Mad-Sci-Soc

by Arrand Pritchard

  How come she could understand this so clearly now but not at the time?

  She figured it out: other people's lives! You always knew what to do for other people but never for yourself. She was not the same girl.

  ***

  Tuesday, January 21, 2118.

  Ever since the Anti-Geo-Engineering Convention of 2101, nobody could control the weather anymore. So when Terri arrived at the Mad-Sci-Soc club house, in the historic brown brick district outskirts of the University campus, there was an uncontrolled, unpredicted winter shower with sheets of rain. She ran from the Auto Taxi to the door and was soaked. She pushed open the heavy metal door and continued up the hall into the lobby area. Conrad was sitting behind a holoscreen dictating notes. He spun round when she entered and was taken aback by the beautiful drowned rat that had burst through the door. He looked apprehensively around and back at Terri, with some confusion, as if seeking administrative help.

  “It is raining hard. It's like a broken drain pipe out there,” panted Terri.

  “Apparently so...” said Conrad distractedly.

  Terri leaned over and surprised Conrad with a welcome kiss saying, “Can I just freshen up?” and wandered into the female hygenisation room.

  She returned after a quick stint in the drying chamber to find Max, business-suited as usual, with Conrad.

  “Ah Terri, come this way. I want to talk,” said Max heartily, eyes fixed upon her.

  “Hello, Max,” she said with no emotion. “That's what I'm here for!”

  Max led Terri into the Imaginarium and away from Conrad's quizzical gaze.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Max obsequiously.

  “Angry.”

  “Angry is understandable. Physically though?”

  “Frack that, Max. Cut the small talk. I'm here for one reason and one reason only.”

  “Terri, Terri, no...” said Max as if predicting the negative direction of her mood.

  “I want you to delete my data from the computer. I want you to wipe my back up.”

  “I'm not too sure what you mean, Terri.” said Max dissembling with maximum reasonableness.

  “You know what I mean. Don't play dumb. I know people in the fashion industry so you can't fake dumb to me,” steamed Terri.

  “I'm assuming you are referring to your Entangle-Scan from last October. Is that what you meant?”

  “You know firefoxingly well that's what I mean.”

  “What about it?”

  “Delete it.

  “I'm sorry, Terri. I just can’t do that.”

  “I don't want you to make any more copies of me!”

  “Make more copies of you? Why would I do that?” said Max with maximum innocence.

  “You conspired with Dameon to manipulate me, to trick me, some would say, seduce me, only if I was putting a positive spin on your actions, or, if I wasn't, to abuse me!” she ranted.

  Max turned away from her and said with head bowed, “Terri, that hurts. Why do you think that? Me? Conspire with Dameon? It is just untrue. I swear it’s untrue. Why would you think that? I rescued you from him.”

  “Don't pretend to be hurt. It is not going to work. Not on me now or on any other clones you may be planning,” she growled.

  “The very thought of abusing you, Terri. It's abhorrent to my nature. Especially... surely you must know my feelings towards you. My deepest respect for you,” Max looked genuinely hurt.

  “I have missed the details, Max, you know on the account of me dying et cetera,” said Terri calming down rapidly. “But if you cared for me at all, then you would understand and do what I ask.”

  Max let out a giant sigh; the type of sigh made by a surfacing whale after a deep dive.

  “If you’re sure this is what you want, ok,” he said finally. “If that's what you really want, I'll do it.”

  “When?”

  “Real soon.”

  “I want to see you do it!”

  “Like now?”

  “Now!”

  “Now?” Max let out another giant sigh, sounding more like a deflating inflatable airbed. “It's... it's... just not possible. Next week, maybe.”

  “No, this very nanosecond! Do you want me to ask Conrad to help? Or maybe Karmen?”

  “Ok, ok. I was just thinking we should discuss it with them. There’s lots of implications.”

  “Steve-knows-that-we-don't-do-focus-groups!” swore Terri. “No delaying tactics. You could just make another copy of my data when I wasn't looking.”

  “That's a 1000 Yottabytes of data. You don't make multiple copies,” said Max seriously.

  “Even more reason to delete it. It'll free up some storage space on your hard drive.”

  Max waved his hand over the holoscreen plate to logon to the computer.

  He pointed to the holographic files floating above the plate and accessed the one with Terri's name and a date October 2117.

  “Ok, do it!” urged Terri.

  “Are you sure?” said Max earnestly. “This could be some kind of immortality for you. Think about it for a second. Forever young, you could have the world at your feet...”

  “This is all trans-humanist nonsense. I have thought about it, Max. It is not immortality. If you bring back another Terri, then she is not me. You are bringing back another wide-eyed, naïve, idiot for you to exploit. Again.”

  “That's unfair. I've never exploited you and you were never an idiot. This hurts me more than you can ever know, Terri. I know you don't want to consider this at the moment but think about it... we had fun, Terri. We had good times together. Check your blog entries.”

  “Since I seemed to have removed my November and December Egospace entries except for a few cat videos, I don't think we, as a couple... OMJ, I can't believe I really said that... ended on a high-note.”

  “Then check my blog posts,” pleaded Max.

  “I'll put it on my to-do list. Now delete the file.”

  “What if I give you some assurances? A contractual commitment?”

  “If you want to get legal then let's do that. I own the Intellectual Property of my own body and mind so I get to choose. I own the copyright!”

  “Hmm, copyright? Maybe,” mused Max. “I don't think there's a legal precedent for this.”

  “So I will make the precedent. Delete it. Delete the file.”

  “I know you won't remember this but, you know, we had safe words. Do you want me remind you of Marmalade and Rhino?”

  “Despite appearances, despite DNA and some shared memories, I am not the same person, Max. Frankly this discussion is grossing me out and I am quite likely to turn violent. I'm not a violent person, but these insinuations are going to take me over the edge. I'm quite capable of attacking you and making you suffer.”

  “Terri, no, honestly. It will be done.”

  “Then do it!”

  Max sighed. This time he sounded like a whale flopping onto an inflatable bed designed for whales half that weight.

  Max gestured to the holoscreen and dragged the file to the holographic trash can.

  “And now empty the trash can.”

  Max sighed again. This one sounding like a whale who had rolled off an inflatable bed with sunburn only to realise the tide had gone out and it was stuck on the beach.

  “Is it done?” she asked.

  The holoscreen started displaying a movie: the 2090 edition of “Gone With The Wind”, with the actress who had changed her name to Harlot Scarharrah just to win the lead role.

  “A movie?”

  “It's the progress bar; entertainment while the computer is busy. Removing 1000 Yottabytes takes a long time. It's selected that movie because it has the same running time as the file deletion. It can't be undone now. The file is destroyed.” said Max dejectedly.

  “Well, fiddle-dee-dee,” said Terri.

  “This is a shame, Terri. A shame for both of us,” said Max sadly.

  She walked to the door and turned to offload another bad quote from the mov
ie just before exiting, “Frankly, Max, I don't give a Murdoch.”

  ***

  Wednesday, January 29, 2118.

  Jenny breezed into Terri's dorm room without knocking.

  Terri sitting at her desk turned sharply with surprise and grunted “Er!”

  “Oh, ah...” said Jenny squirming. “Awkward!”

  The non-verbal communication was clear, the boundaries of formal protocols between Terri and Jenny had been lost in November and December but new Terri was without those friendly memories having gained new levels of paranoia and she had reacted accordingly.

  'Uh, oh, Jenny... “ Terri said uncomfortably as she quickly assessed and understood the situation.

  Jenny sat on the bed. “We were BFF-pledged, pal. I'm guessing you don't remember.”

  “I'm so sorry, Jenny. I feel so klutzy. Some BFF I turned out to be.”

  “Don't worry, sweetie. We'll have it all resolved soon. Did you get my message?”

  “What message?”

  “On Mind-dancer.”

  “Mind-dancer?”

  “Oh drat. I thought at least your G-Phone would have remained up-to-date.”

  “No, I managed to lose my old G-Phone too. So Mind-dancer is an app?”

  “It's a terrific app. The best MMI I've come across. Intuitive and reliable. Isn't it poochie?” From Jenny's bag, her robo-pet dog, connected via the MMI, ventriloquised a bark in agreement. Regarding the Mind Dancer app... Terri, like most people, could not use the MMI, being unwilling to have the techno implants and unable to afford the Zen Meditation training courses required to make the machine work reliably.

  “New is goo to me. So what's the message?” asked Terri politely.

  “Well, I saw you two at the medical centre. I just wondered what was going on,” said Jenny friskily. “You know... Are you poorly? Or getting some secret skin care treatment again? Cos all the girls in the gang want to know how you do it.”

  “Know what?”

  “Your skin. It's so baby fresh. What's the trick?”

  Terri touched her wrinkle free face. She had not noticed that the re-gen had removed all blemishes. “Just keep out of the sun... but, Jenny, I wasn't there... I wasn't at the Medical centre.”

  “Or are you getting back together with Max again and need my advice,” she said with air quotes around “advice”.

  “Back together?”

  “I said I saw you... You and Max… Smiley face...” Jenny began to repeat.

  “I wasn't there. Certainly not with Max.”

  “But I saw you!”

  “At the medical centre?”

  “You don't remember?”

  “No.”

  “Are you back with your boyfriend?”

  “He's not my boyfriend.”

  “So you are not going out with Max again?”

  “I'm not.”

  “Terri, is this another part of your sickness? Were you going back to the hospital to get checked out?”

  “Four-col, Jenny!” said Terri with exasperation. (“For crying out loud”)

  “Well I saw you!”

  “What time was this?”

  “An hour ago.”

  “I’ve been studying here all afternoon,” said Terri with edge, internally raging as she cursed Max.

  Jenny got up. “If you don't want to tell me then that's your business but...”

  “Whoa, there BFF. I'm being straight with you. Perhaps he was with a replicant that just looked like me?” suggested Terri, clinging to straws.

  “You waved to me. A replicant wouldn't do that,” huffed Jenny.

  “Waved? Did we talk?”

  “You waved but your boyfriend then sort of told you off and guided you into a treatment room.”

  “OMJ. This is so weird.”

  ***

  Tuesday, January 29, 2123.

  I was moving boxes in the apartment, in the room designated as the collections room.

  “What are you doing, Aaron?” asked Terri, peering in. Terri had completed all her work that morning, via a collaborative virtual world, and now seemed unusually curious about my activities.

  “I was er... just sorting out my boxes,” I said. In fact, I was hiding the valentine card.

  “A collector of cardboard boxes! I do pick' em,” sighed Terri.

  “It's history. You should resonate with that. I've boxes that are over a hundred years old.”

  “Twentieth century?”

  “Yes, a couple.”

  “I suppose I ought to increase my attention-span to that.” She touched a box, to feign interest but really, brown boxes could not hold her interest for more than two seconds.

  I tried to explain. “This banana box is from 1984 which I thought was very er... allegoric”

  “I don't think that is what you mean. What do you mean?”

  “1984. Same year as the book title, 1984, by John Orwell.”

  “You mean George.”

  “Ok, 1984 by John George.”

  “Whatever,” Terri sighed. “Haven't you giant robots to fight? Or to find a stolen car?”

  “Conrad's car?”

  “Yes.”

  “The robot... I need some help with that.”

  “And the car?”

  “Conrad and Karmen were going to talk to Max about it.”

  “He'll deny everything.”

  “That's right. I was thinking that we need to sneak into Ms Bell and confirm Karmen's probability model first.”

  “Sneak?” said Terri with mild disgust.

  I wiggled my fingers in a walking motion. “Invisibility cloaks!”

  “They are really not that good...”

  “At night time?”

  “The place will be locked down with state-of-the-art biometrics. There's infrared sensors, trip beams, surveillance drones and pretty aggressive guard robots with their Asimov-rule-set switched off,” Terri trotted off impressively.

  “How do you know all this?” I asked amazed.

  “From a game I played... when I was young.” Terri sighed. “Are you going to Mad-Sci-Soc today?”

  “For lunch, yes,” I replied.

  “Hmm. I'm coming with you,” she said.

  “With me? Like, coming inside?” I said surprised.

  “Max isn't going to be there, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I have important information,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “I always have. But it’s only now that you chumps are ready to hear it.”

  ***

  February, 2118

  Jenny was not visiting Terri's room so much. There is grief associated with the loss of shared experiences. It was like losing a friend or being cheated on. And for Terri, there was considerable catching up on study since she had missed a whole term of work.

  After Terri refused to attend Emotional Release classes, as a good BFF, Jenny sought help. She went straight to the Holoweb and paid good dollars for advice from the so-you-think-your-friend-has-a-problem app. The information returned: there was no viral illness that could explain the amnesia; only a blow to the head or mental illnesses. In the mental illness category, there were a whole host of explanations.

  Jenny did not share this information with Terri.

  The whole BFF thing fizzled out quite quickly in that first quarter of 2118.

  Terri had become quite introspective and, at first, did not notice herself drifting away from Jenny.

  She became a recluse as she came to terms with her situation. She spent evenings staring at the ceiling. On one of her mental jaunts she wondered how best to describe herself. “Copy” seemed so inadequate. Since she was back from the dead, she toyed with the term “Zombie”, then, to soften it and make it sound more acceptable, “Zomion”, but eventually decided the analogy failed on so many different levels especially stylistically.

  But the word “Zombie” concerned her. Why are we not zombies? Why do we have consciousness at all? We could just be brilli
ant zombies, capable of retaining information, responding to and reacting to the world programmatically like a robot? Why have the inner life of consciousness? And since she was experiencing it, how could the 1.4kg lump of moist, pinkish-beige tissue inside her skull give rise to the sensation of “reality”? A question never adequately answered by science.

  Terri came across another term, “homunculus” which, from the days of alchemy, represented a man-made being. A being that was less-than-human because it had no soul. Terri did not feel she lacked a soul, just energy. She had been painfully building up her body's stamina by regular trips to the gym where Jim the Gym-bot worked her to exhaustion; initially within 5 minutes. (But she was improving).

  Using the excuse that she was working on a twentieth century media studies course, after exercising, she started using the informatique department to gain access to unfettered French and Icelandic information. The university had free use of Language translation software which was otherwise highly restricted. This allowed her to read vast amount of material that circumvented most of the Holonet information clampdown. On her searches using Yaggle, she came across the question posed by the Swamp Gas Man, “If a man was reconstructed atom by atom, from swamp gas would he be the same man?” The analogy was startling, that was her! Could she be the same person because she was made from exactly the same atoms? Even if they were spun up to be exactly aligned in a quantum entangled matrix? She thought she could be the first Swamp Gas Girl, an exact “graft” of the original Terri, derived from asexual propagation.

  She shuddered at the thought of this technology if it were to be widely adopted. Suppose a dictator or a banker stopped all other forms of reproduction except asexual grafting of themselves creating a monoculture of Napoleons? Would he then also create a monoculture of Josephines for them not to have sex with every night?

  So the conclusion from the Swamp Gas story was that as Swamp Gas Girl, she was not the same as the original Terri, despite having exactly the same memories up until the point of entry into Max's big black ball. Is that all you are, she asked herself, your memories and a body?

  What about the soul?

  So did she even have a soul? What is a soul anyway? Is it just an old fashioned concept used by organised religion to keep the masses toeing the party line? Do you lose your soul if you have been through a matter transporter? How could she be the same Terri if the original had already died?

  Terri discovered, several weeks into her investigations, that scientists had suggested that the soul really does exist. They even had a theory for it, the theory of neo-biocentrism. It proposed that quantum information inhabits the nervous system within microtubules of the brain cells meaning that each human (and animal) is a projection, in this universe, from another and the two are linked by quantum mechanics. Perhaps using the same strange features as Max's machine, Quantum Entanglement. According to the ancient texts, this theory was developed by Dr. Stuart Hameroff when studying near-death experiences. Contrary to the materialistic theories of the mind, where the mind is just an computer, he offered an alternative explanation of consciousness that it was, he proposed, a fundamental property of the universe.