Chapter 11: The Visitor
Sunday August 20, Mass General Hospital, Evening
Ted stood, stretched his back, and grimaced. “Be back in a bit. Too much sitting around. I’ve got to work the kinks out. See you in fifteen?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Anya managed half a grin, then really looked at him. He did look tired. The bags under his eyes. The slumped shoulders. The wince when he stood. “Hey Ted, take your time,” she said softly, touching his cold hand and wincing.
He trudged to the door, turned and smiled as he left. The soft click of the door her signal that she was finally alone.
She lay back, sinking into the hard bed, and closed her eyes. The constant beep of her monitors, the gurgle of the EVD, the strange tingle in her scalp. All everpresent reminders of where she would be for the remainder of her life.
He was gone just a couple of minutes when an unexpected knock came at the door. A soft knock, unlike the firm ‘tap-tap’ the doctors used to announce their arrival. No one entered.
“Hello?” she croaked out. Cleared her throat then tried again. “Yes? Come in already!”
The door opened slowly and a man in a clerical collar poked his head in. “Ms. Chikacheva? I’m Father Robert from St. Catherine’s. Dr. Jones suggested I stop by.”
He was about her age, maybe 45, with a cherubic face and broad smile. Not like the other priests she’d seen around the hospital. And his voice. Deep and resonant. Filled with life. More like a podcaster than a man of the cloth.
Anya managed a laugh despite her exhaustion. “Did Imani mention that I’m an atheist? I bet she left that part out?”
His smile broadened as he entered, leaving the door open behind him. He spoke as he walked toward the visitor’s chair “She mentioned you might appreciate someone to talk to.”
She nodded toward the chair, lips pressed tight, brow furrowed.
“Imani’s prescription for everything: prayer and surgery. Usually in that order.” Anya shifted slightly in bed, pushing off with her right arm, wincing slightly with the exertion. “Let me save you time, Father. I don’t need the comfort of God’s plan. In a few days, I’ll be worm food, and that’s all she wrote.”
Father Robert shifted slightly, a very subtle smile raising his lips. “We’re all God’s children, whether we acknowledge it or not.” His voice held no judgment, just kindness.
“That’s a nice fantasy, but I’m not feeling it right now,” it came out rough but he didn’t react other than with a slight nod of his head.
“Even this illness is part of His will, Dr. Chikacheva.”
“His will?” Anya gripped the sheet tighter, leaning towards him, her face partly contorting with a sneer. “Then God put an AVM in my brain at conception. Designed me to die at fifty!”
“I admit,” he started, leaning forward with a chuckle, “that it doesn’t always make sense to us. But there’s always a reason, even if we can’t see it.”
Anya glared, then smirked. Divine purpose leading to unintended consequences? “You know what? You might be right. Without dying, I’d never have attempted what we’re doing now.”
Father Robert’s eyes widened. “What are you working on? Dr. Jones mentioned a big project but didn’t go into details. I’m a bit of a technophile myself. Jesuits have a long history with science.” He leaned back into his chair, steepling his fingers.
“We’re capturing my mind, Father. Every thought pattern, every memory structure, every cognitive process. We’re going to use that data to build a synthetic brain based on my neural architecture.”
His face went pale. “You’re attempting to create a digital twin to cheat death?”
“No, not cheat it.” She met his eyes directly. “When my body dies, they’ll build a system from my cognitive patterns. If I’m correct, it will think using my architecture. Might process information the way I do. Maybe even solve problems I’ve been thinking about but never got to... because of his will.” She smiled as widely as her face would allow.
Father Robert stood abruptly and walked to the window. “That’s!” he stammered. “Have you thought about the ethics?” He turned her, his hand shaking. “You’re talking about creating a person without a soul. A consciousness trapped in silicon, cut off from God’s grace.”
“How do you know it won’t have a soul?” She reached for her paper cup of water. Took a sip. “If God breathes souls into humans at conception, why not digital beings at initialization?”
“Because souls are divine gifts, not computational endowments.”
“I’m not talking about an AI Father. If this system thinks like me, processes like me, responds with patterns I’d recognize as mine, what’s the difference? What makes flesh sacred and silicon profane?”
“It would be a mockery of life. A gollum with your thoughts.”
“A gollum?” Anya’s laugh was clear, piercing. “Father, if anything, it would be more pure than I am: it will have my cognitive processes without the biological noise of hormones and hunger.”
“It would be empty. Perhaps capable of mimicking love but not feeling it. Speaking of God but never truly knowing Him.”
“I don’t know God now,” Anya said, raising her eyebrow. “Does that make me soulless?”
“You have the capacity for grace, even if you reject it. This thing you’re creating would be forever barred from salvation. You might be condemning it to eternal isolation from the divine.”
“What if you’re right? What if we create something that’s just like me and believes it’s experiencing life, but lacks whatever ineffable quality you call a soul? What if it’s aware but can never touch transcendence? I don’t care, why should it?”
“Because then you will have created Hell, Dr. Chikacheva,” Father Robert said quietly. “A mind aware of its own incompleteness, forever separated from what makes us truly human.”
“Or we’ve created proof that souls don’t exist. That humans are patterns and processes, and nothing more. That we are what we think, and that itself is enough.”
“What emerges will be a shadow, thinking it’s real.”
“Like Plato’s cave,” Anya said. “But here’s the thing, Father: I think we’re all shadows thinking we’re real. You believe your soul makes you more than meat and electricity. I believe my neurons and action potentials make me more than silence and void. We’re both acting on faith.”
Father Robert moved toward the door, then stopped with his hand on the frame. He stood there for a moment, not quite leaving.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said quietly, turning back. The warmth was still there, but troubled now. “I’ll pray for you, Dr. Chikacheva. And for whatever emerges.” He paused. “I hope I’m wrong about the soul. For its sake.”
“Pray for what emerges instead,” Anya called after him, her voice steady and clear. “If you’re right, it’ll be born damned. It’ll need your God’s mercy more than I ever will.”
He left without another word.
Ted returned ten minutes later to find Anya staring at the ceiling, chewing on her lip.
“What happened?”
“Imani sent a priest. I told him about the project.”
Ted sat slowly with a mischievous grin. “All of it?”
She shrugged. Laughed gently.
“He said we’d be creating Hell.” She looked at Ted, her eyes sharp. “What if he’s right? What if whatever emerges knows it’s missing something essential?”
Ted sat and took her hand. “Then it’ll be like us. We all feel incomplete, searching for things we can’t name.”
“But we have hope of finding... something. I found you, after all.” She smiled. “What hope would a digital entity have?”
“Who knows? Maybe it would surpass us. Achieve things we could never dream of? Perhaps the mind itself is the miracle, not this... “ he gestured at his body.
Anya squeezed his fingers. “Promise me something. If it emerges and it’s suffering: existential suffering, knowing it’s artificial and feeling horribly wrong because of it...”
“I won’t let it suffer.”
“Even if it behaves like me? Thinks it’s me? Uses my logic to beg?”
Ted was quiet for a long moment. Then he stood, walked to the window. When he spoke, his voice carried a gravity Anya had rarely heard. “I’ll do it,” he said. “If it’s in existential pain, I’ll end it.”
Anya nodded, exhausted. “We won’t know until it’s too late to choose differently.”
“We can stop now. It’s your choice.”
“No.” Her voice was firm. “We continue. Monday night. Get the data we need. Build what we can. Face what emerges, if anything does. And Ted, if someone does come out of that, you will have done something nobody ever has. It will change the world.”
She fell asleep soon after. Ted sat in the dim room, watching her breathe, wondering if they were about to create life or damnation.
Ted waited until he was certain Anya was in deep sleep. Then he carefully extracted his hand from hers and stood.
The hospital had settled into its night rhythm. Reduced lighting, hushed voices, the occasional squeak of a medication cart in distant corridors. The EVD gurgled softly, a constant reminder that these were her final days.
He looked at Anya’s notebook on the bedside table. Open to the page with her signed consent. The authorization to risk killing her for data. He turned and left the room quietly, walking through empty corridors to the elevator. Down to the transport dock. His footsteps echoing in the vast concrete space.
He sat motionless in the transport as it took him home. Eleven PM. The city moved past the windows, late Sunday traffic, people returning from dinners and visits and normal weekend activities. Their lives continued on predictable trajectories while his veered into unknown territory.
He pulled out his phone and typed a message to Imani:
Everything okay tonight. Anya resting. See you tomorrow.
He stared at the message, took a deep breath and pressed send.
Now, he needed to prepare.
The logistics were daunting. Her left side was paralyzed, her right side weakening. Moving her would require a wheelchair, careful maneuvering, the strength to lift her. He’d have to do it alone. Involving anyone else meant exposure. A risk he didn’t want to take.
He went through the list of equipment requirements: a portable ventilator in case her breathing destabilized during transport. Extra EVD collection bags. Her medications, though they’d only be gone a few hours.
Timing was critical. Night shift changes at eleven and rounds complete by eleven-thirty. A skeleton staff on Sundays meant fewer people in the corridors but he’d need ample time to get her from her room to a transport. Maybe ten minutes to Invita; setup, fifteen. The scan itself - who knew what her body could take. Then get back before the morning shift arrived at six.
A seven-hour window. It was tight but possible.
But the risks. Jesus, the risks were staggering. Hemorrhage during transport. Cardiac arrest in the scanner. Cranial pressure beyond what the drain could handle. Her body might simply fail under the stress. Each one basically meant death.
And for what? Data that might be insufficient. Neural maps that might not be able to reproduce her mind. Or perhaps the priest’s nightmare: a mind aware of its own wrongness, suffering an existence it couldn’t escape.
The transport pulled into his driveway but he hesitated.
“You have arrived at your destination. Please exit the vehicle. Have a nice day.” The door slid open with a pneumatic hiss.
He could stop this. Text Imani right now. Let Imani convince him it was madness. Just let Anya die peacefully. Naturally.
That’s what he’d always done. Chosen safety. It had worked for fifty-three years. Kept him employed, respected, out of trouble. Always the reliable one. The sensible one.
“Please exit the vehicle.” The voice more insistent now.
But Anya had never chosen safety. She’d crossed borders, challenged dogma, antagonized powerful people, risked everything for work she believed mattered. She’d been fearless because she valued truth more than comfort. And now, she was asking him to be like her. Just once.
Ted exited the transport which glided away silently and entered his dark house. Their house. The place they’d shared for twenty years. Every room held memories: arguments in the kitchen, late-night conversations in the living room, mornings in bed before everything changed.
He sat at his computer and began making notes. Equipment requirements. Timing. Contingency plans.
He’d have to optimize the scanner settings for maximum temporal resolution. He’d push it as hard as he could but couldn’t risk overloading the hardware as that could damage her brain.
Data capture needed redundancy. Primary servers plus three backup systems. Real-time copying to multiple locations. They couldn’t afford any data corruption. Whatever they captured Monday night would be the final dataset. There would be no second chances.
The problem was, medical monitoring was normally continuous. Pulse oximetry, blood pressure, EKG, ICP readings from the EVD. There would be none of this in the NRI lab. Maybe a cheap pulse-ox sensor and a blood pressure cuff, but that was about it. He’d have to monitor her reactions to the scanning visually. She could hemorrhage and he wouldn’t know it until she was dead. But he had to do it.
He opened his email. Drafted a message to himself with all the technical specifications. Scheduled it to send Tuesday morning. If something went wrong, if they got caught, if charges were filed, the record would show he’d documented everything. Planned carefully. Acted methodically rather than recklessly But without the medical monitoring, none of it would matter. If Anya died during the scan, it would be manslaughter at minimum. Medical malpractice. Criminally negligent homicide. The lawyers would destroy him. His life would end in disgrace.
His Martin guitar rested untouched in its stand. There was no music left in him. Only calculation.
He looked at the final checklist. Thirty-seven items. Any one of them could fail. Any failure could cascade into catastrophe. But Anya had made her choice. Demanded he match her courage.
Tomorrow night. One more scan. Then whatever happened, happened.