I expected to see part of my body in the foreground, perhaps under plain hospital sheets. But instead, there was just a flat plane, like maybe a desktop.
Just beyond the flat plane, a man sat, consulting a tablet. He looked, I kid you not, exactly how most of us visualize Sigmund Freud, right down to the lab coat. He can’t actually be a shrink. That would just be too cliché. Is he here to talk to me about my injuries? It has to be pretty bad if they have a counselor ready and waiting for me to wake up.
There was something off about him, though. The shirt he was wearing looked almost clerical in cut. And his watch…
It took me a moment longer to realize I was experiencing a problem with perspective. The room seemed to be deep and narrow, and Freud seemed to be about six feet from front to back. In fact, when he turned his head, his nose seemed to stick about a foot out from his face.
As I examined this odd optical illusion, I felt a shifting sensation and heard a whirring sound, and the perspective corrected itself. Before I could begin to analyze the sensation and sound, Freud looked up and smiled. “Good. You’re awake.”
I tried to respond, but what came out was something like a cross between a cough and static. For God’s sake, that sounded like a voice synthesizer having a breakdown.
Freud put down the tablet, leaned forward, and rested his arms on the desk or table or whatever. “Please keep trying. It can take a few attempts for the GUPPI interface to mesh.”
I considered what he’d said. It immediately brought up three points. Point one, I wasn’t dead. Well, okay, I think therefore I am, yadda yadda. Call that one proven. Point two, I wasn’t good as new— in fact I appeared to be speaking through a voice synthesizer. But doing so by mental control, which meant, point three, that the technology had advanced significantly since I’d been hit by the car. How long had I been out? And what the heck was a guppy interface?
I tried again, concentrating on forming the words. “Xzjjzzjjj… Someone want to zhixxxjx fill me in on what’s going on?”
Freud clapped his hands, once. “Excellent. I am Dr. Landers, Bob. I will answer any questions you have, and I will help to prepare you for your new life.”
New life…? What’s wrong with my old one? I already don’t like where this is going.
Dr. Landers pulled the tablet over so that it was directly in front of him. “So, Bob, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“A car coming right at me. I was sure it was going to hit me. I’m pretty sure it did.”
“It did indeed, Bob. You arrived at the hospital in critical condition with a very poor prognosis. Per your contract with CryoEterna, they were standing by with a cryocontainer when time of death was pronounced.”
“Well, good to know my money wasn’t wasted, anyway. So what year is it?”
Dr. Landers laughed. “So nice to talk to a subject so quick on the uptake. It is June 24, 2133, and we are currently in New Handeltown, which would have been Portland in your day.”
I was surprised by that. So that’s… [117] years. Wait, where did that come from?
I’d always been able to do math in my head with no effort, but it normally required me to at least go through the calculation steps. This answer had arrived as if spoken in my ear. Huh. Something to investigate later. Add to TO-DO list.
I turned my attention back to the doctor. The shirt made a little more sense, now. Styles would change in a hundred-plus years. I really wanted to get a look at that watch, though.
“Who’s Handel?” I asked.
“Ah, now, Bob, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I have an established script for bringing candidates up to date, and history lessons come later.”
“So what happened to Old Handeltown?”
Dr. Landers smiled and shook his head in mock sorrow.
I sighed and nodded. Well, I tried to nod. My field of view didn’t move. So I had control over my eyes but not my head. I was starting to suspect some kind of locked-in syndrome.
Instead, I grunted. “Right, so can we talk about how much of me is still human? This artificial voice thing tells me that you haven’t been able to make me good as new. How much is Borg? Should I ask for a mirror, or would that be a bad idea?”
“Ah…” Dr. Landers glanced down at his tablet and hesitated, then looked back at me. “It would be inaccurate to compare you to a Borg. If I remember my Trek trivia correctly, they are at least partly human. I think Mr. Data would be a better comparison.”
I simply stared at him for what seemed like forever. My mind was blank. I couldn’t seem to form a thought.
Finally, I found my voice. “Zhzzjjjz… Excuse me?” I noted almost in passing that I still wasn’t having a panic attack. For the first time, I suspected I knew why.
“You, Bob, are what most people would call an Artificial Intelligence, although that’s not strictly accurate. You are a copy of the mind of Robert Johansson, created by scanning his cryogenically frozen brain at the subcellular level and converting the data into a computer simulation. You are, essentially, a computer program that thinks it’s Robert Johansson. A replicant.”
“Does that mean I’m immortal, then?”
Dr. Landers looked startled for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed. “That is definitely not the reaction I normally get. We seem to have skipped the denial phase entirely. I’m feeling more and more confident about our decision to replicate you.”
“Well, thanks. I think. So then I’m… that is, Bob is still alive? Or still dead? I mean, still in cryo?”
“No, I’m afraid not.” Dr. Landers shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “The recording process is destructive. We have to thaw the brain sufficiently to be able to measure the synaptic potentials, without allowing ice crystals to form. Chemicals are involved which render the brain non-viable. There’s no point in trying to re-freeze it afterwards.”
The revelation hit me with a jolt, almost like touching a live wire. I don’t know why I should be more bothered by the fact of original Bob being dead. Either way, I was a computer program. But somehow, the idea that I was all that was left of Bob felt like being stabbed. I had been—Bob had been—discarded.
“But… but that means you killed me!”