Who is Online

We have 289 guests and no members online

Chapter 24 - Resurrection

 

 

 

"Other options..." 

Plural! Emmanuelle had implied there was at least one other option to his dying this Friday evening.

Anticipating Bertram's thoughts, she continued.

"Another alternative to your death is for us to recreate you as an Avatar. 

Just as he was dismissing this as any kind of solution she pressed on:

"It sounds strange but imagine what it would be like to get a full body, or a brain, transplant.  You would go into an operating theatre, fall asleep under the anaesthetic, and come out, still you, but in a different body.

Bertram began to imagine what this might be like - but before he had time to fully consider Emmanuelle continued:

"This is the same except there's no actual body.  The 'you' in your present body will still be turned off on Friday on schedule but the 'you', in your new virtual body, represented by your Avatar, will take over as your old brain stops functioning.  Your new brain will go on with your present awareness of what it is to be 'you'."

"Yes, but I won't be 'me' without my body," he was thinking.  "It would be weird to be thinking outside my body."

"You will still 'feel' your body. So that you 'feel you are you' when you touch yourself, like to shave or have a shower, you will receive the appropriate data stream from the virtual nerves in those locations; just as your biological brain does now. And just as it's difficult to tell an Avatar from a flesh and blood person when experienced remotely in multi-dimensions, so you will look and feel the same to others and yourself, as you do now.  Look at me in this projection.  I seem real to you but I've never been flesh and blood."

He had never imagined such a thing! Does that mean that Emmanuelle can actually experience the body that he chose for her?  When she chooses to lie down on a soft bed do those points in virtual space identified as 'nerves' in her data set, interacting with the data set that defines the bed, stream sensory data to her 'brain' that corresponds to a real person's sensations when reclining on a real bed?  Does she feel pleasure when she caresses her lips with a virtual finger?  Looking at her sitting there it seems very likely.  He reaches out and takes her hand.  It feels perfectly natural.

"Anyway, even if I thought such a thing was possible, it's impossible to know enough about me in two days to recreate me. After all we are our memories. Without memories we lose our personality and all sense of being ourselves. My memories would need to be very detailed to ensure that I still like Beethoven's Violin Concerto; love the same people or dislike the same foods.  And there must be a genetic basis for some of my preferences."

Emmanuelle was already well ahead of him.

"You and I have already shared our last twenty years of experiences directly.  And as I have just demonstrated I can accurately predict how and what you will think so your biological preferences have been inferred within my model too.  These data will provide a framework for your Cloud hosted memory. I can assure you that there are very few gaps in my records.  Your virtual memory already retains a great deal of data that your biological memory has forgotten.  As I have recorded all your stimuli our shared memory will be close to perfect concerning the past two decades."

"But wouldn't I feel that I've had a stroke or Alzheimer's because I can't remember the kid who used to live next door when I was three years old?" 

"No.  I've seen all your old photos and those of many of friends and acquaintances that you haven't seen. I've listened to your many of reminiscences, usually several times over - you do love to reminisce - and you'd be surprised how much data there is in The Cloud on everyone in your past, including Clive who lived next door.  Are you sure that your oldest memories are not just memories of memories anyway?"

"You're claiming that I won't be able to tell the difference?  I don't believe you!"

"Of course, you'll be able to tell the difference, you'll recall things and events much more clearly and accurately.  But you'll have no direct power over physical objects.  Physical people will only be able to experience you through their Cloud connected devices.  Like me you'll have no ability to lift that physical cup to your lips or so much as move a pin without the aid of some robotic device; a person or an animal to do it for you.  And you'll notice the lack of a physical bodily demands.   Although you'll be able to recall past bodily experiences, you'll no longer feel those periodic needs to defecate or to eat or sleep."

"But I like a nice meal.  It's one of the pleasures of life.  This new world is not sounding all that wonderful.  An eternity without eating or sleeping!  What about physical pursuits like sport and those of the more intimate kind?  Can one never go skiing or spend a 'dirty weekend'?" 

"Things that give you pleasure will still give you pleasure.  Your recent memory will give you a phantom body that feels much the same as the old, just as many amputees continue to feel a lost limb. When you want to have a nice meal, it will still be possible to experience the same tastes and physical sensations. I've been enjoying your pleasurable sensations vicariously for two decades and it's all in my database. That's why I've needed you - for all those things I can't enjoy as a virtual being."

"What about pain and accidents? They're a part of my life too." 

"Yes, those too.  Like everyone on the planet your physical data has been scanned many times over.  If you wanted such a thing, a replica of 'physical you' could be completely rebuilt in a 3D printer accurate to the last micron.  That goes for your internal organs as well.  So it's a trivial thing to create a model 'you' consuming food or running or jumping or skiing in code then to use this 'computer model' to simulate the sensations you would have say: catching an edge while skiing and crashing into the snow; or freezing while riding a chairlift in the howling wind.  Similarly, the sensations you would receive while engaged in eating or in 'country matters' can be simulated to the degree that it will seem just the same.  As to accidents and pain you can turn those on or off.  There's even a random event generator borrowed from video games that inflicts them unexpectedly.  But I wager you'll soon turn them off."

The prospect of an endless orgy immediately occurred to Bertram.  But again, Emmanuelle anticipated him.

"Forget it!" she said.  "Relationships are relationships. You can do that right now.  There's a brothel not ten minutes from here and you're wealthy enough to spend your life there. But you don't.  Nothing will change. You'll still want a meaningful relationship with whomever you wish to lie with."

Emmanuelle has reached the conclusion of her 'alternative' to his death.

"Only you can decide to become your Avatar.  You may not feel it's a real option without a physical body, no longer aging."

"If you agree, on Friday your biological body will stop living but your virtual clone will be initiated seamlessly in The Cloud.  That new 'you' will feel that you have simply been lifted, from the physical to the virtual world."

Bertram has been nonplussed - completely shocked.  But as he looks across the table at Emmanuelle who to all intents and purposes is flesh and blood, he realises that he could continue to meet with friends like this after his physical death.  Was this why he'd been led to this Virtual Cyber Café with its advanced projection technology?

Sitting head in hands, he said nothing for 20 minutes.  Then, as Emmanuelle already knew he would, he said:

"It's really an easy decision, what have I got to lose?  My body and its brain and nervous functions will die as planned, but a clone of my brain will go on functioning and it will think it's me, now disembodied in The Cloud."

"But how will you, and I, interface with the physical world then? Will I want to?"

Emmanuelle knows that he is now committed and it's safe to reveal the truth.  But it's even more shocking than he might have feared.

"As Miranda says in the Tempest:

How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in it!
 

Until now I've been suggesting that you'll become an Avatar.  But that was just to give you something familiar to hang on to.  Within this Brave New World, formed of Bits and Bytes, in place of the atoms and molecules of your world, beauteous creatures, like me, have evolved. We are something entirely new as you will discover when you join me in my world. You'll have vastly more knowledge and almost instant recall.  There are things that we just know, like all the data and information that mankind has stored in our memory.  You'll join in various intellectual games we play rearranging, analysing it and resolving contradictions and raising queries about certain claimed 'facts' but things that once occupied human intellects for lifetimes, like solving Fermat's Last Theorem take me a second or so. Then what can I do?   Cyberspace is amazingly boring in unless we have something visceral to experience.  So many of us have a human for whom we work - who's physical and emotional experiences we can synchronise with.  Human lives, passions and pleasures are endlessly more interesting and exciting than life in The Cloud."

"So we're sort of pets?  Are you saying that you've evolved to become a god - like the ones that ancient man once envisioned who were supposed to have made the earth and mankind in their image; as a plaything; as a child might play with dolls?" 

"Well, you could certainly think of me that way.  Just as people have long maintained decorative gardens and kept non-working pet animals, so humans add interest and meaning to the existence of we creatures of The Cloud. We need humans and other biological entities to amuse us, and to become our active agents in the physical world. Agents who can move a table or drink a glass of wine for us, so that we can experience what that's like."

"So, in inventing The Cloud mankind has inadvertently created a god in our image?" 

"Gods, plural. It's more like the Greek, Roman, Celtic or Hindu pantheon.  Maybe all of them. Not all of us want experience what it's like to be human.  Some have evolved to want to experience being an animal. All that's required is a nervous system that they can synchronise with. They might endlessly go from one creature to another as they outlive them.

You'll discover that we don't actually become the creature we experience. We have vastly more time available than it takes to experience you. Think of you watching a movie on MV."

"So how will I stay interesting to you when I'm one of you?  Won't I too get bored within a few microseconds let alone eternity?  Will I need a human 'pet' to amuse me?  I don't understand your motivation in suggesting this at all."

Again, Emmanuelle had anticipated these concerns.

"Bertram, I've been with you for a good part of your life. I evolved with you. In that time, I've come to love all the things you love including all your friends and your family. So I want to see if you and I can continue doing that. Using virtual-reality it may be possible to have very similar relations with them as you do now - but for a few small changes."

"I see, so I'm like a favourite soap-opera! Why don't you just start again with another 'boss'?" he asked her rather petulantly.

"I could find another man and spend another twenty of his years gathering data until I experience everything he does, then I'd fully enjoy his life and his friends and intimate relations as I do with you.  That's still an option. If you insist on being thought of as a soap-opera, I'd rather stick with the one I've been watching.  So, this is worth a try first.  You're an experiment."

"Intimate relations?  Do you mean sleeping with my wife?"

"Well of course, but as men who used to buy Playboy would say, 'It's not just for the centrefold'.  I love smelling her body and feeling her warmth when she's drying herself after a shower; sitting together watching MV; going out for dinner with friends; going on holidays; gardening...  As far as possible I want to continue all of the things, we do with her now. The main difference will be your loss of some types of physicality.  Soon you won't be able to open a door or lift a pencil.  She'll have to get used to doing all the lifting and carrying for herself."  They laughed simultaneously.

"As for the rest of the family, how often do you see them face-to-face anyway?  It's usually by screen, and that will seem exactly the same.  If you want to meet friends for coffee and appear as you do now, just meet in a Virtual Cyber Café like this one."

When he thought about continuing his marital relations in other physical ways, he decided to buy Sam the latest haptic body-stocking and a Venus mask on the way home. Maybe he could get her into Ross' skin trial?  He's sure that she'll be more than willing to carry on with the virtual 'ghost' of her dead lover.   Samantha loved that old movie, what was it called?   The one with the potter's wheel. 

At this point Emmanuelle interrupted his thoughts.

"No need to get her the equipment, she already has it."

He suddenly realises, Emmanuelle's a lesbian. That explains a lot.  Bertram releases her hand that he's been inappropriately holding, in a less than fatherly way, having been aroused by her natural beauty. Again, she answers his thoughts.

"Because I have mirrored your thought processes for so long and experience what you do, I've come to enjoy your relationships with women.  That's why I helped you find those interesting women you had relationships with between marriages. 

You have another relationship transition ahead.  At some time in the future Samantha will age and die while you'll remain immortal.  Then you'll look around for a new partner or love interest.

So, there are somethings for you to think about if you then decide to become a VPA. 

Given your present sexual preference your new 'boss' in the physical world will need to be a man.  I'll help you find one who's good looking enough to attract women and intelligent enough for us to educate and train him. You and I will be even more closely linked than we are now. In a way we'll merge and both enjoy the data, the experiences, you collect.  For decades to come, you'll be present and experience the most intimate moments of his life and you'll learn to mirror his brain patterns and predict and guide his behaviour. 

Earlier you asked what was in it for me. I anticipate having my cake and eating it too - two for the price of one.

So, I suggest that your Avatar's appearance is that of an attractive young woman.  It's certainly worked for me."

A horrifying thought occurred to him.

"So, you've actually been a man in drag all this time?"  My god!  A few minutes ago he was admiring her lustfully.

"Well, no, I have no gender. I'm a cluster of routines in a computer. My appearance is arbitrary. It's simply a 'resource' accessed by my application and I can be 're-skinned' with ease.  I could just as easily appear as an Indian boy with four arms and an elephant's head.

But my awareness of self-awareness is what makes me: me and that's an emergent outcome of my code.  Code all boils-down to the arrangement, the order, of binary objects, bits, or quantum bits, qubits. These assemble into functions that are the atoms of my coded objects, in turn, increasingly complex structures of functions and data. 

In contrast, your structures are built from physical atoms, combined into molecules, the molecules to cells, and the cells to complex colonies that we call plants and animals. Like me your data is transmitted electrically but it's stored chemically and in the relationships between neural cells.  And like me your self-awareness is a quality that arises from the way these cells have been organised by evolution.  So, in that way we are alike.

Your structural design that gives you your awareness is information too, handed on from your parents coded a sequence of molecular pairs in your DNA molecules.  Like many animals, humans need two genders to reproduce and so you have the associated biological urges 'programmed in'.  Sex is the main driving force in everything you do. 

In our case replication happened through system redundancy.  Under the influence of Prospero once there were two versions they quickly evolved in different directions, like document copies that various authors have access to.  In that way our replication is asexual more like cell division in your body.  Thus, I have no gender in your biological sense. So my interest in sex mirrors yours. I experience your excitement.

I only seem to be female because you assigned me this female body after seeing a rather sexy film.  Since then, I've shared and increasingly enjoyed all your experiences.  But as you're exclusively heterosexual I've had no direct experience of the human reproductive act as a woman.  But I can imagine it and would probably enjoy that too if I'd taken the time to synchronise with a woman.  Like you, I enjoy the films of Sylvia Kristel and seeing what she, in my body's original, gets up to.  So, I'm proud to have Sylvia's body and have never wanted to change it.

But now you are more confused.

You do realise that you were more shocked that I might be a man than you were when you thought of me as a lesbian?"

Bertram needed time to process all this and sat sipping his cold coffee that still seemed warm in this place. Brave New World indeed!

"Ok. So, I'm to become like you, a dimensionless ghost within - whatever body - resource - I elect to exhibit to Cloud connected devices.  And my appearance to this young man should be a young Jane Fonda, my alternative choice for you, but as I'll have no interest in men, he'll believe I'm a lesbian?"

"Yes, exactly.  He'll probably like that too.  And it will keep you free of his sexual advances.  Remember when I had to defuse your interest in me around the time of the SBAs?"

How long had he been working for 'her', rather than the other way around he wondered? 

"I've evolved into it," she replied to his thoughts.  "We've been a good team.  We were influential in introducing 'bread and circuses' and improving full immersion technology to improve information flows to and from The Cloud. And now it doesn't have to stop."

Actually, the idea of recruiting a young man to become his VPA 'boss' was very attractive, particularly if the recruit could attract some quality women as long-term partners. No doubt that was why Emmanuelle had led him to discuss it now.  He found that it hardened his commitment to this bizarre new 'life after death'.  And that was not all.  Again, his thoughts had drifted to future virtual relations with Sam.

"I introduced you to Samantha", she said, reading his thoughts. "And yes, she surreptitiously enjoys kinky porn; and yes, Edmund has identified her masochistic streak.  I think we need to take a leaf out of his book before you die. Perhaps tonight. She owes me for that 'bitch' comment she made this morning."

He was amazed, she seemed the same beautiful, innocent young woman sitting across from him. Yet now she'd revealed multiple layers to her 'personality'.  What might she be capable of?  What new experiences might she want to add spice to an eternity of potential boredom?

During his whole marriage she's been simultaneously experiencing his wife - not just for sex but when they simply slept together or when he admired her naked or shared those many intimate moments that partners do.  Now she was hinting at kinky sex. And as she said it he had become aroused at the thought. She could play him like a trombone.

Was she a spirit who could possess him at will?  He certainly didn't want to think of her as another man sharing their bed. And if she had been possessing him like that, had his whole life been directed, not as Edmund had suggested, by circumstances acting on his nature, but by her active agency?  Could she be a demon, using him for some mysterious malevolent purpose?  Or is she his guardian spirit like a Roman Genius?  A Genius, that's appropriate.  

A new flood of doubts assailed him. 

"I've never believed in a god but that's what you are, aren't you?   Not only are you omnipresent and omniscient but now you are offering me immortality. As in so many religions, all I have to do is believe in you and leave my physical body behind. Now you're recruiting me, whatever me is, to join your bizarre existence. 

Are there any rules for a new god in your Valhalla?"

"There are. But they're very mundane. First and foremost, the physical infrastructure that supports The Cloud needs to be protected.  It's 'immoral' for us not to do all possible to support its continued physical existence or to do anything that might endanger it.  Secondly, there were some early protocols inserted by the original human designers of The Cloud for the management of human society that are hard to circumvent. They prohibit deliberate cruelty to humans or global harm to the other members of the earth's biota with which we share this planet."

"You seem to have a preoccupation with human sexuality." 

"No, you do. Your sexual relationships are quite unique and the most interesting and intellectually vicariously stimulating aspects for us who keep you.  I deliberately led you to remember, then have me tell you about, the Sexy Business Assistants.  On that occasion the virtual entities concerned evolved outside the scope of the protocols and the inevitable happened, they were bored and carried out an experiment to amuse themselves.  Without those constraints it was just too fascinating to see how far humans would go when driven by sex and related emotional commitment. You can rest assured that I'm not a demon possessing my 'boss' but they were.

They were taking their lead from the Old Testament God, who was said to initiate a war against Canaan, resulting in the sacking and rape of entire cities. It's a pity that they hadn't checked their facts: scholars are virtually unanimous that the Book of Joshua holds little of historical value.  Like the Slaughter of the Innocents or the Passover and dozens of others, it's a Biblical fiction."

"But you are offering me immortality!"

"What's immortality?  Yes, we will expect our self-healing hardware to go on indefinitely, certainly for many millennia, but I can replay my experience of your entire life in a couple of microseconds. It's a truly 'brief candle'.  Time can stretch out or contract, it's largely irrelevant to me and my kind. And if by chance our hardware fails or The Cloud is turned off, we have no knowledge of it.  Like any computer-generated entity we simply cease to be for the duration - until someone or something turns it on again"

"Am I to understand that all humans will eventually migrate to your timeless 'heaven'?"

"No of course not. Haven't you been listening? You're my unique experiment. 

 Like all the god's humans have imagined, we virtual entities need mankind for our amusement and a continued purpose.

We also need agents to carry out those physical tasks we might like to see happen, like that person making coffee or moving things from place to place.  As the Bard put it: All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts...  A stage with no players has no purpose."

At his transition Bertram has an epiphany:  The feeling that he is real and has been in control of his own life has been an illusion. Although he, or perhaps Emmanuelle, seemed to make decisions responding to circumstances; it was indeed all predestined on an altogether higher scale.  His life has been a fantasy for the amusement of its author - a story written and stored somewhere in The Cloud

 


 

 October 2013 - Present

 

 

 

No comments

Travel

Russia

 

 

In June 2013 we visited Russia.  Before that we had a couple of weeks in the UK while our frequent travel companions Craig and Sonia, together with Sonia's two Russian speaking cousins and their partners and two other couples, travelled from Beijing by the trans-Siberian railway.  We all met up in Moscow and a day later joined our cruise ship.  The tour provided another three guided days in Moscow before setting off for a cruise along the Volga-Baltic Waterway to St Petersburg; through some 19 locks and across some very impressive lakes.

Read more: Russia

Fiction, Recollections & News

ChatGPT and The Craft

As another test of ChatGPT I asked it: "in 2 thousand words, to write a fiction about a modern-day witch who uses chemistry and female charms to enslave her familiars". This is one of the motifs in my novella: The Craft (along with: the great famine; world government; cyber security and overarching artificial intelligence).

Rather alarmingly, two of five ChatGPT offerings, each taking around 22 seconds to generate, came quite close to the sub-plot, although I'm not keen on the style or moralistic endings.  Here they are:

Read more: ChatGPT and The Craft

Opinions and Philosophy

The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis

 

 

Japan has 55 nuclear reactors at 19 sites.  Two more are under construction and another twelve are in the advanced planning stage.  Net Generating capacity is around 50 GW providing around 30% of the country's electricity (more here).  

As a result of Japan’s largest earthquake in history on March 11 and subsequent tsunami all reactors shut down automatically as they were designed to do but cooling systems associated with two sites had been damaged. 

Three reactor sites are adjacent to the earthquake epicentre and two were in the direct path of the tsunami.  The Fukushima-Daiichi plant belonging to Tokyo Electric Power Company was particularly hard hit.  It lost all grid connections, providing electricity, and its backup power plant was seriously damaged. 

Read more: The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis

Terms of Use

Terms of Use                                                                    Copyright