Peggy Fennell’s death once more.
“You faked that,” said Sarkar.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, come on, Peter.”
“Really. I haven’t even done any cleanup of the data. What you just saw is exactly what happened.”
“Play that last bit again,” said Sarkar. “One one-hundredth speed.”
Peter touched buttons.
“Subhanallah,” said Sarkar. “That’s incredible.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
“You know what that is, don’t you?” said Sarkar. “Right there, in crisp images. That’s her nafs—her soul—leaving her body.”
To his surprise, Peter found himself reacting negatively when he heard that idea said aloud. “I knew you were going to say that.”
“Well, what else could it be?” asked Sarkar.
“I don’t know.”
“Nothing,” said Sarkar. “That’s the only thing it could be. Have you told anyone about this yet?”
“No.”
“How do you announce something like this, I wonder? In a medical journal? Or do you just call the newspapers?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only just begun to think about that. I suspect I’ll call a press conference.”
“Remember Fleischmann and Pons,” cautioned Sarkar.
“The cold-fusion guys? Yeah, I know they jumped the gun, and ended up with egg on their faces. I’ll have to get some more recordings of the thing. I’ve got to be sure this happens to everyone, after all. But I can’t wait forever. Someone else will stumble on this soon enough.”
“What about patents?”
Peter nodded. “I’ve thought about that. I’ve already got patents on most of the technology in the superEEG—it’s an incremental improvement on the brain scanner we built for your AI work, after all. I’m certainly not going to go public until I’ve got the whole thing protected.”
“When you do announce it,” said Sarkar, “there will be a ton of publicity. This is as big as it gets. You’ve proven the existence of life after death.”
Peter shook his head. “You’re going beyond the data. A small, weak electrical field leaves the body at the moment of death. That’s all; there’s nothing to prove that the field is conscious or living.”
“The Koran says—”
“I can’t rely on the Koran, or the Bible, or anything else. All we know is that a cohesive energy field survives the death of the body. Whether that field lasts for any appreciable time after departure, or whether it carries any real information, is completely unknown—and any other interpretation at this point is just wishful thinking.”
“You’re being deliberately obtuse. It’s a soul, Peter. You know that.”
“I don’t like using that word. It—it prejudices the discussion.”
“All right, call it something else if you like. Casper the Friendly Ghost, even—although I’d call the physical manifestation the soulwave. But it exists—and you know as well as I do that people are going to embrace it as an honest-to-goodness soul, as proof of life after death.” Sarkar looked his friend in the eye. “This will change the world.”
Peter nodded. There wasn’t anything else to say.
CHAPTER 11
September 2011
Peter hadn’t seen Colin Godoyo in months—not since the seminar on nanotechnology immortality. They’d never really been friends—at least Peter hadn’t thought so—but when Colin called Peter at the office asking him to come to lunch, something in Colin’s voice had sounded urgent, so Peter had agreed. Lunch couldn’t go on endlessly, anyway—Peter had a meeting with a major U.S. client at 2:00 p.m.
They went to a little restaurant Peter liked on Sheppard East, out toward Vic Park—a place that made a club sandwich by hacking the turkey breast with a knife, instead of slicing it thin on a machine, and toasting the bread on a grill so that it had brown lines across it. Peter never thought of himself as particularly memorable, but it seemed half the restaurants in North York thought him a regular, even though, excepting Sonny Gotlieb’s, he only came in to any one of them once or twice a month. The server took Colin’s drink order (scotch and soda), but protested he knew what Peter wanted (“Diet Coke with lime, right?”). Once the server was gone, Peter looked at Colin expectantly. “What’s new?”
Colin was grayer than Peter had remembered, but he still wore his wealth ostentatiously, and was sporting a total of six gold rings. His eyes moved back and forth incessantly. “I guess you heard about me and Naomi.”
Peter shook his head. “Heard what?”
“We’ve separated.”
“Oh,” said Peter. “I’m sorry.”
“I hadn’t realized how many of our friends were really just her friends,” said Colin. The server arrived, set down little napkins, deposited the drinks on them, then scurried away. “I’m glad you agreed to come to lunch.”
“No problem,” said Peter. He had never been good at this kind of social situation. Was he supposed to