Author: Josip Ivica, III. gimnazija, Split<\/p>\n
It was on the 1st of October 2029 that professor Gregory Mendelssohn fi\fnally invented the Consciousness Uploading Machine. The general public
\nhad been awaiting this moment for years. He called his assistant, professor
\nJames Donovan, to the laboratory at once.<\/p>\n
Professor Donovan arrived at 4 o’clock to the grand laboratory populated
\nsolely by Professor Mendelssohn.<\/p>\n
“Is it done!?” he exclaimed in excitement, \\My dear God, is it actually
\ndone!?”<\/p>\n
“It is, my boy”, the Professor replied calmly, \\We did it! It will from now
\non be possible to upload a person’s consciousness to a server where it will
\nlive for|well, for all intents and purposes|eternally!”<\/p>\n
Professor Mendelssohn then proceeded to show the details of the machine
\nto the young scientist. There was a comfy chair in which a person would be
\nseated, electrodes would be connected to the outer layer of their skull, and
\nthen a large helmet suspended from above would be put on their head.<\/p>\n
This would then scan the person’s brain. Not like an MRI or a CAT-scan,
\nbut rather a complete scan of every neuron and synapse inside the brain. A
\ncomplete model of their brain would be made and transferred to a computer.<\/p>\n
Obviously, this required a plethora of computing power and memory,
\nwhich is why professor Mendelssohn had the government shut the entire city
\ndown. This `temporary’ blackout provided enough energy for the scanning
\nper se, but in order to maintain the consciousness on the server, the entire
\ncounty had to be shut down.<\/p>\n
Professor Donovan was chosen to have the great honour of being the \frst
\nperson in history to have their consciousness uploaded. But was it really a
\ngreat honour… or perhaps a great doom?<\/p>\n
“There is, however, a small problem with the process of uploading…”,
\nprofessor Mendelssohn began to explain, \\It’s nothing serious, only a small
\nbug that I haven’t managed to patch yet. You see, when your brain is
\nscanned, the helmet gets incredibly overheated, which boils your brain and
\nmakes your skull explode.”<\/p>\n
The young assistant looked at the Professor in confusion and reluctance.<\/p>\n
“Oh, don’t be scared, boy!” the Professor encouraged him, \\The uploaded
\nneural network will stay intact. Your physical body will die after the upload
\nis complete, so there’s nothing to worry about!”<\/p>\n
“That’s… Umm… That’s not what I’m scared of…” the assistant mut-
\ntered, \\What will happen to my actual consciousness? I mean, the one in
\nmy physical body? Will I feel the entire procedure and just die!?”<\/p>\n
“No, no, of course not,” professor Mendelssohn kept reassuring him, \\You
\nwon’t die! You’ll become immortal and continue living in the computer!”<\/p>\n
“But what will happen to this me? Will I suddenly stop existing? Will
\nmy consciousness somehow switch with the one in the computer? I mean,
\nhow do we know whether the uploaded… thing will be conscious anyways?
\nWhat if there’s more to it than just neurons!?”<\/p>\n
“Relax, my boy. Your consciousness won’t switch or anything. It’s the
\nonly one you have. There is no other you, nor can there ever be! The
\nconsciousness in your current body will be annihilated along with your brain
\nduring the overheating. Now, we cannot know precisely whether the new
\n`computer brain’ will be conscious as we don’t even know what consciousness
\nis, but what we can do is hope for the best.”<\/p>\n
“So… I’ll just… die?”<\/p>\n
“Not you! I mean, not the you in general, but only you you. Okay, so,
\nthere can be in\fnitely many versions of you if we merely copy and paste your
\nonline consciousness around. Whether they will all be conscious, we don’t
\nknow. But, what we do know is that they are all technically you.”<\/p>\n
“How can they be me if I’m dead!? Moreover, how can there exist more
\nthan one me? Even if I’m successfully `transferred’ to the server, how can the
\nexact same replicas of the same brain generate di\u000berent consciousnesses?”<\/p>\n
“I dont know! Why do you have so many questions!? Maybe they’re not
\nall conscious. Who knows? And of course it’s the real you! Just like you can
\nhave several… I dont know… pancakes that look exactly the same, you can
\nalso have several `consciousnesses’ that are identical.”<\/p>\n
The young assistant continued to be sceptical for a while, but was soon
\npersuaded to continue with the experiment. He was given morphine in order
\nnot to su\u000ber too much during the `explosion’.<\/p>\n
Professor Mendelssohn calibrated the C.U.M. during the time required
\nfor the morphine to kick in.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, professor Donovan went over to the desk and began
\nwriting something in the notebook.<\/p>\n
“It’s ready, my boy!” exclaimed the professor while still \fddling with the
\nbuttons, \\Just sit right here and it will be over quickly then youll have a
\nbrand new `body’ one that lives forever!”<\/p>\n
The Professor smiled and the Apprentice walked towards the comfy chair.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
This is it. It’s the moment of truth. Will I continue living forever or will I
\ndie on that chair? All I know is that I trust the Professor with my life and
\nthat I am willing to do this even if I might die.<\/p>\n
I write this epilogue to the Professor’s biography as my last testament
\nshould the experiment fail. I, however, believe that it is far more likely to
\nsucceed and that I shall continue writing his biography from `the other world’
\nuntil he either passes away or joins me. And besides, who knows how easy
\nit is to type when you are the software? In case the future generations lose
\nthe sense of humour, that was meant to be a joke.<\/p>\n
– An excerpt from the `Biography of Professor Gregory H. Mendelssohn’, * * *<\/p>\n Professor Donovan had been successfully uploaded and continued `living’ Author: Josip Ivica, III. gimnazija, Split It was on the 1st of October…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":6794,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6799","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2cktY-1LF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pug.hr\/gimnazija\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pug.hr\/gimnazija\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pug.hr\/gimnazija\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pug.hr\/gimnazija\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pug.hr\/gimnazija\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6799"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pug.hr\/gimnazija\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6816,"href":"https:\/\/pug.hr\/gimnazija\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6799\/revisions\/6816"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pug.hr\/gimnazija\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pug.hr\/gimnazija\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwritten by James Q. Donovan and published posthumously in 2029.
\nThe two great men died on the same day in the building collapse due to
\na failed laboratory experiment. There were no other casualties.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nin The Void for all eternity.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"