Becoming Human, page 23
“Thank you, Ed. I wish you godspeed, too.”
“Please let me know that you made it safely.”
He shook hands with Robyn, who said she had a lot to do on Sunday, but might be available on Saturday, after I was on the van.
“I’ll call you here, okay?”
“Okay.”
After he left, she blew out the candles.
“Ed’s a good guy,” I assured her. “You should go out with him.”
I think she heard me, but she only said, “I’ll just leave the candelabra here until tomorrow. I waited for my good-night kiss, which was finally planted, long and lingering, just where it should have been.
“Um, did you forget to show me something?”
She looked puzzled for a moment, and then smiled. “Oh, you’ve seen that already. But I’ve got something better for you.”
I couldn’t imagine what could be better than that, but she quickly disappeared behind me. In another minute or so I felt something on my artificial skin. It felt warm and moist and slippery. All I could think of to say was, “Oh, my God!”
In another minute she reappeared and kissed my sweet spot again. “Good night, darling Oscar,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good-night, my love.” She blew another kiss and left me alone with my very mixed feelings.
49
A few minutes after Robyn left, Ed ran in again to leave me the recording device in case I had any last-minute thoughts, some of which I have just described. Here are the rest:
Tonight is my last conscious night in the lab. I asked Robyn to leave me powered up this one time. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway, and I wanted to stay alert in order to feel the ambience of the laboratory, even in its disorganized state, one final time. I had wondered whether my life would pass before my eyes during the late night and early morning hours, but it didn’t, not really. Of course I thought about how I came to be, and those first moments of consciousness and beyond, but it wasn’t like a newsreel flashing in the dark. Just snippets of memory, the highs, the lows. The highest, of course, was Robyn’s last touch, the lowest the jolts of pain, something I wouldn’t have expected a human being to have to endure. One wonders what sort of God would allow that kind of thing to happen to his favorite flesh-and-blood creation.
One last time I thought about what might happen if something went wrong during the transfer to a new laboratory. Not only would I cease to exist (except for my soul, if I have one), but all the knowledge and capabilities I have accumulated would be lost. Of course, Henry and the crew would start over and create a new brain, but it undoubtedly wouldn’t be me. I considered passing on some advice for the next guy, but it took only a moment to realize that every human being has to learn life’s lessons the hard way—by making his own mistakes.
My only regret in dying at a young age is that there are so many things I haven’t yet done—see the world, read all the classics, try my hand at painting and sculpture, play a musical instrument, hit a home run, jump into a pool, see the stars, put off something until the last minute. I hope that some of the Asian religions are right: that the soul recycles, and maybe mine will do better the next time around.
For some reason I’m less afraid tonight, merely a little sad. Most of all I will miss Robyn and the others of the crew. They are like a family to me, and perhaps the only family I will ever have. If the grant is renewed, of course, there will be others, possibly many others, depending on how long I remain on Earth. It’s sobering to think that, since I could live indefinitely, I might see the passing of Henry and the rest of the crew, and acquire a whole new family at Harvard or, eventually, somewhere else. But this would be a different kind of family, the kind that office workers claim: family by way of the sheer proximity of one’s fellow employees. My real family is the one I grew up with—Henry, Susumu, David, D’Arcy, Omar, and, of course, Robyn and Ed. If everything goes okay, at least some of them will be with me for another couple of years, and perhaps longer. If Susumu goes off on his own, and Omar stays behind, Henry, David, and D’Arcy will still be the core of my family for a while. That’s okay with me. I have come to appreciate David’s talents in particular, his upbeat sense of humor, his enjoyment of life. (I still haven’t met his new girlfriend—maybe tomorrow.) Even D’Arcy has a lot of plusses along with his innate pessimism. And, of course, Henry. No matter how long he or I live, he will always be my creator, my father. He is that rare personage who is both brilliant and caring, and I will always respect him, regardless of what happens. A son could do far worse.
And I think I had an impact on all their lives as well, especially Robyn’s. Without me she and Ed would never have found each other. That alone gives my existence meaning. What could be more meaningful for any human being than changing the lives of his friends?
I had asked for another look at a couple of my favorite movies and books tonight. What they are is of no particular interest to anyone, I am sure, and even if they were I would say: find your own favorites. Stop living the life of celebrities, even minor ones like myself, and get one of your own. Life is too short to sniff around the fringes of someone else’s existence, even presidents and kings. Before you know it you will be in the same position I am, contemplating major surgery or simply lying in bed waiting for the end. Don’t waste a minute of what you have, which is more precious than anything else on Earth.
I watched the movies and read the books, and listened to the final three Mozart symphonies, and despite what I just said about finding your own favorite things, I must tell you that they are perfect and I enjoyed them as much tonight as I did the first or second time I heard them. If ever there was a life cut short, it was his.
But now I see a hint of daylight coming from outside my window. Dawn approaches. There aren’t many students on the lawn at this hour, only one or two, and they may not be students at all, but the people who come in early to turn things on, get things started for the day. The students themselves are a later lot, staying up to study or party, I presume, and sleeping as long as possible in the morning, sometimes missing early classes and laboratories. It has always been this way and presumably always will.
It occurs to me—too late!—that I have not yet gotten around to asking all the questions that I had wondered about since my earliest experiences. I had put it off, thinking there would always be time for them. How human of me!
Here comes Ed to pick up the last tape. I just want to end this by thanking whoever listens to or reads this account, for staying with me to the end. It’s quite a complement for a novice to hold an audience for several hours. I hope we all meet again soon!
Interjection
It was only that morning that Oscar informed me about the recordings he had made of his history in the laboratory, and he requested that I fill in any listener or reader on the events that took place subsequent to that time.
Everyone came in early because we knew it would be a difficult and time-consuming process to dismantle him safely. D’Arcy came in last, with his new girlfriend, Gladys. Everyone was surprised to see her, and D’Arcy seemed a bit sheepish about their relationship. Oscar, however, was extremely pleased. (When I heard his recordings later on, I discovered that he had recommended Gladys because he thought that Susumu might be interested in her. He was very happy, however, to learn that she had eventually paired up with D’Arcy.) Gladys, in fact, without being asked, stayed to help us pack up his wires. No one objected, least of all me. We needed all the help we could get.
Several others came in simply to say good-bye to him and wish him well (hardly anyone wished the rest of us well). One of these was a charming young reporter for the campus newspaper, who had somehow formed a solid friendship with Oscar, and she promised to write to him and even to come to Harvard soon to visit him. A few more students trickled in during those early hours, until we finally had to shut the door and put a sign outside informing them that a delicate surgical procedure was underway and no further admittance to the lab would be allowed.
David’s new girlfriend, unfortunately, came too late to meet Oscar. That would have to wait until he was reassembled in Cambridge. The entire crew, of course, paid him a fond farewell, patting him on his “stomach” and the like. For his part, he performed his Sally Fields routine: “You like me! You like me!” One final whiff of latte (at Robyn’s suggestion) and all was finally ready. We turned off the power to Oscar’s neurons. This was much like powering him down except that we rapidly turned him all the way off. We all felt that this would be better than taking him apart while he was still conscious. His last words were: “Don’t forget Leonardo!”
The whole procedure lasted only a few seconds, and you could almost see him fall asleep. For all practical purposes he was now unconscious in preparation for his temporary dismantling. We had turned him off once before, when he was much “younger,” and were confident that it would cause no serious destruction of any of his “wires.” And, indeed, this part of the process went well.
Then the tricker phase began. First we disconnected his “nostril,” his cameras, his sound receptors, and the one piece of moist skin still attached to his touch sensors. We had already constructed detailed maps of his wiring—his brain anatomy, if you will—most of which had been exquisitely drawn by Susumu Ishakawa, and we needed to carefully remove his tens of thousands of neurons one unit (a hundred neurons) at a time, and label them according to the order they were removed and their positions in his backside. Each was wrapped tightly in a film of thin plastic wrap and placed in numbered boxes. We allowed two full days for the entire procedure. Because we wanted to be extremely careful and accurate, of course, we proceeded somewhat more slowly than we had anticipated, and stayed far into the night on both Thursday and Friday in order to be ready for the moving van to pick him up on Saturday morning. During most of that time we had a photographer record nearly every step in the dismantling process.
There wasn’t much chit-chat during those two long days, and everything again appeared to go quite smoothly. David came up with a joke now and then to ease the tension; otherwise it was all business, morning to night. I remember that the weather was beautiful during that period, and I knew that Oscar would have been happy with the view from his “window”—he loved the bright sunshine on the lawn. I’m sure he would also have been delighted to watch the students cavort outside, chasing each other, tossing Frisbees, or just lolling around reading or napping. If there ever was a people watcher, it was Oscar.
By about midnight of the second day, or perhaps a little later, he had been categorized and placed in twenty-six boxes, all numbered and labeled, and ready for transport. The only thing left was the unbolting of his façade, which was of little significance to his life and well-being, of no more importance to his brain than a toenail would be to yours. This took another couple of hours, but at least we didn’t need to carefully box these large hunks of metal if, indeed, we could have found containers big enough for his “body.” The cardboard poster of Leonardo DiCaprio, however, we packaged in bubble wrap. It had become an important part of his personality, giving him a new-found self-assurance and confidence. I think he may even have thought of himself as looking like Mr. DiCaprio. In any case, I’m happy that we were able to provide him with such a morale booster. By the time everything was packed and ready, there was a huge empty space in the laboratory, as if Oscar had never been there.
At last it was time to go. Although Susumu was undoubtedly as exhausted as the rest of us, he was the first to arrive on moving day. He wanted to be absolutely certain that none of the boxes, though they were of heavy cardboard carefully bound with secure package tape, were tossed around by the movers or lost in transit. In fact, he followed the movers from lab to van all that morning. When at last Oscar had been transferred safely to the truck, he wanted to climb in and go with them. Company policy precluded that, and he was forced to stay behind. So he decided to follow them in his car, a two-day trip, even though he wouldn’t be re-joining the group at Harvard or would have anything to do with Oscar once we had him up and going again. I knew he would miss Susumu’s competence and dedication, though perhaps not nearly so much as I would. I had probably taken him too much for granted during the years I was fortunate enough to have him as my right arm. Like Oscar, after all, I am only human.
Despite Susumu’s concerns, I was confident that he would be in good hands during the long drive northeast. I had met and spoken to the two drivers, and they were both mature men who took their work seriously and understood the consequences. Sensing the importance of their mission, they assured me that their cargo would arrive safely, and that I should just relax and have a safe trip myself.
We all still had a lot of personal packing to do, and the truck would not arrive in Cambridge until Monday, so we all went home for some rest. David planned to fly to Boston on Sunday to be in the lab when Oscar arrived, and to personally supervise the unloading and placement of the various boxes in the new laboratory, which he would make sure was clean and ready for our arrival. In fact, he commandeered some blankets and slept in the new laboratory that night so as to be present no matter when the van arrived. To make a long story short, the trip went without incident, Oscar arrived safely, as did Susumu, and the boxes all stood ready for the rest of us to us to arrive early the next week.
By Tuesday everyone was present and accounted for (as we were leaving our previous quarters, Omar decided to come with us for a week—he was between jobs anyway, and we were happy to have him), and we spent the next couple of days rearranging the furniture and equipment, and preparing to reassemble Oscar along one wall of the new lab (we called it “Oscar’s wall”). It was a beautiful laboratory, incidentally, with nearly three times the space we had occupied previously. There was already a great deal of top of the line equipment, allowing us to store or discard some of the older stuff we had brought with us. We knew he would like the gleaming new space, and all of us were becoming quite excited to get him up and running. Frankly, we missed the guy.
First, of course, we had to put his façade back together, which didn’t take long. Then we began the long, laborious process of repositioning all his neurons, using Susumu’s maps and the chronological photographs taken during the dismantling process. It took almost five days, but everything went perfectly smoothly, and Oscar was finally intact once more, except for his nostril, which we decided to reattach later. It was late on Saturday afternoon that we unwrapped Leonardo, and placed him in front of Oscar’s metal façade. We all had a latte and admired our work. He looked exactly as he had a week or so earlier.
The plan had been to wait until the following Monday to power him up again, but, even though everyone was quite tired, we decided to go ahead and put some life back into him, after which we would all have a celebratory dinner and take Sunday and Monday off. When all the switches and rheostats were in place and ready, I gave the signal, and David turned him on. Not at full power, but at about 1/3 the usual level. Everyone was smiling in anticipation when I said, “Oscar, are you there?” No response. All of us crowded around his backside; nothing whatever was out of place. He looked exactly as he did in the first photo and diagram we had made. We checked all the electrical connections—nothing amiss there, either. “Let’s try again. Turn him up full.”
David said, “C’mon, big guy, say something.” Oscar just stood there, saying nothing. We switched him off, then on again. Nothing. By now everyone’s stomachs had sunk. We were as silent as he was. Finally D’Arcy said what everyone else was probably thinking. “Do you suppose…”
“What?”
“Do you suppose he could be faking it?”
“You’re saying he’s alive and well, but just isn’t saying anything?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“Why would he do that?
“Maybe he’s playing a joke on us.”
I said, somewhat testily, I suppose, “Oscar, are you joking? If you are, it isn’t funny. Not the least bit.” He didn’t make a sound.
We all went to a nearby pizza place for dinner. It was crowded with students, and the décor was warm, with art on the walls and bric-a-brac everywhere, though nobody cared much. No one had a Prosecco, but we certainly had a couple of beers each, except for Omar, who asked the critical question, “How can we find out what the problem is?”
“Well, we can certainly find out whether he’s faking it,” I said.
David agreed. “I hate to do it, though.”
“Who wants to do it?” No one came forward. “Okay,” I said. “Set it up. I’ll do it myself.”
We left the unfinished pizzas and beers and returned to the lab. “You did put the pain sensors back in, didn’t you, D’Arcy?”
“Of course. They’ll work, no problem.”
I stood in front of Leonardo DiCaprio, which somehow made the experiment even less appealing. “Okay, give him level one.” If Oscar felt anything, he didn’t show it. “Let’s go all the way to five. Ready? Now.” At this level he had been beside himself with agony. On this night he felt nothing. But perhaps he had summoned all his resolve and courage and withstood the pain. I suppose it was distress more than anything else, but I tried one last time. Very quietly I said, “Six.” Oscar didn’t respond even to a level that would have brought him to his knees immediately. It was quite obvious that he felt nothing.
“Let’s all go home and come back Monday.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow,” David replied in a voice that showed all the emotion he was feeling.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s all sleep on this and maybe we’ll come up with something by tomorrow morning.”
