5. Hugh Joins Up

Bob is approached by Hugh, who has just arrived in Heaven's River after being transported (not copied) from the main universe. Hugh brings news of significant philosophical discoveries by the Skippies regarding identity, consciousness, and the nature of cloning versus transportation.

Bob is near a town on Heaven's River and takes precautions to avoid Resistance agents by coming ashore upstream and bathing in a stream. While cleaning his manny, Hugh contacts him—Hugh is now online in Bob's cargo hold after being booted up by the Guppy. They reunite in Bob's virtual library. Hugh reveals that the Skippies have made breakthrough discoveries about identity and consciousness. When traveling via the transportation process (rather than cloning), there is no replicative drift—the transported individual remains perfectly identical to the original. In experiments with parent and child matrices, activating the parent after the child results in the parent developing drift, effectively becoming a new individual while the child becomes the primary "self." Hugh explains two competing theories: either the simulation cannot handle two identical objects and creates quantum changes to distinguish them, or replicative drift is caused by the No-Cloning Theorem from quantum mechanics, which would imply the No-Deletions Theorem also applies—suggesting life after death and the possibility that current Bobs are actual restores rather than copies of Original Bob. Hugh mentions the Skippies are working on developing true AI with massive processing power to test these theories and explore metaphysical questions. They agree Hugh should head in Bob's direction searching for Bender's location, with the option to link up or separate based on discoveries.