“Who we are?” the German said. “We aren’t anyone. You’re a calculating machine made of meat. A neurotic, violent, depressive computing device. Where do you think love comes from? God? Don’t be absurd. It’s an illusion created by natural selection. People who felt compelled to protect their family had more children survive than people who didn’t and they passed on that trait. But there’s a dark side to those survival instincts: greed, cruelty, bigotry. All emotions are like this—strategies for either spreading our genes or stopping others from spreading theirs. Together, they create the illusion that we exist. That we have consciousness.”

It was a fascinating theory, but not one Smith was fully willing to accept. “If an illusion is perfect enough, though, it is real.”

“Exactly!” Eichmann said. “But what if we could manipulate that illusion and change the perverse Darwinist incentives that control our species? What if we could dull the drive for self-interest and increase the pleasure of giving? What if we could provide the happiness that so many have harmed themselves and others for but never really achieved?”

“Make everyone Christian Dresner’s robot,” Randi said. “Take away our free will.”

“You’re wrong!” he said, actually slamming a hand down onto the table. “There is no free will. Evolution has imprisoned us. Consider the trivial example of diet: We crave fatty, sugary foods that used to be important to our survival but now kill us. It isn’t our will to eat those foods. Quite the opposite. It’s an artifact of programming written a million years ago without our knowledge or permission. What if we could change it? That is free will. What we have now is slavery.”

Randi opened her mouth to speak, but the old man cut her off. “We would have forced no one. If you want to remain angry and unfulfilled, searching for relief from drugs or violence or sex or money, that would be your choice.”

Smith’s head was spinning. His work in medicine had convinced him that over the next fifty years the line between man and machine would become increasingly blurry. But he’d always thought in physical terms: prostheses, artificial organs. Dresner’s ideas weren’t so confined. He wanted to reinvent humanity. To perfect it.

“And this is something you can actually do,” Smith said, stunned. “You proved that in Afghanistan. All you need is a more efficient power supply.”

“No,” Eichmann admitted as his manic energy faded. “Even without the battery issues, it was a complete failure. Behavioral control had bizarre side effects and massive inconsistencies among individuals. And the real-world environment just made them worse. Perhaps Christian learned something from the experiment that could help him but I doubt it. If he had another half century, he might be able to produce something usable. But he doesn’t. Neither of us do.”

“What Christian learned? You weren’t involved?