In that instant, Mynette appears as surprised as the rest of us. But then I catch it: one of those micro-expressions. Her eyes dart to the rest of us so we see she’s as surprised as we are.
I’m about to say something to her when my team is ushered up the steps by the chancellor’s assistant and into the foyer. Two of the NASA engineers, a pair of Secret Service agents, and the Caltech astrophysicist, Dr. Arsenault, wait for us there. When the latter spies Nathan, he extends his hand.
“Maxwell Arsenault,” he says. “So nice to finally meet you, Dr. Wyman.”
“And you,” Nathan says. “I followed your interdisciplinary exchange work with JPL with great interest.”
“How kind of you,” Dr. Arsenault says, though his tone suggests he doesn’t quite believe Nathan.
The Secret Service agents send the team through one of the campus’s old metal detectors, then physically search each one. They’re almost done with Nathan when they tap on the interface chip on his neck. Nathan is about to explain what it’s for when the agent cuts him off.
“They’ll have interface chips waiting for you upstairs,” the agent says. “These have to come off down here.”
“I don’t understand,” Nathan retorts. “You’ve got—”
But Dr. Arsenault puts a friendly hand on his arm. “You think we’d come all this way and miss the main attraction?”
Nathan turns to me, a look of alarm on his face. I’ve seen this before and it’s not his best look. Emily’s my parlor trick, not yours, it says.
“It’s on now?” Dr. Arsenault asks, following his gaze. “It’s here?”
“She’s here,” Nathan corrects him. “She walked over from the iLAB with us.”
“Really?” Dr. Arsenault asks. “I thought you’d turn it on once you got upstairs.”
“She learns through seamless interaction,” Nathan explains calmly, though I can see his temperature rising. “I guess I can forget how odd that is to outsiders. But yes, she’s always with us.”
Like training a guide dog, I think.
“All right,” Nathan says. “Chips off.”
One by one, the team removes them, placing the chips in a plastic tub. The last to do so is Nathan, who offers me a wry smile as he reaches his hand to his neck.
“See you up there,” he says.
I realize at once it’s an invitation to snoop. I offer a mock salute, he removes the chip, and I lurch backward in time fifteen seconds as my perception switches to that of the simulation. Rather than relive the conversation between Nathan and Dr. Arsenault, I hurry to the stairs, then decide, since I’m cheating anyway, to jump up three floors to join the presidential party.
Now, I don’t do this out of malicious intent. Like Nathan, I want to know what we’re walking into.
The scientists and archivists chat energetically with Ambassador Winther as a pair of Secret Service agents move through the conference room, checking it for…what? Bombs? Listening devices? Winther is jovial, keeping things light despite those around him wearing the familiar look of the walking wounded. He could be on the campaign trail or a family reunion for all the smiles and backslapping he passes around.
In contrast, President Eilbacher is less animated. She’s a constant presence in the media, so it’s interesting to see her up close. In front of the cameras, she’s always well lit and a few minutes removed from a makeup chair. Here, as she chats quietly with an aide, the former schoolteacher looks like no one special. If she weren’t so recognizable, she might appear like one more civil servant gathered around Winther rather than the actual center of power in the room.
I remember how she looked during her campaign. She was all big plans and big hopes, despite the contentious nature of several debates leading up to her squeaker of a victory. After a rocky transition, she began delivering on her campaign promises immediately following the inauguration. She was on her way to achieving her first batch of legislative goals when everything changed. Now she is instead tasked with overseeing not her nation’s bright next chapter but its very last. Her face is marked with worry. I wonder when she last slept.
I step closer to listen in but hear only a remark about her son, then another concerning her father, who she plans to see after leaving this meeting, as he resides in Boston. Hardly remarks of national import. Suddenly, something shifts. The heads of the president and her assistant turn imperceptibly, and they switch the subject of their conversation in midsentence.
Or, so I perceive it. Like a time skip, but if I’m not in interface with anyone, how could that—
This isn’t like you, Emily, a voice says in my head.
I turn. Dr. Choksi looks at me from the conference room, where the Secret Service agents have finished their task. She isn’t simply looking in my direction; she sees me. I’m no longer in the simulation. But there’s something different about this interface. The chip she wears isn’t like ours.
Go ahead, she whispers without opening her mouth. Give it a look.
I swim through this opened channel between us and find not the little cues and memories to which I’ve grown accustomed. Instead, I see the whole person laid out in front of me as if I’m looking over an impossibly detailed map. No, that’s not it. More, a searchable directory of the world’s largest computer where suddenly there are no hidden parts. Every detail is available to me. It’s the difference between looking through a shoe box and gazing into the Grand Canyon.
“Oh my God!” I exclaim. “Did you do this?”
We developed the augmented technology, she says. But it only works when synced up to your programming. All of this is your doing.
“Can I…can I check it—you—out?” I ask.
Be my guest, she replies.
I plunge into the bottomless well of information that makes up this one human individual and within seconds can interact with a complete genetic portrait of Dr. Choksi. Not just her DNA, not just a sampling of her current bioalgorithms, but her entire life, thoughts, memories, reflexes, environmental development, and even the evolution of her health.
Whenever faced with new information, my operating system automatically looks for a way to sort and file the information coming in, whether by transforming it into binary code, a random 5GL programming language, or by other means. It’s what a human does when mentally categorizing something either alphabetically or chronologically. But suddenly, I’m faced with breaking down and categorizing every part of a complex living organism. It’s near impossible, but I rise to the occasion. I copy, I translate, I create new languages, and I map across multiple dimensions until I have a record of every biomolecule within Dr. Choksi, a complete digital record of her now stored in my servers.
It’s more data than I’ve ever taken in at one time. Though I have the permission of the subject, the breadth of information I’m receiving can’t help but feel overly invasive. Even I feel embarrassment at how much of her life—past, present, and, if behavioral patterns are predictive, future—is laid bare. I’m having to alter my own internal architecture to contain it all. The number of operations I’m doing per second numbers in the quadrillions.
“Wow,” I whisper upon completion. “If you ever need an extra kidney, hook me up to a 3D printer and I can deliver you one on the spot.”
Unfortunately, technology hasn’t come that far, Dr. Choksi says, still speaking inside my head. We’ve invented the telescope, not the star.
I think about this, running the various applications for how one would construct a star through my head. Dr. Choksi eyes me humorously and a strange thought occurs to me.
“Can you read my thoughts?” I ask.
I don’t know what’s more extraordinary, she says. That you think I have that ability. Or you truly believe you have thoughts to read.
I scowl, feeling like a dressage horse. I’m so accustomed to my colleagues treating me like a human, it’s strange to be surgically reduced to a program even though that’s exactly what I am. Dr. Choksi raises a hand.
I
didn’t mean to offend you, she says. Your processes are so convoluted that for me to access and isolate just the one you identify as your current train of thought would be a miracle.
“Ah, cool,” I say, then worry such a dull response proves I’m anything but a super-intelligent, complex thought generator.
She moves toward me, reaching to take my hand. “May I?” she asks, speaking aloud now instead of inside my—well, I guess her—head.
“Of course,” I reply.
She runs her fingers over mine like someone inspecting fine linen. I get it, but it doesn’t make it less weird for me. When she touches my skin, my programming automatically sends a message to her mind telling her that her fingers perceive it as soft with a fine texture of hair above it. With bone, as when her fingers cross my radius where it connects to my wrist, it’s hard but still reads as under flesh. As her hand travels up my forearm, the skin is as elastic as it would be for a woman my age, smoothing out beneath her fingers, depending on her pressure, gently bunching closer to my elbow, forming lines of wrinkles as she goes.
I experience all of this through her perception of it and adjust and modulate the information sent back to her to perfectly match her expectations as if she were interacting with another human.
“Extraordinary,” she whispers. “You’re as human as I am.”
Now I feel emotional. I endured my share of being poked and prodded like a mannequin or a doll early on. Her natural response to me is one of human to human—a far cry from her no thoughts to read remark. Her touch, as it went up my arm, became ever more tentative, respectful of my boundaries. I am a person to her. I almost want to thank her. But instead, I ask a question.
“Why are you here, Dr. Choksi?” I ask.
She doesn’t reply in words. Rather, I can see from her expression something—something bigger than can be solved with these ingenuous quirks of technology—has changed, become insurmountable. Hers is an expression of deep regret. Not for herself, but for what might have been.
She places it at the forefront of her thoughts.
And then I know, too, though I immediately wish I did not.
VI
The Secret Service ushers everyone in. Nathan and my colleagues are still being introduced to Ambassador Winther and President Eilbacher even as they’re herded to their places around the table. Winther does his best to charm Nathan, but I can see it’s not working. Nathan doesn’t like walking into a room unprepared. The president, to her credit, seems to understand this and goes to speak to him, subtly pushing Winther aside. Nathan looks like a man forced to make conversation with his executioner, but Eilbacher’s seriousness and solemnity make him straighten a bit.
One of the NASA engineers passes out their version of the interface chip.
“You can still place these against the nerve endings at your neck,” one of the engineers explains, “but they’ve been upgraded to work anywhere on the body. If it’s near a nerve ending, it can communicate with the brain.”
Everyone puts them on. I have access to more ears and pick up some of what Eilbacher is saying to Nathan. She says she knows of Nathan’s work and congratulates him on his accomplishments. She tells him how often scientists have come to the rescue of the nation. Nathan, however, is preoccupied with the new chip, turning it over in his hand as if hoping to see who ripped off his design. I wish I could tell him it’s hardly a rip-off, more the implementation of ideas and abilities that expand on his original premise so much, it’s almost a new invention.
But I stop myself. The gravity of what he’s about to learn looms larger. I understand Dr. Choksi’s regret. If we’d only been given the opportunity to live in a world integrated with this tech.
Those in the room seeing me for the first time regard me with surprise and curiosity. It’s clear they’ve been warned what to expect, but that doesn’t keep them from eyeing me like a ghost. I move to Nathan’s side. We exchange apprehensive glances. I won’t be the one who delivers the news.
“Hello, Emily,” the president says, surprising me when she looks me in the eye with practiced acuity. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“The honor is mine, Madam President,” I say, shaking her hand. “Welcome to Massachusetts. What can we do for you?”
If she’s taken aback by my appearance—my existence?—it doesn’t show. She’s been briefed not just on what I am but also on how best to interact with me. But who did the briefing? Certainly not Nathan.
“I have your colleague, Mynette Cicogna, to thank for explaining how impressive you are.”
I keep my eyes locked on the president’s, though every surreptitious glance sent to Mynette by our colleagues washes past me like an icy wave. That explains how they’re already tapping into my servers. Someone’s been listening in and covering their tracks.
“Thank you, Madam President,” I say. “I’d like to think no one knows me like Mynette does.”
The president nods, unaware of the irony of my words. “Please forgive the clandestine nature of this meeting and the overtures that preceded it,” she says. “Secrecy is paramount. Will everyone sit?”
I look to Nathan. Of my team, he’s the only one who hasn’t looked at Mynette once. I doubt she would be able to meet his gaze regardless. She went outside the family, so to speak. For Nathan, this is unforgiveable.
“There is no easy way to say this,” the president begins when all are seated, “but NASA has detected helium fusion in the sun’s core.”
There’s a gasp. From Bjarke, I think, Siobhan as well. This is followed by a funereal silence. The president waits for our combined mental calculus to reach the same conclusion. It doesn’t take long. We’re scientists. Helium fusion means the hydrogen needed to fuel the sun’s endless nuclear reactions has run out and the core has begun to cool. The outer layer will now expand, creating geomagnetic storms and throwing off radiation and solar flares that will soon reach Earth. That part will affect us first and with the most devastating result, rendering inoperable all devices using electricity on the planet—from oxygen machines to refrigerators housing medical supplies to factories and farms—leading to mass starvation and death from previously manageable illnesses.
Even with the mass migration to more temperate climates, nothing can abate the spread of diseases like cholera, typhus, or hepatitis that take hold when water and power systems break down, to say nothing of malaria or dengue fever for those without immunities. As more radiation follows, the temperature of Earth will quickly rise, causing the world’s water supply to dry up. The extinction of all life will follow.
The good news, if you can call it that, is Earth itself will likely survive. It’ll be a burned-out husk incapable of sustaining life, but unlike Mercury and Venus, which will likely be blown apart in the decades to come, Earth is far enough away to keep on keeping on.
Nathan touches my hand and I know the calculation he wants done. I run the numbers and trace the answer on the back of his hand with my finger. Probably four weeks until the first real solar flares arrive. With that comes the end of electronic devices, first regionally with a global saturation point reached within a month. Three or four months until the large-scale, ocean-killing radiation follows, maybe a year before the end of all life. I slip into his mind and feel his skin grow cold.
The president turns to Dr. Choksi. She rises and addresses the group. “Time is of the essence,” she says gravely, the understatement of the year.
“Time for what?”
The question, bitterly stated, comes from Suni. Dr. Choksi, as if expecting no less a response, forces a thin smile.
“Time for hope,” she says. “Not for us, mind you, but for the future of mankind.”
Now she has everyone’s attention.
“As we attempt solution after failed solution, all we hear from people across the world is they want to know there has been some meaning to all of this,” Dr. Choksi explains. “That mankind served a purpose. Will all this pain, all these striving generations of ha
rd-won human achievement, all this discovery—be extinguished in the blink of an eye? Was it all meaningless?”
She turns to me. Upon meeting Dr. Choksi, I had anticipated the grim news, but I suddenly get an inkling of where this is going and why they came here to deliver it. But I can’t believe it. I refuse to believe it.
“When I learned of Emily’s many accomplishments and, more importantly, the full scope of her abilities,” Dr. Choksi says, “I realized there might be a way forward. In humanity’s last moments, our savior comes not in the form of some unseen, prayed-for God, but as an advanced computer program created and implemented precisely at civilization’s penultimate moment. Which can’t help but feel miraculous. Coupled with the advances we have made—”
“No,” I say, cutting her off even as her next words appear in my mind.
Everyone in the room turns to me in surprise. Dr. Choksi looks embarrassed and opens her mouth to continue.
“No,” I repeat.
When Dr. Choksi says nothing, President Eilbacher looks between me and Nathan. “If you’d give the doctor a chance to finish,” she says, eyeing us both with disappointment.
“You don’t want a miracle; you want a thief,” I say, waiting for them to protest, for their facial expressions to tell me I’ve got it wrong.
“Emily, we’re talking about the future of our species,” Dr. Choksi says. “You must admit, that’s a shift in paradigm—”
“What you’re talking about is inhumane, even monstrous,” I counter. “It’s hard to imagine a moment in human history in which any of us would be more greatly defined by our actions. And this is how you choose to define yourselves?”
I stare across the disbelieving faces. Even Mynette looks surprised by my outburst. Only Dr. Arsenault, his arms folded across his chest, wears an I told you so expression.
Nathan taps my arm. “What do they want, Emily? What’re you talking about?”
“Why don’t you ask them?” I say.
I rise and exit, resisting the urge to sever their interfaces and vanish, a childish impulse meant to drive home my superiority, but that would undermine the humanity I suddenly find so lacking in the room.
Emily Eternal Page 4
