Sanctuary               
                                   By Michael Cerkowski
 
               There is a meadow, in a clearing in the forest, with tall fragrant
          grass and moss-brushed boulders by a cool, clear stream. Birds call
          among the trees. There is a girl, small and quiet, with dark hair and
          dark eyes. She sits by the brook with an orange cat at her side, and
          they watch the water slide over the stones. The sun is warm, the shadows
          deep, and the world is just a dream.

               I will always remember a certain night last October. It had stormed
          all day, but by nightfall the rain had gone, replaced by a brisk, chill
          wind. Fall was in the air. Looking out the lab window at the clouds
          being driven past the quarter moon, I decided to step outside and greet
          the season. Standing on the sidewalk, gazing skyward as I tried to spot
          Jupiter through the clouds, I suddenly realized that I wasn't alone. One
          of the children from the apartments down the street was standing against
          a tree about fifteen feet away. Actually, she was slumped against it,
          staring at nothing with the expression of someone who hurts too much to
          cry. A car whirred by, and as it passed over a fallen limb, there was a
          crack loud as a gunshot. The girl didn't stir. I started to turn away,
          but something about that look changed my mind. I don't generally have
          much to do with children, or with people in general, for that matter.
          Books are better company, and computers are better co-workers, at least
          in my experience. Remembering that night, I think that I saw in her
          expression the suffering of a fellow creature, instead of just another
          anonymous face. I walked over to her, staying on the lighted sidewalk to
          avoid frightening her. "Is everything all right?" I asked. She looked up
          at me, not alarmed or suspicious, but as though she really didn't care
          if I was a murderer. "Nothing is all right." She looked about nine years
          old. Not really knowing what to say, I asked if there was anything that
          I could do. "Not unless you're God or the world's greatest vet." Her
          expression didn't change, but a tear ran down her face and fell silently
          to the ground. "You mean a veterinarian?" She nodded jerkily. "Roger, my
          cat, is sick. The doctor says it's his kidneys, and he's not going to
          get better. He says he might be able to keep him going a few weeks, but
          my parents don't want to spend any more money and they say what's the
          point he's old. He's not that old! He's been my best friend since I was
          little, and I love him. I don't WANT him to die! It's not fair."
               She managed to hold back the tears, but it looked like the effort
          was killing her. Maybe it was this un-childlike suffering that was my
          undoing. Before I even realized what I was saying, the words were out:
          "Come to my lab, this building behind me, tomorrow. Bring Roger, but
          don't expect too much. I want to show you something." The look of
          confused hope in her eyes was every bit as painful to see as the
          anguish. "You mean you can help him?" Resisting the urge to run away, I
          tried to look stern. "I don't know. Maybe. I had a cat like Roger...
          just come tomorrow, if you want to. Around noon." She gave me a look of
          grim determination. "We'll be there." As she ran away down the street,
          I realized that I didn't know her name.
               I didn't sleep much or well that night. The next morning, I
          continued to question my sanity, even as I set up the equipment. An old
          IBM mainframe, state of the art in the nineties, dominated my rented
          warehouse lab. My development work on virus filters for
          telecommunications interfaces had paid for some fairly interesting, if
          old, hardware. Along with the IBM and some conventional disk drives, I
          had in my possession four high-temp superconducting memory units that a
          team at CalTech had hoped would be the Next Big Thing in information
          storage. They weren't; not exactly anyway. One of them was already
          running and linked with the computer. I spent two hours uncrating
          another one and preparing it for use, all the while telling myself that
          I wasn't really going to go through with this. When the necessary
          modifications had been completed and the unit connected and 
          tested, it was eleven twenty. I reassured myself with the thought that
          she wouldn't show up, that in the cold light of day, she'd decide that
          I was a nut or a deviant and would stay away. As I was beginning to
          worry that she might decide to tell her parents, or worse yet the
          police, there was a knock at the lab door. Swallowing my heart, I opened
          it. There she stood, holding a medium sized cardboard box. In the box
          was a large orange tiger cat, staring at me with a rather queasy but
          amiable expression. His bones were large, and he looked like he may have
          been fat once, but it had melted off him. He was definitely ill, but
          still curious about what was going on. "Hello, Roger" I said into the
          box. Then to the girl: "Hello, I didn't catch your name - I'm Joseph
          Weller. Please come in." She came slowly into the lab. Puzzled, but
          apparently not alarmed by what she saw, the girl placed the box gently
          on the floor, telling the cat to stay inside. He gave her a tolerant
          look and curled up for a nap. She looked closely at me. "I'm Alicia
          Stern. I live over there." Gesturing at the south wall of the lab. "I
          thought that you were a vet or a doctor. Where's your med stuff?" I took
          a deep breath. "Before I explain, I want to show you something. Please
          step over here." I walked over to an old armchair that was placed
          incongruously in front of a remote workstation. "Have you ever played
          any of the VR games they have at the 'plex?" She nodded. "This is
          something like them, but instead of only part of the simulated reality
          being in your mind, it's ALL done through induction. I know that you're
          wondering what this has to do with Roger's problem, but if you'll trust
          me for five minutes, I can show you. It's very safe, I use it every day.
          If you'll put the helmet on and tell me when you're ready, I want you to
          meet someone." In her place, I doubt that I would have done it; but
          after giving me an appraising stare, then looking over at her cat asleep
          in the box, Alicia placed the helmet, a modified VRcade model, on her
          head and said that she was ready. I typed the entry code and activated
          the interface. After a moment, she closed her eyes and her face grew a
          little slack. She began to speak:  "This looks like somebody's house. I
          don't get it. Oh, there's a cat on the couch. Is he part of the game?
          Here, kitty. He's coming over to me. I think he's going to jump on my -
          hey!" Her body flinched in the chair. "I can feel him! I can feel him
          sitting on my lap. He wants me to pet him. He's ... wait, where are you
          going? Why are you scared? He's gone!" At this point I terminated the
          interface, saying softly "Sorry, Gus." 
               Alicia's eyes opened, and she stood up. " That wasn't like the
          games in the arcade. That was like it was real." I looked her in the
          eyes. "In one important way, that was real." She stared right back at
          me. "What do you mean?" I turned away and began to pace nervously. "The
          cat in the simulated house, his name is Gus, and he is, or was, a real
          cat. I think he still is." The girl looked surprised but not
          incredulous."  You mean he's a real cat, but he's IN the computer?" I
          guess kids watch enough of this stuff on video to make it seem
          reasonable. It had taken me considerably longer to get used to the
          concept.

               I can easily pinpoint when my interest in the nature of
          consciousness began. Daniel, my lover, was killed in a car crash. Even
          now, I can hardly bear to think of it. At the time, however, I was
          enveloped by it. We had been a family, Danny, Gus and I. His death was
          so sudden, so unexpected, that I could not let go, nor could I accept
          the fact that he was gone forever. I have never been particularly
          religious, and my desperate search for solace in the idea of Heaven was
          unsuccessful. However much my heart needed to believe, my mind was not
          convinced. So I turned to science for insight into the soul.
               Much has been accomplished these early years of the century in the
          field of artificial intelligence. Inductive holographic scanning of the
          brain has yielded the capacity to store thought and non-chemical memory
          patterns. This recording technology, combined with ever more
          sophisticated computers and software, has resulted in the development of
          machines that appear in almost every way to be aware. Almost.
          The difference, while hard to define in any technical way, is always
          expressed in the same manner by computer scientists. The programs do not
          possess a sense of self. They have no central identity, although it is
          easy to make them appear otherwise. Having looked without success for
          the soul in intelligence, I sought it elsewhere. While skimming a book
          on the latest advances in Quantum Physics, I came upon a reference to a
          much earlier work. It had been published near the turn of the century
          and dealt with the nature of consciousness. I located a copy of "The
          Quantum Self" by Danah Zohar and soon realized that I was on to
          something. Zohar's theory that identity is a basic component of matter
          has been pretty much ignored. Her hypothesis that self awareness is the
          product of a resonance among molecules in a cell, an electrically driven
          Bose-Einstein condensate, had never to my knowledge been tested. I
          couldn't believe this; the idea seemed so logical, so right. By this
          time, I was finally beginning to accept Daniel's death. I had found no
          blessed lie to believe in, but I was beginning to see a possible basis
          for the soul. I suspected that this theory, with its implied gift of
          self-awareness to virtually all living creatures, had not sat well with
          the anthropocentric scientific community, and was thus dismissed. I was
          not going to follow suit. I subsequently did two things; I began to
          research the possibility of testing Zohar's theory, and upon further
          reflection, I became a vegetarian. 
             I had recently made a nice bit of money on some software I had
          developed. In the course of upgrading my lab I had become familiar with
          several retailers who also dealt in used merchandise, much of it from
          universities and corporate R&D facilities that tended to replace
          equipment when it began to fall too far behind the cutting edge of
          technology. I had been looking into superconductors, and the appearance
          of the CalTech memory units was like a sign from the mythical heavens.
          I purchased all four of them.
             I had decided that the most promising way to test for the         
          presence of self-awareness would be to impose the matrix of an inductive
          brain scan on the superconducting core of one of the modules and then
          look for changes in the pattern. I hoped that the field within the core
          would fulfill the requirement for a "pumped" Bose-Einstein condensate.
          Since I did not want to use lab animals, I would use my own pattern.
          With mounting excitement I made the scan, then fed it into the memory
          module. I was rewarded with nothing more than a stored recording of my
          own perception of the experiment. I tried several times more, with the
          same disappointing results. It was quite by accident that later that
          day, while making another recording, I had to check a connection on the
          unit. My head must have come within a certain critical area of or
          proximity to the machine's electromagnetic field. The analytic program
          that was overseeing the experiment suddenly began to detect independent
          activity within the module. As I tore the headset off and rushed to my
          master terminal, the anomaly rapidly faded away. Whatever had been
          briefly present in the core was now gone.
             Many hopeful repetitions yielded the same tantalizing, frustrating
          result. Perhaps I was capturing some elusive essence from my own mind,
          but it seemed incapable of independent existence, a mere echo. 
             It was a few weeks later that Gustav, the old black and white
          neutered tomcat who for many years had been my companion, began to lose
          weight and generally act out of sorts. After a week of hoping that he
          was just suffering from a stomach bug, I brought him to the local animal
          hospital. They did some tests and informed me that he was suffering from
          irreversible kidney failure. I was crushed. In my mind, it was Daniel
          all over again. Gus was still with me, but already he was walking in the
          land of the dead. It way have been intuitive reasoning, or perhaps just
          grief and desperation, but I decided that there might be a way to save
          him. Whether I would be preserving his "soul" from oblivion, holding it
          back from a better place, (which I doubted) or just disturbing his last
          hours for nothing, I didn't know. I knew only that I had to try.
             The preparations were simple enough. I rigged up a comfortable cat-
          sized induction headset. I then located the area on the memory module's
          housing that was closest to the superconductor. I placed a thin soft
          cushion on this spot, and applied some fur gathered from the couch, for
          familiarity. Gus didn't mind being recorded, although he thought it an
          odd game. While running the scan, I brought various objects of past
          interest for his inspection, in the hopes of eliciting as many memories
          as possible. I wondered how much of one's past might really be recorded
          in this manner. I then stored the scan in conventional memory and, after
          spending a last hour alone with my old friend, I called the
          veterinarian. Telling him that I wanted my cat put to sleep in his
          favorite spot, I offered him an extra hundred dollars to come and do it
          for me. He agreed, and I made the final preparations. Fortunately, Gus
          had never minded the lab, and had often perched on the mainframe when he
          could get away with it. As he lay tiredly on the cushion with my arm
          around him, the injection was administered and I squeezed a remote
          switch to send his brain scan to the module beneath him. We parted.
          After a while, when it was over, and the vet had let himself out, I
          moved away from the body of my friend to the main console. The module
          was generating a steady, seemingly independent field that very much
          resembled Gus's scan, complete with the moment to moment variations that
          are normal for a living subject. I was overwhelmed. It seemed that I had
          succeeded, but what exactly had happened? Was Gus in there, or had I
          merely managed to create some sort of non-software program? There was
          only one way, if any, to find out. I had recently equipped the mainframe
          with a state of the art virtual reality program, and for practice had
          used it to create a simple but very convincing simulation of my kitchen
          and living room. Now I realized that if Gus really was in there, he
          would be confused and in need of familiar reference points. I created a
          two - participant interface with the simulation, one half using my
          workstation scanner and the other linked directly to the memory module.
          I had no idea if it even stood a chance of working. Praying to I don't
          know who, I put the headset on and activated the simulation. The lab
          around me faded away, replaced by a dreamlike version of my living room.
          I found myself sitting in the recliner, as programmed, but there was no
          sign of Gus. My heart fell. With no real hope, I called his name. After
          several seconds, a familiar shape emerged from behind the virtual couch.
          Gus glanced around warily, gave me a stern "what have you done now?"
          look, and jumped into my lap. I could feel the warmth of his body, hear
          his low purr, and even smell his slightly rank scent. We spent the next
          ten minutes just sitting there, enjoying the reassurance of each other's
          company. Then I heard the tone that signalled my timed withdrawal from
          the simulation. I quickly put Gus down on the "rug" as the room faded
          away and the lab returned.
             Leaving the program running for Gus, I dazedly wandered upstairs to
          my living area. I was torn between two conflicting thoughts. The first
          was that I had really done it; I had actually succeeded in storing a
          personality, a "living soul". The other thought was that I had merely
          created a very convincing new type of program, and was now creating an
          equally grand delusion to go with it. What was tearing me apart was not
          being able to think of a way to determine the truth. As I prepared and
          ate a meal that I can't remember, my mind was immersed in thought
          experiments that refused to resolve the issue. I kept thinking that
          there was something significant about the simulation, something that
          might tell me what was really happening in the artificial reality within
          my computer. After making sure that things were stable in the lab and
          that the backup power supply was working (I didn't like to think of what
          might happen if the system went down), I dragged my weary body to bed.
          That night, I dreamed that I was a teenager again; not a very happy time
          in my life, but there was nothing threatening or even particularly
          interesting about the dream. I didn't  even remember it until I was
          working in the lab the next day, checking the system again and still
          trying to decide just what I had done. Then the memory of the dream
          returned, and I realized what I had "seen" but not consciously noticed
          in the simulation: Gus had appeared years younger and pounds heavier. He
          had clear eyes and no trace of his arthritis, but the scar on his ear
          from his days as a rover was still there. He had also smelled like an
          un-neutered tomcat. I couldn't understand why the VR program would do
          that to a recent recording of him. Then it dawned on me, and the
          clipboard slipped from my hand. I nearly followed it to the floor. Gus
          had appeared younger and healthier because *that was how he viewed
          himself*. The simulation had changed to accommodate his current
          perception of his own identity. Without the aches and pains of old age,
          he now felt young again. I quickly ran a comparison of the current
          patterns with the recorded original. There were in fact significant
          differences. This was no bizarre automated brainscan. I was seeing him
          as he had been before I knew him. Gus, the part of him that thinks "I",
          was present in the computer: I had captured his spirit.

             Alicia sat and listened with quiet intensity as I explained, with
          as little scientific detail as possible, how it was that I came to have
          a cat residing in my mainframe. When I was finished, she asked only one
          question: "What's it like for him?" I stopped pacing and slumped into a
          chair. "All that I know for sure is that the simulation is very, very
          good. It uses actual sensory memories wherever possible and over time
          the totally 'made up' parts seem more real. That's why the VRcade games
          have time limits and attendants to keep people from getting too involved
          in the simulation. I've made sure that Gus's world is close to the one
          he left. He can go to his food dish and think that he's eating and after
          a while a feedback subroutine makes him think that he's full. He can sit
          in the "window" and watch recordings of the world outside. He can also
          play with his favorite toys. When I visit with him he's happy and when
          I just "look in" on him with the monitor, he seems content. I wouldn't
          allow this to continue if I thought that he was suffering."
             The girl looked at me for a long moment and then turned and
          regarded Roger as he slept somewhat fitfully in his box. She spoke
          without looking at me. "I don't know if he'd like being alone. He always
          gets upset when I'm away for very long. He also doesn't much like other
          cats. I wish that I could go in there with him." The idea of her wanting
          to "go with him" was appalling but understandable. As I opened my mouth
          to tell her that this was all a mistake, I had an idea. What I said was:
          "I think that we can work this out." For the first time, I saw her
          smile.

             There is a meadow, and a field by a brook. The cat spends his days
          chasing birds and squirrels and dozing in the sun. He never strays very
          far from the girl. She usually doesn't speak much, or move about very
          often, but he doesn't mind. She looks right and feels right and he knows
          the scent of his dear friend. And often, when Alicia comes to visit me,
          the girl comes fully alive. They play together, and wrestle in the soft
          green grass. Sometimes Gus and I join them and the two-legged animals
          watch as the four-legged ones play at cat battles, each strutting away
          victorious and unscathed. I often wonder what will happen when I turn
          this new technology loose upon the world. I will try to make the best
          use of it, but I can't help but worry. I also wonder: will I dwell here
          one day? Will the future be a place of machine stored existence? Have we
          at last found a way to cheat death? I'm not quite sure, but as I watch
          them play in the sun, I find that I no longer care.









   This story was originally published by Wired Art For Wired Hearts.