Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

But the skin shook his head. “Nonsense. We’d just never been in such desperate circumstances before. Desperate circumstances make one do desperate things. The fact that you can’t conceive of us doing this means that you’re a flawed copy. This—this transfer process isn’t ready for prime time yet. You should nullify the copy and let me, the original, go on with your— with our—life.”

It was now the robotic Rathburn’s turn to shake his head. “Look, you must realize that this can’t ever work—that even if I were to sign some paper that transferred our legal status back to you, there are witnesses here to testify that I’d been coerced into signing it. It would have no legal value.”

“You think you can outsmart me?” said GR-7. “I am you. Of course I know that.”

“Good. Then let that woman go.”

“You’re not thinking,” said GR-7. “Or at least you’re not thinking hard enough. Come on, this is me you’re talking to. You must know I’d have a better plan than that.”

“I don’t see …”

“You mean you don’t want to see. Think, Copy of George. Think.”

“I still don’t …” The robotic Rathburn trailed off. “Oh. No, no, you can’t expect me to do that.”

“Yes, I do,” said GR-7.

“But …”

“But what?” The skin moved his free hand—the one not holding the scalpel—in a sweeping gesture. “It’s a simple proposition. Kill yourself, and your rights of personhood will default back to me. You’re correct that, right now, I’m not a person under the law—meaning I can’t be charged with a crime. So I don’t have to worry about going to jail for anything I do now. Oh, they might try—but I’ll ultimately get off, because if I don’t, the court will have to admit that not just me, but all of us here in Paradise Valley are still human beings, with human rights.”

“What you’re asking is impossible.”

“What I’m asking is the only thing that makes sense. I talked to a friend who used to be a lawyer. The personhood rights will revert if the original is still alive, but the uploaded version isn’t. I’m sure no one ever intended the law to be used for this purpose; I’m told it was designed to allow product-liability suits if the robot brain failed shortly after transfer. But regardless, if you kill yourself, I get to go back to being a free human.” GR-7 paused for a moment. “So what’s it going to be? Your pseudolife, or the real flesh-and-blood life of this woman?”

“George …” said the robot mouth. “Please.”

But the biological George shook his head. “If you really believe that you, as a copy of me, are more real than the original that still exists—if you really believe that you have a soul, just like this woman does, inside your robotic frame—then there’s no particular reason why you should sacrifice yourself for Dr. Ng here. But if, down deep, you’re thinking that I’m correct, that she really is alive, and you’re not, then you’ll do the right thing.” He pressed the scalpel’s blade in slightly, drawing blood again. “What’s it going to be?”

* * *

George Rathburn had returned to Shiozaki’s office, and Detective Lucerne was doing his best to persuade the robot-housed mind to agree to GR-7’s terms.

“Not in a million years,” said Rathburn, “and, believe me, I intend to be around that long.”

“But another copy of you can be made,” said Lucerne.

“But it won’t be me—this me.”

“But that woman, Dr. Ng: she’s got a husband, three daughters …”

“I’m not insensitive to that, Detective,” said Rathburn, pacing back and forth on his golden mechanical legs. “But let me put it to you another way. Say this is 1875, in the southern US. The Civil War is over, blacks in theory have the same legal status as whites. But a white man is being held hostage, and he’ll only be let go if a black man agrees to sacrifice himself in the white man’s place. See the parallel? Despite all the courtroom wrangling that was done to make uploaded life able to maintain the legal status, the personhood, of the original, you’re asking me to set that aside, and reaffirm what the whites in the South felt they knew all along: that, all legal mumbo-jumbo to the contrary, a black man is worth less than a white man. Well, I won’t do that. I wouldn’t affirm that racist position, and I’ll be damned if I’ll affirm the modern equivalent: that a silicon-based person is worth less than a carbon-based person.”

“ ‘I’ll be damned,” ’ repeated Lucerne, imitating Rathburn’s synthesized voice. He let the comment hang in the air, waiting to see if Rathburn would respond to it.