Life, Time and Kerberos servers

Part 1: Life

28^th September, 2010 was supposed to be like any other normal day. It had begun normally enough as students poured into the sprawling campus of the University of Texas at Austin. There was a full day ahead – lectures to attend, labs to be completed, papers to be written, coffee to be enjoyed along with the many hundreds of small things that clutter the average student’s daily agenda. But for Colton Tooley, the agenda was terrifyingly simple. At 8:12 am, wearing a dark suit and a ski mask, Tooley started firing a loaded AK-47. Within minutes, wailing sirens rent the air and the entire campus was forced into a lockdown as the gunman walked down the streets with his weapon.

Back home, I was preparing to go to campus when my mobile phone buzzed in a message:  “Armed subject last reported at Perry Castaneda Library. Shelter in place, STAY WHERE YOU ARE. If you are off campus, STAY AWAY”. Even as the UTPolice alerted more than 50,000 students, the campus shuttles and city buses started diverting students from the campus perimeter. At 9:53 am, police found Tooley dead on the 6^th floor of the library.

As the hysteria dies down and more witness reports come in, it seems that Tooley could have killed dozens if he wanted to – yet in those moments of sheer desperation, ended up taking his own life. And people are bound to ask why. What could have driven a quiet, studious math major to pick up a gun and end his life? We may never fully understand the story behind the terror, but it made me wonder (trained as I am by 2 close friends, whom we shall call SoA and SoL) what it meant in the first place, to be living.

The dictionary defines life as “an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction”. Very clinical. But would you agree? Am I really “living” if I satisfy those parameters? A car engine takes in petrol, burns it and produces a lot of energy. Infrared sensors can make your life hell if you’re a thief doing Mission Impossible-style stunts. And as for reproduction, would self-generating code be called “alive” (as if it already isn’t a programmer’s nightmare)? What silly examples, you remark! So I’ll make a better argument – would you say that the sulphur-based micro-organisms at the bottom of the ocean “live”? I’m not asking if they’re living organisms...technically yes, they satisfy all the biological requirements, but would you say that they are really any more remarkable than the rock on which they sit?

So let’s take on the big question. When do we transform from being a collection of coexisting organic and inorganic matter, to being a living intelligent organism? When you see a person walk by, if you’re remotely sane (a state I feel far from right now), you wouldn’t probably remark “That’s one hell of a collection of cellulose, keratin and active sodium, potassium, zinc and phosphorus working together as one cohesive unit”! Why - because we aren’t characterized by our flesh and bones. It’s not because I breathe in every second that I feel alive. It’s because I am capable of thought.

As Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am”. And it’s remarkable isn’t it – the way memories can surface, images flash by in the mind’s eye or even strains of music that can stay stuck in your head. And what is a thought? It’s just neurons firing, stupid, says the scientific me. But that’s the amazing thing isn’t it. Elements have evolved and formed a structure that we call our body, but to manipulate the same elemental matter into something as abstract and diverse as thought is hard for me to comprehend. We can take plastic and metal and fashion a computer out of it, we can even write code that makes it do things, but a computer isn’t capable of booting up one fine morning thinking of why it exists.

Which brings me to the other part of this rambling – being aware of one’s mortality. A very controversial subject if there ever was one. Humans are one of the very few species who are aware of their own existence. We may laugh when we see the Youtube video of the puppy yapping away at its reflection, but the fact of the matter is, perhaps that ignorance is bliss. Being aware of our existence implies also being aware of our mortality. For a very long time, we denied the existence of animal suicides. If they aren’t aware of their lives, how can they know to end it? Yet, a few very strange cases have been studied. Forty years ago, animal activist, Richard O'Barry watched a dolphin in the 1960s TV show Flipper, kill itself. It looked him in the eye, sank to the bottom of a steel tank and stopped breathing. And such cases are typically seen in animals capable of intelligent thought depressed beyond repair. Perhaps a tipping point is reached when you’re breathing in and breathing out but you’re really just dead inside. The body remains but the mind has stalled. It’s when thought has dimmed to a darkness where expiration seems a more profitable release than continuing horror. Reality, as we know it, is the interpretation of our surroundings through our five senses. Imagine being in the dark forever – no sound, no light, no surface to touch or feel. No sense of time. The crushing pain of a dead mind and a blank soul.

We will never fully appreciate why Tooley did what he did. The entire machinery that swung into force that day was to protect other lives from being abruptly cut short by another’s actions. Lives that were to be treasured and valued for what they should be – a collection of moments that can be looked back upon and bring up happy memories. But what if there’s a dark void instead? Tooley didn’t die suddenly by gunshot wounds at 9:53am Tuesday; he probably died a painful death long before he took up a gun. 

In the words of William Blake:

“Every night and every morn,

Some to misery are born,

Every morn and every night,

Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night”