The Emoticon Generation

by Guy Hasson

  I met her during her third year in college. It was, uh, 1997. We met, we befriended, we... became involved. And it was then that she trusted me enough that she told me about an idea she had. She knew it was a bad idea and that it could never work, but, still, she couldn’t help being obsessed by it. It went roughly like this: The only way to make real progress in psychology is to somehow put the human mind in a petrii dish. Or maybe a computer was a better analogy. If you could do to a person what you could do to a program or a digitalized movie or a digitalized piece of music, it would be perfect. If you could copy them, save them, replay them, add or subtract information then rerun the situation – then you would have lab conditions. You could have the same kid grow with two different sets of parents, and how different the two of him are when he grows up. You could make sure that what you think makes the difference is what made the difference, by eliminating all the other options. If you could digitize the human mind you could perform experiments in lab conditions. You could repeat experiments. You could— You could do everything. You could finally get psychology to the level of a science.

  But the idea was obviously self-defeating. She wanted to put the human mind in a computer neural net so she could figure out how the human mind works. But to get it into a computer neural net in the first place, you already had to know how it works. It wasn’t even a paradox. It was a no-brainer. You couldn’t do the former without the latter. And real progress in AI and neural nets was farther away then than it is today – not that it would ever have helped, anyway, because you needed a human mind, not an artificial mind.

  A year before she got her doctorate, a few days before 2,000 – and I remember it, because she partied during those Millennium celebrations recklessly – she came up with the idea of a lifetime. She was so full passion and... joy, which is something I never saw in her in such intensity before or after. She partied because of her idea. She partied because she knew it would work. She partied because she knew she would get a Nobel for it. And you know what? She will.

  It was a streak of genius. Horrible, horrible, immoral genius, Glynis. But genius. Because it was so... damned... simple.

  Oh, boy.

  It went like this. I don’t need to know anything about artificial intelligence or neural nets, she said. I don’t need to know how the human mind works. All I need is knowledge we already have in biology and chemistry, a computer fast and big enough, and the human genome project to be over. That’s it, she said. That’s all I need.

  Why is the human brain the way it is, she said. Why does it work like it does? The body is built and each and every thing in it happens because it reads the instructions in the DNA. A protein called RNA polymerase – I heard that name so many times I won’t forget it till the day I die – reads the DNA. Ribosomes read the RNA polymerase, then they make the right proteins, and the proteins then react chemically with the rest of the body. In short, everything in the human body acts like a machine. A machine that operates according to some very strict rules - which we know!

  Why don’t we program a computer to set up an environment that acts exactly like a cell? We know that the cells are made of proteins, carbohydrates, fat, and nucleic acids. We know the millions of varieties they come in. We know how they react with each other. We know how everything works! We know everything about what makes the blood vessels, the neurons, the sweat glands, and... I don’t remember everything that’s in the body, Glynis. But even then, in the year 2,000, we knew enough about the machine that is the human body to program its rules into a computer. We couldn’t interpret the DNA on a macro level, but we knew how the body interpreted it on a micro level. So we didn’t actually have to know what each packette of genes meant. We just had to know how the cells function and how the instructions are real. What’s in the instructions? We don’t need to know that.

  Now, say we don’t do it to a cell. Say we start out from a virtual egg that’s been virtually fertilized by a sperm. When the virtual egg needs to split into two cells, then the virtual egg splits into two virtual cells. And then into four virtual cells. And so on. And so on. What you get at the end of nine months is a virtual human baby inside the computer! It grew hands, it grew feet, it grew a mouth and lungs, sexual organs, and... everything. But also a brain. We didn’t know how a brain works, but we didn’t need to. Nature did the work for us. We just had the computer follow nature’s instruction.

  That wasn’t the end. You needed to program a virtual environment for the virtual human. You needed to make distinctions between the hardness of walls and the hardness of, say, couches. Sight was a bit tricky, because you’ll have to program virtual photons (that only worked like particles, for the sake of the program) that reached the retina in the eye as if they’ve come from a preprogrammed light source and bounced off the surfaces of the virtual environment. That would be hard to program, but it would be possible. Sound that reached the virtual human’s ears was easier, because sound waves cause vibrations in the eardrums. So the computer could ‘tell’ the cells of the eardrums that they were being vibrated at such and such speed, direction, force, and frequency. Sound coming from the throat was done the other way around. Vibrations in the vocal cords were interpreted into frequencies which were then interpreted into sound for in the earpieces of the humans that are looking into the virtual environment. Breathing in and out was simple – since we knew how the air in the lungs is ‘absorbed’ into the bloodstream, the computer just had to make sure that the blood got a correct mixture of what it would consider Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, and whatever else is in our atmosphere. And so on and so on, every aspect of human life could be simulated.

  The real program is millions and millions of cells working simultaneously. The virtual human speaking and thinking and seeing and feeling in the virtual environment was a small byproduct of the trillions of simultaneous actions that the program was performing each millisecond. It was just a byproduct. But it worked. Boy, did it work. And the virtual baby would never know the difference.

  Olivia got financial backers for her idea amazingly fast. She was in charge of the project, which the McCourt Institute performed. It took the Institute’s computer people until the middle of 2,005, though, to finish programming the virtual human body program that would be at the root of the secret project.

  And then... Then she needed a volunteer. Whose DNA would be used to simulate the body? It was agreed it had to be a living person, so that the problem of ‘consent’ would be solved. The subjects, after all, would not be told that they’re in an experiment, and eventually the courts might claim that they have rights. So if the ‘donor’ made an informed decision and agreed to have digital clones of him- or herself subject to experiments, that would solve that.

  Olivia volunteered. She said she knew how bad and cruel some of the experiments would be, and she was willing. Also, since it was her project, she would be the only person who would never go back on her consent.

  But the truth is, that it wasn’t enough for her to be the person who invented and researched all of this. She also wanted to be the first in a new form of life. A digitalized breathing, speaking, feeling human. That’s the truth behind why she volunteered her own DNA.

  And then the project was off and running. She had to wait nine months for the single cell to grow into a baby inside a virtual, artificial womb that supplied it food and oxygen and so on.

  That’s how you were born, Glynis.

  You were immediately copied into a hundred different Glynisses. Each and every one of them except you is subject to experiments, which are repeated time and time again. Every second each of you or your copies’ lives is saved and backupped someplace in the Institute’s huge computers. They can – and do – go back to any time and any one of your versions and rerun them, changing this or that.

  But you... Olivia wanted one normal Glynis that had a ‘normal’ childhood, one that got the ‘best parenting’ possible. The Institute agreed.

  Your real name is Glynis 1.0. You live in
a virtual house that you can’t leave not because you have a ‘condition’, but because reality doesn’t exist much farther beyond the house. Your house doesn’t have an address and it isn’t a place, it is inside the Institute’s computers. When Olivia arrives and leaves, there’s a basic random program of the car coming and parking or leaving – although all she’s really doing is putting on or taking off her gear. When she sleeps, that’s not her, that’s the computer running a simulation of her. She’s really walking around the Institute, and the computer buzzes her if you try to ‘wake’ her. When she’s with you, she’s at work. When she goes to work, she could be at work, but she could also be at her real home. When you see people – they are physically in the Institute, too. They wear a virtual environment suit, and you see them because the computer excites your virtual retinas as if they were there.

  That’s also the reason why you have pixeled tv. Because the animation in your virtual environment is not as good as real eyesight, and our present televisions are. But the animation is still better than pixeled tv, so Olivia chose that as the solution.

  That’s what you are, and that’s who you are. You have Olivia’s parents. You are Olivia, except that you aren’t real. That’s why I left, Glynis, and that’s why I broke up with your mother. Because, although you weren’t real, you were as human as anyone else. And what they’re doing to the other versions of you... I couldn’t see the things they did to you in the experiments. I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t...

  But, Glynis, you have to realize that you’re not like Pinocchio. You never will be a real girl.

  ~

  “Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god!” Blackness filled her vision. Blackness that wasn’t real.

  “I feel the air from people’s breath,” she whispered. “I feel my own breath... I smell... I dream... I cry...” But her tears were not real tears. Her thoughts were not really there. Her flesh was not flesh. Her breath did not take air from the world, nor did it give any back when she exhaled. Her thoughts, her dreams, her life could be saved on a disk! She was just a computer program.

  “But I bleed!” She shouted, her fingernails scratching her neck. She brought up her fingers. They had fresh blood on them. “I bleed!!”

  “Glynis...” Steve said, and there was pain in his voice. “I’m sorry, Glynis. I really didn’t mean to cause you such—”

  “I’m not Glynis,” she said, her throat raw. “I’m Olivia! I’m not Olivia, I’m a— I’m a computer program. Execute me. Copy me. Delete me. Delete me! Undelete me. Activate me simultaneously. Goodbye.” Her hand fell and Steve’s image was gone.

  Her stomach began to heave. She ran to the bathroom and vomited. And as she did so, she thought: The vomit isn’t real. And she vomited again. And again. And again. And all the time she knew that it was just the computer analyzing what her stomach contents should look like if they were outside her body, telling her eyes, giving the scent, as if it’s there even though it isn’t.

  Fifteen minutes later, physically exhausted, she leaned on the wall of the tub, breathed hard and stared at her surroundings.

  The walls weren’t walls. She kicked one in anger. Her foot hurt. But that didn’t mean the wall was there. Nothing was there. She kicked it again with more force, and pain shot through her foot as it twisted awkwardly. A nonexistent wall just made her sprain her nonexistent foot.

  And Olivia! Even her mom, half the time she was here, wasn’t really here!

  And – oh! oh! oh! – that was why Olivia was always so amused every time Glynis sat down to surf the Net. A computer program playing a computer program. How amazingly funny. Ha ha.

  Bitch. Witch.

  But then she’s me. I’m her. I’m just as much a witch as she is. I’m just as responsible as she is. Oh, god... And though she had nothing more in her stomach, her muscles heaved again. Nothing came out when she vomited.

  For the next hour she tried to will herself to not exist, to stop this farce, for her body to realize that the thoughts were not real thoughts, that her world was not real. But nothing changed.

  Slowly, she realized that she still existed. She couldn’t will herself to disappear. She still had these thoughts. She still had feelings. She still sensed things and touched objects. Her foot still hurt. She still breathed and could taste food and hate her mother. She was still... still herself. She was still alive. And in the most absurd and ridiculous and paradoxical way – she was still... human.

  She flushed the toilet again and again, then sprayed the room with air freshener. She limped to the living room, slumped head first into the sofa, and turned the television on with the remote. The news was on. News from the real world. There was a discussion about something the President said.

  She stared at the television, her eyes glossy. A few minutes later, the news turned to the latest technology breakthroughs. A certain professor was being interviewed. He said that although people could already eliminate many genetic diseases and mishaps in a newborn, what he was offering, roughly, was to custom-design the newborn from the best traits of both parents. Genetic engineering will soon be ‘in’, he claimed.

  Glynis turned the television off in disgust and stared at the ceiling.

  After an hour, she had an epiphany. Humans – normal humans – are just as much machine as she is. They all have inside them a trillion functions going on simultaneously that they’re not aware of. They, too, are a ‘byproduct’ of all the activity going on in the cells. Their consciousness, their sight, their hearing, their tastes, their dreams, their feelings – they’re all just a byproduct of trillions of atom-sized, natural nanomachines doing their thing, obeying the basic DNA instructions. It’s exactly the same.

  I’ll even die like them. Even though I’m a program, I have a time limit, just like them. True, I don’t get sick – and now I know it’s because there are no viruses or ‘bugs’ in my universe – but I’ll die of old age, just like the rest of you. Except...

  Except that after I die, they could resurrect me, start from scratch or from any point in the middle and have a go at it again and again, until the damned universe explodes.

  “But I’m real!” she shouted into the air. “I’m real, I’m real, I’m real!!!” I dream, I fantasize, I masturbate. Can a program masturbate? For god’s sakes, I have a menstrual cycle! My eggs die! I—I—I—I have eggs! Oh, my god! Can I have babies? Is it possible for me to breed?!

  Her mind feverishly ran in circles for hours. At times, she cried. At times she shouted. At times, she gave way to self-pity. At times she wanted revenge and to burn down the Institute and Olivia – whom now had gone from ‘mother’ to ‘twin sister’ – and always in the background were Steve’s words: ‘You’re not like Pinocchio. You never will be a real girl.’

  Suddenly her eyes widened in horror. She’d remembered something else Steve had said. In all the excitement about herself, it got lost. But now...

  When she was born, she’d been split into hundreds of copies of herself. And on each and every one of those copies, they’re holding experiments. Glynis is the lucky one. Her twin sisters are... lab rats.

  She got up. She was dizzy again, but she didn’t care. Her sprained leg hurt. She hobbled to her room and sat in front of her computer. For a second, she hesitated. She was afraid. Instead of doing what she’d planned, she’d brought up again the message ‘Uncle Thomas’ had left on Olivia’s answering machine. She fast-forwarded to the part with Pat.

  “Hi, mom,” Pat waved. “I miss you. Call me when you get home.”

  That’s not my sister, Glynis thought. That’s my potential daughter. She played it again, “Hi, mom.” She stopped it, and pressed a couple of keys, defining a loop. “Hi, mom. Hi, mom. Hi, mom. Hi, mom. Hi, mom. Hi, m—” Glynis pressed another button and paused the frame. Pat was in mid-wave. Glynis stared at the image for a long time, then waved back. “Hi, daughter.” Another button, and the image of Pat waving became Glynis’ wallpaper on the computer.

  Glynis took a deep breath. To hell w
ith fear. To hell with Olivia. To hell with everybody. And to hell with me. It was time to break into the Institute’s computers. It was time to break into hell.

  She entered the Institute’s site. It had the logo, the promos, and so on: stuff meant for the general audience. That didn’t interest her. She looked for a way for the Institute’s employees to get into the Institute’s computers. There was none. Not a code or a password you had to type. Security was tight because they were keeping a big secret, and they couldn’t afford to have even one hacker break-in. Still, it didn’t make sense in this day and age that there was no way for employers to access their computers while away from the location.

  She accessed her mother’s – Olivia’s, Olivia’s, not her mother’s – phone, again, using ReCall through another untraceable route, and this time accessed the phone log. All outgoing and incoming phones were recorded, unless they’d been erased from the log – and even then, if you knew how, you could retrieve them. But Olivia hadn’t bothered to erase them. She’d made the phone calls over the past three days to the same number that had the Institute’s prefix. Each call was a few hours long. Obviously, a computer hookup. Bingo!

  Glynis disconnected, and taking yet another strange route so that her number could not be easily traced, dialed that number. What irony, she thought, I’m breaking into the Institute from the inside! She immediately got another site that clearly belonged to the Institute. But that immediately changed to another site: Access not Authorized!