Bright Light. Ian Douglas

February 2426

       Lieutenant Gregory

       SupraQuito Synchorbital

       1218 hours, TFT

      The offices of Paradise, Inc. were located in a rotating wheel attached to the synchorbital complex just outside of the naval yards. Gregory had checked himself off of the Republic and taken a mag-tube to the office structure’s microgravity hub, from which he caught an elevator “down” to the wheel’s one-G rim. The reception office was luxuriously appointed, with viewalls set to peaceful mood-abstract animations, and with hauntingly ethereal music piped through from hidden speakers.

      An android robot took Gregory’s personal stats, and he was ushered through to an inner space where he met Kazuko Marukawa, seemingly adrift in swirls of colored light. “So, Lieutenant Gregory,” she said with a dazzling smile as he took a chair opposite her desk. “What brings you to Paradise?”

      “I’ve … lost someone,” he told her. “Someone very important to me. I’ve been wondering about the eschatoverse.”

      “An eschatoverse,” she said, gently correcting him. “We build one exactly to your specifications. We have, quite literally, billions of available models to choose from.”

      The thought of his own private heaven felt uncomfortably claustrophobic. “Isn’t that … I don’t know … kind of lonely? A virtual universe just for me and whoever I bring along?”

      “Not at all. Think of your ’verse as a bubble … but one that is constantly merging and interacting with others, with many others. You would have access to the entire virtual multiverse of billions of distinct realities. We offer ready-made realities representing the afterlives of hundreds of distinct religions and belief sets. We offer realities tailor-made to your specifications, where you can fly with a thought, enjoy superhuman powers, anything that is possible for you to imagine … and much, much more! Your new reality, I assure you, will be far, far more intricate, more interesting, and more fulfilling than the so-called real world is for you now!”

      Gregory knew about virtual uploads. It was the same trick, more or less, used by the Baondyeddi and other technically advanced alien species to vanish down a virtual rabbit hole out at Heimdall. Human technology had been moving toward this goal for centuries, but virtual uploads had become practical only within the past few decades and on a much smaller scale.

      But that scale was growing fast.

      “So … I know it’s possible to make a copy of the human brain,” he told her. “And that copy can be uploaded into a computer that’s running a virtual simulation of a world … of an entire universe, even. But if I uploaded myself into one of your bubbles … would that really be me? I mean … even a perfect copy of my mental state is still a copy. What happens to the … uh … real me?”

      She laughed and shook her head. “Lieutenant, you would be amazed at how many times we hear that exact question!”

      “You would be amazed, Ms. Marukawa, how much I would hate to wake up and find that I was the version of myself that didn’t get uploaded.”

      “Do you believe in the soul, Lieutenant?”

      “I’m … not sure. I don’t think so …”

      “Well, let’s concentrate on your conscious awareness, your sense of self. You have one, I assume?”

      He was becoming annoyed with her perky assertiveness. “Of course I do.”

      “Your brain is a network of interconnecting neurons … about one hundred billion of them linked with one another in complex structures through up to eleven topological dimensions, yes?”

      “Uh … yeah …”

      “The interactions of all of those neurons give rise to memory, to decisions, to what we call consciousness.”

      He nodded.

      “Okay. If I were to take just one of your neurons and replace it with a microscopic nanocomputer, maintaining all of those synaptic linkages … would you notice the difference?”

      “Probably not.”

      “Would you still be you?”

      “Yes …” He saw where this was going. He’d heard the argument before, but still wasn’t sure he bought it.

      “And if I replaced ten of your neurons … ten out of one hundred billion. Would you still be you?”

      “I know what you’re saying, Ms. Marukawa. If you could magically replace my neurons one at a time, eventually, my brain would be all machine instead of organic jelly and my mind could be transferred to a robot body … or uploaded to a supercomputer. If all of the connections are the same, I shouldn’t notice any difference.”

      “Your consciousness would be preserved, identical to what you think of as you in every way.”

      “I understand all of that. What I don’t understand is how you can move my conscious mind from here”—he tapped his forehead—“into a machine. That’s different than just swapping out parts.”

      “All I can tell you, Lieutenant, is that we’ve had no complaints.”

      “What happens to the organic body once the consciousness leaves it?” He realized as soon as the words were out that it was a damned silly question.

      “The organic brain is destroyed in the scanning process, Lieutenant. The body is disposed of in a manner determined by the client. We offer a number of mortuary—”

      He held up his hand. “I don’t think I want to hear that part. Listen … about my friend …”

      “This was someone you loved?” He nodded. “A woman?”

      “Her name was Megan.”

      “Do you have a recording? Or is she already in an eschatoverse?”

      He sighed. “I have her avatar.”

      “Ah.” Marukawa’s face fell. “We can offer you an extremely lifelike simulation, of course. A dedicated AI recreates her appearance, her emotions, her thoughts and mannerisms based on the available data. It’s not—”

      “It’s not really her. I know.”

      Gregory leaned back in the chair, fingers drumming on an armrest. The flow of soft light and random shapes around him was distracting, even hypnotic. He needed to think this through.

      Meg’s avatar had been the electronic version of her she used to communicate with others virtually, a kind of personal assistant and secretary that could seamlessly stand in for her electronically. He thought of it as a kind of sketch of the real person, though that hadn’t stopped him from having long conversations with it since Meg’s death. Everyone had one—everyone except Prims, of course, or religious fanatics who didn’t believe in using such things.

      Gregory had been considering suicide for some time, now, a simple and painless way out of the pain of a world without Meg. Paradise, Inc. offered him an option: even if the mind—not the real Don Gregory—was transferred to a simulated universe, the Gregory left behind would end, and that in and of itself would be a form of heaven.

      And if this company was able to transfer the conscious mind, the self, the sense of ego and being and self-awareness that was Don Gregory, he would wake up in a better, richer, more vibrant universe with at least the illusion of Megan with him again.

      Maybe in time he could forget that she was an illusion wrapped around a packet of AI software.

      Marukawa seemed to be reading his thoughts. “We can edit your memories during processing, Lieutenant,” she told him. “You could be unaware that she was a copy. If you wished, you would be unaware that you were living in a simulated universe.”

      He chuckled. “I’ve heard it suggested