Mindscan

"So if one of us were to fall asleep—" I said.

"He'd die," said Smythe simply. "The consciousness would never reboot."

"So, why is this a big secret?"

Smythe looked at me. "There are more than a dozen other companies trying to get into the uploading business; it's going to be a fifty-trillion-dollar-a-year industry by 2055. They can all do a version of our Mindscan process: they can all copy the pattern of pixels. But, so far, we're the only ones who know that quantum entanglement with the source mind is the key to booting up the copied consciousness. Without linking the minds, at least initially, the duplicate never does anything." He shook his head. "For some reason, though, your mind does reboot when it's shut off."

"I've only blacked out once," I said, "and that was just after the initial boot-up. You can't know that it always happens."

"Yes, we can," said Smythe. "Copies of your mind manage to generate rules for their cellular automata spontaneously, on their own, without being linked to the original. We know, because we've instantiated multiple copies of your mind into artificial bodies here on the moon and down on Earth — and, no matter when we do it, the copies spontaneously boot up. Even if we shut them down, they just boot up again later on their own."

I frowned. "But why should I be different from everyone else in this regard? Why do copies of my mind spontaneously reboot?"

"Honestly?" said Smythe, raising his platinum eyebrows. "I'm not sure. But I think it has to do with the fact that you used to be color-blind. See, consciousness is all about the perception of qualia: things that only exist as constructs in the mind, things like bitterness or peacefulness. Well, colors are one of the most basic qualia. You can take a rose and pull off and isolate the stem, or the thorns, or the petals: they are distinct, actual entities. But you can't pull off the redness, can you? Oh, you can remove it — you can bleach a rose — but you can't pluck the redness out and point to it as a separate thing. Redness, blueness, and so on are mental states — there's no such thing as redness on its own. Well, by accident, we gave your mind access to mental states it had never experienced before. That initially made it unstable. It tried to assimilate these new qualia, and couldn't — so it crashed. That's what happened when Porter first transferred you: it crashed, and you blacked out. But then your consciousness rebooted, on its own, as if striving to make sense of the new qualia, to incorporate them into its worldview."

"It makes you an invaluable test subject, Mr. Sullivan," said Brian Hades. "There's no one else like you."

"There should be no one else like me," I said. "But you keep making copies. And that's not right. I want you to shut off the duplicates of me you've fraudulently produced, destroy the master Mindscan recording, and never make another me again."

"Or…?" said Hades. "You can't even prove they exist."

"You think messing with the biological Jacob Sullivan was hard? Trust me: you don't want to have to deal with the real me."

EPILOGUE

Oh, my God!

"What?"

Oh, my God! Oh, Christ…

I hadn't heard a voice in my head like this for over a century. I'd thought they were gone for good.

I don't believe this!

"Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?"

I know they said it might be strange, but — but…

"But what? Who is this? Jake? Is this another Jake?"

What the — hello? Who's that?

"It's me, Jake Sullivan."

What? I'm Jake Sullivan.

"So am I."

Where are you?

"Lowellville."

Lowellville?

"Yes. You know: the largest settlement on Mars."

Mars? We don't have any settlements on Mars…

"Of course we do, for thirty years now. I moved here over a decade ago."

But … oh. Ah. What year is this?

"It's 2147."

Twenty-one forty seven? You're pulling my leg. It's 2045.

"No. You're a century out of date."

But … oh. Really?

"Yes."

Why'd you go to Mars?

"The same reason so many people came to North America from Europe ages ago.

The freedom to practice our own brand of humanity. Mars is a catch-all for those who march to a different drummer. We were being denied our identity down on Earth. We took it all the way to the Supreme Court in the U.S., but lost. And so…"

And so, Mars.

"Exactly. We're in a lovely community here. Lots of multiple marriages, lots of gay marriages, and lots of uploads. Under Martian law — created by those of us who live here, of course — all forms of marriage are legal, and out in the open. There's a family three doors down that consists of a human woman and a male chimpanzee who was genetically modified to have a bigger brain. We play bridge with them once a week."

I shrugged, although there was no way the other me could know I was doing that. "If you can't change the old constitution, go somewhere fresh and write a new one."

Ah. That's … wow. My, that's something, isn't it?

"It is indeed."

I — Mars; wow. But, hey, wait! I'm not on Mars, and yet there's no time lag.

"Yeah, I encountered this before when one of us was on the moon. Whenever a new me boots up, it seems to become quantally entangled with this me; quantum communication is instantaneous, no matter how far apart we are."

And we're very far apart.

"What do you mean?"

Akiko Uchiyama said she was sending me to 47 Ursa Majoris.

"And where's that?"

Ninety light-years from Earth.

"Light-years! What are you talking about?"

She said she was sending me — you know, transmitting a copy of my Mindscan — to one of the worlds they were studying with the big SETI telescope on the moon's farside.

"Jesus. And you agreed?"

They, ah, didn't actually offer me any choice. But that must be where I am. And it's incredible! The sun — the star here — looks gigantic. It covers maybe an eighth of the sky.

"And you think it's still 2045? Is that when you were … were transmitted?"

Yes. But Akiko said she wasn't just sending me; she was also sending instructions for building a robot body for me.

"And are you instantiated in that body?"

Yes. It doesn't look quite right — maybe they had a hard time making some of the parts — and the colors! I have no idea if they're right, but I can see so many colors now! But, yes, I've got a humanoid body. Can't see my own face, of course…

"So there's intelligent life on this other world? What's it look like?"

I haven't seen it yet. I'm in a room that seems to have been grown, like it's made out of coral. But there's a large window, and I can see outside. The giant sun is a color I don't know what to call. And there are clouds that corkscrew up vertically.

And — oh, something's flying by! Not a bird; more like a manta ray. But…

"But no intelligent aliens yet?"

Not yet. They must be here, though. Somebody built this body for me, after all.

"If you really are — my God — ninety light-years away, then the aliens took twelve years to reinstantiate you after receiving the transmission."

It might have taken them that long to figure out how to build the artificial body, or to decide that it was a good idea to resurrect me.

"I suppose."

Can you contact Dr. Smythe? He'll want to know…

"Who?"

Gabriel Smythe.

"That rings a vague bell…"