by Robert Berke
"Okay, look, we've been over this many times" he stated, "but...Well you know the drill. Could lose your memories, blah, blah, try to keep the physical portion of the brain intact so that you can gradually start drawing memories from the artificial one, blah, blah, blah, first man in history to have two brains, completely unprecedented, unknowable and unquantifiable risks, blah, blah, blah. Any questions?"
"I don't have any questions, doc. I'm ready for the twilight."
"Hermelinda, I want you to keep him engaged while I'm placing the electrode."
Hermelinda pulled a stool up near Smith's bed and took his hand in hers. She kissed it gently then pressed it to her chest. She didn't care that Dr. Bayron was in the room. Everyone would know soon enough. She was certain that Dr. Bayron already knew what she had done and was enough of a gentleman not to say it. He probably knows I'm pregnant with Smith's baby too, she thought. He always seems to know everything.
"I can't feel anything, you know," said the cold, computer-generated voice.
"Nothing?" Asked Hermelinda.
"Not with my hands."
"How about with your heart," she whispered into the microphone.
"My heart is dead many months already. But I feel with my soul."
"What do you feel, Mr. Smith?"
"Joy and pain, fear and hope, love. And something else."
"What is it?"
"There is a sensation of becoming eternal. I feel the sadness of outliving my children, including those not yet born. I feel the sadness of not ever being able to feel the warmth of another human being again. I feel the absence of time."
Hermelinda was confused by his answer. At first she thought it was just the mindless babble of a highly anesthetized person whose brain was being manipulated even as they spoke. But then, Smith had always been lucid during the other surgeries. She wanted to know...
"The absence of time?" She asked.
"I can't die. Once my brain is completely virtualized, I really can't die. Of course, that is, unless you count me as dead already, I suppose. But I know I still have a soul and that I feel love. But every thought, feeling, sensation: everything you hear, see, say, touch, is timebound. The more irrelevant death becomes, the more time loses its meaning. Eventually time will cease to measure any aspect of my life and no moment in time will exist, including this one, Hermelinda." Smith paused. "I guess that's what death is. I guess I haven't cheated the reaper after all, have I?"
Hermelinda replied quickly, "Your not dead as long as you have memories."
"But over an eternity, each memory must be accorded a smaller and smaller incremental value solely by virtue of the continually increasing number of memories, until no memory has any significance."
"The important ones will always have significance, Elly."
"I guess that's where mathematicians and poets disagree." Smith's computer generated voice said. "They say that life is really just a string of special moments, Hermelinda, I hope I don't lose any of the special moments."
To Hermelinda the words sounded far too sweet to have come from a machine. Hermelinda began to tear up. She gazed deep into his camera but there was nothing for her to read in the glass lens as there would have been from his eyes. She felt that his soul was still in there. Only the window into it was now closed.
The moment was interrupted by Bayron. "Aaaaaand...Done."
"That was fast." Smith said.
"For this step, the surgery was the easiest part. We already have all your sensory input feeding the model of your memory center. But now we have to train your prefrontal cortex to access your memories-- which, by the way, includes all of your knowledge -- from the virtualized brain. I don't think this will be as simple as getting you to see through the camera or hear through the microphone. So, get some sleep and we'll start some exercises tomorrow."
No sooner had he spoken than Smith fell asleep. Hermelinda kissed him on the cheek and realized that he had no way of knowing that she had done so. The kiss was for herself anyway.
Bayron addressed Hermelinda. "I couldn't help overhearing. If you ever want to talk."
Hermelinda looked at Bayron's eyes. They were honest and kind. "Dr. Bayron, is it true what he was saying, that once the project is complete his memories will be insignificant?"
"There's no precedent for this, but, unfortunately it makes sense. Memories are temporal. They exist in time. In the absence of time there would be no memory since a moment within eternity is indistinguishable from eternity itself. This is the god paradox." Bayron stopped talking abruptly and his face went momentarily blank. He giggled nervously.
"What do you mean?" Hermelinda asked trying to read Bayron's face.
"Well, god, if you believe in god, is eternal. But He – or She if you prefer – frequently dabbles in the temporal. That wouldn't be scientifically possible. You can't be both time bound and above time at the same time."
"Do you believe in god, Doctor?" She asked.
"Of course. But we've been mortal enemies for a very long time," he replied.
As Smith slept, he dreamed. On this, his first night of processing information through his new virtual cerebral cortex, his dreams were unusually vivid. Usually in his dreams, on those rare occasions that he remembered them, he saw people and places that he knew. Often out of context and character, but at least familiar and recognizable. His dreams this night seemed, somehow, not his own.
One dream in particular scared him more than the others. He didn't know why, after all it was just a dream. In this dream he was standing at the edge of a river. He had never been to Russia, but he "knew" the river was the Volga. In the dream he was in grave danger. He was scared. He was afraid of men he did not know. Then he was on a plane. He saw two leathery hands. They were reaching for his throat. He had never seen such wrinkled hands, nor such strong hands. The hands were dark and smelled of coffee. Then, as dreams often do, this dream trailed into another dream. This one was pleasant and becoming familiar. He was a child, playing in a field of starflowers at night. The starflowers were all Hermelinda.
Smith awoke refreshed. He felt sharp, and alert. He remembered his dream of the Volga clearly. His logical mind told him that it was just the kind of nonsense that the mind entertains itself with at night. His other mind, the illogical one knew that the dream was significant, but didn't know why. Russia. Bayron had spoken about consulting with Russians. Distrust of Bayron was the last thing he wanted to feel now that he was only half human and his life was in Bayron's hands.
Bayron was in the room moments later. "How do you feel?" He asked.
"Better than I have in a long, long time. No headache. I feel pretty sharp, and, I know this is going to sound weird, but, I feel strong."
"Well, you were in pretty good shape when we took the scans that we made the model from. I wonder if you're accessing the computer for your memory of what it felt like to be healthy?"
"How would I know? I mean it seems like the thoughts and feelings are coming out of my own head."
"Well, the artificial brain model is showing an awful lot of activity in the long term memory center. Lets try a little informal test." Bayron opened his ever present tattered black notebook and flipped backward several pages. "Now just before we started this surgery I gave you a little speech. Do you remember what I told you?"
Without hesitation, Smith said, "Perfectly."
"Alright, tell me what you remember."
"Let's see, you came in stood over there, and said: 'Okay, look, we've been over this many times but...Well you know the drill. Could lose your memories, blah, blah, try to keep the physical portion of the brain intact so that you can gradually start drawing memories from the artificial one, blah, blah, blah, first man in history to have two brains, completely unprecedented, unknowable and unquantifiable risks, blah, blah, blah. Any questions?'"
Bayron was startled. He didn't remember every word he had said, and he certainly didn't have a recording of it, but he'd be damned if he hadn't just heard his words back EXACTLY as
he had spoken them. It was as if they had been recorded. Bayron's brain acted fast to figure out what he had just experienced. It quickly made sense... if Smith were reading his memories from the machine version of his mind, his memory would, ipso facto, be perfect.
"Okay, let's try another. Do you remember what I said to you before the operation for your eyes and ears?"
Again, Smith repeated the lecture word for word.
"Okay, looks like your accessing memories from the machine. We'll do the formal testing tomorrow. Let's just take the rest of the day off."
Then Smith said something unexpected. "I have work to do. How can I access my e-mail?"
"For now, you'll just have to have someone read it and write it for you, I guess."
Smith took control of the conversation just like he used to do when he was still strong. "I would think it would be easy enough to hook me into the internet through the eyes and ears. Just make an video connection right into my visual processing. It's exactly the same as the camera, but I'll be 'seeing' the computer output instead of you. Then use the same speech-to-text program so I can write and navigate using verbal fingerprints."
Bayron said, "Oh, I know it can be done, but it adds an infinite number of new variables. What if you can't distinguish your memories from the information available on the internet? What if you get hacked?"
"You can't keep the genie in the bottle, Bayron. Just firewall me as best as you can. I want this done ASAP."
"I can't quantify the risks, Smith."
"Look, Bayron," Smith's measured, artificial voice articulated in its unchanging, even tone, "we've been dealing in unquantifiable risks from the first time we shook hands on this endeavor. This is not a significant increase in risk and you know it. You just want me all for yourself."
"You're my monster, Mr. Smith. I know you understand my concerns." Bayron knew that Smith would get what he wanted. He didn't bother to fight. "I still have the team that designed and implemented the interfaces and all they're doing is monitoring now. I can put them on this right away and probably get you on the internet within a few days. Just, don't go Frankenstein on me."
"Don't frighten me with metaphors. I'm no monster and you're no Dr. Frankenstein."
"Your genie metaphor is equally frightening, Smith. Remember what happened when the genie got out of the bottle."
"I promise to be good."
"At least be careful," Bayron said turning to go back to his lab, "you're still only human, after all."
Just before Bayron left the room, Smith stopped him. "By the way, Doc, any idea why I might have dreamt of Russia last night?"
Bayron stopped in his tracks and turned around. "What?" He said, then repeated, "What do you mean?" Bayron's surprise was undisguised as he walked back to the monitor.
Smith told Bayron about his dream and Bayron's face went flush. "We had to use some parts of the Russian model, but nothing that should have affected your memory. I'm going to chalk this one up to the vagaries of the subconscious. Let me know if you have any waking memories that you can't identify as your own. That would be cause for some concern."
"It's a little more complex than a European Quail, isn't it?" Smith asked rhetorically.
"We're going to know more about how the human brain works than anyone ever has, Mr. Smith, as if we didn't already."
"I hope Bob Hanover got those patents done. You should follow up on that when you get a chance."
"I'll do that," Bayron replied. "In the meantime, let me know if Flat Stanley makes any new appearances."
Before leaving the room, Bayron made some notes in his black spiral notebook.
Bayron's lab retained its office like atmosphere. The only thing that had changed about it in the preceding months was the addition of nearly one hundred monitor screens grouped in sets of various sizes hanging on the walls. The monitors were all measuring or tracking something different. Some displayed line charts, some displayed numbers. Others represented the flow of digital "blood" through the digital arteries of the digitized brain that was now doing all of Smith's lower and median brain functions.
The only person who knew the meaning of all the information on all the monitors was Dr. Bayron. He had grouped the monitors in such a way that, with one pirouette, he could see everything that was going on with Smith's two operating brains and his one useless body.
"Sharky," Bayron said placing a hand on the shoulder of the young engineer in the white labcoat, "come with me."
Sarkis Ohangangian, known around the lab as "Sharky", was Bayron's protégé. His father and pregnant mother fled the destruction caused by the devastating 1988 earthquake in Armenia and came to the United States just months before he was born making him the first member of his family born outside of Armenia. In Armenia, his father had been an electrical engineer. But, being unable to speak English, in the United States his experience, skills, and talent were worthless. His education and intelligence however, were invaluable.
Sharky's father landed his first job in the United States as a machinist in a factory working for cash under the table. Then he found work as an auto-mechanic and ultimately opened his own repair shop. Eventually he opened several shops. By the time Sharky had graduated high school, his father owned a chain of auto supply and mechanics shops in three states. Sharky learned mechanics when he was a little boy. He learned how to weld, how to build engines, how mechanical things worked. This was his first language. As his father became more successful, Sharky gained access to the best schools, the best universities, and the best opportunities.
Sharky's blazing intelligence, natural inquisitiveness, and unstoppable drive made him exactly the kind of person most deserving of the opportunities his father's success could provide.
Sharky followed Dr. Bayron to his office in eager anticipation of whatever challenge Bayron was going to throw at him.
As they sat in Bayron's glass-enclosed outer office, Sharky got the sense that Bayron was tired. He looked old. "He wants internet access." Bayron spoke as casually as a waiter telling a cook that the party at table five wanted soup, but Sharky immediately grasped the significance and gravity of the request.
He summed up his concern succinctly: "Then it won't be a closed system."
Bayron answered the non-question with a non-answer. "We could lose control of the operating environment. What do you think?"
"Firewall of some sort. We can't let him get hacked, but there's no perfect firewall. We'll have to back him up, obviously. Maybe let two artificial brains work in tandem: one that's wired to the 'net and one which would require a disconnect from the net before permitting updates to be made. Maybe even a third brain to decide if any of the information brought in is virulent or malicious." Sharky was brainstorming.
"An id, superego, and ego."
"Funny in a way, isn't it?" Sharky said. "I mean, if the artificial brain would hold all of the elements of his personality, then the id, the superego and the ego would already be a part of the system and there would be no need for three separate brains, would there? Then it would just be an issue of making the mechanical connection to the web, which I could actually do today."
"You put too much faith in both science and people, Sharky, neither will ever fail to disappoint you." Bayron sighed. "Think negative for a minute."
Sharky raised one eyebrow to call attention to the irony in Bayron's last remark, and Bayron realized what Sharky apparently already knew: that the entire project was predicated on faith in science and a love for people.
Bayron felt comfortable sharing his concerns with Sharky. He was, after all, a very human engineer.
Sharky continued brainstorming, "Here's a negative for you. Even if we didn't have to worry about corruption to the Smith model, maybe we have to worry about mingling a sentient and intelligent data set with the repositories of all human information. If Smith were malicious, he would be an absolutely unstoppable virus capable of infinite adaptations. And I mean unstoppable. Theoretically, he could replicate himse
lf an infinite number of times and filter every single piece of information that exists in electronic form, which is everything. Smith could put whatever spin he wanted on the entirety of human knowledge. If he woke up one day and decided that the moon was made of green cheese, he could insert that fact into every repository of human information in an instant. He'd be the ultimate arbiter of truth."
Bayron looked Sharky square in the eyes, "Not just of truth. He'd be the ultimate arbiter of reality itself. Once he controls the sources of truth, there would be no difference between truth and lies. The facts would cease to exist and they would be replaced with whatever Smith decided the facts should be. He would be the mind of the entire world. That's a fellow you would not want to piss off." Bayron quipped. "He'd literally be able to make sure that no differing opinions could ever be aired."
"Did you ever try to get toothpaste back into a tube?" Sharky asked. "There'd just be no fixing even a single instance of that kind of thing. Remember that kid who still gets all those get well cards? You can't just undo something once it proliferates over the Internet.
"Okay, let's think about it tonight and make some decisions tomorrow." Bayron concluded.
Sharky lived with his mother. Even though he was paid very well by SmithCorp-- very, very well-- he could never leave his mother alone. Since his father had died she almost never left the house. The bedroom he slept in since he was a little boy was still his best thinking place.
"Sako," his mother called him by his childhood nickname as he came in the front door, "Sako, come eat. I made tacos." Her thick accent made the word 'tacos' sound like a traditional Armenian dish even though she had never seen or heard of a taco until Sharky was a teenager. He was embarrassed by the ethnic food his mother prepared. He wanted American food. Hamburgers, macaroni and cheese, crunchy tacos and the like. His mother, always accommodating of his wants, not only learned to make these "American" dishes, but actually enjoyed them herself.
"I have a lot of work to do, ma, can you fix me a plate to take up with me?"
