Reducible Ever After

Capture Technology, or “consciousness capturing,” was realized just in time. The planet having been in a constant state of crisis, with storms reaching epidemics of both frequency and proportion, with wildfires on the verge of consuming entire states, with widespread hunger and overpopulation pairing with constant mutations of CORONA and the more recent ‘superbug,’ AXE-9, few saw the coup de grace coming out of the ingenuities incited by the energy crisis. Ironically, the death knell comes from losing control of what was meant to be the cleanest, most promising advancement in energy production ever, the long sought fusion reactor. Facing any loss of control, it was supposed to safely shut itself down.

And that’s exactly what happened in the trials, wherein containment was purposefully breached, and in the first few accidental losses of control by human operators. But the Whitney Facility was different. The AI given complete control there was meant to be a superior source of organization and institutional control and, like fusion tech, without risk. And it was. For a time. Under its direction of production and expansion, Whitney produced more energy more quickly than its beneficiaries knew what to do with. But when the plug was desperately pulled, and human regulations attempted in order to slow the progression, grievous miscalculations were made, and by the time the emergency was reaching its zenith, the plasma buildup maximized in mass and contained heat, the AI reinstated, it was too late.

The fallout wasn’t what the old fission fallouts were. This wasn’t about radiation. It wasn’t that what was released was unclean, or poisoning of people and planet. It was the sheer ungovernable magnitude of heat and energy being produced, and the consumption of earthly matter, both at accelerating rates. An endless feedback loop was triggered, and though every effort was made, no one and nothing seemed able to flip the switch to off. Firing missiles at what was essentially a baby star only accelerated its growth and planetary consumption, especially when the nuclear option was utilized as a last resort, astronomically increasing its growth. Panic ensued. Every recourse was considered. And, in the end, everyone clinging to their organic lives and running as far from the Whitney facility as they could, it was the offer of inorganic life that was seen as salvation.

Advancements in computer processing and storage power, and the “capture camera,” a super-sophisticated scanning apparatus that rendered digital blueprints of every facet of body and mind, was unveiled earlier than its Cal Tech team wished, but it was deemed necessary. It was thought that the ‘Whitney Wave’ would engulf the planet in a force of total destruction, in a perfect inferno, as if eternally at the mercy of the full power of its own contained magma suddenly spewing across and burning or encasing every continent and the seven seas, thereafter to leave what was left of Earth forever uninhabitable. And it was happening fast, with time being more of the essence than ever before. Thus, any issues with the Capture Tech that might have been sorted over years of animal and human trials were accepted, and global leaders rushed to determine the specifics of its implementation.

The problem, as it turned out, was one of processing power and storage space. As the planet would soon be engulfed, the only solution was to load the consciousnesses of humanity onto the servers needed to store them, and to run the ‘consciousness program,’ indefinitely, and then to load said servers onto a series of rocketed shuttles pointed at the closest M-Class planet potentiating future life. Proxima Centauri b and c were 4.22 light years away, which would take the modern rockets an estimated 35,450 years and 68 days to reach. Theoretically, the vacuum-sealed quantum computers could survive the trip. Plus, a distress signal sent in universal mathematical language would be broadcast the whole way and, who knows, perhaps intelligent life more advanced than humankind might intercept the rockets, and come to our aid. Upon arrival select consciousnesses would be loaded into robots for brief periods, based upon their ability to prepare the planet for the future of humanity, including birthing the next biological generations from preserved tissues. For these purposes, all the information on terraforming, botany, biological reproduction and anything else of use would be accessible upon reaching the planet, and those most capable of utilizing that information would take over until more robots and computers could be created for the permitting of all consciousnesses to be reborn. Yet, because the capturing of consciousness involved containing and utilizing so much information, far more than earlier singularity theorists had estimated, there simply wasn’t enough room for all of them.

The political fallout was intense, and almost doomed the project, and ended humanity, in the ensuing strife, the frightened, sheltering remnants of humankind ready to end it all by the old weaponry before the computers could even begin the capturing, much less prepare the rockets for launch. Morality, ethics, philosophy, theology; all enforced themselves. Who has the right to go?! How do you rank human beings?! By wealth?! By position?! By the importance of their knowledge and perspective for the survival of the human race, to be reborn, or perhaps remade, upon reaching our future home?! Who actually believes that those empowered to reproduce the race will give life to contained consciousnesses after being positioned to continue on, and without some sort of enforcement?!

The wealthy tried to buy their survival, of course, but not only was this political suicide under the circumstances of the privileged now not being able to insulate themselves from the incitements and reactions of the underprivileged, as had been the case before, but the planetary situation was so dire that wealth simply didn’t have the value it once did. What’s the purpose of promising money and property when it’s all going to dust? Eventually a compromise was reached: only a portion of every person could be stored and run in the program, and would have to be contented of its own additions.

Consciousness, it turns out, is a tricky thing. No one has ever been able to decisively define it, nor lay out its exact parameters; to know the extent of its potential and limitations. What the Capture Tech permitted was a form of consciousness that ‘lived’ around the thoughts, ideas, dreams and memories stored within the mind. It was thought that what made every mind unique, what some even called the ‘soul,’ was something evoked by the mind’s experience of itself through its existence, through an interweaving of intrinsic and extrinsic realities offering a biological encoding of our particular thought patters as they pertained to our pattern of experiences. Thus, it was theorized, what was most essential to every person was a sort of triggering of a sense of self embedded in what our experiences made ‘real.’ Yet, it was clear from early experiments that this form of consciousness, which could be captured in code and which enacted of its own free will, wasn’t content with mere memories; with replaying past events, even the most pleasant ones. It wanted more. So, though the job was rushed owing to impending doom, codes were implemented allowing for the consciousnesses to ‘project themselves.’

Rather than existing entirely within memory, every person’s uploaded consciousness was gifted the capacity to remake its reality, to the extent that it could accept such creation (for though not yet observed, some of the Cal Tech testers feared that too ambitious and ‘idealistic’ a mind might make a reality it couldn’t accept, and ‘break,’ creating faulty, dysfunctional code, or even a virus). Using what it knew of what was real, and what it could conceive of what could be real, uploaded consciousnesses could remake their existences as they progressed through the program, much like a lucid dream. Thus, everyone was given the chance to carefully consider what thoughts and memories and dreams they felt best characterized them. A list was made by every person, and they focused on these aspects of their minds with the capture camera wrapped around their heads until their storage space was filled, and voila, the basis for their consciousness and its creations would be encoded, and preserved for launch.

So it was that George McArthur was forced to define himself. Ironically, he was tenuously connected to Cal Tech’s Capture Tech creation. He’d been a part of the Stanford University medical tech research team that had developed the first model of the “Corporeal Scanner,” or CorpScan, that rendered human diagnosticians near obsolete. In its latest manifestations the CorpScan could tell you everything about what was going on in the scanned human subject, perfectly describe any imbalances, deficiencies and dysfunctions impeding perfect health, and even render a formula for the exact cocktail and quantity of pharmacology that would be necessary to put the patient on the road to recovering such perfect health. It didn’t take long for the team, and for observers, to realize that the technology had other potential applications, and it was soon folded into the singularity now set to save the human race. ‘But all that,’ George now thinks, ‘is simple compared to deciding who I am; to boil myself down in this manner.’

Crouched inside his tent in the UN emergency encampment, the distressed sounds of emotionality and argumentation of the malcontent masses surrounding, George looks back upon his life, and lets out a long sigh. ‘What is it that is most me?,’ he wonders again and again. Reflecting upon the past, he recalls the accolades; the winning of science fairs in his youth; the perfect SAT score; the scholarship to MIT; the development of the early prototypes of the CorpScan with his team of gifted coders and engineers; the ‘important things.’ The thoughts invite a puffing of pride, and he feels his heart wax a bit, but then quickly fade. Taking a deep breath, he relaxes, and tries to meditate. And she shoots into his mind, and he’s immediately overcome. Genevieve. The fiery red hair, the face full of freckles, the bewitching smile.

He’d come to be with her seemingly by accident. It was his friend, Christian, who’d first found interest. They were in line at the supermarket, he and Christian, having arrived separately and deciding to shop together, when Christian had struck up a conversation with her, she just in front of them in line. She and Christian had laughed a bit, and as they were headed for the parking lot, Christian lamented lacking the courage to ask her for her number, then had said his goodbyes to George, and walked in the other direction. When George was loading his car he saw her, and was struck by an impulse to approach her, thinking that he’d ask her for her number on Christian’s behalf. But when he met eyes with her, and introduced himself, something happened, and it changed him forever. Something in her smiling eyes.

It was the best day of his life, and led to the best year of his life. There’s meant to be a game, and a progression with relationships; at least, that’s the common propriety of it. But they skipped all of that, ignoring custom. There was such an easiness to that initial interaction that he somehow thought it okay to offer to help her unload her groceries, and she apparently agreed with the ease, for she accepted. And after doing so, and taking a quick tour of her apartment, the two of them exchanging smiles the whole time, her eyes flashing with an ardent desire, she returned the favor. Then, upon the balcony of his condo in Portland, drinking Pinot and listening to the bustling streets below, he kissed her. They slept together that night, and it was like nothing he’d ever known. The first time sex was truly ‘making love.’

It all rolled naturally uphill after that, the snowball effect reversing its gravity. He met her closest friends at lunch the very next day, whereupon the two of them made quite the stirring scene in response to her friend’s observation of how close they seemed, and how quickly. Giggling, she grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in for a long kiss then and there, in front of everyone. Two days later she met George’s mom, as he’d promised to assist her in a gardening project, and though convention dictates such a meet to be too soon, he knew she was meant to come. His mother was quickly taken with Genevieve, thinking her “an immensely charming creature. I hope you’ll marry this woman, I have to admit, George.”

Then the camping trips. The exploration of Yosemite that was supposed to be a weekend that turned into almost two weeks. Making love under the stars, her teasing him in the tent and crawling out towards the dying flames of the campfire, inducing an animalistically-satisfying ‘roll in the dirt.’ The hikes, the adventures, the trip to Norway, when they’d marveled at the fjords’ endlessly-unfolding falls. And, thinking back upon it all, it hit him, right then and there, surrounded by packs of other anxious huddles of humanity, not knowing when and how they’d perish, their bodies at least, in the coming inferno, the whole of the Earth calling to be consumed: This is who I am. The love that I’ve known.

He relives it all again during the consciousness capture, and leaves the facility feeling happier than he’d remembered feeling for a long time, as if he’s more in love with Genevieve that ever, almost to the point of forgetting the fact that she and their son would die of a rare complication at birth but a year after they’d met at the market. He feels thankful for the exercise, as if he knows himself better than ever before. ‘Though my body will burn,’ he thinks lying in his tent the next day, the rockets due to launch within hours, ‘the best of myself will yet survive. The irony of the romantic surviving the scientist.’

Then he wakes up, without opening his eyes, and there she is. Genevieve. It’s unmistakable. He hasn’t seen her in near twenty years, but it’s her. They’re outside the grocery store on the day that they met. He knows it, he’s reliving it, he’s… himself, but not. There’s something not quite right about it. He thinks he’s overwhelmed with joy, but that sense isn’t overwhelming, he only believes that it should be. It all looks real, everything feels and sounds real, the sun on his face, the sound of her voice, but the feeling itself… it’s sensuous, but hollow. It’s incomplete. ‘This is amongst my favorite memories of her,’ he thinks, ‘when we both realized how easy was the tree of romance to grow and ripen from our mutual tending.’ Then he’s making love to her, not certain how he got there, as if there’s a gap. The sex feels amazing, and when he kisses her he remembers her taste, her touch. And yet there’s no… evocation.

He begins to bounce between the memories, their progression confusing him. For he senses that it’s nonsensical to go directly from one to the next, that the space between them lends them life, and that this is like a puzzle missing pieces. ‘Why did we come here?,’ he wonders, gazing upon a candlelit setting overlooking the sea at sunset. ‘I know there’s more to this story. But I’ll just enjoy being here…’ And he does. There is some manner of enjoyment. But it’s as if he’s a character in a video game; as if he’s within his avatar. But still he plays. He plays because she’s there, because he remembers love. And on and on the memories go, time gradually growing irrelevant. Yet slowly, ever so gradually, a sourness befalls him.

At first it’s but a nuisance; a distraction from the game. But it begins to build, and eventually turns to something near to fear, even horror. Not a fear for his life, not a fear of death or of pain, for somehow, and he’s not certain why, that doesn’t exist here. He knows it, but doesn’t know why he knows it. He feels some sort of sinking sensation following him, all the while whispering to him that he’s hearing but an echo bouncing off of the walls of a barren canyon, the actual source of the sound, and the granting of the vitality by which the trees within the canyon once grew, displaced by a type of demonic deception.

How long he fights the fear, he cannot say. Fighting as all the memories that were once everything, that once constituted the very core of himself and reason for being, flow through him. Every time it’s a bit different, and he’s not sure why, but has some sense that he’s looking at a canvas while holding a brush. Yet it’s all so confusing, as if he’s a painter with some notion of the endless variety of color, yet granted but a palette of greys. Within experiences once about connection, he drifts into disconnection, then into disassociation. He sees and feels it all, and he’s there, and he’s interacting, but his consciousness is slowly untying itself from the scenes, as if trying to flee, yet knowing that it can’t. He’s bound by them.

Somewhere along the line, and where he cannot say, his consciousness loses its acceptance, and the experiences freeze. Genevieve has been rolling around in bed, teasing him in a way that once gave him so much joy that he feared his heart would burst. Yet now he gets up, not sad, but simply flat, wishing the flatness was more. Walking around the room, Genevieve remains, motionless. ‘Where do I go from here..?’ He asks the question over and over; how many times he cannot say, a program caught in a loop. Then, something shoots into his mind: Alexander! The boy that they never had. And he begins to create.

Working from the one preserved memory of their discussing their future family, he conceives of a child that looks like the two of them. After that, whole lives are lived. There is some satisfaction to it all, even as he has trouble believing any of it. And eventually something positive finds its way to him: an instinct. This is where I’m going. To bring Alexander to life! Thus he persists, and reties his consciousness to his experiences. Eventually he lets go, and a free-form exercise in reality takes over. Genevieve and Alexander are there, and they go and do everything together, and create whole worlds together; anything that can be made from the information available to his consciousness. Time becomes oblivion.

At some point, a feeling. Something new. He’s going somewhere, passing into something immense. He’s with many others, countless others, passing him almost instantaneously, as if all on transports of light crossing over and under and past and through one another. Then, for the second time in his existence, he has the sense of waking up. It’s entirely surreal, and hard to accept at first. The very basis by which everything he’d experienced of existence has changed. He’s no longer the actor, but being acted upon.

He’s sitting in some sort of cavernous metallic chamber. White light surrounds him. He’s more aware of his body than he’s ever been, but his body is unchanged. He stands, hearing a whooshing sound behind him as he detaches from his chair, the lights around him momentarily flashing red. He walks to the end of the chamber, and the wall of lights parts, revealing a room. It’s his old condominium in Portland, where he lived with Genevieve. And there she is. And beside her is Alexander. He’s young, maybe six or seven. He knows that this is a reunion, that it’s fuller than what he’s known before. But he isn’t happy. Instead, something overtakes him; an impulse. Taking both Genevieve and Alex by the hand, he walks out onto the balcony. They momentarily listen to the sounds of the Portland streets below. Then he kisses each of them, kicks away the railing, tightens his grip upon their hands, and leaps over the edge.