Factoring Humanity

It was one of those moments of hazy semiconsciousness. Heather was dreaming — and knew that she was dreaming. And, like a good Jungian, she was trying to interpret the dream as it went along.

There was a cross in the dream. That in itself was unusual; Heather wasn’t given to religious symbolism.

But it wasn’t a wooden cross; rather, it was made of crystal. And it wasn’t a practical rendition — you couldn’t actually crucify a man on it. The arms were much, much thicker than they needed to be, and were rather stubby.

As she watched, the crystal cross began to rotate around its long axis. But as soon as it did so, it became apparent that it wasn’t really a cross. In addition to the protrusion at either side, there were identical protrusions front and back.

Her perspective was moving closer. She could see seams now; the object was made up of eight transparent cubes: a stack of them four high, and then four more arranged around the faces of the third cube from the top. It spun faster and faster, light glinting off its glassy surface.

An unfolded hypercube.

And, as she came even closer, she heard a voice.

Deep, masculine, resonant.

A strong voice.

The voice of God?

No, no — a superior being, but not God.

Her pattern suggests three-dimensional thinking.

Heather woke up, covered with sweat.

Spock, of course, had said his pattern in the film, referring to Khan. The “her” — well it had to be Heather, didn’t it?

Khan had been missing something — missing the obvious. Missing the fact that spaceships could go up and down as well as left and right or forward and backward. Heather had been missing something obvious, too, apparently — and her subconscious was trying to tell her that.

But as she lay there in bed, alone, she couldn’t figure out what.

“Good morning, Cheetah.”

“Good morning, Dr. Graves. You didn’t put me in suspend mode when you left yesterday; I took advantage of the time to do some online research, and I have some questions for you.”

Kyle headed over to the coffeemaker and set it about its business, then sat down in front of Cheetah’s console. “Oh?”

“I’ve been going through old news stories. I find that most electronic versions of newspapers only go back to some date in the nineteen-eighties or nineties.”

“Why should you care about decades-old news? It ain’t news if it’s old.”

“That was intended as a humorous comment, wasn’t it, Dr. Graves?”

Kyle grunted. “Yes.”

“I could tell by your use of the word ‘ain’t.’ You only use it when you’re trying to be funny.”

“Trust me, Cheetah, if you were human, you’d be rolling in the aisle.”

“And when you speak in a high tone like that, I know you’re still being funny.”

“Full marks. But you still haven’t told me why you’re reading old news stories.”

“You consider me to be non-human because, among other things, I can’t make ethical judgments that correspond to those a human would make. I have been looking for news stories that relate to ethical issues and am trying to fathom what a real human would do under such circumstances.”

“Okay,” said Kyle. “What story did you dig up that’s got you perplexed?”

“This: in nineteen eighty-five, a nineteen-year-old woman named Kathy was in her first year at Cornell University. On December twenty of that year, she was driving her boyfriend to his job at a grocery store in Ithaca, New York. The car hit a patch of ice, skidded ten meters, and slammed into a tree. The young man broke some bones, but a tire lying on the rear passenger seat pitched forward and hit Kathy’s head. She fell into a chronic vegetative state — essentially a coma — and was placed in the Westfall Healthcare Center in Brighton, New York. A decade later, in January, nineteen ninety-six, with her still in the coma, it was discovered that Kathy was pregnant.”

“How could she possibly be pregnant?” said Kyle.

“And that is the tone you use when speaking to me of matters of sexuality. You think that because I am a simulation that I could have no sophistication in such areas. But it’s you who are being naïve, Dr. Graves. The young woman was pregnant — indeed, had been pregnant for five months at the time it was discovered — because she had been raped.”

Kyle slumped slightly in his chair. “Oh.”

“The police launched a search for the rapist,” said Cheetah. “They came up with a list of seventy-five men who had had access to Kathy’s room, but the search quickly narrowed to a fifty-two-year-old certified nurse’s aide named John L. Horace. Horace had been fired three months previously for fondling a forty-nine-year-old multiple-sclerosis patient at Westfall. He refused to provide a DNA sample in the rape case, but police got some from an envelope flap and a stamp he had licked, and they determined that the odds were more than a hundred million to one in favor of Horace being the father.”

“I’m glad they caught him.”

“Indeed. In passing, though, I do wonder why this rapist gets automatic membership in the human race, but I have to prove myself?”