The Voice of the Heart is my first try at science fiction. The story is about an autistic young man and his father, who used a rather creative strategy to assure that his son would be well-cared for life. I created a new cover, edited the story, and divided it in six small “chapters”, each one about 700 words long. These chapters are:
*Consciousness
*Autism
*The download
*My son
*My son’s life
*Reveal and Departure
Here is The first chapter, absolutely free. I hope you like it!
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Consciousness
I am awake, nice; this is one of the most restful nights that I have ever had. I don’t even think I dreamt.
Wait a minute. I just remembered who I am. I did not wake up. I was activated.
He must never know; he would certainly not handle it well and there is a very good chance that he will freak out. He would not understand that I am not his father while at the same time, in a very real sense, I am. The part that counts, the part that unconditionally loves him, lives in me, yet in a strict sense, I am not quite the real deal.
Here’s our story.
My mind is an SBrain—short for Simulated Brain—, installed in a robotic body that appears human in every possible detail. For as long as there have been computers, the idea of downloading a mind into one was entertained, even dreamt, by more than one thinker. Humanity finally achieved it one hundred and twenty years ago, in 2105. It was no mean feat; the scientists that almost boycotted the Human Brain Project in 2014 were absolutely right; we were not ready then, not even for a mere simulation of a brain. Contrary to what many distinguished scientists thought at the time, it was not a simple matter of mapping the ultrafine anatomy of the most complex organ that Earth had ever seen. Much more work was needed. However, scientists kept trying, and that counted for something in the end.
The key piece of information that allowed us to download a mind into a non-biological physical substrate was staring at us in the face the whole time. Everyone was surprised that quantum theory had very little to do with it, even though most assumed that quantum mechanics was the key. Rather, the answer was an unexpected integration of two classical disciplines, fractal mathematics and good old relativity that made the breakthrough possible. Scientists called it FracRel for short. When we realized what we really needed to do, how to correctly model a mind, it was one of those collective facepalm moments that made the scientific community exclaim “of course!” in unison.
The mind behind the Mandelbrot-Einstein theorem, mathematical neuroscientist Estela Sofía Pauls, of the Republic of Catalonia, became an overnight celebrity and for good reason. In 2103, the scientific community recognized her achievement with the award of the Nobel Prize in physics and the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. This was the very first time in history that a person won unshared Nobel Prizes in different disciplines in the same year.
Once the mathematical theory was in place, the actual design of the working software for SBrains took a surprisingly short time. This allowed the seamless integration of mind and machine, in most cases at least. When they finally invented the technology of mind download, the powers in charge of the Human Brain Project made all the data and engineering details publicly available at no cost, despite the strident protests of the top computer manufacturers. Therefore, essentially any company with the appropriate capabilities happily took the concept and improved upon it. Once perfected, in a rather short time, competition made the process quite reliable and affordable as well.
Many people embraced SBrains as a way to live forever and some people did it to avoid the ravages of cruel conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, which still affected humanity. Both motives were deeply flawed, because in exactly the same way as identical twins do not share a single mind, an Sbrain and its human counterpart are separate entities. However, at least something like you would go on.
My Original, the human template from which my mind was based on, used the SBrain technology for a different purpose. What made him go ahead with the download was not to escape a disease or motivated by a misguided desire for immortality; his main motivation was love.
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You can find the rest of the story at Amazon.com.
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