Duplicate Minds

Four

Back at the laboratory, Dev escorted Rajeev to the dormitory that would serve as his home for the next two weeks.

Rajeev pointed to the twin bed stationed in the corner—the only object in the otherwise bare room. "Is that even necessary?"

"Technically, no," Dev responded. "It's meant more as a comfort. We want to make the transition from man to . . . well, android . . . as seamless as possible."

"Do I even need to sleep?"

"Yes, actually. Just like a computer gets slow and choppy if it hasn't been restarted in awhile, you'll find it more difficult to process information—to think, essentially—without proper rest."

"Without sleep."

"More or less. We call it 'sleep mode.' It should happen automatically when it becomes necessary. You can help the process along by acting out the sleep rituals you had in your old body—dimming the lights, laying on the bed, closing your eyes . . . err, photosensors. But you know what I mean."

"Well, sleeping is something I've always been good at it. Shouldn't be too difficult."

Dev laughed. "That's the spirit." He patted Rajeev on the shoulder, then headed for the door. "Get some rest. I'll see you in the morning and we'll get you started on physical therapy."

He turned off the light and opened the door, but paused before walking through it. He turned his head to face Rajeev one last time.

"Goodnight, dad. It's really great having you back."

Your father isn't back, Rajeev thought. He's dead.

Aloud, he said, "Thank you, Dev. It's good to be back."

***

Falling asleep was as easy as Dev had implied, for the most part. It took a bit more conscious thought than Rajeev was used to, but after a bit of mild effort, he found himself unconscious. When he awoke, it was morning.

At least, he assumed it was morning. There were no windows in the room, so all he had to go on was the sense that he had been sleeping for several hours. He wondered what time it—

"The time is five-thirty a.m."

Rajeev jumped, throwing his robotic arms into the air. A man had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, standing by the door. He was skinny, dressed in straight-legged khaki pants and a bright-green polo shirt. His hair was neatly combed and he wore a pair of fashionable, thick-framed glasses.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Daniel, your virtual assistant," the man said.

"My what? Where did you come from?"

"I'm your virtual assistant," Daniel repeated. "I can assist you with things like checking the time or the weather, searching the web, or playing music. I'm fully integrated with the NLT-X4912—"

"The what?"

"The NLT-X4912 is Next Level Technologies' fourth-generation artificial body."

Interesting. So apparently Dev had programmed one of these virtual assistants into Rajeev's body. Rajeev remembered virtual assistants from before his accident, but they'd always been confined to little speaker boxes. They'd never looked like real people.

"So you're not real?"

"I was created by software engineers at Next Level Technologies in Chicago, Illinois," Daniel replied matter-of-factly. "My visual appearance is a composite of the engineers who created me."