The Terminal Experiment - Robert J. Sawyer Page 0,98

it’s working,” said Peter.

“It takes time to check for the signature patterns,” said Sarkar. “Those sims are huge, after all. Just wait a—there.”

The middle of the three EEGs suddenly spiked violently up and down, and then—

Nothing. A straight line.

And then even the line disappeared, the source file erased.

“Jesus,” said Peter, very softly.

After several more minutes, the top line spiked in the same way, flatlined, and then disappeared.

“One left,” said Sarkar.

This one seemed to take longer than the other two—perhaps it was Control, the most complete simulacrum, the one that was a full copy of Peter, with no network connections broken. Peter watched the EEG line jump wildly, then die, then simply disappear, like a light going out.

“No soulwave escaping,” said Peter.

Sarkar shook his head.

Peter was more disturbed by all this than he’d expected to be.

Copies of himself.

Born.

Killed.

All in the space of a few moments.

He moved his chair across the room and leaned back in it, closing his eyes.

Sarkar set about reformatting the workstation’s hard drive to make sure all trace of the sims were gone. When he was done, he pushed the ejector button on the workstation’s card slot. The memory card with the virus popped out into his hand. He carried it over to the main computer console.

“I’ll send it out simultaneously over five different sub-networks,” said Sarkar. “It should be out there worldwide in less than a day.”

“Wait,” said Peter, sitting up. “Surely your virus could be modified to tell one sim from another?”

“Sure,” said Sarkar. “In fact, I’ve already written routines for that. There are certain key neural connections that I had to sever in making the modified sims; it’s easy enough to identify them based on those.”

“Well, then there’s no reason all three sims have to die. We could simply release a version of the virus that would kill whichever one is guilty.”

Sarkar considered. “I suppose we could first threaten all three of them with the broad version of the virus, in hopes that the guilty one would confess. After that, we could release a specific version aimed at the one guilty party. Surely you’d confess to save your brothers.”

“I—I don’t know,” said Peter. “I’m an only child—or was, until a short time ago. I honestly don’t know what I’d do.”

“I would do it,” said Sarkar. “In a minute, I would sacrifice myself for members of my family.”

“I have long suspected,” said Peter, absolutely seriously, “that you might be a better human being than I. But it’s worth a try.”

“It’ll take me about an hour to compile the three separate strains of virus,” said Sarkar.

“Okay,” said Peter. “As soon as you’re ready, I’ll summon the sims into a real-time conference.”

NET NEWS DIGEST

Georges Laval, 97, today confessed to a series of unsolved strangulation murders committed in southern France between 1947 and 1949. “I’m about to die,” said Laval, “and I’ve got to own up to this before I go on to face God.”

Religion news: a seminar will be held this week at Harvard University with leading New Testament scholars from around the world debating whether Jesus’ soul returned to his body when he was resurrected. Father Dale DeWitt, S.J., will defend his recent contention that Christ’s soul had already departed his body by the ninth hour of his crucifixion when he cried out “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Yet another potential setback for American Airlines’ frequently delayed debut of its passenger shuttle service to the International Space Station: Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, indicate that departing soulwaves may rely on detecting Earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields in order to find the direction they should move in. “If one were to die in the zero gravity of space,” said Professor Karen Hunt of RPI’s Department of Physics, “one’s soul might literally be lost forever.”

Baptize yourself in the privacy of your own home! New product includes formal baptism ceremony on videotape, plus holy water blessed by an authentic priest. Approved by the Worldwide Church of Christ. $199.95. Money-back guarantee.

Gaston, a free chimpanzee formerly with the Yerkes Primate Institute, in an exclusive interview conducted in American Sign Language on CBS’s Sixty Minutes, claimed that he “knows God” and looks forward to “life after life.”

CHAPTER 44

Peter sat in front of the computer console. Sarkar, perched on a stool next to him, was playing with three different datacards—one blue, one red, and one green, each labeled with the name of a different sim.

Peter sent out a message summoning the sims, and soon all three were