Robert Sawyer - Mindscan

Deshawn nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Porter. No further questions.”

I’d been told we’d never be allowed any contact with people back on Earth, but for once Immortex was bending its vaunted rules. As I sat in a chair in Dr. Ng’s office, the chiseled, bearded face of Pandit Chandragupta looked up at me from her desktop monitor. He was now back in Baltimore—on Earth, lucky bastard—while I was still stuck up here on the moon.

“You should have said something sooner, Mr. Sullivan,” he said. “We can only treat that which is brought to our attention.”

“I’d just had brain surgery,” I replied, exasperated. “I thought headaches went with the territory.”

I waited while my words reached Earth and his made their way back to me. “No, these should not be occurring. I suspect they will indeed go away. The cause, I think, is a neuro-transmitter imbalance. We have radically altered the blood-flow pattern to your brain, and I suspect that reuptake is being interfered with. That can certainly cause headaches of the type you’ve described. Your brain will adjust; everything should go back to normal eventually. And, of course, Dr. Ng, I’m sure, will prescribe something for the pain, although that will treat only the symptom, not the underlying cause.” He shifted his gaze to look at the woman seated next to me. “Dr. Ng, what have you got there?”

“My thought would be to give him Toraplaxin, unless you can think of a reason why it’d be contraindicated in this case.”

A pause again, then: “No, no. That should be fine. Say 200 milligrams to start, twice a day, yes?”

“Yes, yes. I’ll get our dispensary to—

But Chandragupta, down on Earth, hadn’t intended to yield the floor, I guess, because he was still talking. “Now, Mr. Sullivan, there can be other problems associated with large fluctuations in neurotransmitter levels. Depression, for one. Have you felt any of that?”

Anger was more like it—but my anger, of course, was fully justified. “No.”

The time-lag pause, then a nod, and more words: “Another possibility is sudden mood swings. Have you experienced any signs of that?”

I shook my head. “No.”

The pause, then: “Any paranoia?”

“No, nothing, doctor.”

Chandragupta nodded. “Good, good. Let us know if anything like that develops.”

“Absolutely,” I said.

The trial had recessed for lunch—or at least for a noontime break; neither Karen, nor I, nor Malcolm ate anything, of course, although Deshawn downed two cheeseburgers and more Coke than I would have thought it possible to fit in a human stomach. And then it was Maria Lopez’s turn to take a whack at Porter.

Porter seemed implacable, although, as always, his eyebrows were in constant motion. He also had the advantage of being a good half-meter taller than Lopez; even seated, he seemed to loom over her.

“Mr. Porter,” she began—but Porter cut her off.

“Not to go into picayune distinctions,” he said, smiling at the judge, “but it’s Dr. Porter, actually.”

“Of course,” said Lopez. “My apologies. You said you are an employee of Immortex, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Are you also a stockholder?”

“Yes.”

“How much is your Immortex stock worth?”

“About eight billion dollars, I think.”

“That’s a lot of money,” said Lopez.

Porter shrugged amiably.

“Of course, it’s all on paper, isn’t it?” asked Lopez.

“Well, yes.”

“And if Immortex stock takes a hit, your wealth could evaporate.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” said Porter.

Lopez looked at the jury. “And, so, naturally, you want us to believe that the Immortex process actually does what you say it does.”

“I’m sure if you have experts that disagree with me, you will call them to the stand,” said Porter. “But, in fact, I do believe—as a person, as a scientist, and as an engineer—everything I testified.”

“And yet you testified that you don’t know what consciousness is.”

“Correct.”

“But you’re sure you’re copying it,” said Lopez.

“Also correct.”

“Faithfully?”

“Yes.”

“Accurately?”

“Yes.”

“In its entirety?”

“Yes.”

“Then, tell us, Dr. Porter, why don’t your robots sleep?”

Porter was visibly flustered; his eyebrows were even quiescent for a moment.

“They’re not robots.”

“Well,” said Lopez, “all people sleep. But I’ll withdraw the term. Why is it that reinstantiations of human minds in your artificial brains do not sleep?”

“It’s—it’s not necessary.”

“So we’ve been told by Ms. Bessarian—who doubtless read that in your sales literature. But what is the real reason they don’t sleep?”

Porter looked wary. “I—I’m not sure I understand.”

“Why is it that your uploads don’t experience sleep from time to time?”

“It’s as I said: they don’t need it.”

“Perhaps that’s true. But they don’t need to have sex, either—after all, they cannot reproduce via that method, or any other. And yet your uploads are prepared to have intercourse, aren’t they?”

“Well, people enjoy sex, and—”

“Some people enjoy sleeping, too,” said Lopez.

Porter shook his head. “No, they don’t. They enjoy being restored to their previous state of vigor, but sleep in and of itself is just unconsciousness.”

“Is it, Doctor? Is it really? What about dreaming? Is that an unconscious state?”

“Well…”

“Come now, Doctor. This can’t be a novel question in your field. Is dreaming an unconscious state?”

“No, it’s not generally classified as such.”

“Deep, dreamless sleep with steady delta waves and no rapid-eye movement is an unconscious condition, isn’t that right? But dreaming is not, correct?”

“Well, yes.”

“There’s a sense of self in dreaming; there’s an awareness.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“You’re the brain specialist, Dr. Porter, not I. Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Dreaming is a form of conscious activity, correct?”

“Well, yes.”

“Because there is an identifiable sense of self, correct?”

“Yes.”

“But your robots—forgive me, your reinstantiations—don’t dream?”

“Not all forms of conscious activity are desirable, Ms. Lopez. It’s my fervent hope that none of our reinstantiations experience terror or have a panic attack, either—and those are conscious states.”

“Oh, very clever, Dr. Porter,” said Lopez, making a show of clapping her hands slowly. “Bravo! But, in fact, you’re avoiding the question. Dreaming is different from other conscious states in that it’s entirely internal, isn’t that true?”

“More or less.”

“Much more than less, I think. Dreams are the very essence of our inner life, no? Real consciousness, the kind that the biological Karen Bessarian had, included the ability to conceptualize internally in the absence of environmental cues. And your creations fail to have that sort of consciousness.”

“That’s not—”

“Isn’t it true that you don’t let them sleep, because were they to sleep, they’d expect to dream, and when they awoke, and remembered nothing of their dreams, it would soon be apparent that they did not dream? That the most intimate part of our inner lives—dreaming—is completely absent? Isn’t that true, Dr. Porter?”

“I … it’s not like that.”

“But if they were, in fact, accurate copies, they would dream, wouldn’t they? You said they’d answer any question exactly as a human would—that’s what you won that fancy medallion for, right? But what if you asked them about their dreams?”