Sarda answered without hesitation. “That form behind the door we’ve just left is just a mass of biological material now. It doesn’t have any of the attributes that define a live personality anymore. They’re all transferred here.” He spread his arms and indicated himself with a gesture of his hands as they walked. “Think of it another way, Mr. Thane. A few years from now, your body won’t contain any of the atoms that it’s made from today. Every one will have been replaced as new material is taken in and old tissue lost. So all we’re really doing is speeding up a little what happens naturally, anyway. Why should you feel any less a sense of continuity with the natural analog of yourself that will be walking around then, than you would for an artificial one created more rapidly? The personality that you insist is you will have moved from the molecular configuration that it resides in now into a different one no less in one case than in the other. Essentially, they’re both the same thing.”
Before Kieran could take it further, they came to the open door of another laboratory, this time with sounds of voices and people visible inside. The R-Lab seemed to have attracted more visitors than the one downstairs. “Here he is!” someone called out. Then, “Leo, we need you to verify something here.”
Sarda observed the exchange of dubious looks between Kieran and June. “Don’t worry,” he told them confidently as they entered. “Fifty years from now it will be accepted as routinely as organ transplants. Nobody will think twice about it.”
“And it was just getting interesting,” June said. Sarda spread his hands and indicated his situation with a helpless nod. “Maybe we could grab you for lunch tomorrow, Leo,” June said on impulse. “How are you fixed?”
“Nothing scheduled, I think . . .”
“You have to try the new restaurant at the Oasis, out at the spaceport. Kieran and I were there last night. Come on. You need to get away from this insanity for an hour.” She was doing it again. The dancing dark eyes, challenging him to rise above the mundanity of a planned routine, were irresistible.
Sarda raised his palms in capitulation. “Okay, you’ve got it.” He grabbed the arm of a frizzy-haired man wearing a gray lab smock. “Stewart, can you show Mr. Thane the reconstitution chamber quickly before he leaves?” He turned back to Kieran and June as the horde closed around him. “Say, twelve-thirty—if I don’t have to cancel between now and then, I’ll meet you there.”
* * *
Afterward, they went down through the regular offices to the cubbyhole with a cluttered desk and multiscreen c-com layout that June used for work space, and met some of the other people that she knew. During one of the lulls, Kieran asked her, “Did you ever hear that old puzzle about the ship? I think it came from the Greeks.”
“Which one was that?”
“If you replace a rotting piece of timber on a ship, is it still the same ship?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“How about if you replace two pieces?”
“Okay.” June saw where he was going. “Then three, then four . . . So if you end up replacing all of them . . .”
“Is it still the same ship?”
June had to think about it. “There’s nowhere to draw the line,” she said finally. “So I’d have to say, yes it’s the same ship.”
“And by his logic, so would Leo,” Kieran agreed. “But now suppose you’d saved all the pieces of the original, and you put them together again. You’ve got two ships. How could they both be the same one?” He made an inviting gesture. “It’s a good question to liven things up in a bar if things start getting dull. You see, even after a couple of thousand years, most people can’t agree on that one. How are they ever going to figure out an answer to what we’re talking about?”
5
Kieran had just completed a long, wearying trip. June had been embroiled in several days of frenetic activity at Quantonix. The next day, they agreed, should be devoted to some serious relaxation.