We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

I snapped back to consciousness. There was no transition, none of the normal vagueness you get when you wake up. I remembered the car coming at me, which I thought was odd. I would have expected the last few seconds to be lost as they didn’t have time to enter long-term memory. On the other hand, maybe the last few seconds had been lost.

I lay there, without moving or opening my eyes, and did careful inventory. I felt no pain. In fact, I couldn’t feel my arms, my legs, or my body at all. I was getting none of the normal proprioceptive cues that would tell me if I were lying down, comfortable, or anything. Not really a good sign—complete paralysis seemed a likely explanation.

I experienced a moment of panic, followed immediately by a kind of bemused surprise. The panic seemed to be purely intellectual. I had no sensation of elevated breathing, increased heart-rate, or fight-or-flight muscle tension. Nothing. While I was normally very analytical, this seemed especially Vulcan, even for me.

Wow. Am I paralyzed from the forehead down? Maybe I’m in an induced coma? If so, it’s not a very good one.

Gathering my resolve, I opened my eyes.

Or tried to. Nothing happened. This time, I did panic. Being blind was the stuff of nightmares for me. For a few moments, my thoughts spun out of control. I thought of movies I would never see, books I would never read.

But again, the panic didn’t self-reinforce. No adrenaline rush, no nothing. I couldn’t think of a medical condition that would do that. Maybe drugs. Good ones.

I was getting a little weirded out. Over and above the panic thing, I mean. I decided on drugs as a good working hypothesis.

Determined to get a handle on things, I tried again, really thought about opening my eyes. The mechanics, the feeling of my eyes opening…

And with no transition, I could see! There are no words to describe my relief with that small victory.

I appeared to be sitting up, since I was looking at a wall instead of a ceiling. The room could be a hospital room, or a lab, or any nondescript government office. The walls were painted in that peculiar off-white tone that new construction always seemed to start out with. The far wall had a large window, currently shielded by white, uh, something. I thought at first it might be Venetian blinds, but they seemed to be actually printed on the glass.

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.” ŖãℕỘ𝖇Ę𝙨

“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!”

The doctor sighed. “And that’s the cue for the history lesson.”

He settled himself more comfortably in his chair and assumed that far-off expression people get when they’re lecturing. “In 2036, the USA elected an over-the-top, unapologetic fundamentalist president named Andrew Handel. Yes, that Handel. During his term, he tried to ban election of non-Christians to any public post, and tried to remove the constitutional separation between church and state. He was nominated, supported, and elected based on his religious views, rather than on his political or fiscal expertise. And of course, he appointed persons of similar persuasion to every post he could manage, in some cases blatantly ignoring laws and procedures. He and his cronies rammed through far-right policies with no thought for consequences. In a number of cases, when challenged on the results, he declared that God would not allow their just cause to fail. He eventually brought the USA to its knees in an economic collapse that made the 2008 recession look like a picnic in the park.”

Dr. Landers tapped his tablet absent-mindedly. It was obvious to me that he knew the whole spiel by rote.

“In the next election, the public voted in the USA’s first—and only—overtly atheist president, Desmond Ahearn, mostly in reaction to the Handel travesty. Needless to say, the religious right went ballistic. In 2041, they staged a successful coup. And thus was born the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony.”

It took me perhaps a millisecond to parse out the acronym. I groaned. “How long do you suppose it took them to work that out?”

Dr. Landers frowned. “The official history doesn’t mention Ahearn or the coup at all, and Handel is credited with being voted in after running on a platform of creating a theocracy. And just so you know, Bob, criticism of the government is a felony, punishable by, er, re-education. It’s certainly something to be avoided. As a machine, though, you’d just be deactivated. Part of my job is to instruct you in right-thinking so you can become a good servant of the state.”

“Are you going to get in trouble at all? Some of your comments seem, you know, insufficiently respectful.”

“The Ministry of Truth, which is backing this venture, is surprisingly pragmatic. They are concerned with results, and have guaranteed us that they will not interfere as long as they get what they’re paying for.” The doctor frowned. “Some of the other ministries, maybe less so. We are cautious during any ministry visits.”

“Got it. So anyway, I get to live out my days operating a garbage truck or something, as a good servant of the state?”

“Ah, well, on that subject… You see, one of the first acts of the new theocracy was to declare all cryogenic facilities blasphemous and all corpsicles truly dead. They confiscated the clients’ assets—all those fiscal vehicles that you and others had set up to pay for your long-term storage. And finally they auctioned off all the cryo companies’ assets. Which included a bunch of deep-frozen clients with no legal standing.”

“Auctioned us off? Wouldn’t the properly orthodox thing to do be to bury us? Not that I’m advocating that right now, you understand…”

Dr. Landers looked angry for a moment. “Did theologues limit themselves to logical or consistent behavior in your day?”

“Point taken.” I considered the doctor’s explanation. “So I actually belong to someone?”

“To the company I work for, as a matter of fact. Applied Synergetics Inc. is engaged in a sort of economic competition with Total Cyber Systems to supply robotic servants to society. We attempt to integrate replicants into useful machinery, while TCS creates artificial machine intelligences, AMIs, from the ground up.”

I chuckled. Or tried to. What came out of the voice synthesizer was a long way from what I intended.

Dr. Landers winced. “That’ll get better. Don’t worry. By the end of this session, your voice will be indistinguishable from human. And to answer the unspoken but obvious question, AMIs at the moment are only authorized for very, very simple tasks with low risk or heavy supervision. Some years ago, some AMI-based pest-control equipment at a local mall had a psychotic break and decided people qualified as targets. Dozens of patrons were hurt, and several were killed before they deactivated the devices.”

I chuckled again. This time it sounded less like a printer jamming.

“On the other hand,” Dr. Landers continued, “replicants aren’t any better at multitasking than they were when alive. Which is why we add the GUPPI interface to offload tasks. And about four out of five replicants go insane when they discover what has been done to them.”

He looked in my direction with a wry expression. “Not to mention that most cryo subjects were wealthy, and don’t take well to the idea of becoming indentured servants in their next life.”

The image of some ex-CEO being told he would now be driving a garbage truck made me laugh out loud.

“…So we can find it difficult to get the right replicant for the right job. And a certain percentage go insane anyway after a while.”

That was a sobering thought. I had a bad feeling that I might be looking down that particular chasm later. Right now, this all felt like it was happening to someone else. Questions about individuality and the existence of souls poked at the edge of my awareness. With an effort I pushed them away, to concentrate on the now.

“Eighty percent failure rate kind of sucks, doc. How do you stay in business?”

“One success, Bob, can be installed in many units. Most of the mining equipment in operation today is controlled by one Rudolf Kazini, who was a miner in his former life as well. Matching temperament to task is the key.” The doctor hesitated for a moment, then added, “And, of course, we cultivate multiple candidates.”

I tried to raise my non-existent eyebrows and I was annoyed when nothing happened. “Am I in a competition, then?”

“Well, yes and no. We have activated five candidates for this project. Statistically, four of you will go insane and be purged. If more than one of you gets through the training phase with your sanity intact, then yes, we’ll have to make a choice. The project requires only one replicant.”

“And the loser?”

Dr. Landers shrugged. “Garbage truck. Or maybe just stored pending another opportunity.”

Not good. Not good at all. The prospect of going insane wasn’t exactly at the top of my bucket list, but the idea of cheating death—more or less—then just being relegated to menial labor, really sucked. Being turned off, even more so. It would appear that I was in a competition, and one with the highest of stakes for me.

I was going to have to take this very seriously. And I would have to assume that the other candidates were equally well suited to whatever task the project required. I would simply have to be better. And the first step was information-gathering.

“So, what’s the job?”

“There’s really no point in discussing specifics at this early stage. It would be a distraction, at best.”

Well, no joy, there. “Can you tell me about my opponents?”

“No, Bob. There’s no reason to. You’ll never meet them. Best that you not humanize them in any way.”

That made sense, in a very cold, clinical way. But I wasn’t making much headway on the information-gathering front, so far.

“Okay. Next question. Why am I not more panicked about all of this? This is absolutely bizarre. I’m dead. I mean, original me is dead. I’m a computer program. I’m property. Why am I not running in tight little circles, waving my hands in the air? Apart from the obvious reason, I mean.”

The doctor smirked, but he didn’t really seem amused. “We can’t modify your personality, Bob. It’s an emergent property. Attempts to do so have resulted in, ah, non-viable subjects. So it’s all or nothing. But we can control the endocrine simulation routines. Panic depends on a feedback loop involving adrenaline. We simply limit that. You can’t panic or get angry or frightened, you can only be deeply concerned, so to speak.”

“And with that, you still have an 80% failure rate?” I tried to wave a hand. I had always talked with my hands a lot, so when that failed as well, I said in exasperation, “Say, am I going to get some appendages at some point? This Jack the Bodiless business is getting on my nerves, er, circuits. Whatever.”

Dr. Landers nodded. “Actually, Bob, I think we’ve made very good progress today. You were obviously a very rational person and are handling this better than I could have hoped for. We’ll continue tomorrow, and I’ll see if I can get you some peripherals.”

Dr. Landers lifted his tablet and poked at it.

“Wait, no, I—”