“In the same kind of way that the expanded DNA information lets you interpolate most of the physical structure.”
“Well . . . yes, pretty close.”
“Okay, that’s from one brain to another. But how about the other possibility that people have been bandying about for years: uploading a mind into a totally different kind of system—holotronic or something? Do the TX processes get you any nearer to something like that?”
Tom wrinkled his nose. “In principle I guess it could work. But to upload it into another kind of system . . . ? I don’t know of anything other than a biological nervous system that could be complex enough to express the code, and at the same time be sufficiently modifiable in the way it would have to. Right now, that would be a tough one.”
June detected no hint of the wariness that she would have expected in somebody skirting a potentially dangerous topic. She edged closer to the subject that she had come here to learn about. “How about transferring parts of someone’s psyche, then, Tom? You know, maybe some special skill or knowledge that they have? You see it in movies, where something that a person has learned is extracted and written into a machine or whatever.”
This time Tom shook his head. “It makes good stories, sure. But our knowledge of memory mapping simply isn’t up to it at this point in the game. We don’t have any way of telling what parts of the total pattern correspond to any particular skill or piece of knowledge, like what you’re talking about.”
“There’s no way of identifying what would need to be selected?” June checked.
“Exactly. It’s not a simple one-to-one relationship, where you can say this bunch of connections defines that function or concept. Everything interacts with everything—like the way genes affect each other and turn each other on and off. It would be like having a book in Chinese. I can copy the entire thing onto another stack of paper, or into an electronic memory, photo film, magnetic image, anything you want. That’s no problem. But don’t ask me what any particular piece of it means.”
“So would it be the same the other way around too?” June asked, as if the thought had just occurred to her. She kept her voice even. “It wouldn’t be possible to delete anything selectively either? For example, so that the Leo who gets reconstituted here ends up missing memories that the original Leo possessed downstairs?”
“No . . .” Tom frowned, seeming to find it an odd and curious question. “Why would anyone want to do that?” His eyes betrayed no inkling of alarm or suspicion. He mulled over the suggestion for a second or two, and then his mouth curled in a parody of a grin, revealing uneven teeth. “Why, has Leo been forgetting things? What kind of stuff are you writing, June? This is starting to sound more like one of those thrillers with people getting brainwashed—” At that moment, his phone beeped. Ignoring his pocket unit, he reached out to activate the flatscreen on one side of his desk. A female voice that sounded like Herbert Morch’s secretary upstairs answered.
“Tom, I’ve got Herbert for you.”
He gestured toward the screen. “Excuse me for a moment, June. Rank is being pulled.”
“Mind if I have another look at the machine?”
“Go right ahead.”
With all the activity around it through the final days, June had never really had a chance to see the reconstitution chamber since its last details were added. Stewart Perrel had shown her and Kieran the finished object briefly, but the lab had been crowded and distracting then.
She set her note pad on the desk, got up, and sauntered over between consoles and a droning coolant pump. The inside of the chamber was cramped and close, full of sensors, scanning arrays, tubes, and cabling to the point where it seemed a human body couldn’t be squeezed in among it all. Kieran had said it put him in mind of some of the early space capsules he had seen in museums. The volume where the form was reconstituted had to be enclosed because of the strict environmental controls that were needed, and the positioning requirements necessitated limb, body, and head restraints. Leo had described how his most vivid sensation on regaining consciousness had been the heat and the clamminess in there. Not for the squeamish or the claustrophobic, June decided.