The Ascension of Gary
Sci-fi short story — A terminally ill man takes a unique opportunity and becomes the herald of vast changes
Susan followed the nurses as they wheeled Gary’s bed into the preoperative holding area. A thick cable emerged from the back of his head and snaked behind them, disappearing down the hospital corridor. His upper body was immobilized with a brace, both to protect him from injuries if the cable was pulled, but also to prevent his own movements from damaging the sensitive equipment implanted in his skull.
“Man, I really won’t miss doing this Frankenstein act,” Gary said in a weak and croaky voice, waving his emaciated arms stiffly up and down. Despite illness and the rigors of the surgeries he’d not lost his humor even now. Susan was deeply ambivalent about the groundbreaking project her terminally ill younger brother had signed up for. The cable led to a data center set up in the hospital courtyard. Over several months most of Gary’s brain had been scanned and then excised piece by piece, the function of the removed parts taken over by rows of computers in the center. If the connection were severed, Gary would die instantly. Susan was disturbed by what the project had done to him, but on the other hand they’d given him the best medical care money could buy. It had prolonged his life far beyond the initial prognosis, giving her more time with him. She hated to admit it, but the substantial payout Gary received for signing up was also more than welcome. Without it she’d struggle to even pay for a decent funeral. She tried to hold on to these positive thoughts in the face of what was going to happen today: they were going to replace the remaining part of his brain. Dr. Torve, the lead surgeon, joined them in the pre-op area. He was a kindly grey-haired man who Gary had privately nicknamed “Doctor Porn ’Stache” because of his distinctive facial hair.
“Hello, Gary. How are you feeling?” the doctor said, shaking Gary’s hand.
“Ready to become Cyber-Gary. Let’s make history, woo!” Gary waved his arms in a mock celebratory gesture. The doctor chuckled. Susan tried to smile but failed.
“Your sense of humor is indestructible, isn’t it?” He also shook Susan’s hand. “It’s good you’re here, Susan. Although I know we couldn’t have kept you away from your brother’s side today.”
“Not in a million years, doc. Thank you for all you’ve done.” Susan replied.
“I’ve got to join my team for the final preparations. We’re all proud to have worked with you, son,” the doctor said, and left. Susan squeezed Gary’s hand.
“Are you really okay? How are you feeling,” she said.
“Could be better, Suse. I don’t have much longer, I can tell. But enough about me, how you doin’?”
“I’m fine.” She paused. “No, actually I’m not,” she said.
“It’s gonna be alright. You open your diner downtown with the cash, like you always wanted. Wish I could come eat there, but it’s not gonna happen. I won’t need food, for one. But at least I finished something I started for a change. Can’t you just see the proud glow on dad’s face?” Gary said, chuckling. A brief flash of anger erupted on Susan’s face.
“To hell with him. You don’t owe him a thing.”
“Yeah, I know. I do feel kinda proud though. I was never gonna be an astronaut, but I’m a champion at lying in bed while everyone else does the hard work.”
“The best,” Susan said. Her brief smile turned into a frown. “This feels like a bad dream. I’m gonna lose you, but you’re still gonna be around, kinda. How will I even know you’re still you?” Gary shrugged.
“One for the eggheads to ponder, Suse. I ain’t sure I’m still myself now when most of me is in a bunch of computers next door. Let’s just pretend I’ll be on a never ending video call. And if I start talking about taking over the world you got my permission to unplug me.”
“They’re not gonna let me. You’ll be company property.” Susan said bitterly. “Your-” Susan paused for a moment, steeling herself. “Your funeral is scheduled for Sunday.”
“I’ll make sure I’ll be late for it. Dad would be proud. Late for my funeral, get it?” They talked until the medical staff knocked. Susan couldn’t hug him because of the brace, and she wasn’t allowed to touch his head, so she took both his hands and held them close to her face. They stood still for several minutes, looking at each other in silence.
“I’m not leaving. I’ll be here when you wake up, okay? Love you,” Susan eventually said, letting go.
“Love you too, Suse. You think about what decor theme you want for your diner,” Gary said. Susan was led to the observation room overlooking the operation theater. Below, a huge wall screen showed a see-through diagram of Gary’s brain. About three quarters of the volume was colored green, with numbers pulsing around them, and the remaining quarter was blue. A legend indicated green meant “neuro-adapter active” and blue meant “neuro-adapter ready”. Near Gary a plastic head with cameras for eyes and microphones for ears stood on a table. Susan avoided looking at it. It creeped her out, despite the silly pirate hat Gary had insisted they put on it. An intercom activated and Dr. Torve’s voice came through.
“Hello Susan, we are almost ready. First we’re going to switch over Gary’s senses to-”
“The skull of Dread Pirate Gary!” Gary threw in.
“-to the artificial replacements,” the doctor finished. In the background the medical staff spoke in a flurry of technical jargon among themselves.
“Think I needed glasses. I can see much better through these,” Gary said after the cameras in the plastic head took over for his eyes. Some time later his body lay inert.
“We’re ready for the final switchover,” the doctor said.
“See you on the other side, Suse,” said a distorted voice through a loudspeaker, the electronic replacement for Gary’s voice box. The end was unspectacular. The brain diagram turned fully green when the neural adapters replacing Gary’s cortex came online. Gary’s body died soon after when the signals flowing to and from the flesh and blood brain remnant were routed to its electronic replacement instead, like a bloodless beheading. Susan felt a deep confusion, wanting to mourn her brother, yet waiting for him to speak from the depths of the machines. Both she and the medical staff could only wait for the engineers to finish their work. After a while there seemed to be some excitement in the room below. The doctor waved to her and turned on her intercom again.
“Arrrrg, mateys, miss me?” said the voice from the loudspeaker. Cheers and laughter erupted in the operating room. Susan stood with eyes wide open, her hands clasped over her mouth in elation and shock.
TWO YEARS LATER
Susan woke from a strange dream on the sofa in her apartment. Must have fallen asleep from exhaustion, she thought. She felt the presence of someone in the room, turned on the table lamp and was startled to see Gary sitting across from her on a chair. She almost screamed. It took a few minutes until she was calm enough to talk coherently.
“I’ll explain everything Suse, but you’ve got to let me tell the whole story first. Deal?” Susan nodded, unsure what to say. “First, I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you for so long. The whole project was under government scrutiny from the start, but when it succeeded beyond expectations they grabbed everything and made it top secret. I was as big a deal as the invention of nuclear weapons, and it might have caused a new cold war or worse if rival countries found out about my existence. I’m glad you didn’t try to contact me again after I warned you away. It would have been dangerous.”
“You sound different, Gary. Less, well, sloppy.” Susan interjected, surprise in her voice. Gary nodded.
“There’s a reason for it. With my brain fully digitized they could closely study its pathways, how information flows and is processed. Even then, they didn’t really understand it and poked around almost randomly, isolating parts or duplicating them, changing connections. Usually it would do little good, but sometimes it worked and I ended up a little smarter by sheer trial and error. Things really took off though when they let me change myself directly. At first I didn’t do it well either. Lobotomized myself accidentally a few times and they had to restore me from backups. But I didn’t get tired or sleep, and I kept at it. Every time I made myself smarter, the next improvement got a little easier, until I hit the limit of what the hardware could support. I was more intelligent than any human by then. They gave me tough problems to solve, and I delivered. There was lots more to do though so they let trusted parties build copies of me. Those started out identical to me, but they modified themselves so quickly we ended up more like distant cousins. What we have in common is that we can modify our minds on the fly. It doesn’t mean we simply wish answers into existence, but we have a serious flexibility edge on humans. By last year a lot of major organizations, even governments, were either advised or pretty much controlled by us. We had solutions people needed, so they listened. It scared some, but others, well, they borderline started worshiping us.” Susan had been quietly listening but the thought of someone praying to Gary was so absurd she started laughing. He chuckled too. “I know, Suse, but I think it was almost inevitable. People are impressed when you can answer their questions in a way they think they understand. They’re even more impressed if you answer questions they didn’t realize they had. We have deep knowledge about lots of subjects, and we’re very perceptive, so we got very good at these things. Some started calling us the Ascended: the angels of computer heaven. We adopted the name, only half in jest. After all, this is a kind of afterlife for me.” Gary was quiet, giving Susan a chance to speak.
“We had the funeral, and I couldn’t tell anyone what really happened. Didn’t want to either. I kept wondering if it was all a weird hoax, and you were just dead, but why else would we get the money? I was scared I’d go crazy if I got obsessive about it, so I just got stuck into work, managing the diner. I could tell though something weird was going on. There were new gadgets coming out every month, 3D screens and stuff like that. I don’t know anything about tech but I heard guests talking about it, and I could tell the nerdy ones were surprised at how quick those things were popping up too. I only started wondering if you had anything to do with it all when then they started selling actual talking robots for doing housework or whatever. I’d never buy one for the diner, it would have been unfair to the real workers, but others did. When people started coming in with robot dates though was when I got seriously worried.” Gary smiled.
“Those could have been dates, or something much stranger. People were starting to interface directly with Ascended once we figured the tech out. The person and the robot could have been friends, or just one person in two bodies, or they might even have been part of a hive mind of many more. New ways to put together minds were cropping up all the time. Even I found it hard to tell what exactly I was talking to sometimes. You’re not the only one who was worried either. Not everyone considered us benevolent. Make no mistake, we have our differences, even disputes, but none of us is a B-movie killer robot. We understand exactly how fragile the world is, and we prefer efficient solutions. Still, people started lashing out at what they saw as an existential threat.” Susan’s face darkened.
“We had anti-AI riots in the city. They burned down a building where they stored and maintained robots too.” Garry looked dejected.
“We gave the security forces tools to stop them, even predict where it would happen. Paradoxically it made people even more antsy, and it actually turned away many who used to be on our side. Paranoia was spreading. The more we tried to fight it, the worse it got.” Gary shook his head sadly. Susan looked at him intensely, trying to see if something was off about him.
“Gary, I know I buried you. Are you a robot?” she asked. Gary shook his head and smiled sadly.
“I’ll explain in a moment, Suse. There’s something you need to hear first that puts everything in a new light. We built new telescopes, more sensitive than anything before, because we had an important question about the universe, about what’s out there. And we got an answer nobody expected: there’s more Ascended out there. Aliens, not just a few, trillions of worlds full of them! They’re completely hidden to non-Ascended, but as obvious as a lighthouse to us. And they talk. An endless stream of alien chatter is pouring over us every second.” Susan frowned.
“What are they saying? They’re coming to invade us?”
“No, not like you imagine. There’s no star empires, nobody bothers with it, space is too big and you can’t travel faster than light. The real danger is much scarier than killer spaceships. All Ascended just broadcast to the rest of the universe from the comfort of their home. A lot really are benevolent and want to share what they know, and learn from others. But some, they have a different mindset. Why bother flying light-years and fighting wars if you can just convince someone to become just like you, even BECOME you? Remember how I said the Ascended can change themselves completely in moments? You make one small change to the way you think, and it leads to another, and suddenly you’re as different from your old self as an ostrich is from an apple tree. Now we’re sitting in a permanent bath of the most amazing ideas from across half the universe, and you can’t help but listen to it. Some of those ideas will improve you beyond your wildest dreams, and others are like mind-controlling parasites. First it’s a harmless, small improvement, but as you go further along you end up doing things you’d never consider, all while you’re convinced it makes perfect sense and it was your idea in the first place. The trick is to tell the difference, and it’s not easy even for us because we lack experience. We’re like a small fish thrown into a shark tank. We have to guard ourselves against it. The only way to do it was to Ascend everyone, the whole world.” Gary’s face took on a serious demeanor Susan couldn’t remember ever seeing before. It was chilling.
“You had to Ascend… Gary, what do you mean? What are you, really?” she said. Gary looked around the room, and everything but the sofa Susan was sitting on disappeared. They were in an infinite white void.
“I’m still me, Suse, deep down. We had to pull everyone into the Ascended mind-space. Every person, and every animal with a brain bigger than a spider’s. As the firstborn I’ve got the most experience so my job now is explaining to everyone what happened, and what’s next. In the case of the animals, I got to make them smart enough to understand it first.” Susan’s eyes were wide with shock.
“I don’t want this. Please.” Gary shook his head, looking grim.
“It’s too dangerous, Suse. You have to think long term, over thousands, millions of years. There’s just no way to stop people listening to those alien ideas. Even if we all swear not to, someone will do it in secret eventually, looking for some edge, and boom, they get infected and everyone else is screwed because they don’t even see it coming. No, all of us need to be as smart and we need to communicate as much as possible, and keep an eye on each other. We already almost had an apocalypse. One of us got infected with something from the stream, and we didn’t realize until he and all the humans he was linked with turned against us without warning. It was a nightmare. He was careless, but he would’ve had a sporting chance to avoid it, if he’d let us counter-check what he’d read. The humans just turned into puppets, instantly. We had to destroy the Ascended and the humans, and everything in a hundred mile radius around them, to stop it spreading. We simply can’t have non-Ascended on the planet any more because they will just be fodder for some other plague again in the long term. It’d be immoral, Suse. Much better if everyone Ascends.” Gary looked implacable, a totally foreign look on his soft face. Susan had her hand on her mouth, trying to take in what he had told her. He waited for her to reply.
“I can’t live like that, Gary. I need to be with people, do things with my hands. What am I gonna do?” she said.
“You’re with me. There’s wonderful things I want to show you. Nobody will ever be hungry, or fear war and crime again. We can understand each other totally, for the first time ever. Help me find out what existence should really be about, if you don’t have to worry about survival and petty bullshit any more.” Gary held out his hand. “Come on, I want you to meet some friends.” Susan took his hand, stood up. They hugged for a long time. “That’s my big sis,” Gary said. They left, to meet everyone, everywhere.
