“Yes, Father.”
“What does this have to do with CarlisleHsing?”
“It appears, Father, that Mis’ Hsing haslearned of my intentions-I do not know how, but she is, as we know,a talented and experienced investigator. I believe she hasmisinterpreted my plans. She kidnaped Guohan Hsing from SeventhHeaven, and I assume she did so because she thought his life mightbe in danger. I take it she has come here to tell you of hermisapprehensions, and ask that I be prevented from continuing myactivities.”
“Her business with me is not yourconcern.”
“As you please, Father. But I want to assureyou, I do not intend to harm anyone.”
The old man looked at me questioningly. Ilooked back blankly and shrugged slightly. I had no idea where thiswas going.
“I note that you have interfered with thehousehold systems,” Yoshio said.
“Only so that I might defend myself fromslander, Father!”
“Go on, then. What is this experiment? Whatdo you want with Seventh Heaven Neurosurgery? You know I declinedto purchase it some time ago; what makes it worth your whilenow?”
“The contract terms for the clients, Father.They granted Seventh Heaven a great deal of control over theirphysical well-being, and as I read the terms, this allows SeventhHeaven to make arrangements that would not be legal under othercircumstances.”
“Let us dispense with pretense and delay,Shinichiro,” the old man said wearily. “What is this experiment youwant to attempt? What do you hope to do with Seventh Heaven’sclients? Explain it to me.”
The tone of the voice from the desktopchanged, from formally polite to forceful and direct. “These peoplehave human bodies they aren’t using, Father, while I, and otheruploaded personalities, would very much like to be human again-thelegal restrictions on us are surprisingly onerous. I want to beable to own property and conduct business without a slew ofartificial constraints. I want to be able to go places that aren’ton the open nets or the family’s systems. I want to have a discretebody again. I can’t just grow myself one; you know about that. Ifit has a functioning brain, then it’s a person in its own right,and I can’t download myself into it without being charged withmurder. If it doesn’t have a functioning brain, there’s no way todownload me into it at all. But these people, Father, have brainsand bodies they’re barely using, and have signed away half theirrights to the company. As I read the contracts, I think it would belegal to remove them from their bodies completely, and putus-myself and other uploads-in those bodies instead.”
“Remove them?” Yoshio asked.
“Upload them,” the desktop said eagerly.“Just the way you uploaded me. They’ve signed away so much controlthat I believe Seventh Heaven can legally remove them from theirbodies entirely.”
“Against their will?”
“No, no, of course not! We would askthem, and offer them a choice-stay in the dreamtanks until they dieof old age or systems failure, or transfer to electronic form wherethey can live forever, where they can, if they want, be removedfrom Epimetheus entirely so that they don’t need to worry aboutwhat will happen if Nightside City is abandoned and left derelict.And they can go right on dreaming-we would transfer their dreamlibraries with them, and set those up in the same nets that theirminds would be in. They wouldn’t need to interact with the outsideworld at all, any more than they do now; they could have dedicatedsystems. They could exist in their imaginary worlds, in realms oflight, worlds of bliss, untroubled by any lingering concerns abouttheir original flesh.”
My skin crawled slightly at that idea; thesedisembodied intelligences would be so isolated, sopointless.
I didn’t say anything, though; this wasbetween the two of them.
“But they would be dead,” Yoshio said.
“What? No, they would be just as alive as Iam, living electronically, and their bodies would be inhabited byme, and Shigeru, and Momoko, and Hideo, and Kazuo-and you,if you want. You could be younger, Father-you’re two hundred yearsold, and even the best doctors can’t keep you alive as you areforever, but you could start over in a younger body, one theoriginal owner doesn’t want anymore.”
“Shinichiro…” The old man lookeddesperately unhappy. He stared at me for a second before saying,“No. Shinichiro is dead. You are a recording. You are not myson.”
“Father, what are you saying?” The desktop’stone was quite convincingly shocked. “I am Shinichiro!”
“You are a piece of software thatthinks it’s my son. And if you were downloaded into a newbody, even one cloned from your own genes, you would stillnot be my son. My son is dead. You would only be a copy.”
“But Father, what difference does that make?”The desktop’s voice was baffled and angry-and, I thought,frightened. “I’m still me. A copy is as good as theoriginal.”
Yoshio shook his head. “If I scan something,the copy may be indistinguishable from the original, but it is notthe original.”
“But there’s no difference! I remembereverything, and what makes us who we are, but our memories? Iremember growing up with Kumiko and Shigeru, and you came to see usevery night and put us to bed, and I made you tuck in my bunny-howcan I remember that if I’m not your son?”
Yoshio did not answer immediately; he sat inhis big black chair, staring at me, with the desktop floating byhis shoulder.
“Father, I am Shinichiro, and I wantto be human again. I want my rights back.” It sounded desperate.“Your shielding worked, so I don’t know what Hsing has told you,and I don’t know how she found out something was going on withSeventh Heaven, but I promise you, I don’t mean anyone any harm. Ijust want to be human again, and I couldn’t think of any other wayto do it. It’s her fault I even thought of this one-I gotthe idea when I did a background check on her for you, when shefound out what Sayuri was doing. I found out where her father was,and that it was the same company you had looked at, and I realizedthat there were all those bodies going unused, zipped up inNightside City where no one would ever notice if they wererecycled. I wasn’t going to steal them; I would ask for volunteers,and trade eternal life for humanity. I wasn’t doing anythingterrible. I wasn’t going to hurt Guohan Hsing.”
“You hacked his medical exam.”
“It was a perfect chance to see just whatcondition the dreamers are in!”
“You faked my death.”
“I… no, I didn’t.” I had never heardan electronic intelligence hesitate like that before; it was themost human thing the Shinichiro upload had done in the entireconversation.
“A copy of you did,” the old man said.
Something here didn’t yet fit, I realized. IfShinichiro had been the power behind Corporate Initiatives, whichintended to buy Seventh Heaven, why had it used the back door toexplore the company files? Why not just wait until it had legalcontrol? It had just said that it knew the old man had looked atSeventh Heaven, so it did know the back door was there and that aYoshio-kun could get it in, but why bother? Why was it worthfaking Grandfather’s death?
Why bother hacking my father’s exam, insteadof just demanding medical data as a condition of the plannedpurchase?
And why had it been our attempt to talk toChantilly Rhee that forced the upload to hack in and talk to theold man?
The upload talked about wanting human rights.It hadn’t said a thing about wanting a body for its own sake. Ithadn’t mentioned wanting to feel human again. It hadn’t saidanything about food or sex or physical sensations of any kind, andthose were the things that the other uploads I’d talked to or heardabout associated with being human, the things they thought they hadlost. Shinichiro had been dead for twenty years; it might not evenremember those. Yes, it remembered the bedtime bunny, butdid it remember lust or pain or hunger? It hadn’t mentionedthem.