The Immortality Code

by Douglas E. Richards

  Since the scene had played out on a video screen, they couldn’t be examined, but there could be no doubt that they were both as dead as anyone had ever been.

  45

  Reed stared at the monitor in horror. “What game are you playing at?” he said to Hoyer. “Anyone can create perfect doctored footage nowadays. But why? What do you hope to accomplish?”

  Allie’s face was ashen once more, and she didn’t seem to have heard a word Reed had said. Instead, she was staring at Hoyer in disbelief. “Your nanites can reanimate biological organisms, can’t they?” she said.

  “Congratulations, Allie. Yes, they can. I was wondering if even your massive brain would let you go there. If you digest a man fast enough, and then later, rebuild him fast enough, the nanites can construct an exact replica. And just like with the cell phone, the replica is not only perfect, it even maintains the electron patterns of old texts, emails, and so on. Or, in the case of a man, the replica has every last neuronal pathway and memory intact. Along with whatever ineffable quality you call the spark of life. So, well done. Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth.”

  “No,” said Reed stubbornly. “I don’t believe it. Using nanites to build a living human from raw materials is exactly the impossible that Sherlock Holmes was talking about.”

  Hoyer grinned. “To be fair, Commander, I did set you up to think that. An old magicians’ trick. Get you to focus on where I want you to focus, and not where I don’t. And it worked. Even on someone as brilliant as Allie. At least until now.”

  Allie nodded thoughtfully. “You purposely only gave examples of the nanites replicating inanimate objects,” she said, piecing it together. “Then you compared what they do to what biologics do. And you drew a distinction between the two to get us off the track. You implied that only life can beget life.”

  “Very good. Although the life begetting life thing is still true. Life still has the distinction of being the only game in town when it comes to building an organism from scratch. The nanites just plagiarize.”

  “How?” said Allie. “How do you reanimate something built up a layer at a time? How can the spark of life be rekindled under these conditions?”

  “Great question,” said Hoyer. “And another bit of misdirection on my part. I told you the nanites can deconstruct something faster than I demonstrated. They can also build faster. Much faster. I made them do it line by line, like a 3D printer, so you wouldn’t consider the possibility that they could replicate human beings. Didn’t want you to go there. Opens up a whole can of worms.”

  Reed was reeling, but fought to stay focused on the important information being revealed. Had he really been killed? Was he really a copy of his actual self? Made from the reconfigured atoms in potting soil? It was ridiculous. Impossible.

  And if it had happened, did this mean he no longer had a soul? Was there such a thing as a soul? He had never been religious, but could life, consciousness, really be created by an alien 3D printer? Without any kind of magic spark to transform matter from mundane clay to irrepressible will?

  Reed desperately wanted to consider these points, to conduct an audit on himself. Did he feel the same? Would he know it if he didn’t?

  Yet he had to suppress this exercise for now or risk missing something he couldn’t afford to miss.

  “If you want to replicate a person,” continued Hoyer, “or any other living thing, for that matter, you have to get the data all at once—almost holistically. You have to bathe the entire person with a high density of nanites. Like the bodysuits, but with four or five times the number of nanofabricators. In this case, total digestion takes place in three or four seconds. I have no idea how the nanites can collect and organize the data generated by many trillions of individuals into a cohesive whole, but they do.”

  He paused. “Then, to build a replica, you have them do the same in reverse. The nanites load up on raw materials, almost all of it hidden in a higher dimension. Then they construct a scaffold, the exact outer shape of what’s in their memory after digestion. Or should I say who’s in their memory. And then they can reconstruct the entire person in less than twenty seconds, building from all angles at once, and keeping all cells intact as they go. Quickly enough that when they’re done, the finished product is just as alive as it was when they, ah . . . killed it.”

  “It all seems unspeakably horrific,” said Allie.

  “Only because you let emotions cloud your intellect.”

  “You’ve set up fail-safes, haven’t you?” said Reed. “So if you ever die, the nanites have standing orders to reconstruct you. Which is why killing everyone in a room you’re in is such a good strategy. Because you don’t care if you die too.”

  “But that now makes you doubly inhuman,” said Allie. “You were always a psychopathic monster without a soul. And now you’re also a replicant without a soul. A high-tech zombie.”

  “Careful,” said Hoyer. “The man you’re falling in love with is now a zombie too. I had him digested right after your first night of sexual bliss. He retired to his quarters. When he was asleep, I hit him with a fast-acting knock-out drug so he wouldn’t feel the nanites swarming over his body and awaken.” He shrugged. “And then they killed him. Now you see me, now you don’t. He dissolved faster than sugar in water.”

  There was a long silence, and Allie and Reed both wore expressions of total revulsion.

  “They digested my clothing too, didn’t they?”

  “Of course,” replied Hoyer. “Otherwise you’d be reanimated naked.” He pretended to shudder. “And nobody wants that.”

  Reed nodded. He had wondered why he had been dressed the same when he had awoken the evening before, down to the contents of his pockets. And now he knew.

  “But Zach was there at breakfast that morning,” said Allie finally. “So you must have reconstituted him right away.”

  “Right. I just wanted a backup copy in the old memory banks, in case I ever needed one. So I brought him back to life, so to speak, almost immediately. What you’re looking at now is an identical copy of him, down to the last atom.”

  Hoyer raised his eyebrows. “So is Zachary Reed now a zombie?” he said. “Well . . . why don’t we ask him? What do you say, Commander? Feel any different? As Allie points out, I didn’t have a soul to begin with. But how about you? Still on your way to falling in love? I provided the perfect experiment. One night of passion with Allie as your original self. And a second night of passion with her as . . . a new man, so to speak.”

  “Zach?” said Allie anxiously. She paused for several seconds, fearful of asking a question she might not want answered. “What about it? Feel any . . . different?”

  Reed felt queasy, and his expression showed it. He had to fight to hold onto his breakfast. “I’ll tell you,” he said weakly, “but I need time to think. To take inventory.”

  He closed his eyes for almost two full minutes. Finally, he opened them again and blew out a long breath. “To be honest, I feel like I’m the same person I’ve always been.”

  “Bingo!” said Hoyer. “Because you are.”

  He gestured to Allie. “What about you? You slept with him last night. Spent the day with him. Find him different in any way? Was he a soul-less replica? Or was he the man you’ve grown so fond of?”

  Allie’s eyes moistened as she considered this vital question for some time. “He was the same,” she admitted finally.

  “Of course he was. You didn’t think I’d let myself be digested if I wasn’t absolutely certain of that, do you? No, I experimented on other people first. Took eight tries to finally get reanimation to even work. When I instructed the nanites to digest or rebuild a subject at the usual rate, I got a perfect, pristine copy of them. But one that was dead on arrival. Only on the ninth try did I stumble on the right recipe. The right combination of speeds of deconstruction and reconstruction to achieve reanimation. The right telepathic instructions to give the nanites to ensure they . . .
locked in the freshness. I had almost given up.”

  “So you murdered eight people, just like that,” said Allie. “Never knowing if reanimation was even possible.”

  “Everyone dies,” said Hoyer. “But these people got to die in the name of science. For a good cause.”

  “Incredible,” said Allie, shaking her head in revulsion.

  “To continue,” said Hoyer, “I, too, worried that there would be a qualitative difference somehow between the original and the copy. So I digested kids, and husbands, and wives. And then put replicas back on the stage. I waited a week to a month and found clever ways to follow up with their loved ones. Each and every time my research showed that loved ones didn’t notice a single iota of change in my subjects. Not in their memory, not in their personality, and not in their behavior.” He shook his head adamantly. “That’s because there wasn’t one. I say again, every atom was the same. So how could they not be the same?”

  “It’s quite possible they are,” said Allie. “A number of scientists who study consciousness believe it’s an emergent property. Something that arises spontaneously, unexpectedly, from systems of extraordinary complexity. Since the number of possible neuronal connections in the brain are greater than the number of atoms in the visible universe, this could well be true. Those who subscribe to this theory believe everything about us is circumscribed in our construction. Meaning there is no soul. But even so, an emergent property means a property greater than the sum of its parts. Two plus two equals a million.”

  “Well put,” said Hoyer. “I believe this to be the case, that consciousness is an emergent property.”

  “On the other hand,” continued Allie, “while no one knows if there is a such a thing as a soul, those who believe there is will tell you that human consciousness, human sentience, is more than the sum of a person’s atoms. And not simply in an emergent way. That it’s something ineffable, something that can’t be recreated, even if a physical copy is identical in every way to the original.”

  “But there’s another possibility,” said Hoyer. “Even for those who insist on believing in that sort of thing. A soul could be something apart from human flesh and blood, not captured in duplication, but could still be present in the duplicate.”

  Allie shook her head. “I don’t see how.”

  “Let’s stipulate a soul the way most people think of one,” said Hoyer. “One that is unique to each newborn. Imagine it doesn’t reside inside the body or brain, but somewhere else entirely. In that case, while the exact array of atoms in a person’s physical brain doesn’t house a soul, it’s possible it channels a soul. One that exists elsewhere.”

  “What?” said Reed in confusion.

  “It isn’t an obvious solution,” said Hoyer, “but I’ve done a lot of research on different religious and scientific takes on the soul, on consciousness. Along with considerable thinking of my own. Did I mention I’m a genius who bores easily?”

  “You did,” said Reed. “You’re a paragon of humility.”

  Hoyer laughed. “False modesty is stupid. But allow me to expand on this theory. Imagine that all souls are located well outside the body. Deep space, other dimensions, who knows? If so, imagine the brain being like a radio. Bryce himself has shown that instantaneous communication is possible, regardless of distance. So imagine an instant Wi-Fi connection between your brain and your distant soul, if you will.”

  He paused to give his audience time to form this thought picture. “Which brings us back to the radio analogy,” he continued. “Does the content of what you hear on your radio, what it’s playing, have anything to do with its physical construction? Of course not. The radio is just a receiver, nothing more. A device able to tune into content coming from some DJ somewhere, sent out by a radio tower. You can destroy the radio without affecting the radio station in any way.”

  Allie’s eyes widened. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “You’re suggesting that trillions of souls are out there somewhere broadcasting signals. And each of our brains tunes into a different, specific one. Unique to each of us.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m simply bringing this up as a possibility that most don’t consider. But if this were true, we’d be like primitives who find a radio. We’d be certain that the voices we’re hearing are originating from inside it. When the reality is that the atoms that make up the physical radio aren’t producing the content at all. Have nothing to do with the content, in fact.”

  “It is a fascinating concept,” said Reed, realizing that Aronson had been right. Hoyer was a monster, but his mind was sharp as a razor.

  “If it’s true,” said the major, “you could have your cake and eat it to. Destroy a human brain, and it no longer gets content. You no longer have a soul, so to speak. But the content is still out there. So when you build an exact replica, the content comes streaming in once again. Religions seem to believe that souls never die. Maybe this is how they manage it.”

  Hoyer paused for several long seconds for this to sink in. “Again, I’m not saying this is what I believe,” he said finally. “Just that if there is a soul, my experiments indicate it’s preserved in the duplicate. And this is one possible explanation for how that could be. Among those I replicated during my experimentation phase were several of the most decent people I could find. Modern-day Mother Teresas. Like the rest, they didn’t change an iota, nor did people’s perceptions of them.”

  Reed nodded. Hoyer made a compelling case. Reed wondered if it would be equally compelling to him if he wasn’t a duplicate himself, making him desperate to believe it. Clinging to this theory in the hope that he could really be the same man he had always been.

  “So this concludes the theology portion of my show,” said Hoyer. “Time to move on.”

  Reed wanted nothing more than to continue pondering the implications of his new existence, but if Hoyer wanted to move on, he didn’t have a choice. “Before this diversion,” said Reed, “you told us you have a backup copy of yourself in nanite memory. And they reconstitute you. Where does that take place?”

  “Let’s just say I have a number of . . . birthing centers. Which is one reason I’m so low on nanites I can use for everyday tasks. I need a substantial supply in place at each center, in case they’re needed. As to which of these I’m reborn at, it’s complicated. When I die, the nanites will bring me back to life in the reconstitution center closest to me. If I ever die within twenty-four hours of being reconstituted, they switch to the one farthest away, assuming that the nearest one isn’t working out. That I’m stuck on a level of a video game I can’t beat, no matter how many lives I’m given. It’s more complex than that, but I don’t want to bore you. Suffice it to say that I programmed the nanites with a complex set of instructions that dictate what happens.”

  “But if you die here,” said Reed, “how can you be reconstructed somewhere distant?”

  “First, the nanites can pick up on telepathic signals, no matter how far away they are. Bryce discovered this early on. Telepathy must somehow travel through four dimensions, so the signal can remain strong, taking a shortcut through vast 3D distances.

  “The nanites also possess a powerful array of sensors, and the data they generate, sensory or otherwise, can be received instantly by my entire community of nanites, no matter how spread out geographically. It turns out that they can monitor—well, think of them as my life signs. From anywhere, even when my telepathy is blocked. Almost as if they can use quantum entanglement to make a connection to my life force. I don’t know how this works, but it does. So if I were to die, they’d know it instantly, even if they were on the other side of the universe.

  “I’ve ordered them to stay in constant touch with each other, wherever they are. Upon my death, the nanites in my reconstitution centers can draw on the data generated by the set of nanites that digested me last, wherever that happened to occur.”

  “That’s quite the operation,” admitted Reed begrudgingly.

  “You have no i
dea,” said Hoyer.

  “I have some idea,” said Reed. “For example, I’m guessing one of your reconstitution centers is within the safe house in Henderson.”

  “True enough. After I gassed us both to death, I was reconstituted in the basement. In the raw materials room. Not all those many bags contain potting soil. Hidden among them are bags that look the same, but contain nanites.

  “After I was reborn, I digested our bodies in the study and retrieved your phone. I listened to the part of your conversation with Aronson you didn’t play. Then, later, I had the nanites bring you back to life.”

  “Your magic trick finally explained,” said Allie.

  “Right. I did nothing to the commander’s mind, after all. Nothing to his memory. The nanites just rebuilt him precisely as he was after the first night you two were together. I put him in the bed where he’d expect to awaken, along with a gun and knife I took from his blistered, dead body. And his mind was restored to its factory settings. He was restored to the Zachary Reed that existed ten days earlier. In fact, if truth be told, he’s now only a single day old.”

  “Which also explains why Rico Gillespie would be willing to commit suicide,” said Reed.

  “Now you’re catching on,” said Hoyer. “Right, the other magic trick. He’s my most trusted lieutenant. The partner you asked about earlier, who helped me eliminate Bryce’s men. In fact, he’s back on site now, with the last three mercs.”

  “Great,” said Reed. “A bigger crowd glued to monitors, following your performance. You must be thrilled. I know how much you love an audience.”

  “Not for this,” said Hoyer. “I had Ava kill the feed from in here, so we have our privacy. If that makes you feel less like you’re in a fishbowl.”

  “It does, actually,” said Reed. “But tell us more about Rico.”

  “Glad you asked. He’s the only other person I’m granting immortality to. He’s died before. In fact, we have to have ourselves chewed up and rebuilt periodically to keep our memory up to date. Don’t want to be reconstructed based on a stale version. You found it disconcerting to lose ten days. Imagine if the last back-up was a year or more distant. So once a week, without fail, we have ourselves digested and reconstituted. It’s so fast we don’t feel a thing. Well, at least as far as we can remember.