Gradually, out on the virtual playing field, Frank began imitating his mentor, clumsily and imperfectly at first, then with ever greater fidelity.
Azimi could spend only so much time in the scanner or his body would start cramping up and his mind would turn to mush. But Frank could keep re-absorbing the same lessons overnight, letting the software whittle away his imperfections while all the humans had gone home to sleep. Every morning Nasim came in an hour before everyone else and sat and watched ‘before’ and ‘after’ clips, summarising her student’s progress.
She remembered a story her father had told her – a story, or a joke; there was no sharp distinction. A famous actor and a famous singer had been invited to the same party, and people kept begging the singer to perform his best-known song. But he wasn’t feeling well, and he’d drunk too much wine, so he kept turning down their requests. Finally, the actor had taken pity on his colleague, and to spare him any further harassment had given the crowd his own rendition of the song – note-perfect, and indistinguishable from the singer’s best performance.
The singer had turned to him in amazement and asked, ‘Where did you learn to sing like that?’
The actor had replied modestly, ‘I can’t sing at all. But I have a talent for impersonation.’
At the end of the week, Azimi and the boss gave a press conference in the boardroom. Nasim stood at the back and watched. Azimi wore his team uniform, adorned with sponsors’ logos, and enough bling to asphyxiate and dice him if he’d still been under the scanner’s magnets.
The boss announced that Zendegi had sub-licensed Stadium Legends, a Korean developer, to write the first work to make use of Virtual Azimi. They were on a tight deadline; the release was to coincide with Iran hosting the Asian Cup in less than two months’ time.
Most of the journalists were sports-gaming specialists, and they followed the line the PR people had steered them towards in their press release, waxing lyrical about the joy Azimi’s fans would feel when they could put on their goggles and play a match under his virtual captaincy. But then Gita Razavi – a ‘cultural critic’ for Generation 2012 – managed to squeeze a question in, and she seemed to be getting her cues from somewhere else entirely.
‘Mr Azimi, of course you’ve already tasted fame, but I wonder how it feels to be the first person on Earth to achieve an entirely new kind of immortality: a century from now, people might still be playing football alongside your Proxy.’
Azimi smiled. ‘Of course I’ll be honoured if I’m remembered in any way at all after I retire, but I wouldn’t call this computer game a form of “immortality”. I’m not just a football player – I wrote a dissertation on Hafez. I am a son, a husband, I hope to be a father. This game has nothing to do with any of those things.’
‘So how would you feel if a Proxy could capture all those other aspects of your life?’ Razavi persisted. ‘Do you think that might be a good thing – or do you think it should be prohibited?’
Azimi glanced at the boss, but then spoke for himself. ‘As I understand it, that’s not even possible. I’m not an expert, but they tell me they can only copy a very small part of the brain this way. Anything more is too complicated for the technology.’
Nasim was cheered; he’d actually been paying attention when she’d briefed him.
Razavi said, ‘Did you have any qualms when you learnt that this project required the brains of two thousand dead men?’
The boss cut in. ‘We had no direct involvement with those donors, but the information they provided was offered up willingly to benefit all of humanity. This is nothing new; when a doctor makes use of a medical atlas, the truth is that it’s only because thousands of people allowed their bodies to be dissected after they died that we have that knowledge at our fingertips. We should be grateful to those people for their generosity, and grateful to God for his glorious creation. And your lovely nose, Ms Razavi, should be the most grateful beneficiary of all.’
When the laughter had died down, another journalist took the opportunity to speak. ‘Mr Azimi, what do you think will happen if the Kuwaiti team have access to this game? If they can play against you as many times as they like, won’t that give them an unfair advantage?’
Azimi was prepared for that one. ‘In this game, my Proxy will be just one player. People can get together with anyone they like to make up the numbers – but with all due respect to both our fans and our rivals, any team they form will still fall a long way short of the Iranian national team.’
‘The advertising’s come back on my photos,’ Nasim’s mother complained. ‘I can’t even look at my own wedding without someone trying to sell me haemorrhoid cream.’
Nasim said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She’d just finished eating dinner and was finally beginning to unwind.
She switched on the TV and chose ‘photos’ from the menu. Sure enough, even at the albums stage a sliding banner of slogans and links was superimposed over the bottom of each preview image.
Nasim put the TV into administrator mode. She launched debugging and monitoring software, followed by the client for the online photo manager, Rubens. A decade before, she’d encouraged her mother to start using the free system. The interface was simple, the images were accessible anywhere, and everything was backed-up automatically to three separate locations.
The client froze. After staring at the debugger’s window for a few seconds, Nasim understood what had happened. The server had figured out that the client was being monitored, and was refusing to talk to it. It wasn’t going to co-operate with a snitch.
Nasim swore under her breath. When the ads had first appeared she’d managed to find a simple way to block them. That task had grown slightly trickier over the years, but now it looked as if the program’s defences had been ramped up substantially. She said, ‘This might have to wait until the weekend.’
‘That’s no problem,’ her mother replied. ‘I never said you had to fix it straight away.’
‘All right.’ Nasim switched off the TV and started carrying the plates to the dishwasher. ‘But remind me again, or I might forget.’
‘I saw your press conference,’ her mother said. ‘On IRIB.’
‘Yeah?’ Nasim hadn’t seen anyone from IRIB in the room, though on reflection she wasn’t surprised that they’d picked up the story. ‘How do you think it went?’
‘You do know this is going to upset people?’
Nasim groaned. ‘Are you going to complain about the brain donors now? You’re the one who wanted me to stay in the States and spend my whole career up to my elbows in grey matter.’ She closed the dishwasher and walked back into the living room.
‘It’s not the dead people’s brains that worry me,’ her mother replied, ‘it’s what you’re doing with the live ones. People aren’t going to be comfortable with that.’
“‘People”? Which people?’ Nasim resisted the urge to tell her that if she had some ethical point to make she should make it, and stop hiding behind imaginary third parties. ‘We’re not in a theocracy any more, and I’m not going to be cowed into acting as if we were.’
‘No,’ her mother agreed, ‘we’re not in a theocracy, but your fellow citizens are perfectly capable of voting conservatives back into power if they start to feel that their values are being threatened.’
‘Threatened by what? A small improvement in the state of the art for faking celebrities in online football games?’
Her mother shook her head impatiently. ‘Maybe not, but what comes next? I’m sure there are people who’d pay to be intimate with a Proxy of someone famous.’