Human (17 page)

"Mr. Smith, could the same technology be used to bring say, Einstein, back to life since his brain was preserved?  By the way, its salmon, not pink."

A series of "ha's came out of the speakers. The laugh's still didn't sound quite right, but they got the idea across, "Young man, in my day we called that pink. And yes, I would say theoretically, if a brain has been properly preserved, it should be possible to bring it back to life with this technology. Maybe Walt Disney would be a better example since his entire head was cryogenically frozen. The chemicals preserving Einstein's brain could have corrupted some of the more subtle structures. The best subject, of course, like me, would be a live one."

I should probably ask a question, Julian thought to himself, this is pretty important stuff. I want to see that luncheon, but I know I should ask something. He hadn't asked a question at a press conference in probably 20 years. He raised his hand and hoped he didn't embarrass himself.

Smith acknowledged Julian, as "old man, up in front."

"Julian Waterstone, Schenectady Gazette. Sir, I understand that you're still alive, but are you still human?"

The question silenced the room and the wavy lines on the screen above the stage went straight and stayed that way for a difficult moment. Smith was not stuck for an answer, he was stuck for a simple answer. Julian looked toward the door to see if Kitty was still there. She wasn't. He'd hoped she had heard his question. He wondered where she had gone.

"Still human?" Smith repeated. "That's really the question, isn't it? I'd be lying if I said I hadn't given that question a lot of thought." Smith confessed to the crowd. "I know that I am still a person. I am still sentient and self-aware, still bound by rights and duties, still cognizant of past, present, and future. The law has never ascribed flesh and blood to the concept of personhood either. Hell, SmithCorp is a person under the law. Human, on the other hand, really relates to a taxonomical classification, Homo Sapiens and taxonomy relate to biological classifications. Clearly I am no longer biological. I'm alive, but not organic. I'll have to leave it to men smarter than myself to decide whether I'm still human though. The description I like is trans-human. Still human, but just in a different state of being. Techno-Sapiens, maybe?"

Julian nodded as Smith continued taking questions. It certainly was food for thought.

Out in the parking lot of the SmithCorp Building, a crowd was forming. Some of the reporters and maybe some of the other guests as well had called or messaged the news of Smith's appearance at his own memorial service and the miracle of his transformation. Reporters, photographers, newsvans, and various curious onlookers were beginning to crowd the parking lot.

When uninvited people first started arriving and were trying to get in, one of the security guards came up and told Kitty what was going on. She didn't want to disturb the proceedings, so she went down to see for herself what was going on. "Keep them out." She instructed the guard. "This is a private event and they have no right to be here."

She went back inside the SmithCorp Building and instructed the desk guard to lock the front door. Kitty called the police and told them what was happening. She had to make a decision and she hoped she had made the right one. She then went up to try to find Myra or Mr. Takahashi to tell them what was happening. She found Myra and told her what was happening downstairs. Myra said she did the right thing and that the police would handle it. She told her to come to the luncheon and make herself a plate.

Kitty walked into the room where the luncheon had been prepared for the attendees of the memorial-service-which-was-really-a-press-conference. It hurt her for a moment to see how the beautiful spread of coldcuts, condiments and desserts had been destroyed by the press and other guests. It hurt her worse to see the crumbs and soda stains on the tasteful linen tablecloths she had picked out. She had struggled so hard to get the right ones and she was sure that nobody had noticed. If they had they wouldn't have put their coffee cups down on them. Then she realized that it was a good thing. People were eating, they liked the food. They were sitting and talking, so that satisfied her that they liked the atmosphere she had made.

Kitty saw Julian sitting alone with a partially eaten bagel in front of him. She took a bagel and a cup of coffee from the buffet and sat down next to him. "Do you want some company, mister?"  She said to him, using the exact same words she had learned to say in order to sell lapdances at the bar.  She didn't know his name, but she knew when she looked in his eyes that he was the saddest man she had ever met and there were many sad men at the Moviestar Topless.

"I would like that very much, Miss."  He said, answering that question in the affirmative for the first time ever. "I didn't recognize you when I first came in."

"They call me Kitty," she said, extending a hand, "my real name is Katherine, though. But I seem to be stuck with Kitty now."

Julian shook her hand gently. "Julian Waterstone," he answered. "They call me Julie."

She reached over and brushed some bagel crumbs off of his shirt but instantly realized that doing so made him uncomfortable. "Isn't this beautiful," she said, showing off her black satin pantsuit. "They've really been treating me nice here," she said.

"Are you working for SmithCorp now?" Julian asked with genuine curiosity.

Kitty smiled and thought for a moment. "I'm not sure," she said. "I think I work for that guy."  She pointed to Sam Takahashi. Julian had seen Sam before at the club. "He hired me to give a lapdance to a little laptop computer. The computer turned out to be Mr. Smith and, well, somehow, here I am, with all kinds of important people, a $600 haircut, and people calling me Ms. O'Malley instead of Kitty."  She picked a little at her bagel.

"This is quite a group to be involved with, Kitty,"  Julian said feeling fatherly, "it looks like you've been given a real opportunity here."

"I'm glad you're here though, Julie. I kind of feel like a phony. I better get back and see if Mr. Takahashi needs anything."

Julian smiled. He knew that she really was glad that he was there. This wasn't a lapdance booth and she wasn't working for tips. "Take my card,"  Julian said, "if you ever need anything." 

She took the card and put it in her pocket. "I don't have any cards of my own, but this is Mr. Takahashi's card," she said as she rose. "I wrote my name on it."

As Kitty walked away, Julian looked down at the card. Across the top, handwritten  in curly stylized letters, was the name, Katherine O'Malley.

"Eliza Doolittle, more like,"  Julian said to himself. He let his eyes watch her ass as she crossed the floor. Good for her, he thought. Some people are blessed. I wish I was dead.

Cruz called Gonzales and asked to meet with him immediately. He had been watching the wires for any news out of SmithCorp ever since they had identified it as being the source of the three names they had intercepted. Today, being the day of the press conference, he had been keeping especially close watch. When Cruz got to the Brandywine Diner, Gonzales was already there and seated in a booth. Cruz pulled a paper out of his breast pocket. It was a report filed by a reporter from the Schenectady Gazette regarding the Smith Memorial service which had concluded only hours before. As Cruz adjusted himself in the booth, Gonzales perused the clipping. Cruz had highlighted what he thought was the most important part which was about two-thirds of the way down in the text. "Smith suggested that, in theory, the same technology could be used to bring the dead back to life if their brains have been properly preserved."

"SmithCorp," Gonzales whispered, "fucking SmithCorp. I'll be a son of a bitch. Kovaretsky wants to use this technology to get the code from Ashkot's brain. Jesus."

Josey Cruz noticed Gonzales's hands again as they contracted around the clipping, the veins visible through his skin.

"What stymies me, though," Cruz said, "is why would SmithCorp go public with this if they're conspiring to unleash an unregulated nuclear arsenal on the world!"

"They wouldn't. Unless they didn't know..." Gonzales started before changing his mind. "But if they didn't know, then how did the names come up?"

"They must have known." Josey said. "It's the first rule of criminal investigation: there are no coincidences."

"True, " Gonzales agreed, "but there are accidents."

Gonzales perused the article again. "Speaking of coincidences..." Gonzales chuckled, pointing to the article's byline, "I served with this guy in Korea."

"Spook?" Cruz asked.

"Nope, a journalist," Gonzales answered.

Smith wasn't aware of the now-dissipating chaos that had descended on his parking lot hours ago. Hermelinda had left the luncheon and took the elevator to the executive floor so she and the baby could spend some private time with their husband and father.

A conference room with a long table and three chairs on each side had been wired with a microphone, a camera, and a wall mounted monitor so that Smith could hold meetings there. Smith called it his office and he strongly preferred to see people there than in the lab. The fewer people in the lab, the better.

Smith felt an awful lot of activity in his artificial mind. He couldn't sort out his thoughts at all. There was just a lot of activity. The fact that he felt a little confused actually made him feel good. It reminded him that he had not become a computer even though his mind was now hardware driven. It reminded him that life was not simply an equation to be calculated and empiricised. Even with the worlds most powerful computer equipment driving his mind, there remained the unquantifiable elements that kept him human.

"Are you worried about Dr. Bayron?" Hermelinda asked.

"No." Smith's still, though barely, mechanical voice crackled, "not really."

"I am." Hermelinda said.

"I always trust a woman's intuition, Herme. Tell me what you're thinking."

Hermelinda smiled weakly. "Well, Doug and I spent a lot of time together."  She said choosing her words very, very carefully. "And, you know, this project was his life. He lived for it. It meant everything in the world to him. He wouldn't just disappear when the curtain was about to go up on it. He wouldn't just abandon you..."  She paused, "or me."

"No,"  Smith said softly, recognizing how selfish his lack of concern for Dr. Bayron was. "You're right. We'll notify the police tomorrow and I'll have Myra hire a private detective."

He sensed sincere sadness and worry in Hermelinda's voice. Was she having an affair with Bayron?  Was that cheating?  They were, after all married, even though the Notary who married them said that the marriage was not necessary legal. They had told the Notary that Smith was out of town and Myra signed the marriage certificate for Smith with her power of attorney. The Notary was not comfortable and was very reluctant to place his stamp on the certificate, but ultimately he did it.

Even if the marriage was legal, Smith didn't know if a court of law would even consider him alive. Even if the marriage was legal and he was deemed to be alive, he still couldn't caress Hermelinda's gentle cheek, or hold his baby, Ellen, in his arms. Bayron could. If I still had flesh and blood, would I be jealous? Smith wondered as he gazed at Hermelinda, who had nothing to look at but a flickering screen, a cold glass camera-lens, and a tangle of wires.

Hermelinda reacted to a knock on the office door.

"See who it is," Smith said.

Hermelinda opened the door and there was Sharky.

"Oh!"  He was taken aback when he saw Hermelinda. He stammered for words and ultimately came up with, "Hi!"

"Hi, Sharky!" Hermelinda said, genuinely delighted to see him-- Bayron was so sad when he left-- "I'm glad you decided to come back."

"I got a little bored not being here, to be honest. And I think Dr. Bayron really wanted my input. I don't know why, its not like I have anything over the rest of the guys."

Smith interrupted, "did anyone else walk away after I was online and the concept was proved?"

"No, not that I know of."  Sharky answered and then corrected himself. "Well, from what I've heard, I guess just me and Dr. Bayron."

"That's what you have over the other guys here, Sharky: A strong conscience. So, what can we do for you?"

Sharky looked at Hermelinda and Smith noticed his reluctance to speak. "Anything you want to say to me you can say in front of Hermelinda," Smith said. Hermelinda motioned to a chair and Sharky sat down.

"Okay, Mr. Smith. I only just came back, but you know that I've been thinking about what you want for the last few weeks and I think I know how to work it."

"I'm listening," Smith turned to Hermelinda to catch her up in the conversation,  "I've been bugging Bayron to let me on to the internet so I can get out of this box and stretch my legs a little. He's fearful that since I can read and think and see data, I would have the capacity to corrupt and manipulate all of the data in the world thus becoming the most powerful human being ever. Now, that doesn't bother me so much, but it really seems to bother Bayron."

"Go figure," Hermelinda replied facetiously, giggling, "I guess he doesn't know you as well as I."

Sharky wasn't amused.

"So what's your idea, Sharky?"  Smith urged.