"Given enough computational power all magic tricks are shallow," my father used to say, and then dedicated his life and his death to proving himself wrong. He was often like that: Hegelian. He never cheated on Mom but his only true love was magic. He read to me every night like a loving father. I don't remember the words, just the joy in his eyes. And then there were the injections and the machines. He was always learning, exploring, testing. It was inspiring and monstrous in equal measure but not equally known to the world. If he realized there was a difference I don't know. He had strong principles that weren't those.
He was both the most famous magician in the world and the most caustic skeptic. Every time he performed a major trick he'd invite the AI companies to analyze the recordings and try to figure out the methods behind his earnestly mocking theatricality. There was some disappointment mixed with his sneer when he called them wrong. Nobody thought he was lying when he did although he always refused neural polygraphs.
For his last trick he locked himself inside a chamber built by the engineers working on the Jupiter probe and had it dropped right down the Mariana Trench promising to return with no external help exactly a year later. At his request the Chinese navy monitored his descent with deep sea drones. I marked my twentieth birthday by watching a live feed of my father being crushed by the ocean's pressure. I don't think it surprised me. I don't think I believed it. Few people in the world did, not at the beginning, but the Chinese were adamant that there had been no collusion or interference and even my father's skill had to have some reasonable limit.
It's been almost a year since then. I've received many condolences I accepted with the grace of somebody who doesn't believe they are needed. Don't ask me why. Or ask me tomorrow, after my twenty-first birthday party, when I'll inherit control of my father's fortune and everything I programmed into my son — every memory, every skill, every plan, every angle of the illusion we call the self — will finally unlock and he'll realize he's now me and I'm back.
Ta-da.