by Hugo Huesca
I could see the energy surround me, delve into my virtual body without harming it, and exit again. It made no sound, no smell, no pain. Nothing but the virtual feedback.
The energy slowly began to focus in a spot around me. It bent and twisted, acquired a shape, became like the metal supports of a building. I watched without knowing if it had been a minute, or a second, or an hour.
Beard’s suspicions about the Device had been… something. Disturbing and hopeful at the same time.
“Suppose,” he had said, “that you’re standing in front of an alien person, or its equivalent. Both of you are trying to communicate. What do you plan to do? Life on Earth, even to the tiniest amoeba, shares some biological principles. Common ground. Things like warmth, or the way cells work. The similarities rise when life gets more complex. We ‘get’ mammals, for example. The snarl of a dog is fairly straightforward. Lizards are harder to read. Get it? Even if we don’t share the same language, or the same cognitive faculties, we can search for similarities in ourselves. We hunt. We sleep. We mate. What about your alien guy? What similarities do you have with him? He may not mate. Perhaps he doesn’t eat, even if I don’t know how he’d avoid that.”
The energy kept concentrating in the shape it was building. Beard had been wrong about one thing. His window theory was wrong. I was standing here, conscious, seeing it all unfold in front of me. There was no space for confusion, no cut-to-black instant that’d murk it all up.
He had said:
“There are larger obstacles to understanding an intelligent being than just the language. What about culture? What about feelings, and impulses, and traditions, and history, and old pains? What about the way their memories form? How do you even build a device capable of translating all the nuances between two human beings of different continents, let alone one capable of translating two different types of brain altogether? You can’t, of course. Such a device is either impossible or redundant—someone capable of building it won’t have a need for it anymore. No. You have to use a translator. Someone capable of speaking both languages. You see?”
Matter began to form around the now solid-looking energy lines. It was like the lines themselves had cooled down and transformed into crystal. It was all a virtual representation, of course, like a render or a 3D printer reading from a model.
“How could someone find such a translator? Between two beings whose biology may make cohabitation impossible. Perhaps one is made of antimatter. Or they reproduce by nuclear reactions—I don’t know. Well, if you have something close to a computer with infinite processing power, you could skip the decades of genetic engineering, and biology study… Hell, even cut out the moral dilemmas! How?”
You simulate such a translator. You get that computer and order it to run a software that’s a perfect map to a working, living, aware human brain.
Impossible? Your brain does it every day.
And a brain isn’t that hard to emulate when you’re using something that handles a 1:1 representation of the entire known universe. Turns out, it’s quite easy. Almost custom-made.
There was a person in front of me. Skin skipped muscle and bone that never bothered to appear (they were not needed in a virtual world) and covered the green wires of his body’s frame. Facial features, hair, and clothing followed.
Who’s the perfect translator? Someone as close to you as possible. Someone who understands how you think, how you feel, how you react. Who can explain the incomprehensible to you better than anyone else.
There was a brief feeling of dissociation. Like falling through a well. Because I was staring at my own eyes right then, and I knew the person in front of me was thinking my exact same thoughts. Because he was me.
Well, a virtual simulation of me. A Cole Dorsett software being emulated perfectly in such a way there was no difference with the original. Memories, opinions… Full package.
I reeled back from him like I’d seen death itself and saw him reel back from me as he suddenly went pale. Exact same movements, exact same reactions.
“The way physics work, there can’t exist two identical complex bodies,” Gabrijel had said. “We’re in a constant state of flux. All the particles in your body have shape thanks to a billion different random events that statistically end up a certain way, as sure as the Sun will go out one day unless we manage to stop it. So, put two Cole Dorsetts in the same space, have them be identical down to their very thoughts. The changes are still ongoing. Particles are still moving around. Unless you update them constantly to keep your Coles in sync, tiny differences will appear. Just by standing there. In time… Experiences will accumulate, new different memories to mix with the old ones. Give them enough years, they may appear to be twins. With time. The problem comes before there’s enough time for those changes. When there’s virtually no difference. You know why it’s a problem? One of those Coles is a copy. And the first big change the two will experience will be…”
When the fake Cole realizes he isn’t a real person, but an electrical dream floating inside an invisible signal that somehow functions as a computer and permeates the entire universe.
You were wrong, Beard, I thought sadly. He had been sure there would be no way of knowing which of us was real until Beard’s little test. The fake Cole wouldn’t have a window to the real world, since he had no real body and wasn’t connected in to a VR-Brain. For the fake Cole, this world was all there would be.
Beard was wrong because I was careful not to blink at any point. I never missed anything. There was no break of continuity in my mind, no flash of light at the last second. I was the real Cole.
I’d no doubt. My life had been an uninterrupted stream of consciousness from the second I had woken up in my bunk this morning, to right now, standing in front of a virtual representation of my mind and body. There was no room for doubt.
The relief that washed over me made me feel like I was a monster.
But was I, really? The Cole in front of me wasn’t alive. He was a simulacrum built explicitly as a translator. I was willing to help him survive the trauma as best as I could.
But I was still human. The intensity of the relief I felt was too much for me to keep a straight face. I sighed.
The Cole in front of me sighed at the same time—
We stared at each other in horror.
My world—our worlds—came crashing around us like they’d been built of glass. Such a pair of fools…!
Could it be?
The same question was in his eyes.
I had to know. It was impossible I could be wrong, I could feel how alive I was. I could remember the taste of Irene’s lips, I could feel them in my skin. I could remember the long talk I’d had with Mom this morning, and the morning we met after Caputi had rescued her. I could remember the nightmares where I fell out of the Teddy, and fell, and fell, beneath a polluted night sky.
The other Cole was looking at me the way I was looking at him.
I was the real Cole Dorsett. But I had to know or I’d go crazy…
I reached with my hand and repeated the gestures that activated the VR-Brain’s option window.
The other Cole reached with his hands and repeated the same gestures.
There was a gray screen floating in front of my hand.
But said hand was attached to the wrong body. There was nothing in front of my own. Just empty, black space.
Beard had said:
“And the first big change the two will experience will be…”
I knew Cole Dorsett to the point that I could feel myself the wave of relief and guilt reflected over his expression before he was able to hide it.
But it wasn’t what I was feeling. I was feeling what a person feels when he realizes his entire life up to this point in time has been the life of another. What a person feels when he realizes his loved ones will never again see him in the same way, if at all, and even if they try to care, there’s still the guy wearing your face that looks and talks exactly like you. Hell, he is you,
and they can’t really care all that much. You can’t miss what you’ve never lost, after all. Unless you’re me.
Cole’s and I experiences were beginning to branch already. But the changes were so small, it was like having telepathy only with another guy who also has telepathy… Cole knew what I was thinking, and so did I. I also knew that he knew and he knew that… Well. And so on.
You’re going to say that this fucking sucks.
“… This fucking sucks, you know?” Fake Cole said.
As if calling him that could change reality. He wasn’t the one with the problem.
“The best therapists money can buy are waiting with mindjacks,” he said. He looked down with embarrasment, as I knew he would. He knew I knew about the therapists. But we had to say something to each other.
Because both of us were this close to madness if we just kept reading our minds as they read each other’s.
Beard had said. “I can imagine a time when the worst punishment there is could be to lock someone in a room and have them talk to themselves for an hour.”
“I do wonder what Kipp would’ve said about being locked in a room with himself,” I spoke so fast it barely even made sense. I had to speak fast because otherwise he may start finishing the sentences for me, except he knew I’d hate that and I knew he knew…
Suddenly I was very aware how a computer felt when some asshole makes it go through an infinite loop.
Cole knew the answer and knew I knew… But we had to play the game or we would go crazy. What would happen to me, then? The Signal would reset me from the start? What about him?
Let the changes pile on. Let the river branch away.
“He’d start a tournament and let the strongest Kipp be the real one,” Cole said.
We both managed to muster a chuckle that died very fast. We knew it was a mirthless laugh, but at least it was something.
I turned my back to him. Here was another difference. The darkness wasn’t only a visual with no sound or smell, like I remembered from a minute ago.
Now it smelt of ozone. And it was cold.
Well, fuck you. But it was mine. It was my ozone and my cold and it was all I had and it would have to be enough. Because I had a job to do. I’d volunteered, damn it, and I knew the risks and played the odds and lost the coin toss. I knew going in that one of us was going to lose it, and I still believed it would be worth it.
That hadn’t changed. To the contrary. This, too, was all I had. So I clung to it with the desperation of a castaway holding on to a board in the middle of the sea.
From Beard’s thesis:
“Now that you’ve simulated yourself the best possible translator there could ever be, what do you do about the second part of its job? The important part. Knowing the other guy’s language.”
“Well, here’s where computers become so crazy useful. You get the alien guy to upload a copy of themselves. Perhaps by sending them a package of instructions that can only be run inside your computer. Then you get said copy, that’s at the end of it, still a cluster of software inside an emulator… You get the copy, and change 1% of its software to run like your software. You don’t mess with his memories or his own self-perception. Just change the language he’s programmed in, you know?”
“You then give them time to process said change. Enough for the rest of himself to acclimate. Then you add another 1%. And 1% after that… Until he’s now a copy of a member of your own species. You get the copy and perhaps upload him a primer on your culture and traditions now that he can understand them. Then you tell him your message, and change back 1% of his mind without messing with his memories. Another 1%. Until he’s back to normal, and he can go to the person he knows the best in the entire world and even if he can’t explain with words what he saw or heard, he can still use metaphor and analogies to approximate. He’ll perhaps say: ‘Hey, asshole, the Glugglorts are a peaceful species, but they express their greetings through their tentacles, so try to say hi from really far.’”
There was a portal in front of me. No other way of calling it. It was green, of course, and I could see a bridge of energy extend far beyond what my eyes could reach.
This was it. Time for business. This is what I wanted. Beneath the existential horror and the brutal knowledge of my nature, there lay something else.
I was going to see beings that Kipp had only dreamed of.
And the other Cole? He didn’t get to see them, to speak to them. Only to hear about my experience second hand and we knew it was never going to come close to the real thing.
Out of nowhere, really, I was feeling sorry for that other version of me that stood behind me. Changes were starting even now. I could see the guilt still in his face. He had no idea yet.
He’d know it in about five seconds, I guessed. I decided I felt a bit sorry for him, too. So I threw him a bone for the guilt.
“Don’t fret for me. I get to go where no man has ever gone before.”
The “bone” was, of course, that I decided to quote Star Trek and not Event Horizon, which was a horror movie that basically said the same thing.
I stepped through the portal.
I walked for a long time across the bridge of lightning. I never tired. Never had to stop and catch my breath. I could have run all my life if I had wanted. But what would be the point? I moved at the top speed Rune could move me and that was it.
For all I knew, I was striding lightyears with every step.
I wonder when will I start to feel the changes, I thought. Beard’s theory hinged on the fact that said changes had to be gradual so the original mind wouldn’t get lost in the translation process. His thesis had included a long dissertation on the components that make a person, and how changes could affect them. It included phrases like: “Change a brick from a house and you can still call it the same house. Keep exchanging bricks until there are none of the original set remaining. Is it still the same house?”
At that point in time, I hadn’t been in a state of mind clear enough to pay attention to phrases like that. But Kipp’s books had mentioned them before, hadn’t they? Perhaps the other Cole would let me check them out. I’d have to ask him.
What am I saying! Of course he’ll let me. He’ll scan them or something. I laughed aloud at how silly I was being. The never-changing black and green and dirkpink landscape must’ve been getting to me.
I lubricated my chin with my lopgorh and wondered when I was going to see some changes. I decided I’d pay close attention so I could see them coming.
Slithering through the dirkpink horizon was hard with the excitement making my ventral-sacks flutter with anticipation. I decided the best course of action would be to deploy my sails and make a good use of the oberdyne currents that passed warmly around the tunnel. I’d soar much better that way.
The currents (*****) my body across the (****) distance. I could see my destination at the end of the tunnel now, a (***) filled with (*****) (******).
The (****) got so (*******) that my (********) (**) (****) (*********).
(****) (***********) (***) (*) (**) (*) (******) (**********) (**).
At the end, (*****) told me that (*****) which was a very uverk way of saying things, but (*****) struck me as that kind of (***) anyway.
The return trip was as uneventful as the first one. I was intent to catch any difference between myself from a second ago and the next. It was disappointing, to say the least. I had never stopped being the same old Cole.
I’d just tell humanity to video-call them next time, because, seriously.
Well, not video-call, I thought as I laughed out loud at my own joke. Of course that wouldn’t work, they’d need to be able to see in five dimensions just to listen to the… to the…
What had they called themselves, anyway?
It had made perfect sense just a second ago, but I found to my surprise that I couldn’t even begin to form the necessary syllables, because I lacked the required organs… Which was strange, because I’d never had those in t
he first place. Right?
I emerged from the tunnel and grabbed Cole by the shoulders with a maddened expression on my face.
“It’s the trees! No time to explain, you have to stop the trees from killing everyone before its too late—”
“Oh my God, what…! Oh. Oh, you’re just—”
“Fucking with you, yeah.” I smiled, enjoying the moment of non-synchrony. At least it’d never again be like the first few minutes between us. The river had two branches now, even if they were still mostly alike.
With my new set of memories, I felt I could put all the painful things that I’d never get to enjoy again on hold. So much to do. So much to talk about. With any luck, I’d be occupied for years.
But first… He was waiting for me to speak. He had a message to relay to a lot of angry, scared, hopeful… powerful people. Who were holding my family technically not hostage, but it wasn’t like any of us could just decide to leave Caputi’s base.
My family? Or his?
That was a question for later. Right now, I had a message to deliver.
I carefully chose how to put it into words. It was hard enough without considering how easy it had seemed a bit ago. But the things they had said had never been uttered by a human being.
In the end, I stopped trying for a direct translation. I chose to tell Cole Dorsett something he’d understand. It closely resembled the original message, but lacked enough dimensions to properly express it.
“Listen up, man. They said they were very surprised to see me. They seemed peaceful, kind of nice. But also scared. They said that no one had ever come out of their end of the tunnel in the entire history of civilization—their civilization, that is. They wanted to know if we built the… the Rune Signal, although they called it something else. Or the ruins that were strewn around their planets, the ones they used to shelter their civilization.”
I’d seen those ruins. Even their memory was impossible for me to understand now. My simulated brain lacked the right components for the task. The biology was all wrong. Or was it the way light had bent around those gigantic, impossible angles that had been wrong?
