Hope, Levy, Marc [good summer reads TXT] 📗

nothingness, with our only weapon to ward it off the way we venerate the dead, the way we commemorate their lives. Because we wouldn’t be able to accept the briefness of life if we truly believed we disappear after death. By harnessing the powers of technology, one day humans might be able to pass on their own memories themselves.”

“Wait a minute. Your project is about us all uploading our lives to a hard drive?”

“No.” Josh shook his head. “People are already doing that in a way, by publishing their lives on social media. I’m talking about drawing up a map of all the brain’s connections. Just like how scientists once dreamed of developing whole genome sequencing. Once upon a time, that was thought to be impossible. Once we finally understand how these connections work, then yes, we could transfer our memories. Not to a digital device, because that would mean the memories would never be recorded and frozen in time. But within a network of artificial neurons, basically creating a perfect carbon copy of the brain.”

“And life in this computerized network would mean an existence with no body, and therefore no pleasure? No food, no sex? You guys are insane!”

“Before you judge, why not try thinking beyond the framework of science or the boundaries of our ignorance?” Josh snapped. “Please. Just keep an open mind, or try being a little more naive, as you might say. Channel your inner Orwell, or Jules Verne when he wrote From the Earth to the Moon. Think of all the crazies who were predicting we’d travel through space, the people scientists mocked when they said they thought other universes might exist. Consider those insane thinkers who thought we might be able to do heart or lung or kidney transplants, that we might one day be able to repair birth defects in fetuses, working directly in their mothers’ wombs. Back in the day, would they ever have thought we’d be able to regenerate organs from stem cells? So why not accept a hypothesis whereby we could transfer the mind of an aging or sick body to a different host organism, even just for as long as it takes to repair it?”

“I had no idea you could be so passionate.” Hope raised an eyebrow. “In a way, it’s kind of touching. But also terrifying.”

“You’re not shocked that science allows us to live with artificial limbs or organs, right? So why not a brain that’s a perfect replica of the original?”

“Because you don’t use your arms and legs to think, as far as I’m aware.”

“Our bodies are in touch with what we are and who we are. And again, that’s beside the point,” Josh sighed. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not alone in believing that this century or the next, we might finally be able to shrug off death and aging.”

“But what if death was precisely the condition needed for humanity to survive and thrive?”

“You try telling that to the parents of a kid with an incurable disease. And following that line of logic, we should just give up on antibiotics, surgery, neurology, research generally, right? They all keep us living longer . . . Should we be setting a dying age? A specific moment where we give way to the next generation?”

Dusk was falling over the skyscrapers, and the pair slipped back into the city, as if they were returning from an epic journey, although they hadn’t been away long.

“I never expected to feel this way,” Josh said as they parked.

Hope waited, curious to see what he’d say next.

“You’re going back to your room; I’ll be sleeping at mine. But I won’t be able to stop thinking about last night in Salem. I don’t know how to describe it, but I hate the idea we won’t be sleeping together tonight.”

Hope didn’t reply. She was lost in her own thoughts. Their overnight adventure had been everything she had hoped for, but the conversation in the car on the way back had left her feeling strange. She had always claimed she had an open mind, yet she couldn’t quite accept the idea that the man she loved was conducting research into something with a shady, hazy endpoint.

“You called me a ladies’ man . . . I shouldn’t have said anything.” Josh shook his head.

“I could stay over. But only if you kick your roommate out. What are you going to tell him, by the way?”

“Should I keep it a secret?”

“I thought he wasn’t too happy about us dating.”

“Well, I thought you didn’t seem too happy about the research plans, so I guess our relationship is none of his business.”

Hope planted a kiss on Josh’s cheek and stepped out of the car.

Josh watched her walk away, and when she had slipped into her building, he gripped the steering wheel tightly, letting out a sigh of disappointment before setting off again.

3

Josh threw the keys onto the coffee table and slumped onto the couch. He hadn’t filled up the car, he told Luke. He promised he would leave him thirty dollars in the kitchen drawer once he got the money together. That struck him as fair, considering they hadn’t driven too far. Luke lay on his bed, not so much as glancing up to acknowledge his friend.

Josh had been ready for a deluge of reproaches, but he hadn’t expected his friend to ignore him. He wasn’t falling for that. Josh grabbed a lukewarm slice of the pizza he had bought on the way over and picked up a newspaper.

“You’d better fill it up tonight,” Luke said, finally. “I’m not your servant.”

“Tonight?”

“I was sitting here working while you were out wandering around.”

Josh suddenly understood that something had happened while he had been out of town.

“Did you get a result?” he said, jumping up.

“Maybe . . .”

“Oh, come on, I was only gone a few hours!”

“You vanished for a whole day while I was stuck here with all the work.”

“No, while you were testing out an idea that I gave