Zendegi

On the fifth floor, Martin explained to Javeed, ‘My ghal’e is a special kind, like I told you, so I’ll be in a room close by, but not right next to you.’ He tensed, prepared for an outburst, but Javeed just gave him a dissatisfied glare. When they reached the end of the corridor Bahador met them; he introduced himself to Javeed by waving a child-sized football jersey prominently signed by Ashkan Azimi. ‘Agha Ashkan told me I should give this to a friend of mine, but I don’t know anyone in quite the right size.’ Javeed’s eyes lit up with delight. He knew he was being bribed into compliance, but yesterday’s complaints suddenly seemed petty.

Martin squatted down and kissed him. ‘Be good, pesaram. I’ll see you in Zendegi.’

Nasim led Martin to the MRI room. The scanner was far more compact than the older model in the hospital’s radiology department – a machine that Martin had come to know all too well – but Bernard, the Swiss technician who operated Zendegi’s version, had assured Martin that the magnetic field was an order of magnitude stronger. Martin had come in on three mornings the previous week to learn how to control his icon while lying flat on his back with his head immobilised in a padded helmet.

He took out his wallet and removed his watch, his wedding ring, his belt and his shoes. He was wearing clothes that had been pre-checked and certified metal-free to save him from having to change for the scanner, but Bernard ran a detector over him quickly to be sure.

Nasim fitted the skullcap that would be used to take EEG recordings simultaneously with the multi-mode MRI; Martin sat beneath a UV light and watched in a mirror as the semi-permanent tattoos they’d given him revealed themselves with green fluorescence, to aid in the alignment of the cap. In order to limit interactions with the MRI’s magnetic field and radio pulses, the skullcap’s ‘circuitry’ was purely optical, reading the electric field leaking out of his brain by observing its effect on tiny capsules of electrolytes incorporated into the tattoos.

Bernard swabbed Martin’s arm with disinfectant and injected him with a mixture of contrast agents that had been magnetically polarised overnight in a special-purpose machine. You could image brain activity to a certain extent just by watching haemoglobin in the blood losing its oxygen to hungry neurons, and that was one signal they’d be looking for. But there were a dozen other processes that could be monitored simultaneously with modern machines – making the image sharper, more responsive and more informative – and extra chemicals with enhanced magnetic properties were needed to render those processes visible. Bernard had sketched the details, but Martin had had too much else on his mind to take it in. It was sufficient to know that they were pulling out all the stops to gather as much information as possible.

Nasim passed him a pair of gloves and he slipped them on, then she helped him with his goggles; all of this equipment had been specially built for use in and around the scanner. He walked over to the MRI, lay down and wriggled around to try to find a reasonably comfortable position that allowed his head to sit in the custom-moulded restraint.

‘Everything okay?’ Nasim asked.

‘Yes, thanks.’ Martin’s stomach was clenched with anxiety, but he’d already asked all the questions he could think of the week before. Nasim had assured him that there was nothing he could do that would corrupt the side-loading process; even if he thrashed about and spoiled the scan, they’d just discard the bad data. There was no risk of it being used inadvertently and turning the Proxy’s brain to mush.

‘What if I have homicidal thoughts about my son?’ he’d asked after one of the training runs. He’d been half- joking, but it had probably focused Nasim’s attention more effectively than if he’d merely waffled on about his fear of exhibiting impatience or irritability.

‘Does that happen often?’ she’d inquired.

‘No – but have you ever tried not to think of a pink elephant? Under threat of putting your only child in the hands of your evil clone?’

‘Calm down, Dr Jekyll. If you have any prolonged negative thoughts, let us know and we’ll throw out the whole session. But if they’re fleeting, I wouldn’t worry. This machine isn’t capable of churning out a second-by-second transcript of everything that passes through your mind; at best, we’ll be able to discern your most persistent thought patterns and associations and train the Proxy to share them. But we’ll be working hard to get enough information to do that. Brief mental tics will be right off the radar.’