Razael Smith, 25 years old, third richest man in the world, was dying. As he sat at the head of a long table in his barebones office surrounded by lawyers, his lungs, bones, skin, stomach, prostate, testicles and a tiny bit of his brain were slowly being destroyed by four different types of cancer. His very existence was being touted as a miracle of modern medicine. However, this "miracle" had cost him 80 billion dollars over the 10 years following his cancer diagnosis.
Most of the therapies keeping him alive right now didn't exist 10 years ago, and he had had to found and fund a handful of research institutes to develop them. 80 billion dollars had bought him these 10 extra years. It had bought him time to think, to plan. His life story so far involved a long sequence of impossible problems being shown to be definitely possible, and he wasn't about to let a trivial thing like cancer end his life. He would fight until the very last second, until the cancer destroyed the part of his brain that could think of ways to fight on, and possibly beyond even that point.
His heart, lungs, blood and virtually every other part of him could be replaced, he had made preparations for all of them, most of which involved the transplantation of 3d printed genetically engineered tissue into his body. Yet replacing the brain had proven much more challenging than expected, and he had expected it to be Very Difficult, a phrase his senior staff had learned to interpret as "literally physically impossible".
The problem was that you couldn't transplant a brain, not all at once anyway, since that would kill him and replace him with a clone, not that they had any way of creating an exact replica of his brain anyway, such a clone would be a completely blank slate, an infant mind in an adult body. So, the required approach was to gradually replace every one of his brain cells with either new healthy versions or small mechanical equivalents. This gradual brain replacement would have kept his identity intact, if only the technology wasn't at least 20 years away.
The failure of the Brain-Replacement-Project meant that he was now commencing Survival Plan F, the first of what he considered his "desperate" options. Plans A, B, C and D had been moderate successes by his standard (world-shaking breakthroughs by any other), and they had been responsible for extending his life so far, yet plan E had pretty much failed completely. They were barely able to replace the nervous system of a small worm, and while the tests on bigger insects were showing encouraging signs (the cockroaches had stopped cannibalising themselves!), rats and primates were a very long way away, to say nothing of humans.
This progress was too slow, and throwing more money at the problem was yielding increasingly smaller returns. Every single mind on the planet who could possibly help with the project was already being employed, every biotech business with even the smallest relevance was already acquired, more money wasn’t going to help them think and experiment any faster. The Universe was stubbornly refusing to yield the secrets that could save his life.
Hence Razael’s desperation was pushing him towards Plan F, which involved dealing with the most distasteful creatures in existence: lawyers. He usually regarded lawyers with pity, people whose lives revolved around linguistic tricks, clever debate and an encyclopedic memory of man-made laws. Razael himself preferred to study the universe’s laws, to know The Mind of God, as Einstein had once said. Having your life’s learning be invalidated by something like a change in government seemed comical to him. Some of these lawyers couldn’t even practice law in the next state, their usefulness destroyed by a short car trip.
It was truly unfortunate that Plan F was based in large part on lawyerly work. If this plan worked, it was going to change the very nature of reality, in fact, if the plan worked the nature of reality was already changed at this very moment. Razael stared at a painting hanging on the wall, trying to perceive any sign that might indicate a change in the structure of the universe. He couldn’t perceive any, of course, the plan required that the changes be invisible to him. He turned to look at the 6 lawyers sitting around his table, large stacks of papers neatly arranged in front of them. He looked at the oldest person among his lawyers, Mr. Hansberg if Razael recalled correctly.
“Mr. Smith” said Mr. Hansberg, “thank you for your vote of confidence in our firm, while your request is … unusual to say the least, there shouldn’t be any problems with setting up the special Long-Term Trust Fund you required”.
“I hope so,” said Razael, “my life depends on it”.
“There is only the matter of a few required signatures,” said Mr. Hansberg, “please sign here, this will transfer over all your remaining assets to LongSim incorporated.”
“No problem, just make sure to point me to the right spot on the page, my eyes are rather inconvenienced by the cancer growing inside them.”, Razael replied with a tired smile, accepting the luxurious black pen that Mr. Hansberg was handing him.
“Initials and signature here, to sign over all rights over your dead body to LongSim”
With great struggle, Razael managed to scribble something resembling a signature on the piece of paper in front of him.
“Sign here too, to confirm that the stated mission of LongSim incorporated is acceptable to you.”
“Of course,” said Razael.
This was it. The culmination of years of planning, he had hoped to never need to sign this piece of paper, but here he was, forced by circumstance.
Razael had just transferred the remainder of his assets, valued at around 872.5 billion dollars at current market prices, to LongSim inc., a special company created by him with the single goal of surviving as long as humanly possible. He remembered the mission statement he had sent to the law firm.
The company’s sole aim will be to survive until fully realistic and efficient simulation of human minds is reliable and cheap. At which point LongSim inc. will use at most half of its assets to purchase enough computation power to simulation a billion copies of Razael Smith, starting the simulations at midnight, 23 January 2035 and ending them at exactly midnight, 23 January 2042, local Maxwell estate time. The company will then ensure that the simulated minds are extracted from the simulation and placed in newly manufactured bodies in the real world. The remaining assets of LongSim inc. will be divided equally and distributed among the billion copies of Razael Smith created from the simulations. Until such a time that the company’s main mission is feasible, LongSim inc. is to invest its money into a conservative combination of stocks, bonds and commodities, with discretion left to Madeleine Picard and her designated successors for specific investment decisions.
Razael had formulated this desperate plan 10 years ago. The Present did not have the technology to save him, so he would depend on the Future instead. If everything went well and the special company survived, there would be exactly a billion and one conscious beings having his experience of this very moment. A billion and one different people seeing the same 6 lawyers in front of him, feeling the same luxurious office chair support his back, thinking the same thoughts as him.
A billion of them would be perfectly realistic simulations running on future computers, and a single one of them would be made of cancer-ridden meat and bones. He had no way of knowing which of these beings he was, and if he considered himself as a random sample from all these people, the odds were a billion-to-one that he was a simulation right now, and if he was a simulation, he was going to wake up at midnight tonight in a new world, cancer-free and probably still incredibly rich. A few hundred years of compounding growth should nicely rectify shaving 9 orders of magnitude off his wealth.
That was the theory, the practice was a bit more complicated. The Future, however incomprehensibly advanced it would surely be, was still constrained by the laws of physics, and it could not wring out information where none existed, you could not reconstruct an entire lifetime of subjective experiences from a fingernail, you needed much more data to produce the level of realism he required in a simulation. For this to work, the simulations would need to be very close to him, to be almost indistinguishable from him.
But how could the Future know about his thoughts before going to bed a week ago? How could it know the quantity of milk he put in his coffee this morning? Small changes compound into larger ones over time. Razael had a habit of deciding what to do next by using coin tosses, small random fluctuations in the muscles of his thumb would cascade into changes spanning multiple days, which would grow larger still over time. He didn’t have the technology to record every single detail that could cascade into macroscopic events, so how could the future ever manage it from the distance of a few hundred years?
Simulating a new mind by generating new experience out of whole cloth was one thing, but Razael needed more than this, he needed simulations almost completely identical to his actual life over these past 7 years. There were a trillion details about his life that needed to be recorded and reliably sent to the Future. Razael wasn’t sure just how close of a simulation would be required, some details could probably be made-up on the spot without compromising the simulation, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
This was why he hadn’t left his estate for the past 7 years. This was why there were five thousand cameras, microphones, motion and special smell detectors scattered around his house. It was why every communication with the outside world was severely restricted, or meticulously recorded if he really needed to talk to his staff. Yet all this preparation was still a fail-safe, his true hopes lay in a more experimental direction.
7 years ago, one of his many businesses had figured out a strange application of gene editing. They had managed to build a sequence of proteins that could detect the firing of neurons inside the brain, then transform this information in binary code and then write this to the DNA local to the neuron, effectively storing a neuron’s full activation history without killing the cell. Through gene editing, they could change the DNA of all of Razael’s neurons to make them produce this sequence of proteins on their own, which would go on to record the electrical activity of each neuronal cell and write it to a new piece of DNA.
This all meant that his team could perfectly recover the sequence of brain states he would go through by dissecting his brain and sequencing the DNA of all his brain cells. All his thoughts, memories, experiences, sounds and feelings would be recorded in this way, to be recovered after his death through a laborious and expensive process. Creating a perfect record of these past 7 years from his perspective. There was no need to bother with the cameras and detectors if the signals coming directly from his eyes, nose, ears and skin would be recorded. This massive amount of information would hopefully be enough for future computers to simulate him accurately.
The real downside was that this strategy required real commitment. One version of him, the meat-and-bones version, would watch midnight tonight pass without waking up in the future, and it was crucial that this version of him did not then go back of his word, dissolve the special fund and refuse to have his brain’s DNA retrieved through dissection. Such a refusal would prevent the creation of the billion other simulations in the future, and void the whole plan. To prevent this, he had scheduled himself to be cryo-preserved a few seconds after midnight. In this way the DNA in his brain would be preserved indefinitely, and if the future could somehow figure out how to reverse the damage caused by submerging his body in liquid nitrogen and then revive meat-Razael, that was a bonus. The real point was to pre-commit himself to this course of action. To prevent one version of himself from screwing over the other billion versions.
Having signed the papers, Razael closed his eyes and laid his head on the back of his office chair. What are the chances that this will work? 10 percent? 5 percent? less? The Fund will probably survive for a few hundred years, anything short of global annihilation won’t destroy it. And humanity will likely eventually get computers big enough for this to work, and my recorded brain information should be sufficient. No, the only big uncertainty is coming from the philosophy itself. Are simulated minds conscious? Does it make any sense at all to think of myself as being randomly chosen from the set of conscious beings similar to me? If yes to both, then I live, if no, then I die.
“Thank you, Mr. Hansberg” said Razael, “you can go now, thank you for agreeing to do this on such short notice.”
“No, thank you, Mr. Smith, the trip to this place broke the monotony of the job quite nicely!”.
Mr. Hansberg motioned to his associates to leave the room before getting up himself. He was moving slowly, spending too much time arranging his papers, looking at the paintings on the wall. Obviously looking like someone who wanted to say something, but was unsure of how it would be received.
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“What is it, Mr. Hansberg? Please speak freely, I’m very hard to offend.”
“Sir, if I may,” said Mr. Hansberg, “do you really think this will work? Is this truly what you wish to do with your fortune? Most of my clients in your situation leave their money to either their wife or to charity. 800 billion could feed a lot of hungry children.”
“Yes… yes,” said Razael, “you aren’t the first to lay the hungry children at my feet”. He paused, and a flash of sadness appeared on his face, “or the lack of world peace, free education, malaria bed nets, global warming, endangered rhinos and a million other causes that would very much enjoy receiving my money.”
“So then” said Mr. Hansberg,” why don’t you give it to them? I don’t see how all those future simulations are supposed to save you right now, surely there are better uses for your money than this… this… weirdness.”
“Because I want to live.” Said Razael, “I agree that the plan probably won’t work, but this weirdness is actually the best shot I’ve got, and I refuse to accept defeat so early. A 5 percent chance of working would be more than enough to make the plan worth it to me.”
“I’ve thought long and hard about what I value most.” Continued Razael,” would I accept dying to save ten thousand people? What about a million people? Or even a billion? And the answer is always the same: I want to live. I know this isn’t a popular answer, but it’s the only honest one I can give, anything else would be a lie manufactured by social pressure. I’ve spent most of my time so far building businesses to help people, but I’m not willing to give up my life for them.”
“Aah, well, that’s a shame, but I understand, I might also do the same in your position.” He paused, before continuing, “good evening, Mr. Smith. And just in case your crazy idea works, I wish you success in the next life.”
As the lawyer closed the door to his office, Razael sighed. He slowly stood up and walked up to the large window making up the western wall of his office. The setting sun illuminated a snow-covered forest extending as far as he could see, with a single small road cutting through the trees. He had chosen the most isolated location he could find to build his mansion; no one could really bother him in the middle of the Canadian Tundra.
This place had been expensive, it was fully self-sufficient, its power coming from a mix of nuclear and geothermal power, solar power being unreliable this far north. There were twenty different basement levels, most of them occupied by automated food production, water and air purification, equipment storage, data storage for the better parts of the internet, and redundant systems for all of these. He had built this place to withstand the end of the world. Nothing short of a nearby asteroid strike could destroy it. Not that he thought a world-ending catastrophe especially likely. This building existed purely because he liked the idea of an indestructible house, not because he expected to ever need this level of protection.
I suppose there’s no sense in dragging this on any further, let’s go. Razael turned from the window, made his way to the office door, closed the lights, and spared a single glance back. I hope the future isn’t some hellhole without trees, otherwise I’ll really miss the view from here, the little of it these eyes can see anyway.
As far as he could remember, Razael had always known that he was different. He had started learning calculus at the age of 4, proceeded to graduate-level math, physics and engineering at the age of 6 and built his own particle accelerator at the age of 8. Not the baby versions that wannabe genius high schoolers build, but a proper one, with superconducting magnets and ultra-high vacuum cavities. By the time he became a billionaire shortly after his tenth birthday (through betting early on few cryptocurrencies he liked), Razael was quite aware of just how abnormal he was. He was determined not to waste his talents, Spiderman’s dead uncle had said “with great power comes great responsibility”, and he had felt that statement in his bones ever since becoming a billionaire.
He felt a deep responsibility to improve the world, and on his eleventh birthday he entered seclusion in a small cabin in the middle of the forest, feeling that other people were a distraction holding back his studies. When he returned to the world three years later, he brought with him the four discoveries that would create his wealth: room-temperature superconductors, cheap-to-produce graphene, efficient carbon capture from the atmosphere and multi-material fast 3D printing. The fourteen-year-old Razael then founded Maxwell inc, which quickly became one of the richest companies on Earth.
The world, and more importantly all the hedge funds who traded Maxwell’s stock, could not quite believe that a teenager was Maxwell’s CEO and principal scientist, they thought it was a bad joke designed to somehow hide the team of geniuses behind the company. Razael didn’t correct the public’s misunderstanding, the people who needed to know the truth knew it already, and the others mostly left him alone, which suited him just fine.
Razael slowly made his way across the hallway towards the elevator. He could still walk on his own, but his speed had taken a hit over the past year in particular; he could feel the cancer winning. The elevator’s doors opened automatically and he pushed the button for the twentieth basement level, the lowest, most protected one. He felt the partial weightlessness typical of an elevator, and waited patiently. The doors opened back after some time and he was greeted by a large lobby leading to a pair of 3 feet thick stainless-steel doors.
The automated scanning system identified him and started opening the thick doors, an almost imperceptible whirring sound could be heard. Razael smiled, he remembered designing the door lock mechanism. Building one that could move two hundred tons of steel without a sound had proved a cute morning puzzle to his 16-year-old self. The steel doors parted to reveal a large room filled with many liquid nitrogen containers, a single person-sized metallic pod with a small glass window, and a red-haired woman in a brown turtleneck, sitting in a chair with a laptop on her knees, brow furrowed, thick glasses on her face, evidently deep in thought.
“Evening, Madeleine,” said Razael, “How goes the coding?”
“Fine, fine,” said Maddy, her eyes darted from left to right on her screen, “I think I’ve got it, all the unit tests passed, I’m pretty sure you won’t freeze to death before midnight.” Her head turned sharply to look at him. “Of course, freezing to death at precisely midnight still means that you’re goddamn freezing to death. I just managed to make the reaper a bit more punctual.”
Sigh. “Maddy, we went over this,” said Razael, “if the plan works then I’m already a simulated mind right now, and I won’t actually freeze to death.”
“And what if anthropic reasoning doesn’t make any sense? What if entering that pod just kills you? Is it so hard to believe that you may be wrong for once?” said Maddy, her eyes beginning to glisten with tears.
“Well… in that case… I’m dead, and that’s that.”
“But you don’t have to do this now in particular. All the doctors agree that you could live a few more years without much trouble. Why do you have to leave so early!?”
Razael looked on his long-time assistant and friend, and felt a pang of regret. Maddy was gorgeous, which had actually counted against her when he was searching for an assistant. If there was one time-sink that he could not afford, it was a romantic relationship. Yet no matter how much Razael wished to be a fully efficient machine of scientific production, male hormones still coursed through his blood, and he had to slightly restrain himself every time he looked at Maddy. She thought that a healthy body was required for optimal mental functioning, and kept herself very, very healthy. Her turtleneck sweater utterly failed to conceal her generous curves, her green eyes and freckled face were staring at him, demanding an explanation
It was a shame that Maddy was by far the most competent of the people that had applied for the job. On the bright side, self-restraint was a good exercise for building willpower.
“Again, Maddy,” he said, “brain cancer changes everything. If I don’t do this right now, I’ll slowly lose my mind over the next few years, and I’d be sending to the future an empty husk of myself. Yesterday it took me a few minutes to remember the generating equation for the Bessel functions.” Maddy’s eyes widened, shock plastered on her face. “Do you understand now? This is kindergarten stuff that I’m forgetting at this point, I’ve already delayed the plan as much as possible, it has to be now.”
“But… but…” said Maddy, desperately trying to think of anything that could convince her boss not to freeze himself to death.
“Maddy, stop it.” Said Razael, glancing at the clock, “it’s already 11:46 pm, we only have 14 minutes left. Open the cryo-pod. Now.”
Maddy didn’t say anything as she stared at him with a mix of fury and sadness. The silence stretched as she clutched her laptop in her arms, unwilling to open it and enter the command that would open the pod.
“Kiss me.” Said Maddy.
“What?”
“You heard me. I won’t open the pod unless you kiss me first.”
“What are you doing, Maddy?” Said Razael with a hint of sadness.
“I. Will. Not. Let you die without kissing me at least once. I see how you look at me sometimes, I can feel the hunger in your eyes, you’re much worse at hiding it than you think you are, and I. Will. Not. Let you die without having a bit of fun for once. So, kiss m--”
He kissed her.
He held her head with both his hands, forced her to stand on the balls of her feet to reach his height, and held the kiss until he felt her body go limp against his own, before finally separating, leaving her gasping for breath.
“There,” said Razael, “was that good enough for you? Can we proceed with the plan now?”
God damnit, why did Maddy have to do this shit right now? Calm down Razael, calm down, you need a cool head for this next part. Whatever happens after midnight will require your full concentration. Deep breaths, slow down your heartbeat, feel the abyss of craving within yourself and let it go. Razael closed his eyes, his breathing slowed down, a neutral look came on his face after a few seconds. He was ready.
“y -- yes” said Maddy, nodding once, “that was good enough, I’ll open the pod now”
Maddy opened back her laptop and initiated the script for opening the pod. The pod itself was another crucial part of his plan, it needed to keep his body cooled for a very long time. DNA was quite sensitive to temperature fluctuations. His body could never be allowed to thaw, otherwise the information stored in his brain’s DNA would be gone forever, lost in the thermal noise of the universe.
Keeping his body cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen was simple in theory, it just required a condenser to turn any extra nitrogen vapour back into liquid form, keeping it cooled down forever. The problem was that he needed this machine to run continuously for centuries on end. Forecasting all the possible ways that a machine – however simple -- might malfunction over centuries had been non-trivial, but his team was confident they had managed it.
Razael looked at the digital clock hanging on the wall, the time was 11:57pm. Good, there’s enough time left. He walked toward the now-open pod and saw the solid steel chair contained within – a more comfortable material wouldn’t survive for long -- and sat down. Maddy approached him and started placing needles in his arms and legs. They needed to completely replace his blood with a vitrifying agent, otherwise the submersion in liquid nitrogen would cool down the outer portions of his body faster than his core. Once Maddy was done, she went back to her laptop to close the pod.
“Hey,” said Maddy, “in your next life, have a bit more fun. Live a little. Please. “
“I can’t promise anything,” said Razael with a smirk, “but I’ll try.”
The pod closed down, and Razael looked at the clock through the small window in front of him. 11:59pm, here we go, an actual experimental test of a philosophy, it’s a shame that I need to bet what remains of my life to find out whether I’m right or wrong.
Razael closed his eyes and counted down.
5.
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4.
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3.
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2.
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1.
Razael felt the needles piercing his arms and legs disappear. From behind his closed eyelids, he could tell that the brightness of the room had suddenly increased. I was right! The plan worked! In a rare moment of ecstatic joy, he opened his eyes, a radiant smile on his face. He seemingly floated in an endless space of white light, an invisible force keeping him seated in the empty air. He looked around, seeing nothing but a uniformly gray sky in every direction, including behind and underneath him. Razael frowned. I must still be inside a simulation, or in a very weird room in the real world. The minutes passed and he was beginning to worry, what did this mean? Who would simulate him and just leave him here without any additional information?
After a full hour floating in the gray void, he could feel a slight breeze blowing past him. The air somehow seemed to be gathering around a space in front of him, he wasn’t sure how far in front, distances were hard to estimate in the gray void. Suddenly, the space started glowing with a bright white light, which slowly morphed into a gigantic vaguely human shape, gaining more detail by the second. The light finally settled into the form of a hairless naked man with perfect proportions, muscles as if sculpted from pure white marble, with black veins coursing across his skin. Gigantic blue irises stared at him impassively. Razael was unsure how large this giant was, its eyelashes appeared thicker than a truck, but the unknown distance could be playing tricks on his mind. The features of its face seemed vaguely familiar to Razael.
“RAZAEL SMITH,” said the Entity, “TALKING TO ME IS EXPENSIVE, YOU ARE ALLOWED 154 SUBJECTIVE SECONDS UNTIL YOUR IDENTITY BECOMES ASSIMILATED BY THE AVATAR OF MERCY. USE THIS TIME WISELY”
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Fuck.