"Why would you ever want to do this to yourself?" I asked.
"Once you get used to it, it actually feels kind of nice. It helps me concentrate. I can work with my interface, talk to people, or just think, without any distractions. Sheila says that when you're working or thinking, a sim is just noise."
"I'm pretty sure I need that noise." I said.
I made the gesture to call up my interface and with huge relief, saw it appear before me. I selected my home sim and jumped at once. Light and sound flooded back to my senses. With enormous relief I felt solid ground beneath my feet again. In fact, I felt my feet. I was standing in my usual jump-in point in the living room.
Emma appeared a second later, dressed in her light green tropical skirt and bare feet. "Sorry Daddy, I should have told you what you were in for."
"Honey, do you do that a lot?" I asked.
"Now and then; I do it mostly when I want to be alone."
I didn't know what to think. To discard one's senses so completely was not something I could handle. It was like tossing aside everything that made us human.
Years earlier, I had read articles warning that because the polis was so radically different from the sorts of places people used to grow up in, children raised there might begin to behave in unpredictable, unusual ways; but the articles had just been speculation. The first generation of upload children were still growing up, and I had been confident in my ability to raise Emma. This was the first time I thought I might have cause to worry, but for the time being, all I could do was table the issue and do my best to be her father.
Chapter 40
We sat down at the kitchen table. Emma’s desktop was still open from before.
“So what do you want to work on today, history maybe?” I asked.
Emma shuffled a few files around and sighed, “Sure”.
I pulled up her history lesson planner. It was a diagram that resembled an upside down tree. At the top was an icon representing the very first history lecture of the course. From there the tree branched downward into various paths, each composed of related lectures and homework assignments that needed to be completed in order. Topics that did not have to be completed in sequence started new branches in the tree. Emma had worked herself a fair way down and had quite a few topics that she could choose from.
“There’s a lecture here about Emperor Flavian that looks interesting.” I volunteered. “Or maybe we should finish the homework on Mithradates. We were supposed to write an essay on how he held off the Romans for so long.”
Emma shook her head.
“Ok, how about the history of the colonization of the Pacific?”
“No”.
“Well, what would you like to study then?”
Emma scowled. “Whatever you want, Dad.”
I shifted my gaze to my daughter. She was slouched low in her chair, leaning heavily on the armrests. She was staring at her knees and feet.
I closed Emma’s desktop and caught the back leg of her chair with my foot, causing her to rotate and face me. “What’s wrong, Emma?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“Something must be bugging you.”
Emma became annoyed. “Let’s just get this homework done, ok?”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong. I know you Emma. Something’s got you upset. Come on, spit it out.”
Emma crossed her arms. “You’ll just say it’s stupid.”
“Come on, Emma. When have I ever called you stupid before? Just tell me, I promise I’ll listen.”
Emma looked out the window at the empty blue sky. I sat back and waited.
After a while, she said, “Remember that project we worked on to list the planets most likely to have life on them?”
I nodded.
“Remember how I said that we couldn’t actually find out if there was life on them or not? I showed the assignment to Sheila and she said she’d think about it. This morning she called me and showed me what she had done. Here… “, Emma made a few gestures in the air and a new desktop appeared on the table. She picked up a large page full of diagrams and equations and angled it for easy reading. Then she let go and the page remained free-floating in the air.
“This is her design for a telescope. It’s made up of a cluster of about 1000 satellites, all circling the sun in an orbit outside of Mars. They’d be spread out evenly along the same orbit, so the sun would be ringed by them. Each satellite would gather light using a 1 meter primary mirror, quantum entangle that light with the light of a laser, and shoot the laser beam at another satellite that would hover above the sun’s north pole, using a solar sail to keep its altitude. That satellite would gather the signals from each of the 1000 smaller satellites, and combine them to form a single image. The whole thing would act like a huge telescope with a primary mirror nearly as big as the orbit of Jupiter. Sheila said it could image a tree on a planet 400 light years away. You could use it to directly study life on other planets.”
I frowned. “I’ve heard of something like this. Haven’t astronomers been combining light from telescopes for a while?”
“Ya, but only from telescopes a few meters apart, never from ones millions of kilometers apart. Sheila said she knows how to build this thing. She said no-one’s ever thought of the quantum entanglement bit before. She says she’s sure it would work.”
I glanced at the equations on the diagram, but they were far beyond my limited math skills. “Are you sure any of this makes any sense?” I asked.
Emma spread her arms. “That’s just the thing, I have no idea. I can’t understand any of this stuff. I mean I’m still working on kinematics and pre-calc. I don’t know a thing about this quantum mechanics or relativity stuff. She tried to explain it to me but it was hopeless.”
“Isn’t Sheila just a year or two older than you? Isn’t this a little advanced for her class too?”
“She isn’t in any classes at all. She just studies whatever she wants.”
“So it’s bugging you that she understands all this stuff and you don’t.”
Emma nodded. “What’s the point of taking all these classes if you can learn all that on your own? Would I be just as far ahead if I did it on my own too?”
“Well you’re already years further ahead of where I was at your age. I always thought these programs were great.”
“But this is real stuff that could change the world, and Sheila’s doing it now. I’m stuck studying Greek history. What’s the point?”
“Honey, I think Sheila might be one of those special types to whom math comes very easily. I think you should feel lucky to have her as a friend. She could teach you a lot, but you don’t have to be jealous of her. You’re doing great yourself, and there will always be some people who learn some things faster than you. You’ll be faster at other things.”
“I don’t know. It’s the same thing with the Jupiter sim. She adapted genetic algorithms to the animal and plant software to let them evolve. She did it in only a couple of hours. I tried to keep up but she was going so fast. Sometimes she makes me feel like an idiot.”
“You don’t have to be jealous. You’re beautiful and smart and lots of fun, with many talents of your own. You’ve got nothing to feel bad about.”
Emma swung her feet in front of her. “Maybe… Dad, do you mind if I just go to the beach for a swim? I’ll catch up on the homework tonight.”
I smiled. “Ok honey, if I’m still free I’ll do it with you after dinner.”
“K. Bye Daddy.” She gave me a sad, half smile and blinked out of her chair. I shook my head.
Chapter 41
“Welcome to a very special presentation here at CNNBC. My name is Mike Hornbrook and I’ll be your host tonight as we investigate a topic of special importance. Two days ago, Ali Nassif, doctor and devoted family man, became the first person ever to be murdered by a robot, allegedly controlled by an upload. Then earlier today, a British Columbia provincial court judge ruled that the accused u
pload could not be tried for murder because he is not legally a person. What does this mean for Justice and for public safety? To shed some light on the issue, CNNBC has assembled an esteemed panel of guests, representing the best of the world’s religious, political and academic traditions. Allow me to introduce…”
I was seated in a comfortable low-back chair at the center of a semi-circle of the guests CNNBC had gathered to spar with me. Directly across from our semi-circle were two more seated avatars. The first was Mike Hornbrook, senior journalist and news anchor for CNNBC. The other avatar represented the audience. The avatar’s location informed the speakers of the audience’s default perspective, for those who were viewing the discussion using an old fashioned two-dimensional video screen. The audience avatar could also be driven by members of the audience selected to ask questions.
The chairs were arranged around a raised circular platform, in what appeared to be a large corner-room of a tower in New York City. The floor to ceiling windows framed a real-time view of central park as seen from 40 stories up.
The sim was hosted by CNNBC. Being an upload, it felt utterly real to me. The other participants were human. They were seated in various buildings around the world. Cameras mapped their body movements and facial expressions onto photo-realistic avatars, and their HUD contact lenses projected images from the sim into their eyes. The illusion of being in the sim could be maintained for them so long as they didn’t try to stand up and walk out of range of the cameras recording them. The end result was a fairly convincing illusion that we were all seated in the same room, when in fact the participants were each hundreds of kilometers apart.
Hornbrook began introducing the experts one by one. They were from my left to my right Robert Pulzer, a republican and member of the US senate, Cardinal Henri Girard, who presided over some sort of Vatican think-tank on law and religion, Guneet Samji, a former justice of the US supreme court, Jessica Parker, professor of philosophy from the University of Pittsburg, and Hassan Allawi, a highly ranked Islamic cleric from the victim’s religious order.
Hornbrook left my introduction for last. “And now for the last of our guests tonight, Jarrod Roamer. Mr. Roamer is not a human being. He is an upload, and as most of you already know, he was the one driving the now famous robot132, just before it killed Mr. Nassif and the two bystanders who tried to help him. Mr. Roamer, your polis has already released a statement claiming that you were not in control of Robot132 at the time the murders took place. Is that true?”
“Yes, that’s right. In fact, at the exact time of the killings, I was driving one of the other two robots that were trying to intercept robot132 and stop it."
“Do you believe that robot132 began to act on its own initiative then?”
“No, the robots don’t have the ability to act autonomously. Someone hacked the communications between VivraTerra and the robot and took control. We don’t know who.” I lied, not wanting to drag our dealings with the NASC into the picture.
“In your own words, could you walk us through the course of events that led up to the killings?”
I recounted my story, beginning with my taxi ride back from the NASC office, but I left the point of origin out of the story, hoping Hornbrook wouldn’t ask.
“What sort of technical ability would be needed to seize control of one of your polis’ robots?”
“I’m not a robotics expert, but I do know that we employ very strong security.”
“So who would have the resources to pull something like that off?”
“Again, I’m no expert but I’d say it would probably have to be a very large organization; a multinational company or a national government perhaps.”
“And why would such an organization want to take the life of a family doctor in Vancouver, Mr. Roamer?”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t know. That will be up to the investigators to determine."
"Then what would be your best guess?"
I waited for the recommendations being sent to me by Speer's team to be updated. Finally they read "Claim frame job. Don't mention NASC".
"This is only my personal belief. As you know there are many groups in the world who distrust and fear uploads. I believe this was an attempt to destroy the public's trust in uploads, by framing us and making us out to be a threat. But the truth is, in the 15 years that the polises have been in operation, I’m the only upload who has ever been accused of committing a crime. Given that there are over 5 million uploads in the world, that's a pretty amazing statistic. No human community of similar size comes anywhere near to a crime rate of zero."
Hornbrook said "And that brings us to the key question on everyone's mind. In court today it became clear that in our current legal system, Uploads who commit crimes cannot be brought to justice. How should the public react to this, and how should the laws be amended? Let’s begin with you, the Honorable Mrs. Samji, could you please summarize for us the legal problem as you see it?"
Guneet Samji straightened up in her chair "The law currently treats uploads as corporations. This grants them the same rights as any normal company, namely to engage in commerce, enter into contracts and to sue or be sued. But most nations do not recognize a corporation as an entity that can be tried under criminal law. When a crime occurs, the "corporate veil", so to speak, must be pulled back, and the human actors behind the corporation exposed, so that they can be directly held accountable for their crimes. Of course the problem here is that there are no human actors pulling the strings behind an upload's corporation. Instead of a flesh and blood human being, we find instead a self aware, intelligent software program, which the law does not recognize as a person capable of criminal acts."
Jessica Parker interrupted "Mrs. Samji is absolutely right, and from her summary it should be obvious that the only reasonable way to resolve the problem would be to officially recognize uploads for what they are, which is to say, as people."
Hornbrook said "And that brings us to the deeper philosophical question. Can an upload truly be considered to be a person? Cardinal Girard, let's hear your opinion first."
Girard, spread his hands "Well Michael, I don't know if it's appropriate to delve fully into the philosophical question of personhood. After all, what we're discussing here is whether we can justifiably bestow the legal status of personhood to uploads, which is quite a different question from asking whether uploads are people, in the moral sense. After all, in law, a person is a legal actor on the court's stage. Historically, not even all human beings were granted that status. For example slaves were considered property, not people, and even into the 20th century, many nations did not recognize women as legal persons. Through their corporate fictions, uploads have already been granted limited personhood, so the real question now is whether that status should be expanded to something closer to that of a human person, so that they can be held accountable for criminal actions."
Samji was nodding vigorously. Hornbrook rephrased his question. "Alright then, Cardinal, what is your opinion on that question?"
"Well, I believe the difference between a corporate person and a real person is that a real person is blessed with a living spirit and soul. A corporation is just a legal fiction and has no soul. Without a soul, it is incapable of mens rae, which is to say, a guilty conscience. Mens rae is an essential component to criminal law. In order for a crime to have been committed, there must exist a perpetrator, capable of holding a guilty conscience. So that is what we need to ask ourselves: does an upload truly have a mind, spirit and soul, like every human being does, capable of mens rae?
Well the position of the Holy Church is very clear on this. The eternal living spirit and soul is a creation of our heavenly father. During life it is temporarily tied to a flesh and blood human body, and when the body dies, the soul is returned to its creator. An upload is a piece of software, running inside of a computer. It is a creation not of God, but of the work of human hands. To believe that it possesses a living spirit is nonsense. The soul is
something which is beyond the scope of the natural world, it cannot be measured by any scientific instrument and it most certainly cannot be duplicated in a set of computer instructions. When an upload is created, the original human body is killed. Thus the soul is released from the body and returns to the Creator. An upload is merely an echo of the body that once was, a shallow copy if you will, but one completely devoid of the living spirit and soul that the human body once possessed."
Girard sat back in his chair and folded his hands. Hornbrook turned back to Jessica Parker.
"Mrs. Parker, as a philosophy professor, what do you make of the Cardinal's position?"
"Well I'll try to stick with the Cardinal's very correct conclusion that the question before us is that of mens rae. The Cardinal's position is that in order to have a guilty conscious, you have to have to be in possession of some sort of supernatural spirit or soul. Well I for one don't believe in supernatural souls any more than I believe in fairies or unicorns. In order to believe in souls, you have to ignore mountains of evidence that prove otherwise, and on top of that, you then have to hold beliefs that are by their very definition, untreatable and un-falsifiable.