by Rudy Rucker
The Korean kept watching him in that blank, judicious way. “You have a lot of money?” he asked finally.
“Yes, I do,” said Leckesh, regaining his composure. “Not that it’s any of your business. What’s your name anyway? I’ll buy you a drink. Take it all out of this and keep the change.” He threw a two hundred dollar bill on the bar.
“My name’s Yung. I’m not supposed to drink on duty but …” The Korean glanced impassively around the bar. There were a couple of old longhairs having coffee in the booths, but that was it. “Yeah, I’ll take a Heineken.”
“That’s a boy, Yung. Get me one, too. Nothing but the best for Douglas Leckesh. I’m full of nuggets. You can call me Doug. I was thinking before, you must get a lot of death cases in this bar, being so close to the Bertroy Building. It’s all doctors in there, you know.”
“Oh yeah,” said Yung, opening the two bottles of Heineken. He poured his into a coffee mug. “Bertroy Medical Associates. They have a teraflop diagnostic computer in the basement there—it does a trillion calculations a second, fast as a human brain. My sister helps program it. She’s a smart girl, my sister Lo.” He sipped at his mug and watched Leckesh some more. “So you gonna die and you think that’s it, huh, Mr. Leckesh?”
“Religion’s wrong, Yung, isn’t it?” Leckesh was feeling his drinks. “When I was your age, I didn’t think so—hell, I even used to paint pictures. But down on the Street, nothing counts but numbers. I’ve got a seat on the Exchange, you know that? So don’t try and tell me about religion.”
Yung looked up and down the bar and leaned close. “Religion’s one thing, Mr. Leckesh, but immortality’s something else. Lo says immortality’s no big problem anymore.” He drew a business card out of his pocket and handed it to Leckesh. “This is modern; this is digital. Whenever you’re ready for immortality, my sister Lo’s got it.”
Leckesh pocketed the card without looking at it. All of a sudden, the beers and the scotches were hitting him hard. The dull throb of his sick liver was filigreed with accents of acute pain. He was stupid to be drinking this early in the day, drinking and slobbering out his soul to a Korean bartender. Where was his self-control? Stiff-legged, he stalked into the men’s room and made himself throw up. Better. He washed his face, first with hot and then with cold. He gargled and drank water from the tap. Three weeks, the doctor had said. Three weeks. Leckesh left the bar and went home to Abby.
Abby Leckesh was a dark-haired woman with full cheeks and beautiful teeth. When they’d met, fifteen years ago, Leckesh had been fifty and Abby thirty. He’d still dreamed of being a painter, even then, and he’d liked the bohemian crowd that Abby traveled in. But now Leckesh hated Abby’s friends with an aging man’s impotent jealousy.
To his displeasure, Abby greeted the news of his impending death with what he took for enthusiasm. She believed in spirits and mediums, and she was confident that Leckesh would be able to contact her from beyond the grave.
“Don’t be downcast, Doug. You’ll only be moving to a higher plane of existence. You’ll still be here with me as a dear familiar spirit.”
“Talk about a fate worse than death,” snapped Leckesh. “I don’t want to float around watching you spend my money on your boyfriends.” For years now, he’d suspected her of being unfaithful to him.
“I’ll wear full mourning for six months,” prattled Abby, ignoring his accusation. “I’ll go out and buy some black dresses today! And we must have Irwin Garden over for tea. He’s simply the most brilliant new medium in America. You should get to know his vibrations so he can contact you on the other side.”
Leckesh didn’t dignify this with an answer. Abby went out in search of mourning clothes and Mr. Garden while the robomat made Leckesh a veal cutlet for lunch. The meal cleared his head entirely and he drew out the business card that the Korean bartender…Yung…had given him.
SOFT DEATH INC.
Scientific Soul Preservation and Transmission
Strictest confidentiality — Call for an estimate today!
Lo Park * B-1001 Bertroy Building * 840-0190
Leckesh studied the card for awhile, and made his decision. He’d be damned if he was going to let one of Abby’s phony mediums get away with pretending to talk to his spirit. If there was anything to this “Scientific Soul Preservation,” he’d be able to steal a march on the table-rappers. He picked up the phone and called the Soft Death number.
“Hello, this is Lo Park.” Her accent was as pure New Jersey as Yung’s, though with a hint of Eastern melody.
“Hello, this is Doug Leckesh. A man—I believe it was your brother—gave me a business card with your name on it. Soft Death Incorporated?”
“Oh, yes, Yung told me. I don’t like to discuss this on the telephone. Could you come see me tomorrow morning, Mr. Leckesh?”
“Ten o’clock?”
“That will be fine.”
Feeling strangely relieved, Douglas Leckesh stretched out on the couch and fell asleep. He dreamed of colors, clouds of color around a long line of precise, musical tones—binary tones chanted by Lo Park’s musical voice. When he awoke, it was late afternoon, and Abby was sitting across the room drinking tea with a balding young man in glasses.
“This is Mr. Garden, Doug. He’s the medium I was telling you about.”
Garden smiled shyly and shook Leckesh’s hand. “I’m sorry to hear of your illness, Douglas.” He had gentle eyes and large moist lips. “You have very interesting vibrations.”
“So do you,” said Leckesh curtly. The thought of Garden alone in a dark room with Abby made him sick. “You have the vibrations of an ambulance-chasing lawyer, mixed in with the aura of a two-bit Casanova and the emanations of a snake-oil salesman. Get out of my apartment.”
Garden gave a low bow and left. Abby was quite angry.
“It’s fine for you, Doug, to act like that. Soon you’ll be dead. But I’ll be here all alone, with no one to take care of me.” Tears ran down her big cheeks. “Irwin Garden only wants to help me contact your spirit.”
“Let me worry about my spirit, Abby. Can’t you see that Garden wants to cheat me and seduce you? I don’t want jackals sniffing around my death-bed. I want to pass on in peace. Business as usual!” His liver hurt very much.
Abby sobbed harder. The fact was that she was very devoted to Leckesh. All her talk of mediums and mourning clothes was just a way to avoid thinking about his death. After a few minutes, she calmed herself and kissed him on the forehead. “Of course, Doug. I’ll do as you wish. I won’t see Mr. Garden again.” In his embittered state, Leckesh was convinced that Abby was lying. He’d never caught her yet, but he was sure she had boyfriends. How could she not? He’d been part artist when he’d wooed her, but since then he’d joined the Stock Exchange. How could Abby still love him? Well, now it didn’t matter. The long game was almost over. And if there was anything to these Soft Death people, Leckesh was on the brink of a whole new existence.
The next morning, he was back at the Bertroy Building. Lo Park’s office was in the basement; it was one of a number of small cubicles partitioned off along one wall of a room-sized computer installation. To all appearances, Lo worked as a programmer here. There was nothing about “Soft Death” on her flimsy office door. Leckesh wondered if he should bother going in, but the thought of outflanking Abby’s occultist manipulations goaded him on.
The Korean woman at the desk was young and slender, with hair so dark as to appear almost blue against her yellow skin. She looked up with a quick smile.
“Mr. Leckesh? Yung told me about you.”
“He told you I’m rich, dying and desperate, I suppose. What kind of immortality are you selling, Lo? And what’s the price?”
“The price is high. The immortality is software.”
“What do you mean?”
“Consider, Mr. Leckesh. The human body changes almost all its atoms every seven years or so. But you feel you are the same person as you were seven or fourteen or fifty-six years ago.
What is constant in your body is the arrangement of cells, especially the cells of the brain. The real essence of Douglas Leckesh is not the seventy-five kilograms of diseased flesh that sits here. The essence of Douglas Leckesh is to be found in the pattern that your brain codes up. Do you follow?”
Leckesh nodded approvingly. “I was afraid you’d be another spiritualist. You’re saying that my so-called soul is really just a pattern of digital information?”
“Exactly. Abstractly speaking, the information pattern exists even in the absence of a body. Yet for the pattern to be in any sense alive, it needs some kind of substrate.” She smiled and gestured beyond her office door. “The Soft Death substrate is that computer out there. If you wish, I can extract the entire software information pattern from your body and code it into the machine.”
“How do I know you can really do it? And what would it feel like to live inside a computer’s memory?”
“Before we continue, Mr. Leckesh, I need a commitment from you. For various reasons, the full work of Soft Death is not legally sanctioned. I cannot put my earlier clients at risk without some proof of your sincerity.”
“You’re saying you want a check?”
“I want a document granting us title to approximately half of your properties and investments.” She slid a legal paper across the desk. “I’ve taken the liberty of drawing it up.”
Leckesh scanned down the contract with a practiced eye. Soft Death Incorporated had worked fast: half his assets were listed here, nearly a billion dollars worth. In return for the billion, Soft Death was promising Leckesh “hospice care and advanced embalming services.”
“We can’t make the contract more specific, Mr. Leckesh, again because of the legal sanctions on certain aspects of our operation.”
Leckesh shrugged. Perhaps this was a con. But what was the difference anymore? If Soft Death didn’t get this billion, Abby would give it to the Mr. Gardens of the world. He could feel the cancer deep in his guts; he could feel the growing of the pain. “I’ll sign.”
Lo pushed a buzzer, and a man came in to witness and notarize the document. Another blue-haired Korean. They reminded Leckesh of smurfs.
“Your brother, too?” asked Leckesh, smiling a little. Signing away this money felt good. What was that old bible story about the rich man trying to squeeze through a needle’s eye?
“No,” said Lo. “A cousin.” She locked the contract in her desk. “And now you’ll want to see proof that our process works. Do you remember William Kaley?”
“Bill Kaley? Yes, I knew him rather well. We did business together. He died last fall, I believe. He was one of the most materialistic men I ever knew. Are you telling me …”
“Here,” said Lo, punching a code into her telephone, and handing Leckesh the receiver. “You can talk to him.”
At first Leckesh heard only pips and bleats, but then there was a ringing, and a voice.
“Hello? Kaley here.”
“Bill? This is Doug Leckesh. Do you know what day it is?”
“It’s March 31, Doug. Are you dead, too?”
“Damn near. Are you really inside that computer?”
“Sure am. It’s not bad. There’s a lot of information coming in. I’m managing most of the investments I signed over to Soft Death, which keeps me busy. There’s a pretty good gang of people in here.”
“Any landscape?”
“It’s not like that, Dougie. But you’d be surprised how much fun pushing around the bits can be. How soon are you coming in? I’m a little lonely for a new voice, to tell you the truth.” He sounded almost wistful. “But, hell, it beats being dead. When are you coming in?”
“We haven’t worked that out yet.” Was this real? Leckesh paused, trying to remember something that would convince him he was really talking to the software of William Kaley. The Schattner deal! “Do you remember the Schattner takeover, Bill?”
“Do I! Don’t tell me the SEC finally found out.”
“No, no, I’m just checking. Remember the night after Schattner shot himself, and you and I’d made twelve million bucks? Do you remember what we had for dinner?”
“We went to MacDonald’s. The check was twelve dollars. We laughed our asses off. I could eat a million of these. Oh, it’s me in here, Doug, don’t worry.”
Leckesh smiled. “I’m not worried now, Bill. See you soon.” He hung up and looked at Lo. “When do we start?”
“Let me outline the procedure. To extract your software, we need to get five kinds of maps of your brain: symbolic, metabolic, electrical, physical, and chemical. Taken together, these data-sets are sufficient to produce an isomorphic model of your mental processes. You should begin working on the symbolic map today.”
“What do you mean? I thought you would do the work.”
“Only you know your own symbol-system, Mr. Leckesh.” Lo took a device the size of a cigarette-pack out of her desk. It had two little grilles, for microphone and speaker. “We call this a lifebox. Basically, I want you to tell it your life story. Tell everything. It takes most people a couple of weeks.”
“But…I’m no writer.”
“Don’t worry; the lifebox has prompts built into its program. It asks questions.” She flicked a switch and the lifebox hummed. “Go on, Mr. Leckesh, say something to it.”
“I…I’m not used to talking to machines.”
“What are some of the first machines you remember, Doug?” asked the lifebox. Its voice was calm, pleasant, interested. Lo nodded encouragingly, and Leckesh answered the question.
“The TV, and my mother’s vacuum cleaner. I used to love to watch the cartoons Saturday morning—Bugs Bunny was the best—and Mom would always pick that time to vacuum. It made red and green static on the TV screen.” Leckesh stopped and looked at the box. “Can you understand me?”
“Perfectly, Doug. I want to build up a sort of network among the concepts that matter to you, so I’m going to keep asking questions about some of the things you mention. I’ll get back to the vacuum cleaner in a minute, but first tell me this: what did you like best about Bugs Bunny?”
For the next couple of weeks, Leckesh took his lifebox everywhere. He talked to it at home and in the club—and when Abby and his friends reproved him for ignoring them, he began talking to it in a booth at Yung’s bar. The lifebox was the best listener Leckesh had ever had. It remembered everything he told it, and it winnowed the key concepts out of all his stories. Leckesh would respond to its prompts, or simply go off on tangents of his own. Except for the dizziness and the constant pain, he hadn’t had so much fun in years.
Finally, in mid-April, the lifebox said, “Now that’s a story I’ve heard before, Doug. And so was the last one. And, unless I’m mistaken, you’re about to tell me about the first time you slept with Abby.”
“You’re right,” said Leckesh, feeling a little twinge of guilt. Telling his life had made him remember how big a part of him Abby really was. And now, for two weeks, he’d been too busy with the lifebox to even look at her.
“Abby, Summer, Maine, Fourth of July, Firecrackers, Cans, Pineapple, Aunt Rose, Roses, Abby, Skin, Honey, Hexagons…I think we’ve got enough to go on, now, Doug. Why don’t you bring me on over to Lo’s. I’ve signaled her to expect us.”
Leckesh nodded to Yung and walked over the Bertroy Building. It was a beautiful spring day at last, with the endless blue sky leaping up from the spaces between the big city building. Six shades of blue, if you looked carefully. He hadn’t been able to tell the lifebox much about colors.
Lo was all smiles. “You’ve done a good job with the lifebox, Mr. Leckesh. That’s one of the most important steps. Now, what the lifebox program has done is to arrange some ten thousand of your key concepts into a kind of tree-diagram. The next step is to correlate this concept-network with your brain’s metabolic activity. Please come this way.”
Leckesh followed Lo across the computer room to the elevators. They rode up to a neurologist’s office on the top floor. There was a
nice view out the top halves of the windows; the bottom halves were frosted glass. The neurologist and his nurses were, of course, Korean. Working quickly, they injected Leckesh with something, and laid him out on a table, with his head inside a large, domed sensor device.
“This is a PET-scanner, Mr. Leckesh,” explained the doctor. We want to learn just which parts of your brain react to the key concepts of your life story.” The injection made Leckesh feel both stunned and lively. He couldn’t move, but his mind was going a mile a minute. The PET-scan sensor seemed like a cavern, a door into the underworld. The doctor set the lifebox down on Leckesh’s chest, and it began its rapid-fire rundown.
“Machine. TV. Vacuum cleaner. Bugs Bunny. Rudeness. Teeth. Dogs …” After each word or phrase the PET-scanner would click. The process went on for the whole afternoon. ”…Pineapple. Cans. Firecrackers. Fourth of July. Maine. Summer. Abby.” Finally it was over. The doctor injected an antidote; Leckesh’s body speeded back up, and his mind slowed back down. Lo took him downstairs to her cubicle. The long afternoon’s ordeal had left him so weak that his walk was a stooped shuffle.
“Well, that’s it, Mr. Leckesh—until the end. We’ll get the electrical, physical and chemical maps at the end.”
“The end? After I die?”
Lo looked a little uncomfortable. “This is where the hospice comes in. We can’t take the risk of having your brain degenerate before we can analyze it. For the electrical probes to give reliable reading, the brain still has to be somewhat functional. Unless the tissues are absolutely fresh, the physical microtoming process works very poorly. And memory RNA is an extremely labile substance. The coordination of your brain-removal with our team’s readiness is a delicate thing.”
“Now hold on a minute. What are you saying?” Lo’s yellow face and blue hair made Leckesh think of a nightmare by van Gogh.
“I told you that some aspects of our operation are legally questionable, Mr. Leckesh.” Each syllable came out just so.
“You’re telling me that I’m supposed to make an appointment for your doctors to shock me to death, and cut up my brain, and grind up the pieces for a chemical analysis?”
