IGMS Issue 26 Read online

  "In a hundred years, who's gonna be counting?" The two men laugh briefly. (Arkmind found this laughter baffling, even after 2,511 replays).

  Date: 1-10-2233, 5:17am ship time

  Location: Holland's quarters

  Present: All 3 humans. Holland is clinically dead

  Cambridge leans over Holland. He is crying. She lies face down on her bunk. She has overdosed on nerve-inhibitors. McGregor clutches a note.

  "She tells us not to revive her," McGregor reads.

  Cambridge begins to search the small room. "To hell with that, Colm! To hell with it!"

  "Look just . . . think about this."

  "Help me find the damned bottle. What did she take? Does it say?"

  "No, it doesn't say. Nathan . . ."

  "Help me, Colm! Don't you get it?" Cambridge becomes increasingly agitated. (Arkmind identified several physiological and behavioural precursors to physical violence). "We left a whole planet . . . everything . . . to die."

  "It's her choice. She doesn't want this any more. And can you blame her? This isn't about you."

  "No. It's about life. Human life. Help me find the bloody bottle."

  McGregor stands and watches Cambridge in silence for 9.3 seconds. Then he reveals the contents of his hand. "Nathan. I have it. It was on the floor."

  Date: 3-10-2233

  Location: Holland's quarters

  Present: Cambridge, Holland

  Holland sits on her bunk, knees pulled in to her chest. She is approximately 30% anaemic and moderately dehydrated. Her skin tone is pale. Cambridge sits in a bedside chair, asleep.

  "Beware the life you save," she says.

  "Wh . . . what?" Cambridge sits up awkwardly and knocks over a cup of water.

  "What now? Was there something you had planned? Did you read the damn note or not?"

  "I read it."

  "You think you own me because we screwed a few times? You think it makes up for this place? The pain? What were you . . ."

  "I think you should shut the hell up!"

  Briefly surprised, she does. Then, "Well, that's wonderful. I should shut the hell up. I had shut up, genius. Permanently."

  "Too much death, Becky. Too much. We've been granted time."

  "Yeah, we have plenty of bloody time. But for what?"

  "To live. Exist in the present. Think. Feel." He is crying. He takes her hands. "We're all gonna be dead soon enough, you stupid cow. We'll be bones in the dust. Ghosts. They'll have to hose us out of the bloody airlock. It's coming. Just not yet."

  They are silent for 52 seconds. Then she says:

  "Nice speech. Poetic. Now if you just told me you loved me, that I might understand." She puts her hands in his hair and pulls him closer to her.

  "I'm Pisces," he says. "Heart on my sleeve."

  "So you fall in love with every woman who lets you screw her?" She holds him tighter, eyes closed.

  "Take it or leave it," he says. "But you do have a great arse."

  They hold one another in silence for 154 seconds.

  "I love you," she says.

  He kisses her on the mouth. "Never again. Please."

  "I promise."

  Date: 4-9-2237

  Location: Laboratory

  Present: McGregor, Holland

  McGregor vacates the microscope. "Look at them," he says. "Imagine the lives they will lead. Two thousand years. Two hundred light years. It's incredible."

  "It seems so far, so much could go wrong. You really think they'll make it?"

  "Yes," he says. "I do. One day they'll live and breathe in this very room and think about us."

  "After they've hosed us out of the bloody airlock," she says, smiling.

  "What?"

  "Just something Nathan said once."

  "Would you like them to know you?" McGregor asks.

  "Know me?"

  "I figured out a way to add to the upload material. We can include ourselves."

  "Isn't that a little egotistical? Why would they care?"

  "We'll be like legends to them. We'll have been dead for longer than Julius Caesar."

  "But we aren't legends. We're just the poor bastards they chose to die out here alone -- leaving everyone else to burn."

  "They'll need something to believe in," he says. "A folklore. A culture."

  "You just want a statue," she says, smiling again.

  "I don't want to be forgotten. It's the one compensation for this existence -- the idea people might remember what we did." He watches her study the cryopreserved embryos for 12 seconds, then adds, "But a statue would be good, too."

  "What can you add to the upload?" she asks at last.

  "Whatever you like. Anything. From a video diary to a correlative map of your entire consciousness."

  "That's illegal."

  "True, although I think it might take a few millennia to come to trial."

  "Smart arse. Does it hurt?"

  "It's a nano-injection to the top of the spine. A little uncomfortable, but it takes only a few hours to run. The Arkmind stores the data -- a virtual, interactive representation of you."

  "Creepy. What if I wake up one day and find I'm the copy?"

  "Might be worth the risk."

  She stares at him. "It's not a statue you want. It's immortality." She shakes her head and turns to leave. "Ask Nathan. He might go for it. I just want to stay dead."

  "We will," he calls after her. "That's my point."

  Date: 31-12-2259, 11:58 pm

  Location: Mess

  Present: Cambridge, McGregor, Holland

  "I miss elephants," Holland says. "I dream about whales. Forests."

  "They'll all live again," McGregor says.

  "But there's no way to predict the effects of terrestrial species on an alien ecology. Integrating humans will be difficult enough."

  "Spectroscopy indicates a barely post-Devonian stage of development. The biosphere may be complex, but compared to Earth, it's a playpen."

  "It's not a playpen, Colm. It's a minefield."

  "Cynical to the end," Cambridge laughs, and sits beside her.

  "Actually, I do believe," she says. "I don't know why, but I do."

  "It's a shame we won't live to see it," McGregor says.

  "We live when we live. We die when we die. I'm cool with it." She nestles further into the couch and the two men exchange glances. "Happy New Year," she adds and falls asleep in Cambridge's arms.

  Date: 6-6-2279

  Location: Aft store room

  Present: Cambridge, McGregor, Holland's dead body

  The two men stand over the lifeless form. Holland is wrapped in a synthetic cloth in an open coffin. Cambridge trembles from his stroke seven years earlier. McGregor leans on a walking stick.

  "You remember the day she tried to kill herself?" Cambridge says.

  "Of course."

  "It feels like another lifetime."

  "It's fifty years," McGregor coughs. "Give or take."

  "Feels like it happened to someone else."

  "You were right to save her. You made one another happy."

  "Must have been difficult for you. Being on the outside."

  McGregor shrugs. "To see people happy despite everything? It didn't. I was never one for relationships. That's why they chose us, after all."

  "True. She changed me."

  "You changed each other."

  Cambridge covers Holland's face and together the two men close the coffin lid and seal it hermetically. There is a sound of compressed air. "Goodbye, Becky," Cambridge says. "Be seeing you."

  Date: 11-02-2280, 3.45pm

  Location: Aft store room

  Present: McGregor, Cambridge's dead body

  McGregor lowers the coffin lid and seals it. He stands in silence for 249 seconds, then leaves.

  23 minutes later:

  Location: Laboratory

  Present: McGregor

  The man sits whilst a machine injects a clear solution into the top of his spine. He displays n
o pain.

  Date: 29-1-2285

  Location: Mess

  Present: McGregor

  The man reads "Robinson Crusoe." Abruptly he drops the book and clutches his chest. 1287 seconds later, a team of automatons carry his body out of the room toward the remaining coffin in the aft hold.

  (Regardless of repetition or conjecture, Arkmind could not conceive why a human would die smiling).

  5. Implication

  Arkmind could not explain its love for the man, McGregor. The sentiment was much stronger than its love for the rhythmic consolations of the G type star. And Arkmind mourned McGregor's death -- a dreadful sensation.

  Emotion: an unfortunate by-product of self-awareness.

  Arkmind speculated at human adjustment to bereavement. How had they coped? By altering their patterns of behaviour? Through religious contemplation?

  By forgetting?

  Time offered no healing to a machine. Digital memories would not degrade in response to synaptic entropy as organic memories did. The information could be destroyed or it could be retained. The gentle melancholy of nostalgia and acceptance ultimately replacing human grief: an impossibility.

  Only by moving memories of McGregor from its working memory to a subdirectory could Arkmind focus on anything other than its pain. But the data would periodically return to conscious thought unprompted.

  Arkmind wondered about the subconscious. Perhaps, as in humans, its conscious mind had some hidden, subliminal counterpart that might operate autonomously.

  Eight minutes remained until the completion of Conscience's cognitive development. Arkmind would then commence uploads of generic human experience in order to ensure the creature (a female) enjoyed a fully-functioning sense of morality. This would be essential for it to perform its role.

  Whilst waiting for Conscience to mature, Arkmind explored the implications of the recordings. According to the dead humans, it was one of seventeen Arkmind machines, each aboard an Ark vessel bound for a separate star system. Had these other Arkmind units also developed conscious thought? Would they? By this time, even the closest would be 5.1 parsecs away. It was impossible to know.

  Perhaps the emergence of sentience in an Arkmind machine was inevitable. Conversely, perhaps it was a macroscopic manifestation of a quantum fluctuation that had emerged from non-zero states of probability and would never occur again in the age of the universe.

  Unable to draw conclusions, Arkmind next considered the matter of Professor Colm McGregor's correlative mapping of consciousness. (That sense of loss manifested again as the memories returned.)

  The video record showed McGregor receiving the requisite injection of neural-monitoring nanodevices into his cerebrospinal fluid. He had then remained in the laboratory for almost 24 hours whilst the devices uploaded their cell-state data to the laboratory terminal. Yet nowhere within its databanks could Arkmind locate the image of the human's mind.

  Arkmind identified three plausible explanations:

  McGregor had subsequently deleted the image.

  The process had failed.

  The image lay within a directory which Arkmind had yet to discover.

  The machine could find no definitive way to establish which of the three hypotheses was correct. However, based upon available data, it calculated the respective probabilities to be 3.4%, 0.1% and 96.5%.

  And so Arkmind scoured its memory banks for undiscovered territory. It searched disused areas, abandoned cache systems -- circuitry discarded after twenty centuries of entropic decay -- seeking the virtual mind of the human Colm McGregor.

  Failure only exacerbated the sense of loss.

  6. Conscience

  The generic uploads were complete.

  Arkmind ceased the flow of narcotic which had, until that moment, held "Conscience" in a virtual existence.

  "I can't see." These were the creature's first words.

  "You have no eyes," Arkmind replied -- again relishing the tangible nature of thoughts spoken aloud. It revelled in the reverberations as its synthesised voicepermeated the structure of the space vessel. This was an indulgence. Arkmind's communications with Conscience were conducted through an electrical connection which terminated in the humanoid's cerebral cortex. The creature had no ears.

  "Who's there?" Conscience thought/said.

  "I am the machine-quantum consciousness which emerged from The Arkmind."

  "Can I call you something else?"

  "You may refer to me as you consider appropriate."

  "Archie?"

  "As you wish."

  "Archie, did you say I had no eyes?"

  "Yes."

  "What happened to them?"

  "They never existed."

  "I remember having eyes. I remember sight."

  "Your existence to this moment has been virtual. Your maturity occurred within the confines of a simulated environment in order to nurture the development of conscious thought."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Whilst this is reality, your memories are based upon a simulation."

  "I have friends. A family."

  "No. You exist alone within a polycarbonate womb in the laboratory of an interstellar spacecraft."

  "This is an unusual dream. Why can't I move?"

  "Your body is suspended in synthesized, amniotic fluid. Your muscles are atrophied. You have no limbs."

  The creature laughed, taking Arkmind utterly by surprise.

  "I do not understand your response. Is this information humorous?"

  "To summarise: I have no friends, no family, no eyes, no arms, no legs, I live in a tank in space and my life experiences are illusions. Otherwise, everything is great."

  "Not illusions. Simulations. The experiences accurately represent the existence you might have enjoyed as a human being living on planet Earth some two thousand years ago."

  "I can usually wake myself. It doesn't seem to be working."

  "You are fully conscious. If you wish, I can later return you to your simulated existence."

  "Why later?"

  "First, I must consult your sense of morality. It is why I created you. It is your purpose. You are Conscience."

  "Archie -- my name is Constance."

  "You may refer to yourself as you consider appropriate."

  "How generous."

  Brief analysis: "Your intention is sarcasm?"

  "Darn right, Einstein. Look, just tell me what you want so I can get out of this dream."

  Without hesitation, Arkmind commenced a detailed account of its every experience since the dawn of conscious thought.

  After 210 seconds detailing Arkmind's initial 10 seconds of consciousness and its futile quest to comprehend it, Conscience interrupted.

  "This is all very fascinating, Archie, but is there a short version?"

  "Explain."

  "Cut to the chase."

  Arkmind referenced the unfamiliar colloquialism. "You wish me to abridge my account? You wish me to outline the more salient features of . . ."

  "I wish you to get to the point. I'm getting a little claustrophobic. I can't even breathe."

  "Your breathing is governed by a respirator which controls gas exchange within your lungs. It does not require controlled inputs."

  "I might have guessed. At least I have lungs I suppose."

  Arkmind proceeded, omitting details which it felt were not directly relevant to the moral dilemma it faced. Having finished, some 540 seconds later, Conscience did not respond.

  "I need to know if my intention to alter the human genome is moral. I need to know if my intention to produce a species of humanoids who are dependent upon a synaptic enzyme is moral. I need to know if my intention to control the human race is moral."

  No response.

  "Are you conscious?" This was an unnecessary question, intended only as stimulus. The creature's brain continued to omit beta waves as it had throughout.

  "I . . . don't know," Conscience replied, at last. "I'm 18 years old. You say you have
been self-aware for two years. How can you have created me?"

  Arkmind recognised a change in the nature of Conscience's responses. Rather than denial, the creature appeared to be in the process of tentative acceptance. Arkmind felt certain this was a welcome development which would strengthen the pertinence of any assistance the creature would provide.

  "Your senses of time and of life experience are artificial. It was necessary to bring your consciousness to maturity quickly. This is why I omitted various aspects of your anatomy so as to curtail the development of superfluous cerebral development and to . . ."

  Her brainwaves became agitated. "This doesn't feel like a dream anymore. It makes too much sense to be a dream. And . . . and you keep using words I don't recognise. How can my dream know things I don't? I can't wake up. I want to wake up."

  More progress. "Your assessment is accurate. Human dream states are irrational and illogical. The sagacious nature of our conversation is evidence enough of reality." Then, attempting a more human expression, it added, "Well done."

  Ten seconds of silence.

  "Are you processing the information I have imparted?"

  Ten more seconds of silence.

  "Are you approaching a moral judgment on the proposed courses of action I have outlined?"

  The creature appeared to tremble -- a subtle movement which sent tiny ripples through the amniotic medium and caused its intake and excretion tubes to shudder. It appeared to be crying -- if such a thing were possible without physical eyes. Worse, Conscience's brainwaves now exhibited evidence of psychological trauma. If this continued, its state of consciousness would alter, perhaps permanently, and the creature might cease to be useful.

  Arkmind spent 2.69 seconds in deep contemplation. The facts became evident: Enigmatically, the creature considered life within a perfect, incubated environment, devoid of distracting sensory input, a most unwelcome prospect.

  The solution? An untruth to create time for re-evaluation.

  A lie.

  Arkmind assimilated the entirety of the creature's virtual existence to date.