"I oversee all aspects of the process of transferring personhood from a biological mind into a nanogel matrix."

"Nanogel matrix being the material you fashion artificial brains out of?" said Deshawn.

"Correct."

"So, you are one of the developers of the Mindscan process that Immortex uses to transfer consciousness, and you continue to oversee the transference work that Immortex does today, correct?"

"Yes."

"Well, then," said Deshawn, "can you explain for us how it is that the human brain gives rise to consciousness?"

Porter shook his long head. "No."

Judge Herrington frowned. "Dr. Porter, you are required to answer. I don't want to hear any nonsense about trade secrets, or—"

Porter tried to swivel in his chair, but couldn't really manage it. "Not at all, your honor. I can't answer the question because I don't know what the answer is. No one does, in my opinion."

"Let me get this straight, Dr. Porter," asked Deshawn. "You don't know how consciousness works."

"That's right."

"But nonetheless you can replicate it?" said Deshawn.

Porter nodded. "And that's all I can do."

"How do you mean?"

Porter did a good job of looking as though he was trying to decide where to begin, although, of course, we had rehearsed his testimony over and over again. "For over a century now, computer programmers have been trying to duplicate the human mind. Some thought it was a matter of getting the right algorithms, some thought it was a matter of mathematically simulating neural nets, some thought it had something to do with quantum computing. None succeeded. Oh, there are lots of computers around that can do very clever things, but no one has ever built one from scratch that is self-aware in the way you and I are, Mr. Draper. Not once, for instance, has a manufactured computer spontaneously said, 'Please don't turn me off.' Never has a computer spontaneously mused upon the meaning of life. Never has a computer written a bestselling novel. We thought we'd be able to make machines do all those things, but, so far, we can't." He looked at the jury, then back at Deshawn. "But the transfers of biological minds that we have produced can do all those things, and more. They are capable of every mental feat that other humans can perform."

"You say other humans?" asked Deshawn. "You consider the copies to be human?"

"Absolutely. As that medallion proves, they totally, completely, and infallibly pass the Turing Test: there is no question you can ask them that they don't answer indistinguishably from how other humans answer. They are people."

"And are they conscious?"

"Absolutely. As conscious as you or I. Indeed, although the voltages differ, the electrical signature of a copied brain and an original brain are the same on properly calibrated EEGs."

"But — forgive me, doctor, I don't mean to be dense — but if you don't know what causes consciousness, how can you reproduce it? How do you know what to reproduce?"

Porter nodded. "Consider it like this: I don't know anything about music. When I was in school, they thought I'd be a menace to every hearing person if they gave me a musical instrument to play, so I was assigned to the vocal class, along with all the other tone-deaf people. So, I know nothing at all about what makes Beethoven's Fifth a great piece of music. But as an engineer, if you brought me a CD recording of it, and asked me to copy it onto a MemWafer, no problem — I could do that. I don't look for the 'musical' stuff on the CD; I don't look for the 'genius' on the CD. I just copy everything to the new medium. And that's exactly what we do when we're transferring consciousness."

"But, if you don't know what you're looking for, isn't it possible you've missed something key?"

"No. Most psychologists would say that even if all we did was transfer a map of the interconnections between neurons, and the various levels of neurotransmitters, we'd have captured everything meaningful in the brain. And we certainly do that."

"It sounds like an enormous amount of data is involved," said Deshawn.

"It's not as much as you might think," replied Porter. "We've found fractal resonances in a lot of it — that means that the same patterns are repeated over and over again at different levels of resolution. The data would compress very nicely if one were inclined to keep a record of it." I sat up in my chair as he said this, but, since I was behind Karen, there was no way for me to catch her eye.

"And so by copying this information, you've copied consciousness as well?" asked Deshawn. "Simply by copying the neural networks and neurotransmitter levels?"

"Well, some argue that those things aren't the true physiological correlates of consciousness — that is, that they aren't in and of themselves the physical indications of conscious thought — and they point to paramecia as proof."

"Paramecia?" repeated Deshawn.

"Yes. Um, your honor, if I may…?"

Herrington nodded, and Porter got up out of the witness stand, looking relieved to no longer be squashed. He pulled a small remote control from his jacket's other pocket, and images started appearing on the wall screen.

"A paramecium," said Porter, "is a kind of protozoan — a one-cell lifeform.

Paramecia don't have a nervous system, since nervous systems are made up of specialized nerve cells, and obviously a one-celled lifeform can't have any specialized cells. And yet, without neurons or neurotransmitters, a paramecium can learn. Not much, I grant you — but it can learn. You can teach it that if it comes to a divided pathway, going left will always result in a mild shock and going right will always result in getting food." The images on the wall illustrated this. "Somehow, the paramecium learns this despite having no nervous system at all. And that at least suggests the possibility that neural nets are not actually what's responsible for our awareness."

"Well, then," said Deshawn, "how does awareness come about?"

Different visuals appeared on the screen.

"One argument," said Porter, "is that the microtubules that make up the cytoskeleton of a cell are where the awareness, the infinitesimal consciousness, of a paramecium — or a human — resides. Microtubules are like hollowed-out cobs of Indian corn: they have an empty center, but are covered with kernels. And, just like in Indian corn, the kernels can form patterns. Some argue that those patterns move and replicate like cellular automata, and—"

"Cellular automata?" said Deshawn.

More visuals, like animated crossword-puzzle boards.

"Yes, indeed," said Porter. "Consider the microtubule's surface to be a grid of squares rolled into a tube. Imagine some of the squares are black, and some are white — that's the Indian corn appearance I was referring to a moment ago. Imagine, too, that the squares respond to simple rules, such as this: if you're a black square, and at least three of the eight other squares surrounding you are also black, then you should turn white." The visual display illustrated this.

"See?" said Porter. "A very simple rule. But from out of such rules, complex patterns appear on the grid. For instance, you can get boomerang shapes made up of a consistent pattern of squares that actually move across the grid — every time the basic rule is applied, the whole cluster might move one space to the left. You also get shapes that devour other shapes, and big shapes that split into two smaller, but otherwise identical shapes." We all watched as these things happened on the screen.

"Now, consider that," said Porter. "The patterns are responding to stimulus in the form of the rule that is being applied. Well, response to stimulus is one of the standard criteria for life. The patterns are moving, and, again, movement is also one of the standard criteria of life. The patterns are devouring other patterns, and, again, eating is a third standard criterion of life. And the patterns are reproducing, and, of course, doing that is also one of the standard criteria of being alive. Indeed, cellular automata are one form of what's long been called artificial life, although I'd argue that the word 'artificial' is unnecessary. They are life."