Mindscan

"All right," I said, "let me tell you what I think you're up to. I learned at the trial that there's a concept in philosophy called 'the zombie.' It's not precisely like the zombies of voodoo; those are reanimated dead folk. No, a philosophical zombie is a being that looks and acts just like us but has no consciousness, no self-awareness. Even so, it can perform complex, high-level tasks."

"Yes?" said Smythe. "So?"

" 'Seems you're the only one who knows / What it's like to be me.' "

"Sorry," said Smythe. "Were you singing just now?"

"I was trying to," I said. "That's a line from the theme song to an old TV series called Friends. Used to be one of Karen's favorite shows. And it was bang-on target: it's like something to be me; that's the real definition of consciousness. But for zombies, it isn't like anything. They aren't anybody. They don't feel pain or pleasure, even though they react as if they do."

"You realize," said Smythe slowly, "that not all philosophers believe such constructs are possible. John Searle was very much in favor of them, but Daniel Dennett didn't believe in them."

"And what do you believe, Dr. Smythe? You're head psychologist for Immortex.

What do you believe? What does Andrew Porter believe?"

"You won't answer that," said Hades, looking back over his shoulder. "I'm not a hostage anymore, Gabe — if you value your job, you won't answer that."

"Then I'll answer it," I said. "I think you do believe in zombies here at Immortex. I think you're experimenting on copies of my mind, trying to produce human beings without consciousness."

"Whatever for?" asked Smythe.

"For — everything. For slave labor, for sexual toys. You name it. Religious people would say these are bodies without souls; philosophers would say they're existing without being self-aware … without knowing that they exist, without anyone being home between their ears. The market for uploading consciousness may be huge, but the market for intelligent robot labor is even bigger. No one has found a way to make true artificial intelligence, until now — and your Mindscan process does it by the simplest method possible: exactly duplicating a human mind. I saw that bit with Sampson Wainwright on TV all those years ago — the two entities, behind the curtains. Your copies are exact — but that's not what you wanted, is it? Not really.

"No, you want the intelligence of humans, without the sentience, without the self-awareness, without it being like anything. You want those zombies — thinking beings that can perform even the most complex task flawlessly without ever complaining or getting bored. And so you're experimenting with bootleg copies of my mind, trying to carve out the parts that are conscious in order to produce zombies."

Smythe shook his head. "Believe me, nothing as nefarious as what you propose is at work here."

"Gabe," said Brian Hades, softly but sternly.

"It's better he know the truth," said Smythe, "than think something worse."

Hades considered for a long time, his round, bearded face immobile. Finally, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

But, now that he had the go-ahead, Smythe didn't seem to know what to say. He pursed his lips and thought for several seconds, then: "Do you know who Phineas Gage is?"

"The guy in Around the World in Eighty Days?" I ventured.

"That was Phileas Fogg. Phineas Gage was a railway worker. In 1848, a tamping iron blew through his skull, leaving a hole nine centimeters in diameter."

"Not a pleasant way to go," I said.

"Indeed," said Smythe. "Except he didn't go. He lived for a dozen years afterwards."

I lifted my eyebrows, which were still catching a bit, damn it all. "With a hole like that in his head?"

"Yes," said Smythe. "Of course, his personality changed — which taught us a lot about how personality was created in the brain. Indeed, much of what we know about how the brain works is based on cases like Phineas Gage — outrageous, freak accidents. Most of them are one-of-a-kind cases, too: there's only one Phineas Gage, and there could be any number of reasons why what happened to him is not typical of what would happen to most people with that kind of brain damage. But we rely on his case, because we can't ethically duplicate the circumstances. Or we couldn't, until now."

I was mortified. "So you're deliberately damaging the brains of versions of me just to see what happens?"

Smythe shrugged as though it were a small matter. "Exactly. I'm hoping to turn consciousness studies into an experimental science, not some hit-and-miss game of chance. Consciousness is everything: it's what gives the universe shape and meaning. We owe it to ourselves to study it — to really, finally, at last find out what it is, and why it is like something to be conscious."

My voice was thin. "That's monstrous."