It’s not every day you find yourself sat in a head office gazing across a small marble coffee table at someone who has literally redefined the risks of space travel and life in general across the empire in the span of only a few short decades. Especially when they are as notoriously reserved when it comes to public record as Alexis de Torqueville, inventor and owner of the SoulSaver company.
In only twenty three years, SoulSaver has revived millions of space travelers and extended the lives of many millions more of our fellow Citizens who would otherwise have experienced an untimely end in accidents or another life shortening conditions.
The technology that allows a consciousness to be transplanted from its dying or recently deceased body into a generic clone is now regarded by some as nothing more than a miracle of modern day technology, however it’s inventor invited me to learn more about the complications and potential pitfalls of something some of us may be only too eager to take for granted without understanding the consequences of being SoulSaved more than just a few times in our lives.
Just an hour earlier the same rain which beat against the office window had been soaking me outside the building while I waited in a press scrum for a glimpse of Mr deTourqeville, and hopefully a few fleeting comments on our new Imperator Addison and his hopes and expectations for his company's future direction under an administration dedicated to Education, Innovation and Research.
As he approached the building with security parting the reporters scrum, his eye alighted on me and he stopped in his tracks. I entertained the notion this was a red blooded captain of industry and my feminine yet waterlogged beauty had caught his animalistic attention, however that flight of fancy was quickly dashed:
Sarah McGriffen: “Mr deTorqueville, I was wond-”
Alexis deTorqueville: “Why are you wearing one of those?” he asked, gesturing to my neck.
SM: “My SoulSaver?” it was a cheaper, and so extremely obvious, model - a fairly large skin-contour device which like ivy crawled in a spiral up around my neck, starting in my collar bones winding up wards plugging in to the base of my skull where brain stem met spine. Fashionable yet intrusive, for the first week it felt like my head was going to pop off my shoulders.
AdT: “Yes, why are you wearing one?” his eyes flit to his Mobiglas and back to me, almost indiscernibly, later he would clue me in to his having a Quantanium scanner installed which let him know if their was one of his devices nearby due to it’s unique use of the material.
SM: “Well, I’m a journalist-”
AdT: “None of your other colleagues have one?” he butt in.
SM: “Due to my knack for articles on technology espionage and intellectual property theft, I have had multiple death threats and one actual attempt on my life. This is my employers insurance policy to keep me alive if anyone ever makes good on their threat and succeeds.”
AdT: “The SoulSaver wasn’t desi-” he stopped and tilted his head ever so slightly to one side. “Your model wasn’t really designed for this... I would like an interview, if I may? An hour, in my Office? I’m not sure you are aware what your insurance policy has signed you up to... One of my associates here will escort you inside and arrange for refreshments while you wait.”
I was left speechless as he turned and moved on into his building. An attendant waited patently by my side, others keeping the rest of the scrum a respectful distance. I was ushered inside once I had processed what had just happened and happily accepted the opportunity to talk more.
An hour later, he gazed at me across the coffee table, I was unable to tell if he was looking at me or the device he had invented which was now as integral a part of me as my toenails.
SM: “Thank you so much for inviting me to interview you.” I began.
AdT: “I apologize, I wasn’t clear outside – it is I who am interviewing you.” he retorted pulling an old fashioned paper pad from his suit jacket pocket and something I have since been informed after a web search was a ‘mechanical pencil’, old, old tech.
SM: “Ah, that would be my mistake. Would you like me to turn off my audio recorder?” I felt like I was at my first ever job interview again.
AdT: “No, no. Your article would not make interesting reading if you were only able to recall half of the details and I would be most disappointed if you missed anything… however I will be interviewing you, to gauge your suitability to suffer the SoulSaver process, if you are ever unlucky enough to go through it.”
SM: “Thank you?” the question mark isn’t a typo, I really did say that, in the audio recording you can clearly hear the inflection as a question.
AdT: “Name?”
SM: “Sarah McGriffen”
AdT: “How many times have you been through the procedure of having your consciousness transferred”
SM: “Zero”.
AdT: “That’s good. And what do you know of the technology and how it works?”
At this point although I am sure Alexis wants to see me write every detail word for word, I will summarize as it is no secret that the SoulSaver consists of two sperate pieces of technology, the Reader and the Transmitter. At the point of death the Reader records a neurological and nervous system in a destructive process that destroys the original but captures the huge amounts of data that is the linked nerves and synapses and their electrochemical charges, and the transmitter which is a few particles of Quantanium which are in Quantum Entanglement with particles at the receiver station, almost always a high grade medical facility, where your consciousness is transmitted in its entirety and uploaded in to a clone made from your own DNA.
AdT: “Are you aware of the issues surrounding Reading and Transmitting at the point of a SoulSave?”
SM: “I’d be a pretty poor tech reporter if I wasn’t. The Reading is destructive, it kills the nervous system as it records it so if your body isn’t dead yet it will be, and the Transmitter uses Quantum Entanglement, which is a fantastic way of transmitting without needing a comms network but even with Quantanium particles the link collapses quickly after being used. It’s only since Quantanium was discovered that the link can hold for long enough to transmit a consciousness and it is limited to going to just that one place you have Quantum Entangle linked your Saver to.”
AdT: “I’m impressed, you genuinely knew more than I gave you credit for. My apologies for having made assumptions perhaps I’m jaded, I’ve been in this profession too long, seen too many people taking the SoulSaver for granted recently... it is just a little more complicated than that, however.”
SM: “I know about the consciousness imprint having to go on to your own DNA clone or it will not graft, I know it’s not a way to cheat a natural life span as your clone has DNA and mitochondria in it the same age as you - that was discovered back in the dark ages a thousand years ago with the first clones in Sol of Dolly the Sheep. These are well documented issues.”
AdT: “It’s not the DNA I’m talking about, though. That Saver grafted to your neck and brain stem. It’s up to date certainly, but it’s not top of the line. It will save you in a pinch, but it’s recording system is going to have a lot of electronic noise… let me be clear, all SoulSavers have electronic noise which degrades the purity of the record of your neurons and nerves, your consciousness. That means if you undergo the procedure multiple times, your nervous system imprint on your DNA clone will be a little degraded bit by bit, each time it’s copied again.”
SM: “I see, so once should be fine?”
AdT: “Maybe even twice from that model that’s part of you now, without too noticeable a set of issues, a better model would get you more transmissions before you started suffering but that’s not my point... you are assuming it can take a full recording of your nervous system – but if you have your leg wrenched off in an accident, those nerves won’t be there to fill in to your replacement body.”
SM: “I do recall seeing the Space Racer pilots who have been SoulSaved in race incidents stepping out of the hospital clone wards with artificial limbs even though they have new bodies...”
AdT: “Exactly why the receiver stations are in hospitals in the first place. If you are missing a part of your nervous system, it can’t just be grafted back in. The useless part of your new body has to be removed and replaced with artificial automated integration. I know of more than one case of newly Saved front-line soldgier being rushed in to surgery to have emergency heart and lung removal and prosthetics implanted because their chests were blown out by a Vandu’ul plasma bolt.”
The look on my face must have told him that was too much information, as he quickly moved on:
AdT: “And that’s not to mention the Transmitter issue, too.”
SM: “But the Quantum Entanglement Transmitter and Receiver are a mastery of Quantum science, Alexis.” I implored.
He remained silent for a heartbeat too long.
AdT: “Forgive me, I have not been called by my first name by anyone in a long time.”
I looked upon him and it became clear I was talking to a very, very lonely man indeed, interested only in his life work and how it interacted with those touched by it - not who's, but the how, and maybe just maybe the why.
SM: “Mr. deTorqueville.” I corrected myself awkwardly “Sorry.”
AdT: “The transmitter… Although it may be mastery of Quantum mechanics, it is also pushing slightly beyond what should be strictly capable. It uses Entanglement to transmit over any distance, two particles of Quantanium linked as if they were two halves of the same whole, ones vibrations matched by the other without them touching or being in each others presence. The issue is observing what you try to transmit over it. As soon as you look, the link collapses and the data is lost before it can even be passed over the link.”
SM: “So how was that solved?”
AdT: “The first part was Quantanium. Those particles help a ship travel at 20% the speed of light, and they also help keep that entanglement hold long enough to get a consciousness to cross.”
SM: “And the second part?”
AdT: “We don’t look. We don’t make an observation. Technically speaking, the information being grafted into the clone is the information being observed, but with the Quantanium it’s strong enough to survive that for just long enough being grafted into the same DNA it came from. If a sentience observes it, if we try to record the consciousness as data for uploading to copy and paste to multiple clones, if we try to put it in any other DNA, the link broken, it’s not transmitted and we lose that conciousness forever.”
Despite myself I couldn’t help but let out a short snort of a curt laugh.
SM: “You’re kidding right? If you can't observe it how do you know how it works?”
AdT: “We don't. I told you it was an issue. Quantum mechanics, a strange thing. When a transmission comes in it’s like the clone body is hit with lightening, it’s like the spark of life is being forceably injected into the thing. It turns an inanimate shell into a someone – they physically jolt alive. It’s incredible.”
SM: “Why are you telling me this?”
AdT: “My dear-” he glanced at the paper notebook “-Sarah, I’ve been trying to tell people this for years. When the really big breakthroughs come along, it is too easy for the light of brilliance to blind us to the shadows that lurk along the edge of the silver lining. I’m just desperate to stop people from taking SoulSavers for granted and unduly suffering the consequences.”
SM: “Thank you. If you wouldn’t mind, I do have some questions about your thoughts on Imperator Addison and your compan-”
AdT: “That is all I have time for today, thank you for attending the interview. Please accept my gratitude for your attendance and an upgrade to your SoulSaver to a model which will in the event of your having to use it make your expiriance a lot more comfortable and somewhat more repeatable.”
SM: “Ah… Thank you for your generosity, but…”
AdT: “Yes?”
SM: “Has your Soul ever been Saved?”
And with that, he left without another word.
Should we heed Mr. deTouquevilles words of warning? From all accounts of people whom I have spoken to since who have had to expiriance a Transmission, it is not something many of them have wanted to expiriance again and from those who have, a military commander in particular who wished to remain anonymous, although he had top of the line devices in his service the repeated use of them had taken their toll.
I must admit, having an integrated chip in my cortex now is a heck of a lot more comfortable than the skin-contour neck crawler, and I trust in Alexis promise that if I ever have to rely on it, I will be getting a much better reanimation expiriance.
