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“Like this, we can live forever,” Jack says, and Lacie can tell that he means it. He’s so rarely genuine in his passion. So rarely is there real, unfettered emotion behind his enthusiasm and words. So to see him so fervent, so zealous and certain, is striking.
And it’s almost fitting, in a strange way, that it is the end of days that has brought this change within him. The death of all things. The scourging of humanity from the face of the planet. Above the ocean’s surface, there is only fire and death. An unending hellscape, like the ones in the stories her brother used to tell her, when they were young. Below the ocean’s surface there is only a slow death, consumption by starvation and dehydration. A slow diminishing of supplies and hope while the remnants of humanity struggled to keep the stations functioning and themselves alive.
The inevitably of the end of their race was an ever-present cloud. And it was utterly unquestionable. The stations at the bottom of the ocean were advanced, well-made, well-stocked, yes. But they were meant to be supplied and supported by organizations and manufacturers on the surface. The comet had wiped away everything from the surface. All that was left was Pandora, the research facility at the bottom of the sea. And that too, would soon die.
Hope. What was it? For humanity, it couldn’t possibly exist anymore. Lacie is a complex person; or eccentric, those less fond of her would say. She’s prone to fits of irrationality and whimsy as well as a carelessness and disregard for consequence. But she is, at the root of her character, exceptionally pragmatic, and just as easily as she accepts the death of everything, she’s also prepared to accept that the only hope for life no longer lies within the human form.
“He’s mad, Lacie,” Oswald says, voice flat. “That project of his is ridiculous. Computer programs aren’t people. There’s no hope for humanity in sending a bunch of AIs who think they’re us into space.”
“They’re not programs, and calling them Artificial Intelligence isn’t entirely accurate either,” Lacie counters, her voice detached. “We’ve seen that his brain scans work. All the memory, personality, and for all purposes, self, of the person scanned are perfectly replicated. They are not a constructed computer program. There are algorithms involved in the copying, but not in the makeup of the scans themselves. Is it so far-fetched to believe that they could truly be true copies of ourselves? That we could scan our minds and survive in an Ark, sent among the stars?”
Oswald’s expression is disbelieving, of course. He and Jack used to be good friends. Very close. But they’ve fallen out, since the comet. Since Jack’s Ark project grew into an obsession. And particularly as more and more people in Pandora sign up to be scanned. As more and more people turn to an existence in an artificial world as the only hope for life. For humanity. The minds, the personalities and memories of the survivors, kept in a self-sustaining program, encased in a satellite powered by solar energy, and sent up to space. To drift forever. To be found by some other civilization. To fade into obscurity.
But it would last. It would last for centuries, perhaps millennia. Longer than the months, maybe half a year they have left in Pandora, in the bottom of the sea of their ravaged, ruined planet.
“You believe him because of Alice’s rabbit,” Oswald says, voice clipped, “Lacie, Oz isn’t-,”
“You don’t have to get scanned if you don’t want to,” Lacie says, interrupting him with narrowed eyes. “But Jack and I, or our counterparts, will miss you on the Ark. We’ll miss playing chess, at the very least.”
Oswald’s mouth thins, his lips pressed tightly together, and Lacie gives him a wane smile. Then she turns and walks away, the sound of her shoes against the metal floor echoing around the corridor.
--
When Jack first came up with the idea of scanning people’s brains, and placing the copies into a virtual reality, to exist as some kind of continuation, or alternate version of the subject’s life, no one was really willing to give him the time of day. Or to even really entertain the idea.
But Lacie, unreadable Lacie, had been intrigued. It was such an interesting thought. So befitting of Jack. And what did it mean to exist, anyways? What was humanity? Who were they to say that the scans of themselves were any less real? After all, there was really no way of knowing that they, the real them, the humans, weren’t living in some other sort of simulated program. Who could say? No one.
So she’d scanned herself. Watched as Jack put his scan and hers in a virtual world. Watched as they went about as if they were human. Spoke like them, talked like them, with no prompting. No commands or alteration in code. Like someone really had photocopied her and Jack’s souls, and placed them in a computer for safekeeping.
They went a step further.
Lacie’s daughter lived on the surface, with the rest of her and Glen’s family. All of their adoptive siblings. Alice. Alice had a friend, who was terminally ill, and rapidly deteriorating.
Jack had offered to scan him.
Lacie had been offended, for half a second, before her pragmatism kicked in. It might not work, if the children had been older. But Alice was five. If they could allow her to keep her friend, even in a different form, would she be hung up on the details? The differences?
So they scanned Oz’s brain. They took the project a step further, and didn’t keep him in a computer program, but transplanted him into a robotic body, modeled after a plush rabbit, so that he could talk and interact with the world.
Oz thought he was still human. He moved around and didn’t notice that he had velvet limbs and buttons for eyes. Alice thought Oz’s life had been saved by a kind fairy, or some other child-like explanation. It’s easy for children to believe things, even things like their best friends being turned into rabbits. Both children were happy. Or at least, the second Oz, the scan of the Oz that died a few weeks later, was happy.
Oswald had been disgusted by the entire affair. Lacie criticized him for having no imagination.
It all seems a lifetime ago. A world that no longer exists. Everyone they left on the surface is dead, now. There is only what remains at the bottom of the sea, and the hopes that they are constructing for themselves using software and code.
--
“Forever is a long time, Jack,” Lacie says softly. She wonders how time will pass within the Ark. She wonders if it’s possible to get bored, while drifting in Utopia through the endless universe.
“Then we better convince your brother to come along,” Jack says, smiling, “It will be far too dull without him there to admonish us, don’t you think?”
Lacie wonders if Jack’s planning to scan Oswald without permission. She wonders if they’ll corner him together, and try to change his mind one last time. She wonders how the three of them would live together, in the idyllic world of the Ark. She wonders if the three of them, their human selves, will die together, side by side, when Pandora’s systems finally fail.
She suddenly can’t bear the idea of leaving Oswald behind. Of her and Jack on the Ark without him. It’s unpalatable to her.
“I do,” she agrees. “He’ll come around. We’ll all board the Ark.” In the dim light of the dying station, her eyes are smouldering. Embers of a fire that refuses to die out.
“Together, we will live forever.”