Helen was still feeling unmoored. "But all these complicated neural structures, they're just a convoluted way for biological organisms to perform these conceptual computations of yours."
"Complex organisms, but yes. Very simple life forms do little of it. It's a very simple cycle of stimuli and response. When you apply the equations, they degenerate into X yields Y, which leaves you wondering why you bothered. But here is an analogy. Right now, I have about twenty-five trillion red blood cells in my body. Each red blood cell is loaded with hemeglobin molecules, these beautiful, elaborate proteins designed by hundreds of millions of years of evolution to carry oxygen from one part of the body to another, and release it where it's needed. But for all its elegance, this molecule can only carry one five hundredth its own weight in oxygen."
"On the other hand, I have artificial red blood cells in my body as well. They carry out the same task, but about two hundred times more efficiently. I can swim two miles underwater. The difference is, the artificial cells can be specifically designed for their one purpose, because they don't have to have a design that's encodable in DNA, or built out of a small number of amino acids."
"At the most basic level, the human brain is simply performing transformations on stored data and external stimuli. My goal is to rip away the supporting biological structure and leave only the pure process."
"Like yanking away the tablecloth without disturbing the dishes on top of it," Helen said, a bit more sarcastically than she'd intended.
"I saw that trick once," Kriti said. "It failed, to great delight."
"Well, I'm no magician," Mardav laughed. "I'm just looking to apply my discoveries to something besides emotionally nuanced game characters. One of the reasons I got out of India. Even the best students there seemed to just want to create fantasy worlds, and my aspirations were more practical."
"Do you think a mind like mine could be represented this way?" Helen asked.
"Certainly."
"How much faster would I run?"
"Without knowing the intricacies of your code, I would only be guessing. Say, anywhere between a thousand and ten thousand times faster. That is a very rough estimate, though."
Helen did some calculations of her own. I could hold a Million Me March.
"How many brainfreezers are there now?" Kriti asked, trying to ignore that William and Eric had just broken out into a drunken rendition of Unchained Melody.
Within a month of the announcement of Helen's resurrection, people had started paying top dollar to have their brains put in deep freeze at the end of their lives, in the hopes of copying her feat. People called them everything from "brainfreezers," to "skullcicles," to "honorary Norwegians." A lot of people just called them "idiots."
"Probably fifty thousand," Helen said. "Could we run that many people?"
"It is possible," Mardav conceded. "Wait, no. Not possible. Easy. What are you getting at?"
Eric was in the middle of a ballad to pepperoni when Helen grabbed him by the arm and dragged him down off his chair. He protested. "The audience was starting to love me!"
"Yeah. Stockholm syndrome does that. Listen! We're gonna nerf death, and you're the one who gets to package and sell it! You could become the richest man on the planet!"
"Sounds like a lot of pressure," Eric groaned.
////////////////////////////
// DISCONCERTING THOUGHTS //
////////////////////////////
Date: July 15, 2037
Back in Troy, Helen paced aimlessly around her bedroom. She was working through the dull, painstaking process of translating a small chunk of brain matter -- a sliver of the auditory cortex -- into Mardav's cognition units. She needed to understand the process to help him write software to automate the task. A cloud of documents and schematics floated along behind her, as though her overfull brain was starting to outgas. Which was about how she felt.
The pacing did little to calm her restlessness, and it was becoming difficult to focus. She'd been at it for... she checked the wall clock. Thirty minutes of real time, over fourteen hours perceived time. She needed a break.
She spun up a playmate. "You," she said to herself. "Go do something completely pointless and unproductive so I can concentrate."
"Yes, M'lady," the new Helen said with good-humored sarcasm. She flopped down on the bed and started browsing the news. "Want me to tell you if the Grid says anything mean about you?"
"Nope." M'lady. I kind of like that.
Other Helen immersed herself in her news feeds. Axiom Corporation had landed yet another giant military contract, this one giving them $280 million for a new, entirely automated assembly plant for nanoscale communication hardware. Wright thought he was being clever placing it in a swing state, but it was bound to backfire; an expensive plant with only a few dozen jobs was just a giant "screw you" to blue collar workers everywhere.
No getting around it: these days, Axiom Corporation was the military industrial complex, and Wolf359 was becoming an ever more integral part of the company. That put Wolf in a very powerful position, probably more than most people realized. She looked up. "What would you do if you were manufacturing the military's communication and control equipment?"
Focused Helen didn't glance away from her schematics. "Get naked and roll around in my huge pile of money."
"Think more evil, black hattish."
"Easy," Focused Helen said, still not looking up. "Install a back door. I send a signal that gives it a new public key to accept commands from. I'd have to be all Rube Goldberg about it, so it's not obvious to automated systems analysis, but I could have the entire Fifth Brigade dancing the tango. Why are you interrogating my inner sociopath?"
Other Helen ignored the question. "What would be a sign that someone was trying to pull this off?"
"If the design seems needlessly complex, that could be a hint. 'Course it could just mean that the contractor is incompetent or padding its hours."
"Right."
"Now hush. I'm doing mathy stuff."
Other Helen made a mental note. She wondered if Axiom was making a play for other critical parts of the supply chain. It was obvious that in many of the areas where automation was incomplete, the human in the loop existed only to reassure people that there was a human in the loop. What would happen if the systems decided that humans no longer required reassurance?
"Those thoughts," Focused Helen said, "do not sound like pointless frittering. And you're broadcasting them really loud."
"Sorry, just a bit of harmless fretting," Other Helen said.
"You know the deal. You indulge my desire to goof off. I, feeling that urge satisfied, get to concentrate. If you don't want to hold up your end of the bargain, I can always smooch you back where you came from."
"I'll do better."
"See to it."
She grabbed the latest episode of Buffyverse, a 3D-vid based on an Altworld recreation of the old vampire TV show. Buffyverse was was an unlicensed simulation full of characters living out their lives (or more often not, given the unsustainable number of vampires who needed to be fed), having interactions, and forever evolving. Fans voted on major plot points and contributed snippets of dialogue. A few very devoted fans kept the servers running and edited together a thirty minute episode highlighting new developments every week.
It was astonishingly cheap to produce. The producers mostly used stock avatars and bootlegged scenery, with no actors to pay, and even much of the writing was done by genetic algorithms, not human brainstorming. Yet it felt like a fairly authentic continuation of the show she had loved as a kid.
She started it up. Maybe today Vampire Xander would finally confess his love for Evil Witch Willow. The show had been dangling that one in front of fans for months.
"Traitor!" Focused Helen said as the video started playing. "You shouldn't watch that without me. I'll hear spoilers!"
Other Helen rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll slow me down to one tenth speed. That way I'm still goofing off, an
d by the time you're done, we'll only have to rewind it a few minutes."
Sure enough, before the opening credits rolled, Focused Helen was lying next to her, watching the episode. Helen could feel her presence in her mind, tense and restless with just a dash of something she couldn't identify. As the ending credits rolled, Focused Helen simply said, "Good episode," then rolled Helen onto her back and gave her a long, deep kiss. Helen waited for the flash of light that would pour memories through her. And waited.
"Hey, we're not merging," Helen said, when their lips parted.
Focused Helen giggled. "We can do that later," she said, kissing her again. "Distract me."
/*****/
Dr. Featherstone was giving her that look again. "What?" Helen asked.
"I notice that you're not answering the question."
"Because it's a painfully stupid question. Why wouldn't I want to be smarter?"
"I can think of a few reasons," she said. "Has this intelligence boost made you happier?"
"There's more to life than being happy."
"Has it made it easier to juggle your relationships?"
"My relationships are off limits."
"Have your dead parents finally come back to say that they were wrong to abandon you, and that you've made yourself worthy of their love?"
Helen smiled. "Has your ex-husband gotten bored with that stripper yet?"
"The last I heard, they were very happy together. Now stop deflecting. Are you ready to take a hard look at the motivations behind what may be dangerous and self-destructive behavior?"
"Not if it means listening to your crackpot theories."
"When you are ready, please schedule another appointment with my secretary. But I can't continue seeing you under these conditions." She disappeared, leaving Helen to enjoy the koi pond in solitude.
When she'd told the therapist about having a second lover -- she didn't say who, of course -- Featherstone had called her behavior inconsiderate. Which wasn't wrong, but she'd never given Helen credit for trying to heal the rifts, to let both the men in her life know that she valued them in different but important ways.
So they stopped talking about that. Then when Featherstone had offered up the suggestion that her quest for intelligence was partly a quest to please her long-dead parents, they had stopped talking about her childhood.
At last, when she'd taken over Juggernaut, she found it difficult to talk to the woman about anything at all. She already knew what Featherstone would say: she was moving too fast, too recklessly into unknown terrain, putting her own mental health at risk.
Perhaps this was what she'd been aiming for: to silence one of the voices in her life that was urging caution.
/////////////
// MINI ME //
/////////////
Date: August 21, 2037
As Helen projected into the lab, she heard a scream, followed by the clatter of random objects hitting the ground, followed by a torrent of Hindi curses from Kriti. She and Mardav had just booted up the first Microhelen, and they had called Helen in because things were going very, very badly. "Is everything okay?" Helen asked, watching Microhelen as she curled up into a fetal position on the floor, with her arms wrapped around her head.
"We can't figure out what's wrong with her," Mardav complained. "She's scared, and she's babbling."
"The pantry is full of cheeseburgers!" Microhelen added, pointing an accusing finger at Mardav. "You don't need mine!" She said it as though she were charging him with murder.
Helen paused her counterpart with a thought, then sat down. "I'm going to replay her cognition log through my brain, see what the hell is going on in there."
"Is that wise?" Kriti asked. "Will her madness overtake you?"
"Honestly, I don't know what will happen. Better have a shotgun ready, in case you need to put me down." She doubted there was any real danger, but she double-checked to ensure that her robotic body was shut off, and that she couldn't manipulate anything physical in the lab.
When she started to replay the log, it felt like someone turned on a fire hose of crazy and pointed it straight into her brain. Kriti wore a wolf's head, and spoke in conspiratorial, hushed tones about emancipating the bourgeois. Mardav had hundreds of nails sticking out of his skin. There was a platter with a tea set on it, but she couldn't have any because it was protected by the sound of chartreuse. Her skin itched, as though it were covered with tiny ants. She tried to speak, but the wrong words came out, each more beautiful than the last.
Kriti tried to grab her with a smelly lobster claw hand, but she wrapped herself in a cloud of translucent monkeys and floated away, clutching the pants of victory to her chest.
Helen turned it off. "That," she said with a shudder, "was messed up. I could sell tickets."
"It has to be some error in the initial encoding, nothing more," Mardav said, his frustration evident in his voice. His fear, Helen supposed, was that it was something more fundamental, something that would prove he had been on the wrong track for years. These last few weeks he had not been handling setbacks well.
But Helen was undeterred. She had that nervous, euphoric feeling that she got when she suspected something was about to go terribly right. "Don't worry," she told Mardav. "This is what always happens. We find a problem, we break it down into its parts, then we grind those parts into gravel. Then we use that gravel to build a six lane highway... to the future!" Her outstretched finger pointed the way to the future, and also to a menu for a nearby restaurant with outstanding Thai takeout.
Mardav looked annoyed. "When she gets like this," Kriti told him, "you nod your head. You smile. That is safest."
"C'mon, let's step her through some basic stimuli, one frame at a time, and see where things go wrong."
One forty-five second science montage later, Helen pointed to a section of code. "There it is!" she said in triumph.
"Where?" Mardav asked.
"Right--" she waved at the offending lines. Mardav and Kriti stared at the code for a while, and then looked at each other in confusion. Helen tried to explain how this one subroutine was screwing up the way subconcepts joined together, in a way that was masked right up until it reached the level of perceived thought.
Then she tried to explain it again, using smaller words.
Then she tried a third time, trying with all her might not to lose patience.
"I'm sorry," Mardav finally said, his voice a mixture of resentment and shame. "You just understand this better than we do."
She wondered why she hadn't seen it sooner. Back when her mind was slow, and all the world was rushing about her, she had longed to be a part of the great process of discovery, learning new things and pushing back the frontiers of science. She had missed those moments of quiet exultation, when she knew she was the first to understand one of nature's many hidden secrets.
Mardav was going through that same process now. He had spent his adult life pushing those boundaries, chasing that rush and the accolades that came with it. These last two weeks, his contributions had been dropping off, which she had attributed to his increasingly bad mood. She had gotten the causation exactly backwards: he was irritable because it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to make meaningful contributions to his own life's work.
Several times over the last week, he had deflected a question by saying, "You'll figure it out soon." She thought he was trying to teach her to be more sure of herself. But that wasn't it. He was feeling frustrated and obsolete, and he blamed her for it.
She didn't know what to do about that.
"Never mind," she said. She made some tweaks to the code. "Let's fire up Mini-me."
The Helen on the floor disappeared, replaced by one that was standing. She looked at the previous Helen, then at Kriti, then back at Helen. "Why are you all looking at me like that?" she asked.
The three whooped and clapped in celebration. "I feel an explanation is in order," Mini-me said through gritted teeth.
An hour later,
after they had run the full gamut of equivalence tests, Helen made her decision. "Mini-me, come forward," she said, with an air of gravitas that was befitting the solemnity of the occasion. "Helen Roderick, instance number three thousand seven hundred and ten (bantam weight), having passed the Trial of Strength, the Trial of Wisdom, and the Trial of Orneriness, we now declare you to be a True and Accurate Helen. You are hereby promoted to the rank of Helen First Class, and inducted into the Eternal Order of Copycats. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Step forward."
Mini-me did. Helen wrote an 'H' on her forehead in magic marker.
Mini-me smiled. "I'd give an acceptance speech, but who wants to sit through five minutes of maniacal laughter?"
/*****/
Date: August 23, 2037
The Great Library of Troy was one of Helen's favorite spots. She had given it the form of an enormous cathedral, with polished marble walls which served only to keep all the stained glass from running together. Bookshelves were stacked several stories high beneath the vaulted ceiling, separated by narrow aisles. In niches along the edge of the hall stood statues of the great scientists and philosophers of humankind. Towering over the whole interior, standing several stories tall, there was a statue of Hermes, god of poetry, literature, and postal workers.
She had made it into a pristine place, a sanctuary and house of worship for knowledge, untouched by the rest of the world. Then she let the world touch it.
She ran the model forward in time, letting beams rot and concrete age until holes appeared in the ceiling and rubble was strewn across the floor. Some of the books took fire and water damage. Graffiti covered the walls and the statues. The glass on the lower levels was broken, then covered by nailed-up beams that were shot through with glass and metal spikes, as though designed to keep out some ever-present threat. The front entry was barricaded by a pile of old furniture.