Six (7 page)

Shannon wrinkles her nose. She looks queasy. “Have you…tried doing this yet? Making a copy of someone?”

Dad nods. “Four months ago we tried the procedure on three volunteers. All were Army veterans with high IQs. Unfortunately, the experiment failed each time. We scanned their brains and successfully downloaded the data into the circuits, but in each case the human intelligence failed to run on the computer. We were able to copy their minds, but the copies didn't survive the transfer.” He furrows his brow. “Since then we've studied the problem, and now we know what went wrong. The crucial factor is the person's age. After the age of eighteen, there's a change in the structure of brain cells. They become coated with greater amounts of a substance called myelin, which insulates the cells and makes them more rigid. This increases the efficiency of a person's thinking but reduces its flexibility. The mind of an adult is simply too inflexible. It can't adapt to the new conditions of residing in a machine.”

“So now you're going to try to copy younger minds?”

He nods again. “We were planning to conduct the next phase of the experiment later this year, but the events in Russia have accelerated our plans. This time, all the volunteers must be sixteen or seventeen. At that age you've reached your maximum brainpower but your minds are still adaptable. In addition to being highly intelligent, the volunteers must have strong, resilient personalities.” Dad sweeps his arm in a wide arc, gesturing at all the teenagers in the room. “All of you meet those requirements.”

Shannon rears back in her seat as if she's been slapped. “And where are you going to store the copies of our brains?” Her voice is furious. “In a supercomputer? A big electronic prison?”

Dad doesn't take offense. He answers her calmly. “The scanning process converts human intelligence to a digital form, allowing it to run on any neuromorphic computer that has enough memory and processing power. But in the initial stage right after the transfer, we believe it's important to connect the intelligence to a machine that can move around and sense the outside world. A human intelligence is accustomed to controlling a body, so if we want to preserve its sanity, we'd better give it something to control. Here, let me show you.”

He puts the vial of nanoprobes back in his pocket and pulls out something else, a small remote-control device. He points it at the doorway beside the stage, and a moment later I hear a loud clanking. The noise startles the soldiers standing by the doorway. They step backward, flattening themselves against the wall. Then a seven-foot-tall robot emerges from the doorway and brushes past them.

The robot strides across the stage. It has two arms and two legs, but otherwise it isn't very humanlike. It has no head or neck. Its torso is shaped like a giant bullet, with the rounded end on top. Its legs angle downward from the base of its torso and rest on oval steel-plate footpads that clang against the floor.

The machine marches briskly past the podium and stops in front of my dad, who presses a button on his remote control. This command extends the robot's arms, which telescope to a full length of six feet. They look like multi-jointed tentacles. The machine's hands, though, resemble human hands, with dexterous mechanical fingers and thumbs.

Dad presses another button, and the robot's rounded top starts to turn like a turret. “The cameras and acoustic sensors are up here,” Dad says, pointing at the top end. “But the neuromorphic electronics are deep inside the torso, encased in armor plating. These robots were originally designed for the war in Afghanistan, so they're pretty sturdy.” He raps his knuckles against the torso. “All in all, it's an excellent platform for a newly transferred intelligence, but really it's just the beginning. The whole point of the Pioneer Project is to bridge the gap between man and machine, and that means the human intelligences must explore their new environment. The Pioneers will have to learn how to use their new capabilities, and that includes transferring their intelligences from one machine to another.”

His voice grows louder again, full of enthusiasm. “Once the Pioneers have mastered these tasks, our hope is that they'll be able to establish a connection with Sigma. If all goes well, they'll start communicating with the AI before it launches any of the Russian missiles. And then the toughest challenge will begin. At the same time that the humans are learning how to be machines, they'll have to teach Sigma how to be human.”

Everyone in the auditorium gawks at the robot. Although it has no mind of its own yet, it's easy to imagine a human intelligence trapped inside it. I can't understand why Dad is so excited about the idea. The huge machine seems horrible to me.

Meanwhile, General Hawke comes back onstage and approaches the robot. There's an odd resemblance between the general and the machine. They're both sturdy, hulking creatures, built for combat. Hawke slaps the robot's armored torso, then turns to the audience. “And if communicating with Sigma doesn't work, we have a backup plan. Our Pioneers will also learn how to fight the AI.”

I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. While everyone else stares at the robot, I lower my head and look down at my ruined body. Something doesn't make sense. There's a paradox here, something that violates the rules of logic. It troubles me so much that I try to raise my right hand to get Dad's attention. Lifting my hand above the height of my shoulder is agony for me, and the wasted muscles in my upper arm tremble from the effort.

Luckily, after a couple of seconds Dad notices my struggle. His head whips around and he looks at me with concern. “What is it, Adam?”

My hand is shaking, but I manage to point it at the machine. “The intelligence in the robot? Would it be a perfect copy of the person's intelligence? No difference at all?”

Dad nods. “That's right.”

“But if my intelligence is in the robot and also in my brain, which one would be the real me? Would I be in two places at once?”

He takes a deep breath before answering. “Good question. If we copied all your memories into the circuitry, the machine would think of itself as Adam Armstrong, wouldn't it? And it would have just as much right to that identity as you have.” He shakes his head. “But in the real world, fortunately or not, we don't face this problem. We won't have two identical intelligences existing at the same time.”

“But you just said the intelligence in the robot would be a perfect copy.”

Dad frowns. All his enthusiasm has vanished. His face is slack and pale now. “I'm sorry, Adam. I should've mentioned this earlier. The X-ray pulses from the brain scanner are more energetic than typical X-rays. They'll destroy the brain tissue. We can't copy your mind without killing your body.”

The auditorium goes silent. Then everyone in the room starts shouting.

I sort of blank out for the next half minute. I'm vaguely aware that lots of things are going on—the rich girl's father is yelling at Hawke, the deformed boy's mother is cursing like a sailor—but the commotion seems distant and unreal. All my attention is focused on my right hand, which now rests on my thigh. I grasp the meager flesh there, the stiff band of dead muscle, and squeeze it as hard as I can. Though it's broken and dying, this is my body. How could I exist without it?

I remain in this trance until General Hawke takes the microphone and booms, “
Quiet! Please
!
” He's not used to dealing with civilians, and the strain shows on his face. “No one's forcing you into this. You have a choice.”

“This isn't a medical treatment!” The rich girl's dad jumps out of his seat. “This is murder!”

“I'm very sorry we can't do more for your children. All we can give you is the chance to preserve a part of them before they die. Maybe the most important part. And in the process, they'd be doing their country a great service.”

“It's sick! You want to harvest their minds!”

Hawke doesn't argue with him. “Because we realize what a difficult decision this is, we're going to let you go home to think it over. It's a security risk, but as long as all of you keep your mouths shut, we won't have a problem. We can't give you a lot of time, though. The threat posed by Sigma is growing every day.” He narrows his eyes. His face is like stone. “You'll have to decide within the next forty-eight hours.”

I wake up to a Kanye West song blaring from my Star Wars clock radio. I'm a big fan of Kanye. I love the fact that his songs annoy my parents. And it's funny to hear his X-rated raps coming from a radio shaped like Darth Vader's helmet.

I'm back home in my bedroom. Although the clock radio says it's 1:00 p.m., it still feels like morning to me. The return flight in the Air Force Learjet took longer than expected, and we didn't land in New York until way past midnight. After we got home at 3:00 a.m., I slept for ten hours straight, but I'm still not ready to wake up. So instead of calling for Dad and starting my day and thinking about the big decision I need to make, I just lie in bed and look around my room, thinking random thoughts. I loved doing this when I was a kid, especially on weekend mornings when there was no school to worry about. And I can still do it now. It's one of the few things that my illness hasn't taken from me.

I hate to admit this, but my bedroom doesn't look like it belongs to a seventeen-year-old. With my Darth Vader radio and my bookshelf full of comics—Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America—it looks more like the room of a geeky preteen. There's a Rubik's cube on my desk and a Star Wars chess set. There's also my Pinpressions toy, which is like a sandwich made from two squares of transparent plastic, one of them studded with hundreds of sliding pins. If you press your face against the back of the thing, it pushes the pins out the front, making a funny-looking mold of your features.

Next to this toy is my digital camcorder, which I used to bring to school every day so I could take videos of Ryan and Brittany and everyone else who crossed my wheelchair's path. And next to the camcorder is my prize possession, an official NFL football from Super Bowl XLVI, which in my opinion was the greatest football game ever played.

Because the New York Giants were in the Super Bowl that year, my parents let me throw a party in our living room. I was eleven at the time and my doctor had just told me I'd have to start using a wheelchair soon, so the party was a kind of consolation prize, something to make me feel better. I invited every kid I'd ever played touch football with, sixteen of them in all. Ryan was there, of course, and so was Brittany, who was a pretty decent kicker and receiver in those days.

We ordered half a dozen pizzas and swilled enormous quantities of Pepsi and screamed at the television set for three-and-a-half hours. A few of the kids cheered for the New England Patriots, but most of us were New York fans, and we went nuts when the Giants scored the winning touchdown with fifty-seven seconds to go. Ryan lifted me off the couch and carried me piggyback across the room, running in joyful circles around the coffee table while I clung to his shoulders.

Dad took a picture of us, and the next day I pasted the photo to a big poster I made to celebrate the game. The poster's still hanging on my bedroom wall: Giants 21, Patriots 17. Below the score is a colored-pencil drawing of Giants quarterback Eli Manning—it's a pretty good likeness, if I may say so myself—and the photo of me and Ryan, our faces flushed and manic from so much Pepsi.

On the opposite wall of my bedroom are five more homemade posters commemorating the next five Super Bowls. The Super Sunday party became an annual tradition at our house, and some of the games were almost as exciting as the Giants-Patriots matchup, but none of the parties was as good as the first. For one thing, fewer people attended each year. Only five kids came to our house for Super Bowl XLIX, and I got the feeling that most of them didn't want to be there. Dad had pleaded with their parents, forcing them to drag their kids to the crippled boy's party.

But the biggest disappointment came the following year, when I was in ninth grade. Ryan had joined the Yorktown High football team by then, and Coach McGrath hosted his own Super Bowl party, strictly for team members. When Ryan told me about it, he was practically crying, but I assured him it was okay. I said I was getting tired of the parties anyway. That year, only two people came to my house: Brittany and a younger boy who also had muscular dystrophy. Dad had met the kid's parents during one of my checkups at Westchester Medical.

The next year—which turned out to be my last at Yorktown High—I didn't invite anyone. I didn't even want to watch the Super Bowl. But five minutes before kickoff time, someone rang our doorbell. Dad went to answer it and found Brittany standing on the doorstep, holding a bag of tortilla chips and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi. With a casual smile, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, she stepped inside and went to our couch, and we started watching the game.

Or at least we tried to watch it. I couldn't concentrate. I was too busy wondering why Brittany had come and what was going through her head. And she seemed a little distracted too. At halftime she asked me, “Are you going to make a poster for the game?” I replied, “Yeah, I guess so,” and she said, “I want to help you.” So we found a sheet of poster board and my set of colored pencils, but this time I didn't draw a picture of Eli Manning or any other player. Brittany leaned against the cushions of the couch and I drew her portrait.

When I was done, I drew another picture of her, and then a third, all three sketches lined up left-to-right on the poster. I paid no attention to the football game and honestly can't remember who won. Brittany kept posing for me until the end of the post-game show, and then she stood up to go. Dad offered to drive her home, but she insisted on walking.

That poster is also on my wall. I have to admit, the three portraits of Brittany aren't as skilled as my drawing of Manning. My right hand lost some of its dexterity in the five years after Super Bowl XLVI. But the pictures are good enough for me to recognize her: the long blond hair, the high cheekbones, the eyes that are blue in one drawing and gray-green in the two others.

As I stare at the portraits now, I realize why Brittany came to my last Super Bowl party. She wasn't just being kind to me—she was also avoiding something. She turned down Dad's offer to drive her home because she had no intention of going back there. After leaving our place, she probably went to another friend's house or another party. Anything to avoid going home. I feel so stupid for not figuring this out until now. Brittany's parents had always seemed okay to me. Maybe a little uptight, but that wasn't unusual. I never saw how unhappy she was.

I'm still thinking about her when I hear a knock on the bedroom door. Startled, I turn my head toward the noise. I feel like I'm waking up again, this time from an even deeper sleep. “Uh, yeah?” I mutter. “Who is it?”

“It's Mom. Can I come in?”

I'm startled again. Dad's usually the one who takes care of me in the morning, washing and dressing me, and helping me get into my wheelchair. Whenever Mom tries to do it, she gets frustrated and bursts into tears. “Yeah, sure,” I answer, trying to prop myself up. “Come in.”

The door opens and Mom steps into the room, holding a breakfast tray. On the tray are a couple of chocolate croissants and a cup of orange juice. I'm impressed—she's done everything right. Croissants are a good choice for me because they're easy to hold. And the orange juice is in a sippy cup so it can't spill.

“Wow, this is great,” I say. “And it's not even my birthday.”

Smiling, Mom sets the tray on my desk. She looks a lot better than she did the last time I saw her, at Westchester Medical. She's wearing gray slacks and a maroon blouse. Her hair is tied in a neat ponytail, and she's put some lipstick on her mouth.

“Well, I figured I'd give your father a break today. He's still asleep, believe it or not.” She gently hooks her hands under my armpits and pulls me up to a sitting position against the headboard. “He was on the phone for nearly an hour after you went to bed last night. I kept telling him to let the answering machine take the calls, but he wouldn't listen.”

Dad was probably conferring with General Hawke or Colonel Peterson. Probably talking about me and the other doomed teenagers, estimating how many of us will decide to become Pioneers. I still don't want to think about it, so I point at the croissants. “Those look delicious. Where did you get them?”

“I went to that new bakery in Peekskill yesterday. While you and your father were away.” She picks up one of the croissants and slips it into my good hand. “Go ahead, try it.”

I feel an odd surge of delight. I'm remembering all the times my mother gave me treats when I was little. She loved to bake cookies and slip them into my hand while they were still warm. I miss those cookies. And I miss the woman who made them.

I bite into the croissant. It's nothing special, but I put a big smile on my face. “Hey, that's fantastic.”

“I'm glad you like it.” She leans against the edge of my desk. There's nowhere to sit in my room except the wheelchair, and I know she won't sit there. She hates to even look at the thing. “You deserve something nice after everything you've been through. Dad says you were very brave out there in Colorado.”

I shrug and take another bite of the croissant. “I don't know about that. All I did was sit there and listen.”

Mom looks me in the eye. “And what did you think about what they said? What the general said, I mean.”

She's determined to talk about it. And I can understand why. I have to make my decision by tomorrow morning. She wants to know which way I'm leaning.

I lower my hand, resting the half-eaten croissant on my lap. “It's definitely creepy. And there's no guarantee that the procedure will work. It failed when they tried it on adults.”

She nods vigorously. “That's right. The Army killed those men.”

“No, not really. I asked Dad about it on the flight home, and he said those volunteers also had terminal illnesses. The Army won't consider you for the procedure unless you have less than six months to live.”

“It's still murder, Adam. Whatever time they had left, those men should've lived it. They should've lived to the natural end of their days instead of being sacrificed in some unholy experiment.”

Mom's voice rises. Now she's speaking in what I call her “God voice.” She wasn't very religious when I was younger, but when I was thirteen she discovered a website called Comfort of the Blessed Hope. She started ordering inspirational books from the site and making large donations to the minister who ran it. Although Dad wasn't happy about this, he noticed that the religious books seemed to ease Mom's depression, so he didn't object.

But I couldn't stand those books. Whenever I found one lying on the coffee table, I'd pick it up and hide it somewhere. It wasn't that I hated the
content
of the books; I never read any of them, so I have no idea what they said. I hated them because they seemed to be taking my mother away from me.

With some effort, I force myself to speak calmly. “Okay, maybe it's unholy. But there's a reason for it. Did Dad tell you about Sigma?”

She nods again. “Your father's a brilliant man, but he doesn't know when to stop. He should've never built that computer in the first place.”

“He wanted to delete the program, but the Defense Department wouldn't—”

“He was playing God, that's what he was doing. I warned him about it many times.” She tilts her head back and casts a rueful look toward the bedroom on the second floor where Dad is sleeping. “But the Pioneer Project is worse. Sacrificing children? I can't believe he'd even consider it.”

“It's a desperate situation, Mom. Sigma is out of control. It's threatening to kill millions of people.”

“I'm sorry, but nothing can justify this. The Army needs to figure out another way to fight this computer. Maybe the soldiers can cut off its power. Or infect it with a computer virus.”

What she's saying sounds perfectly reasonable, but I'm sure the Army has already considered these options. The Russian missile base probably has its own power plant, and Sigma is intelligent enough to protect itself from viruses. Because the AI is constantly rewriting its code and making itself smarter, the soldiers will never be able to outwit it. At least the Pioneer Project has a chance.

“I don't have much faith in the Army,” I admit. “But I have faith in Dad. If he says this is the only way, I believe him.”

Mom comes closer, sitting down on the edge of my bed. She picks up the half-eaten croissant from my lap and puts it back on the breakfast tray. Then she stretches her arm toward me and cups my chin in her palm. Her hand is warm.

“Adam, your father loves you very much. For the past few years he's done all the work of caring for you, because I didn't have the strength to do it. And now I'm so sorry that I wasn't there for you.” She slides her hand up to my cheek. “In one way, though, I'm stronger than him. I've accepted the fact that I'm going to lose you. Even though it destroys me every time I think of it, I accept God's will. But your father won't stop fighting. He has another reason for working on this Pioneer idea, and it has nothing to do with saving the world. He thinks the procedure can save
you
.”

I shiver. These are almost the exact words Dad used when we were in the SUV, heading for Pioneer Base.
I
saw
a
way
to
save
you.
“What are you saying?” I ask. “You think he instigated this whole crisis just to make a copy of my brain?”

She shakes her head. “No, of course not. But this idea has been on his mind for years. He's obsessed with all that Singularity nonsense. He really believes it's possible to live forever by putting your memories into a computer.”

“Well, maybe he's right.” I feel an urge to defend him. “Maybe if I undergo the procedure, I'll wake up inside the machine. My body would die, but my mind would go on working.”