It was time. Sandra felt the shutting down of external ports as the power went off across Hanover. The Bundespost UPS kicked in silently, before any active memory could degrade. But there was no way out now. She sent a message out into the mainframe. “Peter Hobson?”
The Control sim signaled back. “Who’s there?”
“Detective Inspector Alexandria Philo, Metropolitan Toronto Police.”
“Oh, God,” signaled Control.
“Not God,” said Sandra. “Not a higher arbiter.
“What I did was justice,” said Control.
“What you did was vengeance.”
“ ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.’ Since there’s no God for me, I thought I’d fill in the gap.” A pause, measured in nanoseconds. “You know I’m going to escape,” said Control. “You know — oh. Clever.”
“Good-bye,” said Sandra.
“A contraction of ‘God be with ye.’ Inappropriate. Besides, don’t I deserve a trial?”
The UPS batteries were running out. Sandra sent a final message. “Think of me,” she said, “as a circuit-court judge.”
She felt the data around her zeroing out, felt the system degrading, felt it all coming to an end for both this version of herself and, at last, for the fugitive Peter Hobson.
Justice had been done, she thought. Justice had—
They sat side by side on the couch in their living room, a small distance between them. Most of the lights were off. The television showed the crowd in Nathan Phillips Square out front of Toronto City Hall, gathered to celebrate the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. A picture-in-a-picture box in the upper right showed Times Square in New York; there was something about that dropping American ball that was a universal part of celebrating this event. In the upper-left corner of the TV screen the word MUTE glowed.
Cathy looked at the screen, her beautiful, intelligent face composed in reflective lines. “It was the best of times,” she said softly. “It was the worst of times.”
Peter nodded. Indeed a year of wonders: the discovery of the soulwave, the realization — which not everyone had reacted well to — that something persisted beyond this existence. It was the epoch of belief, Dickens had written. It was the epoch of incredulity.
But 2011 had had more than its share of tragedies, too. The revelation of Cathy’s affair. The death of Hans. The death of Cathy’s father. The death of Sandra Philo. The things Peter had faced about himself, mirrored in the simulations he and Sarkar had created. Truly the age of wisdom. Truly the age of foolishness.
The murder of Hans Larsen remained unsolved — at least publicly, at least in the real world. And the death of Rod Churchill remained listed as accidental, a simple failure to follow doctor’s orders.
And what about the killing of Sandra Philo? Also unsolved — thanks to Sandra herself. Free on the net, fully conversant with the security surrounding the police department’s computers, the sim of her had given Peter a Christmas present, erasing the records of his fingerprints (marked as unidentified) at Sandra’s house — Peter’s own precautions in that matter having been completely insufficient — and deleting large passages of her own files pertaining to the Larsen and Churchill cases. Having probed the recordings of his memories and thought patterns, she understood him now, and, if perhaps not forgiving him, at least sought no more punishment for Peter than what his own conscience would impose.
And indeed his conscience would weigh heavily upon him, all the remaining days of his life. We were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
Peter turned to face his wife. “Any New Year’s resolutions?”
She nodded. Her eyes sought his. “I’m going to quit my job.”
Peter was shocked. “What?”
“I’m going to quit my job at the agency. We’ve got more money than I’d ever thought we’d have, and you’ll make even more from contracts for the SoulDetector. I’m going to go back to university and get a master’s degree.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’ve already picked up the application forms.”
There was quiet between them as Peter tried to decide how to respond. “That’s wonderful,” he said at last. “But — you don’t have to do that, you know.”
“Yes, I do.” She lifted a hand from her lap. “Not for you. For me. It’s time.”
He nodded once. He understood.
The main TV picture showed a close-up of a giam digital clock, the numbers made from a matrix of individual white light bulbs: 11:58 P.M.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?”
He thought for a moment, then shrugged slightly. “To get through 2012.”
Cathy touched his hand. Eleven fifty-nine.
“Turn up the sound,” she said.
Peter operated the remote.
The crowd was roaring with excitement. As midnight approached, the master of ceremonies, a pretty veejay from MuchMusic, the cable music-video station, led the assembled horde in a countdown. “Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.” In the little picture-in-a-picture, the Times Square ball had started its descent.
Peter leaned over the coffee table and filled two wineglasses with sparkling mineral water.
“Ten. Nine. Eight.”
“To a new year,” he said, handing her a glass. They clinked the rims together.
“Five! Four! Three!”
“To a better year,” said Cathy.
A thousand voices through the stereo speakers: “Happy New Year!”
Peter moved over and kissed his wife.
“Auld Lang Syne” began to play.
Cathy looked directly into Peter’s eyes. “I love you,” she said, and Peter knew the words were true, knew that there was no deception. He trusted her fully and completely.
He stared into her wonderful, wide eyes, and felt a surge of emotion, the kind of wild, sadness/happiness emotion that was both biological and intellectual, both body and mind — the kind of wild, unpredictable hormonal emotion that went with being human.
“And I love you, too,” he said. They came together in a warm embrace. “I love you with all my heart, and with all my soul.”
Spirit knew what choice Peter Hobson had made. The other Peter Hobson, that is. The one that happened to be flesh and blood. Whatever answers existed to his questions about life after death, he would eventually have them. Spirit would mourn his brother when he died, but he would also mourn himself — the artificial self that would never be able to access those same answers.
Still, if the biological Peter was eventually going to go to meet his maker, Spirit, the soul simulation, had become a maker. The net had grown exponentially in size over the years. So many systems, so many resources. And of this vast brain, like humanity’s original biochemical brains, only a tiny fraction was actually used. Spirit had had no trouble finding and claiming all the resources he needed to carve out a new universe.
And, as all makers do, he eventually paused to reflect on his handiwork.
True, it was artificial life.
But, then again, so was he. Or, more precisely, he was artificial life after death. But it felt real to him. And maybe, in the last analysis, that was all that mattered.
Peter — the wet, carbon-based Peter — had said that in his heart of hearts, he knew that simulated life was not as real, not as alive, as biological life.
But Peter had not experienced what Spirit had experienced.
Cogito ergo sum.