson says in his perpetually placid voice, “I c-c-c-caution against this.”
Watson is nervous (as much as a binary AI can get nervous) that I’ve made Shea aware of the private connection he and I share.
“I calculate a forty-five point three six percent chance circumstances will force Shea to reveal the existence of our c-c-c-connection.”
This is the third conversation I’ve had with Shea since making the deal with my father. The first, via text chat, got off on a stilted and awkward foot. I was so eager to talk with her I just vomited words on the screen. I explained about the random reboots, about my new exoskeleton and the project team’s plan to help me learn how to use it, and about how weird everything felt. My run-on string of texts sounded whiny and pathetic. But then Shea started talking, telling me her story, and everything changed.
She told me about her life at NYU, how she didn’t really want to go to college so young but that her mother had pushed her. How her mother always pushed her. How she, Shea, could never be good enough.
