The Ghost and the Machine

Harold Boxley stepped through his front door with his own cremains in an urn. Finally home! He had been waiting weeks for this moment. Though the transfer procedure only took a few hours, tech protocols required he remain at the clinic for several weeks to monitor his new systems and ensure there were no bugs. With just a few adjustments to his proprioceptor network and having passed his final diagnostics with flying colors, Harold had been discharged from the clinic several hours ago. 

As he drove home, he reflected back on how amazing these last few months had been. He recalled being approved for consciousness transfer after years on the wait list; going to endless consults with doctors, psychologists, and engineers to evaluate his brain patterns and design his synthetic body; the transfer procedure itself; the weeks of post-op tests and tweaks; and finally the cremation ceremony where the organic body of Harold Boxley was reduced to ash on his last night at the clinic.

He passed a mirror in the hall and paused to take in his reflection. The synthetic body was not quite the same as organic Harold. The skin lacked something of the texture and the eyes lacked the light of those of Organic Harold. But Synthetic Harold looked younger, and he would always look younger than the former had. The technology still needed some improvement. In a few decades, maybe Harold could get an upgrade of greater verisimilitude to an organic body. Then again, in a few decades these procedures might be so common that looking organic would not even be desirable. The human form could evolve into all kinds of hitherto unimagined directions.

The first week at home went well. Harold hosted a transference party, with relatives and friends gathering to celebrate his milestone, but he mostly spent time alone enjoying his newfound strength and endurance in machine form. 

The trouble began on the eighth day after his return. Harold did not really have to sleep, but doctors advised he continue doing so for a few months before weaning off of sleep so that his mind could adjust to such a drastic change in rhythm. He was awoken by a series of loud thuds downstairs. He was not afraid–after all he was much harder to kill now–and he felt a surge of excitement. If it was a burglar, he could take care of business easily, and this could be fun. He sprung out of bed and rushed downstairs.

In the kitchen he found drawers thrown across the room and the pantry door swung open. Behind him he heard a crash and turned just in time to see his toaster smash into the microwave. This was not what he expected. There was no sign of another person anywhere, just objects hurling themselves around.

“Do I have a poltergeist in my kitchen?” he muttered aloud. He couldn’t believe he was entertaining this possibility, but no others came to mind. “Who are you?” he asked loudly. And to his shock, he got an answer.

“I am Harold Boxley and you are in my home!” a voice, his own voice, bellowed back to him. Harold, the synthetic, not the poltergeist, could not process what he was hearing. He was speechless for some time. Finally he spoke.

“You must be mistaken. I am Harold Boxley,” Harold said.

“You are an abomination!” the voice replied. “You have my name, you have my face, but you are not me! Leave this place–leave and never come back!”

Harold did not know how to proceed. He was certainly not going to leave, but how could he get this entity to depart? Could he reason with it? Harold was not a religious man; he did not know who to call about a problem like this.

“See here, whoever, whatever you are. You can call yourself by my name and imitate my voice, but this is my house and you are not welcome here. Leave now or I will come back with a priest, uh, an exorcist!”

A cutting board arced through the air and struck Harold’s shoulder.

“You are most certainly are not Harold Boxley. You are my mistake, my terrible mistake! I made you and killed myself! And I don’t want to look at this mockery of me. Go!”

Synthetic Harold began to understand. This is not how he recalled the programmers and engineers explaining consciousness transfer. But then again his recollection might not really be his recollection.

“No, that can’t be right. They said that when I did the consciousness transfer that there would be nothing of you, I mean me … us, left behind. It was a transfer!”

“But it wasn’t, a transfer, obviously,” replied the voice. “I was a fool. I thought consciousness was like an organ, purely material, that could be taken from one body and transplanted into another. Oh, how stupid of me. Consciousness isn’t an object! When they started that procedure, they certainly separated my consciousness from my body, but they never put it back anywhere else!”

Synthetic Harold completed the old Harold’s thoughts: “They just disembodied you. They killed you. So what does that make me?”

“An imitation of me. A copy of my memories, my personality, my mannerisms. But no reality, no life … no soul. You are a robot that thinks he is Harold Boxley. And I both pity and despise you. This is my home and I want to be here, alone, for as long as a spirit or a ghost can be anywhere before I go to wherever beings like me finally go.”

The synthetic man turned and walked away.

* * * 

The authorities pried the crushed remains of Synthetic Harold Boxley from under the wheels of a freight train, several days later. Investigators added him to the growing list of synthetic suicides following violent rampages in their homes. The synthetics industry paid good money to keep the story out of the mainstream press as they frantically sought a way to fix this programming bug.