Editing 1666: Brain Upload

{{comic
| number    = 1666
| date      = April 11, 2016
| title     = Brain Upload
| image     = brain upload.png
| titletext = I just spent 20 minutes deciding whether to start an email with 'Hi' or 'Hey', so I think it transferred correctly.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|First draft still. Why do they wish to upload a consciousness and what could be achieved (with a better brain than Cueball's)? It is for his or science's sake. What about the risks.}}

[[Megan]] is uploading [[Cueball|Cueball's]] {{w|consciousness}} into a computer device attached to his head via a cap on his skull. After the upload, the computer seems to have stopped responding to inputs, causing Megan to conclude that the process has failed, but this type of behavior is what Cueball is used to facing from his own brain, so to him it just sounds like the upload actually worked.

It's unclear why they are doing this, and this is clearly in some future setting as this technology doesn't currently exist.  It could be a new procedure Megan as a scientist has just invented, and she asked Cueball to be the subject.  Or it could be a common procedure in this future setting (though it is perhaps not as common that the recipient computer would become unresponsive after the transfer) -- perhaps as a way of "backing up" a person's brain.  If the process can work in reverse, perhaps a person could recover from brain damage.  It could also be a way to become immortal in some sense, though since it's a copy rather than a transfer it's doubtful the human would feel like the copy is really them.  Nevertheless, upon a person's death someone enough like him (whether on a computer or perhaps transferred to a "blank" body) could continue to live, so that he would consider that immortality.

In the title text either [[Randall]] or Cueball tells that this kind of no response from the brain (or a computer) is something he just experienced when trying to write a email and then failing to get started for 20 minutes while he (or his brain) tried to decide the very important detail of whether to begin the email with 'Hi' of 'Hey', which is of course ridiculous, as this has no consequence (in any normal relationship with friends that you wish to email this informally).

Sometimes computers can seem to be locked in a state from where it will never progress, but if left alone for long enough, they sometimes snap out of it.  In fact, it is provably impossible for a computer to determine (for all cases) if a program will eventually stop (see {{w|halting problem}}).

In the real world, often the user loses patience, and crash restarts the computer. As this cannot be done with a brain{{Citation needed}} it was lucky it only took 20 minutes for Randall to move on...

==Transcript==
:[Megan is standing in front of the control panel of a device with both hands on the keyboard. The device is linked to Cueball's heads through a wire that goes to a cap on top of Cueball's head, where it spreads out in more than ten wires connecting to different places all over the cap. Cueball sits, hands in his laps, on a kind of table on the other side of the device facing Megan.]
:Megan: Neural-digital link established. Ready to upload your consciousness to the computer?
:Cueball: Sure, go for it.

:[Same setting in a frame-less panel, but Megan presses a button on the keyboard with one hand and a flash of light goes through the wire and around Cueballs head. Cueball seems to jerk as his hands are lifted from his lap and his legs move a little forward.]
:Computer: ''Bzzzzzzt''

:[Same setting again but Megan seems to be typing harder on the keys (shown with small lines above her hands on the keyboard) and Cueball sits normally again but one hand further back than in the first panel.]
:Megan: ...Hmm.
:Cueball: What?

:[Same as first panel but Megan looks a little more down on the keyboard.]
:Megan: It's not responding - the whole system is frozen. I think the transfer failed.
:Cueball: No, that sounds right.

{{comic discussion}}

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[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Science]]