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Another student’s
hand went up and the microphone was passed along the row of people.
“What’s the biological basis for being able to
distinguish between the two?”

Dr. Davidson shook
her head. “I’m no neuroscientist. But in the Lidder
study, they were able to separate distinct neuron firing patterns.
One in patients who had experienced orgasm physically
and
consciously. One in those who had only experienced it physically.

“Remember that
initially the Lidder study was a
wellness
study, targeted
toward relieving sexual dysfunction. They used test subjects with
anorgasmia, a medical condition where a patient who could exhibit all
the signs of orgasm and whose brain would fire in patterns similar to
those of normal patients in orgasm failed to actually experience
climax. The only difference was that the subjects with sexual
dysfunction could not experience the feeling of orgasm at all,
claiming that they felt nothing even though their body said
otherwise.

“The men in
this study could achieve erection and even ejaculate. Their brains
fired in much the same way as in normal brains. But they
could not
feel the orgasm
. Separating out those neuron firings patterns has
allowed us to move forward in understanding consciousness in a deeper
way.”

A professor’s
hand went up this time, and Davidson pursed her lips. Faculty
questions were either extremely illuminating or extremely not, and
they tended to weigh heavy on the latter end of the spectrum.

The older man took
the microphone, adjusting his eyeglasses. “Hello, Dr. Davidson.
On behalf of the entire philosophy department, I want to thank you
for taking the time to come talk with us today.” Scattered
applause. Davidson tensed herself
. A philosopher
. They always
tended to be crabby.

“I would just
like to say something, as I have been around for a number of years
and it seems to me that computer scientists, cognitive
neuroscientists, all of you – have for decades been promising
to make headway on this fundamental problem but have not come
anywhere near solving it. Certain scholars,” and here he
glanced two seats over at a colleague, “would venture to say
that this is nothing more than a wild goose chase. And yet we keep
hearing about the next possible breakthrough in solving the
consciousness problem. Do you really think that this time around it
will be different?” He sat down, adjusting his tie, satisfied
with himself.

Chal cleared her
throat. “It is in the nature of a breakthrough that we don’t
know it is coming. To me it seems a bit like chipping on the surface
of ice – you keep at it and keep at it, and you could be a
quarter of an inch away from cracking it and not know. But once it’s
cracked, it’s cracked wide open.”

Her eyes moved over
the room, settling on one of the corners of the audience. “Why
not ask the physicists if they should have given up the Higgs Boson?
Was
that
just a wild goose chase?” Amid the chuckles,
Davidson’s face turned serious. “Look, it’s
entirely possible that we don’t succeed. But if it isn’t,
even if there’s just the slightest possibility that we crack
this open, well...”

For the second time
that night she spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness.
Suddenly, that’s how she felt. Helpless to figure out how it
all worked, how the pieces fit together. Helpless to explain the
importance of the research, because it might all be in vain, that was
true, that was true of anything worth doing.

Her life had been
spent in research, and now, standing in front of the audience, she
had the vaguest sensation of having misspent her years. There was
something missing. She cleared her throat and motioned for the last
question from the audience.

“I get how
digital intelligences can think,” the student said, adjusting
her sweater as she spoke into the microphone. “But how can they
love?”

The doubt that had
edged into Chal’s mind with the entrance of the protestors now
bore down in full force and for a moment she simply stood there,
hearing the echoes of a question that so many others had asked
before.

How can they
love?

She heard her mind
answer back, only half-sarcastically:
How can I?

Standing in the
light, the audience waiting for an answer, she thought of the last
man she had thought she might love. It hadn’t worked out –
they never worked out. She was alone, with only her research. A
hermit. A mad scientist.

A laugh bubbled up
in her throat before she remembered herself, remembered where she
was. It must have been the protestors that had thrown her off of her
game.

To the student she
gave a glib response about the research still needed before her work
was truly done. It was nonsense, but it sounded all right. Chal
thought idly to herself that she might make a good politician one
day.

Questions finished,
she moved out into the crowd, thanking the appropriate people and
making sure to say hello to a few of the more eager students and
computer science professors. The philosophy department pointedly
ignored her, and she was happy to ignore them right back. They had
strawberry cake, after all, and she was much more interested in the
dessert than in talking about the hopelessness of her field with a
bunch of self-important assholes. She hadn’t eaten all day, and
she managed to make the rounds while forking cake savagely into her
mouth.

Finally she managed
to extricate herself from the lecture hall, and she walked toward the
raised parking garage behind the tall building. She couldn’t
wait to get back to the hotel for at least a few hours’ sleep.
She yawned, one hand clutching her presentation materials, and
pressed the elevator button.

The elevator whirred
quietly to the fourth floor, and she stepped out on the top of the
garage. The night air was brisk, and she pulled her jacket tight
around her as she walked through the dark lot, passing student cars.
The sky was dark, moonless, and the dim yellow light of the garage
lights only just barely illuminated her rental car parked on the
other side of the lot.

There was a movement
in the corner of her eye, and she turned her head toward it
instinctively.

“Hello?”
she said. “Who’s there?”

There was no answer,
but Chal had the unnerving sensation that somebody was watching her.
She heard a whispering sound and spun around, but it was just a piece
of crumpled paper being blown softly across the garage floor.

She fished her keys
out of her purse and clutched them in one hand, moving quickly toward
her rental car and cursing herself for not having remembered to put
the pepper spray back in her purse. She had had to take it out for
the flight to California and it sat now uselessly in a pocket of her
suitcase on the hotel room floor. Her past self was always causing
problems for her future self.

“Wait!”

The voice made her
spin, her pulse immediately speeding up. A man in a suit had stepped
out from behind the line of cars twenty feet away in the dim shadows.
She heard an engine roar to life on the second floor of the parking
structure, and tires squealed. She continued walking to her car.
There was something in the way he stood that made her heart pound.

“I’m
sorry, can’t talk,” she said. “I’m late.”
Her voice had a panicked edge to it but she didn’t care. What
kind of person would accost her late at night after a lecture, in an
empty parking lot? Either a creep or a nut, and she didn’t want
to talk to either.

“Stop,”
the man said, and took a step toward her.

Chal did not
hesitate. She turned and ran, kicking her heels off as she allowed
her fear to fuel her muscles. Behind her she heard the man yelling at
her, and then his steps as he began to chase her.

She aimed for the
elevator but then cut right, slipping sideways through the rows of
tightly parked cars. The man chasing her had to cut through as well,
but his large size slowed him down in between the cars. Chal felt
herself gaining distance and broke out from between the rows, heading
straight for the car exit.

There was a black
van driving alongside the exit ramp, and she waved her arms through
the metal grating as it sped forward.

“Help!”
she cried out. “Stop! Help me!”

The black van pulled
around to the exit ramp, stopping twenty feet in front of her. The
side door opened, and Chal’s heart dropped.

Two more men stepped
out of the van. Both were in suits.

She opened her mouth
to scream, but an arm came around from behind her and muffled the
sound. She felt a hot pinprick on her neck, and then the warm
numbness of the sedative took her over, paralyzing her muscles. The
last thing she saw before the darkness swept over her vision was a
man in a suit standing above her, looking down with an expression
that bore no emotion. His eyes were a piercing blue.

“I’m
sorry, Dr. Davidson,” he said. “We need you to come with
us.”

***

CHAPTER TWO

Chal awoke to the
hum of an engine, her neck cricked badly at an angle. She peered
under her slitted eyelids, her vision still blurred, and realized she
was buckled into something. She opened her eyes. It was a bench seat
on one side of the van.

The lecture.

Chal’s head
snapped up with the sudden memory of her abduction. There was only
one overhead light illuminating the back of the van, two long black
leather seats running alongside both sides. The man with blue eyes
was sitting on the long seat on the opposite side of the van. He was
alone in his seat, but two large men in suits sat on opposite sides
of her. She was trapped.

“Hello,”
he said. “I’m sorry to meet again under these
circumstances.” He reached forward and offered his hand. She
stared at it as though it could bite.

“Where are you
taking me?” Chal asked. Her throat rasped with the dryness
caused by the sedative, and she tried to figure out if she could
reach over to the driver of the van, maybe cause an accident –

“Phoenix,”
the man said. “Or rather, just outside of Phoenix.” His
voice was pleasant but firm. Chal had no idea if he was telling the
truth or not, and his face told just as little to her as his tone.

“Who are you?”
Chal asked. Her eyes darted between the men sitting on either side of
her. They were both staring straight ahead. She slid her left hand
slowly down her hip, inching it closer to the seatbelt release.

“Lieutenant
Johnner,” the man said. “Gray Johnner. I’m with the
M.I.D.” He pulled out a badge from his suit and held it in
front of her face. The letters were wavy, and she frowned, trying to
steady her vision.

“The M.I.D.?”
Chal asked. She couldn’t believe it.

“Military
Intelligence Department,” the man said, putting his badge back
into his pocket.

“I know what
it stands for,” Chal said. Her voice began to rise in anger.
“Why have you kidnapped me?”

“I assure you,
Miss Davidson – ”

“
Dr
.
Davidson.” Chal’s hand rested on top of the seatbelt
release. She could lash out with her feet, push herself toward the
front of the van. She could do it. Maybe. Her heart was pounding.

“I’m
sorry. Dr. Davidson, don’t you remember me?”

Chal blinked, her
hand tense on the buckle.
Remember him
?

“From the
M.I.D. research discussion panel. The digital intelligence convention
in Atlanta, four years ago?”

Now Chal was
thoroughly confused. She vaguely remembered the panel, something
about practical applications of digital intelligence. It had been the
M.I.D. that had hosted the panel discussion.

“Yes,”
she murmured, trying to remember.

“You signed up
as a potential consultant for our project.”

In a flash, Chal
recalled the discussion panel and the blue-eyed man who was sitting
opposite her. The last time she had seen him, he had worn that same
dark suit.

The panel discussion
had been forward-thinking, an intriguing project. Modules that
doctors could use to help the mentally disabled increase their rate
of learning, a focus on autistic patients. When the project
developers approached her at the end, she felt honored to sign up as
a possible consultant.

In the months to
come, she had filled out a series of surveys by email. Some of the
surveys were simple experimental design questions, but many of them
concerned hypothetical scenarios that were...strange, to say the
least. End-of-the-world scenarios, wartime ethical concerns, nothing
that related to the mentally disabled. There was a quiz that had
asked about her different emotional responses to a number of living
and non-living things: Venus flytraps and automated vacuum cleaners.
It was ridiculous.

“It’s
how the government works,” one colleague had said when she had
raised concerns. “Start with one project, end up with something
completely different. And useless.”

“You work for
a state university,” she reminded the colleague. He just
shrugged.

“It’s a
joke,” he had told her. “Those kinds of projects are
nonsense, they never go anywhere.”

Except now the man
with the blue eyes was sitting across from her, telling her that it
wasn’t a joke.

“I’m
sure this comes as somewhat of a surprise,” Lieutenant Johnner
said.

“Surprise?
Surprise?
” Chal hissed the words, her fear turning into
anger. “What right do you have – ”

“You signed up
as a consultant,” Lieutenant Johnner said. “And we need
your help.”

“Now wait,”
Chal said. “You can’t just take me, KIDNAP me and take me
away– ”

“Your presence
is required by military law under the project protocol I’m
currently following. We have been ordered to use force if necessary
to bring you to Phoenix.” He had the decency to look ashamed
when he talked about the use of force.