by Guy Hasson
He smiled a sad smile again. “They won’t believe you. They’ll change the background and the scenery, make a billion things with which the people could interact, and then who will turn down immortality? But it will change nothing. The curse of living forever is that you live forever. Forever with no way out. Who can grasp that irony? No. No one will turn down immortality.” What little light remained in his eyes was suddenly snuffed, and behind them Dr. Jeneane Gold saw death. He would die today. He would kill himself as soon as she left.
Notebook in hand, she stood up and walked out, closing the door behind her. Somehow, his death no longer seemed a tragedy.
HER DESTINY
“A road diverged in the woods,” he whispered, standing over her grave. “And fate forced me to choose the one less traveled by.” His legs, rooted in the mud, sank a bit. Wind blew through his hair. “And fate,” he repeated softly, his voice cracking. “Forced me to choose the one less traveled by.”
~
He knew her before he met her.
Like so many things in his life: he just knew.
He’d always known he’d create something big. He’d known that whatever it was he would do, it would make him rich and famous. He’d known that eventually he’d be in league with Edison or Einstein.
He wasn’t good at inventing things, but he was good at making money. And he was near-prophetic at predicting where things would go. And so, at the age of twenty-three, he’d picked a direction and hit the gas. By twenty-five he was the CEO of Eternity Plus, a start-up that melded together different branches of sciences in a direction almost everyone thought was impossible. Its ultimate goal was to be able to copy people’s minds into computers, so they could live forever. And now, only five years later, thanks to his leadership and thanks to his choice of scientists, all the major breakthroughs were behind them. They just needed it to work. It hadn’t yet. Not without bugs. But it would. He knew it.
He knew.
He knew he’d be married, not by the age of thirty, but at the age of thirty: After he’d been around the block, after he’d experienced everything that was bad for him, after he’d have nothing more to regret not having done, after he’d had the crazy teenage energy drained out of him. He knew that only at the age of thirty he’d be mature enough to settle down. He knew it. And he knew that the second he’d be ready, he’d meet her. He knew she’d come to him.
He met her on his twenty-ninth birthday.
It was a one-in-a-billion lucky shot. It was a fluke. It should never have happened.
In the middle of his birthday party, at a friend’s studio apartment, he felt nauseous. He stepped out to take a breath of fresh air. And just as he walked out of the staircase and into the street, she walked into the building.
She wasn’t even supposed to be there. Her best friend had dragged her to Manhattan to celebrate her last day in the States. Of all the streets, they had a flat in this one. Of all the times for it to happen, one cellphone had broken down and the other’s batteries had run down. Of all the buildings in that street, she’d stepped into this one to ask for help, just as he was coming down the stairs.
He found himself face to face with the image he’d had in his mind since he was six years old.
He offered to help them with the flat but they didn’t have a spare. They used his cellphone to call for help. He stayed around until the help got there. They talked. They liked each other so much, that he ditched the party and left with them.
And the funny thing was, they were both called Tony.
~
There are things that are set. There are things that you know.
If they hadn’t met then, they would never have met. He’d never stepped outside New York. She’d always sworn she’d die before setting foot in it. She was on her way to London, to get a degree in the BBC School of Communications. Had she gone, she would have gone on to make a career as a producer in the BBC, and would never have come back. And they would never have met. Now that they had met, she took a job as senior associate producer at a local station.
If they hadn’t met on that day, at that second, they would never have met. He knew it.
~
There are things that you know. There are things that are set.
He knew exactly who he was. He knew what he would do five years from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now.
Now that he knew her, he knew who she was. He knew what she’d do five years from now. He knew what she’d do twenty years from now.
They’d set the wedding date on his thirtieth birthday. But two months before the wedding, she’d cancelled. It was a decision for life, and for a few horrible weeks she hesitated. He stayed with her. She stayed with him. They got over it, and set another date. It was set to be ten months after the original date – he would still be thirty years old. This time, he knew it would happen. And the future was easy to see again. Marriage, work, kids. Kindergarten, school, college. Five years, ten years, twenty years. The path ahead was clear.
Their future, in his mind, had already been written. He knew the future. He knew it.
~
And now, a month before the wedding, after he’d told her the great news, after he’d told her that a French production company was interested in coming over to the States in a few weeks and doing a documentary about Eternity Plus, after he’d convinced her to be interviewed as well, she stepped out of the house, into the car, and a truck ran into her.
Had she waited another second, it would have been fine. Had she come out a second earlier, the other driver would have seen her. Had Tony told her only one more thing that morning, none of this would have happened.
It was a one-in-a-billion chance. It was a fluke. It should never have happened.
And now she was gone. And his life was gone. And he didn’t know anything.
~
Some of the mourners approached him, wanting to console, to share their memories of her. He answered curtly.
Matt Sanders, the company’s CTO, was one of the last to come and share his condolences. Tony stopped him, gripped the man’s arm forcefully, and took him aside, towards his car.
“Matt,” Tony said once they were alone. “Tell me you got her!”
Without looking up, Matt said: “No. I’m sorry.”
“But ... I thought you had everything in place. You said you got all her data from her brain.”
“Yes, well, Tony, we did.”
“Then what?”
“We turned her on,” Matt looked at him with helpless, puppy-dog eyes. “We did get everything from her brain – her personality, everything – into the computer. But ... It was the last ten seconds of her life, Tony. She was dying. Her brain was practically gone. And ... Every time we turned her on, she just ... died. Again. And again. And again.”
“Is there ... Can’t you ...” Tony’s eyes were glazing over.
“Tony. We can only work with what we have. Her brain was dying. So we recorded a dying brain. If we’d gotten there an hour earlier ...” They both knew there had been no time. The accident had been too severe, and she’d lost too much blood. Tony called Matt from the ambulance, frantic, knowing that these were her last moments, desperate to keep even a remnant of her alive. Nothing could have been done faster. “We recorded a dying brain,” Matt repeated. “So we have her dying. Even if our technology worked ten times better, we’d still only be able to work with what there is.”
Tony’s strength suddenly left him. “Yeah. Okay. I’m sorry.”
Matt looked at him. “Yah. Do you need anything?”
“No. Thank you.” Tony opened the car door. “Thank you for everything.”
Matt looked at him with empathy. “Sure,” he said at length, then turned away.
Matt made his way as quickly as possible to his own car, wanting to get away, wanting to just go home. As he reached it, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
It was Tony.
“I want to see them,” Tony said.
�
��What?”
“The last ten seconds. I want to see them.”
“What? No. You don’t want to see that –”
“I want to see what she saw, I want to see how she saw, I – I – I just want to – Just bring it over to my house, okay?”
“Tony ...”
“Tomorrow. Do it tomorrow,” and a spark of the strength that had so often marked the entrepreneur returned.
Matt relented, unable to face the man’s sorrow. “Yeah, sure, okay.” And he fell back into the car and into the driver’s seat.
“Thanks. No. Tonight, bring it tonight.”
Matt looked at Tony for a long time, then nodded, and quickly turned away and left.
~
When Matt came over that night, he brought two tapes.
“What’s the difference?” Tony asked.
“Well ... They both show the last ten seconds of her life. This one,” he raised one tape, “is actually what you asked for. The computer simulated the way her mind really works. It did the math from one fraction of a second to the next fraction of a second, from one moment to the next. Just like real life goes from one moment to the next.”
“Okay. And the other one?”
“See, I figured ... I don’t know ... I had this thought. I mean, this is Tony. It was worth doing something stupid for her.”
“What?”
“I used ... the method we’re working on for long-term.”
“I thought that was for people who wanted to live in a computer for a period of years in a few seconds. Even thousands of years.”
“Yes.”
“What does that have to do with Tony? She only has ten seconds.”
“I figured, I don’t know, you know, the way the computer figures the brain using the other method is the way the computer figures where the moon will be in five years. You punch in a few numbers, and it tells you where the moon will be in five years without having gone through the middle. It’s the same here, you punch in the years, and you get a person who’s lived in a computer for a thousand years in a single second. So ... I figured, we don’t have to type in a thousand years. Instead of skipping a year into the future, let’s do the opposite.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean, let’s break it down into frames, like a movie. I mean, a movie is made up of frozen frames. But you when run twenty-four-or-whatever frames a second, it looks like real life.”
“So?”
“So ... When we compute the brain using the first method, we compute fifty states-of-mind a second. So let’s compute the first fiftieth of a second using the second computation. And then the second fiftieth, and the third, and so on. I mean, it’s different math, maybe it’ll give different results. I mean, we still don’t know if the damned thing –”
“Fine. And ... ?”
“Same thing. Exactly. Frame for frame. Our computations must be right, because –”
“So you have two tapes which show the same ten seconds?”
“Yeah. Done different ways. I figured you wouldn’t take my word for it that they were the sa –”
“Yeah, okay.” Tony took the tapes from Matt’s hands and looked at them. “I just play them?”
“Yeah.”
For a long time, he just stared at the tapes. Then he looked up at Matt and handed him one.
“Put it in.”
Matt put it in. Tony took the remote, and the both of them sat on the sofa and watched.
These were Tony’s last seconds, seen from her point of view, garnered from her brain, seen exactly as she had seen them.
Tony recognized the small hospital room, as seen from her eyes. There was another bed beside hers, with another patient. A curtain. From the corner of her view, you could see part of her leg, covered by a blanket, and a couple of her fingers. And sitting right in front of her was Tony, as he was then, his face sad and broken, holding her hand.
The breathing got harder. Tony’s face – his own face – became frantic. He looked around, about to call a doctor. She made a small sound, then gasped. The vision got blurry, and then the screen turned dark.
“Oh, my god ...” Tony said, looking at the blackness. “Oh, my god ...”
And they just sat there in silence.
Until: “Put the other tape in.”
“Tony. You don’t want to see this again. It’s –”
“Put it in!” Tony thrust the tape into Matt’s lap, clearly unable to get up himself and put it in.
Matt lowered his head, took a deep breath, got up, replaced the tape, sat back down again, and pressed ‘Play’.
The two watched the same ten seconds in silence.
Tony then took the remote. He rewound it, then pressed ‘Play’ again.
And when the screen turned dark, he played it again.
After the fifth time, the remote fell from his hand. “Okay,” he said.
“Is her family here?”
“No, her brother’s in Australia. They’re not ... They’re not on friendly ... He didn’t want to come. And both her parents are dead.”
“Do you ...” he looked around. The huge house felt so empty and dark. And Tony, sitting there in the couch, seemed to have shrunk. “Do you have anyone staying with you? Anyone who could ... ?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Maybe I should stay. Just a bit, just till –”
“I don’t need anyone, but thank you.” He stood up and reached out to shake Matt’s hand. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
“No ... No problem. It’s just that ... I’m so sorry. I know how much you two –”
“Yah,” Tony killed Matt’s sentence with a word. “Thank you.” And he said it in a way that clearly meant ‘get out’.
“Sure,” and Matt bent down to take the tapes.
“Leave them.”
Matt’s hand froze an inch from the tapes. His back still bent, he looked up. “What?”
“Leave the tapes.”
Matt looked into Tony’s eyes for two seconds, then turned and left.
There were twenty-nine days left till their wedding day.
~
Tony didn’t come to the office for a week.
The people from Eternity called Tony every so often, but mostly left him alone. Surely he had friends in his own life, friends he could depend on during these tough times.
After a week, he appeared, went immediately into the office and shut the door behind him.
After a few hours, Matt walked to the door, opened it gingerly, and stepped in.
“Good,” Tony said, before Matt shut the door behind him. “I was just coming to see you.”
Matt shut the door, and looked at Tony. “How are you doing?”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Two things. I got this invitation to a general meeting of the shareholders of the company. You probably have one on your desk, too. ‘On the agenda: The Chairman’s term of office.’”
“I saw that. It’s outrageous! They’d fire you?! And when you’re grieving over –”
“No, no. They sent it the day before she – Look, it doesn’t matter, it’s bogus. They want results and that’s how they’re pressuring me. The point is, try to get results as soon as possible. The heat’s going to get worse over the next few months. But don’t skip over – Do a good job, okay? Don’t worry about the business side of things. I’ll take care of it. But I’m counting on you to take care of everything else for the next few weeks.”
“Sure.”
“I want another favor.”
Matt looked at him with apprehension. “What?”
“Those ten seconds of her. That second method.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t want ten seconds. I want a minute, two minutes.”
“Tony,” his voice was soft and reasonable. “You have everything we have. When we punch it in at a minute after the incident, we just get zero brain activity. It’s just darkness. Ten seconds is all we h –”
�
��You don’t understand. I don’t want more later, I want more inbetween. I mean, why have fifty frames a second? Why not compute a hundred frames a second? Or a hundred-and-fifty? Or at two hundred?”
“But ... at some point the equation will have to collapse. The human brain doesn’t operate at a hundred frames a second or two hundred.”
“If the thing breaks at a hundred, if a hundred is too much, then give me seventy frames a second. If seventy’s too much, give me sixty. If fifty-two is too much, give me fifty-one. But I want that one extra frame I don’t have.”
“Why? What are you looking for? What do you think you’ll see?”
“I don’t know. It’s just, I want to see everything she went through, everything she saw. And even if it’s only one more frame, I just ... I just need to see it. To ...” he was stuck for words.
“To accept it?”
Tony lowered his eyes and didn’t answer. “Look,” he said. “I’ll be here tomorrow, too. I haven’t finished catching up on my paperwork. Can you do it by noon tomorrow?”
“Sure. No problem.”
“And, look, however many frames you get, run it in slow motion, run it at twenty-four frames a second. So those ten seconds will stretch into a minute or two. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Good. When I come in tomorrow, I’ll take the tape.”
“Sure ... Are you – ?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Tony opened the door and was halfway through it when he turned back.
“You know what? Prepare it in tape, but I’d like to see it on the big screen, too.” He meant their theater-sized screen on the third floor. “Maybe I’ll ... I don’t know ...”
“It’s no problem, Tony.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
And Matt was left standing alone in Tony’s office.
It was now twenty-one days before the wedding.
~
Tony came in early the next day.
The tape waited for him on his desk. He sat down, set it aside, finished as much of the paperwork as he could over the next three hours. Then he got up, took the tape, and headed down to Research.
