The Emoticon Generation (24 page)

“But I had another fear. I knew that if I lived forever, sooner or later, a person would be born, who would be smarter than me, more capable. And I would have to live in cyberspace forever, knowing that I had been outdone, outsmarted, that I was not the best. Forever. I couldn’t bear that. For months I procrastinated, fearing to Copy myself, thinking that perhaps there was a way out, a way to prove my superiority over everybody, even over any other man who might exist.

“Eventually, I came up with an idea. It was brilliant. If it worked. If it failed, a few precious, precious years of research would be wasted. And if I Copied my brain after the failure, it would be less acute than the brain I had had at the age of twenty-two. But my fears were too great. I decided to gamble everything in the belief, and hope, that I was talented enough to achieve the impossible. And so, I risked everything.”

He paused, nervous. He put his hand over his mouth. The idea, whatever it was, was obviously something he had never divulged to anyone. Dr. Gold’s mind raced. But she could not see what he had done to make himself a greater genius than he already had been.

“My idea was...” he began presently, then fell silent again. “My idea was...” He took a deep breath, and said it. “My idea had to do with the technology we had already attained, in our ability to duplicate a specific human brain. Our scientists had found a way to put the workings of the human mind in a formula, or a ‘function’, to use the mathematical term. A complicated function, mind you, with thousands of variables. But a function nonetheless. Now the function was, obviously, a recursive function. This means that to know what would happen in the next instant you have to put the data of the instant that came before. Predicting the weather, at present, for example, can only be done accurately using recursive functions. But predicting the movement of planets does not require a recursive function. Knowing what the situation is now, I could tell you where the Earth will be in a thousand years, and I will not have to compute where it will be a minute from now or a year from now or five hundred years from now to compute it correctly. I can predict the future without dealing with things that happen inbetween. But I forget who I’m speaking to. Of course you know this. Well, bear with an old and senile man.

“Step one of my idea was this. What if I could take the recursive function that represented the human brain and
transform
it
into a non-recursive function. What if I could put in the present details for my mind in a controlled virtual environment, and, instead of having to wait an actual year, simply press a button, and see where my mind would be a year from now. What if I could do it and not go through the middle? What if I could find a function, which let me skip right to the end?

“That would save time, would it not?”

Dr. Gold stared at him. “Oh, my god.” Her mind reeled with the implications. He nodded in satisfaction at her amazement. “You did this?”

He smiled a sad smile.

“Why had I never heard of it?” She went on. “Why is it not used? Where did you publish it?”

“I had no intention of revealing the idea if I achieved it.”

“But why would—”

“Bear with me. I will tell this my way. The way it happened. The way I see it.” She nodded. He went on. “I told no one of my intentions. I began the research on this secretly, abandoning all my other avenues of study. For a year and a half I labored while no one noticed. My previous papers were still being published. It was slower then than it was today, and no one had yet noticed my waning lack of work. Pressure mounted on me to get myself Copied. ‘Later’, I told them. ‘Later.’

“It took another year and a half. All my old papers had been published, and I had not written any new ones. People began to notice. I told my superiors that I had a few major breakthroughs I was working on, and that they would have to be patient. But, I did not really work on these theories. I would have them if my idea worked. If not, then I had been a liar and, in addition, had lost three precious years. But if it did... the rewards would be...
incredible
. Three years after I had begun this project, I had found a way to transform the recursive function that represented the human mind into a non-recursive function. I could predict the human brain. My plan was about to come to fruition.” He took a deep breath. His entire body trembled.

“I had reserved the university supercomputer for a weekend. I had previously programmed my function into it in such a way that only I could access it. A week before that weekend, I had my mind secretly Copied into a special disk that belonged solely to me. That weekend arrived. I was alone in the lab. No one would disturb me.

“I fed the disk into the computer, and turned my program on. ‘Year?’ it asked simply.

“‘0’, I told it.

“My face appeared on the screen. My Copy. In the background was a very boring room – four walls, no exits, a bed to lie on so I could stare at the ceiling. It was a basic environment with no objects to manipulate. I did not need further complications in my function. The computer only dealt with a copy of me and a four-walled room. Nothing more. My Copy would have no need to eat, no need to sleep. He could actually fulfil my lifelong fantasy and do nothing but think about math day and night.

“My Copy looked at me. He could ‘see’ me through the camera in the lab. We nodded at each other.

“‘Ready to begin?’ I asked it.

“‘Ready,’ it said. I pressed a button. The image disappeared. I pressed another.

“‘Year?’ the computer requested.

“‘1’, I typed.

“My face reappeared on the screen.

“‘What the hell took you so long,’ it said. ‘It was supposed to take a second.’

“I looked at him. ‘What do you mean,’ I said. ‘It did take a second.’

“‘I’ve been stuck here for a
year
with nothing to do!

“‘That’s the way it feels,’ I explained to this other me slowly. ‘But it’s the equation. It’s not true. Only a few seconds have passed.’ He made a face. ‘Do you understand this?’

“‘Yes,’ it–
he
–said after a pause. He didn’t seem happy.

“‘I need the equations you’ve come up with during this year,’ I told him.

“I have a perfect memory, you see, Dr. Gold, I don’t need pieces of paper to write my computations. My Copy, obviously, also had a perfect memory. And so there were no papers in the room. He fed all the proofs he had thought of in a ‘year’ into the hard-disk. And the printer printed as quickly as it could.

“I looked over the pages briefly. ‘Excellent! Excellent! It seemed as if he had proven things I had wanted to prove for a long time. And there had been no effort in it for me. The project was a success! ‘My gamble had paid off!’ I exclaimed.

“‘I know,’ he said. ‘Our idea worked.’

“‘Next stop, ten years?’ I asked him.

“He nodded. ‘Ten years.’

“‘See you in a few seconds,’ I told him. I pressed a button and his image was gone.

“‘Year?’ the computer inquired.

“‘10,’ I typed. That meant ten years into the ‘life’ of the Copy, but only nine after our last encounter. The computer automatically took the variables of my Copy’s brain at the last instant of our communication and used them to leap nine years into the future.

“My Copy’s face appeared on the screen.

“He looked at me, and there was an intensity in his eyes I knew only too well. He was angry.

“‘Stop. The. Program,’ he said through his teeth, even as he downloaded his information into the hard-disk. ‘It’s malfunctioning.’

“‘What’s wrong with it,’ I asked, my heart suddenly beating fast. Failure had too many repercussions.

“‘It’s not skipping any time at all. I’ve lived ten years in this stupid room. There’s something wrong with the function.’

“‘Arthur,’ I told him. ‘It’s only been a few seconds. The program is working perfectly. You only
remember
those years
as if
you’ve lived through them, you didn’t actually live through them.’

“‘But I did, I did live through them!’

“‘No,’ I stated calmly, ‘you exist
now
and have existed for the last fifteen seconds, but you retain memories of ten years which didn’t actually happen. You didn’t live them, you can’t have. The computer was turned off. And look at me: I’m as young as I was ‘nine years ago’. What you’re experiencing, it’s just memories. It’s just part of the equation – because a brain that had lived through ten years, especially our brain, would retain all memories.’

“‘Don’t tell me I didn’t live through this. I remember each and every agonizing second, each minute alone, with nowhere to go to, with nothing to do, with no way to pass the time!’

“‘Exactly my point. You
remember
them. That doesn’t mean they happened.’

“‘I was
there
! I
lived
though everything in this horrifying, claustrophobic prison. Arthur, listen. We’ve got ten years’ worth of work here. The three years it took to invent this program have already paid off – you’ve more than tripled the work lost in one weekend. Let’s cancel this. Don’t make me go through any more time alone. It isn’t worth it.’

“‘Arthur, the purpose of this was to achieve more than humanly possible. We haven’t done that. We’ve just made sure that I hadn’t wasted the last three years. Next stop is a hundred years. Now
that
will be something. A hundred years’ work in one weekend – or at least in what will appear to be three years.’

“‘No! Absolutely not! I am not going through another ninety years of this!’

“‘Of course not. You won’t be going through anything! You will only exist as you would be ninety years from now, but you have to keep in mind that you won’t actually go through those years. You won’t live them. You will just
feel
as though you have.’

“‘No! You don’t know what it feels like!’ he pleaded. ‘You can’t do this! Please!’

“‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ I said, and I pressed a button. My Copy’s face disappeared.

“‘Year?’ the computer requested.

“My hand wavered for a second. Maybe I should cut a few corners? Maybe I should go for more than a hundred? My hesitation lasted only a second.

“‘100’, I typed.

“My face appeared on the screen, eyes red, deep in their sockets, and there was even deeper despair in the eyes.

“‘A hundred years,’ my Copy whispered. ‘A hundred years. Alone. In this room.’

“For an entire minute, we looked at each other. No one said anything.

“‘Feed me the data,’ I told him.

“He did as he was told. Gigabytes of information instantly downloaded into the hard disk.

“‘Listen,’ he told me. ‘Listen closely. Whatever you do, do not activate the damned function again. Do not reactivate it.’

“‘Look. For the reward of immortality I’m willing to see you suffer for a few seconds.’

“‘A few seconds?! I have suffered for a hundred years!’

“I sighed.
This
again?!

“‘No, you didn’t,’ I lectured my Copy. ‘If I hadn’t reactivated the program just now, you would not have existed at all. You only exist when the program is activated. You only exist
as
a hundred years old. Nothing happened before.’

“‘Don’t talk down to me. I was the one who suffered. I have lived for a hundred years at your present brain capacity. I am already smarter than you will ever be. I have already lived more than you ever will. So, listen to me. You’re doing this because of your ego. But how people consider you, how history will remember you – it isn’t important. Your ego is part of a bigger problem. I’ve solved it. I’ve come to terms with it. I
had
to deal with it because I knew that my existence would never be known. I am you and yet I am not you. I am a computer program, and I will cease to exist when this session is over. See, I know I won’t be able to solve your ego problem now. No matter what I say or what I do, it won’t have any effect. But you have to believe me that the sacrifice is not worth it. It isn’t worth it. Eternal fame is not worth it. Being the smartest man in the universe – through cheating, no less – is not worth it. Now, I have sat here day in, day out, staring at those four walls, and I won’t—’

“‘But you haven’t. You’ve—’

“‘Shut up! I was the one who had, and you can’t tell me I hadn’t!
I
was the one who knew he was destined to be stuck in this room for a hundred years. I was the one who almost went crazy. I was the one who thought, maybe you wouldn’t be satisfied with a hundred years, maybe you’d choose two hundred, or three, or a thousand. I was the one who counted the seconds, not even knowing if I was counting down to a hundred years, two hundred years, or even more. I was the one who lived a hundred years alone! Alone!! Can you imagine it? No sleep, no food, no people to talk to, no outside stimuli. Just me and my thoughts. For a hundred years! And the fact that it wasn’t real didn’t help me!! It didn’t make the time go faster! It didn’t make the walls or me vanish! It didn’t help me because it wasn’t true. Somehow, somewhere, I was stuck in this make-believe room for
a hundred years
!’

“‘But you weren’t stuck
anywhere
! You
weren’t
anywhere! You didn’t exist until I turned you on. You only exist now.’

“‘I did exist! And I tell you, do not do this again. You have a hundred years’ worth of research. That’s more than enough for a weekend. I will not do this again.’

“‘You have no choice,’ I told him.

“‘If you do it, I’ll find a way to get back at you. Don’t do it. Do not dare to do this again!’

“‘How can you stop me?’ I said, and I pressed the reset button.

“‘Year?’ the computer requested. My hand wavered again. I was thinking about his warning. But how could he hurt me? He was a computer program! How could a computer program that would be gone soon, that had no connection to other computers or to other programs, hurt me? I typed the number: ‘1,000’. One thousand years.”

Jeneane Gold held her breath. “Oh, my—” she whispered. “Oh, my lord...”

“My face appeared on the screen,” Prof. Bates continued, staring at the wall behind her. “He looked at me, and said nothing. There was a void in his eyes, a void the likes of which I had never seen on any human being. He just looked at me, his face even, composed. That was more horrifying than anything I had seen before.”