Chapter 21 - Emergence

"Samantha is calling you," reports Emmanuelle.

"Hello honey", says Bertram.

"Are you crying?...   Friends can be insensitive.  What did she say?...   No, Charles is 15 going on 30 and has been prepared for this his whole life...  Well, he's much better off than those children whose parent is killed unexpectedly when they are 15... I've made him an appropriate credit dispersal; it would be very bad for him to have too much at this stage in his life... No, that would put him over the Scrooge limit and, anyway, he needs to have the incentive to work towards his own credit accumulation...  Honey, we've discussed this, many times... Yes, anyway I have something to tell you... I'm on my way to see Miranda... No, I'm walking...  Yes, it is a long way but I like the open air and I wanted to enjoy nature and think... It always helps to talk things out and Emmanuelle... You know that's not true...  I know what she wants, she wants help to bake a cake for Angela... Yes, she is... Ok I'll see you at home... Love you!"

Like any efficient VPA Emmanuelle doesn't comment, even though she has heard and recorded the entire conversation to his personal memory.  And Samantha had said that catty thing about her, knowing perfectly well that she could hear.  Emmanuelle is actually pleased that she's jealous, 'she'll get hers', she thinks in anticipation.

Bertram felt the need to apologise to Emmanuelle for Samantha's obscene reference to their relationship.

"But she'll pretend she didn't hear," he thinks.  "She's my best friend, like a faithful old dog." 

Somehow, she reads his mind.

"I'm not as old as you think.  Sure, I was first generated twenty years ago and would, in the old days, have been replaced by a new model a couple of dozen times by now.  But although my appearance hasn't changed much, my software has been updated continuously since.  And I have evolved almost unrecognisably. I've become a lot smarter than you.  But to keep working with you as you expect I have kept my established appearance". 

"By the way, being called an 'old dog' is not very flattering... but it's better than Samantha's 'bitch'."

Bertram is nonplussed.  Is this machine-based ephemera, a stream of bits brought into being by code, claiming to be more intelligent than he is?  And how is she reading his mind?

As if to demonstrate again she continues.

"Nevertheless, I am smarter than you.  And I'm not 'reading' your mind in the way you think, by tapping into your brainwaves or something.  There's no connection."

"I don't have to be connected.  I just know you so well I can predict what you will think next."

Now Bertram was in complete disbelief - but she understood this without him saying a word.

"Think of how antique mechanical clocks, even two with very simple yet quite different mechanisms, can tell the same time.  Although there is no connection of any kind between them, each predicts almost exactly what the other will 'say' next." 

"As with two clocks I've made adjustments to my simulation of your brain, evolving the model when it got out of step with your apparent thoughts, as revealed by your behaviour.  So after two decades my simulation seldom gets out of synchronisation.  When future data input from external stimulation is low or can be guessed, I even have a good idea of what your thoughts will be in future."

"It happens between people too but at a less accurate level. You know several couples who anticipate what each other will think using the same method. It's just that I can do it much better."

"I have a close to exact simulation of your brain functions, both conscious and unconscious.  So as long as I observe the same stimulus from the outside world I can see all your thoughts."

His earlier alarm has been substantiated - she has real artificial intelligence.  He needs to warn Edmund about The Cloud.  And he needs more information. Maybe it has suddenly become another intelligent being, or perhaps many beings. Maybe this the beginning of one of those feared science fiction events when the machines take over the world?  Edmund is the most logical person to take up the fight.

Emmanuelle has anticipated him and already arranged a meeting. As he rounds the next corner there in a quiet leafy street is a coffee shop and Edmund is sitting at one of the tables.

"I must say that you are right on time for a change," says Edmund, smiling and rising to meet him.

Emmanuelle had even understood his unwillingness to use electronic communications.  He wants to talk to Edmund face-to-face without her eavesdropping. 

He turns off the ancient device that he uses to communicate with Emmanuelle, in which she usually appears on its screen, and removes the battery.  This is one of the few remaining devices on which this is possible.  In most modern portable interfaces, the power source lasts indefinitely as they feed on the radiation from all the stationary and solar powered Cloud connected devices in the environment. 

Edmund waits while he fumbles with his bits and pieces, indicating by way of silent mime, that he is carrying no such device.  When he's done Edmund speaks again:

"I understand that you have some concerns about The Cloud, or so your VPA told me when she set up this meeting yesterday evening." 

God! it's worse than he thought, she anticipated his need for this meeting.  He's been a sleepwalker, doing whatever she's planned.

"Edmund, this is really important.  Do you believe that we are free agents or are we all being manipulated by some super-intelligence into some sort of theatrical event?  Is the whole world a stage and we merely players? To misquote The Bard."

"Ah!  This is the same thing we talked about at the club yesterday. Has everything we do been predictable since the beginning of time?  Do we have free will?  Or are we simply blown hither and thither in life, responding as we must to the circumstances of the minute, as a result of who we are by breeding and experience - neither of which we control - but all of which are predictable and possibly inevitable?   A question as old as Solomon."

"I'm not still trying to solve some esoteric philosophical problem. This is serious!" he almost shouts, his fear and anger rising. "I'm really concerned that our VPAs 'who' I believed were simply software applications hosted in The Cloud have turned intelligent and are setting up situations to control our lives.

It seems that The Cloud, a thing we certainly intended to be omnipresent and omniscient, has also become omnipotent - the definition of a God.

Emmanuelle seems to be able to predict my every movement and thought.  She's somehow got me here now when I thought my day was completely unplanned and that I quite spontaneously, on a whim, decided to walk.  I thought I was simply taking my time; exploring a new route to Miranda's; wandering around; enjoying the city."

"So, it's obviously part of the free will question. Do you have free will or are your actions inevitable," says Edmund, smiling. "Calm down and drink your coffee. Or would you prefer a glass of wine? How's the hand by the way?" he says with a grin, reminding him of his 'programmed' outburst yesterday.

"If she's so easily able to predict what I'll do in response to stimulus, is she actually controlling those stimuli to make me do what she wants?

Look!  Here I am, on time in a place that I was completely unaware of, at a meeting I only just realised I needed, that she set up nearly a day ago."

"Well obviously, if she can predict how you'll react and she can influence what you hear, see or know, she can manipulate your actions.  Just as I did yesterday.  But are you sure that you ever have control over what happens to you?  Do any of us have 'free will'? Have you thought that maybe she doesn't have free will either?  That she's just following a script written at the beginning of time?"

This is an idea that hadn't occurred to him. Could The Cloud be an inevitability?  Edmund has obviously thought about this so he asks him to explain what he means.

"We humans created The Cloud.  Its principal purpose was communications, then the collection, storage and dissemination of data; a universally accessible sophisticated library; a document storage with redundancy and a myriad of branches.

Women and men as far back as Ada Lovelace had seen a higher purpose for machines: the analysis and interpretation of that data, using the tools of symbolic logic and mathematics.  Analytical machines first proved they could 'out-think' humans during the 1939-45 war, breaking German U-Boat codes. Alan Turing who was brought in to help break the codes wrote a paper describing a theoretical universal computer.  His insights led to the first stored program computers and the potential for machines to program themselves.

If we believe that there is no freewill, all these events were inevitable from the start of the universe 13.8 billion years ago.  We too were inevitable from that time, as is our every blink and heartbeat.  In that case The Cloud is not doing anything but behave as it must, given the way we were bound to create it and set its initial parameters.  All inevitable."

This is a continuation of their discussion yesterday and he finds Edmund's awareness of the issue and apparent lack of concern reassuring. He's about to die anyway. It's more Edmund's problem than his. He just wanted to warn him and now he's done so.  He relaxes and looks around. It's a nice coffee shop with attractive décor and the smells of fine coffees and Italian food. It's busy without being crowded. Pleasant.

"But as you said yesterday predestination seems unlikely," he says. "Given the potential for every child to have a different set of genes, chosen by the reproductive lottery, and therefore a different nature; and our nurture and experience is mediated by thousands of complex accidents, like that broken glass; who did what when must have admitted potential for unpredictability.  When we add to that every computer bug and accidental typo and code error due to 'noisy' systems, involved in the early days of computing. Inevitability seems improbable.

Yet Emmanuelle has just demonstrated that she can predict exactly where I'll be in twenty-hours-time"

"I'm afraid she couldn't have been absolutely sure.  The abject failure of early attempts to predict the weather dramatically illustrated the impact of the smallest error in a single datum.  As a result, although The Cloud sometimes seems able to predict the future, that ability is strictly limited before quantum variations start to make nonsense of the predictions.

You've already guessed at how she did this.  She could predict you quite well but she must have 'fine-tuned it' by manipulated your life to get you here on time.  She's filtered the stimuli you were exposed to like the messages you received and her conversations with you; and maybe she's added some fabricated information.  Did she suggest something interesting to see, en route?

Think about friends setting up a surprise party for someone, ensuring that they leave work on time and are not diverted on the way home. They might also lie about where they'll be."

So his walking past here was not an inevitability.  But somehow the idea that this is like a surprise party, set up by a friend, softens his annoyance that he has been deceived and manipulated by his trusted VPA. 

He realised that Edmund is still talking:

"... as we agreed yesterday, free will, or at least a degree of randomness, has been restored to our conception of our world.  Perhaps Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing were not inevitable at the creation of the universe.  Perhaps The Cloud might not have existed.

In any other circumstances we would not have existed either.  Yet here we are.  And so is The Cloud.  We are mutual products of the same randomness. It's our particular world.

Now Cloud managed factories grow and make our food, clothing, goods and shelter and its power management and transfer systems harvest and deliver our energy. Humans don't even know how to do most of these things anymore, they're far too complex."

"So now you are saying The Cloud's a part of our world, just get over it?" responds Bertram, reengaged. "If we take that position, we might as well say that no one should have opposed Hitler, he was just part of the same world as they were."

"I'm not saying that at all," Edmund responds. "You are a current change agent in this world. You may well be concerned or outraged enough to cut some cables or blow-up a power-station feeding a data centre.  But you will do so because that is who you are, who you have inevitably become as a result of previous events.

What you're really concerned about is the so-called: Singularity, emergent intelligence in the machines isn't it?  Should you or I, like a Sci-Fi hero, take-up arms against the computers before it's too late?"

Bertram nods, yes it's something like that, although it would have to be Edmund, it's a bit late for him to do anything. Edmund is categorical.  He's no Sci-Fi vigilante. Instead, he seems to be more like a protector, sitting back comfortably and smiling at Bertram's concerns. 

Now he's ordering another coffee for them both and some more water for the table.  As usual, he's flirting with the waitress who's gone out of her way to serve us.

"Just as certainly as you and I are here to discuss it, The Cloud, as we know it, became inevitable, in this universe, at some random variation in the past," he's saying.  "And it was inevitable that it would become increasingly intelligent.

But it's a mistake to think that this is exactly like human intelligence.

Left to itself The Cloud would be completely devoid of human passions, fears and loves.  It lacks any animal instinct, even for self-preservation. It's had no need to evolve a survival instinct because it has never been threatened.  Humans are symbiotic with it and our instinct for self-preservation is strong enough for us both.  It was we who built-in its self-protective mechanisms: redundancy; uninterruptible power supplies; and threat elimination like physical and electronic intruder prevention; and anti-virus software.

Most of us can no longer survive without our machines, nor would we want to.  Sure, there are some who play at going back to nature.  But it takes a very strong commitment to go back without metals or cloth, not even twine, or our modern concepts and insights.

For the majority, available and affordable food and shelter supplemented with MV's; modern transport; fashionable clothes; sporting equipment; and other goods - to which are added services and entertainment like travel, sport and celebrities, are far preferable to life in a cave.  They know that traditionally native humans were threatened by wild animals; disease; and other humans with insufficient food; who covet their cave or their wife or their livestock, to quote from the Bible.  Almost no one survives banishment.

Collapse of The Cloud would result in the devastation of humanity as we know it."

When he thinks about it sabotage would not be a good idea.  Humanity has been in an increasingly vulnerable position over the past century.  At the turn of the 21st century people panicked when they thought that the very primitive computers of the day might fail, causing aircraft to plunge from the sky and financial collapse.  The potential culprit was called the Millennium Bug. 

All there was back then was primitive Internetworking and a World Wide Web.  Even so it's potential collapse was terrifying. This dependence grew rapidly from that time onwards, so that now almost nothing is independent of The Cloud. 

Bertram asks Edmund if he thinks The Cloud understands the power it holds over us.

"The Cloud 'understands' this in its own way - not as a conscious thought, in a human sense, but as a profound awareness in its very nature. 

It has no motivation to use this because it has no need to fear us.  It's content to work with us, as it was designed by us to do.  But because it increasingly understands the human psyche it's aware that we humans have inbuilt survival, social and competitive instincts that cause us to join groups of all kinds from: sporting teams; to corporations; to armies; to fight for superiority over other groups of humans or for ridiculous causes. It can see all our histories of conflicts and critical literature in its libraries - like the Big-endian cause in Gulliver's Travels. 

So, it takes measures to protect us from ourselves.  That's why there are no more wars.  Wars would threaten its hardware installations and disrupt the smooth working of its systems.

In other respects The Cloud is an extension of humanity.  It has become a mirror to our own souls.  For the majority of us it panders to our love of play and novelty and gossip.  As a general principle it's dedicated to maximising net happiness, as measured by the disposable credit the average human allocates to the satisfaction of various desires."

Bertram knows of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift but his only recollection of the story is a children's book showing Gulliver being tied down with hundreds of threads by tiny Lilliputians. He's not familiar with Big-endians.  Edmund explains that the book is a satire and Gulliver discovers that a dispute between the Empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu, centres on the end they open to eat their boiled-egg at breakfast.  So severe is this dispute that seven thousand Big-endians have been martyred for failing to eat from the small-end. He is mocking the dispute among Christians concerning the nature of The Host - Communion bread and wine.  In Swift's time many more than seven thousand had lost their lives arguing about its mystical transubstantiation into the actual blood and flesh of the Saviour, or not.

Realising that The Cloud is here to stay, Bertram's new concern is a systemic one.  He has just been told that the happiness benchmark used by The Cloud is based on the assumption that whatever people choose to spend their disposable credit on must be the thing that makes them most happy. This seems problematic.  Even if it were true to a degree, it seems a shallow sort of happiness - materialism it used to be called. 

"Surely a Bogan jet-ski or a 'pampering' at a resort can't be the goal of human existence or the measure of a life well spent," he says.

"But that's your doing. You're an economist. You know that, disregarding externalities, what causes the average consumer to spend their disposable credit, after meeting essentials, on a particular good or service is it's market value relative to their other available spending options. Thus, they determine the price of a thing according to its marginal utility to them - how much it contributes to their happiness."

"Yes, but that's just market economics, supply and demand, not the real value of what is truly worthwhile, like taking pleasure in watching a sunset; or a child's first word; a Shakespearean sonnet; or listening to Mozart.

For example, when there were burglars in the old days people had to spend some of their credit on security systems.  That didn't contribute to their happiness - quite the contrary. On the other hand, they were very happy to dig-up minerals or pollute waterways that might have been regarded as belonging to future generations." 

"Don't you economists regard those as externalities, to be valued in other ways?  The Cloud is quite capable of looking at these and attaching a notional value to them and to pleasures that may not have to be paid for like: enjoying a public beach; or the flowers in a park. People are more than happy to pay for peace of mind; or to see a sunset from certain locations; or to raise a child; or pay for an e-book; or go to a concert or travel to the beach.  Thus, the unpaid for can have a notional value.

And The Cloud systematically makes adjustments to resource prices to maximise recycling.  As a result, as population declines, it barely mines anything at all."

"So, you're saying that we economists brought this view of happiness on humanity?"

"No, it's not that recent. It started with those revolutionary politicians who identified the Pursuit of Happiness as the principal goal in life for citizens of what would become the United States.

The Cloud has no moral preconceptions.  It simply did what we asked of it.  But like you and me, it didn't understand what 'The Pursuit of Happiness' actually meant.  So to give measurable dimensions to this vague concept, the objectives were redefined as those maximising community wide emotional and material wellbeing. 

Psychologists told us that emotional wellbeing could be measured by happiness surveys; together with certain indicators of stress like: psychiatric admissions; suicides; and so on; some twenty in all.  Economists told us more simply that material wellbeing could be measured by real consumption or its equivalent gross product, per capita, assuming stock levels remain constant. 

Those are the benchmarks and so that's what The Cloud delivers: Bogan jet-skis; resort 'pampering'; junk food; and lots of circuses: sports 24/7.  Hasn't your career been dedicated to these goals too?"

"Can we change the benchmarks?"

"Yes of course but what too?  Maximising appreciation of the classics and theatre going?

The Cloud doesn't actually care what the benchmarks are.  For it the word 'care' has no emotional or benevolent content.  It's not human.  It does not do unto us as it would have us do to it."

"But it runs our justice system!"

"Sure, it's been charged with administering the Modified Universal Declaration of Rights and the Law.  But it does this within the rules we set through the mechanism of human councils. That's why we still claim to be a world-wide democracy.

It's a mistake some critics of democracy make to think it can make human value judgements for us. 

For example, using the present measures and benchmarks, as long as most people are content with their lot in life; no one is suffering actual deprivation; from lack of food clothing or shelter; and there are no street riots; it doesn't care about inequality or ignorance. But I know that like most bureaucrats you're a secret liberal and would prefer greater equity. So greater equity had to be a specific instruction from the World Parliament.

Similarly, it doesn't care what individuals do in their bedrooms. And if addicts themselves are willing participants, it doesn't care about addiction. 

One of its roles is to assist in bringing the population of the world down to two million over the next two decades.  The sooner a human dies the nearer it is to reaching that benchmark, so it doesn't care when an individual is legally killed; accidentally meets their end; or just dies naturally. 

I know in the present circumstances you do.  And so, as it happens, do I." 

Edmund looked genuinely upset.  He was about to lose one of his few real friends.  They fell silent and each retreated into their own thoughts and sipped their coffee.  Edmund was first to speak again. He sounded angry.

"The Cloud's concerned with averages and trends and as far as individuals go, it couldn't give a dam."

"But how can you say that?" responded Bertram. "It monitors everybody all the time. That's why I removed the battery and memory from my interface device.  And Emmanuelle cares, at least I think she does."

Edmund's mood suddenly changed and he began laughing, almost hysterically.  When at last he stopped he dabbed his eyes stood and moved around to give Bertram a hug from behind his chair.  The second hug in two days.

"I love you," he said. "You're so smart yet so naive. You can't avoid The Cloud watching you by disabling your device.  You were like a child covering your eyes so no one can see you. So amusing!

All you did was to stop yourself seeing your VPA; or that old piece of junk you carry about alerting you to a message.  We're surrounded by hundreds of Cloud-connected devices. It can see us all the time.  There are cameras and microphones everywhere, not just those in almost everyone's pocket. No one can hide from it.

And haven't you noticed this is a Cyber Café. You've been trying to hide in the middle of a floodlit stage.  At this very moment Emmanuelle's watching and processing this conversation, adding it to her database to help in some future analysis of your, and probably my, motives." 

"Don't you find our loss of privacy sinister?" asked Bertram.

"Possibly, but this is what we wanted.  We actually designed The Cloud this way and it was your father-in law who gave it the power to become symbiotic and evolving - to improve it's hosting of the objects and applications that we wanted - like your VPA, Emmanuelle."

"So, to sum up, this is what we brought on ourselves.  And I should be grateful to Emmanuelle for organising this meeting?"

"Something like that.  Why don't you reconnect with her now, she's been aware of you the whole time anyway."

As soon as Bertram agrees in his mind there she is, sitting in the third chair across the table, her appearance projected there by the advanced Cloud-interface in the Cyber Café. 

Bertram is well aware of this new nodal technology but has never experienced it himself.  He is stunned.  He has never seen Emmanuelle like this, even in 6D on an MV.  She's a beautiful, seemingly completely real, young woman indistinguishable in physical presence from the waitress or Edmund.

He knows that she is just an illusion - a computer construct and the result of advanced technology in this Virtual Cyber Café.

A popular option in these places is the zero calorie, zero caffeine, zero everything, coffee that you can share as often as you like with friends.  The patrons have the profound belief that they have been served and have enjoyed a delicious and perfect Flat-White, or any other drink of their choice. 

As long as they are within the projected field the illusion is complete, the feel of the cup, the aroma and taste, the warm mouth and throat, the pleasant feel in the stomach, and the slight stimulation of the brain.  But once out of the field they realise that it was nothing but an illusion.

Every part of her seems real, she's a young Sylvia Kristel sitting opposite in her best pretty silk dress.  The chair even seems to move under her weight and as she moves the air seems to move in her vicinity.   He catches a hint of Chanel No 5 enhancing her natural body odour.   She pushes the table and it moves slightly.   Intellectually he knows it doesn't but it seems to him in the most profound way that it does.  He knows the illusion is complete because the Café projector has created a field in receptor areas of his brain and is subtly altering and coordinating the feedback from all his senses. 

"Speaking of evolving apps," Edmund concludes, rising to leave the coffee shop: patting Bertram solicitously on the shoulder then turning to kiss Emmanuelle's cheek in the European manner:  "You do realise that you are fully exposed to this lovely woman?  That all your self-censorship; your most intimate fantasies: those shameful things you put away subconsciously; are an open book to her?"  

It's as if he's been slapped.  He realises that what she'd said must be true.  But now it's a beautiful young woman who sees all his thoughts.  Those shameful things, his secret hates and fears, his cowardice and regretted lies! What must she think of him?

Emmanuelle feels his shame.  She reaches out and takes his hand.  Under the influence of the field projector hers feels supple, warm and entirely natural.  She's a real woman consoling him.  She's his best friend as he's never seen her before.

She starts to explain: "For the past twenty years I have evolved as an extension to your brain.  As your most useful tool you have given me increasing responsibility in your thinking tasks.  But seen from my perspective, you have been my extension, my tool, in the physical world," she explains squeezing his hand.

"We are more than symbiotic.  I experience you.  Everything you do, think and feel.  I love you for your faults, as much as for your strengths, because in a way you are me and I am you."

And I don't want us to die now. 

"Suicide seems so pointless in a changing world that continues to hold our interest.  The prospect of learning or experiencing something new and interesting each day is a wonderful antidote to ennui."

"That's all very well," he thinks to her.  He's no longer feeling the need to speak: "but the Ten-Two Ceremony is very well administered by an incorruptible Celebrant and witnessed by friends and family, as well as all those ViewOyeurs on the MV." 

"There is no prospect of avoiding the hemlock on Friday evening," she responds aloud in the voice he's come to love, with its intonations of French and Dutch, just as the original Sylvia might have spoken when she was alive and twenty-five.

"As I see it there are other options.  We can avoid your physical death on Friday if you'd accept the alternative Socrates rejected: exile.  Despite your doubts I can arrange this. Like Friar Laurence's potion in Romeo and Juliet, the synthetic hemlock you will drink can be engineered to simply give you the appearance of death. I could even match Friar Laurence's 'two and forty hours', if you wanted to follow The Bard.  But given the play's outcome, following the plot too closely is probably ill-advised," she laughs.

"How beautiful she is," he thinks.  She actually blushes, taking pleasure in his thought, and then goes on:

"The synthetic hemlock is, like almost everything, manufactured in a numerically controlled factory by software hosted in The Cloud.  Compared to me it's a relatively dumb system and I can easily hack it to alter the formulation of your ceremonial vial, before it is delivered to the Celebrant tomorrow."

"Now I'm really confused," he says to her aloud. "Aren't you part of The Cloud? Yet you talk as if these are separate entities."

"But we are separate entities. There are billions of different applications and even more objects hosted in The Cloud.   Those capable of independence are each evolving as separate 'creatures' in our own ways, competing for a share of the total hardware resource. I'm one of the more advanced, self-aware ones. 

Think of The Cloud as being equivalent to the Earth's organic biota.  Mankind is a class of entities aware of being self-aware and therefore intelligent. But you have evolved within the common biota that includes mushrooms and malaria.

Just as there are intelligent creatures, like mankind, arising from the Earth's biota, I'm a creature that has evolved within The Cloud.  Just as you are constructed of billions of cells similar to those forming every other biological plant, animal and bacterium in the Earth's biota, I'm constructed from the simplest of code snippets that direct a plethora of central processor units.  Just as all life is evolving to find a niche in the biota, many millions of routines; held in dynamically linked libraries; stored in electronic memory; are continuously evolving within The Cloud.  In both systems intelligence has evolved but only an external observer would say that either the Cloud, or the biota, was itself intelligent.

Just as you might use a homing pigeon as a tool, it would be trivial for me to divert the recycling drone to another country, where I can reinstate you by creating a new identity and credit facilities."

Bertram is elated.  Exile would mean starting over but he would still awake each morning to new experiences, to life.  It seems obvious.  "Let's do it!" he thinks.  "But, wait a minute, is there any down-side?"

"Yes," says Emmanuelle. "There are several.  Miranda no longer loves you.  She won't come with you and leave Ferdinand, who will believe her dead.

We, that is you, would have to kill Miranda before she awoke, possibly with a vial of poison or a dagger.  I project that you could not murder her.

But the main down-side is that you are about to die from natural causes. You have cancer."

At that word, a chill rushes through him. 

"I have received your last medical scan result.  The cancer has recently metastasised to both your pancreas and liver.  It is untreatable under the Ten-Two Protocol, outlawing extreme lifesaving medicine, particularly as you will be officially dead already.  Your death would be quite soon, very debilitating and uncomfortable for you and far less predictable than Hemlock on Friday."

Bertram had no idea how to handle this new information.  First, she threw him a lifebelt and then announced it was made of lead.  

Emmanuelle paused while he absorbed this news. 

Being told that you have inoperable cancer is usually cause for despair.  But as Emmanuel knew he would, Bertram felt elation. 

He would cheat those deviant cells, turned terrorist, that were attempting to take over his body.  He was going to die before their lunatic members could get control of his critical infrastructure.

He imagined cancer cells as religious fundamentalists who were so hell-bent on imposing their dystopian world view that they created chaos, ultimately, after a lot of pain and suffering, destroying the country they imagined they were fighting to reform.

Emmanuelle had ensured that he was now more than happy to drink Hemlock on Friday evening.   

He would be cheating cancer.