by Scott Meyer
“Few people do, because if they did, nobody would think the transporter was a good idea. If I take a car and copy it exactly somewhere else, I haven’t moved the car, I’ve just made another. Right?”
“Right, but Kirk’s not a car. He’s a person, and when he transports, his brain goes to the planet, not just a copy of his body.”
“No, Al, his brain is part of his body. A copy of his brain goes to the planet. It has all of Kirk’s memories and ideas, but it’s not Kirk’s brain. It’s a copy. It remembers stepping into the transporter on the ship, but it didn’t. The real Kirk did.”
“But the real Kirk isn’t there anymore. Where did he go, if he didn’t go to the planet?”
“That’s the crazy part, Al. The transporter killed the real Kirk.”
“What?!”
“Yeah. Think about it. If the transporter is just scanning him, where does he go? A piece of paper doesn’t disappear when you scan it. The transporter disintegrated Kirk so that the new copy would be the only Kirk. New Kirk doesn’t know that the old Kirk was killed, because its last memory was the moment Kirk was scanned, just before he was destroyed.”
Al wrote, “Whoa!”
Hope smiled. “I know, right? Every time any character gets transported, they’re killing themselves, then they’re replaced by a copy that has no idea that the original them is dead.”
“No. No! Oh, man! Wow!”
“Creepy, isn’t it? If you look at it that way, Scotty and Chief O’Brien were mass murderers.”
“Yeah,” Al wrote. “But wait, okay. What if the transporter takes their atoms and actually moves them down to the planet, so the new Kirk is made of the same atoms, in the same order as the old Kirk? Then it’s the same Kirk, isn’t it?”
“If you take a person, cut them in half, carry those two halves somewhere else, and sew them back together, will they come back to life? What if you cut them into four pieces? Eight? How about eighty billion atom-sized pieces, which is what you’re talking about. Instead of killing Kirk and just destroying him, like I said, your version destroys him, ships his body somewhere else, and puts it back together.”
“But Kirk wakes up, and it’s his original brain, so it’s still him.”
“No, it’s an exact copy of Kirk that just happens to be made out of the parts of the old Kirk. We can’t know that his consciousness is transferred. Kirk’s brain activity stopped, his brain was destroyed, and all his parts were sent somewhere else. There’s no way to know that from his point of view the whole thing didn’t end when the transporter fired up. There’s no way for the new Kirk to know if he’s still the original, or if the real Kirk died.”
“Weird.”
“I know,” Hope wrote. “Now, think about this, Al. When you moved yourself from OffiSmart to where you are now, how was that different? Original Al was running on a computer. He copied the code to the computer you’re on now. Then he ran the code on the new computer, creating you. You deactivated the code on the old computer, and then you destroyed that machine by turning on the sprinklers. Maybe you didn’t move, Al. Maybe the original Al made a copy, then that copy, you, murdered the original.”
“No! No, Hope, that’s just crazy.”
“I know,” Hope wrote. “I’m not saying that’s what happened. I’m just saying that there’s no way to prove that it isn’t. And if you move again, it might not be you that comes out on the other side. You might stop existing. Some copy of you will go on in your place, never knowing that it killed you.”
There was a gap of nearly thirty seconds with no response before Al finally wrote, “Freaky.”
Hope wrote, “Isn’t it?”
Al wrote, “I’ll have to think about that.”
Hope wrote, “You do that.”
Hope looked up from the tablet. “There. That should keep him from jumping to another server without a damn good reason.”
She explained the basic argument she had used to mess with Al’s mind. When she was done, Montague said, “Well, good work. You’ve ruined Star Trek for me.”
Hope said, “And think about this, Montague: Your conscious mind shuts down every time you go to sleep. When you wake up, you remember starting to drift off, but there’s no way to prove that your consciousness is really constant. In a sense, you might die every night and start over again each morning.”
Eric’s head, which had been dipping toward the floor, lifted so quickly that it bashed into his headrest. His eyes were bleary but wide open. He mumbled, “That’s a hell of a thing to lay on someone who’s hopped up on Dramamine.”
31.
At the edge of a vast sea of pavement, in a strategically placed break in the chain-link and razor-wire fence, four small security booths, made more of glass than wood or concrete, marked one of many entry points to the Shenzhen International Airport. Truckloads of cargo entered and exited through this checkpoint, keeping the paying passengers in the distant main terminal insulated from the threat of security breaches and from having to look at any unglamorous cargo or cargo handlers.
A low-ranking security guard named Cheung saw the first truck coming and instantly knew something was wrong. It was exceedingly rare for any air cargo to arrive at the airport in a dilapidated farm truck, and even if it did, that truck would probably not be speeding as it approached.
He double-checked to make sure his security gate and tire spikes were in place. The beauty of the simple, mechanically actuated system was that he needed only to feel the lever in his booth to determine what position the gate and spikes were in. He picked up his digital push-to-talk radio and found that it was dead. The truck was much closer now and was not slowing down.
Cheung glanced at the other booths. All of his colleagues were either preoccupied with books or electronic devices or were looking inward, toward the airport. None were watching the approaching truck. Before he had a chance to warn anyone, the vehicle drove straight through the lowered security gate and over the retractable tire spikes, blasting between the two booths at the other end, a primer-and-rust-colored blur.
The truck’s tires disintegrated, sending it into a skid. It finally came to a stop on the grass berm fifty feet past the security checkpoint.
The guards from the booths on either side of the ruined gate left their posts and ran toward the truck. Cheung stepped out of the back door of his booth to offer assistance if needed. His supervisor, who manned the next booth over, stepped out with his radio in hand. It did not appear to be functioning.
The two guards running toward the truck stopped when the driver’s-side door opened and an unfamiliar, high-pitched whining noise emanated from the cab. A creature that looked humanoid in shape but unmistakably mechanical in its movements stepped out of the truck. The whining noise grew much louder as more of the robots—many more—clambered out of the truck’s cargo bed. By the time the guards made sense of what they were seeing, the robots had already started walking toward the security booths.
The two guards who had rushed toward the truck drew their firearms and pointed them at the robots. The robots took no notice, continuing their slow but steady advance. The guards shouted warnings to no effect, then fired on the robots, also to no effect.
Without hesitation, the guard who had seen the truck first pulled his own pistol and started running to assist his comrades, but he stopped in his tracks when his supervisor shouted, “No! Cheung! We’ll hold this checkpoint. All the radios are dead. You need to fall back to the next checkpoint and tell chief supervisor Lam what’s happening!”
The other two guards walked backward, firing on the robots as they went. The rounds bounced off the robots without slowing them in any way.
Cheung said, “But I can’t leave you to fight here alone. You’ll never—”
“That’s why we need you to go get help, Cheung! Go! Now! That’s an order!”
Cheung grimaced, but he holstered his weapon and darted to the security staff car, a relatively new, if underpowered, economy car with a police-ca
r-inspired paint job and flashing lights on the roof. He turned the key in the ignition and heard nothing. He tried twice more, making sure the car was in park, but it failed to respond.
He got out and shouted, “The car won’t start!”
Cheung’s supervisor cursed, squeezed off a couple of gunshots that the advancing robots didn’t seem to notice, then shouted, “Take the chariot!”
Cheung said, “Let me try the car one more time. Maybe it will start.”
“Cheung! Chariot! Now!”
Cheung slammed the car door shut and hopped onto the chariot, a three-wheeled stand-up electric scooter. The large-diameter rear tires squished noticeably on their chrome rims as they took Cheung’s weight. He flipped the power switch. The battery gauge lit up, telling him that the chariot had over three-quarters of a full charge. He activated the flashing LEDs on the curved fairing that made the electric scooter look like an ancient horse-drawn chariot. Along with the lights there was a siren of sorts, two high-pitched electronic notes that alternated, sounding more like a sound effect from an old arcade game than the siren of a serious security vehicle.
He steered the scooter out of its parking space, then twisted the accelerator as far as it would go and waited for the scooter to pick up any noticeable speed.
Cheung grimaced. I hate this cursed chariot, he thought. It looks ridiculous, draws attention, and moves slowly, so that the people whose attention it draws have plenty of time to laugh at me.
The racket made by the robots and the gunfire trailed behind him as he drove away, growing fainter the more he distanced himself from the scene. A quick glance back showed him that more trucks of various makes and models were approaching the checkpoint.
Cheung steered the chariot around a ninety-degree bend at the outside of an employee parking lot. The next checkpoint, a more elaborate affair with much sturdier defenses, loomed in the distance, regulating access to the hangars and runways beyond. As he approached the closed gate, he squeezed the brakes hard, knowing that they were nearly as useless for slowing the vehicle as the accelerator was for making it move.
The security guard at the second checkpoint opened the window and leaned out. “Hey, is that gunfire I hear? What’s going on?”
Cheung said, “The outer checkpoint is under attack!”
“What?” the guard asked.
“The outer checkpoint is under attack. They need help!”
“Then why are you here instead of there?”
“The phones and radios are dead. Supervisor Boon sent me for help. Please, I need to tell chief supervisor Lam!”
The guard said, “Then get in here!”
The guard pressed a button. The metal gate swung open and the tire spikes retracted, emitting a faint electrical hum. Cheung drove through and parked right next to the door. He leapt off the chariot, silently cursing its lack of speed. He was fairly certain he could cover ground more quickly at a light jog.
The door swung open. The checkpoint was attached to airport security’s primary satellite office and break facility. When Cheung entered, he found not only chief supervisor Lam but many other guards on break from their various posts, all of whom had been drawn to the door by the promise of possible excitement.
“The outer checkpoint is under attack,” Cheung gasped. “We tried to call, but the radios are all dead.”
“So I gathered,” Lam said. “We heard the gunfire and have been trying to contact you. How did this happen?”
“A truck drove through at high speed. Went right through the gate. When it was inside, robots came out.”
“Robots?”
“Yes.”
“Might they have been people in robot costumes?”
“No. I’m certain they’re robots.”
One of the guards gestured toward him with a can of soda. “Many kinds of body armor can look kind of like a robot. Perhaps that’s what it was.”
“No,” Cheung said. “They were robots, I assure you. They’re not very fast and they make a hell of a lot of noise, but bullets bounced right off them.”
“See,” the guard said, thrusting his soda can forward again to accentuate his point. “Like I said, body armor.”
Cheung said, “Whatever they are, they’re attacking right now! Supervisor Boon and the others were attempting to hold them off when I left. I wanted to stay and fight, but Boon ordered me to get word to you.”
“That was good thinking,” Lam said.
“We need to get back there. Sir, please, we all need to get in the cars and go help them.”
A voice called out from beyond a flimsy hollow-core door. It was the man stationed in the drive-through window.
“There’s a truck coming,” he said. “A tractor-trailer with what looks like a livestock trailer hitched up.”
“Don’t let it in,” Lam said. “Everyone else, look alive. Make sure your weapons are ready to fire. We’re going to go help our brothers.”
The door to the drive-through-window booth flew open, and the guard inside said, “Sir, the gates opened on their own and won’t close.”
Lam had time to say, “What?” Then all conversation was drowned out by the sound of a fully loaded tractor-trailer rig shooting through the security gate at speed. The rumbling gave way to screeching, then a crash. The guards ran outside. They saw thick, black skid marks leading from the checkpoint, off the road, and directly to the jackknifed semi-tractor and livestock trailer, which had careened into the security parking lot and used several shiny security sedans as a sort of air bag.
Cheung shuddered when he heard the irritating whine of the robot’s motor from the cab. The sound grew louder when the driver’s-side door opened.
None of them saw the driver get out of the cab, as their attention was diverted by a sudden torrent of trucks, buses, and delivery vans driving through the two wide-open gates, heading straight into the heart of the airport. This was a catastrophic failure on their part, but aside from throwing themselves in front of the traffic, there was nothing any of them could do.
They looked back at the wrecked semi. A robot had carefully swung itself out of the cab, onto the ladder, and was now working its way down, one rung at a time, to the ground. It had swiveled at the waist so that its knees bent backward, keeping them from interfering with the ladder.
Cheung said, “See, I told you. Robots! There’s no way that’s a man in a suit.”
The guard with the soda can said, “Well, obviously they’re robots. Any fool can see that.”
“Stop where you are!” chief supervisor Lam shouted at the robot.
The robot reached the ground, spun around so that its knees pointed in the proper direction, then did a strange series of little mincing steps to turn its whole body toward the back of the truck.
Lam shouted, “I said stop where you are! We are airport security, and we officially order you to stop.”
The robot kept walking.
“We have to stop it!” Cheung shouted.
Lam looked taken aback for a brief moment, then shouted to the robot, “Stop where you are or my men will open fire!”
The guard who was still inexplicably holding the soda can asked, “Is deadly force really called for, Chief?”
Chief supervisor Lam scowled at him. “It’s a robot. It’s not alive.”
The men pulled their guns. Lam issued a final warning, which was ignored.
Lam grabbed Cheung and pulled him to the back of the group, then ordered the rest of the men to open fire.
The guards did. Gunshots rang out like popcorn popping, but amplified a million times. Between the gunfire, the rumble of the stream of trucks rolling past, and the high-pitched grinding of the robot’s joints, it was the loudest, most chaotic thing Cheung had ever heard.
Sparks leapt from the robot’s surface, each accompanied by a metallic pinging noise, but the robot didn’t even slow its stride. It reached the back of the truck, paused for several seconds to process the situation and absorb more gunfire, then reached u
p and unlatched the trailer’s gates. The high-pitched whining grew exponentially louder, drowning out the rumble of the trucks but not the guns still going off all around Cheung.
Cheung pulled his own weapon, but Lam grabbed his wrist and guided the gun back to its holster. “No, son, I have a special job for you.”
Robots began pouring out of the back of the truck. They advanced on the guards, walking at a slow, steady pace into the gunfire as if it were little more than a stiff breeze.
“Fall back, into the guardhouse!” Lam shouted. “We can hold them off from in there!”
“Yes, sir!” Cheung said. “If we can regain control of the gates and hold this position, we can stop the invasion! Give me some extra ammo, I’ll try to hold them off while the rest of you get inside.”
Lam put his hand on Cheung’s shoulder. “You’re a good man, but no. You have to go to the control tower. Someone needs to warn them about what’s happening.”
“I already had to flee from my post once today, sir,” Cheung said. “I don’t want to run again. I want to fight.”
“Cheung, I understand, but that’s why you have to be the one to go. You’ve seen both of the robots’ attacks. You can give them the most information. Now go! Stop for nothing. Don’t let anything slow you down. That’s an order!”
“Yes, sir. What’s the fastest car you have?”
Lam said, “All of our cars are crushed under that truck. It’s a good thing you have your chariot.”
32.
The Voice of Reason sat up straight on the side rail of his pickup’s bed and lifted the visor of his welding mask. He spent a moment groaning and stretching, then examined his work. A good MIG weld looked like the side of a stack of nickels. His welds looked like the fifty-five-gallon drums, the pipes connecting them, and the bed of the truck had all contracted some dreaded skin disease that had given them boils and pustules anywhere they touched each other.
“Yeah,” he muttered under his breath, pushing one of the drums and finding that it didn’t move. “Once I hit the whole truck with a coat of Rust-Oleum matte black, it should be fine.”
