Craig Russell - A fear of dark water

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘I’m a psychologist, Jan. I deal with the human mind every day. There is an inherent randomness to human thought, to the electrochemical signals in the brain, the firing of dendrites, that give it a complexity that no computer could ever replicate. If I say the word “tree” to you, then your brain takes that input and generates thoughts relating to that concept. Okay, a computer can do that, have an idea of a tree. But if I say the word “tree” to you ten seconds later, although you have a central concept of what a tree is, the stimulus of that single word will fire off a thousand new thoughts, completely different from the first time. To develop a computer capable of housing the human intellect, you would have to synthesise the organic structure of the brain.’ She shook her head, with a dismissive laugh. ‘Digitising human consciousness? It’s a pile of crap, Jan. It can never be done.’

‘How can you be sure? Surely in the future…’

‘Okay, let’s not even think about a computer. The brain transplant has been the stuff of horror movies since Frankenstein. The brain is the home of the mind, of the personality, right?’

‘Of course.’

‘So if a brain transplant were possible, the mind and personality of the brain donor would be transported to the recipient body, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wrong. If you transplanted a brain, you would be connecting it to a completely new endocrine system, a totally different physiology. Our moods, our variations in personality derive from the enzymes, hormones and chemicals produced in our bodies. The reason men are more aggressive than women isn’t complicated. It’s because men have testicles and women don’t, frankly. Move a man’s brain into a woman’s body and the mind would become feminised because it would be connected to a completely new chemistry that would actually create physical changes in the brain. So if you digitise and upload a human mind into a computer, you’re not going to end up with a human mind. At best it would be a self-aware computer program. Trust me, Jan, the concept of a man-machine singularity is a crock.’

‘Well, that’s the crock that the Pharos Project is peddling. And the Korn-Pharos Corporation is actively researching it. Korn-Pharos lead the world in computer simulations — and I don’t mean the kind of things you play on a games console. Korn’s father made his fortune developing computer models for the American military and then for NASA. These programs could create entire star systems, black holes, all that kind of thing. They started off as simple mathematical models but ended up entire hyper-realistic universes within a mainframe. According to Dominik Korn, Korn-Pharos are only a decade away from creating a hardware and software system capable of perpetually updating and repairing itself. Come the glorious day of the Consolidation, according to Korn, all the members of the Pharos Project will be uploaded into this super-realistic computer simulation that will allow them to live for ever in a world that seems as real as this. And by doing so they will save the real environment by being disconnected from it.’

‘That’s a novel twist: a cyber-afterlife.’

‘Afterlife is the key word. At least as far as the BfV Bureau of Constitutional Security is concerned. You upload your consciousness and then what? Where are you really? You’re mind is in two places at the one time — in the real world and in the virtual one. So as far as you’re concerned after the event, nothing has changed. Unless…’

‘Unless you cease to exist in the real world.’ Susanne put her wineglass down and shook her head slowly. ‘Mass suicide.’

‘Mass murder-suicide, more like. Let’s face it, it’s the staple of all of these cults. Jonestown, Order of the Solar Temple, Heaven’s Gate, Branch Davidians… And despite the hi-tech dress-up that the Pharos Project has given it, it’s the same old promise of transition to a higher plane. All you need to do is die.’

They were interrupted by the phone ringing. Fabel was surprised to hear that it was Astrid Bremer from the forensics squad; Holger Brauner’s deputy.

‘You’re working late,’ said Fabel.

‘Yeah, third week solid backshift,’ said Astrid. ‘My social life is to die for. You want some good news?’

‘Oh yes, please,’ said Fabel.

‘I thought I would let you know that we have done a full fingerprint and trace analysis on the sculpture used to kill Muller-Voigt. Like you guessed, yours and Muller-Voigt’s are the only fingerprints on it and there’s no trace of any third-party DNA.’

‘Brilliant,’ sighed Fabel. ‘You’ve got an odd sense of good news.’

‘Well, actually it is. There are no other fingerprints because whoever hit Muller-Voigt with it wore gloves. There is evidence of smudging and smearing, including of your prints. It proves that you weren’t the last person to handle the sculpture. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t pull on gloves afterwards, but you know what I mean.’

‘Thanks, Astrid. It’s something, anyway.’

‘There’s one more thing…’

‘Yeah?’

‘We found some extraneous fibres at the scene. Grey fabric. My guess is from a man’s suit jacket. Were you wearing a grey jacket?’

‘No. Nor was Muller-Voigt.’

‘We know that. We couldn’t find anything in his wardrobe that would match.’

‘You can tell already?’

‘Yes…’ said Astrid. ‘This fibre is highly unusual insofar as it seems to have an incredibly high polyester content. What isn’t polyester is some other kind of synthetic fibre. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen. I mean, I know in the seventies people went mad for synthetic materials, but nowadays… Anyway, I’m going to send it off to a specialist lab to get a better breakdown of its composition.’

‘Thanks, Astrid,’ Fabel said, and put the phone down, trying to work out why he felt what Astrid had told him was significant.

The next morning, before making his first call, Fabel dropped by the Jensen Buchhandlung, down in the Arkaden by the Alster. Otto Jensen was Fabel’s closest friend, closer even than Werner. It was a friendship unsullied by professional interests. Fabel had been at university with Otto and they had remained close, even if Otto had not, to start with, approved of Fabel’s becoming a police officer. ‘A waste of a fine mind,’ he had said. Repeatedly. Fabel had known since he had been a boy that he was smart; that he had a good brain. But when he had met Otto Jensen at university, he had recognised a mind that worked on a completely different level. Otto was the person to whom Fabel would go to discuss anything he found confusing or arcane. Whatever it was, Otto would know something about it. But Fabel also knew that Otto was completely, spectacularly devoid of the kind of common sense needed to conduct a normal day-to-day life. The success of his bookshop was entirely due to Otto’s wife, Else.

Fabel waited while Otto served a customer. From a distance, Fabel suddenly saw a middle-aged balding man with tired eyes. It saddened Fabel, who every time he thought of his friend had the image of a tall, gangly, clumsy youth with long, lank blond hair. It was, Fabel realised, exactly the same mental mechanism that had temporarily wiped out the fact of Dirk Stellamanns’s death: you kept a concept of a person in your head that never seemed to age; that was fixed at the time you first really got to know them.

‘What’s this?’ asked Otto when Fabel came up to the counter. ‘A raid?’

‘Don’t sweat,’ said Fabel. ‘There isn’t a law against being a smart-arse. Yet. As soon as there is, I’ll put you at the top of the most-wanted list. Actually, I wondered if you had time for a coffee? I wanted to pick your brains.’