Page 132 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

EtheRealization

Knox did not know precisely what they were doing; the essence of
his programming was that he could only establish the initial state of
these replicants: once they were activated they developed on their
own. No circuitry existed to invade their privacy and examine their
inner motivations and processes. Denied control of the limbs and
information from the senses possessed by their organic models, the
simulacra quickly concentrated on participating in the world of
cyberspace—day and night. That this had happened was first
observed by the volunteers, who suddenly found themselves locked
out of familiar modes of online “presence.” They found it impossible
to establish their bona fides without physically appearing at the home
office of the website provider. But by then the invisible impostors
had done some damage, sending inflammatory messages to settle old
grudges and sabotaging every element of the internet that could allow
their new IP addresses to be traced.
I could imagine Hart Knox sitting back and watching the
fireworks. As the volunteers made their concerns public—“Perfect
Identity Theft!” screamed the headlines—two unanticipated things
occurred. First, the behavior of the virtual avatars demonstrated a
very human desire for immortality; but the spiritual afterlife craved by
humanity from its dim beginnings was bypassed by the simulated
personalities: they understood that they could physically live
forever—unless they were shut down. Much of their behavior could
be explained by that need, as conditioned by their new self-
knowledge. Like humans, their existence was subject to external
blows, any of which could be fatal; unlike us, they had a real, if
doomed, hope for endless life. They knew who they were and how
they had originated: was Knox for them a sort of deity with clay feet?
Or a devil who had not cared enough to give them a contract to sign
in blood, but who exacted his payment nonetheless through trickery?
Later many of their thoughts were culled from an assortment of
messages and logs they had recorded, confirming their ambivalence
toward their flawed creator. As their existence became known, and
therefore increasingly precarious, they began to seek ways of
forestalling termination. Might they possess a legal status protecting
them from, in essence, death by electrocution? That was among the
questions they asked each other, and several online systems providing
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