We began with the primates most distantly related to humans.
We tested lemuriforms and New World monkeys. Then Old World monkeys. Finally, we moved to the anthropoid apes. On the sixth day, we did the chimps.
“There are actually two species,” Point Machine told us. “Pan paniscus, commonly called the bonobo, and Pan troglodytes, the common chimpanzee. They’re congruent species, so similar in appearance that by the time scientists caught on in the 1930s, they’d already been hopelessly mixed in captivity.” Zoo staff maneuvered two juveniles into the room, holding them by their hands. “But during World War Two, we found a way to separate them again,” Point Machine continued. “It happened at a zoo outside Hellabrunn, Germany. A bombing leveled most of the town but, by some fluke, left the zoo intact. Or most of it, anyway. When the zookeepers returned, they expected to find their chimps alive and well. Instead, they found dozens of them dead, lying in undamaged cages. Only the common chimps had survived. The Bonobos had all died of fright.”
We tested both species. The machine hummed. We double-checked the results, then triple-checked, and the interference pattern did not budge. Even chimps didn’t cause wave function collapse.
“We’re alone,” I said. “Totally alone.”
Later that night, Point Machine paced the lab. “It’s like tracing any characteristic,” he said. “You look for homology in sister taxa. You organize clades, catalogue synapomorphies, identify the outgroup.”
“And who is the outgroup?”
“Who do you think?” Point Machine stopped pacing. “The ability to cause wave function collapse is apparently a derived characteristic that arose uniquely in our species at some point in the last several million years.”
“And before that?” I said.
“What?”
“Before that Earth just stood there as so much un-collapsed reality? What, waiting for us to show up?”
Writing up the paper took several days. I signed Satish and Point Machine as coauthors.
Multiple studies have revealed the default state of all quantum systems to be a superposition of both collapsed and un-collapsed probability wave forms. It has long been known that subjective observation is a primary requirement for wave function collapse. The goal of this study was to identify the higher-order taxa capable of inciting wave function collapse by act of observation and to develop a phylogenetic tree to clarify the relationships between these major animal phyla. Species incapable of wave function collapse can be considered part of the larger indeterminate system. The study was carried out at the Boston Zoo on multiple orders of mammalia. Here we report that humans were the only species tested which proved capable of exerting wave function collapse onto the background superposition of states, and indeed, this ability appears to be a uniquely derived human characteristic. This ability most likely arose sometime in the last six million years after the most recent common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.
James read the abstract. He came to my office.
“But what do the results mean?”
“They mean whatever you think they mean.”
Things moved fast after that. The paper was published in The Journal of Quantum Mechanics, and the phone started ringing. There were requests for interviews, peer review, and a dozen labs started replication trials. It was the interpretations that got crazy though. I stayed away from interpretations. I dealt with the facts. I turned down the interviews.
Satish worked on perfecting the test itself. He worked on downsizing it, minimizing it, digitizing it. Turning it into a product. It became the Hansen double-slit, and when he was done, it was the size of a loaf of bread — with an easy indicator light and small, efficient output. Green for “yes,” and red for “no.” I wonder if he knew then. I wonder if he already suspected what they’d use it for.
“It doesn’t matter what is known,” he said. He touched the box. “It’s about what is knowable.”
He abandoned his gate arrays. Above his work station I found a quote taped to the wall, torn from an old book.
Can animals be just a superior race of marionettes, which eat without pleasure, cry without pain, desire nothing, know nothing, and only simulate intelligence?
In the spring, a medical doctor named Robbins made his interest in the project known through a series of carefully worded letters.
The letters turned into phone calls. The voices on the other end belonged to lawyers, the kind that come from deep pockets. Robbins worked for a consortium with a vested interest in determining, once and for all, exactly when consciousness first arises during human fetal development.
Hansen Labs turned him down flat until the offer grew a seventh figure.
James came to me. “He wants you there.”
“I don’t care.”
“Robbins asked for you specifically.”
“I don’t give a damn. I don’t want any part of it, and you can fire me if you want to.”
James grew a weary smile. “Fire you? If I fired you, my bosses would fire me. And then hire you back. Probably with a raise.” He sighed. “This guy Robbins is a real prick, do you know that?”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve seen him on TV.”
“But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
“Yeah, I know that, too.”
Hansen provided technicians for the testing. The week before the tests were going to occur, I got the call. I’d been expecting it. Robbins himself.
“Are you sure we can’t get you to come?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“If the issue is monetary, I can assure you—”
“It’s not.”
There was a pause on the line. “I understand,” he said. “All the same, I wanted to personally thank you. It’s a great thing you’ve accomplished. Your work is going to save a lot of lives.”
I was silent. “How did you get the mothers?”
“They’re committed volunteers, each one. Special women. We’re a large, national congregation, and we were able to find several volunteers from each trimester of pregnancy — though I don’t expect we’ll need more than the first one to prove the age at which a baby is ensouled. Our earliest mother is only a few weeks along.”
I spoke the next words slowly. “You’re fine with them taking the risk?”
“We have a whole staff of doctors attending, and medical experts have already determined that the procedure carries no more risk than amniocentesis. The diode inserted into the amniotic fluid will be no larger than a needle.”
“One thing I never understood about this… a fetus’s eyes are closed.”
“I prefer the word baby,” he said, voice gone tight. “A baby’s eyelids are very thin, and the diode is very bright. We have no doubt they’ll be able to sense it. Then we have merely to note wave function collapse, and we’ll finally have the proof we need to change the law and put a stop to the plague of abortions that has swept across this land.”
I put the phone down. Looked at it. Plague of abortions.
There were men like him in science, too — ones who had all the answers. Fanaticism, applied to any facet of an issue, has always seemed dangerous to me. I picked up the phone again. “You think it’s as simple as that?”