Man Made

: Man Made

A story that comes to grips with an age-old

question--what is soul? and where?--and

postulates an age-new answer.





If I listed every trouble I've accumulated in a mere two hundred odd

years you might be inclined to laugh. When a tale of woe piles up too

many details it looks ridiculous, unreal. So here, at the outset, I want

to say my life has not been a tragic one--whose life is in this da of

advanced techniques and universal good will?--but that, on the contrary,

I have enjoyed this Earth and Solar System and all the abundant

interests that it has offered me. If, lying here beneath these great

lights, I could only be as sure of joy in the future....



My name is Treb Hawley. As far back as I can remember in my childhood, I

was always interested in astronautics. From the age of ten I specialized

in that subject, never for a moment regretting the choice. When I was

still a child of twenty-four I took part in the Ninth Jupiter Expedition

and after that there were many more. I had a precocious marriage at

thirty and my boys, Robert and Neil, were born within a few years after

Marla and I wed. It was fortunate that I fought for government

permission that early; after the accident, despite my high rating, I

would have been denied the rare privilege of parenthood.



That accident, the first one, took place when I was fifty. On Planet 12

of the Centauri System I was attacked by a six-limbed primate and was

badly mangled on the left side before breaking loose to destroy it.

Surgical Corps operated within an hour. Although they did an excellent

prosthetic job after removing my left leg and arm, the substituted limbs

had their limitations. While they permitted me to do all my jobs,

phantom pain was a constant problem. There were new methods of

prosthesis to eliminate this weird effect but these were only available

back on the home planets.



I had to wait one year for this release. Meanwhile I had plenty of time

to contemplate my mysterious affliction; the mystery of it was so great

that I had little chance to notice how painful it actually was. There is

enough strangeness in feeling with absolute certainty that a limb exists

where actually there is nothing, but the strangeness is compounded when

you look down and discover that not only is the leg gone but that

another, mechanical one has taken its place. Dr. Erics, who had

performed the operation, said this difficulty would ultimately prove a

blessing but I often had my doubts.



* * * * *



He was right. Upon my return to Earth, the serious operations took

place, those giving me plastic limbs that would become living parts of

my organic structure. The same outward push of the brain and nervous

system that had created phantom pain now made what was artificial seem

real. Not only did my own blood course through the protoplastic but I

could feel it doing so. The adjustment took less than a week and it was

a complete one.



Fortunately the time was already past when protoplast patients were

looked upon as something mildly freakish and to be pitied. Artificial

noses, ears and limbs were becoming quite common. Whether there was some

justification for the earlier reaction of pity, however, still remains

to be seen.



My career resumed and I was accepted for the next Centauri Expedition

without any questions being asked. As a matter of fact, Planning Center

preferred people in my condition; protoplast limbs were more durable

than the real--no, let us say the original--thing.



At home and at the beach no one bothered to notice my reconstructed arm

and leg. They looked too natural for the idea to occur to people who did

not know me. And Marla treated the whole thing like a big joke. "You're

better than new," she used to tell me and the kids wanted to know when

they could have second matter limbs of their own.



Life was good to me. The one-year periods away from home passed quickly

and the five-year layoffs on Earth permitted me to devote myself to my

hobbies, music and mathematics, without taking any time away from my

family. Eventually, of course, my condition became an extremely common

one. Who is there today among my readers who has all the parts with

which he was born? If any such person past the childhood sixty years

did, he would be the freak.



Then at ninety new difficulties arose. A new Centaurian subvirus

attacked my chest marrow. As is still true in this infection, the virus

proved to be ineradicable. My ribs weren't, though, and a protoplastic

casing, exactly like the thoracic cavity, was substituted. It was

discovered that the infection had spread to my right radius and ulna so

here too a simple substitution was made. Of course, such a radical

infection meant my circulatory system was contaminated and synthetically

created living hemoplast was pumped in as soon as all the blood was

removed.



This did attract attention. At the time the procedure was still new

and some medical people warned it would not take. They were right only

to this extent: the old cardioarterial organs occasionally hunted into

defective feedback that required systole-diastole adjustments.

Protoplastic circulatory substitutes corrected the deficiency and, just

to avoid the slight possibility of further complications, the venous

system was also replaced. Since the changeover there hasn't been the

least trouble in that sector.



By then Marla had a perfect artificial ear and both of my sons had lost

their congenitally diseased livers. There was nothing extraordinary

about our family; only in my case were replacements somewhat above the

world average.



I am proud to say that I was among the first thousand who made the

pioneer voyage on hyperdrive to the star group beyond Centaurus. We

returned in triumph with our fantastic but true tales of the organic

planet Vita and the contemplative humanoids of Nirva who will

consciousness into subjectively grasping the life and beauty of

subatomic space. The knowledge we brought back assured that the fatal

disease of ennui could never again attack man though they lived to Aleph

Null.



On the second voyage Marla, Robert and Neil went with me. This took a

little political wrangling but it was worth throwing my merit around to

see them benefit from Nirvan discoveries even before the rest of

humanity. Planetary Council agreed my services entitled me to this

special consideration. Truly I could feel among the blessed.



Then I volunteered for the small expeditionary force to the 38th moon

that the Nirvans themselves refused to visit. They tried to dissuade us

but, being of a much younger species, we were less plagued by caution

and went anyway. The mountains of this little moon are up to fifteen

miles high, causing a state of instability that is chronic. Walking down

those alabaster valleys was a more awesome experience than any galactic

vista I have ever encountered. Our aesthetic sense proved stronger than

common sense alertness and seven of us were buried in a rock slide.



* * * * *



Fortunately the great rocks formed a cavern above us. After two days we

were rescued. The others had suffered such minor injuries that they were

repaired before our craft landed on Nirva. I, though, unconscious and

feverish, was in serious condition from skin abrasions and a comminuted

cranium. Dr. Erics made the only possible prognosis. My skull had to be

removed and a completely new protoskin had to be supplied also.



* * * * *



When I came out of coma Marla was standing at my bedside, smiling down

at me. "Do you feel," she stumbled, "darling, I mean, do you feel the

way you did?"



I was puzzled. "Sure, I'm Treb Hawley, I'm your husband, and I remember

an awful fall of rocks but now I feel exactly the way I always have." I

did not even realize that further substitutions had been made and did

not believe them when they told me about it.



Now I was an object of curiosity. Upon our return to Earth the

newsplastics hailed me as one of the most highly reintegrated

individuals anywhere. In all the teeming domain of man there were only

seven hundred who had gone through as many substitutions as I had.

Where, they philosophised in passing, would a man cease to be a man in

the sequence of substitutions?



Philosophy had never been an important preoccupation of mine. It was the

only discipline no further ahead in its really essential questions than

the Greeks of four thousand years ago. Oh certainly, there had been lots

of technical improvements that were fascinating but these were

peripheral points; the basic issues could not be experimentally tested

so they had to remain on the level of accepted or rejected axioms. I

wasn't about to devote much time to them when the whole fascinating

field of subatomic mirror numbers was just opening up; certainly not

because a few sensational journalists were toying with dead-end notions.

For that matter the newsplastics weren't either and quickly went back to

the regular mathematical reportage they do so well.



A few decades later, however, I wasn't so cocksure. The old Centaurian

virus had reappeared in my brain of all places and I started to have a

peculiar feeling about where the end point in all this reintegrating

routine would lie. Not that the brain operation was a risk; thousands of

people had already gone through it and the substitute organisms had made

no fundamental change in them. It didn't in my case either. But now I

was more second matter than any man in history.



"It's the old question of Achilles' Ship," Dr. Erics told me.



"Never heard of it," I said.



"It's a parable, Treb, about concretised forms of a continuum in its

discrete aspects."



"I see the theoretical question but what has Achilles' Ship to do with

it?"



He furrowed his protoplast brow that looked as youthful as it had a

century ago. "This ship consisted of several hundred planks, most of

them forming the hull, some in the form of benches and oars and a

mainmast. It served its primitive purpose well but eventually sprang a

leak. Some of the hull planks had to be replaced after which it was as

good as new. Another year of hard use brought further hull troubles and

some more planks were removed for new ones. Then the mast collapsed and

a new one was put in. After that the ship was in such good shape that it

could outrace most of those just off the ways."



I had an uneasy feeling about where this parable was leading us but my

mind shied away from the essential point and Erics went relentlessly on.

"As the years passed more repairs were made--first a new set of oars,

then some more planks, still newer oars, still more planks. Eventually

Achilles, an unthinking man of action who still tried to be aware of

what happened to the instruments of action he needed most, realized that

not one splinter of the original ship remained. Was this, then, a new

ship? At first he was inclined to say yes. But this only evoked the

further question: when had it become the new ship? Was it when the last

plank was replaced or when half had been? His confidently stated answer

collapsed. Yet how could he say it was the old ship when everything

about it was a substitution? The question was too much for him. When he

came to Athens he turned the problem over to the wise men of that city,

refusing ever to think about it again."



* * * * *



My mind was now in turmoil. "What," I demanded, "what did they

decide?"



Erics frowned. "Nothing. They could not answer the question. Every

available answer was equally right and proved every other right answer

wrong. As you know, philosophy does not progress in its essentials. It

merely continues to clarify what the problems are."



"I prefer to die next time!" I shouted. "I want to be a live human being

or a dead one, not a machine."



"Maybe you won't be a machine. Nothing exactly like this has happened

before to a living organic being."



I knew I had to be on my guard. What peculiar scheme was afoot? "You're

trying to say something's still wrong with me. It isn't true. I feel as

well as I ever have."



"Your 'feeling' is a dangerous illusion." His face was space-dust grey

and I realized with horror that he meant all of it. "I had to tell you

the parable and show the possible alternatives clearly. Treb, you're

riddled with Centaurian Zed virus. Unless we remove almost all the

remaining first growth organisms you will be dead within six months."



I didn't care any more whether he meant it or not; the idea was too

ridiculous. Death is too rare and anachronistic a phenomenon today.

"You're the one who needs treatment, Doctor. Overwork, too much study,

one idea on the brain too much."



Resigned, he shrugged his shoulders. "All the first matter should be

removed except for the spinal chord and the vertebrae. You'd still have

that."



"Very kind of you," I said, and walked away, determined to have no more

of his lectures now or in the future.



Marla wanted to know why I seemed so jumpy. "Seems is just the word," I

snapped. "Never felt better in my life."



"That's just what I mean," she said. "Jumpy."



I let her have the last word but determined to be calmer from then on.



I was. And, as the weeks passed, the mask I put on sank deeper and

deeper until that was the way I really felt. 'When you can face death

serenely you will not have to face it.' That is what Sophilus, one of

our leading philosophers, has said. I was living this truth. My work on

infinite series went more smoothly and swiftly than any mathematical

research I had engaged in before and my senses responded to living with

greater zest than ever.



* * * * *



Five months later, while walking through Hydroponic Park, I felt the

first awful tremor through my body. It was as if the earth beneath my

feet were shaking, like that awful afternoon on Nirva's moon. But no

rocks fell from this sky and other strollers moved across my vision as

if the world of five minutes ago had not collapsed. The horror was only

inside me.



I went to another doctor and asked for Stabilizine. "Perhaps you need a

checkup," he suggested.



That was the last thing I wanted and I said so. He, too, shrugged

resignedly and made out my prescription for the harmless drug. After

that the hammer of pain did not strike again but often I could feel it

brush by me. Each time my self-administered dosage had to be increased.



Eventually my equations stopped tying together in my mind. I would stare

at the calculation sheets for hours at a time, asking myself why x

should be here or integral operation there. The truth could not be

avoided: my mind could no longer grasp truth.



I went, in grudging defeat, to Erics. "You have to win," I said and

described my experiences.



"Some things are inevitable," he nodded solemnly, "and some are not.

This may solve all your problems."



"Not all," I hoped aloud.



Marla went with me to hospital. She realized the danger I was in but put

the best possible face on it. Her courage and support made all the

difference and I went into the second matter chamber, ready for whatever

fate awaited me.



Nothing happened. I came out of the chamber all protoplast except for

the spinal zone. Yet I was still Treb Hawley. As the coma faded away,

the last equation faded in, completely meaningful and soon followed by

all the leads I could handle for the next few years.



Psychophysiology was in an uproar over my success. "Man can now be all

protoplast," some said. Others as vehemently insisted some tiny but

tangible chromosome-organ link to the past must remain. For my part it

all sounded very academic; I was well again.



There was one unhappy moment when I applied for the new Centauri

Expedition. "Too much of a risk," the Consulting Board told me. "Not

that you aren't in perfect condition but there are unknown, untested

factors and out in space they might--mind you, we just say might--prove

disadvantageous." They all looked embarrassed and kept their eyes off

me, preferring to concentrate on the medals lined up across the table

that were to be my consolation prize.



I was disconsolate at first and would look longingly up at the stars

which were now, perhaps forever, beyond my reach. But my sons were going

out there and, for some inexplicable reason, that gave me great solace.

Then, too, Earth was still young and beautiful and so was Marla. I still

had the full capacity to enjoy these blessings.



* * * * *



Not for long. When we saw the boys off to Centauri I had a dizzy spell

and only with the greatest effort hid my distress until the long train

of ships had risen out of sight. Then I lay down in the Visitors Lounge

from where I could not be moved for several hours. Great waves of pain

flashed up and down my spine as if massive voltages were being released

within me. The rest of my body stood up well to this assault but every

few seconds I had the eerie sensation that I was back in my old body, a

ghostly superimposition on the living protoplast, as the spinal chord

projected its agony outward. Finally the pain subsided, succeeded by a

blank numbness.



I was carried on gravito-cushions to Erics' office. "It had to be," he

sighed. "I didn't have the heart to tell you after the last operation.

The subvirus is attacking the internuncial neurones."



I knew what that meant but was past caring. "We're not immortal--not

yet," I said. "I'm ready for the end."



"We can still try," he said.



I struggled to laugh but even gave up that little gesture. "Another

operation? No, it can't make any difference."



"It might. We don't know."



"How could it?"



"Suppose, Treb, just suppose you do come out of it all right. You'd be

the first man to be completely of second matter!"



"Erics, it can't work. Forget it."



"I won't forget it. You said we're not immortal but, Treb, your survival

would be another step in that direction. The soul's immortality has to

be taken on faith now--if it's taken at all. You could be the first

scientific proof that the developing soul has the momentum to carry

past the body in which it grows. At the least you would represent a step

in the direction of soul freed from matter."



I could take no more of such talk. "Go ahead," I said, "do what you

want. I give my consent."



The last few days have been the most hectic of my life. Dozens of great

physicians, flown in from every sector of the Solar System, have

examined me. "I'm leaving my body to science," I told one particularly

prodding group, "but you're not giving it a chance to die!" It is easy

for me to die now; when you have truly resigned yourself to death

nothing in life can disturb you. I have at long last reached that

completely stoical moment. That is why I have recorded this history with

as much objectivity as continuing vitality can permit.



* * * * *



The operating theatre was crowded for my final performance and several

Tri-D video cameras stared down at me. Pupils, lights and lenses, all

came to a glittering focus on me. I slowly closed my eyes to blot the

hypnotic horror out.



But when I opened them everything was still there as before. Then Erics'

head, growing as he inspected my face more closely, covered everything

else up.



"When are you going to begin?" I demanded.



"We have finished," he answered in awe that verged upon reverence.

"You are the new Adam!"



There was a mounting burst of applause as the viewers learned what I had

said. My mind was working more clearly than it had in a long time and,

with all the wisdom of hindsight, I wondered how anyone could have ever

doubted the outcome. We had known all along that every bit of atomic

matter in each cell is replaced many times in one lifetime, electron by

electron, without the cell's overall form disappearing. Now, by equally

gradual steps, it had happened in the vaster arena of Newtonian living

matter.



I sat up slowly, looking with renewed wonder on everything from the

magnetic screw in the light above my head to the nail on the wriggling

toe of my left foot. I was more than Achilles' Ship. I was a living

being at whose center lay a still yet turning point that could neither

be new nor old but only immortal.