Immortal Minds
Bart31@Sandwich had been a brilliant young man when he first developed a method of obtaining immortality by mapping all of a person’s neural synapses into an eight-hundred-terabyte computer chip. This invention brought him fame and fortune when he sold it to M.I.T. (Massive Intelligent Technology, Inc.). The money didn’t matter to Bart; he was far too wise to care about material riches. His cyber neurology practice provided a comfortable income. Although it did not quite match what his wife was pulling down as a kindergarten teacher, he felt good about his contribution. After all, her job was both more stressful and more important than his role in restoring the brain functions of accident victims. Together, they had already and quite unintentionally reached the top tax bracket.
His inventiveness was born out of a family tragedy. His brother-in-law, Carlos98@Manila, was eaten by a shark while he was repairing holes in the nets of his Mahi Mahi farm off the coast which left his widowed sister as a single mother with two small boys. As their only uncle, Bart felt responsible for seeing that the boys had a father-figure to guide them into manhood. How could he be there for them when they lived half way round the world? Even though they could converse on their computers, their schedules were completely out of whack. Modern technology had not overcome the twelve-hour time difference. Thinking about solving that problem led him to the idea of creating an electronic mentor for his nephews, a replica of his own mind placed on a computer chip.
He started working on a solution in his spare time at the office. The possibilities were exciting. Soon he started staying late to work on his project. The more effort he put into devising a feasible electronic brain, the more interesting and stimulating the project became. It gradually grew into an obsession that cut into his family time. The children were young and much more attached to their mother. Besides, his work was for their benefit. It would be well worth it in the long run.
Generating an electronic duplicate of a person’s brain turned out to be the easiest part. It took him less than a year to modify an obsolete MRI scanner to generate the digital pattern of a sleeping person’s brain. The person just needed to exhibit at least 40 minutes of REM dream activity during the night for the process to be successful. By connecting a pair of microphones to the electronic audio nerves, Bart could demonstrate that the recorded chip reacted to verbal stimuli with exactly the same patterns as the subject’s brain.
Getting thoughts out of the electronic brain proved to be a much greater challenge. Human brains convert thoughts into spoken words through a complex set of signals to a vast set of muscles, coordinating breathing and the shape of the mouth. It took three years to identify all of the relevant signals and create software that would reliably produce the same audio response to a question that his own brain did. When he proudly showed his completed device to his wife, she simply asked, “How many people do you think will spend their good money to hear your thin, raspy voice?” That sent him back to his workshop for another year. Once he had adjusted his equipment so that it could match the voice characteristics of any human, he patented his process and opened shop.
He called his pocket-sized device the Immortal Mind® and charged customers twenty thousand Universal Monetary Units for an overnight session and a set of four personalized Immortal Minds. Additional copies were available for two thousand Monetary Units. He was soon swamped with customers, mostly elderly men who wanted to preserve their stories for posterity. Even with three additional converted MRI scanners, he was unable to keep up. Working seven nights a week left him no time to make improvements. That was when he sold his patents to M.I.T. for two Monetary Units.
His customers were well satisfied, but Bart was not. While Immortal Minds were great for the egos of the customers, they did not work as mentors. Kids would not sit and listen to a disembodied voice telling them what to do. They got all the preaching they could tolerate at school. Bart’s research found that the main information that teens sought from Immortal Minds were old jokes. That wasn’t the role that he wanted his mind to play. He considered selectively erasing memories, but soon rejected that idea. Memories are not truly isolated or localized. Deleting a single memory changed the brain’s personality and interfered with other neural associations in unpredictable ways.
He decided that to hold the interest of young people, he would need vivid visual actions to accompany the words. He spent the next three years developing a video playback facility for his Immortal Minds. Memories could be played back in response to requests to “Remember when …” This feature led directly to his divorce. His wife asked one of his test versions to remember the happiest moment in his life. She was hoping to see their wedding day from his perspective. Instead, she saw Bart celebrating a break-through in his lab with his young assistant. He was glad that their children weren’t there to see his actions and his wife’s reaction. A single slip like this could forever end his dream of becoming a role model and mentor to his descendents. He hurried back to the lab to work on a “Withhold Horrifying Output” filter (patented as the WHO-filter) that interpreted requests to select only memories appropriate for disclosure to the current audience.
After the divorce, the children stayed close to him through daily phone calls. Just hearing their voices encouraged him to keep up the struggle to produce an excellent mentor. Yet sometimes the calls came at inconvenient times, interrupting his concentration. After awhile, their conversations became repetitive and most of their problems were mundane. He hooked up an early version of his Immortal Brain to his answering and recorded all of its conversations. That way, he only needed to answer the phone when he was not otherwise occupied. He listened to the recorded conversations with the kids the first thing every morning. It was an effective and efficient arrangement.
It took another three years for Bart to complete his memory playback feature to his own satisfaction. The effort paid off, at least for M.I.T. Immortal minds started being generated world-wide by the hundreds of millions. Home videos of memories became a standard feature of birthday parties, anniversaries and wakes. The popularity was enhanced by shows like “America’s Funniest Childhood Memories.”
Bart commissioned a study of the use of Immortal Minds by teenagers. He was saddened to discover that teens turned to their grandparents’ Immortal Minds for entertainment and for quick answers to schoolwork problems. Fewer than one percent went to an Immortal Mind for personal guidance. In response to a follow-up survey, the vast majority of teen responses were words to the effect that “Those people only talk about themselves. They spend most of their time complaining. Why should I take advice from an unhappy person who doesn’t care about me?” He tackled the impression of unhappiness by modifying the WHO-filter to select happy, positive images at least eighty-percent of the time. That was easy. The perceived lack of caring puzzled him. He listened carefully to the responses that he got when he asked a sample of Immortal Minds for advice on a variety of subjects. In nearly every case, the answers were respectfully communicated with words of concern and support. He couldn’t understand why such answers were not well received.
A consultation with a professor of psychology provided a solution. She explained that most adults have become skilled at using caring words to placate people they don’t like. Children receive enough hypocritical speeches from adults to distrust the emotional connotations of the words. They discern the speaker’s true emotions from his facial expressions. The eyes don’t lie. Face-to-face contact is necessary to build trusting, caring relationships.
Life would be so much better if people were just more logical, but Bart knew he couldn’t change human nature. What he could do was to enhance Immortal Minds by including realistic facial expressions. In conversational mode, the Immortal Mind would use a pair of digital cameras focused on the user’s face and connected to the simulated optical nerves so it could accurately determine the user’s emotional state. That was a fairly simple task. No new software was needed; the brain was already wired to read faces. Displaying an accurately caring face was much more of a technical challenge. That was fine with Bart. Solving difficult technical problems gave him more joy than any other activity. He spent three happy years developing a program that converted photographs of a subject’s head into an animated face whose movements were controlled by an Immortal Mind. Another six months went into testing before he was satisfied that he had finally created an adequate virtual mentor.
Before releasing his great breakthrough to M.I.T. for general distribution, Bart captured his own brain with copies for each of his descendents. He has reached the age of seventy, half-way through his expected lifetime, and was at the peak of his mental powers. There would be no better time to preserve his accumulated wisdom and pass it on to the future generations. Fully cognizant of the responsibility and complexity of advising young people, Bart spent three months studying the best video books on psychology, sociology and parenting. He also trained himself to avoid simply giving factual answers when he could teach the questioner how to find the information for himself. Not only was this a good pedagogical practice, it would allow his Immortal Mind to be helpful even when asked about events and developments that would occur after its generation.
Finally, he remembered that it was vital for a good mentor to be happy and optimistic about the future. So, he waited for a particularly joyful day. Luck was on his side. The Red Sox beat the Diamondbacks in the decisive seventh game of the World Series. The next morning, he composed a press release announcing the tremendous potential of the improved version of the Immortal Mind. That evening, he relaxed over three drinks of the finest single-malt Scotch to dull the minor aches of his chronic carpal tunnel syndrome and to enhance his dream activity. Then he powered up his modified MRI scanner and fell asleep on its bed.
The next morning, he set his new Immortal Mind up in front of his video phone and called a number of different friends and family members. The Immortal Mind passed the Turing Test with flying colors. None of the people he called guessed that they were conversing with a machine instead of the live Bart. Several accused him of lying when he let them in on the secret.
He made multiple copies of his Immortal Mind, sending each grandchild, nephew, niece and young associate a personal mentor. They were gratefully received. His grandchildren even wrote old-fashioned thank you notes. With no more technical problems left, Bart devoted himself to promoting his marvelous device. For a while he was in great demand as a guest on television news and talk shows. Hosts like to interview both Mr. Sandwich and his avatar. The audiences were amazed at not only by how well the avatar matched the human, but also by the brilliance of Mr. Sandwich’s mind. College students gave ringing endorsements praising the value of having the mind of on of their grandparents with them wherever they went.
The orders came pouring in. Bart traveled all over the world and was entertained by political leaders of every nation. The celebrity was intoxicating. Four years passed in a blur of visits to exotic places and important board rooms. He didn’t have time to spend relaxing with his relatives, but that was not a concern since they were all accompanied by his Immortal Mind. They did not interrupt his schedule with phone calls or requests. With all of his wisdom and caring words available at the flick of a switch, it was much easier for his loved ones to consult his virtual self than to take a trip to visit him or even call him up on his telephone.
Over time, small difference began to appear between Bart’s and his Immortal Mind. None of the differences were substantial, but they were enough to remove the mystique from the side-by-side interviews. On the days after a long flight or a late party, Bart would be slightly inattentive and somewhat curt in his responses while nothing would spoil the Immortal Mind’s happy mood. Bart had gained a substantial amount of weight from the frequent banquets. His double chin, plus the additional wrinkles in his skin made him clearly distinguishable from the well-toned automated face. When the ratings started to fall, the network’s agent suggested that Mr. Sandwich take a vacation. The network would continue to pay and use his Immortal Mind as a commentator. Bart didn’t care about the salary, he already had far more money than he could ever spend. It was the prospect of a carefree summer on Cape Cod that caused him to accept the proposal. He would be refreshed and rejuvenated when he returned to tour in the fall.
Back home, Bart tackled the technical problem of getting back into shape. He established an enjoyable routine of kayaking and bicycling. He ate mostly fresh seafood and fresh local produce. In ten weeks, he reached a best level of physical fitness he had experienced since his college days. Another mission accomplished. He called his agent at the network. “Hello Mr. London. It’s Bart. That vacation was a great idea. It was so refreshing that I feel better than I have in years. I am ready to return to the broadcasting circuit.”
“That’s good news. I’m glad you are enjoying yourself. There’s no need to go on the road again. You are still our audience’s favorite commentator. We use your mind nearly everyday. There’s no need to put yourself through the grinder again.”
“I enjoy the interactions. As good as my Immortal Mind is, it still isn’t completely human.”
“That’s exactly why the producers are so happy with your Immortal Mind. There is never a scheduling problem. He’s cheerful and ready to go on whenever news breaks. His upbeat mood is more consistently pleasing than any human can possible be. Not to mention that the producers are saving a bundle on travel and per diem expenses. No, you just stay where you are and enjoy life. The network prefers the current arrangement.”
Bart was stunned. For the first time in his life he had spare time and no pressing task to work on. He was not ready to do nothing. If the network didn’t need him, then he didn’t need the network. He would finally spend time with his widespread family. He called his oldest nephew in Manila. “How would you and your family like to spend August vacationing on Cape Cod with me? It will be a nice break from your tropical heat. The kids will enjoy swimming where there’s no shark danger.”
“Wow! Unc, that’s a nice daydream. But Cape Cod is so far away and traveling that far with our four kids would be prohibitively expensive.”
“Don’t worry about the cost. It’ll be my treat’ won’t cost you a cent. Just say when and I’ll get the tickets.”
“That’s awfully generous of you, but I’m needed here to manage the fish farm.”
“Can’t your brother take care of it for a month? You could use a vacation.”
“But just last week, I consulted your mind about our summer plans and you reminded me that when you find pleasure in your work you are enjoying life more than you could on any vacation. It’s true. I look forward to going to the farm every morning and the kids have gotten old enough that they can help too. They are proud of the contributions that they make. Having my children at my side always makes life feel worthwhile.”
“I would really love to see you and let your kids get to know me.”
“They already know you. About the only thing they argue about is whose turn it is to use your Immortal Mind. Your creation is truly a boon to mankind and we feel so lucky to have you in our lives. Compared to your accomplishments, my little farm must seem unimportant, but running that farm successfully is the center of our lives. It’s always good to talk to you but I gotta go now. Breakfast is ready.”
Bart sat quietly by the phone. He thought about the rest of his relatives. Then he remembered it was his youngest granddaughter’s birthday. He called her right away.
“Happy Birthday Threesy!”
“Oh Gramps, you’re so silly. My birthday was yesterday.”
“I’m really sorry I missed it.”
“I know. You’re always so busy. That’s why that I.M. thing you gave me is so good. He never forgets and since he’s not really a person, I could tell him what I wished for without ruining the magic.”
Bart was crestfallen, but he still managed to sound cheerful. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I’m playing soccer with my friends now. I love you Gramps. Bye.”
When she hung up, Bart felt that his road to success had reached a lonely dead end. He tried consulting with his own Immortal Mind. The I.M. tried to encourage him by reminding him that he had given the children what they needed and that made his life worthwhile. He became frustrated when his former self persisted in stating that his own needs were being met through his accomplishments and that everything would work out for the best in the long run.
Bart thought that he had grown wiser than his old mind, but the world wouldn't listen to his new revelations. They preferred to talk with his more cheerful self that was fossilized in his Immortal Mind.
With nothing else to do, Bart retired to a beach house outside of Manila, where he could at least live out his remaining years in the warmth of the tropics and be near his extended family. He soon settled into a relaxed routine of reading and gardening in the morning and looking after the grandkids in the afternoon.
One day he was sitting on the pier with Threesy, waiting for the fish to start biting. She commented, "We studying the ancient Greeks in school. Grandpa, Do you know any of their myths?"
"Let me think... It's been a long time." Bart pondered before replying.
"It's OK. I can always get your old memories from the immortal mind, but it's much more fun to make new memories with you."
"You're right about that!" Bart sipped an arm around Threesy's shoulder and began, "Once there was a young man named Narcissus who was so in love with himself that he ignored everyone else..."