The Terminal Experiment

“Did you look at it?” said Peter.

“Aye,” she said. “Chimps have souls.” Her voice was bitter, as she thought about her lost friend. “As if anyone could have ever doubted that.”

The sim’s first thought was to tamper with the prescription database at Shoppers Drug Mart, the pharmacy chain used by Rod Churchill. But despite repeated attempts, he couldn’t get in. It was frustrating, but not surprising: of course a drugstore would have very high security. But there was more than one way to skin a gym teacher. And there were lots of low-security computer systems around…

Since the 1970s, immigration officials at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport had used a simple test whenever someone arrived claiming to be a Torontonian but whose papers weren’t entirely in order. They asked the person what the phone number was of a famous local pizza delivery chain. No one could live in Toronto and not know that number: it appeared on billboards, countless newspaper and TV ads, and was sung incessantly as a jingle in radio commercials.

As the decades passed, the chain widened its array of deliverable meals, first adding other Italian dishes, then submarine sandwiches, then barbecued chicken and ribs, then burgers, and, eventually, a whole range of cuisine from the pedestrian to the exotic. Although they’d kept their trademark phone number, they eventually changed their name to Food Food. But even back in its humble pizza days, the company prided itself on its state-of-the-art computerized ordering system. All orders were placed through the one central phone number and then transferred to the whichever of the over three hundred stores throughout Metro Toronto was closest to the caller’s home, allowing the food to be delivered within thirty minutes — or the customer got it for free.

Well, Rod Churchill had said that every Wednesday night, when his wife was out at her conversational French course, he ordered di

It took a couple of days of trying, but the sim eventually unraveled the security of Food Food’s computers — as he expected, the safety precautions were much less rigid than those of a drugstore. He called up Rod’s ordering history.

Perfect.

Like all restaurants, Food Food was obligated to provide full ingredient and nutritional information, which could be read by videophone at the customer’s leisure. The sim waded carefully through it, until he found exactly what he was looking for.

Pope Benedict XVI today released an encyclical affirming the existence of an immortal, divine soul within human beings. The Pontiff revealed that the Papal Committee on Science was now in the process of evaluating the evidence related to the discovery of the soulwave. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the Vatican has placed an order with Hobson Monitoring Ltd. for three Soul Detector units.

Charity news: The United Way of Metropolitan Toronto reported a record-breaking week of donations. The American Red Cross a

In 1954, an American physician named Moses Kenally left a $50,000 trust fund for anyone who could prove the existence of some sort of life after death. The fund has been administered for fifty-seven years now by the Co

The ultimate memorial! Davidson’s Funeral Homes now offers deathbed recordings of the departing soul. Call for details.

Representative Paul Christmas (R, Iowa) today introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would require hospitals to terminate life-support for patients with no realistic hope of recovering consciousness. “We’re interfering in God’s attempt to bring these poor souls back home,” he said.

CHAPTER 31

Peter made a couple of phone calls to pass on the news from Glasgow, then rejoined Sarkar at the main console. Sarkar moved the Ambrotos simulacrum into the background and brought Spirit, the life-after-death sim, into the foreground.

Peter leaned into the mike. “I’d like to ask you a question,” he said.

“The big question, no doubt,” said the sim. “What’s it like being dead?”

“Exactly.”

Spirit’s voice came through the speaker. “It’s like…” But then it trailed off.

Peter leaned forward in anticipation. “Yes?”

“It’s like being an aardvark.”

Peter’s jaw went a little slack. “How can it be like being an aardvark?”

“Or maybe an anteater,” said the sim. “I can’t see myself, but I know I’ve got a very long tongue.”

“Reincarnation…” said Sarkar, nodding slowly. “My Hindu friends will be pleased to hear this. But I must say I’d hoped for better for you, Peter, than an aardvark.”

“I’m getting hungry,” said the voice from the speaker. “Anybody got any ants?”

“I don’t believe this,” said Peter, shaking his head.

“Hah!” said the speaker. “Had you going there for a moment.”

“No, you did not,” said Peter.

“Well,” said the synthesized voice, a little petulantly, “I had Sarkar going, anyway.”

“Not really,” said Sarkar.

“You’re just being a pain,” Peter said into the microphone.

“Like father, like son,” said the sim.

“You crack a lot of jokes,” said Peter.

“Death is very fu

“Fu

“The sound of laughter might be, although I’ve come to realize it’s more of a social, rather than a biological, phenomenon, but finding something fu

“I suppose,” said Peter.

“In fact, I think I know exactly what humor is now: Humor is the response to the sudden formation of unexpected neural nets.”

“I don’t get it,” said Peter.

“Exactly. ‘I don’t get it.’ People say precisely the same thing when they don’t understand something serious as they do when they fail to understand a joke; we intuitively realize that some sort of co