“You mean—?”
“I mean, if the Overrider and Guard are one-time folks who believe the Kagan 7800 is god and a wonderful thing that can do no harm, could and would we then all be remade into its slaves?”
9
MAGICIAN’S SPELL
“I—I simply can’t believe the level of changes,” Haller said, unnerved. “You are changing people into other people. Completely different people. It’s magic, that’s what it is. The blackest of magics.”
“Bullshit,” Suzuki responded. “It’s science, pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less. These aren’t new people, only new aspects of the old people. The changes are physical and have solid grounding in the past, even if we are more or less reversing psychotherapy.”
“That girl is not Hasim,” Connie put in firmly.
“All right—consider this for starters. You’ve heard of people with multiple personalities? Usually people who were brutalized or sexually abused as small kids who develop separate personalities to hide from the realities of the past?”
Haller nodded. “I’ve heard of them, although I’ve never met one.”
“They’ve always been rare, but they exist, even today. I’ve seen people with two, three, even forty or fifty different personalities. They believe they are different people in the same body. They act like different people. Even their EEGs are different—just like the brain patterns of totally different human beings. They are different. Not always complete, but some really are complete individuals. Often when one is in control, the other doesn’t have any knowledge of or memories of what they first did when it was in control. Absolutely nothing. One may be a lousy reader but a brilliant musician. One might paint portraits, the other paint houses. There might be totally male personalities in female bodies and vice-versa.”
“Yeah, well, a personality change I can accept. We have drugs that do that, even recreational ones. But you changed one person into another,” Haller objected. “One no more kin to Hasim than the original dirt I used is to the brick that’s now outside.”
“You’re wrong. Both the Hasim that was and our new girl are different aspects of the same person. The outward physiological change, which we see directly, is actually the least important part of it. Minor. We’re using the system now to cure diseases, manage genetic defects, eliminate the physical effects of aging, that sort of thing. You’ve done it, and so have I.”
“I’ve never done it, but I’ve known it was being done,” he told her. “But that’s just curing the original of defects. They’re still the same inside.”
“Of course—because you didn’t touch the brain itself. Now, leaving the multiples aside for the moment, let’s think of something else. Religious rapture. We’ve seen that, even here. Periods of concentration so intense that someone can walk barefoot over hot coals or do single things otherwise impossible. The brain is always selective. It has to be. Just as a lens focuses on the foreground or background, one object or many—but not both—so our brains must also do this. Heighten animal senses when we are in a threatening situation. Close out externals when we are sexually aroused. We even filter out a lot when concentrating on a tough job, or when going to sleep. This is rooted in the brain’s parietal lobe—it decides what gets and keeps our attention on the basis of external stimuli fed to it. Danger—filter out so you get the animal wariness and reflexes. Sex—filter out the extraneous surroundings, noises, even the nature of the environment. People screw in the damnedest locations. Delicate craft work—filter out all sounds and distractions not relevant to the task at hand.”
“I’m following you so far,” he said dubiously, and Connie nodded assent.
“All right, now back to our multiple personalities. The reason the personality in charge is different is because the message is sent to the parietal lobe to filter out everything not relevant to that personality. Memories, for example. Certain skills. Likes and dislikes.
“The brain and the mind are two separate but interacting things. The mind is the integrated personality we see and which interacts with the world. The parietal lobe simply filters out brain information—data—that is not relevant to the mind at a specific time. With the multiples, it filters out everything relating to the other personalities, but retains what is relevant to the single, forward personality that is in control of the mind and such skills as may be necessary for that personality—speech, for example. Artistic skills and aptitudes. Skilled crafts. What makes one good at a job is the ability to filter out all that’s not relevant to that job while it’s being done. You with your engineering and programming, for example. There was once a disease—Alzheimer’s, it was called—that attacked the brain at its central switching points, but it was selective. It might allow music, or painting, through—even the reading of music—while not allowing through basic reading or math skills, or the ability to make a cup of coffee. We managed to find a chemical cure, but we know how it works. We can selectively induce and freeze it if need be. We can make anyone we want into anyone else we want, and there is no magic to it, just basic biology.”
And he saw it. “Then, what you’re saying is that the computer issues a set of instructions, filters, to this lobe in the brain. It creates the new personality, with whatever its gifts and limitations, knowledge and limitations, by the limits of the filter. Selectively, it allows to come through only those things that are relevant to the personality it is designing.”
“Exactly! And then it reinforces them in a more or less traditional manner. Our drugs work because they fit specific receptors in the brain. The new chemical changes the synapse— the gap between neurons—and redirects the messages, shutting down some and diverting others. The drugs can do this—make you silly, or emotional, or sexy, or coldly distant, or whatever—because they mimic specific peptides the body has the potential to produce but for either genetic or environmental reasons did not. Once the computer has its filter in place, it can then trigger a real mechanism in the brain to create those new peptides naturally and continuously, and even determine the rate of release. These interact with the data allowed through the filters to the mind to create a specific end result. Finally, it can harden this personality by creating an external form that reinforces the personality and causes others to react to it in certain ways. A nymphomaniac in a gorgeous body with exaggerated physical attributes, for example. Then it’s complete. And this filter is locked into place. It can only be changed in the same way it was created.”
He was stunned. “Then—you can play god to your heart’s content. You can make people into anything you want. Stupid, strong, obedient, handsome, beautiful—whatever. It is the nightmare of every ethical scientist. You can do more than all the genetic engineering and psychodrugs ever promised, easily and with no traces, while remaining yourself virtually immortal.”
“There are limitations,” said the psychiatrist. “We cannot give you what you never had. We can’t increase real knowledge. If you knew how to play the piano before, we can retain that, perhaps make a mediocre pianist into a good or even great one through that focus of concentration I mentioned. But if you didn’t know how to play the piano before, we can’t give that ability to you. We filtered out Hasim’s ability to read and write, but had he been illiterate, we could not have made her literate. It is mostly a process of subtraction.
“Nor, in fact, do we have immortality. Oh, life extension, certainly, and a physical quality of life, definitely, but not indefinitely. Growing new brain cells is not like growing a new finger. The organ is too complex, and its components have interrelationships we are nowhere near solving. There is, however, between an eighty and ninety percent excess capacity. All other things being physically equal and nearly perfect, the death of old cells can be compensated for by unused parts. And to that the selectivity we mentioned and then also add the additional experience longer life brings, and we wind up giving ourselves centuries. How many it is hard to say. Five hundred to eight hundred is not, however, outside the bounds of possibility, and all that in the physically perfect body of a youngster. I myself am fifty-four, but physically I am twenty-two.”
“Not gods, then,” Connie put in, her voice barely a whisper, “but gods at least to those who don’t have access. Demigods.”
“Demigods is sufficient. We will retain the knowledge and continue to work on the cutting edge of technology while the masses are maintained and maintain us in a self-sufficient economic system stabilized by a practical but rigid social system.”
“But no godhood for them,” Connie noted sourly.
“There couldn’t be, unless we can perfect this colonization process and make it inexpensive enough to do it to an infinite number of worlds as need be. We would choke in people. Even if we could somehow manage to make the necessities out of Flux, the logistics of getting those necessities to the people and evenly and regularly distributing them would be a nightmare. It could not be sustained. Admittedly, many of those who will have access will be undeserving, but we will also preserve our best. Our own future Einsteins and Borellis. It won’t be as fair as natural selection, but it will do a better, more efficient job, fair or not.”
“I’m still not clear on how you changed the religious orientation from Shi’ite to Suni,” Connie put in.
“Simple. We simply filtered out everything that correlated with the Shi’ite branch of the faith. Hasim was learned in his religion. He knew the beliefs of both, but he was raised to accept one as correct and the other as mistaken. We simply removed the factors involved in his being raised that way and left the Suni intact relating to all the keys—Islam, Moslem, the Prophet, basic beliefs, and the like. It’s not only poetic justice, she’s better off that way. Our Shi’ites in this Anchor are among the most fundamentalist of the lot, while our Sunis tend to be more modern in their customs and outlook. This division doesn’t always hold true, but it happens to in our case.”
Haller leaned back in his chair and looked for a moment at the psychiatrist and the quiet little colonel. Finally, he said, “There’s an implied threat here to us, too, isn’t there? You can leave whatever skills are useful inside us and yet change us into others at will.”
The colonel shifted uncomfortably. “That is true, but I do not believe that either of you are the foolish.”
“How—how many people here know about this?” Connie asked them.
“In Luck? Our team of a hundred and five and now the two of you. On the whole world? Well, there are now about fifteen thousand people spread over all the Anchors. No more than four hundred know,” the colonel told her. “Outside of this project, the directors, and the military commanders, a few people in Transportation and Energy know because they originally discovered this, and the top engineers in each Anchor usually figure it out, as you did. Mostly, they are blocked beyond a small number at the top by a combination of security blocks in the computer and some logical disinformation that proves it impossible.”
“And everyone has kept this secret?” Haller asked.
“All but a few,” responded the colonel, “and they are quite agreeable now.”
It was Connie who unexpectedly exploded. “How dare you! What right do we have to play god? All that Toby and I do benefits everyone. Now the seeds are here for a godhood that seems inevitable! We have the technology! We should make it available to all, regardless of problems, then set about solving the new problems. We solved nuclear war, we even solved how to finance a project like this.”