Calculating God (22 page)

I glanced at the clock on the wall; there was plenty of time left—on the tape, at least.

“You’re probably curious about my relationship with Hollus, the Forhilnor.” I shrugged. “Frankly, I’m curious about it, too. I suppose if you remember anything from your childhood, it’s the night he came to visit our house. You know that was the real Hollus? Not a projection? Well, it was. You, me, and your mother were the first humans to actually meet a Forhilnor in the flesh. Besides this tape, I’m also leaving you a copy of the journal I’ve been keeping about my experiences with Hollus. Maybe someday you, or somebody else, will put together a book about all this. Of course, there will be gaps that have to be filled in—I’m sure there are relevant things going on that I don’t know about—but the notes I’ve made should give you a good start.

“Anyway, about my relationship with Hollus, all I know is this: I like him and I think he likes me. There’s a saying that an unexamined life is not worth living; getting cancer caused me to examine my life, but I think getting to know Hollus has caused me to examine what it means to be human.” I shrugged a little, acknowledging that what I was about to say was the sort of thing people didn’t normally say aloud. “And I guess what it means is this: to be human is to be
fragile.
We are easily hurt, and not just physically. We are easily hurt emotionally, too. So, as you move through life, my son, try not to hurt others.” I lifted my shoulders again. “That’s it; that’s the advice I have for you.” It wasn’t nearly enough, I knew; there was no way to make up for a lost decade with a few bromides. Ricky already had become the man he was going to be . . . without my help.

“There’s one final thing I want you to know,” I said. “Never doubt this for a moment, Richard Blaine Jericho. You had a father once, and he loved you. Always remember that.”

I got up, shut off the video camera, and stood there in the den, my sanctuary.

22

It had come to me while sleeping, doubtless because of the recording I’d made for Ricky: a version of me that would live on after my body had died. I was so excited, I got up and went downstairs to tap repeatedly on the holoform do-decahedron, in hopes of summoning Hollus. But he didn’t come; I had to wait until he appeared in my office of his own volition the next day.

“Hollus,” I said, as soon as his image had stabilized, “I think I know what they’ve buried beneath those warning landscapes on all those dead worlds.”

Hollus locked his eyes on me.

“It’s not nuclear waste,” I said. “As you said, there are no markings related to nuclear waste, and no need to worry about such things over million-year timeframes. No, they buried something they wanted to
preserve
forever, not something they wanted to get rid of. That’s why the Cassiopeians went so far as to shut off plate tectonics on their world by blowing up their moon—they wanted to be sure what they had in their subterranean vault never subducted.”

“Perhaps,” said Hollus. “But what would they want to preserve so carefully while at the same time trying to frighten anyone away from digging it up?”

“Themselves,” I said.

“You propose something like a bomb shelter? Seismic soundings suggest there is not enough volume in the vault on Mu Cassiopeae A Prime to house more than a small number of individuals.”

“No, no,” I said. “I think they’re
all
down there. Millions, billions; whatever their entire population was. I think they scanned their brains and uploaded themselves into a computer world—and the actual hardware generating that world, the machines they didn’t want anyone messing with, are stored beneath those horrendous landscapes.”

“Scanned . . . ,” said Hollus’s left mouth, and “scanned . . . ,” ruminated his right. “But we only found three worlds with artificial landscapes designed to frighten off the curious,” he said. “The other worlds we visited—Eta Cassiopeae A III, Sigma Draconis II, and Groombridge 1618 III—had simply been vacated.”

“On those worlds, the computer hardware may have been shot into space. Or else those races may have decided that the best way to avoid detection was simply to do nothing at all. Even a warning marker attracts the curious; maybe they decided to hide their computing hardware with no indication of where it is.”

“But why would entire races do that?” asked Hollus. “Why give up physical existence?”

That was a no-brainer for me. “How old are you?” I asked.

“In subjective Earth years? Forty-seven.”

That surprised me. For some reason, I’d expected Hollus to be older than I was. “And how long will you live?”

“Perhaps another eighty years, assuming an accident does not befall me.”

“So a typical Forhilnor lifespan is a hundred and thirty years?”

“For females, yes. Males live about ten years longer.”

“So, um—my God—so you’re female?”

“Yes.”

I was stunned. “I hadn’t been aware of that. Your voice—it’s rather deep.”

“That is just the way Forhilnor voices are—male or female.”

“I think I’ll go on calling you ‘he,’ if that’s okay.”

“I am no longer offended by it,” said Hollus. “You may continue to do so.”

“Anyway,” I said, “you’ll live a total of about a hundred and thirty years. Me, I’m fifty-four right now; if it weren’t for the adenocarcinoma, I’d live another twenty-odd years, if not thirty or forty.”

Hollus’s eyestalks moved.

“But that’s it. And, again, even if I didn’t have cancer, a lot of that time would be in declining health.” I paused. “Do Forhilnors age gracefully?”

“A poet on my world once said, ‘It is all eclipsing moons’—a metaphor that means much the same as your expression ‘it is all downhill’—from the moment you are born. Forhilnor bodies and minds deteriorate over time, too.”

“Well, if you could assume a virtual existence—if you could live inside a computer—starting in the prime of youth, you could go on forever, without any deterioration.”

“Immortality has always been a dream of my people,” Hollus admitted.

“Mine, too. In fact, many preachers use a promise of life everlasting, albeit in some other realm, as their main inducement for good behavior. But although we’ve extended our life spans a great deal through improved health care, we are nowhere near immortal.”

“Nor are we,” said Hollus. “Nor are the Wreeds. But both they and we harbor hopes of making eternal life possible.”

“We thought we’d made a breakthrough a few years ago when we discovered how to put the end caps back on DNA.” Chromosomes have little protective bits at their ends, like the plastic-wrapped tips of shoelaces; every time a chromosome divides, the tips—called telomeres—are shortened. After enough divisions, the tips are completely gone, and the chromosome can’t divide anymore.

“We discovered that, too,” said Hollus, “almost a hundred years ago. But although replacing telomeres can make individual cells divide forever in the laboratory, it does not work in an integrated organism. When an organism reaches a critical mass of cells, division either halts after a set number of repeats, just as if the telomeres had been diminished, or reproduction becomes uncontrolled, and tumors form.” His eyestalks dipped. “As you know, I lost my own mother to cancer of the
vostirrarl,
an organ that serves much the same function for us as does the marrow in your bones.”

“Leukemia,” I said softly. “We call cancer of the marrow leukemia.”

Hollus was quiet for a time.

Yes, I could surely understand the appeal.

To be uploaded.

To be divorced from the physical.

To live without tumors, without pain.

If the opportunity were presented to me, would I do it?

In a minute.

“It’s certainly a great incentive to give up physical existence,” I said. “Living forever in the good health of youth.” I looked at Hollus, who was standing on just five legs; he seemed to be giving the sixth a rest. “In which case, perhaps your people have nothing to fear. Presumably, soon enough your race will develop the same ability—it seems every race does. And then, if your people want, they will . . . will
transcend
into a new form of existence.”

Hollus said nothing for several seconds. “I am not sure that I would look forward to that,” he said.

“It must be very tempting, if race after race has chosen that route.”

“I suppose,” said Hollus. “My people have been making considerable progress in brain-scanning technology—it is somewhat more difficult for us than it will be for your people, since our brains are in the centers of our bodies and since the integration of the two halves will doubtless pose some problems. Still, I imagine we will be able to upload a combined Forhilnor consciousness within a few decades.” He paused. “But this does explain the phenomenon I observed in those science-fiction videos you showed me: why alien races that encounter each other in the flesh are always at about the same technological level. There is, it seems, a narrow window between when interstellar flight is developed and when a race ceases to have corporeal existence. It also explains why the search for extraterrestrial intelligence via radio telescopes usually fails; again, there is only a short time between the development of radio and the abandonment of its use.”

“But, as far as you’ve been able to determine, none of the races you’re aware of, except our three, have existed simultaneously.” I paused. “Our races—the three of us—may be the first chance the galaxy has ever had for a . . . a planetary federation.”

“Interesting thought,” said Hollus. “Do you suppose that is why God intervened on our worlds? To bring us to technological sophistication simultaneously so that we could form some sort of alliance?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Although I’m not sure what that would accomplish. I mean, it might be good for our races, but what does it do for the creator?”

Hollus lowered his sixth foot. “That is a very good question,” he said at last.

Later that night, after we’d put Ricky to bed, and I’d read to him for a bit, Susan and I were sitting on the couch in the living room. I had my arm draped around her shoulders, and she had her head resting on my chest.

“Have you ever thought about the future?” I asked her. I lifted my arm a little bit. “I don’t mean the near future.” I’m sure she’d been giving that much thought. “I mean the far future—thousands, or even millions, of years from now.”

I couldn’t see Susan’s face. I hoped she was smiling. “I won’t be around to see that.”

I was quiet for a moment; I didn’t know if I really wanted to broach this topic. “But what if there was a way,” I said. “A way to live forever.”

Susan was sharp; that’s one of the reasons I’d married her. “Has Hollus offered you that? Immortality?”

I shook my head. “No. He doesn’t have any better idea of how to make it work than we do. But his race has found evidence of six other species that seem to have perhaps discovered immortality . . . of a sort.”

She shifted slightly against my chest. “Oh?”

“They seem to have . . . well, the word we’ve been using is ‘transcended’ into another level of existence . . . presumably by uploading themselves into computers.”

“That’s hardly ‘living forever.’ You might as well be a corpse preserved in formaldehyde.”

“We presume the uploaded beings continue to exist within the computer, acting and reacting and interacting. Indeed, they might not even be able to tell that they don’t have material existence anymore; the sensory experience might be comparable to, or better than, what we’re used to.”

She sounded incredulous. “And you say whole races have done this?”

“That’s my theory, yes.”

“And you think the individual consciousnesses continue on forever inside the computers?”

“It’s possible.”

“Which means . . . which means you wouldn’t have to die?”

“Well, the flesh-and-blood me would die, of course, and I would have no continuity with the uploaded version once the scan had been made. But the uploaded version would remember having been me, and would go on after I’d died. As far as it—or those interacting with it—would be concerned, it would be me. So, yes, if we had access to the technology, in a very real sense I wouldn’t have to die. I assume that one of the big reasons for people uploading themselves was to overcome the limitations imposed by growing old or ill.”

“This isn’t on the table?” asked Susan. Her heart was pounding; I could feel it. “You really haven’t been offered this?”

“No,” I said. “Neither the Forhilnors nor the Wreeds know how to do it—and, for that matter, we’re only assuming that this is what really happened to the other races. It seems that every intelligent species either destroys itself shortly after discovering nuclear weapons, or that it survives maybe a hundred and fifty years longer, but then decides to transcend.”

Susan lifted her shoulders. “If it
were
on the table—if it was something you were being offered right now—my response might be different. You know that . . .” She trailed off, but I knew she’d been about to say that she’d do anything to keep from losing me. I squeezed her hand.

“But,” she continued, “if it weren’t for that, if it weren’t for what we’re facing, I’d say no. I can’t imagine it being something I’d want.”

“You’d live forever,” I said.

“No, I’d
exist
forever. That’s not the same thing.”

“It could all be simulated, of course. Every aspect of life.”

“If it isn’t real,” said Susan, “it isn’t the same.”

“You wouldn’t be able to tell that it wasn’t real.”

“Perhaps not,” Susan said. “But I’d
know
it wasn’t, and that would make all the difference.”

I shrugged a little. “Ricky seems just as happy playing Nintendo baseball as he is playing the real game—in fact, he plays the computer version more often; I don’t think his generation is going to have the conceptual problems with this that we do.” I paused. “A virtual existence does have its appeals. You wouldn’t have to grow old. You wouldn’t have to die.”