Here & There (40 page)

“That’s the multibillion-dollar question, isn’t it? Perhaps they aren’t as interested in consciousness as you are.” Curzwell finishes his bottle of water and proceeds to roll the empty container between his fingertips.

“There are cheaper ways to produce goods,” Reidier says. “The cost of what you’re talking about would far exceed the price of replicating items using conventional techniques.”

“But not necessarily over great distances. Payloads into space can be very expensive, especially when traveling beyond the earth’s orbit.”

“Space colonization?”

“In the future, why not? Surely you must have thought about that. You even mention traveling to Mars in your lectures.”

Reidier’s body language reveals his discomfort. While his lectures are on iTunes University for all the world to download, the pervasiveness of his host’s knowledge of him must be unnerving the physicist.

“There are also more global applications, assuming you eventually perfect the consciousness transference to the point of at least replicating habitual training,” Curzwell says. “For example, there are certain advantages to replicating an individual who knows his way around a Barrett M107 sniper rifle even if they don’t know what killing is. Or especially if they don’t.”

Reidier sits in silence, contemplating Curzwell’s insinuation. He shifts in his seat, squeaking against the leather. Finally, he utters, “Soldiers.”

“They are very expensive to train and often sent into harm’s way. Each casualty incurs a significant financial, human, and political cost. Imagine the possibilities of being able to send platoons of soldiers on numerous suicide missions anywhere in the universe and not have to report a single death. Every ‘individual’ original accounted for and safe. Casualty-free war fought by expendable clones. Very science-fiction/
Star Wars
, I admit, but then again, so is teleportation itself.”

The man’s eyes flit from Reidier’s face to his hands and back. Reidier’s fingers are intertwined. The knuckles turn white with pressure.

Up on the stage, the dancers have removed their tops and are using their breasts to collect dollars from various patrons.

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,”
¹⁰⁶
Reidier says, stricken.

The man flashes an avuncular smile. “Not at all. Quite the opposite. You are the Destroyer of Death. At least that’s what we’re hoping over at Beimini.
^®
”
¹⁰⁷

The waitress sets down Reidier’s drink. He doesn’t reach for it.

“I’m sorry, what is it that you all would want from me?” Reidier’s voice seems to have lost direction.

Clearly Curzwell, a practiced negotiator, has been waiting for this. He has Reidier off balance and knows it. Now he needs to gently bring him back to equilibrium, supported and steadied by Beimini. “War is too important to leave to the generals, don’t you think?”

“And technology is too important to leave to the scientists.”

“But you are not just a scientist. You’re a critical thinker. And that’s what’s important.” Curzwell lets this sink in a moment and then continues. “What we want is for you to continue your work, any way you see fit. We’d provide all of your technological necessities,
relocate you and your family wherever you desire, and guarantee your security.”

Reidier doesn’t respond. One of the dancers, in a green G-string, hangs upside down from a pole, and spins slowly to the floor.

“Furthermore, we’d start you off with a twenty million dollar signing bonus that would be yours outright, and also offer you forty-five percent ownership in any and all of our mutual endeavors. Whatever other wonders you invent or develop outside of the purview of our partnership would be solely yours.”

With the offer of serious money, Curzwell relaxes his posture. He’s confident in the intoxicating draw of wealth, certain that his deal far exceeds the government’s. The pull of the private sector on the institutional man is as unrelenting as gravity.

“That’s a generous offer,” Reidier says.

“It’s what you’re worth.”

“But I still have no idea what it is you want in return.”

Curzwell nods toward the stage, where the two strippers tease their thongs up and down their hips. “What do you see there?”

The blonde stretches the thin material away from her flesh so a calloused hand with dirty fingernails can slip a dollar bill between the elastic and her skin. On the other side, the redhead, the one dressed in green, stands with her back to a patron, bends over, traces her index fingers along the curves of her hips swooping toward her groin, hooks her finger underneath, and draws the thong out from between her buttocks so that a wrinkled hand might slide a five underneath.

“Ritual,” Reidier says.

“An age-old one.”

Reidier wraps his hand around his juice drink but doesn’t lift it.

“What would you say is the source of this ritual?” Curzwell asks.

“Biology. A lack of options.”

“I’d agree on both counts. But why do these customers come here?”

Reidier continues to clasp his glass.

Curzwell lets out a laugh. “Yes, the scantily clad women, of course. Sexual urges, et cetera, et cetera. But on a psychological level what are they really getting? I’ll tell you. They’re becoming invigorated. Alive. In a word, youthful.”

An inebriated man leans across the stage to slide a bill up the redhead’s leg, but she moves out of reach and wags her finger at him.

“They come to feel young,” Curzwell says. “These men come to be close to young women. Why young women? Because they’re fertile. The act of sex at its most basic level is the urge to continue the line, to cheat death. It’s a pervasive, universal urge.”

Reidier finally lifts his glass and sips.

“And with your help, we think Beimini
^®
Corp can cater to that need.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We would support development of any and all technological innovations you might have, and apply no constraints about how to proceed, whether it be with quark echoes, nanofabrication, or something else entirely. We would just want you to figure out how to adapt your progress to our needs.”

“Your agenda.”

“Our agenda, yes, but with complete respect for your autonomy. And full disclosure of our goals and targets. You will never wonder about our motivations or what we’re planning to do with your work. Transparency precludes the need for trust. You’d be our partner, not our project.”

“How does this tie in to cheating death?”

“Your fourth step.”

“What step?”

“In teleportation. What you call the animation step.”
¹⁰⁸

“Transference and animation,” Reidier recalls.

“Yes. We want to be able to transfer a mind from one vessel to another.”

“That’s the key to all teleportation, isn’t it?”

“Only we’re unconcerned with traveling any distance.”

“Then what would be the point of moving a consciousness from one vessel to an exact copy?”

“There wouldn’t be. Unless.” Curzwell lets the insinuation hang in the air between them.

“Unless it wasn’t an exact copy,” Reidier says, unable to conceal the astonishment in his tone.

“We call it Restoration. The basic methodology would require scanning a client now, today, storing that data, and then at some later point, using it to reconstruct that same body and then transferring the client’s consciousness from his older self into his younger self.”

“So I would scan you now, then in twenty years or thirty years, I’d teleport you from your older self to your younger self.”

“That’s the basic gist, yes.”

“And that process could be repeated ad infinitum.”

“Restored to your youthful vigor.”

“The Destroyer of Death.”

Curzwell swallows the last of his vitamins. “What is death? I’ll tell you. He’s the world’s most successful thief who has stolen our loved ones and our time for as long as we’ve been around.”

“Death gives life meaning.”

“Nonsense,” Curzwell scoffs. “That’s useless orthodoxy based on a lack of options and perspective. It’s what we do with life that gives it meaning. Art, music, relationships. What we create.”

“You want to bring immortality to market.”

Curzwell winks at Reidier. “The thing about immortality is that you can never affirm you’ve achieved it.”

“It’s inhuman.”

“Science is inhuman. Science is incompatible with humanism.
The whole point of it is to escape from humanity. Why do you think we went to space? Science is at war with humanity.”

Reidier doesn’t respond.

Curzwell takes a different tack. “At the same time, science is the ultimate expression of our humanity. You know what separates us from the beasts. This,” he taps the side of his head, “which holds a neocortex the size of a napkin and allows for critical thinking. That and this,” he touches his thumb to his forefinger, “our nimble opposable thumb, which enables us to take our advanced thoughts and fashion them out of the world at hand. Humanity is defined by our ability to manipulate our surroundings, to cross our thresholds and transcend limitations. That’s what being human is.”

Reidier holds his drink and leans back in his chair, facing the dancers. The redhead is on her knees, legs splayed, leaning back. She tugs at her G-string with the beat. In doing so, she reveals a tattoo just above her pubic area. It’s a single word written in a curved path, forming an arc. The footage is blurry, but it looks as if it spells “Panoramas.”

“Curious,” Curzwell comments.

Reidier finishes his absinthe in one gulp. “Who would . . . ?”

“Obviously our clientele would be very exclusive as we’re offering the ultimate high-end service,” Curzwell says. “We’ve already got a sizable pool of investors and prospective clients.”

“Your only limitation would be when someone comes in for the original scan,” Reidier says.

“Yes. At least for Restoration 1.0.”

Reidier stops watching the dancer.

“We hope to do much more than that in subsequent generations. By 2.0 we expect to use DNA excavation to reconstruct a client’s physique from any age. Third generation, as envisioned, would allow us to diversify physique entirely, allowing clients to choose race, gender, or even design personalized attributes. Although we’re not sure about how the psyche would handle such a drastic shift in hosts. And
depending on how your work progresses, both technically and economically, we might eventually even develop a Death Insurance division where clients would regularly have their minds copied and stored monthly, weekly, or even daily in the event of an unforeseen demise.”

Reidier takes a moment to respond. “Sounds like your marketing department is ahead of the research curve.”

“We want you to know how big we’re thinking. This would be the end of ends. The death of death. The world, as we know it, will never be the same. And you’ll be at the center of it all. The alpha and the omega.”

“This is certainly a lot to take in.”

“A task I’m confident you’re up to.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, aren’t you nervous about sharing this with me? I mean, what’s to stop me from striking out on my own?”

“You are free to do so. But you’d need significant funding, time, and resources to set up a new lab and develop an adequate power source. All of which would need to be done in secret, more or less, because more than anything, you’d need protection. All it takes is a memo from Pierce, and you become a National Security commodity, devoid of any civil rights. Beimini is already in the position to facilitate your transfer from the public to the private sector and provide the necessary cover.”

Curzwell smiles once again at Reidier, but Reidier provides almost nothing in the way of response or body language.

Curzwell holds out a business card. “Please, should you need anything. It’s a bit on the nose, I admit, but still an easy way to hide a purloined e-mail. An innocuous underscore away from reality.”

The card is matte black, constructed out of heavy stock paper. On one side is a gold-embossed fleur-de-lis.

Reidier flips it over and laughs.

On the back is a solitary e-mail address: [email protected]

An innocuous underscore away from reality.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Curzwell smiles. “Rest assured, though, it will find me. Whatever I can do to help. The truth is that, for every great man in history, there has been another more powerful man who helped him get there. It’s not enough to have the talent, you need a paladin as well. Nikola Tesla had his Westinghouse, Roy Cohn had his McCarthy, and you have me.”

A

TITLE CARD:
GALILEE 6:21

TITLE CARD:
EXPERIMENT 47 OMEGA

CONTROL ROOM, GOULD ISLAND FACILITY - 2008-08-08 01:02

Only the console lights, console video screen, and the ambient light from Mirror Lab illuminate the room.

Ambient light bleeds in from the Mirror Lab.

On video screen in console, SPLIT SCREEN-

RIGHT SIDE, target room: blackness.

LEFT SIDE, transmission room:

Fiber-optic cables circumscribing the Entanglement Channel flare red for several seconds, then morph into an orbiting white light as the Entanglement Channel opens.

An orange sits on the pad. A small section of its rind has been torn. Roughly a finger’s width wide. The rind has folded back into place, but a jagged, white outline demarcates the damage.

The Boson Cannons and Pion Beams twitch to life. SOUNDS of the rapid ACCELERATION and DECELERATION of GEARS as the men take a series of readings of the orange. Once complete they settle into optimized focal positions.

On another console screen, SPLIT SCREEN:

ANGELL LAB RIGHT: lit, though empty, target pad.

ANGELL LAB LEFT: shows Dr. Reidier’s tweed sport coat draped over the back of his chair in Angell
Lab. SOUNDS of Dr. Reidier PUTTERING AROUND offscreen.

Dr. Reidier’s arm comes into view from the right side. In his right arm, he holds one of the twins (boy is only visible from waist down, wearing a onesie).