We left the Agora and passed through the open-air food markets displaying goods from the bubble farms outside the city and into the Ning Ji Plaza where we dallied amongst the flea markets and booths displaying cloths (linens, muslins, brocades, and silks) and jewelry (both metallic and bio). Local hand-crafted goods competed with imports, and hawkers of nian hua woodblock prints called out to passersby. A hundred stalls crowded the Ning Ji, and behind the stalls stood a row of shops.
Kauppinen paused to study a porcelain display in a window.
“I read your thesis on Mythos and Logos back when I was a student.” It’s always good to butter up the boss. “I know I didn’t get everything out of it I should have, and I ought to re-read it.”
“The theme was simple enough,” she said turning away from the window. “Myth and Logic serve different functions. Myths are true, but they are not factual. Both Myth and Science try to explain the universe, and often seem contradictory. Fortunately, people have the ability to compartmentalize their thoughts. Plaster a label on them and stick them in a box. This is especially true when dealing with conflicting beliefs about how the natural world operates. For instance, one old folktale describes how a warlord asked his god to halt the Earth’s rotation so that he’d have more daylight in which to fight and win his battle. Given a supernatural deity who can cancel physical laws with the flip of a switch, and all science becomes meaningless. If the universe can be reset or altered like a software program, then the universe is an illusion, and one might as well believe that it’s all a virtual reality or that Brahma is dreaming. So natural philosophers have to set aside the folktales because there is no way to incorporate supernatural deities into any theory based on observation of how the universe functions.”
“Is this a virtual reality?” I asked her.
She tugged a corner of her mouth into a sardonic smile. “If I said no, could I prove it? Does it make a difference?”
We moved down the row of windows, pausing this time before a clothier specializing in brilliant blue and red silks embroidered with geometrical patterns and realistic pictures of animals, flowers, and mountains-and-waters landscapes. Kauppinen ran her eye over the designs, and then moved on to the next shop. She stopped to peer in at a row of books on display. Prior to the Festival, writers would post their latest works on the net and hire a bookbinder to make up a fancy hardcover object for a Transapient to purchase if e desired. Kauppinen barely glanced at the books. “The hardcover editions show some skill,” she remarked, “but the content is purile.” Kauppinen stopped again to admire a display of improbable glass sculptures and vases, then moved on again.
The next shop specialized in body scuplting and bio-mech implants. Delany’s, I realized, where I had purchased my own data-siphons and data-filters. Delany’s supplied nanotech implant networks combining the features of communicator, locator, datanet connection, virtual reality interface, computer and database/knowledgebase; artificial immune systems making the user immune to virtually all forms of disease and able to heal/regenerate any wound that is not instantly, splatteringly fatal; various biocybernetic augmentations extending the user’s senses, dexterity, resistance to environmental extremes, etc. Everything but a backup implant/memory box to record the owner’s mindstate and preserve it in case of a fatal accident so that the owner can be resurrected. It was common knowledge that at least two other star systems in the Empire allowed the backup memory box technology, but such technology was unavailable in the Huang De system.
“May I ask a question, Your Excellency?”
“Certainly.”
“Some people say that if we all made periodic backups of our minds we’d never die. You could have brought back Lucy Miner.”
“Or ten Lucy Miners. Or a hundred. If I write a self-aware program named Lucy onto a data cube, and then make an exact copy of it onto another data cube, which is the real Lucy? Each copy thinks it is the real thing. I can destroy the original, and lose nothing because I have an exact copy.”
“So why then don’t we make backups?”
“Because that is machine thinking. We can suck minds out of one life support system and place it into another without, we hope, disrupting the holistic entity that makes up a person. Look at it this way: if I make a copy of you, and that copy walks up and kills you, are you dead or alive? There’s a ‘You’ still here. Does it matter?”
“I think it’d matter to me.”
“Right. Because ‘You’ are gone, replaced by ‘You Mark Two.’ No one else may notice the difference, but you might. Assuming that there really is an afterlife.”
“And if there is no afterlife?”
“Then nothing matters to you anymore. One way of looking at it is that a backup copy that survives your death is a type of immortality similar to begetting offspring to carry on some part of you. One is a ‘personality line of descent’ and the other is a ‘genetic line of descent.’ But you are gone. The only solace is that something of you lives on after your demise.
“I have trouble making my colleague Wang Khan understand this. My origin is organic, but Wang is an artificial intelligence. To Wang, one copy is as good as another, or as good as the original, and he sees no problem in discarding one for the other. I once suggested to Wang that he create a backup of e-self and then commit suicide. E’s response was, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Which only proves my point.”