Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
The chubby girl giggled next to me, but for me it was no laughing matter. Soon after my shuffling actualization, I’d been disturbed by all sorts of different smells. For example, I could swear the girl’s melon eau de cologne made me hear things. If your cognitive system turned over each time you smelled a different odor, it could be disaster.
“We solved that by dispersin’ special sound waves between the numbers. Call signs that caused reactions very similar t’the reactions t’certain smells. Another problem, depending on the individual, was that the junction box would kick over, but the stored cognitive system wouldn’t operate. We found out, after investigatin’ all sorts of possibilities, that the problem lay with the subjects’ cognitive system from the very beginnin’. The subjects’ core consciousness was unstable or too rarefied. Oh, they were healthy and sharp enough, but pyschologically they hadn’t established an identity. Or rather, they had identity enough, but had put things in order accordin’ t’that identity, so you couldn’t do a thing with them. Just because you got the operation didn’t mean you could do shuffling. As clear as could be, there was a screenin’ factor at work here.
“Well, that left three of them. And in all three, the junction box kicked over at the prescribed call sign and the frozen cognitive system functioned stably and effectively. So we did additional experiments with them for one more month, and at that point we were given the go-ahead.”
“And then, I gather, you proceeded with shuffling actualization?”
“Exactly so. The next phase was t’conduct tests and interviews with close to five hundred Calcutecs. We selected twenty-six healthy males with no history of mental disorders, who exhibited strong psychological independence, and who could control their own behavior and emotions. This all took quite some doin’. Seein’ as tests and interviews leave a lot in the dark, I had the System draw up detailed files on each and every one of you. Your family background, upbringin’, school records, sex life, drinkin’,… anyway, everythin’.”
“Just one thing I don’t understand,” I spoke up. “From what I’ve heard, our core consciousness, our black boxes, are stored in the System vault. How is that possible?”
“We did thorough tracings of your cognitive systems. Then we made up simulations for storage in a main computer bank. We did it as a kind of insurance; you’d be stuck if anything happened t’you.”
“A total simulation?”
“No, not total, of course, but functionally quite close t’ total, since the effective strippin’ away of surface layers made tracin’ that much easier. More exactly, each simulation was made up of three sets of planar coordinates and holographs. With previous computers that wasn’t possible, but these new-generation computers incorporate a good many elephant factory-like functions in themselves, so they can handle complex mental constructs. You see, it’s a question of fixed structural mappin’. It’s rather involved, but t’put it simple for the layman, the tracin’ system works like this: first, we input the electrical pattern given off by your conscious mind. This pattern varies slightly with each readin’. That’s because your chips keep gettin’ rearranged into different lines, and the lines into bundles. Some of these rearrangements are quantifiably meaningful; others not so much. The computer distinguishes among them, rejects the meaningless ones, and the rest get mapped as a basic pattern. This is repeated and repeated and repeated hundreds of thousands of unit-times. Like overlayin’ plastic film cells. Then, after verifyin’ that the composite won’t stand out in greater relief, we keep that pattern as your black box.”
“You’re saying you reproduced our minds?”
“No, not at all. The mind’s beyond reproducin’. All I did was fix your cognitive system on the phenomenological level. Even so, it has temporal limits—a time frame. We have t’throw up our hands when it comes to the brain’s flexibility. But that’s not all we did. We successfully rendered a computer visualization from your black box.”
Saying this, the Professor looked first at me, then at his chubby granddaughter.
“A video of your core consciousness. Something nobody’d ever done. Because it wasn’t possible. I made it possible. How do you think I did it?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“We showed our subjects some object, analyzed the electromagnetic reactions in their brains, converted that into numerics, then plotted these as dots. Very primitive designs in the early stages, but over many, many repetitions, revisin’ and fillin’ in details, we could regenerate what the subjects had seen on a computer screen. Not nearly so easy as I’ve described it, but simply put, that’s what we did. So that after goin’ over and over these steps how many times, the computer had its patterns down so well it could autosimulate images from the brain’s electromagnetic activity. The computer’s really cute at that.
“Next thing I did was t’read your black box into the computer pre-programmed with those patterns, and out came an amazin’ graphic renderin’ of what went on in your core consciousness. Naturally, the images were jumbled and fragmentary and didn’t mean much in themselves. They needed editin’. Cuttin’ and pastin’, tossin’ out some parts, resequencin’, exactly like film editin’. Rearrangin’ everything into a story.”
“A story?”
“That shouldn’t be so strange,” said the Professor. “The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape. Mental phenomena are the stuff writers make into novels. It’s the same basic logic. Of course, as encephalodigital conversion, it doesn’t represent an accurate mappin’, but viewin’ an accurate, random succession of images didn’t much help us either. Anyway, this ‘visual edition’ proved quite convenient for graspin’ the whole picture. True, the System didn’t have it on its agenda. This visualization was all me, dabblin’.”
“Dabbling?”
“I used t’—before the War, that is—work as an assistant editor in the movies. That’s how I got so good at this line of work. Bestowin’ order upon chaos. I did the editin’ alone in my laboratory, without assistance from any other staff. Nobody had any idea what I had holed myself up doin’. So of course, I could walk off with those visualizations without anybody the worse for knowin’. They were my treasures.”
“Did you render all twenty-six visualizations?”
“Sure did. Did them all, for what it’s worth. Gave each one a title, and that title became the title of the black box. Yours is ‘End of the World,’ isn’t it?”
“You know it is. ‘The End of the World.’ It’s a rather unusual title, wouldn’t you say?”
“We’ll go into that later,” said the Professor. “The fact is, nobody knew I’d succeeded in visualizin’ twenty-six consciousnesses. I never told anyone. I wanted t’take the research beyond anythin’ related to the System. I’d completed the project I was commissioned t’do, and I’d taken care of the human experiments I needed for my research. I didn’t want t’hang around there any longer. I told the System I wanted t’quit. They didn’t want me t’quit; I knew too much. If I were t’run over to the Semiotecs at this stage, the whole shuffling plan would come to nothin’, or so they thought. Wait three months, they told me. Continue with whatever research I felt like in their laboratory. They’d pay me a special bonus. In three months’ time, their top-secret protection system would be perfected, so if I was goin’ t’leave, hang around until then.
“Now, I’m a free-born individual and such restrictions don’t sit well with me, but, well, this wasn’t such a bad deal. So I decided t’hang around. Still, takin’ things easy doesn’t lead to much good. With all this time and these subjects on my hands, I hit upon the idea of installin’ another separate circuit to the junction boxes in your brains. Make it a three-way cognitive circuitry. And into this third circuit, I’d load my edited version of your core consciousness.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“For one thing, just t’see what effect it’d have on the subjects. I wanted t’find out how an edited consciou
sness put in order by someone else would function in the original subjects themselves. No such precedent in all of human history. And for another thing—an incidental motivation, granted—if the System really was tellin’ me t’do whatever I liked, well then, by darn, I was goin’ t’take them at their word and do what I liked. I thought I’d go ahead and concoct one more function they’d never suspect.”
“And for that reason, you screwed around in our heads, laying down those electric train tracks of yours?”
“Well, a scientist isn’t one for controlling his curiosity. Of course, I deplore how those scientists cooperated with the Nazis conductin’ vivisection in the concentration camps. That was wrong. At the same time, I find myself thinkin’, if you’re goin’ t’do live experiments, you might as well do something a little spiffier and more productive. Given the opportunity, scientists all feel the same way at the bottom of their heart. I was only addin’ a third widget where there already was two, slightly alterin’ the current of circuits already in the brain. What could be the harm of usin’ the same alphabet flashcards t’spell an extra word?”
“But the truth is, aside from myself, all the others who underwent shuffling actualization have died. Now why is that?”
“That’s somethin’ … even I don’t know why,” admitted the Professor. “Exactly as y’ say, twenty-five of the twenty-six Calcutecs who underwent shuffling actualization have died. All died the same way, as if their fates were sealed. They went to bed one night; come morning they were dead.”
“Well, then, what about me?” I said. “Come tomorrow, I might be dead.”
“Now hold your horses, son,” held forth the Professor from inside his blanket. “All twenty-five of them died within a half-year of each other. Anywhere from one year and two months to one year and eight months after the actualization. And here you are, three years and three months later, still shuffling with no problems. This leads us t’believe that you possess some special oomph that the others didn’t.”
“Special? In what sense, special?”
“Now, now. Just a minute, please. Let me ask you this: since your actualization, you haven’t suffered any strange symptoms, have you? No hearin’ things or hallucinatin’ or faintin’ or anythin’ like that?”
“No,” I said. “Haven’t seen or heard things. Except, as I said, I have become sensitive to fruit smells.”
“That was common t’everyone. Even so, that hasn’t resulted in any auditory or visual hallucinations, has it? No sudden loss of consciousness?”
“No.”
“Hmm,” the Professor trailed off. “Anythin’ else?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Something I’d totally forgotten as ever having happened to me just came back to me as a memory. Up until now, I’ve recalled only fragments of memories, so they didn’t seem to call for attention. But as we were making our way here, I experienced one long, vivid continuity, triggered by the sound of the water. It was no hallucination. It was a substantial memory. I know that beyond a doubt.”
“No, it wasn’t,” the Professor contradicted me flatly. “You may have experienced it as a memory, but that was an artificial bridge of your own makin’. You see, quite naturally there are going t’be gaps between your own identity and my edited input consciousness. So you, in order t’justify your own existence, have laid down bridges across those gaps.”
“I don’t follow. Not once has anything like that ever happened to me before. Why suddenly now does it choose to spring up?”
“That’s because I switched the junction to the third circuit,” said the Professor. “But, well, let’s just take things in order. Make things difficult if we don’t, and it’d be even harder for you t’follow.”
I took a gulp of whiskey. This was turning into a nightmare.
“When the first eight men died one after another, I got a call from System Central. Ascertain the cause of death, they said. Frankly, I didn’t want t’have any more t’do with them, but since it was my technology, not t’mention a matter of life and death, I couldn’t very well ignore them. Anyway, I went t’have a look. They briefed me on the circumstances of the deaths and showed me the brain autopsy findings. Like I told y’, all eight had died of unknown causes in the same way. There was no apparent damage to brain or body; all had quietly stopped breathing in their sleep.”
“You didn’t discover the cause of death?”
“Never found out. Naturally, I came up with a few hypotheses. If for any reason the junction boxes we implanted in their brains burnt out or just went down, mightn’t the cognitive systems muddle together and overload brain functions? Or say it wasn’t a junction problem, supposing there was something fundamentally wrong with liberatin’ the core consciousness even for short periods of time, maybe it was simply too much for the human brain?” The Professor then paused to pull the blanket up to his chin.
“The brain autopsies didn’t clear anything up?”
“The brain is not a toaster, and it isn’t a washing machine either. Codes and switches are pretty much imperceptible to the eye. All we’re talkin’ about is redirectin’ the flow of invisible electrical charges, so takin’ out the junction box for testin’ after the subject’s dead won’t tell you anything. We can detect irregularities in a living brain, but not in a dead brain. Of course, if there’s hemorrhagin’ or tumors, we can tell, but there wasn’t any. These brains were clean.
“Next thing we did was t’call in ten of the surviving subjects to the lab and check them all over again. Did brain scans, switched over cognitive systems t’see that the junctions were working right. Conducted detailed interviews, asked them whether they had any physical disorders, any auditory or visual hallucinations. But none of them had any problems t’speak of. All were healthy and kept up a perfectly unremarkable career of shuffling jobs. We could only conclude that the ones who died had had some a priori glitch in their brain that rendered them unsuitable for shuffling. We didn’t have any idea what that glitch might be. That was something for further investigation, something t’be solved before attemptin’ a second round of shuffling actualization.
“But as it turned out, we were wrong. Within one month, another five died, three of which had undergone our thorough recheck. Persons we had deemed fit on the basis of our recheck had up and died soon after without battin’ an eyelash. Needless t’say, this came as quite a shock to us. Half of our twenty-six subjects were dead, and we were powerless t’know why. This was no longer a question of fit versus unfit; this was a basic program design error. The idea of switchin’ between two different cognitive systems was untenable from the very beginning as far as the brain was concerned. At that point I proposed that the System freeze the project. Take the junction boxes out of the survivors’ heads, cancel all further shuffling jobs. If we didn’t, we’d lose everyone. Out of the question, the System informed me. They overruled me.”
“They what?”
“They overruled me. The shuffling system itself was extremely successful, and it was unrealistic t’expect the System t’return to square one. And besides, we weren’t sure the rest would die. If any survived, they’d serve as ideal research samples toward the next generation. That’s when I stepped down.”
“And only I survived.”
“Correct.”
I leaned my head back against the rock wall and stroked my growth of beard. When was the last time I shaved?
“So why didn’t I die?”
“This is also only a hypothesis,” resumed the Professor. “A hypothesis built on hypotheses. Still I can’t be too far off the mark. It seems you were operatin’ under multiple cognitive systems t’begin with. Not even you knew you were dividin’ your time between two identities. Our paradigm of one watch in one pocket, another watch in another pocket. You probably had your own junction box that gave you a kind of mental immunity.”
“Got any evidence?”
“ ’Deed I do. Two or three months ago, I went back and replayed all twenty-six visualizations.
And something struck me. Yours was the least random, most coherent. Well-plotted, even perfect. It could have passed for a novel or a movie. The other twenty-five were different. They were all confused, murky, ramblin’, a mess. No matter how I tried t’edit them, they didn’t pull together. Strings of nonsequential dream images. They were like children’s finger paintings.
“I thought and thought, now why should that be? And I came to one conclusion: this was somethin’ you yourself made. You gave structure to your images. It’s as if you descended to the elephant factory floor beneath your consciousness and built an elephant with your own hands. Without you even knowin’!”
“I find that very hard to believe,” I said.
“I can think of many possible causes,” the Professor assured me. “Childhood trauma, misguided upbringin’, over-objectified ego, guilt,… Whatever it was made you extremely self-protective, made you harden your shell.”
“Well, okay. What if it’s so, where does that lead?”
“Nowhere special. If left alone, you’d probably live a good, long life,” said the Professor. “But unfortunately, that’s not goin’ t’happen. Like it or not, you’re the key to the outcome of these whole idiotic infowars. It won’t be long before the System starts up a second-generation project with you as their model. They’ll tweak and probe and buzz every part of you there is t’test. I don’t know how far they’ll go, but I can assure you it won’t be pleasant. I wanted t’save you from all that.”
“Wonderful,” I groaned. “You’re going to save me by boycotting the project, is that it?”
“No, but you’ve got to trust me.”
“Trust you? After you’ve been deceiving me all this time? Lying to me, making me do those phony tabulations …”
“I wanted t’get to you before either the System or Semiotecs did, so I could test my hypothesis. If I could come up with positive proof, they wouldn’t have t’put you through the wringer. Embedded in the data I gave you was a call sequence. After you switched over to your second cognitive system, you switched one more click to the third cognitive system.”