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.