Читать книгу Banana Palace - Dana Levin - Страница 6

DMITRY ITSKOV: A CENTO

Dmitry Itskov, 32, has a colossal dream: an early start

for his own

mechanical face.

He’s one of the men with brains, wondering How—

To evade

the death of meat, he thinks—

By 2045 we’ll have “substance-

independent minds,” then

no need for biology at all…

At 25, he started to have the symptoms of a midlife crisis:

the musical instruments unlearned, the books unread—

The more he contemplated the world, the more broken it seemed—

“What we’re doing here does not look like the behavior of grown-ups,

killing the planet and killing ourselves.”

Decoupling the mind from the needy human body

could pave the way for a more sublime human spirit—

It could allow paralyzed people to communicate,

or control a robotic arm or a wheelchair—

It could allow you to start your car if you think,

“Start my car”—

Within a century, we’ll frequent “body service shops,”

choose our bodies from a catalogue, then

transfer our consciousness

to one better suited for life on Mars—

“From the very beginning,” he said, “we realized Dmitry

was not an ordinary person.”

He leads a life that could best be described as monastic—

No meat, fish, coffee, alcohol, or cold water—

Meat gives him an energy he’s “not comfortable with.”

What is the brain? What is consciousness?

It contains plenty of terrifying, brink-of-extinction plot twists.

It’s somewhere between a cellphone call and teleportation.

It’s speaking with his voice in real time.

Get right up close to Dmitry Itskov and sniff all you like—

He has the kind of generically handsome face and perfect smile

that seem computer generated,

complete with all the particulars of consciousness and personality—

Yes, we have seen this movie and yes, it always leads to robots

enslaving humanity—

For now, just acquiring a lifelike robotic head

is a splurge.