Текст книги "Architects of emortality"

Автор книги: Brian Stableford

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Intermission Two: A Pioneer on the Furthest Shore

As if it were caught by the surge of a fast-flowing black river, the soul of Paul Kwiatek was hurled upon its wayward course through the warp of infinity. It was outside the universe of atoms, beneath the wayward play of nuclear interaction forces, having been reabsorbed into the implicate order itself. Paul knew that his fleshy envelope must be dead and that his body must already be in its coffin, borne through the streets of Bologna on a black-draped bier—but his soul was free, miraculously inviolate.

Tossed as he was by the whim of the reckless current, Paul could see nothing of the river’s shore, the Land of the Dead. Perhaps it was only his imagination which assured him that he could hear the whispering voices of the spirit legions, welcoming him with gossip as they marveled over the achievements of his life.

The guardian at the entrance to an older heaven might have stopped him at the gate, for his life had not been entirely without sin, but he had always worked in the cause of Mind and the further evolution of the human intellect. In the reckoning of cowards, he had committed crimes—crimes from whose legal consequences the agents of the MegaMall had fortunately condescended to shield him—but everything he had done he had done for the sake of increased understanding of the last and greatest of the ancient mysteries: the nature of consciousness, the fundamental phenomenon of the human mind. In any case, the heaven of tradition was now a virtual theme park owned and operated by the MegaMall, through which silver saints offered guided tours to the living; this was the world beyond death, the ultimate upload, the exit to eternity.

Paul knew that the flow of the river was not the flow of time, because he was now beyond the reach of time, although his consciousness had no alternative but to arrange its thoughts and feelings consecutively, preserving the illusion of duration even in a realm without any such dimension. Nor was his soul confined in any way; free of his body, it had neither width nor breadth nor depth—but consciousness had no alternative but to define itself in terms of “position” and “magnitude,” and so he perceived himself as an inconsiderable atom in the flotsam of a river which fed the Sea of Souls—an atom as yet alone, but fit nevertheless to join the company of all humankind at the omega point of creation.

Paul did not fear dissolution in the ocean of the implicate order, nor did he fear annihilation at the Climacticon; he knew that he could not be lost, even in infinity. Nothing, ultimately, could be lost, no matter how many inflationary domains bubbled up from the wellspring of creation, making worlds within worlds within worlds and selecting those best fitted to be cradles of further worlds, further minds, further candidates for the ultimate upload. The surge of creativity was illimitable, possessed of no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end, and the surge of mind within it was irresistible in its insistence on being heard and felt. Every sensation that was ever felt, every thought that was ever framed, was gathered here into the river of intelligence, neatly bound into identities and personal histories, stories made from memory, racing upon the tide toward omega, the summation of all.

Souls bound for lesser heavens were supposed to be joyous, worshipful, and above all grateful, but Paul was prey to no such petty treasons. He was an explorer, whose mind was questioning, and he had no space within his virtual self for gladness or triumph, ecstasy or awe. He had come to see all that there was to be seen, to feel all that there was to be felt, and above all else to know all that there was to be known. His purpose was discovery: to go to the undiscovered country where multitudes had been before, but from whose bourn no traveler had yet returned; to be what multitudes would one day be, although they could not know it.

It was, of course, a virtual experience—Paul had always despised the phrase “virtual reality” as a vile oxymoron, and thought “virtual environment” misleading because it implied that a person within one had merely altered his existential wallpaper without altering himself—but that did not make it any less valuable, in Paul’s reckoning. As he was fond of reminding the few friends he had left, all experience was virtual, because that was the very essence of Mind.

The cogitative brain was a machine for generating virtual experiences of a kind that would allow the body to function in the world of things-in-themselves, but to describe the phenomenal world of things-as-perceived as the real world was a conceptual step too far.

Few would have agreed with him, but Paul felt perfectly entitled to put the experience of the black river on a par with his experience of the Tiber or the Po, and to deem the implicate order of the Sea of Souls as sensible as the streets of Rome and the shores of the Adriatic.

Paul had no doubt of his own effective immortality, but still he could not shake the last vestiges of his fear of death. Perhaps, if he had been able to do that, he would have been able to ride the black current to its terminus, without the necessity of a return to vulgar quiddity. As things were, however, he felt compelled to call an end to his odyssey when his IT began to send unmistakable distress calls from his not-quite-abandoned flesh.

Paul lifted the VE hood from his head and set about unsealing the special suitskin in which he had been enwrapped for thirty-six hours. He fumbled every seam, his quivering fingers seeming huge and repulsive.

When he was finally free he made no immediate attempt to raise himself into a sitting position, let alone to swing his legs from the cradle to the floor. He simply lay there, becoming reaccustomed to his lumpen body and his mere humanity. He felt utterly deflated as well as severely disoriented; it was an effort even to blink his rheumy eyes.

He could no longer remember a time when this kind of return had seemed like returning home. He felt as if he had been washed up on an alien shore, stranded there as a castaway in a state of utter exhaustion. There was nothing he could do, until he recovered far better possession of himself, but lie still and wait.

His IT was no longer transmitting distress calls, but it was laboring under duress. Although he had not consulted a physician in some time, his personal nanotech was neither obsolete nor broken down, but while the law forbade “explicit neural cyborgization,” IT could only do so much to help the brain to maintain its efficient grip on the motor nerves. Given that the whole point of a VE hood-and-suitskin was to distract the brain from its involvement with a body, it was hardly surprising that the efficiency of that grip could be compromised while a person was lost in virtual experience.

Suitskins designed for everyday use were purely organic—even supposedly state-of-the-art sexsuits and commercially augmented VE trippers were only lightly cyborgized—but the suitskin Paul had been wearing was nearly 40 percent inorganic. Fortunately, there was no law specifying the limits of explicit neural cyborgization in artificial constructions. The suitskin was as awkwardly bulky as a twenty-second-century deptank, but it carried ten times as much fibertech and fifty times as much nanotech—and every single nanosuite was a great deal sleeker than its ancient ancestors. The suitskin’s power was so much greater than a deptank’s, and the virtual realities to which it took its user were so much more complicated, that the difference had to be reckoned as a qualitative one rather than a merely quantitative exaggeration.

Paul thought of the suitskin as his own invention, refusing to admit that the contribution of the giants on whose shoulders he had stood while drawing up its blueprint had been significant. He also thought of it as his own personal property, although he could never have financed its construction. All the money he had ever extracted from the MegaMall in the days when he had been a pioneer, oblivious of the cautionary elements of the emerging brainfeed laws, would not have served to buy an eye and a glove, let alone a whole suit—but if ever it became an item of controversy, he would have to take sole responsibility for its possession and its use. The Secret Masters of the world were hardly likely to come forward in his defense and say: the guilt is ours, and the penalty too. He had ceased to be an officially acknowledged employee of the MegaMall on the day that Michi Urashima had been thrown to the wolves. Others had thought of it as expulsion, but Paul had thought of it as freedom. In his eyes, the augmented suitskin was his creation, his property, and his gateway to eternity, no matter who had fed the cash into his bank account or what elaborate chain of transfers had culminated in the final delivery.

Paul’s friends occasionally took leave to inform him—as if he had asked, or cared, or needed to know—that his apparatus was simply a souped-up version of the VE kits that ordinary folk used for remote work and virtual tourism. He always denied it, pointing out that suitskins intended for the use of VE tourists and others like them were content to pretend merely to alter the worlds in which their users moved, while ostensibly leaving their sense of self unmolested. Relatively few VE suitskins were actually designed to alter their users’ subjective experiences of their own persons as profoundly as they altered the environments through which their bodies appeared to be moving. Most of the ones which could and did were geared to produce the illusion of being some other kind of animal: “a leopard stalking its prey; a dolphin in the deep; an ant in the hive. Paul’s pride and joy was far more ambitious than that, and the virtual worlds in which he routinely immersed himself were stranger by far. He was an explorer of artificial universes whose physical laws were markedly different from those pertaining to our own inflationary domain, and of alien states of being as remote from the human as the digital imagination could produce.

He was always prepared to explain this, not merely to his friends but to anyone who would listen, but no one really understood who had not done what he had done and been where he had been. Had he tried much harder, he might eventually have persuaded one or more of his friends to do that, but he never tried too hard. To evangelize was one thing; to share the embrace of his most intimate possession was another.

* * * When he had finally managed to sit up, Paul reached for the plastic bottle waiting on the shelf beside the cradle, uncapped it with hands that were almost steady, and sucked at the tube. He held the glucose-rich liquid in his mouth for six or seven seconds before easing it into his esophagus. The last of the time-release capsules that he had carefully committed to his stomach before donning the suitskin had exhausted its cargo of nutrients five hours before; he and his loyal IT were both in need of the energy fix.

Another ten minutes passed while he flexed the muscles in his limbs, preparing for the arduous journey to the bathroom. An everyday sleepskin would have absorbed the secretions of his skin as easily as it absorbed all other excreta, then turned him out perfectly fresh, but the suit he had been using had only the most elementary provision of that kind. He needed a shower and a generous dusting of talcmech before he was fit to receive company.

Sometimes he wondered whether it might be better to become a total recluse, but he did not like to be called a VE addict and he knew that.if he were to withdraw from all human contact it would be taken as proof that the label had not been unjustly attached to him. The idea of a permanent retreat into the suitskin’s inner worlds was not altogether attractive, even though it was now practicable.

Thanks to the sudden flood of wealth produced by their stake in Zaman transformation technology, the Ahasuerus Foundation had been able to put a whole fleet of new susan technologies on the market, including a DreamOn facility which promised year-round support. He had enough money to pay for his upkeep for far longer than his body and mind were likely to hold out, and his doctors had advised him that a third core-system rejuvenation was out of the question unless he wanted to start over with a tabula rasa personality. The whole point of his odysseys in exotica was, however, to undertake voyages of discovery. How could he be reckoned a true explorer unless he brought the fruits of his labor back to Earth? Whatever people might say, he was not a VE addict; he was a pioneer.

Even susan-becalmed dreamers were, of course, only a phone call away from their real-world neighbors, but those voluntary Endymions to whom Paul had talked on various virtual grounds had always given abundant evidence of the fact that they were entranced. When they posed as scrupulous scientific observers reporting on their findings, they never gave the impression of reliability. Paul did not want to be seen as an unreliable witness, let alone a figure of fun; his journeys into the remotest regions of virtual space were attempts to expand reality, not attempts to escape it, and in order to make that plain he had to retain the capability of wakefulness.

He set the temperature control on the shower ten degrees too low, so that the first jet of water would startle his flesh, but he held on to the knob so that he could twist it to a more comfortable setting as soon as the benign shock had worked its way through his system. After that first reminder of what manner of being he was, it became far easier to relax into what he still considered-even after all his amazing adventures—to be his true self.

By the time he had slipped into a conventional day-suit Paul was beginning to wonder if he had left himself enough time to check his mail and get something to eat, but he still had thirty minutes to spare before the appointed time for his rendezvous, and he had already taken note of the fact that his visitor’s sense of timing was extraordinarily exact. Although he had known her for less than a fortnight, he felt that he knew the young woman as well as he knew anyone else in the world, and he trusted her to appear at the appointed time, neither a minute early nor a minute late.

He did not, of course, have time to reply to any of his mail, but no one who knew him even slightly would be expecting a rapid response. His meal was whole diet manna, as uncomplicated as possible, but he followed it with hot black coffee, as authentic in taste and texture as his dispensary could contrive.

While he drank the coffee he reflected that although his lifestyle might have appeared frugal to anyone who had cause to consult the record stored by the mechanical eyes which had him under observation, they would have been wrong.

“Only those with extensive experience of the unreal,” he murmured, “can properly appreciate the real.” It was one of his favorite aphorisms; he could no longer remember from whom he had stolen it.

“That’s not what most people say,” the beautiful woman had observed when he had quoted the saw on the occasion of their first meeting. “Some reckon that the near perfection of virtual reality can only devalue actual experience, by proving that it is—at least in principle, and nowadays very nearly in practice—reducible to a mere string of ones and zeroes.” “That’s absurd,” Paul had told her. “Even if one were to ignore the hardware whose structures are animated by the digital programs, it’s as grossly misleading to think of the programs merely as a string of ones and zeroes as it is to think of living organisms merely as a string of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts threaded on a DNA strand. In any case, how can it be a devaluation to know that everything, in the ultimate analysis, can be reduced to the pure and absolute beauty of abstract information?” The beautiful woman had been as deeply impressed by his eloquence as she was by his originality. There had been a spark between them from the very first moment: a spark that was emotional as well as intellectual. The fact that he was a hundred and ninety-four years old while she could hardly be more than twenty—twenty-five at the most—was no barrier to empathy. On the contrary: the difference between them actually increased the quality of their relationship by marking out complementary roles. She had so much to learn, and he so much to teach. She had such bright eyes, such fabulous hair… and he had such a wealth of experience, such a wonderful elasticity of mind.

“The professions of information technology have generated many derisory nicknames over the centuries,” Paul had explained to his new lover when she wondered aloud whether she ought to follow a career trajectory in Webwork, “but those of us who have a true vocation learn to bear them all with pride. I’ve never been ashamed to be a chipmonk, or a bytebinder, or a cyberspider. I’ve devoted my life to the expansion of the Web and its capabilities. It is, after all, the mind of the race. In my youth I found it tattered and torn, ripped apart by the Crash, and in my middle years I had to fight with all my might to preserve its scaffolding from the vandalistic activities of the new barbarians—but in the end, I saw the triumph of the New Order and felt free to move on to further fields, searching for the road that would lead to the ultimate upload. That’s the way to true immortality, after all. No matter what the so-called New Human Race is capable of, it can only be emortal; if we’re to look beyond the very possibility of death, it’s to the Web that we must look in the first instance, because it’s the Web that will ultimately be fused with the Universal Machine, the architect of the omega point. It’s a pity that so many of the people whose souls are inextricably caught in the embrace of the Web feel compelled to belittle it with their talk, even while they enjoy the wonderful privileges of its caresses, but it seems to be human nature to take the best things in life for granted.” “Rumor has it,” she had told him while inspecting his cradle and his collection of uncommon suitskins, “that the most realistic VEs of all don’t require a suitskin. The illusion is produced entirely by internal nanotech while the dreamer lies unconscious in a kind of susan. It’s said that the suite was never put on the market because the illusions were too convincing for some of its users.” “Actually, the system in question was made commercially available for a while,” Paul had been able to tell her, “but it was withdrawn after the first half-dozen shock-induced fatalities. An overreaction, in my opinion, but typical of the way the World Government works, always turning panic into legislation. All that was required was a slight tightening of the IT safety net, but the vidveg never see that, and democracy gives the vidveg the right of campaign. I’ve used the relevant IT myself, but work on the software stopped when the scandal forced the product off the market, and the existing VEs aren’t nearly as sophisticated as the best of those designed to run on equipment like mine. If the MegaMall ever puts it back on the market I’d certainly consider adapting my own work to that kind of system, but it would involve some heavy and exceedingly laborious work.

I’m probably too old for that kind of project.” “I doubt that,” she had said, with a brilliant smile. “You’ve worn better than any other two-hundred-year-old man I know.” He hadn’t even bothered to point out that he was still six years short of his second century.

By the time the door chime sounded, Paul was entirely ready to receive his visitor. He felt perfectly at home in his flesh, and perfectly at home in his apartment “Why thank you,” he said as she offered him a bouquet of golden flowers. “I think I have a vase, somewhere. Are they Wildes or Czastkas?” “Wildes,” she told him. “His latest release.” “Of course—I should have known. The style’s unmistakable. Czastkas always look so lackluster, so very natural– although I suppose we’ll have to give up calling things natural, now that the adjective’s been turned into a noun by the new emortals.” Paul did have a vase, although it wasn’t easy to find. He was not a man who liked clutter, and he kept the great majority of his possessions neatly and efficiently stored away. “My memory isn’t what it used to be,” he explained while he searched for it.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You can set them in the wall if you have the right kind of plumbing.” “I don’t,” he replied, still searching. “In my day, picture windows and virtual murals were all the rage. Nobody wanted creepers and daisy chains covering their interior walls—even daisy chains designed by Oscar Wilde or Walter Czastka. I was at university with Czastka, you know. He was so intense in those days—so full of plans and schemes. A little bit crazy, but only in a good way. He was an explorer uienj like me. Sometimes I wonder where all his daring went. I haven’t spoken to him for decades, but he’d become exceedingly dull even then.” “It really doesn’t matter about the vase,” the woman told him anxiously.

“It’s here somewhere,” he said. “I really ought to remember where I keep it. I might have thirty or forty years in me yet, if only I can keep my mind alive and alert. My brain might be a thing of thread and patches, but as long as I can keep the forces of fossilization at bay I can keep the neural pathways intact.

As long as I can look after my mind…” Paul realized that he was rambling. He shut up, wondering whether he could find an opportunity to ask her whether or not she was a Natural, engineered for such longevity that she might not ever need “rejuvenation.” If so, her mind might have a thousand years to grow and learn, to refine itself by the selection of forgetfulness. He wondered whether it would really be indelicate simply to ask her—but he decided against it, for the moment. She was authentically young; that was what mattered. What would become of her in two or five hundred years was surely none of his concern.

“The apartment sloth will know where it is,” he told her while he continued to move hither and yon uncertainly, “but if I ask it, I’ll be giving in to erosion.

Sloths never forget, but that shouldn’t tempt us to rely on them too much, lest we lose the ability to remember. A good memory is one that’s as adept in the art of forgetfulness as it is in the art of remembrance.” He realized, somewhat belatedly, that he was losing the thread of his own argument—and that he still had not found the vase.

“I’ll put them down here,” the woman said, laying the flowers down on the table beside the food dispensary. “They’ll be fine for an hour or two—longer, if necessary. You can look for the vase later, if you really want to.” “Yes, of course,” Paul said, trying not to sound annoyed with himself lest she take the inference that he was also annoyed with her. He resolved to start the encounter again, and went back to greet her for a second time, in a better way.

The young woman was extraordinarily beautiful, in an age where ordinary beauty was commonplace. Her eyes sparkled, and her hair was a delight to eye and hand alike. The touch of her lips seemed to Paul’s old-fashioned consciousness to be a sensation which not even the most elaborate and sensitive virtual experiences could yet contain.

“Sometimes, when I emerge into the daylit world,” he told her, “I feel as if I had passed through a looking glass into a mirror world which is subtly distorted. It seems very like the one I left behind, but not quite the same. I always need the touch of a human hand or a kiss from human lips in order to be sure that I’m really home.” “You can be sure of that,” she told him. “This is the world, and you’re certainly in it.” And so he was, for a while.

By the time death came to claim him, Paul Kwiatek was deep in yet another waking dream, and it seemed to him that he was in a very different body, in a very different world. Even before the seeds began to germinate within his flesh, he was a ghost among ghosts, in a world without light, adrift on a black torrent pouring over the edge of a great cataract, falling into an infinite and empty abyss.

The memory of the kisses he had so recently shared had already been stored neatly away, ready to be forgotten. Now, like the elusive vase, they would be forever lost.

So far as most people were concerned—even others like himself—Paul Kwiatek had been a mere phantom of the information world for years. His extinction passed unnoticed by any kind of intelligence, human or artificial, and the fact of it might have remained undiscovered for months had no one found a particular reason to search for him. It was not until a dutiful silver linked his name to those of Gabriel King, Michi Urashima, and Walter Czastka that anyone thought to wonder where he actually was, or what he had actually become.