Dmytro Taranovsky   July 16, 2006

Reversing Death
(fiction)
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This story is dedicated to the memory of my father, a person of bright mind and diverse interests, who tragically died in an accident on March 4, 2005.

It is 2100 AD.  I am standing in a large circular room with a pedestal in the center.  Several of my friends are around to support me and to witness what was once thought impossible.  I concentrate on the identity of my deceased father and on the task before me.  My father died in 2005 in an accident.  During that time, many people (but not father) still lived in dire poverty.  It was 25years before medical technology allowed humans to live indefinitely, and 15 years before self-sustainable robots were developed, and even before large scale automation and robotization of industrial tasks.

My father's dream and the goal of his life was to produce strong artificial intelligence (AI), a piece of software with the full capability of the human mind.  The nature of the human mind was still unknown at that time.  Only later would we learn that strong AI is impossible, an impossibility that is empowering to the human mind and that enables me to do the present task.  For when they tried to simulate the human brain by a deterministic machine, each small part seemed to work perfectly, at larger levels slight deviations were noticed, and the whole degraded into incoherency.  We now know that lurking behind many chance events in the brain is free-will, the power of the human soul.  It is that power, hidden yet wonderful, that allows me to do what was thought impossible.  

The argument for impossibility of death reversal is simple:  The brain contains information corresponding to the identity of the person.  At death, the information is lost from the ordinary world, and without it, the person's identity does not exist.  Some thought that an analogue of a deceased can be recreated from the memories of those still living, but that would not be the same person, at least to the extent that sameness of person remains meaningful after death.

For most of the history, free will seemed perfectly hidden behind the randomness, and as far as science was concerned, free will did not exist.  To achieve more with free will, one requires a strongest commitment and an enlightment of mind not achieved until well into the 21st century.  It is our thought and enlightment that makes life meaningful, and it is our comprehension that enables true feelings to exist.  For without the capacity of understanding, one has just physical processes, and no immortal immaterial soul that carries feelings.

As I continue to concentrate, I become surrounded by a shower of spiritual light.  It is not just an electromagnetic wave, but is the influence of my mind on matter.  As I increase concentration, using both the strength of will and the intricacy of mind, the usual physical reality disappears, and I see a more abstract world.  

To reverse my father's death, I need to recover the physical information on his body, and complete it with his soul.  The various epochs of the past are before me.  I see the past, but I do not see the future, for at present, there is no such thing as the future; future is something we will create through our choices and through physical laws.  I retrace the last moments of my father's life and transfer the information--and with it his physical reality to the present time.

In a paroxysm of will and with an act of the Supreme Law, we were hit as if by thunder, and my father became alive.  His spirit was transferred into his restored body, and he became what he was in 2005.