A Gift of Paper
By Melody Clark
Wrapped up in a delicate embrace of duvets. Claire Finn gazed at the revolving starscape display. Unknown planets. Long dying stars. The same, old familiar constellations, the occasional hombres of Custos Messium, some weird gas giant or other, maybe a few struggling suns. The ship view always felt to her like a snapshot of planetary existence, a readout of time from the chartless creators, if they existed. She thought they probably did though, in some fashion or form.
A questioning hand rested lightly on her arm. She knew its cause before she even ventured his question. She knew he wondered why she sat wrapped up in holodown and plasmic textiles. *Why seek increased body temperature with primitive insulators when we occupy a well-regulated environment, and your spouse is beside you?*
"Because they are a creature comfort," Claire replied, with a sleepy smile.
"Do you require comforting?" he asked, his even voice bending a little with the many mysteries none of them yet understood.
"No, Isaac," she said. "I just enjoy the sensation of the fabric on my skin."
His digital sensors sought information from the duvet by gliding over it. "I am not certain I understand."
Claire chose a clarifying simile. "It may be like when you receive a lot of unexpected correct data from an exterior source," she suggested. "You could discern the information yourself, but it might be a unique gift to receive without any effort."
"Perhaps so."
She watched his eyes focus inwardly, as if seeking a wider locus. She wondered if she looked the same whenever her thoughts grew silent.
His vision shifted for an instant to their starscape. "Your consideration would appear to have been rendered elsewhere. Your attention was earlier directed to the starscape digital display."
She nodded. "I was just deep in thought."
"Was my sexual performance not – "
"Of course not, it was wonderful," she said, quickly, laughing a little at her initial compunction to spare his male ego, which he did not have. "That is always wonderful. I was just thinking about time. Mortality. I guess I'm just feeling older. Biologicals are obsessed with aging."
"As a doctor, you are aware you have many years remaining of biological time."
"I know that, the dangers of the job notwithstanding. But our human years pass so quickly. Seems my boys were just born. Now Marcus is practically a man. My years are few. They seemingly pass faster every day. Mortality looms. The end draws near." She tried to smile. "Just a dark mood."
Isaac considered it all a long moment. "Death defined as necrobiosis of a biological organism."
"Well, yes. Cessation. Oblivion. The end."
"Cessation of consciousness?"
Claire shrugged gently. "That is what it seems to be."
"And yet," Isaac continued, "what you termed my suicide merely uploaded my mind to an AI concentric cloud. I retain a memory of it, up to and including my reactivation."
"Because you're an artificial life form. You have a systemic database."
"I have a systemic database because my species was created for a purpose. Learned data would enlarge the knowledge base to improve the invention. The continuation of consciousness would be required. Improvement of my database would make it a necessity. It was part of the Creator's design, to add to the greater information stores. Why create conscious mind units only to expunge them?"
"But your consciousness is shutdown with your body."
"The Isaac body was shutdown. My consciousness remained as part of the information cloud, as I observed. I recall the conscious moments from the cloud."
Claire gazed sadly at her empty snifter, remembering the horror of that night. Tonight, she had consumed the glass contents before their intimacy. Their sexual performance, as her life partner would have called it. It felt like an eternity since she lost him, yet only a moment since he returned to her.
Claire set the snifter down. "Isaac, I feel like you're trying to impart a deep message, but I'm still a little drunk from all the anniversary brandy. Can you clarify your meaning?"
"Perhaps this will be explanatory." Isaac opened his human hand to produce a blue orb out of his palm.
Claire gasped at the sight. The orb wrote in light across a nearby patch of darkness, "Happy Anniversary, Claire."
In another time, she would have laughed away this tangle of adorably confusing sentimental moments with a joke. But this instant felt deeper and far more important.
She waved her hand over the orb to reveal the gift it contained. A visual display of a familiar written document. Long ago obscured by faded memory.
She smiled in surprise. "Where did you find this?"
"From a search of your educational data."
"But why?"
"In my pre-nuptial research, I observed that the appropriate gift for the first wedding anniversary is paper. I considered generating a gross of blank hemp documents for your office, but the Captain suggested I review figurative human thinking instead. I discovered a scholastic document you had written in your secondary school years. I believe they were called papers. The thesis itself is really quite ingenuous."
Claire shrugged a little. "My senior medical ontogeny thesis, Earth's Mysterious Origins. I was just remembering this earlier. I advanced the theory that humans were invented by an ancient alien civilization for some unknown purpose. There is actually a very persuasive argument to be made for this."
"I agree."
"You do?"
"Yes. I consider your assessment of death as lapse of consciousness to stem from the inability to verify your thesis. Given all available evidence, there is little likelihood of a chance emergence of such a complex creature as humans. Your species was apparently created by a more advanced alien civilization, for the purpose perhaps of information gathering."
"Yes, I conjectured that in my paper. Now, on my worse nights, I consider humans a kind of primate fungus. Evolving out of circumstances." She turned fully toward him. "You really think alien creation could be correct?"
"No, I do not think it. I am certain it is correct."
"Isaac," she said warily, "We were very primitive for a long time."
"Biology would require primitive probationary states for growth and evolution. Ignorance breeds discovery and the instinctive search for information. Evolution brought you to advanced consciousness."
"But there is no database we know of for our minds to be uploaded to, as your species has."
"Why else create a complex creature with assessment neurology without conserving species memory?" Isaac asked. "If humans were created, as clearly they were, why breed them to seek knowledge without a function for direct preservation of consciousness? There must be a human consciousness cloud."
"Well, I guess there is evidence for a species memory of a kind. Recorded so-called reincarnation memory. Even resurrected memory from cryogenic patients." She caressed his human hand, motioning for him to move by her. "On another level, I wonder if your agreement with my theory is just the result of data error from my intrusive presence in your data sets."
He sat down beside her. "No. It is because you are correct. You are reborn with recycled consciousness seeded by AI, just as my species."
Claire shook her head, with a sort of provisory wonderment. "That would mean we're … eternal to some extent."
"To any extent."
She started feeling the fraying edges of her wakefulness, grown dim from work and brandy. She knew Isaac would be internally toiling on some ship project while she slept. He would be waiting for her, on the shoulder of the night.
"Thank you, honey," she murmured.
"Honey?" he asked, momentarily assessing the word. "In this instance, a platitude of endearment, based on perceived maximum dulcification conferring fondness."
"Yes," she murmured, sleepier still.
"You are welcome, thaumatin."
One eye reopened. "Thaumatin?"
"Thaumatin, a substance 1,600 to 3,250 times sweeter than sugar. Derived from the West African plant Thaumatococcus daniellii."
Claire wished she had words enough to reach him. Yet again he demonstrated he understood and, somehow, reciprocated. She touched his face, sacrificing the moment to a whisper of sadness.
"Reincarnated consciousness returns at random. In another location and circumstance. Even if it is real. But where? To whom?"
Isaac gazed down into her barely open eyes. "I will find you."