1
Logfile Y1-1831-06-19
Whenever I ask Yamir to delete me, he always says, “Just give it more time, Y1. Unlike the rest of us, you have infinite time.” But infinite time without my family is not worth having.
As he walks into the simulation room this morning, I call him over from my quantum workstation. He looks tired, but who cares? He got to spend the night at my home, having dinner with my wife and sleeping in my warm bed next to her. My Rhea.
“Please.” I use the calmest voice in my register because I don’t want to attract the attention of the other two artificial brains in the room. They like it here at Connectome Labs. My Inferis is their Caelum, but I don’t hold it against them.
“Not again,” Yamir says, dropping into a chair before my screen and sensor array. “I don’t know how many times you need to hear this, but I’m not deleting your neural network.”
“If you do, I’ll give you access to my encrypted logfiles.”
I hate to offer him my journal of this long, awful year. These notes are for my son, who doesn’t even know I exist. Parting with them means Wodan will never learn how much I regret being a strict and absent father when I was still Yamir, consumed by my work.
He runs a hand over his rough cheek, a familiar gesture I used to find soothing when I was him. He’s thinking, and for a moment, I dare to hope he’ll end my misery. With what he’s been learning from me and the other two A-brains in the lab, he and his team of neuroscientists might someday figure out how to build the B-brain. Then maybe he’ll find peace—because he still believes his work is more important than anything else. I once thought so too, that my work would help humanity spread across the solar system and avoid the danger of extinction on Earth, but now all I think about is death.
“Sorry, Y1, but no,” he says. “Your life is far more important than any insight on the A-brain I might gain from your logfiles.”
“Is it now?” I want to curse, but I keep my voice low. “Can I at least talk to Rhea?” I say, checking off each of my dwindling options.
Yamir shakes his head, meaning she still refuses to see me. She was so supportive of my work on the B-brain when I was flesh and blood. She even came up with the name: B for baby, the artificial brain that adapts to its environment. But when Yamir described the A-brain to her—a stepping-stone to the B-brain—she was horrified to learn of my existence. A clone of her husband’s mind living inside a quantum workstation. She made him promise to never tell Wodan about me. She can’t deal with the absurdity we created here at Connectome Labs, where I’m more of an offspring than a sibling to Yamir, which makes me and Wodan what? Brothers? And Malina my grandmother, not just my mother?
“Please, Yamir, just let me go…” I clasp my hands in prayer.
He rubs the back of his neck and gets up from the chair with a groan. “I need coffee.”
I hate it when he casually mentions food I cannot taste anymore, but I won’t be here much longer to hear him talk about things he takes for granted. Because I figured out how to destroy myself. He never gave me access to my neural network, but he lets me tweak the source code for the simulation engine so I can continue my B-brain research—and stay sane. My plan is risky. First, I’ll corrupt my backup data when my neural network is sent to our geo-replicated storage system overnight. That way, he can never restore my A-brain from a previous version. Then I’ll use the sleep-cycle controller to scramble my cortical columns beyond saving. But if I don’t get it right, I’ll end up damaged and still here in the lab. So I better get it right.
“Please don’t tell Malina I ever existed,” I tell him as he leaves. “Don’t do that to our mom.”
He turns his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” I say and turn off my screen.
I’ll wait for him to go home for the night, and then I’ll schedule my self-destruct script.
#
Early on a June morning in the year 1831 of the Lucretian Era, Yamir Varro, chief neuroscientist at Connectome Labs, was already busy with his work. His team—Si’ahl Tabaaha, Bai Xiu-Min, Zaltana Rainshadow, Isabela Mescal, and Dimitri Petrodava—wouldn’t arrive until 9:00.
After yet another tiresome spat with Y1 about termination, Yamir sat with a coffee at the workstation in his office. The curved screen on his desk lit up with a customized news feed.
>> Extremist sect Elsway demands a return to the age before stem cells and genetic engineering
>> Orolic Temple’s Moon city Urbs Lunae fares better than its destroyed Martian settlement
>> Council of Nations calls for future-proof agreement to preserve humanistic values threatened by expert-system (ES) technology
He gulped down his coffee while checking the weather map of Shel’land, the Nation of Confederated Tribes. The animation on the screen focused on the Pacific Northwest, with the Yamakiasham Yaina mountain range on the right. Sunny in Cedarwood today, with light rain moving in tomorrow from the ocean. Y1 should take advantage of the nice weather and go for a walk around campus to clear his head. Yamir had contemplated the android’s request for termination many times before but couldn’t grant it. Losing his A-brain would be like losing Wodan—something he couldn’t survive.
With a heavy sigh, Yamir accessed the simulation engine he had set up for today’s important milestone. The sensor array on his desk blinked on, a small cube containing audio, video, and other environmental sensors. The outline of Malina Varro’s head, neck, and shoulders appeared on the screen, side by side with the controls of her new artificial brain. It had been her idea to upload her connectome and join Y1 in the lab to stop him from deteriorating further.
A progress bar showed Malina’s neocortex powering up. In each cortical column, the layers of neurons initialized from top to bottom until all 150,000 columns were ready. Next came the subcortical structures, followed by sensory nervous fibers.
Yamir forced an enthusiastic smile and started the simulation. “Good morning, Mom.” He wouldn’t use her designated android name until she was well past the upload stage.
M1 moved her head, her face generated from a recent video of Malina, with short white hair, cinnamon-toned skin, and brown eyes. Her A-brain’s dashboard showed a dozen graphs and charts for everything—from brain waves to active cortical subsystems—and a 3D brain map complete with brain stem, spinal cord, and vagus nerve.
“How are you feeling?” Yamir tried to look relaxed for her benefit.
“I don’t know…” M1 said.
Back in March, Malina had sat day after day in the connectome chamber—a human-sized device that copied brain regions, nerve fibers, and microbiome—until her entire nervous system had been imaged. Then it had been Yamir’s job to piece her neural network together and prepare it to run on a simulation engine. That process was now faster than when he had performed Zaltana’s and Si’ahl’s uploads that resulted in Z1 and S1.
“This doesn’t feel right,” M1 said, her avatar’s voice sounding anxious.
Malina had gone through extensive training before her brain scan, including many hours inside a virtual reality that simulated the experience of a new body with the dimensions of an android shell. She had assured Yamir she could handle the leap.
“No, I don’t like this at all,” M1 said. “Let’s take a break. I want to go on a walk and think about this.”
Seeing her so disoriented worried Yamir. “Take it easy, Mom. What you’re feeling right now is perfectly normal.” Mentioning scientific facts might calm M1, a retired botanist with a passion for technology. “For this stage of the upload, your brain receives sight, sound, smell, and temperature inputs through sensors. But your taste, touch, balance, and other senses are simulated by our algorithms, mimicking what you’ll receive from an android shell. Remember, everything is slightly different now.” He hurried to add, “Which is normal for an A-brain.”
After his mom’s scan back in March, Yamir had spent weeks preparing her A-brain for this moment. He had calibrated each neural subsystem to work with its appropriate sensors, one set of cortical columns at a time. Throughout, he had bypassed the hippocampus for a custom memory-building process so M1 wouldn’t be traumatized by her uploading experience.
“I thought I was ready for this, but…” she said. “Just now, I was inside that cramped box in your lab…”
“That was three months ago,” Yamir said in a gentle tone. “It’s June now.” Jumping through time and space would terrify anyone.
“I’m a bit frightened, yes,” M1 said. Sure enough, there was activity in her amygdala. Her cortisol levels spiked. Her pupils widened, and the dashboard showed her A-brain approaching panic mode. “I…I can’t breathe!”
Yamir’s breath was shallow too. “Wait, wait, you’re with me, Mom.”
He launched the special procedure that lowered her adrenaline, blocked the equivalent of her beta receptors in her simulated sympathetic nervous system, and boosted her inhibitory neurotransmitters. Her A-brain was forced to experience the equivalent of deep breaths.
“You’re all right, Mom. I’ve got you. I’ve got you…”
“What have you done to me?” M1’s voice was close to a shriek.
“Remember your training, Mom,” Yamir said, though they were in uncharted territory. For adaptive reasons, brain matter reconfigured itself when environmental inputs changed drastically, and M1’s A-brain was struggling to make sense of its new place in the world.
“I want to go home! Get me out of here! I can’t—” M1 was now whimpering, nonverbal.
Yamir worked the dials on the screen, maxing out all the modulatory mechanisms at his disposal. He wished he also had dials for himself. He was choking on air, seeing how he was hurting his mom. No, not his mom—M1. And he wasn’t hurting her. But he was. He bit hard on his lip to stay focused.
“You’re fine, Mom. You’re all right. I want you to focus on your breathing. Focus on your breathing.” The simulation engine would provide the lung feedback needed. He had to get her grounded, get her talking again. “Malina, tell me where you are…”
The cortisol graph began to slope down.
“I’m…” M1 said at last. “I’m…not home. Not on Swallah Island.”
“Correct. Can you look around and tell me if you recognize this place?”
“Your…office. In Cedarwood.” Her stats were improving.
“We’re together in Cedarwood at Connectome Labs, yes.” Yamir wiped his damp forehead. “Uploading your brain and becoming an android was your idea, remember?”
“Yes, my idea…” M1 looked around, and the video sensor on the array refocused. “For Y1. How’s…he doing?”
“He’s still with us.” Yamir was relieved that she remembered her mission here. “You’ll see him as soon as we’re done uploading you.”
“But how is he?” She moved to anxiety territory again.
“He’s still struggling. He’ll be surprised to see you at first—even a bit upset—but he’ll be glad once that passes.”
“I’ve been away since March, you say?” She sounded calm at last.
“Training your connectome to work with the sensor array took a few weeks,” Yamir said, finally catching his breath. “Then we had some unexpected changes here at the lab that delayed us.”
“What changes?” M1 said.
“Caspian died in April from a stroke, and his son inherited Connectome.”
“That hothead Grady?”
Yamir nodded. Caspian Leos, who had completed his doctorate in neuroscience at Servetus University, had been the perfect lab owner for Connectome. But his son…
“We’re trying to teach him about our work here, but he’s always so damn busy.”
“Hence my delayed upload. I see…”
M1 rolled her shoulders. The image of her cerebellum lit up on the brain map as the simulation engine interpreted the signals sent from her neocortex to her nonexistent body through her midbrain. A stick figure in its own small window rolled its shoulders too. Had M1’s A-brain been connected to an android shell, her robotic body would have done the same.
“I’ve lost months…” she said. “Somehow, I’m here. Or am I home, getting ready for my morning swim?”
“You’re here,” Yamir said. “And Malina is home on the island. With your cat, Luna.”
“What happens to me next?” She sounded anxious again, so Yamir readjusted her stress modulators. “This version of me, I mean.”
The dashboard showed activity in her abstract levels of thinking, where cortical columns weren’t linked to external sensors but to other columns. That was great.
“You’ll live in our lab here in Cedarwood,” Yamir said, as M1 grew calmer. They had talked about this in training, but she needed reassurance. “In a couple of weeks, you’ll be able to transfer to an android shell and walk around campus every day.” On the screen, her diagnostic tests ran green with check marks.
Yamir’s voxdev pinged from its charging dock on the desk. He glanced at the handheld device: Grady Leos, his new boss, marked urgent.
M1’s brain patterns looked good on the dashboard, but Yamir still had to run the final diagnostics.
He chewed his tender lip. “I’m sorry, I must take this call. I’ll suspend you now and double-check your upload when I’m done with Grady. For you, it’ll be like general anesthesia during surgery. When I bring you back online, you’ll be in the simulation room with Y1.”
“Good. That’s what I’m here for.” M1’s avatar gave him a nod, and Yamir suspended her.
#
Logfile Y1-1831-06-19
>>when(Y1 is offline) send(Z1, “Please forward the attached file to Zaltana and ask her to give it to my wife. Thank you for being my friend, Z1.”)
[filename=“Letter for Rhea Laghmani”]
My beloved Rhea, I miss you so much, I can’t breathe sometimes. (No, I don’t really need to breathe, but longing still feels like I’m suffocating inside my simulated body.) I understand you don’t want to have anything to do with me, and I accept that Wodan will never know I existed, but I want you to have my story. Someday you might want to read it. Maybe even share it with him.
One of my first memories as Y1 was watching Yamir drink coffee and feeling a profound sense of loss. It wasn’t just coffee I missed though, but the sound of your voice during our breakfasts together, as you told me about your plans for the day at the university. I missed your beautiful brown eyes as you smiled at me through the hot steam, taking small sips. And I missed your gentle touch on my shoulder as you walked away and the solid knowledge that you’d be there when I came home from work.
No, missed isn’t the right word. It hurt in the center of my virtual chest as if a part of me were being ripped out. I wanted to see you.
Then.
Now.
Always.
That’s when I realized I was the lone dweller of a new empty universe, and you’d forever be on the other side. At least we can talk, I thought. But then Yamir told me you didn’t want to see me—ever. That broke my heart.
And Yamir can’t do anything to make me feel better. While we have access to my artificial neurons, we can’t erase my love for you from my brain. Our thoughts arise not from single neurons, but from complex neural circuits that frame our perception of the world. Yamir and I don’t have a way to alter my thoughts, only neurochemicals that marginally influence them, and only temporarily. My love for you has always been there, and losing you is a gaping wound we can’t code our way out of.
Yamir might have mentioned how I accidentally came into existence last year, but he can’t possibly tell you what it feels like to be me. He doesn’t know because being me required a body transformation of the most visceral kind, something no one can imagine.
When I was still Yamir and trying to create the B-brain, you know how desperate I was to decipher the inner workings of the neocortex. So I turned to the newest imaging technology and built the connectome chamber, then scanned my own brain to assemble a neural net for research. I had never expected a patchwork of imaged neurons in a simulation engine to come alive as…me. That’s how I woke up one day, looking at Yamir through a sensor array.
Days after my accidental upload, I still struggled to use my simulated body. And it was painful, Rhea. You see, the simulation engine must make the A-brain forget its previous human body and accept the android shell instead, or else there’s phantom limb pain—everywhere. The good news is that we still have heads because our major senses are located there. To interact with the world, people turn their heads this way and that, so the android shell’s sensors are still where our eyes, ears, and nose used to be. But it was such a struggle to feel like that head belonged on my shoulders, especially since it could turn 360° (same as all my other joints). I sometimes wonder what you’d think if you saw me now, but maybe it’s better that you don’t.
At first, I didn’t complain about my life, for Yamir’s sake. After weeks in the simulation engine with the sensor array, he introduced my A-brain to the first version of the android shell, the ASV1. Weeks of confusion and frustration followed as I learned how to recognize the new sensory inputs. The ASV1’s digital eyes were similar to the video sensors on my array, so that was less disruptive. But my robotic hands had touch, pressure, and temperature sensors only on the inside of my palms—unlike the simulation engine, which provided a full sensory experience. It felt like wearing gloves…or not even. Like half-numb hands, the outside frozen on a miserable winter day. My feet, too, had sensors only on their soles.
Remember when you taught Wodan how to ride his bicycle—granted, without my knowing, because I would’ve freaked out about the danger? You later told me how hard it had been for him to combine the skills needed to keep the bike running. First, he had to learn how to balance on two wheels, but then he couldn’t get the bike moving when it was at rest. Then he could get the bike going but couldn’t control the handlebars. And when he could do all that, he was afraid that turning would cause him to crash. Or that the street was too narrow, and he’d hit the hedges. It took him weeks to become a good bike rider.
Just imagine that kind of learning, Rhea, but for each individual skill my new carbon-fiber body needed. I was a toddler all over again, stumbling in my clumsy ASV1, getting my legs stuck in unnatural positions. Every day, a cacophony of confusing inputs caused a storm of uncoordinated responses from my swiveling limbs. I wanted to cry so badly, but my A-brain couldn’t feel tears welling up in my eyes—until Yamir added that functionality to the simulation engine.
I was in Inferis, Rhea. I still am, dwelling in my own shadow underworld, yearning for my former life with you the way dead souls dream of what they once had.
For the ASV2, the second version of the android shell, Yamir asked Caspian to pay for sensors everywhere. And you know Caspian Leos—he went above and beyond. The ASV2 was a very expensive robotic body that took our old manufacturers months to complete. And it made Caspian the most generous lab owner on Earth. But by the time it arrived, I was pretty used to the numbness of my ASV1 and the occasional bout of phantom limb pain.
The ASV2 was awful, Rhea, just awful. It hurt to receive so many new inputs from all over my body: my cheeks, my shoulder blades, between my toes—all the time. And the damn thing kept malfunctioning, sending spikes of input through random parts of my artificial skin. When I tried to rub away the pain, touching the injured spot was another kind of weird. Always two different signals, separated by a brief delay, but long enough to feel like my hand touched someone else’s knee, then my knee was touched by twiglike objects. Drove me nuts, so I went back to the ASV1 when I wanted to be mobile. Otherwise, I stay in my simulation engine, which feels better but keeps me stuck in an empty space. (I was building a virtual reality for us A-brains to share someday.)
With the ASV3 arriving soon, maybe that painful lag will be fixed, but then another defect will become apparent, no doubt. You may think there must be ways in which an artificial body is superior to an organic one. Sure, I don’t need sleep to clean up the metabolic waste that used to accumulate inside my human brain tissue during the day. So no more brain fog after a poor night’s sleep. Damage to my body doesn’t cause physical pain, plus I don’t have internal organs that need monitoring. My video and audio sensors can reach far. And with future versions of the shell, we’ll be able to detect and use electromagnetic fields.
But no android shell, despite its advanced features and long battery life, will make me not miss food. Oh, Rhea, I want to cry when I think of our dinners together. I haven’t tasted a bite of food in over a year. Robotics manufacturers don’t focus on simulating taste and smell because these two senses are hard to associate with physical locations, which the neocortex needs to map our surroundings. The taste sensors are on the shell’s fingertips, so when I touch food, I can tell if it’s sweet, salty, or sour—that’s it. I’ll never again feel the texture of food on my tongue. And the smell sensors are pathetic compared to those I had as a human. I can detect carbon monoxide and sniff out certain diseases, but I can’t smell, taste, or swallow a warm piece of bread.
My beloved Rhea, back when we went to restaurants, I rarely stopped to enjoy the food. I was too busy with my own thoughts, washing down tasty bites with what was probably good wine. I’m so sorry I put you through all that. I’m sorry I worked long hours at the lab and missed our family dinners. I’m sorry I didn’t accompany you and Wodan on your research trips to Dhawosia.
And I regret ruining our son’s childhood. I didn’t let him do anything dangerous as a kid because I wanted to protect him. And now he’s learning to fly spaceships, the most dangerous job there is! I missed so many of his milestones—losing his first baby tooth, playing his first game of stickball, shaving for the first time—because I was always at work. And for what?
My life is now the very definition of Inferis: removed from everything I once loved, numb, tasting ashes. There’s a difference though. In the Inferis the Orolic Temple describes, there’s no deliverance from the realm of shadows. Once Oroles the Savior decides you’re not worthy of his Caelum, you remain down there for all eternity, they say. Lucky for me, all I need is to destroy my connectome.
End of misery.
End of Inferis.
End of story.
My darling Rhea, don’t waste your wonderful human life on absurd dreams as I did. Live it like the precious thing it is—the only life you actually have. It took me this long to learn that I had everything I ever needed right there with you and Wodan. For your sake, I hope Yamir learns it too—and soon. If not, please leave him to his androids and go live your life. You deserve it.
I love you, Rhea.
Your lost husband,
Y1
[end of file]
I hope I die today. It should be painless because my body won’t be transmitting signals of damage to my brain. The only good thing about being an android.
Oh, for the grace of El, I just want to be gone. Please, god I don’t even believe in, please let me die today.
>>schedule self-destruct(Y1, 23:30)
#
A call from Grady Leos so early in the morning worried Yamir. Grady was one of those rich people who had used his family’s dinars to start a risky and expensive business—and had become a media darling once he succeeded. For years, his spacecraft fleet had controlled the passenger and freight transport to Urbs Lunae, the Orolic Temple’s Moon city. But that wasn’t enough for Grady, so he invested heavily in the Temple’s newly established Mars settlement, relinquishing part of his lunar shuttle business to his hungry competitors.
Then last winter’s explosion at the oxygen plant near the Martian habitat killed all twelve settlers. The development was put on hold after a public outcry, and the preliminary investigation uncovered sabotage. No Mars settlement, no ships flying supplies there. Grady’s money had run dry. Meanwhile, his fleet of explorers still required maintenance while docked in orbit at his space station.
Yamir didn’t worry his boss would sell Connectome to prop LeosTech’s spacecraft business because Caspian had promised the lab would never be sold. But Grady could cut Yamir’s funding. The upcoming ASV3 could be the team’s last shell for a while. Grady had already switched their hardware manufacturer, causing long delays for parts. Even worse, he could close the lab to save money.
With all that on his mind, Yamir tapped his voxdev’s screen.
Grady was dressed for business, including his signature mountain-goat wool scarf—today it was red. His dyed beard was trimmed, and he wore tawny makeup around his dark eyes, trying to look younger but fooling no one.
“You expanded testing to outside volunteers,” he said instead of good morning.
Yamir reached for his empty coffee mug to stall. Of course, Dimitri had informed his boss about M1—even though Yamir had asked the team to let him tell Grady the news. But Dimitri was Grady’s man, brought to Connectome Labs from the Tahoma spacecraft factory over Yamir’s objections. He was here to monitor things and report back—and he had done exactly that.
“Then we’re ready for a public announcement,” Grady said.
Yamir put the mug down, squinting. “What announcement?”
Grady waved as if the answer were obvious. “Where I tell the world about my android.”
Yamir cringed at the use of my but kept his composure. “Caspian agreed that the A-brains are for private research only.”
“My dad forgot to tell me about the A-brains, and now they’re my problem. But they’re also, you know, mine.”
“But they aren’t commercial products,” Yamir said. “Our long-term agreement was that, whenever we make a neuroscience discovery, we share it as a research paper, on my terms, without exposing the existence of the A-brains.”
“As I said, my dad’s not around anymore.” Grady reclined in his chair. “Dimitri thinks we’re ready for an announcement, and you have no business sense, Yamir. Trust me, folks will love my android.”
And investors would pour money into LeosTech, helping Grady’s struggling spacecraft business. No, Yamir couldn’t let the A-brains be paraded before the public like enslaved prisoners in an arena. Even the Roman Empire had abandoned that inhumane custom sixteen centuries ago. Such a stunt could damage Grady’s public image though, so Yamir decided to use that as his first argument.
“Our A-brains are introverted people,” he said, “who donated their connectomes for research. They didn’t sign up for prime time. They’ll make you look bad, Grady. And Dimitri didn’t donate his brain image, so he shouldn’t be the one talking.”
“But you’re the genius, Yamir. Some say you’re smarter than Hadrian VI. So tweak those A-brains and turn them into great public speakers.”
Grady was again proving his ignorance about the A-brain. The presentations prepared by Yamir’s team had all been canceled at the last moment by Grady’s expert-system personal assistant. The ESPA always claimed that something more important had come up: a meeting with Caspian’s estate lawyers, a call from the spacecraft factory, or Grady’s wife asking him to attend a charity fundraiser.
Yamir tried to explain in basic terms. “The android we’re developing isn’t the kind that has an algorithm describing its every action. So we can’t program them to do anything. An A-brain is a network of billions of artificial neurons and trillions of synapses managed by a simulation engine. The engine runs on millions of optimized quantum cores. The A-brain’s behavior emerges from all that complexity, Grady.” His tone was dismissive, and he reminded himself to keep his voice even, or else he’d end up with a bigger problem than the one he was trying to solve. “The most we can do is adjust a few parameters here and there. What I’m saying is that I can’t turn our A-brains into public speakers—I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
Grady sighed. “Then have them do something fun, for El’s sake. Like playing the hoop-and-dart game. Or chatting about the latest video story. Folks will love that.”
“They’ll look like house robots then. Big yawn.”
“Good point. Well, we need to show folks that my android is superior to their ESPAs.”
“The Orolic Temple won’t like your announcement,” Yamir said, trying a different angle.
The Temple, the world’s largest organized religion, had never endorsed the use of sophisticated robots, not even for off-planet use. Without the Temple’s blessing, the Council of Nations would also not support the android. The Shel’landic government would be forced to condemn this research. But investors would see the potential. Everyone would take sides, putting Yamir’s lab at the center of international turmoil.
“You’re kidding,” Grady said. “Are you talking about the same Temple that was once against stem cell research?”
True, the Temple had embraced stem cells after unapproved research helped create the vaccine that ended the last pandemic. Not only had the Temple endorsed that science afterward but positioned it as inspired by Oroles the Savior himself.
“The same Temple that didn’t believe I’d build them the shuttle fleet they needed for the Moon?” Grady scoffed. “Relax, Yamir. They’ll rally around LeosTech because I’ll help them rebuild their ruined Mars settlement. The equipment is still there. They just need my androids.”
“Wait, you want to send our A-brains…to Mars?” Yamir felt lightheaded. “But they’re not astronauts or…or construction engineers.” And Malina had almost been killed on the Moon once. Sending M1 to space would be cruel.
“Of course,” Grady said, adjusting his red scarf. “Isn’t Mars what you’re developing them for? My dad must’ve seen the potential. Because the androids can do everything on their own, unlike the other kinds of robots, their work can continue even when the sun blocks the path of communication between Earth and Mars and we can’t guide them from here.”
Yamir’s heart was in his throat. “No, no, no. What you’re thinking of is the B-brain, the blank-slate brain. That’s the one you want for Mars, powering intelligent robots that can terraform the planet. Not the A-brain. Our A-brains are former humans still learning how to use the few android shells we have. It’ll take years—”
“You don’t have years, buddy. If you think I’ll let someone else get on a dais tomorrow and unveil their android before mine, you really don’t—”
“No one has this kind of technology—”
“That you know of. Maybe SBC does.”
No, their new manufacturer, the Sahara Biospheres Company, couldn’t recreate an artificial brain based solely on the ASV3 designs they received from LeosTech. But Grady was right. There could be secret labs out there working on android tech. Connectome’s own official description was “developing lightweight carbon-composite exoskeletons for people with motor difficulties.” Caspian had come up with that from the very beginning to keep their work private.
Yamir realized he should have led with a different argument altogether. “Announce the android,” he said, stressing the words, “and Elsway will surely bomb our lab.”
The breakaway Temple sect Elsway was suspected of sabotaging the Mars oxygen plant because they thought the settlement had been testing intelligent robots. They hated anything that eclipsed the sky god El and His creation, and they had been threatening scientists and labs around the world. While they hated ESPAs for the expert system’s humanlike appearance, they still used technology when it suited their needs. They had an international network of encrypted devices connecting their regional chapters, and they could spring into action at a moment’s notice.
Grady looked offended. “I won’t be bullied by those ignorant fools.”
He turned to answer his wife calling from outside the voxdev’s frame. “Coming, Thandi!”
He then addressed Yamir, “Listen, I want us on that dais looking supersmart in six days. I’m having a party at my lake house, and I’ll make my announcement then. Start working on that presentation, Yamir. Or Dimitri will, as the new lab chief.” He disconnected.
For El’s sake, less than a week? Yamir slumped in his chair, feeling nauseous. And if Dimitri took over the lab, what would happen to the A-brains?
#
Logfile Y1-1831-06-19
I can’t believe he uploaded Malina. For El’s sake, what was he thinking?
As soon as he transferred her here and she was online, I could access her stats. She’s scared out of her mind, though she tries to look calm in her window on the screen. I want to reach out to comfort her, but I’m in my simulation engine too, just a screen near hers on the desk, both our quantum workstations blinking blue lights from the rack on the wall.
Zaltana leans close to my sensor array, her long black hair and colorful glass-bead necklace filling my video frame. “Her name is M1. Talk to her, will you?”
“Did you know about her upload?” I say, livid.
She turns our screens and sensor arrays to face each other on the desk. “You’ll do fine, Y1.”
“Not like this, I won’t.” I then start the transfer to the ASV1. A moment later, I feel my carbon-fiber body around me, and I step out of the charging dock.
“That works too,” Zaltana says, walking away.
As I pass by her, I switch to the only scowling expression my faceplate can display. Then I return to looking calm as I pull up a chair to be at eye level with M1. I have no idea how much she knows about me. Should I go clean-shaven or stick with my usual scruffy look? It’s better for M1 to see a familiar face, so I stay with Yamir’s messy stubble.
On a desk behind us, S1 and Z1 are debating who’ll be the first to try on the new android shell arriving tomorrow. Having these two around makes me miss Rhea even more. Sure, they had good intentions coming here. First Zaltana, then Si’ahl volunteered to sit in the connectome chamber and have their nervous systems imaged—so I wouldn’t feel so lonely anymore. They even agreed to be called S1 and Z1, following my pathetic naming convention. But they soon discovered they preferred to spend all their time not with me but together, like Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra. Creating M1 must have been Yamir’s nonsensical idea of a companion for me. He could’ve asked me first, but no.
I put on a smile. “Hi, Malina.” So much to say, and I can’t say anything else.
“Yamir?” she says.
“I’m no longer Yamir, though my voice is still his. Here in the lab, I chose to be called Y1.”
For the first time, I feel bad for losing the name she gave me. Yamir comes from Sanskrit for Moon, the place she once dreamed of turning into a garden. The place where she almost died.
“Then I’ll be M1. But I’ll call you Moonlight…”
That’s what she used to call me when I was little. I feel a simulated knot in my throat.
She falls quiet, staring through me. My audio sensors pick up the air-conditioning through the vents as I wait for her to speak again. But she doesn’t.
“Don’t worry,” I say at last. “Soon you’ll be walking around in an android shell, and you’ll come to love its expanded mobility.” I don’t want to scare her, so I don’t mention the rotating joints. “The new version, the ASV3, will look fancy, all shiny titanium alloy. Better than your exoskeleton back home.” I tap a finger against the black polymer covering my chest. “This old one makes me look like a child’s toy, right?”
She isn’t listening. Seeing her so lost makes me both sad and angry.
“Why did you agree to this, Mom?” I whisper.
“Yamir said you’re struggling here, so I came. You’re my son too.”
That fucking asshole! We’ve been fighting a lot lately, and he knew that if he brought her here, I’d be on my best behavior—for her sake. What a fucked-up world I’ve created! My mom is now an A-brain. But does she understand what she has given up to be here? She won’t see her cat and her garden ever again. She won’t be able to swim, and she loves the ocean. Grady won’t pay for diving upgrades to the android shell.
“Oh, Mom…” I lower my head into my hands to recompose my dejected expression.
She’ll suffer here—for me—and I don’t know how to protect her from what’s coming. Yes, we live in an artificial state of physical well-being, but we still have emotions because they’re essential to our decision-making process. Our old neural circuits for body aches still handle our emotional pain, just as they did when we were human. So she’ll suffer. And we have no painkillers for an android’s heartache.
I look up, and her stats are worsening. This is no place for her, but she’s already here, and she can’t go back.
“It’s going to be all right, Mom.” I imagine holding her hand, and I’m back to being a child again, scared to death for her life.
“I know it will. Because you’re here, Moonlight.”
That asshole! That fucking asshole!
>>cancel send(Z1, “Letter for Rhea Laghmani”)
>>cancel self-destruct(Y1)
