The Resurrected Man

by Sean Williams

  He didn't have to wait too long to find out.

  The VTC combined the faces of more than a dozen people across the station, plus the faceless voice of QUALIA, making it difficult to follow the conversation at times. Jago Trevaskis, Director of the MIU, was present, but the main speakers were Odi Whitesmith and Indira Geyten, the latter's presence due to her specialised knowledge. Jonah gathered that she had thought of the idea herself, or at least made it workable.

  “We can recreate the brain of your deceased self,” she said, unable to avoid linguistic complications when talking about his own dead body. “We can measure with great accuracy the electrochemical output of the partitioned tissue, but we can't tell what it means. In order to do that, we need to use your living brain as a decoder, if you like. We take the outputs from the old one, plug them into the new, and see what emerges.”

  “That sounds simple enough,” Jonah said, “but I'll bet it isn't. How do you plan to get the outputs out of the old brain and into me?”

  “That's the tricky part. In a pinch, we can use nanoware to reach the partitioned segments of your brain without overly damaging the tissue around it. The same ‘ware can deliver the compounds and currents needed to simulate the outputs from your old brain. Getting the outputs quickly enough is where it gets interesting. We'll have to run a hot-wire simulation of the dying tissue and lift the data directly, rather than rely on usual extraction techniques. It'll be quicker that way, and more accurate.”

  There was a reassuring mumble of support from the experts in the background, but Jonah wasn't satisfied.

  “Hot-wire? I'm not familiar with the term.”

  “It's a spin-off of d-med,” Geyten explained. “Instead of keeping the subject frozen in time, it is allowed to develop in accordance with physical laws. It experiences true virtual reality, if you like, not just VTC or CRE.”

  “People do this?”

  “Of course not. The processing power required is astronomical. As it is, we'll have to requisition a largish chunk of the Pool just to simulate a smallish piece of your brain.”

  “So you can reach in and analyse the outputs in situ.”

  “Exactly. In a hot-wire simulation, as with d-med, we have access to higher dimensions and can perform internal manipulations without touching the surrounding areas. The possibilities are truly amazing.”

  QUALIA cut her off gently. “The MIU home laboratory does not possess the facilities to perform a hot-wire simulation.”

  “I know,” Geyten said. “We'll need to borrow KTI's.”

  “Have you consulted Director Schumacher?”

  “No.” Geyten looked puzzled. “I just assumed it would be okay.”

  “I will ask him for you.” The AI paused for a split-second, then went on: “Hot-wire simulations do, as you say, place a large demand on resources. My analyses of the cost-benefit outcomes do not favour proceeding.”

  “Why not?” Whitesmith asked. “If it works, who knows what we'll find?”

  “That is my point,” QUALIA responded. “We may uncover nothing but trivia.”

  “And if it doesn't work?” Jonah asked.

  “We may wreak biochemical and psychological havoc upon your living brain.”

  “That doesn't sound like much fun.”

  “QUALIA is simply presenting a worst-case scenario, I'm sure,” said Geyten. “Look, the odds are as much in favour of a positive result as they are of a negative result. Indeed, no meaningful result at all is the most likely outcome.”

  “That's my gut-feeling,” he said. “But then, I'm no specialist.”

  “No one is, I'm afraid. This is a completely new technique.” Geyten cleared her throat. “That's why we're being more up-front than we may have been in the past. We'll need your informed approval before we can go ahead.”

  “You mean this time I really have a choice?”

  “Yes.” Jago Trevaskis spoke for the first time. “There's no escaping the fact that you and your memories are crucial factors in this investigation. I will support any attempt to pursue this lead, using all of the resources at the MIU's disposal. But the law, in this case, isn't behind me. I can't force you to undergo an untested medical procedure. You need to know what you're getting into and to give us your approval before we can proceed.”

  “If I don't?”

  “You may never know what memories InSight keeps hidden from you,” Geyten said. “You may never know who you thought killed your father, three years ago.”

  He hesitated.

  “Don't turn us down to spite us,” said a voice from behind him.

  He turned. It was Marylin. She must have entered the suite while he was engrossed in the VTC.

  “Part of me says I ought to,” he said aloud. “Just on principle.”

  “You never had any principles.”

  “True.”

  Whitesmith shifted position. He, too, had belatedly noticed Marylin's presence in the room. “What're you doing here?”

  “Just listening,” she said.

  “This is restricted to senior—”

  “Well, I thought I'd stick my nose in anyway.” She glared at him resentfully. “Don't try to protect me, if that's what you're doing.”

  “You told them what I told you,” Jonah broke in. “About Lindsay, and who killed him.”

  “Of course I did. That's my job.”

  “Did you tell them about ACHERON?”

  “Yes.”

  “And about—?”

  “I told them what they needed to know, and that's all.”

  He smiled at her discomfort. “Good.”

  “We need to move quickly on this, Jonah,” she said. “Before word reaches ACHERON.”

  “Well, QUALIA's already off telling Schumacher. And where's Verstegen? He'll know before long, if he doesn't already. Whose to say that ACHERON's not already online listening in?”

  “If so, why isn't he trying to put a stop to this?”

  “Maybe for the same reason he let us go to Quebec. Because he thinks there's nothing to be found.”

  “How could he think that?” she shot back. “No one knows what we'll find in your head.”

  “He might,” he said. “If it doesn't kill me.”

  “You've already been killed once today.”

  “But at least I wasn't driven mad first.”

  “We certainly won't know anything if we don't try.” She glanced at Whitesmith—who, she realised, had pointedly avoided the argument—and looked slightly uncomfortable. “If something does go wrong and it doesn't kill you, we can always wipe the slate clean and start over.”

  “Now there's a cheery thought.” He shook his head. “But I don't understand why you're making such a big deal about this. Why don't we just get on with it? I'm already sick of sitting around talking. Let's bring in the old brain and fire it up. Give me the show. When it's over and done with, then we can talk. Either way, I'll have plenty to say.”

  “Are you sure?” Whitesmith asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, somewhat half-heartedly. “I give you my approval to use me as a guinea-pig.”

  “Good.” She smiled, but there was concern in her eyes. “Thanks, Jonah.”

  Whitesmith spoke aloud and via the VTC: “Okay, that's it. We're going ahead. QUALIA, obtain approval from Schumacher. I'll organise the suite and get the staff back in here.”

  “Here?” Jonah repeated, surprised. “I thought you'd want me in the medical centre.”

  “No. We need the suite.”

  Jonah remembered that Whitesmith had held it for him earlier, and felt the beginnings of doubt. “It's not really set up for nanoware brain surgery.”

  “Obviously. Indira was possibly a little vague on this point. She said that in a pinch we'd use nanos to plug the InSight outputs into your hot-wired brain tissue. She didn't say that's what we were actually planning to do.”

  “Then what—oh, I see.”

  “Yes. You'll be hot-wired too.”

  Jonah cursed himself
for being so trusting. “So Indira was also being vague when she said people didn't do that?”

  “Not that I'm aware. This is the first time I've ever heard of it being used on a live subject. But there's no need to worry. It will only be for a little while.”

  “As President Emes said to Congress when he introduced martial law.” Jonah shook his head. “All right, all right. I give in. Do whatever the hell it is you want to do to me, and I'll just lie back and take it. Sometimes I think I'd be better off with the Twinmaker.”

  “You don't mean that,” Marylin said as the intern and the female supervisor entered the room.

  “No but I felt like saying it, which is bad enough.” He allowed himself to be stripped and rearranged on the padded surface of the Resurrection coffin, unable to repress an eerie feeling that could only be described as the opposite of rebirth.

  Marylin leaned over him as the sides swung closed.

  “Where is Verstegen, by the way?” he asked. “I thought he'd be involved in this. Wasn't he the one behind using d-med on me in the first place?”

  “That's right, which is why we could count on his support now, if he was here,” she said. “We had a security scare earlier today. He's still sorting it out. No doubt he's watching from somewhere.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I have attained approval from Director Schumacher,” QUALIA broadcast over the still-active VTC link. “You may proceed, Jonah, but only under the awareness that you do so at your own risk. Also, the MIU is authorised for a one-hour hot-wire simulation only. Any additional charges for Pool resources or punitive awards resulting from the use made of these resources will be born solely by the MIU. KTI admits to no liability whatsoever for the following experiment. All senior officers and Directors present and involved in these proceedings will acknowledge their understanding immediately.”

  Jonah whistled as Whitesmith, Geyten and Trevaskis formally responded to the legal request. “I'll bet young Herold knew that was coming. No wonder he kept his distance.”

  Marylin, too, looked worried. “Do you think QUALIA knows something we don't?”

  “I'm sure e does,” Jonah said, without really thinking, as the lid of the coffin slid shut and darkness fell.

  “I will temporarily suspend your overseer,” QUALIA said into the silence. “Do not be alarmed. This is merely to simplify the simulation when it begins. Once it is self-sustaining, normal functions will resume.”

  Jonah nodded unnecessarily, eyes searching for a reference point as the comforting frame of his overseer disappeared. But the darkness and silence was complete. For the first time, the fact that he was inside a box shaped almost exactly like a coffin began to bother him.

  He waited a minute or two, then began to fidget. The air in the coffin smelt faintly electric, and he felt as though every hair on his body was standing on end. The sound of his breathing had become very loud.

  “It's dark in here,” he said aloud, not knowing if anyone could hear him. “Could you at least give me a light, or something to focus on? You don't want me going crazy before—”

  He stopped as light blossomed all around him.

  “Holy crap.”

  Stark grey lines crossed and recrossed in a rotating, giddying pattern against a background of utter black. He couldn't tell if they were light-years away or floating just in front of his face. He reached out with one hand to touch them, and they seemed to recede just beyond his fingertips. His brain recoiled from the vision, unable to accept what his senses told him.

  Then he realised that this was the default form constant of the MindSet.7 overseer, as seen from the inside.

  He was hot-wiring.

  “QUALIA?”

  The familiar frame of his overseer reappeared. “I am observing you closely.”

  “Wind the wallpaper back a bit. A lot. Give me something familiar, something simple. Just a light, perhaps.”

  The pattern faded to black and was replaced by a single point of brightness floating in front of him. That was better, but he still couldn't tell how far away it was.

  “Give it a shape. Make it a lightbulb. Can you do that?”

  The light yellowed and became the sort of globe he remembered from his childhood. The coiled wire burned inefficiently but radiated as much comfort as light.

  Again he reached out a hand. The globe was a few centimetres out of reach. His fingertips were rendered with such detail that he couldn't tell they weren't real.

  “It's warm,” he said, marvelling at the illusion. “The globe is warm.”

  “The hot-wire illusion mimics physical processes with great attention to detail, if required to do so. The light-source could have been cold, but I requested that it be as genuine as possible in order to provide you with the greatest reassurance.”

  “Well, thank you,” he said. And he did feel reassured. More amazing than the illusion of the globe, though, was the fact that he could think normally, without any sensation of unreality. He couldn't imagine how they went about modelling his conscious thoughts, or his unconscious, or the proprioception that told him he was still lying down even though he could see nothing behind him to lie on. But he supposed they didn't have to do that. All that was required was a detailed map of the cells and synapses of his brain. If they could model the physical laws that underpinned the behaviour of his cells, then the virtual cells themselves would generate the thoughts just as they always did. Once the model was set into motion, he would do the rest.

  Reality at one remove, he thought. And as flexible as CRE. It needed a new term, but nothing sprang to mind.

  “We're wasting time just sitting here,” he said. “How long has passed?”

  “Three minutes.”

  “Not just time, either. This must be costing a fortune. Is the other brain, the dead one, ready to roll?”

  “It has been simulated and its outputs are being recorded. The outputs of its InSight-affected regions are ready to be superimposed upon your own.”

  “So we could start whenever we wanted, basically.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why haven't we started, then?” Jonah asked. “You're waiting for me, is that it? Do you think I'm going to decide to pull out, even now?”

  “That is a possibility.” QUALIA's tone was cautiously distant, notably different to the first time the AI and Jonah had spent time in darkness alone, shortly after his first awakening. “Have you?”

  “No, and I won't.”

  “Then we shall commence the superimposition immediately. I will terminate and reset your brain chemistry at the first sign of distress.”

  “No. Don't do it unless I ask you to. I'm bound to become distressed at some point, if it works. I don't want you pulling me out just when I'm making progress.”

  “But—”

  “Don't argue. Leave me in until time runs out, if necessary. Understood?”

  “I understand, Jonah, and I will obey within the parameters of my KTI commission. That is, unless one of my superior officers instructs me otherwise.”

  “Sounds fair to me.”

  QUALIA said nothing for a second or two, then: “I am commencing input now.”

  Jonah felt a surge of adrenalin, followed by a momentary dizziness, then—

  Click

  —panic ripped through him as heavy fluid rolled over his face and down his body. He tried to free himself, but his arms and legs were paralysed. All he could do was gasp in vain for air, and choke on the viscous jelly as it slithered down his throat and into his lungs. And then—

  Click

  —it was gone.

  “Shit!” He was panting, thinking: I'm breathing. Why am I breathing? There's no air here! The vision had been brief yet so powerful that he could not doubt its veracity. And he could place it—that was the amazing thing. The memory had come from the moment he had been enveloped by the maintenance fluid in the spa of the unit in Faux Sydney, three years before.

  It was possibly his last conscious thought before succumbin
g to hibernation.

  “You are experiencing distress?” QUALIA asked.

  “A flashback,” he said, his voice sounding weak. “I didn't think it would be like this. I thought the memories would just filter back in, that blocked pathways would reopen and suddenly the information would be there when I looked again. I didn't expect it to come in a rush, completely out of control.”

  “Maybe both will happen,” the AI suggested. “Perhaps you should try to remember something specific—a date or person—and see what emerges.”

  “Perhaps.” Jonah hesitated, even though he knew QUALIA was right. The experience had been so powerful that he hesitated to encourage another one just yet.

  And besides, what would he look for? There was no point looking for Lindsay, who had died before the week of his memory-loss. Any images of his father Jonah might recall would almost certainly be—

  Click

  —broadcast by his overseer on a virtual screen covering almost sixty percent of his primary visual field. He was sitting on the lounge of the unit in Faux Sydney, the data-card lifted from SciCon pressed firmly against his palm. The images flickered on the virtual screen, silent, flat and colourless as a result of heavy compression, and limited to the view obtained by the minuscule security camera. But the image was clear enough. He could see the interior of SCAR in adequate detail.

  The view was focussed on one corner of the lab from a point on the ceiling in the opposite corner. To the left was a hefty SHE processor, its maintenance lid ajar. To the right was the airlock leading to the observation bay. The exterior door was open.

  As he watched, someone walked across the image to fiddle with the case of the SHE processor. The person's face was obscured by the angle, but he knew who it was.

  Someone else stepped half into view, pacing and gesticulating down one side of the lab. Lindsay paused with his hand inside the case of the processor, turned to look over his shoulder at his son, shifted position slightly, then—

  Click

  —he had stopped the recording at that point. He remembered it now. He hadn't needed—or wanted—to watch any more. And indeed the flashback ended there, too, as though the memory and the recording both shied away from the explosion that had shattered the lab in the next frame, lifting Lindsay off the ground and hurtling him to the far wall with enough force to make him ricochet two metres. Jonah himself disappeared from view, blown back by the shockwave but not killed by it due to the muffling effect of his father's body. The rest of the recording had consisted of his futile attempts to deal with the situation, and he'd had no desire to revisit that.