Factoring Humanity

“You’re forgetting the full impact of Dr. Hameroff’s contribution. He was an anesthesiologist, and he’d discovered that the action of gaseous anesthetics, such as halothane or ether, was to freeze the electrons in microtubules. With the electrons frozen in place, consciousness ceases; when the electrons are again free to be quantally indeterminate, consciousness resumes.”

Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yes. The neural nets in the brain — the interconnections between neurons — are intact throughout, of course, but consciousness seems independent of them. In creating me, you accurately emulated the neural nets of a human brain, and yet I still don’t pass the Turing test.” The same Alan Turning that Josh Huneker had idolized had proposed the definitive test for whether a computer was exhibiting true artificial intelligence: if, by examining its responses to whatever questions you cared to ask it, you couldn’t tell that it wasn’t really human, then it was indeed true AI; Cheetah’s jokes, his solutions to moral quandaries, and more, constantly revealed his synthetic nature. “Ergo,” continued the voice from the speaker grille, “there is something else to being human besides neural nets.”

“But, come on,” said Kyle. “Microtubules can’t have anything to do with consciousness. I mean, they’re hardly unique to the human brain. You find them in all kinds of cells, not just nerve tissue. And they’re found in all kinds of life forms that have nothing like consciousness — worms, insects, bacteria.”

“Yes,” said Cheetah. “Many people dismissed Penrose’s idea precisely because of that. But I think they were wrong to do so. Consciousness is clearly a very complex process — and complex processes don’t evolve as a unit. Take feathers for flight as an example: They didn’t spring full-blown from naked skin. Rather, they evolved from scales that had gradually become frayed to trap air for insulation. Consciousness would have to be similar; before it first emerged, there would already have to be in place ninety-plus percent of whatever was required for it to exist — meaning that its infrastructure would have to be both ubiquitous and useful for something else. In the case of micro-tubules, they serve important functions in giving cells shape and in pulling chromosome pairs apart during cell division.”

Kyle made an impressed face. “Interesting take. So what are you proposing? That my quantum computer is essentially an artificial equivalent of a microtubule?”

“Exactly. And by porting an APE such as myself to a general-purpose quantum computer, you’d be able to create something that really does have consciousness. You’d make the artificial-intelligence breakthrough you’ve been longing for.”

“Fascinating,” said Kyle.

“Indeed. So you see, you can’t give up on me. Once you get your quantum computer working, it won’t be long before you will have it in your power to grant me consciousness, enabling me to become human… or, perhaps, even more than human.”

Cheetah’s lenses whirred, as if going out of focus while he contemplated the future.

20

Pressure shifts; stars before her eyes.

Then the walls of the construct receded again into nothingness, and Heather felt once more as though she were floating, her body invisible.

Below her, the strange ground curved away as if she were viewing an unknown part of Earth from a great height.

Above, the sky curved away in the opposite direction — but no, it wasn’t the sky. Rather, it was another world, a world of distinct geography. It was as if two planets were orbiting very near each other, in defiance of celestial mechanics, and Heather was floating down the doubly concave corridor between them. In the distance far, far ahead, there was a maelstrom of gold and green and silver and red.

Her heart was racing. It was incredible, overwhelming.

She fought for sanity, grasped at reason, trying to interpret it all.

Heaven above and hell below?

Or perhaps the two hemispheres of a brain, with her riding along the corpus callosum?

Or maybe she was sliding down the cleavage of some colossal Earth Mother… ?

Yin and yang, broken apart, with one of them turned around?

Two mandalas?

None of those seemed right. She decided to try a more scientific approach. Were the spheres of equal diameter? She couldn’t tell; when she concentrated on one, the other faded away — not just into her peripheral vision, but as if its actual reality required her concentration.

She was literally shaking with excitement. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. For the first time, she understood what the phrase “mind-blowing” actually meant.

She wondered if she were seeing the Centauri system. It consisted of three suns, after all — bright and yellow A; dimmer, orange B; and tiny, cherry-red Proxima. Who knew what dance planets would undergo in such a system?