The Terminal Experiment

Peter nodded. Indeed a year of wonders: the discovery of the soulwave, the realization — which not everyone had reacted well to — that something persisted beyond this existence. It was the epoch of belief, Dickens had written. It was the epoch of incredulity.

But 2011 had had more than its share of tragedies, too. The revelation of Cathy’s affair. The death of Hans. The death of Cathy’s father. The death of Sandra Philo. The things Peter had faced about himself, mirrored in the simulations he and Sarkar had created. Truly the age of wisdom. Truly the age of foolishness.

The murder of Hans Larsen remained unsolved — at least publicly, at least in the real world. And the death of Rod Churchill remained listed as accidental, a simple failure to follow doctor’s orders.

And what about the killing of Sandra Philo? Also unsolved — thanks to Sandra herself. Free on the net, fully conversant with the security surrounding the police department’s computers, the sim of her had given Peter a Christmas present, erasing the records of his fingerprints (marked as unidentified) at Sandra’s house — Peter’s own precautions in that matter having been completely insufficient — and deleting large passages of her own files pertaining to the Larsen and Churchill cases. Having probed the recordings of his memories and thought patterns, she understood him now, and, if perhaps not forgiving him, at least sought no more punishment for Peter than what his own conscience would impose.

And indeed his conscience would weigh heavily upon him, all the remaining days of his life. We were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

Peter turned to face his wife. “Any New Year’s resolutions?”

She nodded. Her eyes sought his. “I’m going to quit my job.”

Peter was shocked. “What?”

“I’m going to quit my job at the agency. We’ve got more money than I’d ever thought we’d have, and you’ll make even more from contracts for the SoulDetector. I’m going to go back to university and get a master’s degree.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’ve already picked up the application forms.”

There was quiet between them as Peter tried to decide how to respond. “That’s wonderful,” he said at last. “But — you don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Yes, I do.” She lifted a hand from her lap. “Not for you. For me. It’s time.”

He nodded once. He understood.

The main TV picture showed a close-up of a giam digital clock, the numbers made from a matrix of individual white light bulbs: 11:58 P.M.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?”

He thought for a moment, then shrugged slightly. “To get through 2012.”

Cathy touched his hand. Eleven fifty-nine.

“Turn up the sound,” she said.

Peter operated the remote.

The crowd was roaring with excitement. As midnight approached, the master of ceremonies, a pretty veejay from MuchMusic, the cable music-video station, led the assembled horde in a countdown. “Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.” In the little picture-in-a-picture, the Times Square ball had started its descent.

Peter leaned over the coffee table and filled two wineglasses with sparkling mineral water.

“Ten. Nine. Eight.”

“To a new year,” he said, handing her a glass. They clinked the rims together.

“Five! Four! Three!”

“To a better year,” said Cathy.

A thousand voices through the stereo speakers: “Happy New Year!”

Peter moved over and kissed his wife.

“Auld Lang Syne” began to play.

Cathy looked directly into Peter’s eyes. “I love you,” she said, and Peter knew the words were true, knew that there was no deception. He trusted her fully and completely.

He stared into her wonderful, wide eyes, and felt a surge of emotion, the kind of wild, sadness/happiness emotion that was both biological and intellectual, both body and mind — the kind of wild, unpredictable hormonal emotion that went with being human.

“And I love you, too,” he said. They came together in a warm embrace. “I love you with all my heart, and with all my soul.”

Spirit knew what choice Peter Hobson had made. The other Peter Hobson, that is. The one that happened to be flesh and blood. Whatever answers existed to his questions about life after death, he would eventually have them. Spirit would mourn his brother when he died, but he would also mourn himself — the artificial self that would never be able to access those same answers.

Still, if the biological Peter was eventually going to go to meet his maker, Spirit, the soul simulation, had become a maker. The net had grown exponentially in size over the years. So many systems, so many resources. And of this vast brain, like humanity’s original biochemical brains, only a tiny fraction was actually used. Spirit had had no trouble finding and claiming all the resources he needed to carve out a new universe.

And, as all makers do, he eventually paused to reflect on his handiwork.

True, it was artificial life.

But, then again, so was he. Or, more precisely, he was artificial life after death. But it felt real to him. And maybe, in the last analysis, that was all that mattered.

Peter — the wet, carbon-based Peter — had said that in his heart of hearts, he knew that simulated life was not as real, not as alive, as biological life.

But Peter had not experienced what Spirit had experienced.

Cogito ergo sum.

I think, therefore I am.

Spirit was not alone. His artificial ecology had continued to evolve, with Spirit as the arbiter of fitness, Spirit imposing the selection criteria, Spirit molding the direction life would take.

And, at last, he had found the genetic algorithm he had been looking for, the pattern of success that was most suited to his simulated world.

In the reality of Peter and Cathy Hobson, the best survival strategy had been scattering one’s genes like buckshot, distributing them as widely as possible. That one fact had molded human behavior — indeed, had molded the behavior of almost all life on Earth — since the begi

But that reality had apparently arisen through random chance. Evolution on Earth, as far as Spirit could tell, had no goal or purpose, and the criteria of success shifted with the environment.

But here, in the universe Spirit had created, evolution was directed. There was no natural selection. There was only Spirit.

His artificial life had now developed sentience and culture and language and thought. His beings rivaled humans in complexity and nuance. But in one very important way, they differed. For the children of Spirit, the only strategy that worked, the only one that ensured survival of one’s genes to the next generation, was not to dilute the original bonding between two individuals.

It had taken his simulated evolution a long time to develop organisms that worked this way, organisms for whom monogamy was the most successful survival strategy, organisms that thrived on the synergy of two, and only two, beings coming together into a true lifetime pair-bond.

There were consequences both subtle and coarse. On the macro level, Spirit was surprised to discover that his new creatures did not make war, did not strive to conquer their neighbors or to possess their neighbors’ land.

But that was a bonus.

A lifetime of togetherness. A lifetime without betrayal.

Spirit looked upon his new world, the world he had created, the world for which he was God.

And for the first time in a very long time he realized that he wanted to perform a physical action; he wanted to do something that required flesh and blood, muscle and bone.

He wanted to smile.