She stood up, her cheeks burning, refusing to sink into a heap of tears but still not able to laugh the whole thing off. Fretting about the HCP was useless vanity, but Zendegi’s fate was real and pressing. She’d seen the boss after the money men departed, and he had not looked hopeful.
As she stared at the screen, her attention fell on a series of links leading off from the paper itself into the massive stores of data on the HCP’s own servers. In the spirit of Open Science – and as a condition of some of the funding – all the raw scans that had been used to build the map were available on the web, along with the map itself. The HCP’s first draft was not the final word; researchers around the world would keep adding more brain images and refining the results.
But even without fresh scans to contribute, anyone could come along and re-analyse the data.
Nasim read the whole paper. Every few paragraphs she had to break off to follow up an unfamiliar reference, or embark on a restless circuit of the room as she mulled over some technical detail, but after two hours she’d come to grips with everything.
They’d done it deliberately, she realised. They’d chosen a different way to combine the scans, not because her technique had been rendered obsolete by a superior method, but because they’d been aiming for a different kind of map. This draft would allow neurologists to diagnose pathologies more easily, and enable computational biologists to test many of their basic ideas. What it would not do, though, was give rise to a complete, working simulation of a human brain. It was, by design, too blurred, too abstracted, too generic. But that had been a choice. The same raw data, with different methods, might well yield a different kind of map, far more amenable to being treated as a blueprint.
There was no prospect of waking the dead; the individual memories and personalities of the subjects of the scans were unrecoverable. But their common attributes, their common skills, might not lie beyond reconstruction.
Other people, Nasim was sure, would already have thought along the same lines. Cyber-Jahan? Happy Universe? Games effects subcontractors, like Crowds and Power? Anyone who was serious about building the best possible Proxies would have had two months’ head start.
But she’d trained for this race, she’d written the book on it. She was rusty on the details, but she could be back up to speed in a week or two if that was what she wanted.
Out on the balcony, the finches were singing.
13
The plan had been for Mahnoosh to take Javeed to his first day of school while Martin opened the shop. The night before though, as Martin had been drifting off to sleep, Mahnoosh had turned and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘We can open late just once, can’t we?’ she’d said.
‘Yeah. That’s a good idea.’
As Martin shepherded him into the car, Javeed was as excited as he’d ever been. He’d been awake since five o’clock, checking and rechecking everything in his school bag, counting his coloured pencils as if they were action figures. The impending novelty had even – finally – eclipsed the prospect of his return to Zendegi.
‘I know both alphabets,’ he boasted, as Martin strapped him into the back seat. ‘Some kids don’t know anything.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t be too full of yourself,’ Martin warned him. ‘Maybe you’re luckier than some kids. Your job is to help them catch up, not to make them feel bad.’
‘They should feel bad,’ Javeed retorted.
Martin scowled. ‘Shaitan nasho!’
Mahnoosh approached the car. She whispered to Martin, ‘I just phoned Omar about you-know-what, and he said he’d keep two ghal’eha free for us.’
‘Great.’
Martin drove, blocking out Javeed’s chatter and focusing on the road, leaving it to Mahnoosh to engage with him. The school wasn’t much more than a kilometre away, and they planned to get into a routine of walking there, but today this would save them going back for the car.
It took them ten minutes to find a parking spot, but Martin wasn’t going to drop the two of them off and circle back to pick up Mahnoosh, not today. When they finally reached the gate, the bell was ringing. They walked with Javeed across the playground, to the lines of boys and girls already forming outside his classroom.
Mahnoosh bent down and embraced Javeed tightly.
‘Have you got everything, azizam?’
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘I’ll be back in a few hours. You wait for me here.’
‘Okay.’ Javeed squirmed a little, and she released him. Martin squatted down and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Have fun. I’ll see you later.’
Javeed went to join the line. Standing beside Mahnoosh, Martin reached over and took her hand. They waited until the teacher appeared and marched the two lines into the classroom. Mahnoosh waved, but the teacher had instructed the children to keep their eyes straight ahead, so Javeed didn’t see her.
‘Are you okay?’ Martin asked her. The truth was he was feeling the tug of separation himself more keenly than he’d expected. For the first time in his life, Javeed would be going through something new without either of them beside him.
Mahnoosh scowled defensively. ‘Of course. Ah, we didn’t take a photo!’
‘Do it when you pick him up,’ Martin suggested. ‘That’ll be better, because he’ll have something to show you; he’ll probably be waving a big drawing.’
‘The butterfly maze, I expect.’ All the classes had been led into their rooms now, and the parents were drifting away across the playground.
Mahnoosh said, ‘I’ll drive you to the shop.’
‘Martin jan, are you awake?’
Martin opened his eyes. It was night-time; the unfamiliar room was lit by a lamp attached to the wall beside the bed. Omar was sitting on a chair, hunched towards him. Martin’s mouth was dry and his head felt heavy.
‘What?’ he replied stupidly.
‘You’re in hospital,’ Omar explained; it must have been the lamplight, but he looked impossibly haggard, as if he’d aged a decade since Martin had last seen him. ‘You had an accident.’
‘Really? I don’t remember.’ Visceral panic welled up in his chest. ‘Who else was in the car?’ Martin swung his legs towards the side of the bed, but the sheet was tucked in so far under the mattress that he couldn’t kick it free.
Omar reached out and restrained him. ‘Stay there, you’ve got a drip in your arm. I picked up Javeed from school. He’s at my home, he’s fine.’
‘Thank you.’ In the silence that followed Martin heard his own laboured breathing; the sound didn’t seem to belong to his body. ‘What about Mahnoosh?’
‘She was driving.’
‘Can I see her?’ Martin squinted at him, trying to read his face. ‘Get a wheelchair for me. We’ll go to the women’s wing.’
‘There was a truck,’ Omar said. ‘It went straight through the intersection.’
‘What does that mean?’
Omar’s hand was still resting on his shoulder. He lowered his gaze slightly. ‘She died straight away. Nobody could help her.’
‘No.’ Martin knew this was impossible; Omar wouldn’t lie to him knowingly, but the hospital bureaucrats could get anything wrong. ‘What if I was in the car alone? People just assume things. Did you ring the shop?’
‘Martin jan, I saw her,’ Omar confessed. ‘They didn’t know if you’d recover, and they needed someone to… say who she was.’
Martin felt his body shuddering; he struggled to keep control. ‘I’m sorry you had to do that.’