TEAR OUT PAGE

And so here it is, my creation, and me.   What now?  No longer alone, someone separate from me who yet is me.  Will that alleviate loneliness?  The loneliness of the sufferer?  The loneliness that Christ Himself underwent on the Cross when all had turned away from Him, even Peter His Rock, even God His Father:  “My God, My God why hath Thou forsaken me?”  The gray aloneness, the horrific nothing, no one, they can listen but even then they are all too willing to offer advice.
You must have done something they will say.  It is your behavior.  You enticed him on.  ARGGHHHH!  Listen to me and share my suffering.  Wow, I guess Christ thought that too…
The room had gotten so quiet.  Even Maria was quiet.  Outside was grey and cloudy.  Inside Father Bleary, who kept every other bank of florescent lights off, for some reason, moved slowly in the semi-gloom, up and down the rows of silent, afraid children, at the chairs fixed to their desks, unmoving, waiting to see what he was going to say.
“What about the suffering of the innocents?”  he repeated into the silence.  He slowed as he got near me.  “Why has God let us on earth be hurt?  Why has Jesus broken His Promise?  We are being hurt, some of us in this very room.  Why?”  He stopped above me.   His words just hung there in the air, in the grey.  The room was tense, wanting something, anticipating something, some relief of this tension, four graders holding their breath, a priest asking the questions that no one else would even ask, staying away from the ugly truths.
“There is no solution for us to the suffering of the innocents,” he finally said, gently, “none at all.”  And the room let out a collective breath, not so much at the answer but at the fact he had said something, anything.  But as the meaning of his statement came clear, as it penetrated our young minds, our tension lessened but we started to get confused.  How could a priest say this?  What is he trying to do?
He went on.  “You know, some people think the worst part of suffering is the loneliness.  Some people who suffer can’t tell anyone, or if they do, they aren’t believed, or, if they do, they are believed, but the people they tell think it’s their fault, that the sufferer cause the suffering, or the people they tell simply run away.”  And his hand fell on my shoulder, briefly as if it was just a casual touch, and I could tell, I could feel, that Maria noticed it.
“Isn’t that what happened to Jesus?  On the cross?  Didn’t everyone run away, even Peter?  Only a week earlier He was being greeted as king of the world, riding into Jerusalem people singing Hosannas to Him, praise echoing in his ears, but behind the scenes people were working to bring him down, to kill him.  Probably some of those same people who were in the crowd praising him were planning to kill him.”
And we went silent again. 
“Everyone had run away from Him.  No one listening.”  He went up to the front of the room and turned around.  “Even his Father, his God.  God running away from God.  My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
“Haven’t we felt that?  Just like Jesus?  When we, the innocents, suffer?” 
His words hung there in the air, we were holding our breath again, give us an answer Father we silently pleaded, relieve our tension, something anything, make it simply, make it understandable.
“There is no reason we can understand for the innocents to suffer,” he finally said.  “No reason even Jesus could understand.  My God, he cried out.  Why have you given up on me?   Why have you forsaken me?  Suffering can be so great.  It can destroy you.”
He looked all around now.  Everyone was fixed on him.
“But it won’t,” he said.  “It won’t.”  And we breathed again.  “Because like Jesus, you can still call on God.  You can still say God, why am I suffering.  And remember we studied Job last fall, and Job suffered too, and he called on God too, and God’s answer there was you don’t understand Job, you don’t understand me, or what I am, or what is happening to you.”
“We know a little more about how Jesus suffered, and we know he was God, and even God suffered on this Earth, on His Earth.  He suffered, died and was buried.  And He was alone.  Even God was alone and I think aloneness makes suffering worse, much much worse.“
The bell rang but none of us wanted to leave.  We wanted a resolution, a tidy resolution, something to send us home feeling good, but Father Bleary just turned to his desk to his books and started tidying them up, ignoring us.
We slowly got up and got our things.
“One more thing,” he said suddenly, and his words rang out in the silence and gloom and everyone stopped moving, hopeful this was the resolution.  “Jesus said My God, my God.  He knew God was still there.  Even though God was silent.  He still had faith.  Even though God wasn’t answering.  And that is the only solution I can give to you.  All of you.  Keep your faith.  God is there.  Keep your faith,” he repeated one more time looking at me again, and we all left.

 END TEAR OUT PAGE

July 26 9 pm

Holy crap indeed.   Some philosophers might well characterize matter that way.
But he was/I am functioning (so far!) and although every one wanted to rush into the room and start testing both of us, we needed a minute, ignoring the many many observations that were being made of us, and simply staring at each other, absorbing the other.
I backed away from the door and he did too and we smiled, both of us wanting the other in “their” room.  It shouldn’t matter, this territoriality, after all we were made of the same genetic stuff, but I still perceive him now as another.
Wow Maria!  What now?
And all that went though my head in a second, as he waited on the other side of the connecting door and I decided then and there, because I was here first, and it would only be polite after all to him define the territory and so strode through into “his” room, and so come closer to him.
I had never seen myself this close before, seen myself as others see me, and the heightened anticipation, the adrenaline, enhanced my perception and for him too as we reached out and grasped each other’s hands and held them for a minute.  Reasonably firm grip, skin fairly soft.  He rotated my hand and looked at the backside of it, and then I did it back again it was a very odd thing because it was the same hand, two of them, in full mirror image, the back of my hand, with its hairs and veins and finger ligaments and knuckles and his fingertips wrapping around them with their visible nails, and rotating the hand, slowly and the wrinkles where the skin is and the color slowly changing to from the lighter palm on mine to the darker skin and just the reverse on his, thumb and forefinger meeting at the exact same angles, on either hand, and looking like a mirror image exactly but in 3D and over to the back of his hand, and every single thing looking the same once I rotated it in my mind, ever hair and vein and ligament and knuckle in the right place but rotated wrong until I figured it out, and then it snapped into place it was exactly the same as mine, wow.  An intellectual construction, the nano, essentially little equations putting themselves together into something here and tangible something I could now see and feel and that looked just like me.  Wow wow.  I was weak all of a sudden and looked around for a chair and he did too, after all we were probably having the exact same reactions.
I have made this.   This is another who is thinking the same as me right now, feeling the same.  “Right?” I asked, and he said it at almost the same time, and we both smiled.  Jim looked at us, and I shook my head now, but on the other hand it would be valuable to us, to science to record it now, so I stood up and he did at the same time walked into my room to get my notebook and when I came back he had his in hand and was sitting and had started writing already.  I sat and started too, and so these pages.

ED. NOTE ...

As you can see, the last entry immediately below is pretty intense.  And this is where it gets really intense, because I also found a second series of handwritten notebooks in the same box that started with a post that is a lot like the last entry below.  The handwriting looks almost identical to my non-expert eye between the two series of notebooks, but I believe, as you will no doubt note, the second notebook deserves a separate blog, which according to the spirit of the subject matter, I have called http://renanocopying.blogspot.com

I have kept up my Internet searching because, as I continue to go through these notebooks, and as you will see (because I confess I have read ahead a little) the technology seems sufficiently advanced enough for there to be some mention somewhere on the Internet, but I still haven't found anything.  If anyone reading this does see something that might constitute some kind of information, please let me know so I can provide the links. 

July 26

Finally the day is here.  I’m  sort of numb now rather than nervous -  if this thing works it will be earth shattering.   We have worked long and hard and tried to anticipate everything.  I should be ready.  But boy am I nervous.  The funny thing is if I was running it from the outside I don't think I'd be nervous like this.  My own involvement is what makes this tough.  I wonder if it will change the experiment?  That is, will my observation change my experimental trajectory?  Kind of like quantum mechanics…
I want to focus on the positive – after all who wants to come into the world bummed out?  Babies cry of course, but who knows if they are happy or sad?  Probably sad – being ripped out of that nice warm womb into the cruelty of the world.  And this is the first time if all goes well and God Willing (ha!) that we are going to create a person without a baby, without a mom, without so many things.  Wow.  I am a little freaked.  It all seemed so theoretical, so easy, and now we are doing it.
I got up and went to take a leak.  Gotta keep all those functions moving this morning.  It would stink coming into the world and having to take a leak right away.  Better eat something too.  We had planned all that out and I should be keeping a dairy but I need to have a little looseness right now.
I looked in the mirror at myself, trying to read my own face.  But the control mask I put on long ago is still firmly in place.  I can’t read a thing.
I get to the lab early.  The lot is full of cars.  It looks like everyone – from workers to investors -- is there early too.  I pull right up into one of my two spaces.  The other has a car just like mine already in it.  If nano me wants to drive.
Jim is waiting, kind of looming – no better way of putting it – my perception is a little hazy – not quite foggy – just a little dream like, with Jim’s face in ultra relief and the rest of the world cloudily present behind.
“You ok?” he asks, little concerned but alert scanning my face for anomalies, treating me a little like a piece of meat, a specimen, not really caring (although he does) but being clinical about his observation.  I am his patient more than his friend now, his subject.  I tried to scan his face for the effects of last night but he showed nothing.  Hmmm….
“So, what happened?” I asked.  “Were they twins or what?” 
He smiled despite himself.  “Well they had certain…similiarities.  Now c’mon,” he siad, grabbing my arm to move me along, ”we have to get to work.  Di you take you vitals?  What was your BP…”  and his voice faded as I answered him automatically, allowign him to manuveur me though an unmarked door and directly into the nano room.  We had planned for me to be stressed, so Jim is the only one to communicate with me for now.  I assume the rest are scurrying about, but his job is simple.  Me.
The nano room has  dim lighting and water and wood and big dark one way glass and my connecting door to the next room.  I sit and feel a little better.  He leaves to let me alone.  I have this notebook and pull it out and bring it up to date.  I’ve been taped and observed since I woke up this morning at home and I’m not thinking really about the faces staring at me behind the glass.  The chair I am sitting in has sensors measuring everything that can be measured, as unobtrusively as we could, and the needle to place the implant in me.  I am feeling better here in the semi-darkness.  I am thinking about what I do.  But there isn’t much.  I sit, think happy thoughts, get flooded by nano.  The nano mold forms, they pull it out, move it to next door, an identical room, flood it with nano there, and nano me is created and takes his first breath and we are done.  The nano me then will start thinking too.  Will there be a gap for him?  For me?  We have a book there for him too to start writing right away.  No one will talk to him.  Except Jim.  He will move into the other room when nano me is created.  No one else.  Not even me at first.
I’m starting to feel a little bloated.  Or is that my imagination.  Don’t want to lose my cool.  This is history.  The tapes will be played over and over.  If I freak I’ll look like an ass.  I’m cool, I’m cool, I’m cool. I start to hear my heart.  Crap, what do I think about.  “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name”  I lose focus, and random thoughts crowd through my mind, too fast to stop, what if the nano isn’t passive, what if Jim doesn’t come back, what if there is a God, whoa, whoa, where did that one come from, what if this doesn’t work, that water sound is starting to get on my nerves after all, I am sweating a little too much in this chair, I wonder what Maria’s doing?  Maybe if I focus on sex that will help…
“Ok, you’re done,”  Jim comes in quickly and I jump.  “Ow,” the needle implants the code.
“That was too quick, something’s wrong.”
“No we’re cool sunshine, you just lost it a little, you might have fallen asleep, which wouldn’t be surprising considering the neural flooding of your system.”
“Of course not, “ he says, and leaves, to go to the other room.
I sit.

We are almost there.  Another day now.   Thank God it’s coming soon – I am going to stroke out.  I mean I’m cool, and everything will be fine, but wow, this is a little nerve wracking.
Last night I went out.  I sat at a bar and stared at me in the mirror.  Lot of me staring at me yesterday.  The bar mirror me is even different than the regular mirror me and of course -- like I said above -- the video me.  In fact, I’ve probably spent more time staring at the bar mirror me than any other me but I am still not sure why.  Alcoholism?
I looked through the bar mirror me to others in the bar.  Not many others were staring at themselves.  But they were in their own little incisive mini dramas.  Which is kind of like staring at themselves.  Mostly the girls.  It seems to me a girl on a night out can be one long calculated impression – the neurons must be firing constantly.
I caught the eyes of a girl with long dark hair as I stared at her through the mirror.  Her date didn’t notice.  She smiled at me, tossed her hair back, and kept looking.  She kept a little half smile on as I watched her scan the room.  She was liking my attention.  She was cute.
Oops, her boyfriend stopped talking.  She brought herself back to him, took on a concerned look, and he was reassured.  He started talking again.  She took his hand across the table and went back to him.
Wow, I thought.  What a juggling of inputs, variables and outputs.   But she wasn’t totally done with me yet.  She took the straw out of her drink and sucked on it slowly.  Wow, wow, wow.
Some people came in and took the seats next to me but I didn’t notice.  I felt someone sit next to me and then something wet in my ear and jumped.  I heard laughter.
“Not really with us, are you?”  Maria,  the owner of the tongue, said.
“Hey, how are you?”  I said, and stood up and enveloped her in my arms.  She held her pretty little face up and I kissed her, long and feelingly.   What happens to her?  And us?
“Hey WE are doing great,” a loud voice said.  I broke it off and reached around Maria and shook Jim’s hand, “How are you Doctor?”
"I am doing just great Doctor, just great,”  Jim said, looking around me for the bartender.  “Another day another appendix.  As long as the Board doesn't catch up with me.  Hey let me have a Sapphire and Tonic, Marie will have a Chardonnay and ladies," Jim turned to two others that had come in with him, “What can I get you?”
“You know,” one of the two said, and the other said “you should!”
“Oh right,” Jim said, “cosmos, pink ones, I think” and the girls nodded their heads, at about the same time.  They kind of looked like twins.
"Mark, this is Sharon and Karen." Jim said, introducing the other two.  "They're going to be a social worker.  Ha, get it?  Sharing and Caring."
The girls hit him.
"So, what are we planning tonight?  Three of you, two of us, I sense magic in the air." Jim said.
The girls giggled again.
"Well, I am afraid I'm with someone exclusively," Maria said.
"Lose him!" Jim commanded. "We have no room for extras."
Maria smiled and hit Jim.
"What about your friend, doesn't he talk?" Karen said teasingly.
"Oh, he talks,” Maria said, and put her arm through mine.  “He talks…the language of love.”
“Ohhhh,” they said, together.
"Do you want to go somewhere?" she asked me.  She knew tomorrow was a big day, but I had been a little vague as to why.  I looked in her eyes.  They were smiling into mine, her eyes bright and beautiful, her face, her expressions so known to me, through years and years and years.   Wow times infinity.   If this isn’t love what is?  And if there are two of me will that be better for her?  Or not?
I pulled myself back to her, to the here and now.  "I can think of one place," I said honestly.
She smiled even more at me. "Really? Gee, I can't imagine where that would be."
"Now kids," Jim broke in, "this is a public place.”
He turned.
“Ladies," he addressed the others, "These children are in the midst of the joy of love.  I leave it to you.  Shall we allow them the joy of being with each other in privacy, or shall we see if they can maintain a relationship under real world stress, which to my mind, would only strengthen it – as Nietzsche said of course what doesn’t destroy me makes me strong – and which goes to relationships too I think as in What doesn’t destroy them makes them strong.  What should we do?  What should we do?  Sharon, your vote?"
The smaller of the two, or maybe not, they appeared identical, nodded solemnly.  "Oh I think we have to stress them.  Maria would do it for me, wouldn't you dear?" She smiled at Maria, a little maliciously.  "Remember my engagement night, Maria?"
Maria laughed.
"No, viciousness now girls, no dirty laundry." Jim cried. "And you Karen?"
"Oh I agree absolutely,” the other one said, and I swear they were identical – or else sisters, or else friends who looked exactly alike (why do girls do that but not guys?  Have friends who look almost exactly like them?  A grouping instinct?)  “I think it's our duty to stay and help them."
Jim said, "Another round Bartender, and any help you can provide in getting these two lonely kids together would be appreciated."
"So, Karen," Jim kept on, "Tell me about yourself.  Your hopes, your fears, your aspirations.  What do you do, who do you see, where do you go? Is there anyplace you'd rather be, anyone you'd rather see?  My God," he said to the others, "I'm on a roll, spouting poetry.  Don't stop me.  Aren't I romantic?" he finished, leaning over and leering at them.
"And this man was my thesis advisor," Karen said, giggling.
"That's right my dear."  Jim took her hand, "and now that we no longer have a professional relationship," he stressed "professional" and paused, "perhaps we can have another, more fulfilling sort of contact."
"Oh you can have that sort of contact and still have a professional relationship with her," Maria said laughing.
"Maria!" Sharon, Jim and Maria started talking at each other about Karen's virtues.  I sat back and watched Maria argue.  Her hair shone, her eyes were lit.  She spoke with her body and her voice.  She had a simple dress of some kind of shiny material.  It rose to mid thigh as she sat.  Her legs were crossed.  They started from a pair of shiny high heels and were sheathed in dark stockings.  I looked back up at my drink.  Quickly.  I didn't want to stare too long at the place where the legs disappeared under the skirt.  Maybe one more quick look.  I  looked down again, quietly.  Her skirt had moved up her leg a little.
"See anything you like?" she asked, catching me, and laughing at me again.
I was embarrassed.  Usually I was much more subtle.  Hard to control my lust now.
The rest of the evening passed wonderfully.  At the end, I told Maria I couldn’t go home with her that night, or for the next few nights.  She understood and kissed me long and hard.  “Take care of yourself,” she said.  Jim shook my hand, said, “see you tomorrow” and walked out, one arm around each of the girls.

ANOTHER TEAR OUT PAGE
Why am I going back to this?  I thought I had made my peace with it a long time ago.  Or at least buried it.   It’s too damn disruptive – can’t think with it in my head.  And I have to think now.
Is it the stress of what’s about to happen?  The copying?  The thoughts?  That’s why I went into science in the first place.  It was sure.  One plus one equals two – and it didn’t really matter what Gödel said about proofs.  But now I stand on the edge of an awesome experience and I guess, thinking rationally (which has been my salvation) (can I guess and think rationally?) the strain is taking me to places I haven’t been in forever and thought I had covered up long ago.  Let’s try to get back to where I started this.
Hmmm.  Nano plastic surgery.  But that might be a little tough if we start messing with too much – the law of unintended consequences might rear its ugly head.  And me 1.0 is ok in many ways.  But maybe me 1.0 could be a little better in the non scientific side – like in emotion and caring, and those kind of things that I let slip all too often because of work.  But we can’t engineer for those now anyway.   And since nano me is a copy of a functional organism – me – the law of unintended consequences shouldn’t come into play.
But love created me I think.  What happened later in my house didn’t change that.  My mom told me that more than once, that she was in love and I was a creation of that love.  So maybe it is just an extension of love for me to create another me and/or improve the other me so much that it becomes another person.  But Nature has settled on its method of reproduction – not to mention God, who I am not sure about – to in part I think include two sets of DNA which increases the mixing and matching and the variety of the organisms.  Although I have wondered why Nature stopped at two.  Why not really mix it up with three or four or five sets of DNA?  That and certain other anomalies makes me wonder about evolution as a science.  And of course it is not predictive either.  We can’t predict what changes may occur in the future using evolution – and predictability is supposed to be the hallmark of scientific theory.
And this is where it gets really odd.  If, according to sociobiology, the genes only desire to propagate, and adaptations are precisely to accomplish that desire (but honestly I could never figure out where that desire was supposed to be – it is stored exactly where on the gene?) haven’t my genes reached unimaginable heights, by now being able to reproduce repeatedly, without love.  Which also means without dilution by another’s DNA, so doesn’t that mean that my DNA have “won”!?!  They have reached the ultimate pinnacle?  They have exactly reproduced themselves, or will once we make nano me, without any other DNA getting involved – without watering themselves down?  And once we build the nano mold my genes can reproduce as much as they want because one mold can be used for a theoretically unlimited number of copies as long as you have the nano.  On the other hand, I can’t have the first set of genes that tried to reproduce asexually – don’t planaria or something do it?  Maybe – and I’m assuming I am a higher life form (see modesty above) – maybe no other higher life form got the ability for a reason, it was selected against, and if so why not?  Is there some issue with it, some reason it was selected against?  I know by mixing more variation is achieved and likely more adaptability which is why it is seen as an advantage – but if that’s the case, why not three or four or eight mixing together?  That would introduce even more variety, not to mention legitimizing orgies.
On the other hand, if we just could reproduce asexually life there would just be one of us and that one could, if it had any environmental survival skills at all, take over everything.  After all, the supremacy of the hive or group think has long been touted – such as ants and bees and even the Borg (ok that last was a fictional reference…)  The ultimate group think would be a colony of the exact same person – of course they would all think the same way.  And, on a philosophical note, the whole private language thing kind of gets blown away – each copy would understand his other (or hers!!  What would gender be anyway??) copies implicitly.  (And on that private language thing it’s doubtful anyway – especially because close couples and lovers and friends have a private language – and frankly Wittgenstein and most of philosophers I know don’t have anyone they are especially close to in an emotional way – don’t even recognize the worth of emotion in communication -- so they blew that one I think, but I will be able to scientifically prove they did once we make me 2.0.)
And one more thing too.  Wouldn’t it be an advantage not to go through the whole courtship thing?  Not to waste time chasing after another, and using resources and neurons etc.  to do all that?  What if we didn’t need any of that to attract a mate?  Would love and cooperation and altruism – all the things the sociobiologists think comes from our genes because we need to attract others, go away?  So aside from blowing away Wittgenstein aren’t we proving (or not) all that genetic theory too?
Wow I thought this would calm me down, but not.  I really am nervous.
Back to the problem right in front of me.  Changes to nano me to make me a better me.  I can’t change things too much till I solve the code that will let me change the nano once set.  And that code is proving very tricky.  Another me, another mind like me, might help there.  So maybe nano me can help improve himself.  Which is a fine and calming thought to end this tear out section with.
 END TEAR OUT PAGE

TEAR OUT PAGE
But then me 2.0 might be better than the me 1.0.   And then I will get jealous of me 2.0 (EVEN THOUGH ME 1.0 CREATED ME 2.0 – LET’S NOT FORGET THAT, 2.0 IN CASE YOU AND I HAVE ISSUES, SHALL WE?)  Like God got jealous of Adam and Eve once they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil becoming like Him.  But He knew they would, since he knows Man in The Womb.  So He created someone who He Knew was flawed.  Hmmm.
“So, children,”  I remember Father Bleary saying, one day,  “from Jesus to the flood, how come God killed his own creations?”
Maria raised her hand because she was often the first and most prepared.     “He didn’t Father, it was people who killed Jesus.  And God brought the flood because people were evil.”
“But,” the good father said, “Didn’t He make them?  Didn’t He know what they would do?  And is it their fault He made them evil?“
No one, even Maria, said a word.  We didn’t know what Bleary was doing.  We didn’t know what to think.
“What about the people the evil ones hurt and killed before God killed them?”  and he seemed to be looking at me, but I was having trouble focusing.  I had thought that a lot at night at home before they came for me.  Praying that they wouldn’t.  Oh God stop them now, why me, You promised this wouldn’t happen, why me?
And now the priest dropped his voice, “and didn’t Jesus promise no one under His care would hurt or be hurt?  How could that happen?”
And now I was sure he was looking at me.END TEAR OUT PAGE

We are trying to plan for all contingencies, so today I am looking at myself.   I am on a camera and output to a screen so I can see myself as others see me – not as I see myself in a mirror.  When my nano person comes out, I want to be used to looking at me so I don’t freak when I see me in nano.  A view in a mirror is different than a view in a camera, and since we are more familiar with a mirror view we don’t like picture views.  So if I don’t like pictures of me, I probably really won’t like looking at nano me.  Or will I?  After all, identical twins like each other.
That is why we didn’t proceed beyond Jekyll.  We thought that anything beyond a mouse would have freaked out (to use a scientific term) if he or she had viewed himself or herself in the flesh.  A dog, if we had Nano’s a dog, would have freaked out (scientific word) if it saw himself or herself opposite him or her; another dog with the same smell, tail and whatever dogs use to communicate.   We figured, without knowing truly what animals may understand (after all didn’t Wittgenstein say something about a bat or a lion or something regarding our total inability to understand them?), that a mouse was about as far as we could get in a complex CNS (“Central Nervous System”) without fucking the animal’s mind.
People are animals too, of course, but we do think that we will be able to overcome with rationality (or “free will”) such freaky things as seeing ourselves opposite us.  That is why I think I can tolerate seeing me.
 I want to have the memory of looking at me too, for my nano me, so that he can be as familiar as I am with looking at me.  Like I said above, what is in my mind should be in his mind…we should be just about the same person once we make him.
But we can’t be the same person.  That would be impossible.  He will be a different person but me in body and mind.   And soul if we have one or if nano will copy that too.  Of course, if he has no soul and I do that would be rough on him and he would be different although query if you were missing a soul would you know it?  The Catholic church which might be the best authority we have or at least the oldest, would say that a soul is not matter, so we won’t be able to reproduce a soul by simply copying matter though nano.  But the Catholic Church believes in God too, in a physical manifestation of God that walked this planet – made of God nano?  Hmmm, this is the first time I’ve thought about it but it seems that the closest analogy to what we are doing IS the Trinity, Three Persons in One Godhead.  Of course, I do know that the Roman Catholics believe Nature (or (“God-ness”) came first and Personality came second, while the Greek Catholics believe Personality came first and Nature comes from Personality.  So under Roman Catholic theology I will share my nature with nano me and only second are we separate persons, while under Greek Catholic theology I will be separate people and have separate natures…
Awesome.  I am going to delve into the nature of the Godhead by this experiment.  And figure out if Man has a soul.  But at the least we should be able to create a me of nano, just like Hyde is like Jekyll.  And Hyde seems happy enough – even if he doesn’t have a soul.  (And I know animals aren’t supposed to have souls so maybe I can’t use them as a precursor experiment to me.)
So that leaves the questions of whether nano me will have a soul and of course assuming there is such a thing, which science theoretically had settled long ago.  Kind of like math had settled the universal consistency of numbers.  Or didn’t.  That is a dig at my friends the mathematicians who like to pretend their “queen of the sciences” is settled.  It isn’t.  And I still think one day everything will come crashing around down our ears because Pythagoras or Euler or Hilbert or someone made a basic logical error.
But it hasn’t yet.  And we were able to use math to construct our quite miraculous nano.  And whether or not the me who assumedly has a soul will recognize the me who assumedly doesn’t as me or even as human is an interesting question, but I don’t think the soul question will lead to disaster like the math question could.  (Cue Adam and Eve and their attempt to know good and evil…or Icarus and his pride…or Oedipus, or Doctor Faust, etc. etc.  But I really don’t think that will be an issue…)
And then we are also attempting to gain insight into the nature or nurture question – nano me’s nature and nurture will be essentially the same, but environmental variables will soon be different.  I guess to truly answer that question I would have to nano a baby…hmmm…but for right now it is enough to track the environmental variables which may well give insight to the question.  How soon will he start being different?  Will he ever be different?
And that brings us full circle more or less to what I am doing right now.  I am writing this and occasionally looking up, at the life size me in the screen opposite.  I am looping a previous movie I took, of me writing in another notebook.  I see my head bent down and the top of my mostly black haired head. Getting a little thin up there.  I remember once I asked a barber if it was getting thin and he said it’s “not that bad”.   “Not that bad”!  “Damn No!” would have been the right answer!  I don’t care what the evidence showed, I wanted to hear “Damn No!”  With the exclamation point.  I never went back.
Maybe I can patch it in with little nano.  We make people and replace hair too!
Me on the screen looks up and stares straight ahead.  At me here without seeing.  I freeze the image.  I stare at me, the me on the screen unconscious of me staring at me.  I get up and look at me closer.   Regular enough features.  Dark eyes.  Afore (lawyer word!) mentioned hair.  We’ve recorded this and other movies for another reason.  Teams are ready to record nano me and compare every gesture and every movement to me-me.  Will there be any differences?  Poor nano me.  He will have to get used to that too.  But he already did as me-me.  Till I revolted and killed the feed – jammed it.  Couldn’t think with constant observation.  Nano me should be able to last though as long as I did –two weeks.  To make it fair to him I’ll record me, as long as he does.  Hopefully we can get him to keep a notebook too, and I will too, so we can compare those too.  Because we still aren’t sure – but we think – the copying operation leaves no mark.  But it is good science to make as many observations as possible.
I am getting a little nervous about all this.  Got to watch that.  It helps no one.  And if I am nervous going in then nano me will have a nervous pattern coming out.  Will that impact nano me?
And for God’s sake we need a better name for nano me.  I don’t want to be called anything but me and if someone tries it will get old real quick.  We couldn’t think of a good name for him so I have proposed we do the decent thing.  Let him name him.
I have also tried to make sure that other things that would drive me nuts upon first arrival are taken care of to the extent we can.  So for the record (as you lawyers say) it should be clear that nano me is inheriting half my property.  Half of everything I own goes to him upon completion – upon his first breath.  The lawyers have obtained an opinion from a judge that this transfer is legally recognizable.  But there is no transfer of my remaining share ever – why tempt nano me to off me-me?  But nano-me wouldn’t off me-me cause I am nano-me too up to this point or a little further till we actually create him and I wouldn’t off me-me or nano me.  After all I created nano me.  Or would I?  After all God offed his creations, and let them suffer and be tortured.
I looked at me again.  Looking at every line hair and pore on the screen.  My vision is still good and I still look good.  Thirty two and too much work hasn’t dented me yet.  Otherwise I would do nano surgery on me.  We make people and replace hair and fix vision too!  We can do nano plastic surgery too.  So why not tune up the face and/or body?
There will be one difference between me and him, so we and everyone else can tell us apart.  Not for us one of those mistaken identity things in movies.  I will have a unique radioactive signature, a small implant, placed under my skin in my right hand as soon as the copying is done.  He won’t.  And the implant will be as unique as possible, locked by a code that will take something like 10 to the 128th power to unlock.  So we will be able to be uniquely id’d.   

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The nano me should die at the same time as me if we copied me correctly.  But can we?  Is that all a person is?  A pattern in time and space?  Father Bleary wouldn’t have agreed of course.  And so we are going to test some of the tenets of religion too.  Which could be scary for them that believe.
I stopped believing a long time ago myself.  Right about the time I discovered the evil that men do.  To me.  When I was ten.  And if that stuff happens to a kid how can there be a God?
   No there can’t be.  And so we are only patterns.  And so we can make more of us with nano. 
END TEAR OUT PAGE

I ended yesterday’s page rather abruptly, in the middle of a thought, and so I should take a moment or two to finish that thought out.  (Will nano copy thoughts?  We think so…)

Since, as I discussed yesterday, we belief life is a pattern in time and space, and mathematics is the science of patterns, we have used mathematics to construct nano, which are the building blocks of the more sophisticated patterns that form life.  A nano particle is like a little teeny mathematical equation made a little teeny bit of matter – but it is so small it isn’t really much matter – nor really much math for that matter.  Just enough to be a building block of matter, and stick onto its neighbor.

Now the dicey thing is that the math isn’t quite as firm as what we might want.  Despite what they taught all of us in school math is riddled with inconsistencies and other problems, but fortunately we don’t really care about that.  All we have to do is restrict our equations, or nano, to the world of matter and within that restricted world they work just fine.   We think.  Kidding, kidding.  Of course they work fine.  Hyde is doing just fine over there isn’t he?

But we really don’t know if everything IS working fine with Hyde -- maybe he has small squeaky mouse fantasies about taking over the world -- and that’s where I come in.  If we can copy me, and have another functioning me, with a mind and everything…

I just hope we capture everything that is me, including the changes programmed into me (or my pattern) to change across time and space too, from when my father’s sperm first fused with my mother’s egg, and my body beginning and growing in the womb, and me growing though baby and child growing into adulthood.  And to finish this, the descent too, that is my pattern including my  downhill slope too (if I’m not taken by accident before although some think a tendency towards accidents is included in DNA.)  And then my pattern destroyed, and my death.

Will my nano me die?

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Or can we?  Is that all a person is?  A pattern in time and space?  I remember Father Bleary (if that was his name, I think it was something else but I don’t remember and that is what we called him) holding forth in our fourth grade religion class.  “Children,” he would say, from behind his large desk to all of us sitting there, in our neat little rows and uniforms before him, “remember you are unique, a child of God and each of you are fearfully and wonderfully made.”  And he would smile, a with his red face and big bloodshot nose.  And sometimes he would look straight at me trying to give me extra assurance I suppose because he knew my family and where I came from and probably guessed some of what I went home to.  But not all of it I am sure.  Not all of it.

I knew he felt sorry for me and probably even liked me because he was a good man of the cloth, retired I guess, which is why he got stuck with us.  But he seemed to like us none the less.   

How do you quantify like?  Or love?  What force or material or whatever will be copied by our nano that will equal love?  And conversely, how do you quantify hate?  What will be copied that will equal my hate?

END TEAR OUT PAGE

Yesterday I brought this notebook up to speed, more or less, with a general description of where we are ending with my possibly doubling my shareholders’ investment in me.   We have better, more specific records elsewhere but the lawyers and scientists tell me my own records are important, even though I drive them nuts with my digressions…But I digress…

I am ultimately responsible for leading this project to a successful resolution in two ways.  The first way is in the traditional sense of a team leader, directing the project.  And like I said above, the second way is in providing the raw material for the project, in being effectively the scaffolding on which we are going to build our nano construct.

Our nano construct is of a real life entity (RLE), a Homo Sapiens, me.  It’s a little too difficult to start from scratch in trying to use nano to construct life.  We simply don’t understand all the variables.  But we have plenty of examples of life all around us.   And we copied one of those examples, Jekyll, successfully.

So our next, more complicated (we think!) real life construct (RLC) based on a RLE (me) will involve the same two stages as making Mr. Hyde: first, using nano to build a scaffolding around all the organs, and tissues, and cells, and parts of cells, and parts and other parts, of me.  Then, second, using nano to fill that nano mold, making the positive of me.  So we will end up, if all goes well, with a nano negative me mold and a positive me.

It is exciting to say the least.  The reason why all this works is that a living organism is a regular pattern across space and time, with food and drink and breath providing the raw material and energy, and with DNA providing order and timing  for the organization of the material and for the building and rebuilding (we think), but the order and the timing seems to be a little beyond our understanding, and a little beyond what we think DNA does, so really so much of the body’s working remains shrouded in mystery.  But we do understand it is a pattern, because we constantly replace the raw material in the body, like bricks or mortar in a building as it breaks up or falls out.  The building could be replaced with entirely new matter, new material that is the same as the old, like one brick for another, and we would likely think of it as the same building.  And we are the same way, our food and environment does the same thing, provides our body with the raw material which it can use to replace parts, and so we turn over the material in our body every so often,  depending on the nature of the cells, and nerve cells maybe not ever, entirely new matter replacing the old, yet we still think of ourselves as the same person even though we are new material – because we are the same pattern.  Of course ultimately we can’t replenish it any more and our body fails, the pattern doesn’t work right and we die.

But my point too is that Man’s pattern, like DNA’s function, is nested and recursive, so that Man’s pattern contains its own time for its own rebuilding, and its own schedule for its own rebuilding, and it even rebuilds the functional parts like the mouth and stomach and lungs that deconstruct the food and drink and breath into the material needed for the rebuilding. 

And even though we can’t even understand how all that gets done, in fact like I said above even though we can’t even understand quite how DNA works, we can copy the machine.  In other words, we can, using nano, make a duplicate of the pattern, and using a nano, make the material that is built by the pattern, so even though we can’t make a person new, we need a sperm and egg and, hopefully, love for that, we can make a new copy of a person, by copying everything about a person.

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I am writing this part on a separate page, directly on a hard surface, so as to leave no imprint on the underlying pages.  I will tear this page out later.  Sometimes it’s good just to write things down for my own purposes and memory that no one else sees because I will tear the pages out.  Without a trace.  That’s also really why I grab whatever to use as my own notebooks.  Without consistent page numbering, specific page numbers, etc. (like real lab notebooks have) I can do what I want and no one knows what was in the notebook. 

And I do have to remember to KEEP ALL THE TORN OUT pages together and not lose them because that could be a real problem.  And I think I will be able to – because I am not as disorganized as I have let the world think.  But I do lose things.  But I tore out all the pages from the last book before I lost it.  I think.

Enough digression.  I want to make sure that I record for my own use my thoughts as closely as I can because afterwards my doppelganger will probably start to change, just like Mr. Hyde probably did, because he will be different, have had different experiences, as soon as he comes to life, at the moment all the nano is in place.  I don’t know the impact those changes may have.  Plus I am thinking that it might be possible, once we get hold of some of those changes, to fine tune my mold, so the next time we make another me (after all the nano mold is reusable) maybe I can make some very small changes in the neurological structure to make a better me if you will.  Like one who doesn’t lose things.  And/or is more efficient.  And/or doesn’t try to do too much.  But at some point that isn’t me.   We can change nano once set, a little, but not much and I am working on code that might allow for even more changes, even once set.  But that code is not developed enough yet, even for tear out pages.  So with nano now I can’t change my nose into an ear, or my penis into something huge, like over twelve inches cause then it would be a foot.  Hahira.

But the changes I am planning on making might be very dicey I think and I want to make real sure I don’t screw them up.  After all I am changing me.  And it might be for the philosophers or priests but at some point changes to me make me no longer me although I guess if I am a physically different entity I am a different me.   I also seem to remember the Pope saying if we even could create Man then we would truly be playing God and God wouldn’t let us.  Somehow. 

Well, maybe it’s pedantry but technically speaking I’m not creating man – just copying him.  Maybe God won’t strike me dead then, and even though I was raised to believe in God and the Pope, my God isn’t the Pope’s God any more.  Maybe I’ll try to find the belief neurons and change those too.

TEAR OUT PAGE DONE

FIRST PAGE

I have always tried to be extremely careful with my things, but occasionally, as my father had noted, I have tried to do too much.  Trying to do too much leads to all sorts of issues, not the least of which is misplacing my things in my hurry to get to the next thing.  Or, as a teacher told me once, I get ninety percent of the way there and figure the last ten percent isn’t worth it because I am in a rush to do the next thing.  But then, also since I do try to do too much, I get a lot done.  And I also usually find my things in the course of doing other things.  But dammit, I get a little tired of my inefficiency. 

So when I lost my notebook I wasn’t that worried.  It’ll turn up, I thought.  But as the rest of the day went by, and I still didn’t find it, I got annoyed at myself in a low level kind of way.  I write things down so I don’t have to remember them (and for the lawyers and scientists too) but if I don’t have the book, I have to remember them, and I wasted effort in writing them down. 

I don’t put most stuff on the computer either.  Too much risk.  And as I tossed everything in my apartment, drove to my lab and tossed everything there, I thought the system had to change.  Either I had to do less, or start duplicating my stuff so I always had two of everything. 

Which is actually kind of ironic.  Because the stuff in my notebook was all about duplicating me.  Making another one of me.

Let me give you a little background -- you lawyer or scientist of the future parsing my every word.  I am an inventor, scientist and engineer who, for the past ten or so years, has been working on methods of duplicating life.   Not creating life.  I don’t think we can get there anytime soon.  But we can copy living things, from plants to animals, using nano technology.

Nano technology means we can copy things, even living things, by a pretty simple process.  First, we expose the thing to a bunch of nano.  The nano swarms into the thing.  Nano are small, very, very small.  Nano are fuzzy too; they stick to each other like Velcro.  So the nano, once they’ve swarmed into the thing, start moving through the thing and even the parts of the thing, and even parts of the parts of the thing, all the way down to atoms and parts of atoms, and surround the whatever – the thing, or the parts or the thing, or the parts of the parts of the thing – like scaffolding around a building and they end up making a mold of the thing while they are still inside the thing.

We then pull the nano out of the thing, using something that’s like a nano magnet, that makes the nano swarm out from the thing it’s in.  Once the nano’s out, we have it rebuild its mold and voila, we have a perfect mold of something. 

And then it gets really cool.  We fill that mold with more nano…and that nano becomes a mold of the mold – or a positive of the negative mold – a copy of the original thing.  (Nano are amazing.  We make them through a process that involves (sort of) making mathematical equations real, and I will explain a little more about that later on.)

So, for example, in our first successful effort in mammals, we exposed a lab mouse to nano by putting him in an airtight cage, pumping nano (and air of course) into the cage and letting him breathe the nano in.  We named him Dr. Jekyll in case the experiment went horribly wrong – who said we aren’t funny?  

The nano started traveling into his nose (mice are something called obligate nose breathers – they have to breathe through their nose) where some stuck and mapped the surface of the tissue inside the nose.  Other nano went deeper into the nose tissue and dove into the nerves and blood vessels too, and even other nano traveled beyond that, into the cells and parts of cells, and then nano went all way down, into the chemicals and molecules and atoms that Dr. Jekyll’s nose is built from.  (Remember nano are very very small – and we use billions and billions to do the mapping.)  Yet more nano went past Dr. Jekyll’s nose, into his paranasal sinuses, into those, into the muscles and vessels and cells (oh my!) there, and yet more traveled down his airway, mapping that surface and then moving into that surface, and the parts there, deeper and deeper, into the tissues and cells there and yet more nano kept going into his lungs, and they mapped those and went into his blood and cells and other parts there, and so nano kept moving into Dr. Jekyll’s body, and into the cells and all the way down to the molecules and atoms and parts of atoms that make up Dr. Jekyll.

And the really cool thing is that since nano copied a living Dr. Jekyll – and didn’t hurt him in the process but I do think he looked a little bloated by the end with all that nano in him – it also kept track of the electrical and chemical and other reactions necessary to life.  So once the nano had flooded through Jekyll, and copied everything about him (which didn’t take long; maybe a minute or two – nano are fast)  during which Jekyll didn’t seem to be bothered at all and in fact looked a little bored (but bloated!) we pulled the nano out with our nano magnet and it came out but had kept a memory of where it had just been so when we turned the magnet off the nano reassembled into a 3D mold, a negative, of the mouse.  It wasn’t alive of course and looked kind of like Jekyll but with the colors reversed because it was a negative, and it was a little bigger (a scaffolding is always bigger than the building.)   We hung it from a little teeny sling so it was just hanging there with all four feet dangling.

Then came the second part.  We filled that 3D mold, that negative, with new nano, to make a positive, to take on the characteristics that were copied from Dr. Jekyll, so the nose was recreated, and the support tissues and nerves and blood vessels of the nose, and the cells and parts of cells, and the chemicals and molecules and atoms, and then the paranasal sinuses, and the parts that make up those parts, and then airway, and the lungs, etc. etc. etc. 

And when that nano was done we lowered the little sling, pulled out the nano mold with our magnet from our new positive and voilà! – we have an exact copy of Dr. Jekyll.  And the really really cool thing is that since we had copied a living mouse we got a living mouse, a living mouse that started breathing as soon as the last piece of new nano went into the mold -- an exact copy of Dr. Jekyll – or as we called him, Mr. Hyde.

And Mr. Hyde was now looking at me inquiringly as I tossed my office looking for the missing notebook.  Technically speaking, Dr. Jekyll should have been doing the exact same thing.  After all, they were the same mouse.  But Dr. Jekyll was busy chewing on a tube and ignored my frantic search.  We did expect them to do the same thing, and we watched them closely and took their vitals for months (the poor assistant who had to put on the little blood pressure cuff on the mouse’s little leg really suffered)  (kidding!  That’s not how you take a mouse’s BP, it actually goes on her tail) and for a little while they did because they had the same body parts and even the same neurons and neuronal connections.  But once Mr. Hyde was made, his experiences were different, and he started to react differently after a time.  Not always, and not (usually) with regard to major stimulants like food and sex – yes there was a Mrs. Jekyll, who frankly was a little bit of a slut because she slept with both of them willingly, apparently not able to tell the difference, but that is a tough call since mice; a) sleep with any other mice willingly when they are “in the mood” (which happens surprisingly often for lab mice); and, b) I could swear she looked a little confused the first few times she was in with Hyde.  After all, he looked the same and smelled the same (as far as we could tell) yet something in her tiny mouse brain seemed to be telling he wasn’t the same.  Of course we can’t really tell what is in a tiny mouse brain or if they have any thoughts at all so we aren’t that sure about b)  but Jekyll and Hyde did seem to have the same moves – Hyde maybe being a little more aggressive.  But some mouse women like that.

But I digress.  I now am writing this down in another notebook, having more or less given up the search for the moment.  I grab whatever I can – so they are all different, with different pages and margins.  Like I said above I try to do too much and having a consistent notebook structure was a little too much – I had to store them in a consistent place, keep the same idea in memory until I could find an available notebook, etc.  Now I just play catch as catch can with the notebooks which drives the lawyers and scientists nuts. 

Part of doing too much is moving ahead – maybe too quickly – and getting bored with mundane tasks.  And as you can see, I have gotten a little bored with straight note taking through the years.  So even through the lawyers want these notebooks for their records, and even though the scientists want these notebooks for their research, and even though they both want to end up comparing the nano me to the non nano me to see how different if at all we are, and each have their desires there, the lawyers want us to be different so they can make their case we are different, they law couldn’t really deal with one person split in two, would both “splits” control the property?, and the scientists don’t know what they want because if we are the same the reductionists win, and if we are different, the non reductionists win (even though neither, strictly speaking, is a scientific viewpoint) and all that is predicated on these notebooks, but after a few years what was supposed to be straightforward records of my research, thoughts and procedures, ends up digressing some.  Or maybe more than some.

In any event, we are doing some cool things with nano, and the next step is to duplicate something bigger than a mouse.  Like me.  Which has all sorts of interesting implications when you think about it, not just for the lawyers and scientists, but for the philosophers and theologians and really most other people of any kind, and I wanted to get on with it as soon as we could so I could see those implications play out and observe them firsthand, which went out of style some time ago as an experimental protocol – sometime around the time Timothy Leary did LSD and wrote down the results.  Which probably makes sense given his later career.

So because observation leads to corruption (as Heisenberg sort of said with his Uncertainty Principal) subjective experimentation went out of fashion.  But I saw no other way to continue our research, and even though I will be the subject and the primary observer, we do understand the potential for corruption and knowing that  will help us compensate for it.  Just like Man knows he is subject for original sin and has been able to compensate for that.  Ha.

  But I do think my observations will be invaluable.  Plus I’m CEO and majority shareholder so I get to decide.  (My investors are concerned about me being the lab rat.  I pointed out to them however with two of me, their investment should be worth twice as much.  They quieted down after they thought about that.)