Robert Sawyer - Calculating God

“Anyway,” I said, “you’ll live a total of about a hundred and thirty years. Me, I’m fifty-four right now; if it weren’t for the adenocarcinoma, I’d live another twenty-odd years, if not thirty or forty.”

Hollus’s eyestalks moved.

“But that’s it. And, again, even if I didn’t have cancer, a lot of that time would be in declining health.” I paused. “Do Forhilnors age gracefully?”

“A poet on my world once said, ‘It is all eclipsing moons’ — a metaphor that means much the same as your expression ‘it is all downhill’ — from the moment you are born. Forhilnor bodies and minds deteriorate over time, too.”

“Well, if you could assume a virtual existence — if you could live inside a computer — starting in the prime of youth, you could go on forever, without any deterioration.”

“Immortality has always been a dream of my people,” Hollus admitted.

“Mine, too. In fact, many preachers use a promise of life everlasting, albeit in some other realm, as their main inducement for good behavior. But although we’ve extended our life spans a great deal through improved health care, we are nowhere near immortal.”

“Nor are we,” said Hollus. “Nor are the Wreeds. But both they and we harbor hopes of making eternal life possible.”

“We thought we’d made a breakthrough a few years ago when we discovered how to put the end caps back on DNA.” Chromosomes have little protective bits at their ends, like the plastic-wrapped tips of shoelaces; every time a chromosome divides, the tips — called telomeres — are shortened. After enough divisions, the tips are completely gone, and the chromosome can’t divide anymore.

“We discovered that, too,” said Hollus, “almost a hundred years ago. But although replacing telomeres can make individual cells divide forever in the laboratory, it does not work in an integrated organism. When an organism reaches a critical mass of cells, division either halts after a set number of repeats, just as if the telomeres had been diminished, or reproduction becomes uncontrolled, and tumors form.” His eyestalks dipped. “As you know, I lost my own mother to cancer of the vostirrarl, an organ that serves much the same function for us as does the marrow in your bones.”

“Leukemia,” I said softly. “We call cancer of the marrow leukemia.”

Hollus was quiet for a time.

Yes, I could surely understand the appeal.

To be uploaded.

To be divorced from the physical.

To live without tumors, without pain.

If the opportunity were presented to me, would I do it?

In a minute.

“It’s certainly a great incentive to give up physical existence,” I said. “Living forever in the good health of youth.” I looked at Hollus, who was standing on just five legs; he seemed to be giving the sixth a rest. “In which case, perhaps your people have nothing to fear. Presumably, soon enough your race will develop the same ability — it seems every race does. And then, if your people want, they will . . . will transcend into a new form of existence.”

Hollus said nothing for several seconds. “I am not sure that I would look forward to that,” he said.

“It must be very tempting, if race after race has chosen that route.”

“I suppose,” said Hollus. “My people have been making considerable progress in brain-scanning technology — it is somewhat more difficult for us than it will be for your people, since our brains are in the centers of our bodies and since the integration of the two halves will doubtless pose some problems. Still, I imagine we will be able to upload a combined Forhilnor consciousness within a few decades.” He paused. “But this does explain the phenomenon I observed in those science-fiction videos you showed me: why alien races that encounter each other in the flesh are always at about the same technological level. There is, it seems, a narrow window between when interstellar flight is developed and when a race ceases to have corporeal existence. It also explains why the search for extraterrestrial intelligence via radio telescopes usually fails; again, there is only a short time between the development of radio and the abandonment of its use.”

“But, as far as you’ve been able to determine, none of the races you’re aware of, except our three, have existed simultaneously.” I paused. “Our races — the three of us — may be the first chance the galaxy has ever had for a . . . a planetary federation.”

“Interesting thought,” said Hollus. “Do you suppose that is why God intervened on our worlds? To bring us to technological sophistication simultaneously so that we could form some sort of alliance?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Although I’m not sure what that would accomplish. I mean, it might be good for our races, but what does it do for the creator?”

Hollus lowered his sixth foot. “That is a very good question,” he said at last.

Later that night, after we’d put Ricky to bed, and I’d read to him for a bit, Susan and I were sitting on the couch in the living room. I had my arm draped around her shoulders, and she had her head resting on my chest.

“Have you ever thought about the future?” I asked her. I lifted my arm a little bit. “I don’t mean the near future.” I’m sure she’d been giving that much thought. “I mean the far future — thousands, or even millions, of years from now.”

I couldn’t see Susan’s face. I hoped she was smiling. “I won’t be around to see that.”

I was quiet for a moment; I didn’t know if I really wanted to broach this topic. “But what if there was a way,” I said. “A way to live forever.”

Susan was sharp; that’s one of the reasons I’d married her. “Has Hollus offered you that? Immortality?”

I shook my head. “No. He doesn’t have any better idea of how to make it work than we do. But his race has found evidence of six other species that seem to have perhaps discovered immortality . . . of a sort.”

She shifted slightly against my chest. “Oh?”

“They seem to have . . . well, the word we’ve been using is ‘transcended’ into another level of existence . . . presumably by uploading themselves into computers.”

“That’s hardly ‘living forever.’ You might as well be a corpse preserved in formaldehyde.”

“We presume the uploaded beings continue to exist within the computer, acting and reacting and interacting. Indeed, they might not even be able to tell that they don’t have material existence anymore; the sensory experience might be comparable to, or better than, what we’re used to.”

She sounded incredulous. “And you say whole races have done this?”

“That’s my theory, yes.”

“And you think the individual consciousnesses continue on forever inside the computers?”

“It’s possible.”

“Which means . . . which means you wouldn’t have to die?”

“Well, the flesh-and-blood me would die, of course, and I would have no continuity with the uploaded version once the scan had been made. But the uploaded version would remember having been me, and would go on after I’d died. As far as it — or those interacting with it — would be concerned, it would be me. So, yes, if we had access to the technology, in a very real sense I wouldn’t have to die. I assume that one of the big reasons for people uploading themselves was to overcome the limitations imposed by growing old or ill.”

“This isn’t on the table?” asked Susan. Her heart was pounding; I could feel it. “You really haven’t been offered this?”

“No,” I said. “Neither the Forhilnors nor the Wreeds know how to do it — and, for that matter, we’re only assuming that this is what really happened to the other races. It seems that every intelligent species either destroys itself shortly after discovering nuclear weapons, or that it survives maybe a hundred and fifty years longer, but then decides to transcend.”