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  “Just wool gathering,” she said. He didn’t need to worry about her. Nobody needed to worry about her. She turned back to the paper binder.

  Some of the material was new, and she puzzled over the formulas for a while before continuing her reading. Inserted in the middle was a copy of the magazine article with her picture attached, the one with her in a red skin-tight dress. She scowled and turned the page quickly.

  There was also a printout of her speech on the emotional ramifications of bio-substrate dig-int. She had delivered it on a second’s notice at a neurobiology convention a couple of years back.

  She waved the paper at Lieutenant Johnner. “Did they just put everything I’ve ever said in here? Because this talk is about future emotional possibilities for biological creations. Not machine-based digital.”

  “That’s right.”

  Chal felt oddly slighted by his tone. He hadn’t even answered her question.

  “So, this is just a transcript of everything I’ve ever said?”

  “Everything in that binder is relevant to the project at hand, Dr. Davidson,” Lieutenant Johnner said.

  “I’m sorry, you’re saying this is relevant?” She laughed, and stopped when she saw that he did not join her.

  “You’re saying you’ve done it?” Chal said. “Bio-substrate intelligences? With emotional sentience?”

  Lieutenant Johnner shrugged lightly.

  “Bullshit,” Chal said. “You’re bluffing.”

  “Bluffing?”

  “Just like you were bluffing with Dr. Abboud,” she continued, flipping through the binder. “This tech is decades away.”

  “The M.I.D. has been working on this for decades, Dr. Davidson.” The lieutenant’s blue eyes shone in the dim light of the road as they turned off of the highway.

  “What does this–any of this–have to do with the military?” She flipped ahead in the binder. Emotional induction studies, including the recent Lidder paper. Child development research. One of her articles on conscious feeling and qualia. “You can’t weaponize emotions.”

  “You work in a field with some very important implications, Dr. Davidson. You’ll understand more once we reach Phoenix.”

  He said something else, but she was distracted by the sudden idea that something interesting–very interesting–might be right around the corner. Distracted enough that she didn’t hear the coolness that had entered his voice. “Say again?” She flipped back to the formulas. How had they gotten it to work?

  “You talked about chipping away at a problem,” Lieutenant Johnner said.

  “Yes?” Chal was eager, impatient. A million possibilities raced through her head.

  “Don’t be too hasty to break through the ice,” Johnner said as they pulled onto a deserted dirt road. “We’re standing on it.”

  ***

  CHAPTER THREE

  The progress of digital intelligence in the world scientific community had been set back by a number of factors since its inception. Apart from the religious objections over the creation of intelligent life, society believed that thinking machines were useful for only the most technical of tasks. It was seen as silly to even try to work on the more nebulous and impractical aspects of intelligent life such as sentience and emotion. This attitude would prove to be dramatically short-sighted.

  Perhaps the largest issue that eventually had to be faced head on was that leading cognitive scientists refused–absolutely, positively, one hundred percent refused–to believe that biological substrates were necessary for the creation of intelligent life.

  In the late 1980s and 1990s, mathematician Roger Penrose had argued that the laws of physics as we know them were insufficient to explain consciousness. He proposed a theory along with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff called the Orch-OR model which depended upon the quantum characteristics of microtubules in the brain. It was soundly rejected by physicists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists across the board as being unlikely, even radical.

  As one scientist sarcastically put it: “It’s reasonably unlikely that the brain evolved quantum behavior.”

  Penrose had made his name as a brilliant mathematician, and his contributions to that field were beyond dispute. This foray into neuroscience, however, was seen by all as an ill-conceived failure. Mathematicians were disappointed that he had devoted his attentions to a different field of science, and everybody else treated him with condescending indifference. He wasn’t a neuroscientist, after all, so what the hell was he doing studying the brain? He wasn’t a physicist, so how could he possibly come up with a major development in quantum field theory? To say that scientists were skeptical of his claims was to put it kindly. Some of his close friends whispered privately that the man had gone off his rocker.

  Two decades later, Penrose re-examined his initial theory in a paper titled “Consciousness in the Universe: Neuroscience, Quantum Space-Time Geometry and Orch OR Theory. The paper began with the following sentence:

  “The nature of consciousness, its occurrence in the brain, and its ultimate place in the universe are unknown.”

  He went on to evaluate the shortcomings of the brain-as-computer viewpoint that continued to gain popularity in the early days of cognitive science, mentioning the hard problem of consciousness as a sticky issue for those who shared that viewpoint. He also criticized those who searched for the origins of consciousness in the brain, noting that the best measure of consciousness (gamma synchrony EEG from 30 to 90 Hz) didn’t derive from neuronal firings at all. The paper was largely ignored in scientific circles.

  One hundred years after Penrose’s first book on the Orch-OR theory of consciousness was published, Chal Davidson was born. Twenty years after that, she ran across Penrose’s paper while researching the origins of quantum physics in one of her college classes in scientific history. It was this paper that caused her to abandon her degree in physics and turn instead to philosophy.

  Penrose was right, she thought. Physics was broken; there must be something deeper driving the fundamental laws of the universe. Something more. It had been years since she had last prayed to God, but when she read Penrose she felt an odd stirring inside of her that hearkened back to sunny Sunday mornings spent in churches.

  Faith.

  In year 2131, the year in which Chal Davidson was contacted to assist in Project Paragon, the nature of consciousness and its ultimate place in the universe was still unknown.

  ***

  Chal woke to find Lieutenant Gray Johnner leaning toward her, her binder clasped loosely in his lap. She raised her head and peered outside of the van. They were moving: dark, empty fields flew by in the window, and in the moonlight she could see barbed wire haphazardly strung along the side of the road.

  “We’re almost there, Dr. Davidson. You dozed off.” Johnner sat back in his seat.

  “Almost where?” She had been to Phoenix before; this wasn’t it. This wasn’t a city at all. The mesas outside were dotted with sagebrush, and in the cold blue light the desert resembled an alien landscape.

  Johnner seemed relieved that she was awake and talking. “M.I.D. headquarters. It’s almost a hundred miles south of Phoenix.” He handed her back the binder full of her files and she took them clumsily, still half-asleep.

  They pulled off of the highway, the van bouncing on the dirt road at a speed that Chal was not entirely comfortable with.

  “Can we slow down? Jesus,” she said, as they hit a pothole, her body lurching upward in her seat.

  “It’s urgent that we reach headquarters as soon as possible,” Lieutenant Johnner said, no trace of an apology in his voice now. “We still have to undergo decontamination procedures. And you’ll need to view the videos of the failed prototypes.”

  “Prototypes of what?” Chal asked, her heart beating a bit faster. This was the good stuff.

  “Emotional intelligence in a biological substrate.”

  “Rats or chimps?” Chal had worked with both types of substrates, and found benefits and drawbacks
to each one. It was universally acknowledged that rat neurons were the easiest to replicate in terms of memory retrieval processes, but chimp tissue had become increasingly popular in studies that focused on neurotransmitters, the chemistry of chimp brains being much more similar to those of people’s brains. She was curious to know what the military had decided upon, but Johnner’s answer surprised her.

  “Neither,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Johnner cleared his throat. “The M.I.D. is working with human substrates.”

  Chal’s mouth dropped open, and for a second she didn’t know what to say.

  “That’s...that’s illegal,” she finally sputtered. “The MacLaurin Conventions–”

  “The indigenous Tohono people have never recognized the MacLaurin Conventions,” Lieutenant Johnner said. “None of the native tribes have.”

  “And we’re on a Tohono reservation now.” It wasn’t a question. Chal simply couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “That’s right.” The van raced along the bumpy road, and in the distance Chal could see a ranch house. Its aluminum roof reflected the moonlight brightly.

  “So you’re making humans?” Chal asked. “Implanting intelligence into actual human-substrate bodies?”

  “It’s not implanting,” Johnner said. “That’s been tried, but implantation is only really good for memory chips, learning modifiers, and the like. Consciousness doesn’t work quite that way.” Chal realized that he knew much, much more than she had first believed. Johnner wasn’t just a stuffed suit after all. “It’s more like...growing. Around a digital core.”

  “Growing.” Chal repeated tonelessly. “You’re growing digitally-controlled brains.”

  “In human substrates, yes.”

  “Making men.” Chal looked at the ranch house looming before them as the van slowed. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Well, we’re trying.” Johnner’s voice was impassive on the surface, but Chal could tell that he was tense underneath. “We’ve come across some unexpected issues with the prototypes that have led to two failures in a row.

  “That’s why you need my help.” It was beginning to make sense.

  “Of course, this work is classified, and I trust that you’ll be able to handle this with discretion.” Johnner looked worried, and Chal remembered what he had mentioned earlier.

  “You talked about the implications of my work,” Chal said.

  “That’s right,” Lieutenant Johnner said, as they pulled to a stop outside of the deserted ranch. “It would be very bad if word of this project were to get out.”

  “Because of the MacLaurin Conventions?”

  “Because of the political implications,” he said cryptically. Chal had no idea what he was talking about. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but he waved her ahead toward the building. Whatever the political implications were, they would have to wait.

  ***

  The MacLaurin Conventions had been developed at the insistence of the European consulates after the digital Divide, which had resulted in nearly a third of European countries rejecting digital technology within their borders.

  It came as no surprise that many nations had decided to rein in their intelligence research, especially after the second millennial digital expansion and the ensuing backlash. Fears of digital surveillance and ethical qualms about intelligence programs spread rampantly among many first-world populations at the beginning of the twenty-first century. What was surprising was how entirely and totally the post-Divide nations abandoned intelligence work altogether.

  Some people called these countries backwards, and Chal Davidson had been one of them. Her own mother lived in West Catalonia, a newly-formed nation state that had decided, along with a dozen other countries, to abandon digital intelligence technology and revert to old analog/electrical systems or digital systems without any intelligence components. Old technology was hard to find or manufacture. Countries created rigid customs inspections to deal with the hazard of importing goods, and a national review board decided the borderline cases. Life reverted to that of the late twentieth century.

  Some dissented, of course, but the costs of their emigration balanced fairly with the increased revenue of whole immigrant tribes like the Amish. With huge governmental subsidies provided to move people across the dividing lines, there were few who put up too much of a fight.

  The United Nations deemed it necessary to protect these countries from external interference, including digital intelligence warfare against which they would have no possible recourse. Many who lived in the non-digital nations pushed for global conventions that would support their isolation and keep them safe from attackers in adjacent digital nations.

  The digital intelligence boom had come on the heels of a great number of military advances that bulked the automated machine armies of just about every major nation state to annihilation-level proportions. Once cognitive advances made the machines intelligent, political scientists warned that if any nation state at all with an A-level army began an invasion, it would be impossible to prevent global war and mutual destruction.

  Because of this threat, a UN subcommittee drew up the first drafts of what would eventually be known as the MacLaurin Conventions. They consisted of three treaties that established for the first time the standards of international law for the treatment of digital intelligences both in and out of warzones.

  Ethical considerations of creating life had been worked out across many medical ethics boards some time back. Ever since digital intelligences in biological substrates became used in widespread applications, concerns about whether or not they should be treated as different from normally developed animals had flown back and forth across ethics boards. The treaties were quickly drawn up.

  The first treaty banned creation of any digital intelligences designed to kill emotionally conscious beings, where consciousness was determined to be a base level of at least +1 on the modified Freitas consciousness quotient spectrum.

  Many disputes arose over this definition. Conservative pundits argued that allowing carnivorous plants to be defined as “conscious” was too liberal and could be misused by environmental activists. A coalition of pesticide companies lobbied to place certain weed varieties under exemption, ridiculing the treaty’s language that classified plant life as “conscious.”

  Eventually it was agreed that a liberal interpretation was necessary, and the UN amended the draft to include concessions for lower-level biological life. But anything that could feel – with the liberal Freitas interpretation of “feeling”– was safe from digital warfare.

  One military leader, vehemently against the MacLaurin Conventions, was quoted in a national newspaper:

  “The liberal pansies writing this document have no idea of what reality is like. We can’t drive an automated car across the border without being worried that we’ll crush a bug. We’re being forced to trash all of our smart machines for no reason at all.” His words, echoed by many, were nonetheless ignored by the UN. The armies of all digital nations cut back their forces to non-intelligent machinery.

  Many panentheistic religious groups, believing that all of nature possesses consciousness in some form, would not ratify the MacLaurin Conventions because they felt the first treaty was not liberal enough. Native American tribes such as the Tohono asked Washington to extend the first treaty to forbid the destruction of any form of nature by digital intelligences.

  Washington privately laughed at the request, which would outlaw logging, mining, basically all resource management whatsoever, since those industries had long since stopped using human workers and moved over to digital intelligence machines to do their dirty work. Publicly they issued a statement encouraging Native American tribes to pass their own extensions to the MacLaurin Conventions. This, of course, was financially implausible for the tribes, and would only have protected the dwindling reservation lands anyway.

  The second and third treaties in the MacLaurin Conventions establi
shed basic rights for digital intelligences which possessed consciousness. As nobody had ever created such intelligences and there was no reason to believe they would, these two treaties passed under the radar with very little comment. A few hard science fiction fans irritated the hell out of Washington leaders by giving their own interpretations of the treaties and filibustering the public forums, but that was all.

  It was tacitly understood in Washington that the second and third treaties were simply a catch-all for any possibilities of developing conscious life in order to satisfy the conditions of the previously existing Geneva conventions. It didn’t make any difference one way or another.

  Not yet, anyway.

  As one popular magazine put it, “even if we could build a robot with consciousness–which we can’t–there isn’t any reason we would want to. Everybody wants a robot that can vacuum a rug and do the dishes; nobody wants a robot that knows it is slaving away at housework, or worse, complains about it.” One late night talk show had a popular segment based on the idea which they called “Simon the Sad Sentience,” featuring a lovable but depressed robot who would try to kill himself whenever asked to perform the tasks for which he was designed.

  Military leaders described the Tohono reservation development as a biological research station, and construction moved forward quickly. The Tohono tribe leaders accepted the explanation. With over three hundred million dollars at stake in the investment, nobody asked too many questions about the details of the research it would be doing.

  ***

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Johnner waved an ID card in front of the door of the abandoned ranch house, and Chal tried not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. The cabin looked straight out of Little Home on the Prairie, and yet Johnner was passing his card across the wood like he was swiping it across a scanner.

  “Is there a secret knock?” she joked, looking back to the military men standing guard by the van.

  “The security here is airtight,” Johnner said, as a steel post slid up from the ground in front of them. He entered a passcode and pressed his thumb to the post. It beeped and the heavy metallic sound of the door unlocking was so unlike what Chal had expected that her mouth dropped open.