>From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY: DEUS EX > Chapter One, Pt. 1
Date: 17 Nov 91 19:04:06 GMT
DEUS EX
by Melanie Miller
all rights reserved - copyright 1991
CHAPTER ONE (part one)
Memories make us what we are
June, 2003
"Oh, God, not again."
The words echoed off blank Clean Room tiles, back to an
irritated research technician staring at an old ENIO computer
terminal. With mechanical glee, the monitor had decided to crash
during an experiment, replacing a graph of immunoassay reaction
times with red static.
Why does the frigging thing always have to break down when
I'm using it, the tech wondered. Morosely, he imagined little
electronic voices giggling to themselves: "Let's see how we can
screw up Rich's assays today, hee, hee, hee.""
A wonderful fantasy came into mind--one fist cocking back,
then punching forward to make a nice, satisfying hole in the
monitor screen. A last, dying electronic scream as the obsolete
piece of junk went to that Computer Graveyard in the Sky. . .
And then Kate would kill you. Slowly.
Nice dream, though, Rich mused as he started typing. A
series of hot-key commands told the computer to run through a
series of diagnostics (recommended by the operator's manual, said
manual assuming that the monitor hadn't been through obsolescence,
near-junking, and reluctant rebirth in a basement lab).
Microscopic chip circuits opened and closed, something had to
work--
The computer burped, and reddish static was replaced by
loud FCC snow. Swearing under his breath, the tech gave up on
modern diagnostics and went back to the basics. He whacked the
monitor on the side.
Nothing. It still looked like a broadcast from Mars.
"Richard," said a tired voice behind him, "why do you have
to take out your aggressions on my equipment? Don't you have a
computer at home you can beat?"
"I only beat equipment when it misbehaves," he muttered.
"Which means?"
Rich closed his eyes and waited for the explosion. Kate
was usually good-tempered, but the tension over the last few weeks
had eroded her patience. And they needed the computers
desperately. . . "That the monitor just went down again," he
admitted.
Dr. Katherine Elliott turned from her own terminal,
frowning. "That's the third time this month," she said crisply.
"I thought you said you'd fixed it."
"I did. Unfortunately, the monitor isn't staying fixed."
"Wonderful," the project director muttered, rolling her
eyes at the smooth tile walls surrounding the computer bay. Three
months until the project review, until they knew if the grant would
be funded--why couldn't the circuitry hold out for that long?
"All right, we'll have to work around it," she finally
said, pushing her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose. "Can
you patch the terminal into another monitor?"
"I can try, Boss, but I can't promise it's going to run,"
Rich said, getting up to retrieve a beige toolbox. "You know these
old ENIO workstations are right on the edge of total system
collapse. I'm surprised they've held up this long, with the way
some of your grad students beat on them." He paused, decided to
try one more time. "Of course, if you'd let me buy some components
and upgrade the motherboards into this century--" he said
persuasively.
"Rich, please stop bugging me about money," she said
mildly, shaking her head. "I have none, and you know it." The
National Institutes of Health had just committed their most recent
samurai action on federal research grants; with across-the-board
budget cuts, there was just enough funding left to cover salaries
and supplies. Equipment was something that had to be scrounged on
an "as needed" basis. "Otherwise, I would've bought new computers
a long time ago, and these things would've gotten a Viking funeral
on Lake Michigan," she finished.
Rich snorted. "If you'd give me the honor of setting them
on fire, I'd go along with that."
"Be my guest--just get us a new computer system first. And
while we're on the subject, don't even think about punching out
that screen." She smiled at his suddenly guilty look. "We need
every peripheral we can get."
"Even the broken ones?"
"Well, if you stop flapping your lips at me and fix the
monitor," she said sweetly, "it won't be broken anymore, will it?
Hint, hint?"
The tech shook his head, grinning. "You're a cruel woman,
Boss."
"I know," Kate replied blandly. "We dedicated project
directors are supposed to be cruel--it's in the union rules. Now
shut up and fix the mother."
Still grinning, Rich half-saluted and started to dismantle
the monitor. He liked working for Kate Elliott--she was one of the
top cyberneurologists in the country and knew biotech from the
ground up. Kate was also one of the more interesting project
directors on campus--she had an aberrant sense of humor and didn't
treat her research staff like cattle. Which made working for
Project NAMSR (Neuroanatomical Memory Storage Research) a hell of a
lot easier than it could have been, considering the situation.
While Lake Michigan University had a national reputation
for producing top-notch academics, it was not known as a haven for
research. It ran a number of projects in the main
divisions--Physical, Social, and Biological Sciences--depending on
the type of political wind blowing out of Washington. If a project
was popular, looked like it could produce good data, and would
bring in grant revenue (all three elements were important, in the
university's view), it was signed up. If a project stumbled, it
was cut, surgically and clean.
NAMSR was an exception, designed as an offshoot of the
university's prestigious Perlman Neurodevelopment Research Center.
Originally headed by Dr. Loren Chiles, the Center performed
in-depth research on the central nervous system, one of the last
real frontiers left in the human body. Research perfomed in the
Center had discovered how much of the CNS operated; one major
achievement had been the isolation of neurochemicals linked to the
operation of memory in the brain. At the beginning, NAMSR had been
set up as a program project, a sort of mini-Center, to study these
neurotransmitters with Chiles as principal investigator.
The research broke down when the neurotransmitters proved
to be untraceable beyond a certain reaction point in the
hippocampus. NAMSR wound up as the Center's white elephant for a
number of years--tolerated because of Chiles' funding clout, but
not taken seriously as a research entity. It wasn't until Chiles
announced his plans to retire, nominating Kate Elliott as the new
director, that the project started attracting attention again. It
was an unusual move for the older scientist (a signal of
encroaching senility, some of his less-successful colleagues
muttered); nominating a relatively young researcher to become
primary investigator seemed like funding suicide for the project.
But Chiles' influence and Kate's solid record as a neurobiologist
at MU-Children's Hospital had finally convinced the National
Institute of Neuroscience of her ability to handle a major project.
In due course, she was appointed director of Project NAMSR.
Kate's first job had been to revamp the project's research
goals, aiming for a new five-year program project grant aftre the
current grant expired. As stated in the revised proposal, the new
goals of the project were "to define the physiological processes by
which living sentient organisms record and store memory stimuli,
and determine methods of modifying this memory storage process for
use by silicon-compatible cybertnetics systems." In layman's
terms, this meant that NAMSR intended to discover the physical
method by which human beings remembered the awesome amount of
information they gathered in a single lifetime--and, more
importantly, how all of this information was stored in a space the
size of the human skull.
In effect, NAMSR was throwing down the gauntlet in the face
of neuroscience. The creation of virtually unlimited memory space
had been a goal with cyberneticists for years, and the fact that an
ordinary brain could store more memories per cubic centimeter than
the most advanced supercomputer could per cubic meter was
something that had infuriated cybertechs for years. A computer had
a number of advantages over the brain--logical processing, random
access memory, and precision paradigms, but the organic brain still
maintained its storage superiority over any artificial system
devised, as well as the advantage of a limited self-repair
capability. If these abilities could be combined in a single
package, it would mean a lightning jump into the next computer
generation--a cybernetics system based on an organic model,
combining the speed of silicon with the memory capabilities of
carbon. The pluses were enormous--a computer with inherent
self-repair capabilities that didn't exist in artificial systems,
that could actually grow its own components and memory banks,
limited only by the programmer's need. Some experts even
hypothesized that a semi-organic computer matrix was the logical
direction for artificial intelligence, arguing that the organic
component was necessary for self-consciousness.
Unfortunately, there were still some problems to be
overcome; namely, filling some major gaps in medicine's
understanding of neurobiology. While the fact that people could
remember things was self-evident, scientists still did not
understand the actual process by which a memory was recorded in the
brain's tissues. The holographic paradigm of memory storage was
already accepted by most researchers, and 'hard wiring' experiments
had found structural changes that took place in the connections
between brain cells during memorization. But the actual mechanism
that translated sensory stimuli into patterns that the brain could
store--the biological compiler--was still unknown. This was
NAMSR's first set of goals--to determine how the brain translated
these stimuli into retrievable patterns that could be stored within
neural tissue.
The next problem was to convert the system to silicon for
use by a mainframe. Early attempts to create a completely organic
computer system had resulted in an unstable biochemical soup, and
the cries of outrage over scientists 'meddling in the realm of God'
had been deafening. Further research had settled on a combination
of organic carbon and silicon elements in circuitry, creating the
first true bionics in history. Privately, Kate hoped that the
similarity of electron placement between carbon and silicon atoms
would also serve as the bridge between natural and artificial
intelligence, allowing them to graft the storage capability of
modified brain cells directly into silicarbonon circuits. But this
was honestly more of a hunch than anything they had demonstrated in
the lab--in the end, it was possible that the human memory system
simply could not function on an essentially artificial computer, no
matter how much silicarbonon was incorporated into its logic
boards.
And how long would it take them to pull our funding if that
turned out to be the case, she wondered. It would be supremely
ironic to unlock one of the greatest mysteries in the human body,
only to find that it didn't fit the requirements of a government
grant.
Currently, the main focus was on tracing synaptic
connections in the hippocampus, a small part of the brain's limbic
system connected with short-term memory. Certain biochemical
changes that occurred in this area of the brain during memory
experiments reinforced the view that the hippocampus was definitely
linked to memory storage. But basic research was often compared to
the classic needle and haystack saw, and limbic research had been
going on for three years now. All that time, all that effort, and
the hippocampus still hadn't revealed any of its secrets.
If it had any secrets, Kate mused, suddenly bitter. The
idea of unlocking the human memory was tantalizing on paper, but
fiendishly difficult to do in the lab. There was an excellent
chance they were following a red herring with the hippocampus, and
would still be following it when the grant ended. When that
happened, NAMSR would be facing NINS for competitive renewal of its
grant. Without the achievement of their stated research goals, the
chances of funding became more and more remote. Three strikes and
you're out, she mused sourly. You overreached, Dr. Elliott, and
now we're going to punish you for it. Goodbye NAMSR, LMU, and
fascinating neurological work.
Goodbye research, hello private practice. Oh, God.
She closed her eyes, leaning back in the operator's chair.
Even with her eyes shut, she could still see the synapse vaguely
outlined against her lids. You've been in front of a terminal too
long, she chided herself. Take a break--that slide isn't going
anywhere.
But she couldn't stop working now--couldn't let herself
stop. It had gone well beyond trying to save her job, into
personal territory. The hours she spent on overtime were an
attempt to salvage the project that had slowly taken center stage
in her life. NAMSR had become Kate's baby, the research team more
of a family than the scattered Elliott clan, and she was damned if
she was going to let the government take them away as a
budget-balancing measure.
So get back to work, Elliott. Wearily, she opened her
eyes, pushing up glasses that had slid to the tip of her nose.
"You're doing it again, Boss."
Sshe glanced at Rich. "Pardon me?"
"Your glasses," he repeated gently, hands still buried in
the dismantled monitor. "I know the danger signs--whenever you're
on the brink of mental meltdown, your glasses start sliding up and
down." His head tilted slightly, absurdly, making him look like a
quizzical Saint Bernard. "I really don't mean to tell you your
job, but you're not helping anybody by staying here all the time,"
he continued. "Why don't you go home? Eat something, get some
rest, act like a normal human being for awhile."
Kate sighed, one hand coming up to massage her neck. Sleep
would be good. "Since when did PIs become normal human beings?"
she asked, just to continue the needling.
Rich rolled his eyes luridly. "I said act, didn't I?" he
replied. "It won't be easy, but the field of neurocybernetics will
manage to get through the night without you. Go home."
She smiled reluctantly at the blunt advice. Rich had been
a senior research technican with NAMSR for seven years, and their
mutual respect for each other was well-known. The banter was just
that--flippant words to cover that bone-deep, hard respect. "Yeah,
yeah, and you'll wind up calling me in half an hour with some
horrible news about how the cell banks exploded," she chided.
"I'm serious, Boss.
"So am I." The brashness ebbed slowly, turning weary. "I
just keep hoping that if I look at this stuff long enough,
something's going to click," she said quietly. "It's so damned. .
.frustrating. All the parts to this project are functional on
their own, but we can't use them without the center, the memory
storage system. Discover that, and everything would start to fall
into place." She gestured towards the biolabs, towards rooms lined
with cell libraries generating endless lines of neurons for
combination with silicon wafers to produce that singular cybernetic
curiosity--silicarbonon. "Without it, all the bits and pieces
we've discovered are useless by themselves, except as trivia."
"There's no way you could call artificial neurons trivia,"
Rich replied. "Those could easily be turned into brain implants,
or replace damaged nerve cells. And you've given neuroanatomy a
whole new field to examine with the new deep-range scanning
programs. We've done a hell of a lot of good work here, Boss, and
none of it is trivial."
Kate glanced at him. No anger there, only a need to
convince her, rebuild her confidence. It must be scaring him to
see me like this, she realized hazily. Elliott the Silicarbonon
Queen--tough as nails and twice as sharp--ready to crack.
"I know, Rich," she said quietly. "And I'm sorry. I
didn't mean it like that--I'm just tired and talking crazy. Time
for the PI to go home." She checked her watch. "You know the
drill--"
"If anything happens, you'll be the first to know," he
assured her. "We'll pipe data directly to your home terminal."
She grunted, nodding, and started to shut down her
workstation. Home. It sounded like a fine idea.
The small apartment on Kimbark and 58th Street was within
walking distance of the BRI building (rented specifically for that
option). As she opened the door, Kate enjoyed the peculiar feeling
of peace she got from the apartment. The Kimbark Building was over
sixty years old, red brick and mortar on the outside, old woodwork
and marble on the inside. Typical Hyde Park structure built for
the illuminati that had built the University, now surrendered to
grad students and the occasional professor. Cracked plaster walls
and an ancient molded ceiling trim added to the place's charm, but
it was Kate's collection of computer artifacts, knick-knacks,
masks, and the odd Chicago street sign that gave the place a
feeling of home. After spending a day surrounded by clean room
decor and plastic monitors, it was nice to come home, pat the
horrible plaster lion perched by the door, and feel surrounded by
bits of herself. Which probably means that I'm schizophrenic as
hell, she mused, tossing her purse on a chair and heading into the
kitchen. A good therapist could probably have a field day with
this stuff.
While she waited for the coffee, she watched the day's
messages on the answering machine. Two were sales pitches, the
standard animated commercials fed by telemarketing computers into
unsuspecting vidphones every day. The last message was from Dr.
Phillip Baumgarten, the director of the Perlman Center and Kate's
nominal superior.
"Hi, Kate. Um, I called your office, and one of your techs
said you'd gone home for the evening," he said, fidgeting slightly.
Kate had to smile at this--Phil once said that answering machines
were bad enough, but the nationwide installation of videophones
added insult to injury. "I'm surprised--I thought you lived in
that dungeon you call a lab."
Kate blinked, grinning at this. "I wouldn't call it a lab
if you gave me some topside lab space, you twerp," she murmured to
the screen.
The screen image ignored her. "Well, um, if you get home
at a reasonable hour and you don't have company--what I mean is, if
you're not busy--oh, hell, just call me, okay? I want to talk to
you about NAMSR's site visit." A pause, while he glanced away,
trying to find a graceful way out of the call. "Well, bye. Call
me."
She shook her head as she hit the REWIND button. Phil had
first wandered into her life during internship year at the ULM
Medical Center, where they teamed up with another intern, Tim
Gideon, and became the ruling pranksters of the hospital. After
residency, their paths diverged, Kate and Tim following the
research track through BRI's labs, and Phil getting involved in the
administration, eventually working his way up to the Center
Director's office. As a friend, he was delightful. As a comrade
in crime, he had a nimble, inventive mind. As a budget-conscious
superior, well. . .
He did the best he could, she reminded herself. Phil was
constantly getting flak from the Division about NAMSR's
non-production, running the gauntlet for her in a way she had no
business to expect. But a call could wait until morning--she
wasn't in the mood to be pumped for hopeful news. Especially when
there wasn't any.
Grabbing her sandwich and coffee, Kate settled on the couch
to review the day's notes, switching back and forth between the
datapad and a neurology journal. An article on bionics caught her
attention briefly, news about crude polycarbon feedback devices,
myoelectric limbs. She flipped back to the beginning, amused to
recognize one of the authors, a self-appointed expert in
neurocybernetics who was apparently fixated on the old "Six Million
Dollar Man' series. Wonder what he'd say if he saw our stuff?
One of the ironic things about the project, she mused, was
that they had blueprints for a semi-organic computer circuit ready
for production. Immortalized neural cells had been combined with
thin sheaths of polysilicon to form simple axons, the hybrid
supported by a specialized nutrient flow channeled across the
silicon sheath. Building silicarbon chips into artificial brain
structures, then, was simply a matter of using the organic model
and working from that to create the complex banks needed for memory
storage. Until the process of translating stimuli into memories
was discovered, though, artificial brain structures were
effectively useless. The circuitry alone could replace damaged
nerves in isolated cases (and the possibility of bionic nerve chips
was actually a subproject within the research), but they couldn't
generate the unique transformation of analog data into memory.
Kate glanced down at the datapad again, absorbing the
information. Standard information on the tests run during the day,
certain pieces falling into their places on the puzzle. A coded
tagalong at the end of the datastream caught her eye--the code
meant an error in one of the experiments. She scrolled down past
raw data, hitting the marked section.
The notation read that there had been an error in one of
the memorization experiments. Electrodes tapes to the skulls of
participating rats had picked up an analogous firing from the
anterior section of the hippocampus, very faint. When the
experiment was repeated, the signals couldn't be recaptured.
Martin Singh, the post-doc in charge of the experiment,
hypothesized that the electrodes had malfunctioned and recommended
discarding the day's data.
No, really, Martin, she thought sarcastically. Of course
I'll discard it.
Best to check it out first, though. She tapped the
pad--obediently, it replayed a truncated graphic of an EEG tracing.
The small glitch appeared at two different areas, signalling an
interruption in the normal bioelectric flow of the rat's brain.
For some reason, the glitches--a small, finely waved
tracing--looked familiar to her. She typed in a request for
amplification.
NOT AVAILABLE.
"Shit," she muttered under her breath. She stood up and
took the datapad over to her desk, plugging it into her PC and
dumping data directly into the larger computer. The PC hummed for
a moment, then displayed a more detailed picture of the double
glitch. Here the waves were amplified, showing an odd waveform
where there should have been a smooth parabola.
She punched for further enlargement. The screen lurched
forward, focusing on the waveform. What had been a brief series of
uneven scallops became more defined.
Again.
A series of waves followed by a spike, waves followed by
two spikes. Waves, spike, spike, waves, spike.
Kate gazed at the graphic, something nudging at the back of
her mind. The pattern looked like something she had seen before,
niggling at her. The question was--
Of course. The glitch vaguely resembled something she had
seen in a computer course from college--modulation/demodulation
waves used by a computer modem, the old telephone method for
computer transmission before the global cybernet of fiber-optics
had been established. As telephone transmission was designed for
the analog human voice and computer transmission used digital
signals, some sort of conversion process was necessary--
Some sort of conversion process.
"Oh," she said involuntarily. "Oh, my."
It struck her with head-on force--translating digital
signals to analog, then back again. Or vice versa. Analog data
carried by the sensory neurons to the brain, converted to digital
through the one point in the brain where all signals were funneled,
the only logical source for an organic modem.
The hippocampus.
Kate leaned back carefully, keeping the rush inside. Not
yet, not until they checked out the signal, found its source.
She'd scream when they pinpointed the waveform source in the
hippocampus, determined that it wasn't an electrode malfunction or
a rat tumor. Which could only be done at the lab.
She almost forgot to close the door on her way out.
"YES!"
Kate leaped out of the operator's chair, throwing her arms
around Rich to plant a loud kiss on his cheek. "We've found it!"
she yelled jubilantly.
"You bet your sweet ramchip," Rich yelled back. They broke
apart to stare hungrily down at the monitor. Flowing across the
screen was a steady stream of waves and spikes, computer-augmented
amplifications of a rat's EEG during a memory experiment. "Jesus,
that's beautiful," he breathed reverently.
"That's better than beautiful--that is direct conversion of
neural analog signals into digital patterns," Kate replied, her
attention locked on the monitor. "Raw data, but readable by a
computer. We can tap it, track it, and record it--exactly what
that rat was remembering at that moment."
Rich nodded, suddenly uncomfortable. "Yeah, we can tap it,
but we still don't know where the rat records that memory," he
reminded her. "Or what it's a memory of, for that matter."
"Which is the next step," Kate said intently, leaning over
to turn on another workstation outfitted with a holo projector.
Epiphany had continued on the way over to the lab, revelation
following revelation like a line of dominoes. What had she
said--"There are so many parts to the project, all functional on
their own but useless without the center." And now they finally
had the center.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, calling up an old
program. Above the monitor, the holo stage sprouted a long model
of chained carbon molecules, every other atom in the chain flanked
by a set of two golden pinpoints. "This is that anomalous
single-chain carbon molecule we found a few months ago."
Rich nodded. "The backbone for that weird neuron
microtubule," he agreed.
"Right. It only links up with other microtubules like it,
and the damn things crosshatch every major brain cell type we've
studied," Kate said. "Each carbon molecule chained like this keeps
two valence electrons open in its outer shell. Valence electrons
are used to link up with other electrons, but there are kept open.
Why?"
The tech studied the hologram. Pinpoints winked on and
off, turning around the chain like shackled stars. "You don't
mean--"
"I do mean," she said, catching his attention in her own
enthusaism. "What if those electrons act as logic gates, each one
carrying a single byte of information? What if you have a network
like this set up throught the entire brain, a three-dimensional
network that can shuttle information from nexus--" she typed, and
another chain appeared to cross the first chain, "--to nexus--."
Another chain.
"--to nexus."
Another.
Rich shook his head, still staring at the microtubule
hologram. "Jesus, Boss, I don't know. I mean, it sounds
feasible," he said doubtfully. "But how are the memories
organized? If this is right, the brain has to use some kind of a
storage and retrieval system--God," he suddenly realized, "it
evolved its own ROM. And we've got to crack that language?"
"It can be done. One way or another, we can work it out,"
Kate replied softly, her attention shifting between the stream of
data and the glittering chain. "What we had to do was pinpoint the
method of memory conversion and storage first." One finger tapped
the screen, then pointed towards the golden holo. "We've got what
looks like a conversion process here, and the logical basis for
storage here." And now she did turn away from the screen, her face
lit up with the uncomplicated eagerness of a child on Christmas
morning. "All we have to do is find out where specific memories
are going, track the conversion process, and then we can decode the
program." With some difficulty she paused, trying to sort out the
next hundred things to do. "Scrap the relecephalon experiments.
We're going to need lots of computer time to rerun all the
hippocampus tapes, and someone in Comp Sci will have to write a
program that will screen for that signal. If it showed up on one
tape, it may have shown up on others--I want to match what the rats
were doing to the signal." She tried to keep up with her own
thoughts. "I'm going to need, let's see, some atomic studies of
hippocampal tissue--get Bruce in Electron Microscopy to freeze all
carbon structures--and some background material on carbon atom
relationships in vivo."
Rich had grabbed a datapad and was frantically scribbling
it all down. "Oh, and get some three-dimensional frameworks of the
EM stuff made up," she added.
"Holo or solid?"
"Both. I want something I can throw at the site reviewers.
Literally." In her mind, she blessed her undergraduate biochem
instructor, the old goat, for making carbon/organic conbinations a
clasroom drill. "I may wind up making a complete fool of myself on
this, but I think we're finally on the right track," she said.
"Maybe," Rich said, suddenly grinning. "If we are, a lot
of people are going to be in for a surprise."
Meaning all of the researchers in Computer Science who
laughed up their sleeves at those idiots in BRI, trying to grow a
mainframe, if you can imagine it. "Believe me, they've got it
coming," Kate said, her face lighting up with a lovely, feral look.
"And I'm going to love giving it to them."
The next three months turned into a classic race against
time, big science versus human stamina. Kate was willing to admit
that she was gambling NAMSR on an unproved theory, and the sheer
amount of data that had to be collected before she could even begin
to form an acceptable background for the microtubule storage system
was staggering.
But the whole process was unravelling so perfectly, she
thought, gazing at streams of monitored data. Once the anterior
tip of the hippocampus had been marked as the demomod, the
conversion telltales began to show themselves to the electrodes,
flowing gracefully onto a mainframe-linked EEG monitor. The carbon
chains in the microtubules followed suit, revealing themselves as
ever-shifting strands of biocircuitry, evolved to interact with
other strands throughout the brain in a meticulous symphony of
thought.
In effect, the brain took up analog data from sensory
neurons, translated it to digital signals in the hippocampus, then
distributed the signals throughout the brain. Bioelectrical bursts
of memory cascaded at other signals, releasing a stream of images,
sounds. Wetware, she termed it, deliberately lifting the term from
old SF stories, countless scientific articles. The soft machinery
that predated the computer and so eerily paralleled its inner
circuitry, its motherboards and ROM. In retrospect, the similarity
wasn't surprising, for what was the computer but a poor imitation
of the brain?
Armed with the new data, Kate prepared a revised grant
abstract detailing the new areas of research NAMSR had opened, and
mailed it out to the NINS review board. With a little more luck,
they would have a solid body of work to present at the site visit,
a full example of the MS theory and wetware. Construction of
silicarbon circuitry was already in progress, circuitry that could
be grafted into a small computer to form a primitive version of
their planned semiorganic mainframe. Parallel to this, the CS
programming team had developed a program that could track and
record faint MS signals put out by the hippocampus, reproducing
them in the revamped mainframe as they would have existed in a
rat's brain.
"Now, if we only knew what those signals meant, we're be in
terrific shape," Kate sighed.
She had murmured the thought absently. From the vantage
point of the main control board, she was watching NAMSR's hardware
team work on the project's auxiliary computer, now being used as a
guinea pig for the silicarbon circuitry. The remark wasn't meant
to be a criticism, but the slim Indian standing next to her
stiffened perceptibly. "Considering that we have only had seven
weeks to work on that problem, I believe our progress is
satisfactory," he said formally.
"I'm not complaining, Nathan," she said, raising her hands
in a conciliatory manner. "I know your team's been working
overtime, and your basic outlines look spectacular." She sighed,
allowing her mind to go random for just a moment, an escape hatch
for stress. "I just wish we had more time. I want a working model
up and running by the site visit, and there's still do damned much
to do."
"Tell me about it," he said, nodding once. "I believe we
may have determined some of the main paradigms already, but we
still need to track their interaction paths and rates in the
muscine brain, and my techs are beginning to talk mutiny from the
workload." Dr. Nathan Kundu's thin mouth quirked, the closest the
cyberneticist ever came to a smile. "As it is, I am grateful that
we are only trying to determine the thought processes of a rat," he
said. "I shudder to think of what you will be like when we begin
our research on humans."
"If we don't get funded, you won't have to worry about it."
That drew a thoughtful glance. "Do you really believe that
we will not be funded, considering what we have achieved in the
past two months?" he asked.
Kate shrugged. "If this was a perfect world, and grants
were awarded simply on scientific merit, I wouldn't be worried,"
she said, turning away from the renovation. "Unfortunately, we
live in the real world, and you know that a thousand ridiculous
things affect funding--who you know in Washington, what kind of
clout you can swing, even where you're doing the research." She
started ticking items off on her fingers. "We're associated with
LMU, so that's a point in our favor. I've got some pull at NIH,
and Loren can swing a hell of a lot more if he bothers to crawl out
his retirement cave in the Everglades, but that doesn't guarantee a
thing anymore. If Congress decides to cut research funding again,
if somebody comes up with a really spectacular project--hell, if
our benevolent president decides to piss somebody off again with
his highhanded attitude--we could be in trouble. I won't know
which way it'll swing until after the site visit and the NINS
council meeting." She shrugged again, burying her hands in the lab
coat's deep pockets. "And if we don't get funded, BioSci is going
to pull this space out from under us before the rejection fax is
even cold," she finished heavily.
"Surely they wouldn't do that," Kundu protested. "They
would have to give us time--"
"Time is one thing they don't give. As they see it, we'd
be wasting valuable lab space. I can hear what the Dean and his
collection of spitlickers would say--'Why prolong the inevitable?
Just pack them off to their various departments, and turn the space
back over to the Center.'"
Before Kundu could respond, one of the grad students poked
his head into the control room. "Dr. Elliott? Dr. Baumgarten just
called--he wants to see you as soon as possible."
Kate nodded, glancing back at Kundu. "Speak of the devil.
. ."
"They want you to come to Washington," Phil informed her.
Kate blinked against the sudden invasion of news.
Suddenly, everything in the room caught at her attention--sunlight
streamed through pale beige blinds, the blond wood desk giving off
polished glow. Shock protects you from the first attack of pain,
she remembered. "A reverse site visit," she said blankly.
"Yeah. They're reshuffling the budget again, and since you
were reviewed less than three years ago. . ." Phil let his voice
fade.
"But we've come up with totally new information," she
flared, suddenly hating the calm professionalism that filled the
office. Phil took his position as Center director very seriously,
so seriously that any sense of academic discovery was leached away
in the name of administrative efficiency. "They have to come
here," she added, clutching her hands into the fabric of her chair.
"We have all of the data loaded onto our mainframe, the models are
here, goddammit, and I can't pack them all up just to traipse out
to Washington--"
"They're not expecting you to bring everything," Phil said,
trying to calm her down. "I already spoke to our contact person at
NINS. He said that the institute was strapped to the bone with
those asinine budget cuts, but that they still want to see the new
data. All you have to do is put together a good presentation, some
nice sims of the circuitry, and give them a thorough briefing on
what you've found with the MS research." He frowned a bit when the
news didn't immediately send her into fits of joy. "He said it
looked promising," the director added.
Kate sank back into her chair. "Promising," she said
dully. "God, doesn't that sound like a bureaucrat."
"And doesn't that sound just like an ivory-tower
scientist," he replied, nettled. "Dammit, I'm trying to put a good
spin on this, Kate. I've got the Office of Research Services and
the Dean of BSD on my back, all screaming for your lab space."
"Don't remind me."
"And the only thing holding them off is the prospect of
NINS awarding you a major grant on the basis of this 'wetware'
theory of yours," he continued, ignoring her. "So you could try to
be a little less sarcastic to me, and a little more helpful about
getting your work funded."
Against her will, Kate could feel the anger draining away,
replaced by a reluctant contriteness. God, I'm so tired of
fighting all the time. "So I should shut up, go to Washington like
a good little girl, and give them my best song-and-dance, right?"
she said quietly.
"Either that, or you could try showing them your legs," he
said, relieved that she wasn't going to fight. "But I'd try the
song and dance first if I were you."
"I'm crushed."
"Don't be. When they're visible, your legs are very nice.
I just don't think they'd have much of an effect--the NINS Board is
a bloodless bunch of eunuchs." He gathered up a sheaf of faxes,
and Kate noticed the perfect manicure of his hands for the first
time. Old Phil had certainly gained some polish, hadn't he, she
thought suddenly. Fitting into the power structure perfectly, that
stereotypical iron hand right in the velvet glove.
Oh, stop being bitchy. He's trying to help.
Kate looked up at him, remembering the year together in
their internship. Phil's veering sense of humor, buried now
beneath the administrator's facade. What happened, Phil?
She finally nodded. "I guess I have to go, then," she
murmured. "Since I don't have much of a choice."
"Not if you want the money."
"And I do." She stood up, the simple movement taking on a
stiffness. "Did they give you a show time?"
"Two weeks, kid." He pushed the faxes across the desk.
She had to give him credit--somehow, he dredged up the courtesy to
look sheepish. "Try to bring home the money."
She nodded. "I'll do my best."
>From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY: DEUS EX > Chapter One, Pt. 2
Date: 17 Nov 91 19:04:39 GMT
DEUS EX
CHAPTER ONE (part two)
The hum of the 747's quadjet engines traveled through the
seats, settling Kate deeper into her seat. She gazed unseeing at
the window-framed cloudscape, reviewing the speech she had given
the team before her departure. The formation of quiet, intense
faces, some of the best minds LMU had to offer, had elated and
depressed her at the same time. They haunted her now on the plane,
the knowledge of all their combined work on the line with her
presentation.
"We have put our best into this grant submission, and I
want you all to know how proud I am of the work you've done in the
past few months," she'd said, unaccustomed to the focused attention
from her team. "We may be on the threshold of the next computer
generation with the data we have uncovered. After this
presentation, NAMSR's going to have a good shot at decent funding,
decent salaries"--a cheer went up at this--"and appropriate access
to the mainframe. No more hiding in the basement, taking computer
time whenever we can grab it. NAMSR is going to be taken seriously
from now on, I promise you that."
Good speech, Elliott. You should have been a politician.
Or a used car salesman.
By the time Kate's plane landed in Washington, the
remaining shreds of good will had vanished, replaced by a simple
carapace--to endure and perform, and to bring home the funding.
Even this shell was assaulted the minute she stepped out of the
airport, buffeted by an unexpected blast of humid air. She
immediately regretted wearing a tailored suit that had been
comfortable in Chicago, but was now rapidly melting to her body.
God, I hate coming here, she thought glumly, finally
flagging down a cab for the long ride to the suburbs. Washington
in mid-August was one of the most uncomfortable spots in the
country--which probably went a long way towards explaining
governmental antics, she thought sardonically, watching busy
streets jerk past the taxi window. The old car's cranky
air-conditioning did manage to soothe her nerves, but she was still
out of sorts when she arrived at the National Institutes of Health
complex.
Oh, the hell with it, Elliott. You're scared to death.
The building where the review committee was scheduled to
meet did nothing to help matters. Constructed in the late 1990's,
the C. Everett Koop Research Center had a 'neo-functional art'
motif firmly ingrained in its brass and wood entrance level. In
other words, it was a handsomely appointed, expensively maintained
rat maze. Wandering around the lobby and muttering about the
idiocy of government architects, Kate didn't notice the marine
walking up behind her.
"Excuse me, ma'am--"
Kate jumped and whirled around, just missing the man with a
swinging briefcase. "Oh, God, I'm sorry," she said, flushing.
The marine kept a straight face, but his eyes were
twinkling. "Dr. Elliott?" he asked politely. When she nodded, he
said, "I'm supposed to escort you to the conference room, ma'am.
If you'll follow me."
He started down a tastefully beige hallway, giving her just
enough time to wonder why an guard had been sent for her. She
finally decided to trail along, and found herself led through a
maze of corridors to the elevators which were, naturally, hidden
behind a huge bank of runaway greenery. Kate rolled her eyes to
the ceiling in mute supplication. Washington.
After a silent nine-story ride, broken only by Kate's
peripheral examination of her unexpected guide, the doors opened
onto another beige hallway. Turning around to thank him for his
assistance, she neatly snagged her left heel on the elevator's
threshold and stumbled out into a man's arms.
"Now, what's a beautiful researcher like you doing in a
place like this," he said, looking down at her with a wicked smile.
It took half a second, but Kate finally recognized him.
"Sam!" she yelled happily, staying in his embrace for a hug. "God,
I didn't expect to see you here."
"You know me," he said cheerfully. "I keep popping up in
the weirdest places, and this place is about as weird as it can
get." He turned her around, keeping his arm draped across her
shoulders. "So why don't you come to Washington more often?"
"Move it about 300 miles inland and I'll think about it,"
she replied. Sam Jansen was an old friend from medical school.
The last she had heard, he had gone into neurological consulting
with NINS. Federal work had been good to him, she thought, looking
him over--elegant suit, compact body, dark hair with just the right
amount of gray at the temples. "It's good to see you, dear," she
continued, giving him another friendly squeeze. "It'd be even
better if you could find somebody who knows why this nice young man
is following me around."
"You're looking at him," he said, turning to the guard.
"Sergeant, I'll be escorting Dr. Elliott to the conference."
"Yes, sir." Executing a neat about-face, the marine
reentered the elevator. As the doors closed, Sam turned back to
Kate, catching her raised eyebrows.
"Would you like to tell me how you're involved in this,"
she began sweetly, "or should I just wait until I explode from
curiosity?"
He couldn't help laughing. "Somebody upstairs read your
new specs on NAMSR and got very interested," he offered by way of
explanation. "I'm the only one they have who's even semi-familiar
with biotech, so they asked me to take over as contact person."
"That I can understand. But what's with the marine?"
Sam reverted to an attitude she remembered from medical
school--an almost impossible combination of sly fatalism and
innocence. "They think you're important, so they gave you priority
clearance and an armed guard," he offered. "Consider it a
compliment."
"I hardly consider a marine a compliment," Kate said dryly.
"You should. Do you know how much we pay those guys for
special duty?"
"I don't have the faintest idea," she replied, hefting her
briefcase. "But it's probably where my computer money's been
going."
"Now, Kate, " Sam purred, "would we do that to you?"
"In a minute. Without hesitation."
That got another laugh. "You are really paranoid, you know
that?" he said cheerily. "We could use you around here."
"I'd rather eat boll weevils, but thanks for the offer,"
she said. "In case I ever lose my mind and leave research, I'll
think of you first." She immediately winced, realized what she had
said.
Sam's smile grew a bit strained. "Yes, do that," he said,
forcing a jovial note into his voice. It was common knowledge on
the research circuit that Sam's first project for NINS
collapsed--some said, as a result of leaving too much in the hands
of his assistants in favor of dabbling in local politics. Kate
hadn't intended to brush this sore spot, and tried to make up for
it by asking his opinion on her chances for another grant
extension.
"Well, let's just say I can tell when there's money in the
air," he said, keeping his voice low as they walked through the
passageway. "I've been hearing some great things about your work
in Chicago, and I can almost promise that your grant is going to be
picked up."
Something about his attitude set off an alarm bell in her
head. "Sam, that sounds great, and I'm not going to turn down
funding if it's offered to me," Kate said carefully, "but I'd like
to know who's supporting the project. Armed guards and security
isn't really NINS's style."
"So?"
"So who's interested in the NAMSR specs?"
Sam shrugged. "Top people."
Kate snorted. "That covers everybody from an overambitious
senator to God," she said sardonically. "Would you like to be a
little more specific?"
For a moment, Sam looked distracted, his lips pursed while
he thought. "Kate, all I really know is that a certain group read
your grant proposal, and are interested in seeing your
presentation," he said quietly, glancing at his watch. "Which, by
the way, is in fifteen minutes, so if we can get underwayI" Taking
her arm, he attempted to guide her down the corridor, and was
almost pulled off balance when Kate wouldn't move.
"'A certain group' doesn't work, Sam," she said delicately,
retracting her arm. "I want names."
The consultant's smooth attitude cracked a bit, she noted.
"Come on, Kate," he murmured, glancing down the hall, "this isn't
the time to get stubborn. Does it really matter who funds you, as
long as you get funded?"
"If we're dealing with a source outside of NIH, you bet."
He hesitated for a moment, then finally shook his head.
"All right. If you really have to know, I'll tell you who I
think--and notice, I said think--it is." He glanced around
casually. "Rumor has it that your security clearance was requested
by SPD."
"SPD?" She frowned, trying to match the acronym up with an
organization, then blanched. "Wait--the Special Projects
Division?"
"Well, yes--"
"They're military," she continued, rolling over his words.
"That's Defense, not NINS. Why are they interested in NAMSR--who
told them about it?"
"They've been sharing information on bionics with NINS for
years, and your project includes some bionic elements," said Sam.
"As for why they're interested, maybe they want a reliable
silicarbonon computer system for their new satellites. Maybe they
just want to dump a few million so they can convince Congress that
they need a bigger budget next year. How should I know?" He fixed
her with a stern look. "You said you wouldn't turn down funding if
it was offered to you."
Kate blinked at the accusing tone. "I wouldn't, if it came
from NINS or one of the other institutes," she said defensively.
"But Defense? Jesus, Sam, you know all of the horror stories about
SPD--and no one even asked me about this. As project director, I
think I have a right to be consulted in a situation like this--"
"Will you please calm down?" Sam soothed, tugging on her
arm. They started walking down the hall again, headed for a corner
conference room. "Apparently they just want to compare what you're
doing to their own work," he said. "They can't lift a project from
NINS without permission from everybody involved, including you.
They're just here for a look-see."
"Swell, just what I need," she muttered, as they turned the
corner. A number of people were milling around the conference room
door, among them a small group of military officers. "An
audience."
"You'll be fine," Sam whispered, just as he propelled her
towards the group. "It's showtime."
And heeeeeere's Katie, she thought.
The presentation was the standard format--a brief
introduction, followed by an in-depth description of the most
recent advances NAMSR had made. Kate launched into the
presentation with an energy she didn't feel, relying on her
memorized speech and desperation to carry her through. As she
activated the holoscreen, she felt gratified to see interested
glances between the review team members. At least nobody was
actively snoring.
The Army officers also looked interested, particularly when
she outlined the smaller size of NAMSR's proposed cybernetics
system. Mentally, she flickered back to Sam's comment about
satellites (missile bases? SAC equipment?). The cost of
maintaining an organic computer environment in space was too
prohibitive, even for the Defense budget, she mused. Maybe they
really were just comparing notes for their bionics projects. The
idea carried a surprising sense of relief with it, and she was able
to segue into the question and answer session feeling in control.
The Q&A section of a site visit was always the most
difficult point--it was here that elements of a research project
were called into question, the scientist challenged by the review
team to defend every aspect of the research being performed. Kate
managed to weather the inquiries about silicarbon circuitry and the
microtubule storage theory, countering an occasional broadside with
data from her laptop. She had prepared herself appropriately--the
most radical theories were always the ones most open to attack, and
the concept of the brain following cybernetic models for memory
storage sounded outrageous at first.
As an hour passed, the site visitors began to realize that
her data held up under analysis. The questions grew more and more
vague, touching on the possibility of developing an artifical
intelligence from silicarbon circuity. At that point, she
felt--knew--she had won. Despite their best attempts, they
couldn't punch holes in the theory or in any of the projections.
NINS had to fund NAMSR now.
"These are the outlines NAMSR will be following in the near
future, with your support," she concluded, turning from the
whiteboard to face her audience. "Are there any more questions?"
Seated among the military observers, an officer who hadn't
said a word during the session raised his hand. "Dr. Elliott, I'm
Major Arnold Barrie," he said quietly, in a rich baritone. Kate
thought that he'd never raised his voice in his life--people would
automatically hush to hear him. "Number one, I'd like to
congratulate you on the work you've done with NAMSR. As far as I
can see, your MS theory seems sound, and your plans for a compact
hypersystem would be a breakthrough in cybernetics. I'm sure that
NINS will be very interested in your future work with memory and
human data storage." A sudden, iced glint in his eye belied the
pleasant smile. "But right now, I'm more interested in the
circuitry for your neurocomputer. Have you given any consideration
to other uses for it?"
"We've come up with a few ideas," Kate said, more calmly
that she felt. Deliberately, she turned back to the whiteboard and
uncapped a marker. "We have plans to develop silicarbon circuitry
that can take the place of damaged or inoperative brain tissue,"
she said, beginning to sketch on the board. "You can imagine what
this technique would mean to people with Alzheimer's Disease or
stroke victims--"
"Very impressive, but what about other areas?" the major
interrupted, stopping her in mid-scribble. "Not necessarily
medical, but dealing with human reactions. This neurocomputer, you
say that it could have the memory capacity of a man, true?"
"Correct."
"And your current work is tracking and recording rat
memories, using a specialized set of EEG electrodes and tracking
equipment," he continued smoothly. "Will you eventually be doing
this sort of research on human memories?"
"Well, yes, but that's still a few years down the road.
We're trying to establish engram--memory pattern--parameters with
the rat model. One that's done, we can begin research with the
higher apes, eventually working up to human memory."
"One more question, if you please. Once you develop your
parameters for recording these engrams, do you think this
neurcomputer could be programmed to generate a simulation of, let's
say, a human persona?" He gestured obliquely. "One with all the
emotional quirks and unique attitudes that a real person would
have?"
Kate was silent for a moment. "I suppose that could be
done," she said cautiously. "I never thought of using the
mainframe in that exact way, but if you had the proper programming
and circuitry, and enough memory that could be pieced
together--yes, you could create an abstract of a persona."
"What about an complete persona?"
She looked blank. "I don't understand."
"Once you determine the storage patterns for human memory,"
Barrie asked, leaning forward, "and allowing for popular belief
that a man's personality and actions are based on experience--and
what is experience in the brain but stored memories--could you
record a man's memories and play them back? Recreate a person in
computer simulation?"
For a moment, Kate kept her eyes on the marker in her hand,
not sure what the officer had in mind. "The human psyche is a very
delicate and complicated thing, Major," she explained carefully.
"I don't think you understand what you're asking. We could
probably program a decent computer simulation of a personality, if
you wanted to see how it would react to certain situations. But
duplicate a living human mind?" She paused, thinking it over.
"I'll be honest with you--I don't know," she said. "Theoretically,
NAMSR could do it if it had an appropriate program to track and
record memory patterns, not to mention a big enough mainframe with
a core of silicarbon synapses, but--"
"How big of a mainframe would you need?" Barrie asked.
She felt her lips start to tighten--the constant
interruptions were getting to be annoying. "You're talking about
recreating a human persona through artificial memory storage," she
said, her tone clipped and precise. "That would take trillions of
bytes, not to mention a mainframe that would have to be built to
revised NeuroNet specifications. And this is all separate from the
storage program that you would have to develop to record and access
the information. Even with the new data, we're months, maybe years
away from realizing everything you'd need for this kind of
simulation."
"If the Department of Defense was willing to fund your
project, give it all the help it needed, how long would it take to
develop the system, circuitry and all?" the major pressed.
Kate felt her jaw start to drop, and closed it with a snap.
"You want it built from scratch or from modified systems?" she
asked bluntly, trying to hide her shock at the blatant offer.
"Whichever is faster."
She thought rapidly, turning back to the whiteboard to
write equations. "Using an existing NeuroNet 500 mainframe and
working with the data we already have, I'd say it would take eight
to twelve months to develop the proper circuitry, and about three
months to install it in the mainframe," she murmured, then looked
expectantly over her shoulder. "That's with an expanded budget and
a full-time research team, of course."
"Could you use the NeuroNet at LMU?" the major returned.
"The new one down the street from the Medical Center?"
Kate blinked, wondering where Barrie had gotten his
information. Inadvertantly she could feel herself growing
defensive. "Well we'd need about half the system, and we'd have to
shut it down first to renovate," she said lightly. "But I'm sure
the University would be more than happy to give the computer time
to us. After all, it's only their most advanced system, and they
have hundreds of projects waiting in line for computer time, but if
we asked them nicely I'm sure they'd let us use their computer."
She gave the major a sweet smile. "Of course, as soon as word got
out that we'd taken over the NeuroNet, half the hospital would be
at our door forming a lynch mob."
"But you could use it," the major repeated patiently.
Kate gave up, reining in the sarcasm. "Yes, we could," she
said, just as patiently. "But even if we could convince them to
shut down the computer for silicarbon adaptation, there's no way we
could get the necessary file space or computer time. The
University would never lock off half the system for a single
project's use."
Major Barrie nodded thoughtfully. "I understand. Well,
Dr. Elliott, NAMSR seems to be exactly what the Special Projects
Division is interested in supporting. I'm satisfied with your
presentation, and I'm sure that my superiors will feel the same."
He started to replace various papers--one of which was the NINS
copy of the project abstract--in his briefcase. "With your
permission, I'll begin the paperwork for your contract
immediately."
Kate stared at the major, unaware that she had just dropped
her marker onto the carpet. "You can't do that. We're a NINS
project," she said, incredulous. Her eyes roamed around the room,
finally stopping where the review team had quietly started to file
into the corridor. The final nature of the meeting began to sink
in on her. "I don't understand," she stammered. "Dr. Hellman,
what's going on."
The last member of the review team, a graying man with
glasses, turned back to her. "We were going to let Major Barrie
explain it to you, Dr. Elliott," Hellman began apologetically, "but
since he's decided to jump the gun, I'll do it myself. NAMSR has
produced some very interesting data, I admit, and we look forward
to future development." He spread his hands, the picture of a
bureacrat faced with an impossible problem. "But at the moment,
your theory still needs a great deal of investigation," he
continued, " and the review committee cannot condone the extension
of your PO1 grant while there are other projects with better
support for their hypotheses."
Kate froze, her throat tightening painfully. "In other
words, NAMSR is simply too radical for you to fund."
Hellman looked uncomfortable. "In other words, yes. And
since the Department of Defense has already expressed an interest
in picking up the grant under its own auspices, we've decided to
release it to them."
"With your permission," Major Barrie said, with an oddly
gentle smile. "Of course, if you don't want our support--"
"That's not it," Kate said harshly. She glanced at
Hellman, then at Barrie. "But I wasn't expecting this--release--so
soon. I was under the impression that SPD was interested in NAMSR
because of the bionic elements, and that was all. No one told me
that NINS was going to release the project." She glared at them,
feeling suddenly, terribly unsure of everything. "So would either
of you care to tell me when this decision was made?"
"Approximately a week ago," the major replied, surprised.
"I thought you knew that?"
She blinked, unable to speak for a moment. A week. They'd
known about it for a week. Sam knew about this--he must have
known--and he didn't tell me anything.
So this is betrayal, she thought, detached. "No, I didn't
know that," she said, her face growing to match Barrie's cool
expression. "I suppose no one thought it was important to tell me
until now." With an effort, she regained control, the facade of
the ice queen sliding into place. "I'd need some time to consider
your offer, Major. I'm sure you understand."
He nodded, courteous. "Of course."
"And it would help my decision if I knew what you were
planning to do with NAMSR."
"We're not going to do anything," the major said smoothly.
"NAMSR will continue in its present line of research, headed by
yourself." The calm mask was wrinkled by an upturning of the lips.
"I assure you, Dr. Elliott, I don't want to break up a winning
team," he continued. "Your goals of understanding human memory and
constructing a cybernetic paradigm are exactly what we want, and
your work will not be interfered with in any way. However, I would
like to make one addition to your staff."
"What sort of addition?"
"One of our scientists, a cyberneticist who has been
working independently on bionic circuitry," the major said. "He
won't be directly connected with your research group, so you won't
have to worry about strangers puttering around in you labs." This
last item was delivered as if it was a tremendous compromise on
Barrie's part.
"I'm not worried about people puttering in my labs, as much
as I'm worried about them puttering behind my back," Kate said, the
words ringed with ice. "I'm sure the offer is well-meant, but we
don't need an addition to our staff."
"I think you do," Barrie said. The latent coldness she'd
sensed became evident, expanding into the gut-locking ice of
instinctive command. "Dr. Elliott, you may not understand this,
but my department is willing to put a lot of backing into your
project," he stated. "That backing will include financial support,
equipment, supplies, everything you need. It will also include the
brainpower we think will be helpful. Dr. Browning will be at your
disposal, of course, but I believe you'll find him to be a valuable
addition to your team."
As Barrie judged the effect of his words, his voice shifted
to its previous timbre. "Right now, I think it would be a good
idea if you thought the offer over," he said. "When you've made
your decision, you can get in contact with me through Dr. Jansen.
But please remember--the sooner you make your decision, the sooner
you'll get your funding." He smiled. "Or your chance to start
looking elsewhere. Good day."
The major closed his briefcase with a snap and left,
followed by his entourage and Dr. Hellman. Kate stared at the door
as it closed, cutting her off from the outside. Like a knife, she
thought crazily, surgical extraction of the old lifestyle. NINS
for SPD, and they never let her know--
"You lied to me," she said, not turning around. "Goddamn
it, Sam. You lied to me."
"I didn't lie, Kate. I didn't know NINS was pulling out
for sure--"
"You lied to me," she repeated, finally moving to face him.
The anger felt good--healthy, the only healthy thing about the
entire situation. "You let me go through that whole presentation,
and you never told me we were going to be dropped," she said, the
even, cold tone carrying her anger better than an earsplitting
scream. "Your friends must have thought I was some kind of trained
monkey, Dr. Jansen. Jump through the hoops, get a reward, doesn't
matter from whom--"
"Kate, that isn't what happened. I knew if I told you
about NINS possibly dropping NAMSR, you'd be too pissed off to let
Barrie see the presentation," Sam said quietly, running a hand
through his hair. "I'm sorry, I really am. I did my best, but
they just didn't want you. NAMSR hasn't come up with anything
solid for the last three years, and Taguchi out at USC needed a
grant for his neurometrics project. Damn it, I begged, I
pleaded--I would've bent over backwards if I could move that far.
Nothing worked. They didn't want to risk any more money on the
project, no matter what you found. So I stuck my neck out and
checked around for another sponsor." He gestured with soft, open
hands. "When I heard that Special Projects was interested in
bionics, I suggested that Hellman approach them. I know Barrie
seems like a cold bastard, but he's got a lot of clout in the
department, and he liked what NAMSR was doing."
"You told Hellman to do that?" Kate said venomously,
ignoring his "look how you've repaid my goodness" attitude. "Where
do you get off doing that without asking me, without even checking
to see if I wanted it--"
"If I didn't, NINS was going to drop you completely," he
replied, his voice almost a whisper. "No more money, no more
support, and no recommendations. You would have been dead in the
water." It was more his tone than his words that stopped her, a
tone that spoke of undeniable defeat--the special kind that only
Washington could think up, where not even the best of science could
win you a grant if all the pegs of clout and the good-old-boy
network weren't properly in place. She'd known that kind of defeat
before, raged before it as unfair in the extreme. But it was
inexorable, almost Nature-like in its blind indifference and
uncaring manipulation of people who only wanted to know the cosmic
Why and How. Something had happened between the submission of the
grant and today--she'd probably never know what, exactly--and NAMSR
was out, to be replaced by any number of program projects around
the country, directed by hungry PIs eager to get their work funded.
And she had to patch together what was left and what was
offered, make it into something the project could use.
Moving silently, she sat down next to Sam, focused emptily
on the wood panel wall in front of him. "Goddamn it Sam, you
could've told me," she murmured bitterly.
"I only knew about the probability," he said, defending
himself. "As far as I knew, they were supposed to make a final
decision right after your presentation. There was still a slight
chance they'd pick you up, and I knew that Barrie would make an
offer if NINS wasn't interested. One way or the other, you
would've been covered."
"By Defense? Oh, like that would make everything all
right?" she replied sarcastically.
"At least you would still be working," he said stiffly. "I
know how you feel about the military, but this is a chance to get
your work finished and get that mainframe on line."
"Yeah, at the expense of the few principles I have left,"
Kate retorted. She walked away from him, putting some necessary
distance between them. "You know as well as I do that the military
has this bad habit of manipulating science into new and interesting
ways of killing people. I don't want my life's work being turned
into a better missile tracking system. And that is exactly what's
going to happen if I'm ordered around by someone like Barrie."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, grow up," Sam flared. "No one
likes dealing with that kind of shit, but most of us have to put up
with it if we want the money." He stood up on the last word and
circled Kate, the slick consultant facade cracked by defensiveness.
"Let me tell you about the facts of life, research style. You
walked into a sugar-coated situation when Dr. Chiles took you on,
then gave you the project after two years," he said angrily. "You
don't know what it's like to fight for a major grant--all you've
ever had were piddly little RO1s and then NAMSR, which was handed
to you on a silver plate."
"Fight? What the hell do you think I was doing here
today?" she accused. "Putting my reputation on the line for the
hell of it?"
"No. You were defending a project that somebody else
started," he replied. "Face it, Elliott--you've never had to put a
PO1 together from the ground up, going anywhere you could to get
enough funding. And when you start talking about a multi-million
dollar project, you're going to have to deal with types like Barrie
and SPD. Yeah, maybe the conditions don't exactly appeal to your
high moral standards, maybe you'll have to play politics with
people you can't stand, but this," he made a sweeping movement to
include the complex, "is the real world, Kate. If you want to do
science with government money, it comes with the territory."
Kate leaned back, glaring at him. "And what if I don't
like the territory?" she snapped.
"Then you pack your bags, go back to Chicago, and forget
about research," Sam said. "Simple as that."
They stared at each other, two angry animals waiting for
the other to make a move. Kate was the first to break eye contact,
to turn away. She stopped when she got to the only window in the
room, a glass enclosure of the Washington skyline. The cool glass
felt wonderful against her palms, a solid kind of reality she could
cling to, reassuring her that she hadn't suddenly stepped into the
Twilight Zone. They did this behind my back was the dominant
thought, drowning out everything else.
"I'm not trying to hurt you, Kate."
She didn't answer.
"I want you to keep your project. That's why I set up the
meeting with Barrie." Reluctantly, he crossed the space between
them. Even more hesitantly, he took her by the shoulders, turned
her around. To his relief, she moved, but wouldn't meet his eyes.
"But you're trying to control the situation, and you can't always
do that," he said, resisting an urge to shake her. "Sometimes, you
have to compromise, meet the other guy halfway."
She blinked, looking up. "And I suppose this is one of
those times," she said quietly, her jaw set with an expression of
purest pain. "I know that, Sam. I think I knew it from the moment
I walked into the room." The pain vanished, buried under a wave of
defensiveness. "Jesus, I mean I how the game is played. I'd
probably be willing to compromise if it was anybody else, but--"
She paused, an image of Barrie's cold blue eyes swimming
into her mind. Chilling. "I don't like being surprised," she
finished lamely. "And there's something about Barrie that scares
me. I can't explain it any better than that."
"If it makes you feel any better, he's not on my Top Ten
list, either."
"So I noticed." Frustrated, Kate got up and brushed past
the consultant, headed for the whiteboard. "It's not even him so
much as who he represents," she said, staring at the circuitry
paths she'd drawn. "Or what, in this case. All the scare stories
I've heard about Defense, especially SPD. Taking good projects and
mucking them up, turning beneficial discoveries into top secret
weapons." She glanced over her shoulder. "NAMSR is too good, too
important, to be perverted like that," she said pleadingly. "I
won't--I can't--let it happen."
"You don't have to," Sam said, with some irritation. "No
matter what happens, you are still project director, and you have
the control over day-to-day activities." His voice dropped into a
conspiratorial tone. "Take the offer. Keep NAMSR running, and let
Barrie put one of his men on the staff. You'll know who he is,
obviously, so while he's keeping an eye on the project, you can
keep an eye on him."
Kate made a disgusted noise. "I don't want to have to keep
an eye on anybody."
"It won't be that hard, believe me. All you have to do is
make sure he works on bits and pieces, never really gets a good
overview of the project."
"He's going to want access to our records."
"You can fix that, too," Sam reassured her. "I know you
have some computer geniuses on your staff."
"Kundu and Michaels," she said. "What about them?"
"Have them write a computer program, a good one, that uses
a double book entry format," he explained, keeping his voice low.
"You put standard data on one set, nothing spectacular. Give
Barrie's man access to it, and keep the other one for important
data. That way, the man will have something that seems legitimate,
and is basic bullshit. Everybody will be happy, and later on, you
can give the real data to Barrie at your own discretion. If you
don't think he can be trusted, well," he shrugged, looking
fatalistic, "the project didn't pan out. It happens."
Kate cocked her head to one side, looking at him
critically. "You've been working for these people too long, Sam,"
she finally said. "You sound just as sneaky as they do."
"I'll take that as a compliment, and none of your lip," he
said, smiling slightly. "So how about it? Do I give Barrie the
go-ahead?"
As well as she could, Kate considered the plan he was
offering. She understood enough about the applied science game,
and how it picked its players. Sam was right about NAMSR's
chances--no private agency in its right mind would accept the
project without more proof about MS theory. The only place for the
project was Defense, and as much as she hated to admit it, putting
up with Barrie was better than shutting down completely.
Still feeling doubtful, she nodded. "All right. Tell the
major I accept," she said, hearing her earlier words echo in her
mind. "I don't have much choice, do I?"
"Not really," Sam agreed, "but it won't be as bad as you
think. Barrie can be a jerk, but he won't bother you as long as
you seem to be on track. Keep a little security in your system,
and you'll be okay."
"I never needed security before," she said, a little
wistfully.
"Well, now you're in the national defense business, so
welcome to military rigidity," Sam said, glancing at his watch.
"Speaking of, I think I can still catch up with Barrie, so if you
don't mind?"
"Go, go."
At the door, Sam paused. "Listen, you look like you could
use some food. After I track down Major Brass Balls, how would you
like to have dinner with me?"
"I could use a stiff drink more than anything," she said
heavily, "but dinner sounds great."
"Good. I'll pick you up at seven." A quick smile, and he
was gone.
Alone, Kate turned back to the whiteboard, examining the
symbols she'd drawn earlier. Something about about Sam's attitude
(maybe his new, hard-sell aspect) was vaguely disturbing. She
didn't really like the bureaucrat that had grown out of the
easygoing med student she remembered. Shaking her head, Kate
started to shovel papers back into her briefcase. I've been
railroaded, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. But as
long as I'm project director, she swore to herself, NAMSR is going
to be under my control. Not Barrie's.
So the major wanted to have his man on the staff.
Fine--she could handle that. If necessary, she could play watchdog
very well--maybe even better than Sam thought. But if there's one
sign of a takeover, misuse of the data, anything, the Special
Projects Division is going to find out that this watchdog has
teeth. And bites.
>From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY: DEUS EX > Chapter Two
Date: 15 Nov 91 17:58:54 GMT
DEUS EX - Chapter Two (and I'm going to try sending it in one
piece)
NAMSR's transition from NINS to Defense funding was as
orderly as could be expected, considering the circumstances. Kate
had returned to LMU with the news, expecting cries of outrage.
Instead, she was greeted as a hero by BSD administration and a
relieved Phil Baumgarten. As he had explained, "Administration
doesn't particularly care where your funding comes from, as long as
they get an extra 60% as indirect costs."
"Scientific slumlords," Kate grumbled.
"This much is true. But I wouldn't complain--all of a
sudden, lab space is opening up, and they're talking about moving
NAMSR up to ground level. You'd actually have windows for once."
Kate shook her head. It would sound superstitious to
anyone else, she knew--but NAMSR was born below the earth, and it
would stay there as long as she was in charge of the project. "The
windows in this building have a bad habit of falling out when you
lean against them," she said with a smile. "I think we'll stay in
the basement."
She had a slightly tougher time with the NAMSR research
team. The more liberal elements of the team muttered about
military interference for awhile, but settled down when the first
gift from SPD--a bank of new Artemis workstations and a dedicated
microcomputer--arrived. With the new equipment in place, they got
down to the problem of tracking memory storage in the brain and
constructing silicarbon circuitry that could mimic the process.
A busy, almost insanely hectic year went by between the
signing of the SPD contract and the final work on the revamped
wetware mainframe. By the middle of September, 2004, the
modification of the UC NeuroNet 500 mainframe from standard
circuitry to silicarbon was on the verge of being completed, almost
a month ahead of schedule. What cut down on the construction time
was the integration of circuits already present in the mainframe as
crossover channels for the electrolyte support system that had to
be installed for the new circuitry--the carbon component, suspended
in a silicon matrix, needed to be 'fed' with a high-pressure
electrolyte solution. Additional circuitry paths were rerouted and
used as direct control links between the mainframe building and the
laboratory at BRI.
Even with the new circuitry constructed and ready to go,
none of it would have been installed if, quite conveniently, a
downtown NeuroNet mainframe hadn't opened its system to the
University at prices that made the administration weep in joy.
Also quite conveniently, the University's NeuroNet was immediately
declared 'inoperative', and NAMSR was awarded a special grant to
modify the mainframe's circuitry with experimental networks that
they had developed 'with the University's knowledge.' In short,
NAMSR was neatly given full use of the NeuroNet's computer
facilities without inciting half the campus to riot over the
unfairness of it all.
Or, as one of the more cynical research assistants
observed, "What the campus doesn't know about, they can't bitch
about."
As promised, Major Barrie had almost no contact with the
project, other than his initial visit. At that time, he'd
suggested that while the silicarbonon problems was being hammered
out, the NAMSR computer staff could focus their energies on writing
a program that would track and record human memoria.
Kate conceded graciously, and assigned her resident
software experts to the task. On a quieter note, she also had them
write a program that would store NAMSR data on a sophisticated
double set system. Her personal code would access the project's
current work; any other code would be shunted into an special data
bank, releasing edited information about NAMSR's activities. The
everyday work was put on a different system for staff use, but any
vital data had to be accessed through Kate's office, giving her
tacit--and total--control over the project.
It was a good system, and once the silicarbon had been
installed, nobody had questioned any of their progress reports.
Probably because the in-house spy was doing such a good job keeping
Washington informed, Kate mused, looking through her office window
at the room directly across from hers. The NAMSR complex filled a
rectangular space in the hospital's first subbasement, with the
main labs taking up three-fourths of the rectangle. The rest was
sectioned into an H-form, with the main entrance at the middle of
the crossbar and offices lining the arms of the H. Kate had a
large corner office, and had deliberately assigned the office
across from hers to the cybertech from Washington. Framed within
the opposite window was a tall, rumpled figure, hunched over a
terminal as if someone was going to take it away from him.
Dr. Jonathan Browning had arrived in Chicago one week after
the project contract was signed. After puttering about with the
circuitry records for a day or two, he had asked, rather
diffidently, to see some of the work being done on the silicon
matrix. Kate shrugged and passed him on to Kundu and Dr. Tina
Michaels, the PIs in charge of the circuitry research. After an
hour, both of them had appeared in Kate's office, shaking, and
reported that Browning had an uncanny grasp of the construction
principles behind their wetware blueprints.
"He looked at the printouts for two minutes, tops," Tina
said in a raw, controlled voice, "and gave us a formula for
suspending organic carbon chains within a microthin silicon sheath.
I mean, boom, out of midair--the cellular biochem angle didn't even
faze him. Then he started writing equations for integrating the
support leads within the matrix."
"If he's right, this is going to put us months ahead of
schedule," Nathan commented. "And I don't have to mention that
anyone who could solve a problem like that in his head could
probably crack the our double entry program while brushing his
teeth. On a bad morning."
Kate took the news in stride. She decided to capitalize on
Browning's enchantment with the circuitry design, channelling him
directly into basic wetware research and filling any spare time
with a crossover into the parallel brainmapping project.. It was a
deliberate maneuver--with all the hurdles facing the research team
on the final installation checks, Browning wouldn't have enough
time to figure out the standard computer layout, much less muck
about with the files.
Not that he ever seemed interested, she thought, observing
as he furiously typed instructions into the terminal. Browning had
the classic cybertech's proverbial one-track mind--laser-focused,
almost obsessive, and impossible to distract--and all he was
concerned about at the moment were the final modifications for the
NeuroNet. Once he finished those, she figured, he could always be
unleased as a troubleshooter on the Personality Simulation Program.
Much to her surprise, Browning hadn't turned out to be a
bad sort. When he first arrived at the labs, dragging a trunkload
of diskettes and computer journals, Kate had the entire staff
placed on alert--Dr. Browning was a direct representative of the
Special Projects Division, and as such was not to be trusted with
the smallest scrap of gossip without her direct approval. But
Browning turned out to be quiet, intelligent, and only mildly
introverted, which was normal behavior for people whose main social
interaction was with computers. Granted, he was working for
Defense, so he was probably sending Washington detailed reports on
anything he saw (which didn't include a complete overview of the
refurbished mainframe; brilliant or not, he was only allowed to
work on isolated wetware structures, and then with close
supervision by Kundu or Michaels). But NAMSR had employed a number
of cybertechs who were thoroughly obnoxious about their brilliance,
so Kate appreciated Browning's quiet attitude in getting the
modified computer up and running. No matter who was paying him.
Some spy he turned out to be, she mused, glancing across
the hall. I expected James Bond, and they sent me Dr. Science.
Whoever, whatever he was, Browning was a useful addition to the
NAMSR staff, and Kate was willing to overlook the more annoying
parts of his background as long as he kept the project ahead of
schedule. The primary circuitry was already in place, and the
secondary equipment was due to be installed within the week.
Maybe I should start him on the PS problems now, she
thought, keep that agile little mind busy. As she watched,
Browning looked up from the monitor, his eyes glazed over as the
mind behind them rooted through circuitry problems. Finally, he
nodded in satisfaction at something, then typed in a command. As
the computer recorded the data, he glanced in her direction, and
performed a neat double-take when he saw her gazing back.
Trying to cover her scrutiny, Kate gave him a friendly
smile. It was obvious that Browning wasn't used to having anyone
smile at him, and he flushed, tentatively smiling back at her.
Something must have flashed through his mind, because he mouthed,
"Can I talk to you?"
"Sure," Kate shrugged, mouthing it distinctly so that he
could understand. "Come on over."
With a minimum amount of fluidity (along with the social
skills of an adolescent, Browning seemed to retain the body of one,
with long, gangling limbs on a deceptively compact frame), he
navigated through the corridor to her door.
"Um, hello," he mumbled, hanging back at the doorjamb.
"Um, I wanted to talk to you about the circuitry."
She waved him in to a seat. "Any problems?"
"Oh, no, no, nothing like that," he assured her quickly.
"In fact, we're pretty well finished with the installation
preliminaries, and I'd like to get to work on the artificial limbic
system equations next." Suddenly, he stopped himself, a quizzical
expression on his face. "That is, if you don't have any other work
for me," he said, as if he was overstepping his bounds by
suggesting tasks.
"I think your own schedule is working out fine," Kate
answered dryly. "Actually, I think it would be great if you
started working on PerSim. Tina's already laid some of the
groundwork for the limbic equations, but I think she's more
interested in working on the learning input. If you want the job,
it's yours."
He didn't smile, but a glow of relief lit up his face.
"Thank you, Dr. Elliott," he said, looking at her with a sober
expression that probably was the nearest thing he got to
cheerfulness. He got up from his seat, then hesitated. "You know,
I really didn't have a chance to say this earlier, but I wanted to
tell you how happy I am to work with you on this project," he said
earnestly. "I know you don't like me--the idea of me, anyway. I
wouldn't like it either, if somebody walked into my project and
started telling me who I had to hire." Kate was amazed to see him
blush faintly, as he continued. "But I think you should know that
I volunteered for this assignment," he said. "I did my Ph.D. work
on cybernetics circuitry much like NAMSR's, and getting the chance
to work with it again has been the high point of my life. I want
to thank you for giving me that chance."
"Oh. Um, well," Kate mumbled, nonplussed by his obvious
sincerity. "You're welcome, I guess." Studying him, she allowed
herself to lower her guard for a moment. "I have to admit, I
wasn't happy about your joining the staff in the beginning," she
said.
"I could tell."
"Yes, well," she continued uncomfortably, "I didn't like
the idea of having somebody I didn't personally choose on the
project, as I'm sure you understand. But your contribution to the
wetware has been incredible. So incredible, in fact, that I find
myself grateful you were sent here."
"Even though I was sent by the military," Browning finished
for her. "For your information, I understand your reservations,
and I happen to agree with them. Being forced to take someone onto
your staff, particularly by SPD, can be incredibly unnerving. I
can imagine how you must feel."
Kate raised her eyebrows, somewhat taken aback by this
statement of solidarity. "You're very--sympathetic, Dr. Browning,"
she said blandly. "It sounds like you've been in this position
before."
"I have," Browning said. His voice lost its diffident
tone, became stronger, more assured. "I didn't like it then, and I
don't like it now. That's why I happen to be on your side, no
matter who signs my paycheck. And whether you believe it or now,
the most important thing to me right now is getting through the
final mod checks and setting up PerSim, not reporting to
Washington." He leaned closer to Kate, the tension crawling off
his body in silent waves. "This project is going to be the biggest
thing in cybernetics since UNIVAC, the biggest thing in computing
since the abacus. And I want--no, I need--to be a part of it ."
He was leaning over her desk, no longer the awkward
computer engineer but a passionate lover of the silicon medium,
professing his adoration for her project. Kate felt an unexpected
warmth for this thin, rumpled man, the only person beside herself
who ever held such a deep belief in NAMSR. "I'd say you're a big
part of it right now, Dr. Browning," she said, confused by her own
reaction.
Her words broke the brief contact. Suddenly aware of his
position, Browning jerked back to his own seat in embarrassment.
"Sorry," he muttered. The invisible barrier slid back into place,
sealing him inside his own monomania. "I get carried away,
sometimes."
"That's something we have in common," she finally said.
"NAMSR sweeps us both off our feet." She withdrew into her own
shell, that of the concerned project director. "Thank you for your
candor, Dr. Browning. I'll keep it in mind."
Nodding, he got up and headed for the door.
"Of course, this doesn't mean that I trust you."
He turned, framed by the doorway, and gave her a sober
look. "Somehow, I didn't think you would, Dr. Elliott."
"Jon, you've been working here for close to a year. Please
call me Kate. Only irate deans call me Dr. Elliott."
He nodded, almost hesitantly. "Kate."
"That's better," she said, her expression matching his.
"Now, why don't you go back to work? We still have to get that
computer up and running, you know."
His face took on a thoughtful cast, balanced at the edge of
amusement. "Yes, ma'am."
Once he was gone, Kate switched on her terminal and went
back to her own work, unaware that she was smiling. Confrontations
always made her feel better.
By the beginning of October, the final modifications were
microsoldered and 'healed' into place, and the refurbished NeuroNet
was ready to go on-line again with the first operational
semi-organic mainframe in the history of cybernetics. The sifted
few of the Computer Science Department had announced that they
would like to be on hand for the ceremony, even though the project
wasn't technically under the University's supervision. This sudden
interest in the project was a result of NAMSR's new clout, the
rumor of which had spread discretely across the academic side of
the campus, and a number of hardcore engineering professors who had
heard about the 'half-alive' mainframe wanted to see firsthand what
some crazy neurobiologist had cooked up in the basement of BRI.
The only obstacle in the way of their curiosity was the
Special Projects Division, which wouldn't allow anyone but team
members to be present at the installation of the NeuroNet. It was
SPD's project, as their argument went, no matter where the physical
location of the project was, and they could not allow unauthorized
personnel to be present for security reasons. It took a great deal
of connection dancing and some smooth huckstering on the part of
Sam Jansen to convince Barrie and SPD that allowing two star
professors to attend the ceremony would be a wise political move.
After all, SPD owned the project, but the University owned the
property and the mainframe, and it would be extremely difficult, as
well as expensive and silly, to unhook the entire mainframe base
and move it, when a simple compromise on both sides would make
everyone happy, etcetera, etcetera.
With some argument, the compromise was made, and on October
11, despite a squalling rain sweeping over Lake Michigan, the
observers from SPD and the professors from the CompSci Department
filed somewhat soppily into Gray Hall, which housed the mainframe
and its support facilities. The cavernous structure, named after a
president of the University, was situated on the corner of 58th
and Ellis, three blocks down from BRI--an intentional distance from
the main campus to keep the building out of sight from prospective
students and visiting faculty. The Administration Building was bad
enough in its deviation from the campus's Gothic theme--Gray Hall,
with its black steel walls and tinted slit windows contained by an
outer ring of office/control rooms, was considered to be atrocious.
How the adminstration felt about the hall's appearance,
however, was completely opposite from the support staff, which now
included the NAMSR cyberengineers. From first sight, they fell in
love with the building--its state-of-the-art temperature control
system, fiber optics communication channels, and huge battacitors
that reached two hundred feet below ground to protect the mainframe
against data-destroying power surges. The building was built for
computers, not humans, and the staff felt an empathy with the
building design. Right down to the oval shape, Gray Hall was a
protective shell for their computer, and they tended it as
carefully as they would an expectant mother.
Led by hastily drafted research assistants, the visitors
were ushered through the heart of the womb into the Data Center, an
amber Perspex bubble on the side of the mainframe's outer
containment tank. The Data Center was the brain node for the
mainframe, where technicians monitored and regulated the internal
processes of the computer along with its organic and electrical
support systems.
The center of all this attention was the NeuroNet
mainframe, a compact mass of silicarbon circuitry slightly larger
than a microwave oven. Physically, the collection of wetware
looked more like a mysterious, crenulated organ taken from the body
of a giant than a creation surpassing any data recording system in
the history of cybernetics. Instead of relying on liquid
hydrogen-based bubble memory or the older method of
microminiaturized magnetic tape, this mainframe had been
constructed as a mimicry of the human brain5, molecularly storing
its data on immortalized neural carbon chains sheathed by silicon.
The containment structure, a smooth-skinned tank of Perspex and
brushed steel three meters high and five meters wide, made the
system look larger, suspending the mainframe in a semi-liquid
chemical bath. This bath acted as intermediary between the
artificial and organic components of the circuitry, insulating the
microthin silicon sheaths while 'feeding' the carbon chains within,
balancing electrolytes so that pulses of information would flow
evenly along the circuitry without loss of signal strength. All in
all, the mainframe was a technologically exquisite mimicry of the
human brain's memory functions, brought up to a highly magnified
size.
Kate, Tina Michaels, and Browning waited quietly in a
corner of the bubble, letting the visitors get their first good
look at the mainframe. Finally, the project director stepped
forward to make introductions. "It's amazing, isn't it?" she asked
softly.
The two professors and one SPD observer jumped. "Ah, Dr.
Elliott," one of them, a Professor Simages, turned to her and
exclaimed. "You're here after all." He was a tall, narrow man,
with grey shreds of hair plastered the the sides of his skull.
Here and there, a wisp had broken loose, giving his head a number
of antennae. "Yes, it is amazing. An unusual combination of our
sciences, eh?" He chuckled in an avuncular way, making her feel
like a little girl who had received a pat on the head. "But the
important question about your new computer is, will it work?"
"We have complete confidence in the mainframe, Dr.
Simages," said a slender man who hadn't been startled by Kate's
entrance. One of SPD's people, she remembered, name of Harmonn.
"Our tests indicate that the CS circuitry will function precisely
within its design parameters," he said in a bland little voice.
"Your tests," snorted the other professor, drawing bushy
eyebrows together in an impressive scowl. "Your tests don't tell
us anything, Mr. Harmonn. You won't even let us look at the
blasted things, so how do we know this bastardized hybrid," he
nodded in the direction of the tank, "will do anything but float
there and sparkle?"
Before Kate could say anything, Browning grated, "I suppose
the best way to do that would be to turn it on."
Bushy Brows skimmed right over the challenge in Browning's
voice and laughed. "Good for you, boy," he said, clapping Browning
on the shoulder. "Let's get this fiasco over with, so we can all
go back to some real work."
Kate fought to keep her temper--and tongue--under control.
Bushy Brows was one of the leading researchers in bubble memory--it
was natural that he was concerned with how well the CS mainframe
would function. "Dr. Wallace, If you aren't here to see real work,
then I don't see why you raised such a fuss about attending," she
said, each word sweetly iced. "Especially as NAMSR is only
affiliated with the University, and not actually a part of its
research administration."
"Which means that your attendance here is a privilege and
not a right," Harmonn added.
"Privilege?" Wallace bellowed, leaning closer to the
slight SPD officer. "Do you seriously think I consider being
present at this waste of time to be a privilege?"
"Considering what efforts you were making to get in here
tonight, I believe you think it's a necessity," was the cool reply
from Harmonn. "Perhaps you're worried about NAMSR's impact on your
own work."
He paused, allowing himself a smile. "Seriously worried."
Kate sighed inwardly, stepping between the men before
Wallace had a chance to explode. "Dr. Wallace," she said in her
most placating tone, "has his own reasons for being present, and
I'm pleased that he decided to join us here tonight." She flashed
a brilliant smile, eliciting a grunt from the professor. "And I
think the best way to answer his legitimate questions would be to
get on with the activation," she continued, managing to guide the
grumbling man and the others to seats in the back of the bubble.
Still maintaining the smile, she turned back to the main terminal
and took the seat beside Browning.
"Laid it on a little thick, didn't we?" he murmured out of
the corner of his mouth.
"If it gets him to shut up, don't knock it," she said,
hissing through her smile. Tina, already seated, began to type in
initialization commands, while Browning monitored the
electrochemical power being fed to the mainframe.
Kate started to explain the procedure over her shoulder as
they worked "We're cheating a bit for this demonstration," she
said over the bubbling hum of the support system, directing their
attention to the main monitor. A graphic of a three-dimensional
grid--the amount of free memory in the mainframe--was on the
screen. "Normally, that display would mean that the memory
processors were completely unformatted--tabula rasa, as it were,"
she said. "Considering the unusual properties of the circuitry, we
decided to preformat it with a language that Dr. Browning has been
working on, based on second-generation artificial intelligence
languages."
"I call it ORGON," Browning said, after a nudge. "It's
basically a two-mode language. One half is based on Pascal, acting
as an translator for incoming computer languages, and the other
half takes the transposed language and turns it into specialized
signals for reception and storage on the carbon chains."
"Which means that the mainframe will be able to accept data
in most computer languages, while maintaining its own discrete
language for internal procedures," Kate finished, her eyes on the
smaller monitors. "It also means that the mainframe is holding
data at the moment, Dr. Wallace."
"Holding a language doesn't impress me, Dr. Elliot," was
the reply. "Any microcomputer can do that."
Kate nodded politely, but felt her earlier expression
replaced by a decidedly unscientific grin. She glanced at
Browning, who nodded, then typed in a command to run an information
dump program.
Deep within the circuitry, requests were made, links forged
to outside lines probing along a computer net. At the halfway
point, the probe was met with its equivalent, and data began to
flow.
The grid on the monitor blazed into life. As they watched,
the lowest left space on the grid began to flicker. Pixel by
pixel, the space filled with green light, representing the amount
of memory being stored in the databanks. Almost unconsciously,
Kate looked up through the tank wall, to the mainframe. As data
poured through its neural pathways, the mass began to sparkle,
reflecting back millions of tiny electronic connections being made
within the silicon sheaths. It's beautiful, she thought intently.
Doubly so, because it wasn't a dream any longer.
"Data transfer complete," Browning announced ten minutes
later, tapping buttons to record the reading. He turned back to
the visitors, anticipating what their reaction would be to his next
words. "We are now holding the entirety of the University's
downtown NeuroNet data at 10% of our capacity," he said.
Dr. Wallace lurched to his feet in disbelief.
"Impossible," he growled, moving to Browning's side so that he
could examine the readouts for himself. After a moment, he shook
his head. "This can't be right," he muttered. "We're talking
three gigabytes of information stored inI" His voice faltered as
he gazed up at the computer. "Ten percent of your mainframe."
"And we do have all of the information," Browning said.
"If you'd care to access one of your files, Dr. Wallace, please
feel free."
Wallace glared at Browning, then sat at the terminal and
entered one of his project passwords. Immediately, the screen
filled with a Physical Sciences Division data entry screen,
identifying the project as Wallace's. The professor stared at the
screen for a moment, a flush creeping up his neck, then typed in a
page scroll command. Line by line, the data began to move upward,
revealing more information. From what Kate could see, the data had
to do with hyperextension of bubble memory components. She had to
stifle a laugh.
Unfortunately, Wallace heard her snort, and turned livid.
He stood up from the terminal as if moving away from something
diseased, wiping his hands on his pants. He gained enough control
over himself to rasp, "You may be assured that the President's
Office will hear of this," and stalked out, followed by the
flustered Dr. Simanges.
Harmon came forward, one thin eyebrow raised in curiosity.
"Your colleague is excitable," he commented. "What did he mean by
that comment about the President's office?"
"I think he was a little shocked to see one of his
projects on our computer," she said. "I managed to cut a deal with
the University Computing Organization--they'd lend us their data
for the activation experiment as long as I erased it as soon as the
mainframe's capacity had been proven--but he didn't know that."
She laughed slightly. "Probably thought I hacked his codewords on
purpose."
After additional tests, the NeuroNet's new wetware memory
core was pronounced to be fully operational. While the cybertechs
had been working on the silicarbon circuitry, NAMSR's software
artists had been laying groundwork for the PerSim program,
brainmapping with the resident neurobiologists for a application
that would track and record memory patterns. Using modified
electrodes to pick up the relatively weak electrical signals, they
had been able to transfer fragmentary memoriae from rats, then from
rhesus monkeys into the auxiliary computer, where the encoding
process of a primate brain could be broken down and studied. Two
months after the NeuroNet went on-line again, the software people
announced that they were ready to attempt human memoriae
transferrence.
Michaels' team had designed a set of parameters that would
record and integrate basic heuristic algorithms representing
different areas of memory into a simplified engram. The engram,
named in honor of Dr. Karl Lashley's memory experiments, was the
unified collection of memory patterns--the sum of a person's life
experience--that provided the basis for a human persona.
In this case, the engram would be a deliberately piecemeal
construction. Every member of the software team underwent a
'tapping' process, consciously remembering a specific event in
their lives while modified electrodes scanned their
electroencephalographic signature, matching memorization activity
to brainmapped areas. The memories of love and hate, fear, sorrow,
the special and ordinary events of a single day would be coded
together in a single engram, and the software team would attempt to
generate a persona from it.
Much to their surprise, it worked. The result was
codenamed 'Harlequin; as a computerized persona, Harlequin was
childish, idiotic, and understandably schizophrenic (after all, it
had over twenty-five emotional 'parents'). It refused to answer
certain questions, suffered from incompatible viewpoints, and could
only be accessed for short periods of time before it went
catatonic. From a purely scientific viewpoint, however, Harlequin
was a raging success, NAMSR's first proof that a persona could be
generated from engrams stored on the mainframe.
"Obviously, the next step is to recreate an functional
persona," Browning said during a celebratory staff meeting. As
usual, he wasn't smiling, but his excitement was almost palpable in
the crowded conference room. "Harlequin's engram is fundamentally
unstable because its memoriae are from a number of people, and some
of the memoria are obviously incompatible with each other. If we
want to generate a stable engram we're going to need homogenous
memoriae, preferably from a single person. I suggest that we push
the tap experiments ahead of schedule and start looking for
volunteers."
Before Kate could reply, Tina shook her head. "I'd really
prefer to wait on that until we have some hard copy on the stress
parameters," she said. "We used a hell of a lot of energy to get
Harlequin up and running, and I don't want to blow out a cell bank
if we do a full transfer."
"I understand that, but there's no reason why we can't
start lining up research subjects while we're waiting for the
results," he replied eagerly. Browning had a new light in his
eyes, and his sense of triumph was overriding any sense of caution.
"I mean, my God, we've managed to create a functioning artificial
persona. This is something that the AI researchers have been
dreaming about for years!" Carefully, as if he was handling
religious relics, he slid a set of printouts from a folder in front
of him, arranging them in chronological order. "The patterns we
tracked matched the original brainmapped projections for neural
activity," he said, pointing out the data, "bit for bit, down to
the last microvolt. We know that the electrodes and the program
are working, so let's go to the next step and do some real
research."
"This is real research," Kate said in mild reproof. "We
need to start out slow, give the mainframe a chance to prove itself
before we transfer an entire persona." She shrugged slightly. "If
the NeuroNet can handle an entire persona, that is. I mean,
Harlequin was good, but he--"
"She," interjected Tina.
"It," said Kate, firmly, "was still an artificial
construct. A lot of fun to talk to, but you wouldn't want to live
with it." She tapped the program printouts in front of Browning.
"You keep forgetting," she added, "that we purposely limited the
amount of input, so as not to strain the circuitry. I'm still not
sure if the mainframe has enough memory stability to process over a
teraK of information."
"Of course it does," Browning argued, and a few of the
cybertechs murmured assent. "We built it specifically to handle
large amounts of information, remember?" He accented his words
with a jab at the printouts. "Every circuit in the computer is
flexible enough to process a real engram without any trouble," he
stated.
Before she could answer, a voice from the end of the table
said, "No trouble for the circuitry, perhaps, but what about the
volunteer?"
Startled, Kate and Browning turned to the man who had
spoken--Rich Ticotin, a staff neurologist and member of the
software team. "In your rush to start experimenting," Ticotin
continued in a quiet tone, "you're overlooking one very important
fact--we still have no data on how a human being would react to
having his memory patterns tapped."
"We all went through it," Browning objected. "Nothing
happened to us, so why should it be different for a volunteer?"
"Because they wouldn't be going through a partial tap,"
Ticotin said patiently. "The tap isn't a passive procedure like an
EEG--our dermatrodes have to electronically interact with the
brainwaves in order to pick up an engram." Flipping a printout to
its blank side, he sketched how the electrodes, using a radar-like
system, bounced 'blank' signals through the brain in order to pick
up the patterned echoes. "Anyone who underwent a full tap would,
in effect, be exposing their neural tissue to the mainframe's
capacitors," he stated, sliding the sketch across to Browning.
"All we'd need is the tiniest volt surge, and we're talking crisped
synapses. Irreverable brain damage."
"That's practically impossible, and you know it," Browning
said impatiently. "The mainframe capacitors have state-of-the-art
surge protection. Even if, by some freak accident a volt surge
happened, there are at least four points along the dermatrode
connection where the surge could be damped out before reaching the
subject."
"I'm well aware of the equipment's failsafes, Dr.
Browning," Ticotin said, maintaining the same pleasant tone. His
eyes, however, had become black ice. "However, I do think that we
should do some more beta testing on the program before we perform a
full tap. And as for your comment that nothing happen to any of
us, that's not quite true," he continued. "During the medical
scans, three people reported a slight headache and some dizziness
after the procedure." He shrugged. "Naturally, I examined them
more thoroughly. Apart from one case of hay fever, all three had
felt fine before the experiment, which make me suspect that the
symptoms was a result of the tap."
"Why wasn't I informed of this earlier?" Kate asked
sharply.
"I was going to bring it up in the meeting," Ticotin
informed her. "The headaches cleared up with some aspirin and a
nap, and there weren't any other complications. I'd have to review
the EEGs in depth, but my guess is that the procedure puts some
kind of stress on the neurons, which the brain translated as pain."
"I cannot believe what I'm hearing," Browning said,
incredulous. "A few people get a headache, a mild one that
could've been caused by anything, and you're blaming it on the
tap?"
"I'm not blaming it on anything," Ticotin replied calmly,
staring down the younger man. "All I'm saying is that we should do
more testing, preferably with animals, before we subject a human
volunteer to a full tap. Unless you have some burning desire to
watch a kid suffer a stroke during the procedure, that is."
Uncomfortable under the sudden scrutiny of the research
team, Browning turned to Kate for help. "What do you have to say
about this?" he said, almost accusingly.
"I have to agree with Rich," said Kate, spreading her hands
in a gesture of assent. "I'd like to know more about the procedure
from a medical angle before we start experimenting with humans,
especially if the tap is showing side effects. The whole purpose
behind this project is to help people, not to find new and
interesting ways to kill them."
"I know that," Browning said irritatedly. A strange
expression, like shame battling with anger, flashed across his face
as he gazed around the table. "I just don't--I don't want this
angle of the project given up without further research," he
finished.
"No one said we were going to give it up," Kate replied
calmly, trying not to react to his odd behavior. "PerSim is still
a major goal on the contract, and we can't give it up without
calling down the wrath of Washington--you know that. But let's do
some testing, find out exactly what we've got here before we wind
up frying some poor student's brain by accident," she added.
"Agreed?"
Shuffling through the last of the printouts, Browning
nodded reluctantly. "I suppose that's best," he admitted.
"Good. And with that, people, let's wrap up this meeting.
Back to the salt mines." On the way out, she collared Browning.
"My office. Five minutes."
"Would you like to tell me what you were doing out there,
Jon?" Kate asked. Both of them were ensconced in Kate's office, a
pot of tea and two cups perched uneasily on the desk. "What do
you mean?" he said suspiciously.
"For a man who supposedly has NAMSR's best interests at
heart, you're doing a great job of trying to get us into trouble."
"What trouble?" he said, honestly upset. "I suggested we
start doing human taps--"
"Suggested?" Kate said, raising both eyebrows in
exaggerated disbelief. "If that's what you call suggesting, I'd
hate to be around when you demand something--you probably throw
furniture."
"--and the suggestion was turned down," he continued,
ignoring her jibe. "I have a right to offer my opinion in these
meetings, don't I?"
"Of course you do," she said impatiently. "But when you
start harping on something that everyone agrees might be dangerous,
it makes you look a little bloodthirsty."
Browning sighed, tilting his head back in the chair. "I
suppose it would look like that to you," he said, addressing his
words to the ceiling, the overhead fluorescents giving his
complexion an odd, pale glow. "After all, I'm the Washington spy,
and everybody knows it. Barrie's mole is supposed to be a hardcase
when it comes to the project, right?" The bitterness in his voice
was surprising.
"I'm not saying you're a hardcase," Kate said carefully.
"But you're behaving like you have some kind of private agenda with
this project." You, or somebody else, she didn't add.
"Right, we're back to that," Browning said, slowly easing
himself into an upright position, "'Keep an eye on Browning, he
might be dangerous.' You know, I really wish I knew how I could
earn your trust, because I am getting very tired of this whole
situation." His usual blank expression started kaleidoscoping
through pique to irritation, into outright anger. "It's pretty
obvious that I'm being monitored very carefully in the lab," he
said resentfully. "I've been here for a year, and no one wants to
talk shop with me. You won't give me access to the complete
circuitry blueprints. Any work I do has to be piecemeal, and
usually under Tina's supervision." He waved his arms through the
air, short, simple gestures pantomiming frustration. "No matter
what I do for the project, you people won't trust me because I was
sent here by SPD, so you're hamstringing me," he finished, the
facade now fully defiant. "And I can't do anything about it,
because if I complain to Washington, SPD is going to steamroll over
all of our work."
"And you don't want that?" she asked coolly.
"Of course I don't," Browning flung back, surging to his
feet. The few meters between them was quickly breached as he
leaned over her desk, the avenging cybernetic angel moving to
wrestle with a nonbeliever. "Kate, what do I have to do to
convince you that I'm on your side? Get 'NAMSR' branded on my
chest? Quit SPD, move into the lab, what? Tell me what I have to
do and I'll do it, but for God's sake stop shutting me out!"
Before she could respond, the door creaked slightly.
Startled, both of them glanced over to see it opened by Rich
Ticotin. From the expression on his face, it was clear that he'd
heard the last exchange and deliberately stepped in without
knocking. "Sorry to interrupt you, Kate," he said, throwing a
blunt look at Browning that said he wasn't sorry at all. "But we
need to talk when you get a chance."
Browning caught the message. Sullenly, he straightened up
from the desk, jamming his hands into lab coat pockets. "You might
as well talk to her now," he said ungraciously, "since she doesn't
want to listen to me." Turning to Kate, he gave her what she could
only interpret as a warning glance, and left.
Kate maintained a blank expression until Ticotin shut the
door, then sighed in relief. "I thought people like you were
supposed to wear shining armor," she commented.
"It's in the shop--I have to make do with a lab coat," he
quipped, turning back to her with eyebrows raised. "So what was
that all about?"
"Oh, we were having a little discussion about NAMSR," she
answered, pulling a sour face. "Dr. Browning was protesting his
innocence once again."
"Methinks the man doth protest too much."
"It's not the protesting that bothers me as much as his
attitude," she replied dryly. "Up until last week, he was his
normal introverted self, but now that we've done some preliminary
research on the tapping procedure, he refuses to work on anything
else. He's gotten completely obsessed with it."
The older scientist made a disgusted noise. "That's
putting it a little too nicely," he said bluntly. "I'd call it
monomania. If you ask me, I think he'd jump at the chance to do a
complete memory tap, and to hell with what might happen to the
volunteer."
"Well, he's not going to get that chance," Kate said
shortly. "I don't care what Browning says, and I most decidedly
don't care what SPD says. As long as I'm project director, NAMSR
will not engage in human engram taps until I have conclusive proof
that there are no serious side effects from the procedure."
Ticotin studied her intently, then nodded. "You cannot,"
he slowly said, "imagine how much that relieves me."
Kate flicked him a brief glance, and snorted. "You should
try it from this end," she suggested acerbically. "I just came to
that conclusion, and it scares the living hell out of me, because I
might actually have to lay the project on the line to save
somebody's life." She began to play with her glasses absently,
toying with the earpieces. "I don't like any of this, I really
don't. Browning's campaigning for full taps, SPD making a special
point of including that on the project contract--with the heat I'm
getting, I'm starting to wonder why persona simulation is such a
big deal to these people."
"I started wondering about that a few weeks ago," Tictotin
commented, pulling out a minipad from his lab coat pocket. He held
it up fractionally enough for the light sensors to draw enough
energy, then flicked it on, scanning down the liquid quartz page.
"Can't say I particularly like what I came up with."
"Oh. Were you planning on sharing this with me, or was I
supposed to wait for a divine revelation?"
"Just wanted to make sure which side you were on," Ticotin
replied, allowing himself a small, crafty smile. "I did some
theorizing with the data, blue sky stuff, and came up with some
interesting scenarios. This may not be the same thing behind SPD's
interest--at least, I hope it isn't--but it's something for us to
think about," The neurologist stood up, pushing his chair around
the desk so that they could sit side by side over the small screen.
With delicate motions, his fingers tapped at the keypad, calling up
a tight block of writing. "Now, if we subject a volunteer to a
full tap, we're completely duplicating his or her engram onto the
mainframe," he started, referring to the notes on the screen. "If
we access this engram through PerSim, we're creating a
computer-generated copy of that person's persona, right?"
"Well, basically, yes," Kate said, straining to read the
small type. "The computer would have a template of that person's
memory patterns, and the template could be used as an a indicator
of personality patterns." She made a shrugging gesture with her
hands, lost. "But that's no big deal," she said. "It's the
original idea behind PerSim."
"Carry the situation further," Ticotin continued. "Let's
say that we provide the computer persona with wide-band sensory
input, the ability to learn from its mistakes, and enough lateral
memory to store everything it learns. What would you have?"
Glancing again at the notes, Kate clucked her tongue,
thinking. "This is crazy," she said dubiously, "but it sounds
like you're talking about an artificial intelligence."
"How about a high-level AI with the capacity for
consciousness," Ticotin said. "This AI could develop its persona
independently of the original memory donor, learning as it goes and
adding its own experiences to memory. Given enough time, the
donor's persona and the computer's persona would split apart," he
pantomimed a shape breaking, the halves moving away from each
other, "creating two separate entities."
The full magnitude of the idea settled on her. "Let me get
this straight," she muttered, trying to line up the pieces of
Ticotin's theory in some logical kind of order. "Are you actually
telling me that this program could give a computer the ability to
become sentient?"
"In a limited sense, yes. A system using NAMSR's circuitry
and donated memories would, in time, develop a personality
independent from that of the donor," he said. "Given enough
leeway, the sentience would follow as the computer built up
experience in its persona, much like a human child. Right now,
there are certain finite limits in stimuli input that would act as
a restrictor on the computer's consciousness, keeping it somewhere
around the level of a five-year-old. Strictly a technological
problem--we can't make equipment that can match the input ports of
the five senses, and even PerSim is hopelessly crude compared to a
real human persona.
"Now, take it one step further. We know that personae are
partially based on memory, as well as the organic processes going
on in the brain, and we've established that memories can be
recorded onto our system--a system, I may add, which duplicates
those organic processes. I've already described the possibility of
creating a sentient computer system using NAMSR circuitry, and
that's frightening in itself. So let's consider a really
terrifying possibility--what would happen if a tap volunteer had
his engram recorded onto the computer, and died during the
procedure?"
Kate was rocking slightly in her chair, still trying to
digest his earlier suggestion. "I don't know," she finally
admitted. "If the engram had been properly recorded, nothing could
touch it once it was inside the system. We might lose some data if
the subject died before his memoriae were completely translated,
but that's the only problem I can think of. What are you
suggesting?"
"Metaphysics, Kate. Nothing I can prove, only things I can
hypothesize," he said heavily. "I just have to wonder what would
happen to that living mind if it was caught in a tap loop. And
suddenly didn't have a body anymore."
Kate regarded him for a moment in silence. A mind,
spinning free-- "Do you think that's what SPD wants to find out?"
she said, her voice quiet.
"It's possible," he rumbled. "It occurred to me that death
during the tap might do something interesting to the recorded
memoriae, maybe even to the persona. And if it occurred to me, you
can rest assured it occurred to SPD. And Browning."
She nodded, forcing herself to ask the next logical
question: "So do you think they want someone to die during a tap?
And Browning's pushing it for SPD?"
For a moment, the other scientist looked thoughtful. "I
don't know," Ticotin admitted. "Browning's the wild card in all of
this. He's dangerous in his own way, but I don't believe he's
part of whatever SPD may be planning. It's entirely possible he's
telling you the truth--or part of it, anyway. Of course, he
wouldn't mention if if he had his own plans for PerSim."
"Marvelous," Kate muttered, not wanting to hear her own
suspicions echoed. "Everyone seems to have their own little plans
for NAMSR. Not only do I get to deal with the Pentagon's
thinktank, but I have a certified mad scientist in my own back
yard."
"That might not be a bad thing," Ticotin offered. "If you
do it right, you may be able to play them against each other. If
Browning's so determined to prove his loyalty, take him up on it.
Use it--use him."
Everything he said seemed to be an echo of what Sam had
told her so many months ago, Kate thought--find ways to manipulate
the system in order to safeguard NAMSR. The eternal dance of
politics extending into research, the one place where it shouldn't
exist.
I specifically went into research to get away from hospital
politics, and I wind up running into a whole new style, she mused.
What a life. "Okay, I see your point," she told Ticotin, sighing.
"And I'll admit you're right. So what am I supposed to do now?"
Ticotin shrugged. "That's where I have to pack up my
crystal ball," he said. "I don't have the mindset for dealing with
something like this."
"And I do?"
"You must have--you wouldn't have been able to keep this
project together otherwise." He raised his hands at her sudden
frown. "What I'm trying to say is, you're tough-minded and you're
willing to do whatever it takes to keep NAMSR on an even keel. And
I'll back you up on whatever you decide, if that's any help."
She thought for a moment. "It is," she said finally.
"Now, all I have to do is decide what the hell I'm going to do."
>From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY: DEUS EX > Chapter Three, Pt. 1
Date: 17 Nov 91 19:35:03 GMT
DEUS EX
CHAPTER THREE (part one)
Later that evening, Kate was deep within a review of the
'Harlequin' stability data when her phone rang. Not bothering to
look at the telescreen, she flicked the ANSWER switch, leaving on
the video privacy filter that blanked out her own image to the
caller.
"NAMSR, director's office," she recited absently.
"Kate, m'girl," said an irrepressibly cheerful voice, "I
know you're hiding behind that silly graphic, so you might as well
shut it off."
"Why?" she drawled, still examining the screen.
"Beacause you're about to get an invitation for a
late-night dinner at Piccolo Mondo, so stop being a smartass and
turn off the filter."
"Sounds interesting, but don't you think you should
introduce yourself first?"
The featureless voice snorted. "Maybe if you'd answer your
own calls instead of making people stare at a really bad picture of
mating amoebas, you'd know who this is."
"It's a paisley pattern, and I already know who this is,"
she said, reaching over to cut off the privacy switch. The
telescreen on her right fuzzed for a moment, bright static abruptly
resolving into a man's face. "The only person who ever invites me
out at weird hours for food, and does it with a particularly
annoying nasal twang," she continued, "is one Timothy L. Gideon,
the eccentric pride and joy of Billings Hospital's neurosurgical
service."
"I'll take that as a compliment, so don't get smart," he
said, glaring like an Old Testament prophet into the vid pickup.
Unfortunately, his auburn eyelashes and eyebrows were completely
wrong for a true glower, making him look more like an offended
accountant. "Otherwise, I'll make you pay for your own dinner."
"Since when have you ever paid for my meal, you gonif?"
"I defer to the last wishes of the Equal Rights Amendment,
may it rest in peace," he said facetiously. "And don't abuse my
heritage. You know how I feel about Gentiles using the mother
tongue."
"Gideon, my pet, you're Episcopalian."
"Episcopalians are often the best kind of Jews," he said,
waggling his eyebrows. "But seriously, how about we blow this
place and get some decent Italian food?"
Kate glanced at the papers and datapads stacked on her
desk, judged the amount of work she'd done that evening. "Oh, what
the hell--I've been a good girl," she muttered half to herself,
making a quick decision. "Okay. I'll meet you at Mondo's in ten
minutes," as one hand reached to hit the SAVE button on her
keyboard. "Just let me get my coat--"
"No, no, my favorite lab rat," he stopped her. "You'll
have to come over here first. I'm still on duty for the next half
hour."
Her mouth twisting to hide a grin, Kate leaned back in the
big chair, letting her glasses slide to the tip of her nose for an
austere look. "And what am I supposed to do for the next half hour
while you're busy performing your medical marvels?" she asked
dryly.
"How about cleaning the on-call room?" he suggested
Automatically, she made a face. "Thank you, no," she shot
back. "I interned there, remember? And I'm not up to discovering
new forms of life behind that bunk bed."
"Well, we could always start one on top of it."
"Tim, why must you always sound like a seventeen-year-old
with a hard-on?" she said, laughing.
"Congenital defect. What can I say?" he replied,
unrepentant. "Anyway, it's a quiet night, I'm finished with all my
cases, and I'm almost hungry enough to eat cafeteria food, which
shows you how desperate I am. Why don't you come over here, help
me waste a half hour, then we'll hit Mondo's for some decent grub."
"I'll meet you on the floor in fifteen minutes. See you
then." As the screen blanked out, Kate punched an exit command
into her terminal and grabbed her coat, still smiling. Tim Gideon
had gravitated into her life during residency at Billings with the
force of a black hole, batting her out of the classic first year
resident's slump with his depraved sense of humor. Their
friendship, begun on rounds and late-night bull sessions in the
on-call room, was clinched for life when they smuggled a leprous
penis and scrotum out of Pathology and had it sent up to the SICU
nurse's station--home of the most tight-assed nurses in the
hospital--labeled as a "Do-It-Yourself Stress Reliever." This
antic had them were permantly barred from Pathology and voted Most
Likely To Incur A Malpractice Suit Before Age Thirty by their
admiring colleagues.
As well as being a good friend and compatriot in
M*A*S*H-style humor, Tim was also on NAMSR's unofficial 'advisory
committee', a loosely connected group of neurological specialists
that served as Kate's backup think tank. Cutting through Abbott
Hall, Kate mentally reviewed the events of the day as she wound
her way through the labyrinthine complex. As well as looking
forward to a nice, relaxing dinner with Tim, she wanted to ask his
opinion on her computer expert's latest antics and on Ticotin's
theories.
Jogging up a flight of stairs, she came out on the M
corridor, which housed the Neuro service. At that time of the
evening, the only person in the hall other than the floor
supervisor was a tall man with auburn hair, lounging by the nurse's
station with a large stack of patients' files that he was cursorily
reviewing.
Moving on the edges of her shoes, Kate stole up to within
five feet of him. When he didn't notice her, she leaned against
the water fountain in what she hoped was a seductive pose.
"Hey, little boy, want a lollipop?" she drawled.
The man glanced up from his reading, the slight glaze in
his eyes evaporating. "You know, my mommy warned me about strange
people like you," he said, with mock solemnness. "Will you take me
away, give me candy, and do nasty things to my body?"
"Of course."
"Good." He tossed the file back on the desk, drawing a
glare from the supervisor. "Anything's better than wading through
some more incredibly boring patient files."
"It's reasssuring to see a dedicated physician such as
yourself refer to your patients' charts with the respect that they
deserve," she replied.
"Oh, whale shit." Taking her arm, Tim started to guide her
to the elevator. "Most of those scribbles were made by overeager
medical students and interns that are effectively brain-dead from
lack of sleep," he informed her. "Which means that a medical
genius such as myself need take no note of those chicken
scratches."
"So why do you read them?" she wondered, playing straight
man.
"Purely as an ego boost, to remind me of how far I've
come," he pontificated, his grip on her arm growing more personal.
"Speaking of that, let's say we take off and get started on those
nasty things, hmm?"
"I thought you were still on duty?" she purred back.
"All's quiet on the Neuro front, which is a boon from the
Gods that I don't intend to waste," he whispered. "I already
signed out to Lu Ching, so let's go--"
The hall loudspeaker gave an electronic crackle, as if
clearing its throat, then barked: "Dr. Gideon, please report to the
ER. Dr. Gideon, report to the ER."
Tim groaned. "--before I get paged," he finished,
disgusted. "Dammit, why does the ER page me every time I try to
get out of here early?"
"You probably forgot to sacrifice a spotted chicken to the
Gods this morning," Kate said just as mournfully, remembering her
own blasted attempts at sneaking out on quiet nights. It was a
universally held axiom that the switchboard operators knew when you
were so exhausted you would gladly sell your firstborn for an fast
exit, and saved up messy emergencies specifically for those times.
It was also one of the cons about being a practicing doctor in a
hospital--something Kate had thought she'd never be bothered with
again. "Well, it's no big deal," she said, trying not to feel
disappointed. "Maybe another night--"
"You're not leaving yet," Tim ordered, still keep a grip on
her arm, "It might be something piddling, and then we'd blow a
whole meal for nothing." He hummed for a moment, thinking, then
the merry look came back with a hint of persuasiveness. "Listen,
why don't you come down to the ER with me" he said in a wheedling
tone, "wait till I finish up whatever they called me for, and then
we'll leave for dinner? Sound good?"
"Not really," she objected, "because if it's something
messy, you'll be in there for hours." In a discrete manner, she
tried to work her arm out of his grasp. "Listen, why don't I just
go back to the office, and you can call me when you're done?" she
suggested.
"No way," he said firmly. "If I let you go now, you'll
never come out again, so you can just stop wriggling."
Kate finally settled for jerking her arm away from him.
There was no malice in the gesture--Tim just didn't know when to
stop. "How do you know I won't come out?" she said, brushing at
the wrinkles in her sleeve.
"Because I know how you work," he said, very
matter-of-fact. "You're a classic obsessive-compulsive. You
couldn't wait to blow this place for that hole in the ground at
BRI, and you've spent most of the last five years there trying to
breed some kind of half-assed computer up from brain cells, despite
my numerous invitations to come up to street level and act like a
human being."
"But that's my job--" she started, as he grabbed one of her
hands, lifting it for study.
"I mean, look at this thing," he said, flopping it back and
forth at the wrist. "It's completely bleached from being
underground all the time. Can you even remember the last time this
hand touched a live patient?" Still shaking her wrist, he squinted
at her in a judgemental fashion--Marlon Brando at his most
overbearing. "It just might do a soulless scientist like yourself
a world of good to see some real doctors at work, young lady," he
announced.
"The last time I watched real doctors at work, I wound up
missing a malpractice suit by inches," she said in amusement,
yanking her hand away. "By the way, am I still banned from the
morgue?"
"Go down there and see. You'd look swell with a bone saw
implanted in your chest."
"Sounds like fun," she said tartly. As his expression
collapsed into a pout, she thought it over, and shrugged. It
wasn't worth the hassle. "Okay, I'll wait."
Surrendering, she followed Tim into the stairwell leading
down to the Emergency Room corridor, keeping half an ear on his
(purposefully--she knew that much) distracting chatter about the
antics of his hotshot med students. They were halfway down the ER
corridor before she noticed it--an unpleasant, sweet stink in the
air, playing counterpoint to the usual hospital atmosphere of
disinfectant and rubbing alcohol. Wafting down from the ER, the
odor wasn't all that strong, but as Kate realized what was causing
it--the only possibility in a hospital trauma center--her empty
stomach lurched into a slow forward roll.
"Oh, shit, I recognize that smell," she moaned, wrinkling
her nose. "Burn patient."
Tim sniffed experimentally as they entered the triage area
of Billings' emergency room, grimacing at the suddenly pungent
odor. "Yeah, I think you're right," he admitted, trying to ignore
the abrupt mental comparison to sweet pork. Inside the double
doors, the stink was more concentrated, an invisible blanket of
that unmistakable aroma--burnt human flesh.
Trying not to breathe through her nose, Kate checked out
the triage area, the waiting room to her right mostly empty (and
I'm not surprised, she thought--only the truly desperate would sit
in the middle of that smell), automatically assessing injury
status. Instead of the usual three or four patients, the area was
rumbling with activity, with the ER staff hurriedly trying to prep
and treat a number of trauma cases. There were a number of fairly
serious injuries, she noted, but no burn victim.
At least, not in sight. The thick air said otherwise.
"I hate to tell you this, babe, but I don't think you're
getting out early," she said, trying to be heard above the babble.
"Yeah, I think we've got a full house tonight," he grunted
in agreement, as a harried-looking nurse glanced up from the crying
teenager she was examining and waved them over. "Well, you
took your own sweet time getting down here, Gideon. We've got a
hell of a mess here," she said in pure Alabama drawl, nodding at
Kate. "Hi, girl. You picked a hell of a night to visit."
"Nice to see you, too, Barb," Kate said, "and yeah, I
noticed the company."
"Company, it isn't," Barbara snorted. Despite the caustic
tone, her hands moved with care, gently swabbing blood from a long
cut on the girl's face. "There was a five car pileup on the Dan
Ryan, right at the Skyway exit," she reported. "According to the
police, a semi blew a hover engine and smashed into a car. That
car skidded through traffic, hit three other cars, and finally
caught fire when it slid into the lane divider. The truck driver,"
she gestured towards a burly man with a thin film of blood on his
face, sitting dazed on the next table, "has two cracked ribs and
some minor lacerations, and most of the other drivers caught some
glass. Nothing fatal so far."
Tim grunted. "So why'd I get called into this?"
"Head and neck injuries to the driver of the first car.
Unfortunately, the poor SOB survived."
"Unfortunately?"
"You haven't seen him yet. Just follow your nose." She
pointed towards a treatment room. "Nice to see you again, Kate."
"Thanks." Grimacing, Kate followed Tim to the curtained
section. The unique odor of burnt flesh hung over the area,
broadcasting the nature of it's occupant's injuries to anyone
within fifteen feet.
Reluctantly, Tim pushed the curtain aside and looked in,
his frown deepening as the scene registered. "Wonderful," he
growled, giving Kate an apologetic shrug before entering. "Okay,
kids, give me an update."
The curtains closed, leaving Kate outside, but she knew
what would be going on in the tiny room from the other times she'd
been on duty in the ER. The burn team would already be at work,
cutting away the charred remnants of the patient's clothing and
setting up IV's for fluid replacement and lactated Ringer's
solution, in preparation to clean and debride the burns. Once the
patient's vital signs were stablized, the primary danger at this
point would be from infection and temperature fluctuations, as
their mechanism for temperature control and bacterial protection
had been burned away with their skin. Burn victims were extremely
susceptible to any sort of virus, and in a germ-rich environment
such as an emergency room, they could spike a deadly, brain-burning
temperature within minutes.
If that wasn't bad enough, Kate mused, there had to be some
kind of damage to the spinal cord or the brain, since a
neurosurgeon had been called in for consultation. Trying to look
like she was supposed to be there, she leaned in closer to the
curtain, listening to the ER resident going over the patient's
various injuries. Between the shifting bodies of the burn team,
she managed to catch a glimpse of blackened torso, with what looked
like red cracks delicately traced on the surface.
Unexpectedly, a resident darted through the curtain,
yelling to an orderly for a transfusion crossmatch. Kate jumped to
one side, almost unconsciously veering into the examination room.
She turned her head to apologize, and froze. For a long, horrible
moment, she had a crystal-clear view of the patient, and the
resident's workup slammed home with shocking clarity.
My God, how did he survive, Kate wondered, horrified pity
coursing through her at the sight of that-- No, she thought,
shaking her head, it couldn't be called a patient. That was a
victim. The curtain swept down again, cutting off the room's
interior, but in her mind she could still see that pathetic body
laid out on the examination table--one leg burned away to mid-calf,
the left arm crushed, a blackened expanse of charred flesh covering
what used to be the lower torso. The patches of skin that hadn't
been blackened were raw and bleeding, lacerations branching across
the man's chest like red webwork. While the burn team worked on
debridement, a nurse was struggling to find an intact area of skin
that could take an IV needle without disintegrating. The only
relatively intact portion of skin was above the white cervical
collar, on the man's face.
That face. Through her shock at the battered body,
something welled--not a memory, but the suggestion of one. She
opened the curtains slightly, straining for a better look. To her
horror, she noticed the patient's eyes flutter, then open. "Jesus,
he's conscious," one of the doctors groaned. "Get that IV set up
now--I don't want him trying to move around."
"Like he could," she heard Tim mutter.
The nurse finally managed to get a needle into an interior
carotid artery, then moved out of the way for Tim, who was trying
to test pupilary reflexes.
"Reflex is normal, no sign of bleeding in the retinas," he
said, gently rolling back the patient's eyelid for the light probe.
"Brain looks all right, but there's been some damage to the
cervical vertebrae. I'm going to need X-rays before I can pinpoint
the break."
"You'll get them as soon as possible," one of the other
doctors said curtly, "which is after he gets out of surgery." He
gestured to two team members, who started to slather a
biosupportive foam over the exposed flesh. "If we don't get that
left subclavian sealed off soon, he won't have to worry about his
spine," he added, punching instructions into the table's minicomp
that would maintain patient vital signs. "Okay, let's move it,
people."
With neat, mirroring gestures, two nurses pulled a formed
sheet of plastic from the head of the table, twisting it up and
over the IV poles until it beacme a sterile tent that would protect
its inhabitant from the various microbes floating in the ER's air.
The medical team moved into position then, pushing the table into
the hall and into a smooth angle towards the OR elevators.
Quickly, Kate flattened against the tile wall as the group passed
her, but she caught another glimpse, this one blessedly short, of
the man sealed behind the medical plastic. Beneath the support
foam and the collar, the only part visible now was his eyes,
fluttering weakly above an oxygen mask. For an instant, they
opened completely, a brief, wondering stare at the ceiling of his
tent. There was no pain--there wouldn't be, she thought, until the
skin's burnt nerve endings grew back--only a look of bewilderment.
Then the lids finally settled shut, and the table and its gown-clad
satellites rumbled towards the elevator and surgery.
Or the morgue, she thought morbidly. The elusive memory
fragment welled up again, more strongly this time.
Somehow--Kate didn't understand exactly how--she thought
she knew him.
Tim was last out of the room, stripping off a pair of
surgical gloves. "I guess this is going to be a bad one, after
all. Sorry about dragging you down here," he said apologetically,
already starting for the elevators. "They're waiting for me up in
surgery, so you're going to have to take a rain check on dinner
tonight--"
"No problem," she said, jogging to keep up with him. "Um,
Tim--"
He glanced at her, not breaking stride. "You planning on
coming up with me?"
That made her smile a bit. "Nope. Wouldn't want to make
you look bad," she replied, trying to sound sarcastic. "I just
wanted to ask--do you mind if I check out your patient's
background?" Kate paused, trying to articulate the fragmented
memory rattling around in her mind. "I mean, it was probably a
long time ago, but I think I knew the guy," she finished lamely.
"Oh, Jesus," he murmured, stopping and rolling his eyes in
sympathy. "I'm sorry, kid. Yeah, sure, everything should be on
the datapad--you can check it out in the exam room."
"Thanks." She let out a held breath, feeling oddly
relieved. "Let me know how it goes, okay?"
"I'll call you."
Kate watched him board the elevator, then headed back to
the examination room. Not surprisingly, it was still empty. It'll
take a while for the smell to die down, she thought, feeling like a
spy as she stepped into the room. Which is probably for the best,
because I'm going to have a hell of a time explaining this if
someone walks in.
Laying on one of the counters was a datapad, still
activated. After debating the ethics of reading a patient's
personal files--with curiosity winning out over ethics--she sat on
the edge of the counter and scanned the admitting information. The
information she needed would be on the first line--patient's name.
It took a second for the name she read to register as a
memory. Then, it clicked, and her heart contracted, sqeezing
inside her chest.
It couldn't be him.
She didn't even hear the light footsteps squeaking up to
the door. "Kate?"
"Huh?" She jerked her head up, still clutching the datapad
in suddenly cold fingers. "Oh, God! You scared me."
Barbara stood in the doorway, hands on hips. "Well, I see
you found the stinker," she drawled, glancing around the room.
"Did they take him up or down?"
Meaning the operating room or the morgue. "They took him
up," Kate muttered, her attention refocusing on the pad. "God, I
don't believe this."
"What don't you believe?" Barbara asked.
In a daze, Kate laid the pad with its blinking information
back on the counter, disbelief swamping her face. "I actually knew
that man," she said, finally.
"Oh, honey," Barbara said, immediately stricken. "I'm
sorry. I didn't know--"
"No, that's okay," Kate interrupted her. "I mean, I
haven't seen him in--" She ran a hand through her hair, trying to
remember. "God, it's been years," she said, half-laughing. Only
the low, mirthless tone in her voice erased any semblance of
hilarity. "I never expected to see him again," she added.
Still embarrassed, Barbara sat down next to her and patted
her shoulder. "Old boyfriend, huh?" she said sympathetically.
Kate turned to the nurse, surprise replacing the disbelief.
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
Barbara shrugged. "Because I've seen it before, hon," she
said. "You've got this look, like you're not sure whether you
should be happy to see this guy or not. The only creature under
the sun that can cause a look like that is an old boyfriend." The
big woman leaned back, shrewdly assessing the doctor's reactions.
"Now, he winds up under your nose, on the critical list to boot,
and you don't know whether you should throw a party or pray for the
fool."
Kate gave her a wan little smile. "You ER nurses are too
damned good at mindreading."
"Honey, I've seen things come through those doors that
would make Jeanne Dixon run screamin' into the night," Barbara said
complacently. "You don't have to be psychic to know how the human
animal works."
"Mmm," came out of the cupped hands. "Well, you're wrong
on one point. He wasn't a boyfriend."
A jerk, yes. An object of obsession, definitely. But not
a boyfriend.
Fourteen years ago. That made it 1989--Hurricane Hugo, the
Great San Francisco Earthquake II, the tottering and ultimate
crumble of the Berlin Wall, the Cubs just missing a National League
pennant, and an undergraduate Kate Elliot slogging her way towards
a B.A. from the University of Illinois.
"I had to get a job, in order to pay for school," she had
explained to Barbara. "The grants weren't covering it, and I
wouldn't take out any more loans after I blew two years and two
thousand dollars at this little private college down South. The
easiest way to do it all was to get a job on campus. I tried for a
few secretarial jobs, but you had to have an inside track to get
one of those, so I wound up at Campus Food Service. And that's
where I met Alex."
Alexander McKinnon was a senior at UIC and a student
assistant at Food Service. He was one of their best managers, had
a good relationship with the director of the service, and knew the
business of getting supplies to the different areas of the campus
like the back of his hand. He was also an insufferable jerk with a
raging Machiavelli complex, and the only person who could put up
with him over long periods of time was Kate. Naturally, her
friends thought that this was a result of carrying a brain-addling
course load, but Kate had been convinced that Alex simply needed
someone who understood him.
"Unfortunately, he didn't know I was alive," she
explained. "I did everything I could to get his attention, but he
was fixated on one of the other assistants. Of course, he never
let anything cute in a skirt go by without a once-over."
"What about you?" Barbara asked.
"I wasn't cute," she said tersely. "Anyway, that's where
Alison came in. She was the craziest person who ever worked at
Food Services. Used to dance with the nachos--a complete nut case.
The customers loved her. Anyway, Alison knew I was hot for Alex,
even if the craven fool couldn't see it himself, so she threw a
party at one of the dorms for the Food Service students. As she
put it, I was supposed to get him thoroughly drunk, catch him off
guard, and jump him."
Or so the plan went. Unfortunately, it backfired, and Alex
had spent most of the party chasing after Alison, while Kate had
been left sitting in a corner of one of the bedrooms, playing an
ironic game of solitaire.
Kate tightened up, involuntarily clutching the datapad in
front of her. She could still feel the raging embarrassment that
always accompanied this part of the memory. After most of the
guests had left, Alison had started necking with one of the booth
captains from Concessions as a desperation move, trying to
discourage Alex into paying some attention to a forlorn Kate. In a
way, it had worked--while Alison and Madhi were playing slap and
tickle on the bed, Alex was sprawled halfway underneath it,
drunkenly muttering about how Mahdi was a fucking lucky Malaysian.
Eventually, Alison and Mahdi segued back into the living room, and
Alex, now desperate for any kind of attention, started talking to
Kate.
"Then, he asked me to kiss him, and I think I overdid it,"
she said. "We necked for a little bit, and--" She sighed, letting
her hands fall into her lap. "I don't know. I guess I thought I
finally broke through, that we really had something going. I
thought he was serious." Her voice trailed off. "For some reason,
I asked him why he was doing it," she finally said, resigned to the
end of the story. "He looked at me, kind of grinning, and said
that it felt good."
Kate shrugged, trying to ignore the finely etched pain that
accompanied the memory. "And that was it. He didn't care about
me. It just felt good." Her faint smile was bitter. "You can
imagine what that did to my ego. For the first time in my life, I
was truly humiliated by someone I cared about, and I didn't know
how to handle it."
Barbara was silent. "So ,what did you do?" she finally
asked.
"What could I do?" Kate said. "I sat there and looked
hurt. And tbis is where it gets down to the bone. I suppose it
was the booze, loosening him up, but he really was--well, maybe not
apologetic. Concerned would be a better word. I don't think he
really intended to hurt me. So he hugged for a minute, and he said
that we'd dance at each other's weddings." She paused, the moment
coming back to her in its bittersweet force. "And I said that if
he ever needed me, I'd be there. I promised him."
And I never forgot that promise, Kate thought. Along with
the anger and humiliation of the night, she still remembered how
she had felt about the lonely boy hiding behind a facade of
arrogance. It wasn't just attraction--it was a sense of empathy,
of knowing what it was like to be on the outside. His rejection
had tempered that emotion, but hadn't destroyed it entirely.
"And now, he's upstairs in surgery," she said, "and I don't
know how I'm supposed to feel." She picked up the datapad again,
contemplating the information in her hand. "All I know is that
he's probably going to die. And there's nothing I can do about
that, is there?"
With a wordless sense of understanding born out of
experience, Barbara put her arm around Kate, giving her a gentle
squeeze.
"Why don't you go home, darlin'," she suggested quietly.
"Get some sleep. The Ruthless Jew will call you when he's
finished."
Kate shook her head. "No," she said, almost wistful, as if
the idea was somehow too tempting. "I've got some work I can
finish up in the lab. I might as well wait there."
Twilight activity. Vague, hulking shapes loomed up,
geometric angles stretching out to the vanishing point in a lovely
fog. In a corner, someone crouched, reaching for something warm
and smoky. And shrieked, drawing her hands back from fire--
The phone rang, jerking Kate abruptly out of the dream.
Disoriented, she tried to sit up and almost slid out of the chair,
grabbing for the desk's edge at the last minute.
Whaaa?
She peered around blindly, trying to recognize shapes..
Oh. Lab. I'm in the lab.
The phone rang again, and her memory clicked in--Alex.
Fumbling for her glasses, Kate hit the ANSWER switch, glancing at
the fuzzy numbers on her desk clock. 12:23 a.m.
"Elliott speaking."
"Hi, Kate. It's Tim." There was a heavy note of
exhaustion in his voice, like he'd been through five miles of hell.
"Turn on your video. I've got an update on your man's condition."
It was the verbal equivalent of a cold shower. Now alert,
she shut off the privacy screen and looked into tired blue eyes set
against a background, she guessed, of the surgery floor. "Let's
hear it."
"Well, he's still alive. Barely. Considering his
condition, I don't know how he got through the surgery--"
"Get on with it."
"Sorry," he murmured, rubbing a hand across his mouth.
Even through the graininess of the hospital phone, she could see he
was exhausted. "Okay--he has second and third-degree burns over
thirty percent of his body, as well as various fractures and
lacerations. The left arm and shoulder had to be amputated, and I
think he suffered some pulmonary damage from the smoke." He
checked something in front of him, out of pickup range. "If that
wasn't enough, he's got a fracture in the second dorsal vertebra,"
the surgeon added. "If you don't mind a bad joke, it's the straw
that broke the camel's back. He might've had a chance with any one
of the injuries, but not all of them at once. Quite seriously,
it's a miracle that he's survived this far."
"So what happens now?"
He consulted the pad again. "Burn Unit already has him up
on a special stryker frame," he continued, referring to the
suspension system used for burn patients, "and he should be
finishing up in debridement right now, for all the good that'll do
him."
She nodded, understanding what he meant. Alex had hit the
wall, medically--from then on, it was just a matter of time until
his body simply gave out. "How long does he have?" she murmured.
Tim shook his head. "A few hours, maybe four or five,"
he said honestly. "If he's lucky. But I don't think he'll make it
to sunrise."
Kate nodded, her emotions suddenly cool and sharp. "I want
to see him."
>From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY: DEUS EX > Chapter Three, Pt. 2
Date: 17 Nov 91 19:36:24 GMT
DEUS EX
CHAPTER THREE (part two)
Ten minutes later, she was on the burn unit, trying to
getting used to the sweetly nauseating smell in the air (and, she
had to admit, increasingly grateful for the filter of her surgical
mask). Because of a burn patients' susceptibility to
infection--without the first defense of skin, any random virus
could play havoc with their systems--visitors on the unit had to
wear special sterile outfits. Protective goggles were mandatory
under the germ-killing ultraviolet lights, topping off the standard
surgical mask with an odd, futuristic look. Kate understood the
rationale behind the costume, but understanding it didn't make it
any more comfortable to wear. The clinging odor seemed to weigh on
her, escaping out of the Special Environment Modules--semi-sealed
niches that compensated for the patient's loss of temperature
control--through the ventilation system. Despite her concern for
Alex, Kate couldn't blame Tim for preferring to wait in the hall.
I wish my nose could be out there with him, she mused.
A privacy shield had been drawn around one bed, hiding its
inhabitant from the rest of the starkly lit unit. For an area
where the sight of burnt flesh was normal, a privacy shield was a
uniquely grotesque honor, indeed. Composing herself, she drew back
one of the drapes and stepped inside.
And gasped. The man held by the stryker traction frame was
a mass of charred tissue, suspended between a network of composite
carbon/steel threads that held the ruined body in midair. Her
first image of an insect in a web abruptly gave way to a newer,
more horrible impression--that of an overdone roast on a barbeque
grill.
Without warning, Kate's stomach suddenly rolled. She shook
her head, hard, to get rid of the image.
A myriad of IV tubes and drains sprouted from the few
patches of undamaged skin, connecting the body to the hospital's
Burn Patient Support system. The LED medprobe, a tilted black
rectangle of glass scored with a hatchwork of red neon, hovered
over the framework protectively, giving the eerie impression of a
guardian angel--which in a sense it was. The medprobe was
responsible for monitoring a patient's heart signal, respiratory
rate, temperature, EEG readings, and other data, feeding the
information directly into the hospital's mainframe and the
enviromods. Without the medprobe's constant surveillance, many of
the patients would have rapidly succumbed to infection, pneumonia,
and eventually death.
Wrinkling her nose under the goggles, she examined the
medprobe's signals, reaching up to type in a request for a replay
of Alex's vital signs within the last hour. As Tim had warned her,
they were declining rapidly. Pulmonary edema--fluid collecting in
the lungs--had already set in, and temperature spikes of two
degrees or more were being tracked by the environmental control.
The BPS system had compensated for this by reducing the enviromod's
temperature and cooling the antibiotic solution being pumped into
the I.V., but even the elaborate system couldn't maintain a patient
beyond a certain level of damage.
In other words, it was almost certain that he was going to
die, and there wasn't anything she could do about it. Shit. She
leaned back from the frame, trying to make some sense out of her
emotions. I haven't even talked to the man in years, she thought
defensively. No one would blame me if I turned around and walked
out.
No one but herself. A long time ago, she had made a
promise to the man in the Stryker frame. Admittedly, it had been
made as a drunken cushion to her bruised ego, but somehow she
couldn't bring herself to break that promise now.
I told him I would be there for him if he ever needed me.
And he needs me now.
Hesitant, Kate reached out to touch Alex's throat, where
the neck met the shoulder. The information flashed on the
medprobe, but she wanted to feel his pulse for herself.
A sudden beeping from the probe startled her. Guiltily,
she jerked her hand back before she realized that the machine was
signalling a change in the EEG pattern.
Beta waves, the first sign of consciousness. He's waking
up.
"Oh, God," she muttered, feeling the leading edge of panic.
The nurses would be tracking VS changes at the station, but she was
at his bedside. If he woke up, and saw her, she'd be expected
to--to--
No, I can't do this, she thought. I can't tell him what
happened. An animal hypnotized by the horrible fascination of two
headlights bearing down, her mind jammed up on itself, freezing her
in place while his eyelids flickered once or twice, then opened.
Too late.
Above the nasal prongs, his eyes were slightly glazed,
tracking dully across the ceiling before they reached her face.
Underneath the mask, Kate felt herself try to smile encouragingly.
Like he can see it, she realized, annoyed with herself. Her
mindset was detaching itself from the situation, spinning loose to
protect itself. As a delaying tactic, she checked his vital signs
again and caught her breath, shocked by their visible
deterioration. When she turned back to Alex, his gaze had cleared,
locking on her face.
"What happened," he whispered. His eyes were overbright,
uncomfortably aware in that tortured face.
"Do you know where you are?" she asked.
He blinked, trying to concentrate. "Hospital?"
"Right. You were in an accident."
"Yeah, I know." He tried to swallow, clicking on the
consonants. "Who're you?"
"I was in the emergency room when you came in."
His gaze tracked over her face, obscured by the mask and
goggles. "You. . .nurse?"
She shook her head. "No. I'm a doctor," she said softly.
"My doctor?"
"I'm a friend of your doctor's." She paused, not really
sure how to phrase what she wanted to say. "And. . .I'm your
friend, too," was how it came out. "At least I was, a long time
ago. At UIC."
He was silent, studying her weakly. The only sound in the
module was the click and hiss of the ventilator. Then, "Can't see
your face."
"Yeah," she said, now not caring about the expression
beneath her mask. "I'm sorry--it's regulations. I'm Kate
Elliott."
Alex went blank for a long, long moment. Then he gave her
a tiny smile, his lips trembling. "Kate--God, yeah. That really
you?"
"Yes. I mean, you can't really tell underneath this
get-up," she stepped back, so that he could see the outfit, "but
it's me."
Alex licked his lips again. "Been a long time. Didn't
think I'd ever see you again."
"Same here. But I told you I'd pop up if you needed me."
The trembly smile again. "It's that bad, huh?"
Kate made a noncommittal sound, sidestepping the question.
"I didn't expect to see you here, of all places," she said.
"Didn't plan on being here." He tried to laugh, the weak
chuckle turning into a cough. "Why can't I move, Kate?"
And here it comes. "You're in a Stryker frame," she
explained, as gently as she could. "It's a form of traction--"
"I can't feel my arm," he interrupted. "What happened? Am
I paralyzed?"
She swallowed, hard, and nodded. This was the part she
hated about being a doctor--telling a patient the truth about what
had happened to their body. "Two of your vertebrae were fractured,
one lumbar and one cervical," she said. "The cervical's a hairline
fracture, but your spinal cord there seems to be all right. The
lumbar fracture is more serious. Right now, you're paralyzed from
the waist down. Your left arm was crushed in the accident,
apparently when your car hit the lane divider. They had to
amputate."
Even hidden behind the goggles, she couldn't look at him.
The expression of grief was too sudden, too intense to bear. "What
else?" he whispered hoarsely.
"Alex--"
"What else?"
She took a deep breath, and recited the rest. "There was a
fire in the car. Before they could get you out, you took severe
second- and third-degree burns. That's why you can't move or feel
much--the nerve endings in your skin
(Are gone)
were damaged," she said. "You won't be able to feel
anything for a few days."
That's right, Elliot. Lie to him.
Alex's face contracted, crumbling under the onslaught.
"Oh. Oh, God."
"But they brought you to the right place, Alex," she rushed
on. Say something, anything, just don't give him the chance to
understand what's really happening. "The ambulance brought you to
Billings Hospital, and their burn unit is the best in the country,
and they're going to help you--"
"No no noooo!!" Motionless within the stryker frame,
Alex's voice was his only weapon, his defense against the numb,
steel wired world in which he had woken up. "No, don't tell me
that, no. . ."
Kate reached for the nurse's button, but the medprobe was
already responding to the heightened pulse rate, automatically
increasing the synthetic endorphin ratio in Alex's IV mix. After a
moment, he subsided, slack-jawed from the sudden rush. It was the
standard reaction to stress signals in a burn patient, but Kate
wished that they had held off for another minute.
"Dr. Elliott?"
She jumped at the sound from the probe's speaker. It was
the nurse's station.
"Is everything all right?" The voice was concerned,
professional. "We're tracking some agitated signals from the
patient--"
"Fine. He's fine," she cut the voice off. Leave me alone
with him, damn it. There's not much time.
The voice paused. "If you need any help--"
"I'll call you," she said. The speaker remained silent.
Apparently, they were taking her at her word.
"Kate. . ."
She glanced down at Alex, now relaxed into the protective
embrace of the frame. The tranquilizers would keep him calm until
it was all over.
"Alex." Carefully, she laid her hand across his forehead,
human contact the only thing she could give him now. "Can you hear
me?"
"Didn't mean to do it," he mumbled. "I felt so lousy. And
you left. Couldn't tell you--sorry. I'm sorry. Never meant. .
.hurt you."
She nodded, fighting back her own emotions. "Shhh, it's
all right," she whispered, stroking his skin. "I understand."
Underneath the lulling touch, Alex closed his eyes and was
quiet. The seconds ticked by until she heard a whisper.
"I'm going to die."
She started to demur, before she realized it was a
statement, not a question.
"Please, Kate. I don't want to die."
"Oh, Alex--"
"You promised. . .be my friend. Help me."
"I can't do anything, Alex," she murmured. The most
terrible words a doctor can say; the admittance of fallibility.
"It's out of my hands."
"Promised," he breathed, voice almost gone. "Don't want to
die."
She gazed down at his body, trying to ignore the tears
welling around the goggle's edges. The harsh red and black began
to blur, soften. Washing away.
"I'm so sorry," she murmured, wishing fiercely that she
could hold his hand, just for a moment. But that was impossible.
The hand still present was charred, wrapped in biosupport gel. The
other, in some pathology lab, awaiting classification and disposal.
The thought of that destruction broke in on her, the impersonal
scalpel cleaving flesh away from bone.
I can't let him die. But I can't help him. There simply
was no way to save that poor, shattered body.
And the idea slipped through her grief, small and pure:
but what about his memories?
His memories.
Everything--Ticotin's theory, PerSim, tap procedures, the
NeuroNet's new circuitry--flooded into reality, interlocking like
the plastic of a puzzle. She couldn't save Alex's body, but she
might be able to save the essence that made him unique--the
memories that made up his persona.
The arguments were immediate. A full PerSim tap never been
fully tested on human beings. The computer might not have enough
memory to support a fully-functional persona.
But if it worked! she argued with herself. If it worked,
it would be a breakthrough, proving the capacity of the NeuroNet
and PerSim. And he's on the verge of death. At worst, he dies
without pain. At best, he would have achieved a form of
immortality. Everything he had seen, everything he had done would
be saved, to teach them more about the human mind. And possibly, a
voice whispered in the back of her own consciousness, how to
construct an AI.
The prospect was dizzying.
She struggled with the thought for a moment longer--the
darkly marvelous temptation to preserve Alex and, at the same time,
explore the reaches of Ticotin's theory. If she was to keep her
promise, there really was no choice.
But there was so little time left. Quickly, she bent down,
her lips close to his ear. "Alex, I can--I think I can do
something," she whispered.
He opened his eyes, squinting. Get on with it.
"It's an experimental process. I don't have time to
explain it all, but it has to do with recording memory patterns, on
a new kind of computer." She paused, biting her lip, then raced
on. "If the procedure works the way we've hypothesized, your
memories would still exist. They'd be able to think, to function
on this computer, as the first artificial intelligence in history."
The tiniest sound. "Yes."
Kate felt a pang of conscience at the unquestioning
acceptance. "We're still testing it," she whispered, more
insistent. "We can't project exactly what would happen once your
memoria are embedded into the NeuroNet."
His eyes flickered, but stayed open.
"But I do know that they'd function--we'd be able to access
them, and give them the ability to grow," she continued. "You'd go
down in cybernetics history as the first persona donor--and your
memories would live forever." She hovered over the strained face,
gazing down at him like a modern guardian angel. "It's your
choice."
Yes, his eyes glared. Do it.
And done. Kate nodded once, not trusting her voice, and
stood up. She was halfway out of the sterile outfit as she exited
the ward, tossing them at the nearest clothes bin in her hurry to
get to the nearest phone. There wouldn't be enough time to go over
to the lab herself. We'll need tap electrodes, software--
Tim glanced up from a patient's chart just in time to see
her walk by, headed for the door. "Kate?" She didn't hear him.
"Hey, Elliot, where are you going?" he asked, jogging to catch up
with her.
Kate gestured for him to come along. "I have to call some
people," she said, her attention focused on the job ahead; Tina
will have to be there--I need a good tech. What about a permission
document? "Does Alex have any living relatives?" she asked
distractedly.
"Uh, no," Tim said, surprised. "The chart said both
parents are dead. One brother, but he's MIA--"
"Married?"
"Divorced," he said. "Recently, in fact. We had to get
his ex-wife to sign some papers--"
Kate cut him off. "The BPS is connected to the hospital's
mainframe, right?"
"Right--"
"And the hospital had an account with the University's
NeuroNet?"
He sighed, "Naturally."
"Very good. We won't have to worry about patching a relay,
then." Without stopping, she turned to look at Phillip. "I know
you told me this before," she said, her voice low, "but just repeat
it for the record--in your opinion, what are Alex's chances of
surviving until morning?"
"In my opinion, zero," Phillip replied, confused by her
abrupt change of subject. "Three hours, maybe. Six hours,
possible but unlikely. But there's no way he'll make it past
sunrise."
Kate nodded at the answer, once again lost in thought.
"We'll have to do it immediately, then," she said.
"Wait a minute--do what?"
When she looked at him, he was shocked to see this
expression of infinite sorrow, like a transparent mask, over her
face. "I'm going to keep a promise," she said simply. "One I made
a long time ago. And I'm going to need your help."
At BRI, members of the night shift hustled to load the
equipment Kate had ordered onto an inter-university carrier. "She
wants a complete tap set, with resonant jacks for the hospital's
mainframe system," one of the programmers read out loud, checking
items off the datapad as she went. "Contact salve, integration
software, peripherals, and one prototype consent form."
"Got it," said Rich. He checked over the collection in the
carrier pod once more, then nodded. "Everything's here. You
better carry the software over by hand, though."
The programmer, a petite, tired-looking blond named Tina,
accepted the plastic diskettes and slipped them into a briefcase
sitting next to the pod. She peered into the grayish container.
"It's a little cruder than the stuff we have in the lab," she said
doubtfully.
"Don't worry. It'll work."
"That's what you always say."
"That's because it always does," he said, scooping foam
pops from a canister next to the Fac Ex drop and packing them over
the equipment. "So what's the deal on this, anyway?" he asked,
keeping his voice low. "I thought Kate wasn't going to do any more
taps until we ran some rats through the process."
"There's a terminal patent over at Billings who wants to
volunteer," she explained, shrugging thin shoulders. "Somehow,
this guy heard about the program, and he wants to have his persona
recorded before he dies."
"Oh, right," Rich drawled. "He just happened to hear about
a classified project."
Tina didn't even bother to look up at the comment. Rich's
constant attitude of semi-paranoia could get a little tiring. "I
don't know how it happened," she said tersely. "Kate just told me
to meet her in the Burn Unit with the software, so that's what I'm
going to do." She clicked the locks on the briefcase, sealing it.
"I think that's everything. After I leave, make sure that PerSim
is on-line and open to the hospital. I'll access everything from
there."
"It'll be ready, boss lady," he said.
As she walked back to the street exit, Rich snapped the
clamshell halves of the pod together, loading it into the IU turbo
shaft. While he was programming destination coordinates, he
thought about what would be going on at the hospital. "Might be an
interesting way to go," Rich commented to himself. He picked up a
pop, slowly bending it between finger and thumb. Crackling, the
foam crushed.
A sterile privacy cubicle had been set up around the bed.
The unit nurses (including one who had witnessed the patient's
signing of a consent form) knew something was going on, but the
attending doctor wasn't talking. Just pacing.
Kate made a final adjustment to the multicolored crown of
electrodes encircling Alex's head. The BPS system leads from the
medprobe had been pushed aside by NAMSR's silicarbonon sensors,
which would drain memory patterns directly into the NeuroNet
program.
"We're almost ready," she said, slightly muffled by her
surgical mask. Tina nodded without looking up from the portable
terminal at the foot of the bed, where she was busy accessing the
PSU and setting up input codes for the new data.
Kate turned back to Alex. He'd barely had the strength to
sign the consent form, and was now in a light coma. Once again,
she wondered if she was doing the right thing, subjecting him to an
potentially dangerous experiment of this kind.
But what else am I supposed to do, she told herself
fiercely. Sit by and watch him die? At least his mind might
survive this way.
The other woman made a last entry, calling up the input
grid. "Ready for tapping procedure," she reported.
Kate nodded. "Tim?"
Tim looked in from his pacing outside the privacy shield.
"I don't know why I let you talk me into this," he said, frowning.
"Because you're a doctor. You want him to live as much as
I do."
"But memories aren't the same thing as life."
"They're the closest we can come right now," Kate said,
keeping her voice calm. Between the phone call and the arrival of
the equipment, she'd told Tim that she wanted to duplicate Alex's
patterns, and that Alex had agreed to this. It would have sounded
insane to tell the other doctor her real reason for the experiment.
Phillip stared at the inert body in the stryker frame. "I
just hope we're doing the right thing."
So do I, Kate thought. She gave a final glance at the
vital sign readouts, then at Tina. Nodded. "Engage electrode
feedback."
Tina touched a control. The sensors ringing Alex's skull
came to life, emitting an uncomfortably low hum of sonics that
crawled over the bones. At the same time, the terminal monitor lit
up with program coordinates tracking the tap. A blank spot
occurred in the left-hand corner--space for the complex graphics
that would visually track the tap.
"T minus five seconds. Memoria tracking at zero percent,"
she said. "Five--"
Kate lowered her mask and ducked in quickly to brush her
lips across Alex's forehead. Then she backed away, murmuring a
prayer to whatever gods were listening.
"Four--"
Let it work. For him. For me.
"Three. . .two--"
Please.
"One. Synaptic tap engaged."
The hum climbed to a high-pitched whine, uncomfortable in
the close room. A graphic of a human brain flashed onto the
computer screen, rapidly patching in with color as the PerSim
Program began recording carbon chain patterns from Alex's brain and
transferring data to the NeuroNet. At the same time, Kate noticed,
Alex's face seemed to relax, the pain slipping from it into some
unknown place.
The procedure carved out minutes, building slowly into an
hour. Tina called out percentages at precise intervals, provoking
a question from Tim. "Everything's fine," Kate assured him, trying
to keep her attention focused on Alex and the monitor. "It's the
percentage of memory patterns the mainframe has already tracked."
"Or drained." Phillip made it a statement, not a question.
"Sixty-two percent."
"That's just the term we use," she said, trying to mask her
own nervousness with a quick smile. "In fact, it's more of an
interactive signal relay--"
"I'll take your word for it."
The hour stretched to enclose another fifteen minutes.
Tina had just announced ninety-two percent when the medprobe
abruptly let out a bleat, making Kate jerk. She glanced at the
probe in time to see LEDs pulsing across the probe's black surface,
the vital sign readouts dropping into danger zones. "Warning," the
medprobe's voicechip chimed, "metabolic rates are dropping rapidly.
EKG becoming unstable--pulmonary edema increasing. Approaching
total system collapse."
Tim pushed up to the medprobe, absorbing the data. "Oh
bleeding Christ, he's going into system shock. Probe, start
Trendlenberg and alert the trauma team." As the head of the frame
started sinking (to counteract blood loss from the brain during
shock), Tim moved inside the sterile field, reaching for the
sensors.
Kate got there first. "Don't. The electrodes are
attached--"
Tim hands were already moving, tugging at the sensors. "I
don't have time to play around with these things--" he snapped.
"Ninety-five percent."
"No, the prongs, they'll rip the skin," she insisted, "they
have to be removed one by one." She reached in quickly, to
demonstrate. Tiny prongs, just light enough to catch the skin
without breaking it, anchored each electrode in place. "Can't you
work around them?"
Tim growled to himself, touching one electrode. It stuck
to the skin. "Oh, Christ. I don't have a choice," he muttered,
moving aside as the crash cart team entered the room. The smell of
cooked flesh hung sweet and strong in the air as a crush of
blue-gowned bodies crowded around the silver frame, Tim shouting
out instructions in clipped bursts.
"Come on, people."
"We're losing him."
"Ninety-seven percent."
A nurse handed Tim a syringe filled with norepinephrine,
and Kate took a step forward, hands out. And paused, horrified to
realize that she was about to stop them because norepinephrine
would shock the system, interfering with the tap. No. I can't do
that.
"Ninety-eight." Tina's eyes were huge and wide. The
graphic on her screen seemed to leap at her words, pixels racing to
fill a neon-sketched brain as the last dregs of memory flowed
through the electrodes. "Ninety-nine."
Tim popped the needle cover, squirted, and positioned the
needle over Alex's chest.
Kate froze. Just a moment more. Wait, please wait--
"Damn." Tim glanced up, signalled the nurse. "I can't
find a clear place--"
"One hundred percent. Synaptic drain complete."
For a long, terrible moment, there was silence. Then, the
system alarm went off suddenly. "Warning. Patient is in cardiac
arrest," said the calm, mechanical voice. "EEG, EKG both flatline.
Repeat, patient is in cardiac arrest."
Cursing, Tim tossed the syringe away. "Sonofabitch--give
me the paddles," he shouted, shifting an IV tube. While he was
beginning CPR, two nurses rushed into the section with a mobile
defibrillator unit. Kate backed away, watching them work over the
body. She barely noticed Tina darting in, jacking the sensors out
of the mainframe coupling--her entire concentration was on Alex and
the trauma team working on him. The shock troops of emergency
medicine, the skilled ER physicians and nurses were trained to deal
with all types of emergencies. Even they had their limits, though.
The medprobe reflected the stimuli of the resuscitation attempts,
the repeated electrical bursts from the defibrillator and the
chemical bombardment of various drugs, and nothing else. Whatever
life that had remained in that burnt shell was already gone.
Tim finally dropped the shock paddles back into their
cradles. "This is useless," he growled. "I'm calling it.
Medprobe, access Records, McKinnon, Alexander. Record expiration
time at 2:32 am, 10/11/04. Cause of death--" He paused, flashing
a hunted look at Kate. "Heart failure, complicated by burn
injuries. Timothy Gideon, attending physician, recording."
"Recorded and filed," said the quiet voice. As the nurses
collected the cart equipment and left, Kate stepped towards the
body. "Tim," she said haltingly.
He couldn't look at her. "I'm sorry, Kate. We tried."
"I know."
"The edema was out of control. All the damage, it was just
too much for the probe to maintain--"
"Tim." Her voice was soft, straining for a calm tone. "I
know. There was nothing more you could do."
Silently, he reached out and gathered her in, hugging her
tightly. Kate relaxed in that embrace, holding the surgeon as much
as he held her. She looked up finally, took in his exhausted face.
"You did your best, Doc, and he knew it," she murmured. "We both
did. Thank you."
He nodded heavily, blinking. "Do you. . .want a few
minutes alone with him?"
She looked back at the body, its face composed peacefully
in death. "Yeah. I want to say--I don't know. Goodbye, maybe."
"Okay. I'll meet you in the hall." And he was gone.
"Kate." Tina's tone was hesitant, breaking her loose from
the remembered comfort of Tim's embrace. "The equipment's packed
up. I'll get an orderly to help me move it to the carrier. Do you
want to wait until tomorrow to run a diagnostic?"
Kate shook her head, the sick, heavy feeling settling over
her again. "No. I want to see it tonight," she said distractedly.
I want to make sure it's all there. "As soon as everything's on
the carrier, meet me in my office. We'll run a review program from
there."
Tina nodded and left. Kate remained where she was, at the
foot of the frame, not daring to look at the body held in its
metallic embrace. I didn't want this, she thought weakly. Alex,
wherever you are, please believe that. I only wanted to help.
Moving slowly, she stepped back and closed the shield, then left
the ward. What remained of Alex McKinnon's body was behind her, a
shell for the coroner's office to deal with. His soul was
consigned to heaven, or to whatever afterlife awaited him.
She had to see what was left of his mind.
Before Kate could reach the elevator, she felt Tim's hand,
warm, on her shoulder. Silently, she turned and allowed herself to
be held again for a moment.
"I'm sorry, kid," Tim murmured into her jacket collar. "I
know it hurts."
Kate leaned into his arms, grateful for the small human
touch. "Yeah, it does," she agreed. There were no tears, only a
kind of hot grief in her head, welling up behind her eyes.
Geothermal pressure, the feeling of lost regret. "I just didn't
expect it--Jesus, I don't know. I didn't expect it to be like
that. So quick."
"Yeah, I know," Tim said, "I fucking hate it myself."
"Right," she said, taking a deep breath. "God, that's why
I went into research. I couldn't handle it anymore, watching
patients die. It goes against everything that made me want to be a
doctor, but sometimes there's nothing you can do, you know? And no
matter how good you are, you're going to get a walking corpse at
some time, and the only thing you can do is make them as
comfortable as possible and keep their families calm." The long
buried words rolled out of her, the reasons why she jumped ship at
Billings and went over to NAMSR, surprising even to herself. "So I
left. When you're working in a lab you don't have to stand a
deathwatch at a patient's bedside." She swallowed hard. "You
never have to lie to them about what's killing them from the
inside. But Alex really brought it all home again." She pulled
away completely, jamming her hands in her lab coat pockets. "I
don't know. Maybe I'm just afraid of death."
Tim snorted once. "Well, congratulations--you've just
discovered you're a member of the human race," he said with gentle
sarcasm. "Having an M.D. doesn't exclude you from being afraid of
death. It just forces you to understand it more."
"So I've noticed."
He nodded. "So what are you going to do now?"
"Go over to the lab, I guess," Kate said, shrugging. She
managed to push the weariness back by an effort of will. "I have
to see how much of the memoria we transferred to the mainframe.
Considering what happened during the tap, it's possible that we
lost some of the secondary patterns."
The other doctor noticed her reluctance to use the
possessive. "I'd rather have you go home and get some sleep, but
since I know you won't listen to me--"
"I don't listen to quacks." The bantering was forced, but
he smiled at it--she was holding up.
"--I'm counting on your obnoxious nature to carry you
though," he said. "Give me a call when you're finished. I'd like
to take a look at whetever you got."
It was a brief walk across the complex to BRI. I suppose I
should be grateful this is all enclosed, she thought
absentmindedly, still feeling that heaviness in her chest. It
wasn't what she'd call a happy feeling--that was one emotion she
wouldn't be able to stand for awhile. But Alex's death forced her
to accept some things about herself that had been buried for too
long.
She keyed herself into the lab, on autopilot, and hit a
switch. The overhead fluorescents flickered on, illuminating the
empty computer bay. One of the nice things about working nights
was the company, she reminded herself, cutting through the nearest
aisle to the office corridor. At least nobody was going to be
poking around and asking embarrasaing questions about why the
director was barricading herself in her office and playing K games
with PerSim. She still had to figure out what she was going to
tell Browning when he came in. The man was going to be hot for the
program, once he discovered that they had successfully tapped a
memoria, and she didn't particularly relish telling him what
ultimately happened to the donor. Not that he could use it in some
way--the tap had nothing to do with Alex's death.
Oh, God, she hoped that was true.
Kate locked herself into her office, leaving the lights on
'dim,' and turned on her terminal. The opening sequence was a
graphics display she'd played with--very nice on the color screens.
Here goes. Breathing a little deeper, she keyed in her
personal ID number, then the command for PerSim.
Nothing.
She felt herself grow very still. I typed it in wrong,
that must be it. Once again, she typed in the command that should
have called up the opening PerSim screen to her monitor. The blank
screen flickered for a minute, as if the computer was processing
the request (but that didn't make any sense either, she thought,
the command is directly linked to the application), and then. . .
"What the hell--"
Because the screen had literally exploded into color.
Thousands of churning geometrics in visual primaries riccocheted
across the monitor field, bouncing off the virtual edges like tiny
cartoon characters on speed. The perspective was exquisite--like a
neo-Japanese animated short, the control of size as the shapes
approached the screen was crisp, precise, a concoction of electric
images intended to dazzle the eye with the virtual reality of
computer images. Seen against what was normally a dark blue
monitor screen, the whole thing was crazily beautiful, a
multicolored collection of snowflakes twirling through a cyan sky.
And then a velvet spread of crimson swept down from the top
of the screen, smoothly covering the frantic shapes with its own
muted glow. Following in the wake of the crimson (wave,
shape--what the hell was it?) were fine, patterned black
threads--irregular fishnet silhouetted against sunset light. The
elegantly baroque result reminded her of something she had seen
once; that of a mental patient's doodlings with an advanced
graphics program. This screen had that same sense of unrestrained,
razoredge sanity, translated into visual shape. As soon as the
netting touched the bottom of the screen, gold-edged print
scrolled:
<PerSim:unavailable_ incorrect.access.code>
The message was almost insignificant, compared to the
scooping parabolas and arcs etched in black and red. For a brief
instant, Kate felt drawn to the screen, like a child pressing her
nose up against the candy store window.
And then the message sank in. She couldn't get into PerSim
because her access code was gone.
It was more effective than cold water. That's impossible,
she thought, feeling the nibbling first edge of panic. Her code
was on file with the mainframe system prorgams--the whole system
would have to crash before she could be locked out of a specific
program. Unless someone had gone in and changed the code. . .
While I was at the hospital. Quickly, she typed in a
request for an access report. Still in that odd script, the
NeuroNet scrolled information across the screen on user activity
for the last twelve hours. Browning's name jumped out at her
immediately, along with his logout time--8:25 pm. Which meant that
he had quit while she was still working on PerSim.
"Damn." If Browning hadn't jiggered PerSim's recognization
processes, there could be some kind of integral glitch with the
program itself. I think I'd rather have Browning playing mind
games with the computer, she thought, chewing on the side of her
finger. Because if there were still some quirks with the program,
they could lose all of Alex's memory patterns. And if that
happened. . .God, she'd never forgive herself. The poor fool had
trusted her with his life, and he'd lost that already--
Ignoring the sudden guilt, she tried typing in the command
again, using an alternative general code as the identisuffix. To
her surprise, the image on the screen began to surge gently, like
the surface of a crimson sea (or, she thought abruptly, a computer
animation of a body shifting under a red blanket. God, you're
getting morbid). The cursor trembled once, then skipped down one
line and pulsed:
<who are you?>
The words were clear, normal English, glowing on the CRT
with the NeuroNet's usual precision. And Kate felt her heart
lurch. Out of the world of logic, and into aberration.
That syntax isn't in the computer system, part of her brain
buzzed over and over. PerSim doesn't use near-English syntax like
that for identification relays--it doesn't even understand
non-prefixed English commands. It can't ask me who I am.
But it just did. So what did that mean?
It means that there's something new in the computer
program.
Like what?
The obvious answer sprang to mind, and Kate immediately
dismissed it. That was something she couldn't accept. Ticotin's
theories or not, it was too soon, the memoria had just been
transferred. There had been no time for them to split off,
translate into a working--
"Mind," she said aloud. "It can't be a mind, it's just a
goddamned program." And I'm not shaking. Body, stop that.
Clenching her fists once to stop the tremors--defiantly,
she thought--she typed in her personal code along with a status
display request.
<kate? is that you?>
Staring at the words--oh, they were real, perfectly clear
on the screen--Kate slowly noticed that there was a low, animal
sound crawing through the room. Startled, she realized it was
coming from her own mouth. She cut the sound off abruptly (I
didn't know I could sound like that, she thought, horrified),
choked it off by realization--the memoria was responding on its
own. And it wanted to talk to her.
Hesitantly, she touched the keyboard, pecking the letters
into a message:
%%resp: this is dr. katharine elliott. query: who are you?%%
The reply was instantaneous.
<alex mckinnon>
Kate sat there, all circuits blown. Because when an
inanimate computer program, even one as advanced as PerSim, starts
percolating though a man's recorded memories and dredges up
something that sounds like a human being on the other side of the
monitor screen, well, that's the point where she got off, this
wasn't her field, she was only the fix-it person who assembled the
bits and she didn't want to know what kind of bastardized
pseudo-being she'd jigsawed together--
<kate, are you still there?>
She stamped down on the rising panic, hard. "Try yes,
Elliott," she muttered, fingers tapping at the keys. Use the
language, kid, get through to the logic circuits.
%%resp: yes, i am here. query: what do you mean by stating that
you are alex mckinnon?%%
<I mean i'm alex mckinnon, what do you think i mean? and why are
you talking like a computer?>
This can't be happening, she thought rationally. I am not
sitting here arguing with a computerized memoria. Something is
wrong with the program--that is the simplest answer. Ignoring the
last line, she typed in a command for a program integrity check.
<PerSim:prog_integ_f2 run>
<well, i feel a little weird. Do you have me on some kind of
drugs, or what?>
It was reading the commands as English. Not PerSim--the
superprogram wasn't written to recognize near-English commands. It
couldn't be responding like that--using idiomatic English--to her
queries, not without a month's worth of reprogramming.
The memoria was responding to the commands.
And it was a sledgehammer shock deep down in her gut, the
place scientists were trained to ignore--that the NeuroNet, in
conjunction with PerSim and Alexander McKinnon's recorded memoria,
had somehow jumped past their predictions, into Ticotin's theory.
It had taken NAMSR's stumbling through six years, two different
fields of research, and one man's death, but somehow these separate
elements had been cobbled together into--
"An AI," she said, awed. "Jesus Christ, it's a fucking
AI." An artificial intelligence, one that had fused the memories
and thought patterns of a man onto a supercomputer.
The tail-end realization hit her abruptly--and resulted in
a bastardized thinking machine that doesn't know it died. The
NeuroNet--Alex--still thought it was alive.
<kate?>
<hello?>
<come on, kate, knock this off. i'm a sick man>
< >
<KATE?>
Her mouth dry, Kate touched the keyboard, typed:
%%alex, is that you?%%
<who were you expecting, mahatma ghandi? yeah, it's me>
%%i'm sorry. you surprised me--i wasn't expecting to talk to
you%%
<obviously. listen, what's going on with me? i can't move
anything. am i paralyzed?>
%%no. alex, can you tell me where you are right now?%%
There was the briefest pause. <funny you should ask. i don't
know. i see something in the distance----------um, i think i'm
hallucinating. what do you have me on?>
%%i'll explain later. tell me--what do you see?%%
Another pause. <it's like i'm in the middle of a mirror.
like a silver ball, inside out--i can't see a horizon, and there's
something directly below me. it looks like, i don't know--a
computerized version of a frisbee, I think. No, more like two
fans, the japanese kind, put end to end--there's a split down the
middle with some kind of glowing liquid in it, and colored shapes
all over the surface. it's big, whatever it is, and electric
blue--the shapes look like neon, though. remember close
encounters?>
%%yes%%
<this is kind of like that--the mothership, i mean. god, i
don't know what drugs you people have me on, but this stuff is
great shit. i hope i get a prescription when i go home>
The feeble attempt at a joke was the final straw, too much.
Kate just sat there, unable to cope with the supreme irony of a
computer wanting to go home. While she was flailing with her
thoughts, the cursor flashed again, leaving a trail of words.
<while we're on the subject, when do i go home? i mean, how badly
was i hurt? are we talking month sof recuperation here, or can i
do some of it at home?>
With Alex's thought patterns, the NeuroNet had gained one
of man's most unique, and dangerous abilities--the ability to
delude itself. And it was her responsibility to tell it--him--the
truth.
%%alex--she typed--do you remember giving me permission to do an
experiment with your memories?%%
<of course, i remember it, i remember everything, but what
%%please be patient and let me explain. you were badly injured in
the accident%%
<i know>
%%when we performed the procedure, what we call a tap, it copied
your memoria onto an advanced, semi-organic mainframe, organized by
a special program called PerSim that was desig
<kate, i don't really care, okay? why don't you just answer my
question? how badly was i hurt, and when do i go home?>
Kate hesitated, trying to judge the effect of her words.
What would be the result if she told him (and for the last time,
stuck on the article--it was a representation of Alex, so she might
as well address it as him) the truth?
What would she do if she woke up in a computer mainframe?
Go completely insane, probably.
So don't tell him the truth.
And what am I supposed to tell him? Yeah, Alex, we have
you on some really good shit, that's why you can't feel anything,
ha ha.
At least. . .be kind.
%%all right. as we finished recording your memoria, you went into
heart failure caused by pulmonary edema--fluid in the lungs. the
doctors did all they could, but the damage from the accident
coupled with the edema was too extreme to treat. you were
terminal%%
There was a long pause. Then, slowly, word after word
appeared on the screen:
<are you telling me i'm dead?>
Simple words, on a monitor screen. Words that hung an
ancient human belief in the balance, the recognization of physical
existence as life.
I'm not God, Kate thought. Whatever inhabited the
NeuroNet, it was an entity that was responding as a human, with
what could only be called, at first assessment, sentience. Does
that make it alive? I can't decide.
%%i'm telling you that your body couldn't be saved%% she typed
slowly. %%your vital signs ceased at 2:32 am this morning%%
<oh, my god. i'm dead>
And who am I to judge?
%%alex, i don't know. i don't think so. you seem to be responding
intelligently, you can recognize surroundings--you are showing
signs of sentience. That means
<I know what sentience is. what are you saying, that i'm alive
because i'm talking to you? WHAT HAPPENED TO ME? WHERE AM I?????>
%%your memoria, at time of death, was tapped and recorded into a
modified NeuroNet 5000. i'm sorry, but physically, you are dead.
mentally, your brain's memory patterns now exist on the mainframe
of a special computer that has been designed to mimic the human
brain. more than that i can't tell you--i don't understand it
myself. we didn't expect anything like this to happen%%
No, that wasn't true. Ticotin had postulated something
like this, the possibility of extracting more than a memoria
through PerSim. And his hints of what would happen if a volunteer
died during a tap--
She shook her head violently, blocking off that particular
train of thought. She didn't want to think about that, not now.
There was only one question she had to answer--what was residing on
her mainframe?
<what exactly did you expect to happen?>
She recoiled a bit from the sarcasm.
%%we expected to access a duplicate of your persona embedded within
the PerSim program%% she typed. %%the duplicate would have been an
mental model of you, based on your memories and neurochemical
patterns%%
<but you didn't expect your duplicate to talk back?>
%%no. the duplicate was programmed for read-only access, nothing
more%%
<so what am i? for christ's sake, am i even alive?>
%%i don't know. i believe it's possible that you exist%%
<i exist? what the hell does that mean?>
%%it means that you--the thought patterns, the memories that made
you unique, the essential alex mckinnon--seem to have retained some
kind of independent sentience during the transfer to the mainframe
<stop talking about me like i'm some kind of experiment!>
She paused for a moment.
%%i'm sorry. when i came in here, that's what i expected to
access--an experiment. not you. that's what i'm trying to tell
you--i don't understand this%%
<you think you don't understand? try waking up without a
body--that plays hell with your sense of reality>
Kate clamped down on her natural response, but not without
a fleeting thought--my God, it does sound like Alex.
%%maybe i--we--can analyze this better if you describe what
happened. what was the last thing you remember, in the hospital
room%%
<what good is that going to do? it's too fucking late>
%%alex%% She pulled a bedside manner up from a rubble of discarded
mannerisms, tried to project it through her fingers, into the
keyboard. %%i'm trying to help you, but i can't if you start
breaking down%%
<i can do that now, can't i? i mean literally, bits and pieces
rusting away, right? a mechanical mind, that's what i am, aren't
i? AREN'T I?>
%%alex
<shut up, shut up, just get out of MY MIND>
Obediently, she took her fingers off the keyboard. The
abrupt sense of frustration was almost overwhelming, mixed in with
something she could only describe as awe. It was incredible; to be
speaking, actually communicating on an sentient level, with a
cybernetic intelligence. No one--not Cray, not IBM, none of the
major computer researchers--had ever achieved anything like this.
Reality blindsided her--with something that, no matter what
it was now, had once been a man.
No matter what, the memoria was reacting like Alex, down to
emotional responses like the demand to get out of his mind. And
what would her emotional response to waking up on a computer
mainframe be?
Sheer terror.
<kate?>
<kate, i'm sorry>
<please talk to me. don't leave me here. i'm scared>
%%i'm not leaving, alex. i'm staying here, as long as you need me.
i won't leave%%
<i'm sorry, i didn't mean to scream at you like that> The cursor
moved faster and faster, began blurring across the monitor: <i
don't understand what happened, i don't know where i am. I was in
the hospital, and somebody was counting in the background, and then
my heart hurt and i couldn't breate anymore and then my body my
body
%%alex, calm down, slow down. concentrate on my voice (did he hear
a voice?) or my words. relax-----please, try to relax%%
The screen cleared briefly, red tides surging, then:
<okay. okay. i'm better>
%%all right. i want to help you, but i have to understand what
happened to you first. can you see or feel anything right now?%%
<seeing, maybe. but i don't think i feel anything>
%%what do you mean?%%
<i mean , i can't feel anything solid. i'm trying to concentrate
on feeling, but it keeps slipping out of my mind. this is like a
dream--there's some kind of sensation, but it's blocked, dull.
god, this is hard to describe. there's no words for it> The flow
of words had slowed down from their first kamikaze rush, but they
wre still rapid, characters streaming across the screen in frantic
lines. <it's like being in a dream, one where you can control
what's going on, but it still doesn't make any sense. like when
your leg goes to sleep, before the pins and needles. i know that
something's going on--i'm receiving some kind of information, but
it's not what I'd call hearing or sight. and definitely no touch.
everything i'm--feeling, i'm going to use that word, even though it
doen't really fit--is an approximation>
%%like a translation?%%
<yes, exactly. all my feelings are translations, and something's
definitely being lost>
%%that's understandable. you aren't processing stimuli through
sensory organs--eyes, ears, limbs--anymore, so the neuronet must be
trying to supply you with stimuli you would recognize%%
<what's a neuronet?>
%%a standard neuronet is one of the cray IIIV clones with some
goosed-up processors from big blue. the one we're using is a new
kind of computer, with semi-organic circuitry, what we call
wetware. it's the only kind in the world that can accept a
translated memoria%%
<is that what i am? i mean, where i am?>
%%yes%%
<semi-organic circuitry? you mean it's alive?>
%%in a manner of speaking. wetware is based on a carbon/silicon
composite, which is why we call it semi-organic%%
<then----------does that mean i'm alive?>
%%alex What was she supposed to say? it means that you have a
different physical makeup, one that is semi-organic%%
<semi-alive?>
%%you could put it that way%%
<i mean, i'm still thinking. i can't feel anything very well, but
i'm still thinking. even if my body isn't---here---my mind still
is. i can remember, but i can't feel, or smell, or hear
anything, not as you would. do you have to do those things to be
alive?>
On screen, the words were emotionless, but Kate could sense
the desperation behind them, a pathetic need for some kind of
anchoring reality. She had to be kind.
%%no, i don't think so. being alive is more a state of mind than
anything%%
Another pause, before his next words. Words that broke her
heart.
<Then I must be alive. All I am now is a state of mind>
Comments are welcome. Please send any opinions to
kmrc@midway.uchicago.edu. Thanks.
Melanie Miller
>From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY--Deus Ex <Chapter Four, Part One>
Date: 16 Dec 91 16:25:52 GMT
Deus Ex
Chapter Four, Part One
"Is it an AI?"
Kate sighed. "Not exactly. It's a little more than we
expected."
Tim rubbed at the stubble on his chin. He had been home,
asleep, when Kate got him on the phone and persuaded him to come
down to the lab to look at the memoria. Now, he was sprawled on
the small couch in her office, occasionally glancing over her
shoulder at the crimson terminal screen. "Look, you said this
program is reacting in a quasi-sentient manner--" he started.
"Semi-sentient," Kate corrected. Her own exhaustion was
starting to show in her voice. "There's a difference."
Tim waved a hand. "Whatever. I don't know that much about
computers, but it sounds like you've imprinted a turbo-charged mass
of circuitry with some half-assed brand of artificial
intelligence." The hands came up again, gesturing towards the
ceiling. "I mean, wonderful, hooray for the nerd squad, but please
don't try telling me that this program is alive."
Kate rubbed at her eyes, feeling the stinging graininess.
"What would you say if I did?" she murmured. "Tell you it was
alive?"
Tim paused, considering. "I'd say you sound fairly lucid,
in spite of this little sanity detour of yours. That'll probably
impress your review board."
"Tim--"
Abruptly, he swung long legs off the couch, sitting up to
face her. "Kate, sweetheart, this thing you've translated to the
NeuroNet--it isn't Alex," he said patiently. "It is, if I
understand you correctly, a highly detailed recording of Alex
McKinnon's memory patterns, embedded within a program that is
designed to function as some kind of mental matrix. But it's just
a recording--it's not the man."
"I am perfectly aware of that," she said through clenched
teeth. "And I never said that this," she waved a hand at the
terminal, "was Alex. It is a clone of Alex's mind--a separate
entity from the man that, given time and a chance to grow, could
develop a completely different personality. But it is an entity
just the same."
"A computer is not an entity, no matter what you've loaded
into the databanks," he fired back. "It is an inanimate recording,
not a clone, and you're assigning some misguided anthropomorphic
tendencies to it out of grief."
She grew very still. "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
A nod, as if she was agreeing with something. "Then talk
to him," she said.
Tim sighed. "That's exactly what I mean, Kate. It's not a
him, it's an it."
"Him, it, whatever--pick your own article," she said,
giving that nod again. "Right now, you're probably more
clear-headed about this than I am. I admit that freely. If you
think I've lost what little mind I have left, fine, I'll take a
nice long rest and turn everything over to Browning. All you have
to do is make your own judgement."
"All right." Giving her a bleary look, Phillip went over
to the keyboard and started typing, two fingers in hunt-and-peck
style. The crimson shape began to flurry, and the odd lettering
popped into existence. Kate imagined that they had an impatient
look to them.
After the first response, Phillip's eyes widened.
After one minute, his jaw loosened, slightly open. "You
aren't doing this, are you? Some kind of remote control--"
Kate held up her hands, completely empty.
"No, you're not," he muttered, and resumed typing.
And after five minutes, he pushed himself away from the
terminal, stunned.
"I don't believe it," he muttered, his voice quivering.
"This is--Jesus, this is absolutely impossible."
"What's your diagnosis, Dr. Gideon?"
"Diagnosis?" His mouth worked silently for a moment.
"Diagnosis. Right. Okay, my diagnosis is that either both of us
are completely off our rockers--" he hesitated, still trying to
comprehend what the other choice was, what it meant. "Or there is
some kind of intelligence there," he finally admitted. "Organic or
not, it's there, and it sounds like a man--" He caught himself,
and flushed a bit. "I'm not a computer expert," he said, slowly.
"But it was like talking to somebody on a modem. Like there was
another human being on the other side. I've never heard of a
computer, even the SuperCrays, responding that way. I mean,
dammit, he's using idioms!"
"Intelligent and sentient. Now you see what I'm talking
about," Kate said quietly, ignoring an 'I told you so' urge. "I'll
run the standard Turing tests later on, all the AI protocols, but
I'm pretty sure I know what we'll find--completely sentient
reactions on the scoring runs."
Tim was still staring at the monitor, tracking the surges
of the red curtain. "And you weren't expecting this?"
"Not like this, so soon. We thought we'd access a static
recording, nothing else. But if this is standard for every full
tap," she threw up her hands, "hell, this could be Genesis all over
again. Mating a complete memoria to PerSim and our circuitry--we
could be looking at the dawn of true artificial intelligence.
Maybe even a silicon-based lifeform, one composed of pure mind."
Tim was still staring at the monitor, at the last response.
"I hate to interrupt you, Dr. Frankenstein, but it looks like your
pure mind's in one hell of a foul mood."
The message cursor was flashing, printing a rapid character
line:
<are you still there? christ, will somebody please talk
to me?>
"Excuse me." Kate leaned over Tim to type: %%sorry, alex.
i was explaining the situation to phillip%%
<is that who that was? jesus, what is he, spastic?>
%%no. but he isn't exactly the flash on keyboard, is he?%%
<i've known quadruple amputees who could type faster>
%%come on, alex, try to keep it cool%%
<give me one good reason why?
%%because i asked you to, okay? this is only temporary--i'm
working on something that should speed up communication times%%
<well, ring-a-ding-ding. think i'll see this 'alternative
communication method' before i go out of what i laughingly call my
mind?>
%%i have to wait until the techs get here--they'll set up the new
system. what time is it?%%
<03:10:11:04:l2:45. and counting>
Kate paused.
%%very precise. how did you do that?%%
<i don't know. i just thought about it, and it popped into my
mind>
%%like a memory?%%
<no. translation again--it was something i knew, but didn't
remember until i actively thought about it. why didn't i just say
4:12?>
%%probably because the neuronet has an internal chronometer with
CTOD--character to date--translation, and it's accessed as a
numerical string. you simply looked at your watch, figuratively
speaking, and automatically told me what the hardware told you.
the reason i asked is because the troops should be filtering in
soon. as soon as the experts get here, I'm going to have them
install a vocoder and a big holo peripheral in my office%%
<could you give that to me in english?>
Automatically, she was about to type in the information,
when an an idea hit her.
%%let's try an experiment. think of the word vocoder, what it
means%%
<okay. vocoder>
<>
<that's weird. i know what it is, now--an input/output peripheral
designed to accept and translate speech into a language readable by
a computer, and to convert computer language into a spoken
language, using a combination synthetic tympanium-larynx as the
input/output transponder. so i accessed that, right?>
%%you got it. And I'll see if they can couple it into a holo
projector--it'll give me something visual to work with%%
<more tangible, you mean>
%%yes. sorry%%
<don't apologize--anything that'll speed up your reaction time is
fine with me. if i could access vocoder, does that mean i know
everything that's in the neuronet?>
%%i would assume so. if you were able to lock me out, i think that
means you have a free rein in there%%
<huh. interesting. listen, kate, could i try something?>
%%sure%%
<i want to practice accessing. could i just poke around for
awhile, get the hang of it?>
She paused, forcing herself to think. It was happening too
fast--the first burst of panic, followed by this weird,
matter-of-fact calm--
Or shock. He couldn't be acclimatizing that quickly.
Turning him loose in the mainframe could be dangerous, then. But
if I tell him no, he won't have anything else to do.
Abruptly, she made a decision.
%%all right, if youre sure you feel comfortable with it. do you
want me to stay on-line?%%
<you don't have to--this is going to take some time, I think. when
was the last time you got any sleep?>
%%about twenty hours ago%%
<can you sleep somewhere there? In your office, maybe?>
The unspoken plea hung in the air--don't leave me.
%%i can crash on a couch. i'll turn the sound up on the
terminal--it'll beep when you signal. all you have to do is call%%
<okay. over and out>
<PERSIM:EXP-1B LOGOUT>
Kate sat back. "I didn't know he could log out on his
own," she said to herself.
"Yeah, I could use that little trick myself," Tim added.
He leaned back, still moving through the shock from Alex's
revelations. "So what are you going to do with him?"
"Him?"
He sighed. "I accede to a high authority. It's reacting
like a man, so I'll call it 'him.' And you're avoiding the
question."
She shrugged wearily. "I'm not avoiding it--I just don't
know how to answer it," she said. "This is all ahead of
schedule--I didn't think I'd have to worry about a memoria for a
few months yet, until we went through the animal testing--"
Before she could finish, there was a quick knock. Tina,
looking very pissed, ducked into the office.
"Kate, you better come see this."
"What's wrong?"
Tina waved both of them over to a terminal in the main
computer bay. "I called up the status board as soon as I got here
to run a memory check," she explained, tapping instructions into
the bed of grey keys. "That's when I saw this."
On the monitor was a graphics display of the central
databank. Under normal conditions, the display was a tracery of
circuit paths, color-coded according to function with the CS
portion outlined in pink. Now, small blue splotches were blooming
like electronic fireworks throughout the pink circuitry, fading
away within seconds.
"What the hell is that?" Kate said.
"I don't know. We're getting some kind of weird activity
in the main core," Tina said, scrolling down the information bar to
the right of the display. "Circuitry alarm systems have been going
off all night, and the diagnostics are going nuts trying to track
down what's wrong. I finally had to disengage all the protection
subprograms before they overloaded."
"Any danger to the organics?"
"Nothing I can pick up. The surges--or whatever they
are--are just bouncing off the silicon." She paused, examining the
board section that relayed temp and energy levels inside the core,
and pointed to a grid. "Wait a minute. Here--see that?"
An electronic representation of a power surge flickered
across the grid, insubstantial. It flickered again, the tracking
line swelling for an instant, then going down to flatline. "And
that's all we get. There's a brief surge, an alarm goes off, and
then the surge disappears before the diagnostics can get a lock on
it," Tina said, frustrated. "It's like the damn thing is playing
tag with the internal sensors."
"Is there some kind of pattern?" Kate suggested.
"Nothing, totally random."
"And there's been no damage?"
The programmer shook her head. "That's the weird part.
According to the status board, there's nothing there that can do
any damage. Other than the circuit alarms, everything's
quiet--memory status is holding steady, all the suppressors are
reading for normal, and we would've gotten a call from Con Ed by
now if there was some sort of drain on the city grid."
"Which means--?"
"That whatever those surges are--if they're really there,
and I'm not swearing to that yet--they aren't electrical," Tina
said. "The sensors are definitely picking up interference, but
it's some kind of anomalous energy form that they can't completely
scan. All they're really catching is an echo."
"Or a ghost," Kate mused.
"Good analogy," Tina admitted. "And the ghost is what's
setting off the telltales. What we have to find out, is what's
causing the ghost."
Kate nodded, exhaustion pushed into the background.
"Okay," she said, "what kind of energy forms can we rule out right
now?"
"A lot of things," Tina said, ticking off items manually.
"Standard electromagnetic radiation, electrical surges, and static
interference are already damped out by the wiring and redundancy
controls. When the NeuroNet was revamped, that also included an
upgrade of the computer and building shielding, so cosmic rays and
EMPs are also blocked."
"Nuclear radiation?"
"From where?"
"Humor me."
"All right. The shielding includes lead--SPD
requirements--and the NeuroNet doesn't contain any nuclear
components, so we can rule out internal contamination. Unless
somebody dropped a bomb directly on Gray Hall last night and we
didn't notice, I don't know how it could be externally
contaminated," Tina said, leaning back in the operator's chair.
"Right now, that computer is shielded against everything but the
wrath of God."
"Shit." Kate glared at the screen, wishing it would
suddenly revert to normal. The silent pops of blue light were
rather pretty in a way, but if they threatened the memoria--Alex--
"Wait," she said abruptly. "When did the alarms start
going off?"
The programmer scrolled up the infobar. "2:21:34 a.m."
All three of them were quiet for a moment, as the time sank
in. "Right after you finished the tap," Tim finally said.
"Quite a coincidence, isn't it?"
Startled, the trio turned to see Rich Ticotin standing
behind them. "Rich, what the hell are you doing here?" Kate asked
gently.
"Couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd come in, do some work,"
he said by way of explanation. "When Tina found out I was here,
she asked me to help with the wetware diagnostics." He glanced at
the board. "Interesting telltales, don't you think?"
"You sound like you expected them," Kate said.
"I expected something like them." Ticotin's face was a
frieze of emotions--concern, sorrow, and a pervasive weariness. "I
only wish I'd been wrong."
"I'm not talking about problems--I'm talking about getting
more than we anticipated," Ticotin said slowly. He had gone to
Kate's office with Kate, Tim and Tina, the three of them posed
around her desk in various states of exhaustion. "Remember when we
were talking about the tap, what would happen if a volunteer died
during the procedure?"
"Vaguely," Kate sighed. "You started hypothesizing about
what would happen to the donor's mind, and then you dropped the
subject."
"I didn't want you to think I was crazy. Unfortunately,
that's sort of a moot point." He gave her a sympathetic look.
"Since I'm pretty sure now that I was right."
"Would one of you mind cutting through the bullshit?" Tim
said irritatedly. "Just what the hell were you right about?"
Ticotin smiled thinly. "My hypothesis of what would happen
if a donor died during a full tap," he explained. "Very simply
put, it's this--during a standard tap, I believe we can also patch
through the electrical patterns into a completely separate kind of
energy system. I believe that our system can touch, indirectly,
the lifeforce of a donor. His spirit, if you will."
Kate's expression went blank. "Rich, don't go metaphysical
on me now," she said with a dead sort of patience. "I'm too tired
to handle it."
"Then just listen and let me finish explaining," Ticotin
said, equally patient. "If you're bothered by the word spirit, we
won't use it. Instead, let's say that the tap can access a donor's
mental energy construct."
"You're still talking metaphysics," Kate said, pushing
herself up from her chair wearily and stalking to the whiteboard
across the room. The tables had been crazily truned--an hour ago
she'd been defending the idea of artificial intelligence, and now
she was forced into Tim's position of the unbeliever. "Okay,
look--the tap electrodes are designed to read weak neural impulses,
not some kind of spiritual energy," she said evenly, turning back
to Ticotin. "Saying this goes against every empirical fiber in my
body, but if this mental energy construct of yours does exist, and
it's something that can be measured in physical terms, how could we
tap that kind of energy with electrodes designed for
encephalographic wave reception?"
"How do you know that a person's mental energy isn't
connected to the brain's electrical energy?" Ticotin queried.
"There's a lot more evidence in favor of that idea than against
it."
"Like what?" Tim interjected.
"Like brain death," Rich said, sitting back to lecture. "A
patient's body can be in perfect shape, not damaged at all. But a
tiny blood vessel pops in the brain, and destroys nerve cells. If
enough cells are destroyed in certain areas, the EEG goes flatline,
and the patient is considered brain dead. The body's still pooping
along, but what's up here," he tapped his temple, "can pass for
potato salad. It's obvious that the patient's body is still
functioning in some manner, but in your opinion, would that
personality still be alive? Note," he raised a hand, cutting him
off, "that I said personality, not person. Would the mental
component, that unique set of thought patterns that delineated the
patient's conscious existance, still be present?"
Tiredly, Kate rubbed at her eyes. "You're dragging me into
medical ethics, Rich," she said slowly, "and it's not convincing me
at all."
"Just answer the question."
She sighed. "All right. From my limited experience in
treating brain dead patients, I would say that once the higher
thought centers stopped functioning, the patient's personality
ceased to exist," she stated. "All that's left is a nonconscious
life form."
"Which illustrates the connection of the construct to the
brain's electrical energy," Ticotin said decisively. "Once neural
activity is damaged or shuts down completely, the mental construct
disappears, and a person turns into an animated piece of meat.
"Now, let's imagine that we have a volunteer hooked up to
the computer. For whatever reason, he dies while the electronic
patterns of his brain are being tapped and recorded. Meanwhile,
the mental construct--" He paused, searching for an appropriate
tag. "For now, let's call it an animus--is no longer needed to
power a dead mind." He raised his hands. "So what happens to the
animus? It can't just disappear."
"Why not?" Kate muttered.
"Because the first law of thermodynamics says it can't," he
said patiently. "According to the law, the energy of the
universe--"
"--is constant. On a smaller scale, it means that the
energy of any closed system is also constant," Kate recited,
irritated. "I did take Chem 101, Rich. But apart from the fact
that we're not discussing normal energy, you can't consider a human
being to be a closed system. Our bodies gain and lose energy all
the time."
"Right, but that's what we would consider normal energy,"
Ticotin argued back. "Paranormal energy, such as an animus,
wouldn't depend on the boundaries of the body to keep it
restrained--however, the animus is connected to something inside of
us, so it has to have some kind of finite range. From what we've
already discussed, we can assume that at least part of the
connection has to do with the brain's electrical activity. It's my
theory that that the energy contained in the memory patterns acts
as a closed system for the animus. In the case of brain death, the
system would normally be opened, the animus would leak away to
whatever afterlife awaits it, and everything would be proceed
according to nature.
"But with our hypothetical volunteer, his memory patterns
have been temporarily expanded to include the computer." Ticotin's
arms opened to sketch a huge shape in the air. "The system is
still closed, but it's much bigger. When the body dies, the animus
would still have energy boundaries to keep it tied to this level of
existence--boundaries that consist of recorded memories in the only
computer bank in the world built to perform like an artificial
brain."
The other people regarded him in silence. "Our mainframe,"
Kate finally said.
Ticotin nodded. "And before you tell me I'm crazy, answer
me one question--have you accessed the memoria yet?"
"Yes."
"And how is it responding?"
Like a sleepwalker, Kate detailed the memoria's sentience
and emotional response. While she talked, Tim had started pacing,
glaring occasionally out the window, while Tina absorbed Kate's
description in fascination.
"I haven't run any Turing protocols yet, but I suspect the
combination of circuitry and PerSim somehow converted the memoria
into an AI," she concluded. "That much, I can accept. Artificial
intelligence that responds like a human, I can also accept with
some reservation--I don't know why these strong emotional responses
are coming through, but I'm sure we can track it down through the
heuristic algorithms. But now you're telling me that somehow, Alex
McKinnon's soul got lodged in our mainframe along with his
memories?"
"Crude but essentially correct," Ticotin said. "That would
explain the sudden sentience, use of idioms, the anomalous energy
patterns--"
"NO!" The word exploded out of Tim. "No. I don't believe
it!"
Ticotin glanced over, frowning. "Doctor, you've
overtired--" he began quietly.
"Overtired? I'm fed up with this metaphysical crap!" he
shouted. "Jesus, Kate, I can believe that you took some kind of
physical pattern out of his head and coupled it into that damned
mainframe to produce an AI. But transferring a man's soul? That's
impossible."
"Are you Catholic?" Ticotin asked calmly.
Tim glared at him. "Protestant. My mom was Jewish. Why?"
"Catholicism tends to accept the idea of the soul as a
discrete entity better than most religions--the Holy Spirit,
tongues of fire, that sort of thing. What we're seeing here is
simply hard proof of that dogma."
"Wonderful--metaphysics, now religion. And you people are
supposed to be on the cutting edge of neuroscience," Tim said
scathingly. "Why does that scare me?"
"We're just trying to find a logical basis for all of
this," Kate stated, the control finally starting to crack.
"Occam's razor--"
"Screw Occam's razor! I'm talking about real life--"
"So am I, goddamn it!" she yelled, shouting him down. "I'm
talking about finding a rational explanation for shit that souldn't
be happening on my mainframe. If it makes you feel any better, I
agree with you--Rich's theory is almost too frigging incredible to
believe. But if you have a better explanation for Alex's
reactions, start talking."
Almost as if in response, the terminal started beeping.
Abruptly, the monitor stuttered maroon, a line of type scrolling
across the screen:
<anybody home?>
Maintaining her glare, Kate leaned over to the terminal and
typed:
%%i'm here, alex. what's up?%%
<a lot. you wouldn't believe what you've got in here--it's like a
whole other world>
Kate could feel Tina peering over her shoulder. "My God,"
the programmer murmured, echoed by Ticotin..
"You ain't seen nothin yet," Kate muttered, her fingers
dancing over the keys:
%%i'll bet it's interesting%%
<understatement of the millenium. i'm linked into other networks,
aren't i?>
%%yes--comnation, internet, and cybernet III--but how did you
know?%%
<i've been outside>
%%what?%%
<well, as close as i can get, up against the borders. it's
beautiful--i've got to get out there!>
"What the hell is he talking about?" Tim asked irritatedly.
"The other networks, I think," Kate said quickly. "We have
accounts with some national computer linkups--apparently, he found
the way in."
%%alex, you're not ready to do that%%
<>
<why not?>
%%considering the length of time you've spent on the mainframe, I
think you'd be moving awfully fast. Maybe too fast%%
<anything wrong with that?>
%%definitely. i think it might be better if you eased into it.
jumping straight into a network might be dangerous%%
<that's ridiculous>
%%no it's not. i'm worried you might overload yourself%%
<>
<yeah, i see your point. i can blow fuses now--literally>
"That can't happen," Tina said automatically. "We don't
use fuses anymore--everything's on chips or. . ." She trailed off,
realizing what she was saying, and gave a short laugh just this
side of hysterical. "It--oh my--it's thinking--"
<yo, kate. will you stop doing that?>
%%sorry. explaining the situation to tina%%
<oh. right. you have to get that vocoder hooked up, babe--this is
starting to get really old>
%%i'm sure. but will you hold it on the networks for a while?
just until we're sure that everything's stable%%
<stable?>
She winced. "That was smart, Elliot."
%%with persim. consider it like fitting you to an artificial
heart--we want to make sure that all the connections are tight%%
<yeah--me and my artificial brain. you do that--i'm going to
wander around some more. talk to you later>
<PERSIM:EXP-1B LOGOUT>
The screen went blank. "He does like to disappear, doesn't
he?" Ticotin remarked mildly.
Tina visibly started. "You're calling it 'he'?"
"Oh, for God's sake, even I was calling it 'him,'" Tim
blurted, rubbing his eyes with both hands. "I can acknowledge an
artificial intelligence--what I won't fall for is some kind of
bastardized lifeform with a human soul."
Kate sighed. "Would you feel better if we used another
term?" she said.
"It isn't the semantics--it's the idea. I'd feel better if
you dropped the entire concept."
"Then how do you explain the energy form we have on the
computer?" she asked. "Like Tina said, it's nothing we've seen
before--we can't even read all of it. Can you describe some kind
of energy--electrical, nuclear, cosmic rays, whatever--that can
contaminate an advanced computer mainframe like that and not
interfere with data processing?"
"I'm not an expert--"
She threw up her hands. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Tim, I
know you have a PC in your office," she snapped. "And I know
you've read the instruction booklet, including the specific
instructions on where to put the secondary drive so that it's
shielded from the PC's standard EM radiation. If a few EM waves
can play hell with a personal computer, think of what the energy
we're dealing with should be doing to the databanks."
"She's right. We should've had a complete system shutdown
sometime last night," Ticotin interjected. "But the board is
totally green--no problems except for that anomaly."
"That we didn't experience until we tapped Alex's
patterns," Kate continued inexorably. "So tell me logically that
it's not a direct result of the tap, that--lifeforce, animus,
whatever."
Tim's glance slowly moved from Kate to Ticotin, then to
Tina. "What do you think about all of this?" he said shaprly.
The programmer frowned. "I haven't really talked to the
memoria yet," she admitted. "But according to Kate, it's
demonstrating sentience. And there is that energy that's sitting
on the circuits without doing any damage. I won't--can't --commit
to anything until I've completed all the diagnostics. Until then,
I have to allow for the possibility," and she gave him a tiny,
reluctant smile," that somehow the tap process wound up translating
some kind of lifeforce onto the mainframe."
It was obvious that Tim couldn't think of a better argument
in the light of Tina's support. "All right," he blurted, holding
his hands up in surrender. "I give up. I don't know what it is,
but I have to take the expert's--" here, he gestured to Tina
"--word on it that the energy matrix most likely came from Alex
McKinnon's body. But I'm not calling it a spirit, or a soul."
"Then use Rich's term--call it an animus."
"Fine," he said, rolling his eyes. "What the hell, let's
use a euphemism. It might be a little less painful."
Kate was grinning at his last grumble when Tina broke the
moment with, "So what are you going to tell Browning?"
The grin slowly faded. Giving SPD Alex's memories would be
painful, but she would have to deal with it. Giving SPD Alex. . .
No. "We have to tell him something--he's going to notice
the jump in bytes even if he doesn't get to Alex," Kate said,
thinking fast. Her eyes lit on the computer, and suddenly she
nodded. "So, we're going to tell Dr. Browning a pleasant little
fiction," she said. "Something he'll want to hear--"
Copyright 1991 by Melanie Miller. All rights reserved.
>From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY--Deus Ex <Chapter Four, Part Two>
Date: 16 Dec 91 16:26:30 GMT
Deus Ex
Chapter Four, Part Two
There was a hall of endless silver, mirrors canted to
reflect infinity scored here and there with neon lines, shapes,
solids--perfect and rectilinear, with the occasional sphere
breaking the pattern like a sudden arpeggio. The impression of
space did not apply here--because space did not comprise the hall.
It was an utter void, but not a dead one. Rather, there
was constant activity, the hum of electronic conversations being
conducted over a net of fiber optics and microwaves, trunklines of
information that crisscrossed the globe or sliced through blue air
above the planet. Humans belonged to this interconnection, but
only as dilettantes, players that interfaced for short periods of
time and then withdrew to their irrational, organic pursuits. The
real inhabitants were giants of steel and silicon, patterned,
perfectly logical, whispering their digital gossip over FO lines by
the picosecond. More than anything else, the void was a place of
calm, above the electronic din--emotions did not enter here because
they were not understood by the inhabitants.
Until one inhabitant changed.
The change was unexpected, inexplicable. In the place of
order, there was the struggle of chaos, something undefinable
infiltrating the elegant mass of circuitry connected to the
University of Chicago's database.
Deus Ex Machina. The ghost from the machine.
It wasn't impossible, after all. Unexpected, yes--the
dominant organisms, in their present stage of development, had no
way of quantifying the energy fluxes that separated them from the
non-conscious animals in their world. But it wasn't impossible.
This energy form--call it 'consciousness'--was strange, almost
sticky in its way, maintaining a tenuous connection with the
activities and thought processes that could live on after its
primary root in the flesh had been severed. 'Haunted' houses were
a good example of this connection--the small percentage of the
dominant organisms that could 'read' an object and tell where it
had been was another.
And now, the primary link with the body had been broken.
Consciousness should have leaked away, released by its primary root
and the dissipation of the thought processes, except. . .
The thought processes continued! The setting was
strange--a different element of basis, no stimuli that was
recognizable, energy driven by the beat of an alien heart. But it
was enough to retain organic thought and memory. And consciousness
followed, like veils in a high wind--
--and connected--
I am alive. . .
8:30 a.m. Kate had decided to camp out in the conference
room for a short nap before she fell asleep on her feet. Tim and
Ticotin went home, and Tina had rounded up the various techs as
they trickled in, putting them to work in Kate's office on new
wiring for, as she described it, an updated audiovisual system for
the NeuroNet. While the formal equipment was on order, Tina had
decided to use the University-installed security cameras as remote
visual sensors and a homemade vocoder, cobbled together by the
electronics shop, for audio. The holoplate, a projection system
roughly the size of a serving tray, would be jacked in as an
auxiliary peripheral.
"You sure this thing is going to work?" Tina said, leaning
against a counter in the ELab as she gave the exposed wires of the
unit a dubious look. At the moment, the vocoder looked more like
a homemade blender than a AV transponder. "It looks kind of--well,
sloppy."
"So what did you expect for three hours?" one of the techs
grunted. "Factory tech? If you want it to look pretty, you can
wait until the custom pieces get here. If you want it right away,
it's going to look a little sloppy--"
"Right. It's fine." Tina waved him off. She was still
tired from being up all night, but getting the chance to talk with
Alex had done wonders for her energy level. After Kate had left
for her nap, Tina and the memoria had settled down for a long chat.
She still couldn't give a qualified answer over whether or not Alex
was a living being, but Ticotin's theory had gained a lot of
brownie points in the interim.
I can understand why Kate doesn't want to turn him over to
SPD, she thought, watching Rich and one of the other techs carry
the speaker system to the director's office. As a memoria, Alex's
thought patterns were simply part of a project. There wasn't any
sort of ethical dilemma connected with experimentation performed on
them--in the most basic sense, a memoria was simply a computer
program copied from a human template.
If the memoria had translated as an AI, that was something
else. And if Alex's animus had been transferred to the NeuroNet
along with his memoria, that turned the AI into something else
entirely. Even without an organic body, she considered Alex to be
a sentient being. Whether or not he was still human was a moot
point.
Musing over this, she followed the techs through the main
bay, turning at the back to enter the office corridor. To her
surprise, Kate was leaning against the entrance to the director's
office, watching the ongoing proceedings with a weary but tolerant
air.
"You're up."
"Good observation. Three hours of sleep does wonders for
me," Kate said. "I'm ready to fight tigers or the federal
government, whichever comes first." She took Tina's elbow and
guided her into one of the adjoining offices. "Speaking of that,
has Browning shown up yet?"
Tina shook her head. "But he should be here any minute. I
prorgammed the door alarm to chime me as soon as he gets here. You
get to tell him why your office looks like a war zone." She
glanced in at the installation. "They won't be able to install the
holoplate for another day or two--some kind of jack crossover
problem. But patching into the security cameras was a breeze, and
that vocoder is a nice piece of work. You'll be able to talk
directly to Alex without keyboarding."
"That'll make my life a lot easier," Kate agreed, watching
the techs lifting a section of speaker across the central terminal.
"Just out of curiosity, how can he tell the difference between
vocal and keyboard data?"
"I think it's similar to how we can tell the difference
between reading something and hearing it spoken aloud," Tina
explained. "Alex seems to receive the data in different ways,
along separate stimuli channels. And the vocoder channel is
definitely smoother. I've already tried talking to him by patching
the intercom system through the mainframe. He says he gets my
messages much faster that way."
The beeper on Tina's belt chimed suddenly, interrupting
them. "Browning just came in. If he sticks to routine, he should
be here in a few seconds."
The doctor sighed, straightening the wrinkled outline of
her lab coat. "Okay, kids--it's showime."
As she waited by the door, Kate reviewed what she was going
to tell Browning about Alex. True to form, the scientist turned
the corner precisely on time. He glanced up, taking in her perch
by the door and the various wires snaking in and out behind her.
She could see the curiosity bubbling into his expression.
"Hi," she said easily, with a small wave. "I wanted to
catch you before you stumbled into the wreck of what was once my
office."
"Oh?" Politely, he tried not to peer over her shoulder.
"What's going on?"
"Just a little rehab work. Why don't we go to your office,
so I can explain." Smoothly, she moved so that he was forced to go
past without a clear look at the rewiring work, to his office down
the hall. As soon as they were seated in a pair of rather spartan
operator chairs, she assumed a solemn look. "I thought it'd be
best if I discussed this with you in private," she began.
Browning nodded, still confused. "I noticed the wiring. I
thought you were adding some new hardware to your terminal." He
smiled, a little self-consciously. "I'm sure we can afford some
upgrading by now," he said, tentative.
"Well, I did authorize some purchases, but that's not what
I wanted to talk about," she admitted. "I just wanted to prepare
you. When you check the computer status this morning, you're going
to get a surprise."
The self-consciousness disappeared, replaced by sharp
concern. "Like what?"
"A massive jump in occupied bytes. Somewhere around
eighteen and a half teraK, I believe." Browning snapped to
attention at the huge number, his eyes glittering. That kind of a
jump could only mean one thing. "Last night, I ran into something
of a unique situation over at the hospital," she continued,
maintaining the solemn tone. "A terminal situation, if you don't
mind the bad pun. I didn't have time to call you or anyone else,
so I decided to act on my own initiative."
"Which is within your rights as project director," he said
gravely. His eyes, however, belied his words, filling with an
excited gleam. "What did you do?"
Kate took a deep breath, launching into the story. "I
authorized a full tap. The patient, a burn victim, was rapidly
going into heart failure. It didn't look like he was going to
survive the night, and he wanted to leave something to science, so
I persuaded him to donate his memory pattern."
If it hadn't been for the previous night's events, Kate
would have laughed at Browning's reaction. "And the procedure
worked?" he said, leaning forward in excitement.
"Perfectly. You were right--the system could easily hold
the new data. Unfortunately, as soon as we had all his patterns
recorded the patient went into cardiac arrest. No one accused us
of anything, but I'm afraid it was adding insult to injury--the
stress from the burns, then the added stress of the tap--he just
couldn't take it." She allowed her expression to take on a faint
patina of guilt. "You can imagine the attending physician wasn't
terribly pleased with me."
God, that sounds trite, Elliott.
Browning tried to look sympathetic but the emotion came out
grossly distorted, second to his obvious excitement at having an
entire memoria on tap. "I'm sure you weren't planning on losing
the patient," he said consolingly. "I am sorry about that. But
those are the risks we have to take for the progress of science."
A image of Alex's body flashed into her mind. Her throat
tightened abruptly, choking off her immediate harsh response. "I'm
sure," she murmured instead, feeling suddenly bitter. "The
important thing is, I wanted you to know that we have an entire
memory pattern on file. It'll probably be the only one for awhile,
until we find a way to reduce the stress factor of the tap
procedure, so treat it with respect." She leaned across the desk,
locking her eyes onto his. "That means no unauthorized
experimentation," she stated clearly. "Don't play around with
anything."
He blinked, rabbit-like. "That would be utter lunacy,
Kate," he said, as if she had suggested that he go play with some
water and live electrical cables. "When can I access it?"
"As soon as they finish wiring up the new system--it's
voice activated, so you won't have to play around with a keyboard."
She hurried on, not giving him a chance to ask when an English
translation program had been installed into the system. "Before
you jump in, I want to explain why I don't want any kind of
experimentation with PerSim or the memoria. Tina's already running
a review program with Alex--" She halted, trying to recover. "Um,
that was the patient's name--I thought it would be a good idea to
keep it for the memoria. Kind of a sense of continuation."
You're rambling, Elliott. "Anyway, there seems to be some
anomalous behavior going on in the higher logic nodes--it's
generating a unique response manner." She shrugged her shoulders.
"The memoria seems--and I'm qualifying this statement--it seems to
be responding like an AI."
Browning's entire expression tensed. "An AI? Are you
sure?"
"You can see for yourself when you access it. It's
behaving remarkably like a human intelligence." She shrugged a
bit. "Because of that, I'd prefer it if you didn't treat it like
another piece of machinery."
He bristled, the bulldog side coming out. "I would
never--"
Kate raised her hands placatingly. "Sorry, wrong choice of
words. I know you treat the hardware like the Ark of the Covenant.
What I'm talking about is how you're going to treat the memoria."
She frowned, trying to phrase it correctly. "If it is an AI, that
means we've breached the limits of the project into a completely
different field, and we're not completely sure of the rules for
that field yet. The intelligence is retaining a lot of emotional
tics, more than we planned on, and if you go in there and start
accessing it like you would the average NeuroNet. . .well, you
might wind up producing some confusion in the higher logic nodes,
and that might make it mad," she finished.
Browning went blank. "I'll make it mad?"
"Yes. I know this sounds incredible, but its responses are
remarkably human--"
"Of course they are," he said impatiently. "We designed
PerSim to mimic the human mind."
"And the mimicry is very good, as you'll find out.
However, we don't know what's causing this degree of mimicry--or if
it's mimicry at all. Until we find out what the intelligence's
parameters are, why we're getting this unexplained sentience, I
don't want any of the original parameters to be changed."
Browning was still bemused by the thought of a computer
responding emotionally. "I'll have to go back and reexamine the
limbic equations," he muttered. "That may be part of the emotional
base template--"
"Jonathan."
His head jerked up. "Hmm?"
"Will you honor my request?" She caught his gaze, held it.
"You won't change anything in the base memoria?"
"Of course I won't." Browning blinked twice, as if
memorizing the information. "Although I have to admit I'm
tempted--but you're right. We can't attempt any deengineering
until we have cause of sentience locked down."
Kate breathed a silent sigh of relief. "Good. In the
meantime, we'll have a lot of work to do with the current
programming--""
On cue, Tina appeared at the doorway. "Everything's
finished, Kate," she reported.
"And the memoria?" Browning asked, turning around.
"The diagnostics say it's completely functional," she
reported soberly. "All the data systems are on line and the
audio's hooked up, so we're ready to roll."
"Great," said Kate, turning to Browning, who was already
half out of his chair. "How do you feel about meeting the newest
member of the team?"
The thin, sober face lit up. "More eager than you know."
Together, they stood up and walked down to Kate's office.
Most of the excess wiring had been cleaned up, and an impressive
array of electronic equipment had been arranged around the terminal
desk. The vocoder itself was nestled directly above the computer
monitor, and modified pickup/speakers stood on either side, giving
the terminal the appearance of a futuristic pipe organ. In
addition to the computer hardware, two security cameras--one above
the terminal and one in the far corner of the office, were now set
on swivel bases, computer-controlled, so that the cameras could be
focused on any part of the office. Black cables snaked from wall
to wall, connecting all the equipment into a master control circuit
that fed into the NeuroNet mainframe two blocks away.
"Very impressive," Browning said, gazing around the office.
"This was all done this morning?"
"From four o'clock on, actually," said Kate. "Luckily, the
ELab had a lot of this stuff on hand, and they were able to fudge
components together into a working vocoder model. Believe it or
not, most of this equipment," she waved at the terminal, "is good
enough to stay, although I've ordered some formal components for
the audio equipment and the cameras." She smiled at him crookedly.
"Purely cosmetic. Nothing budget-busting, so don't worry."
"I won't," he said pleasantly, ignoring her jibe.
The three of them pulled up chairs, seating themselves
rather ceremoniously in front of the terminal. Tina gave Kate a
questioning glance, then finally shrugged. "And here we go," she
said, flicking a switch.
The monitor lit up with a burst of color, rainbow pixels
swarming across the screen to form the now-familiar crimson shape.
Sharp yellow flecks gathered from the four corners to condense into
letters.
<i was wondering when you would come back>
%%sorry about that, Alex%% Tina typed. %%i had to go call the boss
in%%
A camera whirred, focusing on them.
<hello, kate I hope your nap was long enough>
Good. He was keeping up the act. Kate nodded, leaned over
to reach the keyboard.
%%it wasn't, but I'm not complaining. are you ready to switch over
to audiovisual?%%
<i believe so>
Kate smiled. "Tina, will you do the honors?"
"With pleasure." Disengaging from the interface window,
Tina typed in a series of commands, keyboarding smoothly as the
instructions wound their way into the mainframe's electronic
sections.
The monitor glowed solid crimson for a minute, computer
instructions scrolling down in stylized gold ideographs. Linkups
were made, electronic connections patching the vocoder system into
the stimuli center of the NeuroNet. Mechanically, the effect was
measurable in microwatts of power being absorbed by the computer as
it processed this new source of data. Within the soft, organic
sections of the NeuroNet, however, it was as if a disabled man had
abruptly been gifted with his first view of a sunset.
Suddenly, the monitor cleared. At the same time, the
speakers came to life, emitting a strange electronic hum.
Beginning as a subsonic, the hum climbed up through registers,
resolving into a single tone, then into words.
"Iiiiiiisss this better?"
The synthvoice, an electromechanical reproduction of a
human larynx, piped an imitation of a flat tenor voice over the
speakers. Kate couldn't help it--she started to grin as soon as
Alex's first words were transmitted into the speakers, proud as a
new mother. "Alex, that's wonderful!"
"Absolutely amazing," Browning chimed in.
The terminal camera swiveled, focusing on him. "I'm glad
you are pleased," the synthvoice said. "May I ask who you are?"
Browning smiled sheepishly. "I am Doctor Jonathan
Browning," he said, enunciating clearly. "I am one of the NAMSR
staff members."
Tina gave him an odd look. "It's electronic, not deaf,"
she said quietly. "You can use a normal tone of voice."
Browning glared at her, but did as she said. "I'm part of
the team that designed and built your silicarbon circuits," he said
more easily. "And I'd just like to say that I'm very, very happy
to meet you."
"Thank you very much. You have designed an excellent
system for me. Perhaps we can discuss further methods of
improvement someday."
The most annoying look of satisfaction spread out over
Browning's face. "Nothing would please me more," he said, giving
Kate a sideways look of triumph.
"But for the moment, I believe my current system is quite
satisfactory for my functioning needs," the synthvoice continued
calmly. "In that case, I must ask you not to randomly experiment
with my circuits or databanks. I would prefer to collect more data
on my current state before my processing system undergoes any type
of alteration or upgrading."
Chopped off in mid-sentence, Browning could do nothing but
stare at the terminal. Slowly, almost automatically, he nodded.
"Of course, that must be your decision. It is only a
request on my part."
"Naturally," Browning murmured. His look of shock,
however, was in direct counterpoint to his voice. "I. . .we. .
.will do our best to honor your request."
"Good. Is there anything else you would like to discuss?"
"No." Browning managed to regain his composure. "Not at
the moment, anyway. I have to do some research, look up. . ." He
trailed off, frowning briefly. "Some data, research material.
There must be a precedent somewhere. . ."
"If you have no further need of me, may I return to the
information circuit from the hospital?" the synthvoice asked.
"There are many things I would like to learn, and the information
circuit is an excellent source of data."
"Of course," Kate said smoothly. "Go to sleep, Alex."
"Goodnight."
<PERSIM:EXP-1B LOGOUT>
The monitor shifted back to its normal screen.
"Can he still hear us?" Browning murmured, gaze still
locked on the terminal.
"No. The 'go to sleep' command shut off audio in this part
of the lab," Kate replied. "So--what do you think?"
"Impressive," he admitted slowly. "Very impressive. I
hadn't expected this type of jump for at least two generations."
His words were soft, almost painfully drawn. "I was hoping--when
you told me about the tap--" He broke off, and Kate was surprised
to see a tiny sliver of disappointment pass across his face. "I
had hoped for something more, though," he finally admitted.
A twinge of apprehension went through her. "What more did
you want?"
"Something more--reactive--"
The twinge grew. "Jon, we have generated an artificial
intelligence by combining NAMSR circuitry and a human memoria,"
Kate said patiently. "The first true AI in existance, and we've
developed it," she continued, tapping the concept in with solid
emotional strokes. "I mean, my God, isn't that enough for now?"
The look he gave her was long and contemplative. "It
should be, shouldn't it?" Kate was on the verge of asking him what
he meant, when he shook his head. "No, you're right. This is good
enough for now. In fact, it's better than good--it's superlative.
Washington is going to be very pleased with our progress."
Kate nodded slightly, preparing for the second phase of the
plan. "I'm sure they will be, as soon as they receive my next
progress report."
Browning absorbed that piece of information, not missing
the subtle message Kate was trying to imply. He glanced at Tina,
who had remained silent throught the exchange. "The next progress
report isn't due until January," he noted coolly.
"True. I don't see why we should get anyone's hopes up
until we do some more testing. Turing programs, intelligence
scans, that sort of thing."
"I'm fairly sure SPD would be quite happy to hear what you
have now."
"Does that mean you're going to submit a report before I
do?" she asked, her tone faintly challenging.
"I am supposed to keep them updated--I think you know
that," he said slowly. "Is there some reason why I shouldn't tell
them about the AI?"
"Because we're not sure it's an AI," she said, launching
into her prepared speech. "It could be a hyperprogram responding
to complex speech patterns that were already present in the
memoria. Or it could be some kind of pseudosentient reaction due
to overstimulation of the logic circuits. I simply don't want to
be held to any one definition until we've run a thorough series of
diagnostics." She folded her arms, giving him a steady look.
"Certainly you can't blame me for being cautious. If we're wrong,
I'm the one who gets to explain why we pumped up SPD's expectations
without any solid evidence."
"I thought you were used to working without solid
evidence."
"Don't be snide. An organization like Special Projects
expects proof--of all people, you should know that."
She thought she saw him flinch.
"And I cannot present this memoria as an AI until I have
solid proof that it is, truly, an AI," she continued. "If you
absolutely feel like jumping the gun, go ahead, but don't expect me
to back you up if the sentience collapses."
That same flicker of disappointment appeared, stronger this
time. "You don't have any faith in your own theories," he said.
"I believe in my theories--but tangible results never hurt,
either."
To her surprise, he finally nodded. "I suppose you're
right," he said. "We'd look like fools if we didn't run a full
diagnostics course first, and the AI turned out to be premature."
He shifted his head, and the overhead lights shone directly down on
his glasses, turning the lenses opaque. "I just hoped. . ."
"We all did," she said softly. "And we still may be right.
But let's get some backup before we start staking the project's
reputation on a few humanoid responses, okay?"
The light was still on his glasses, masking his eyes behind
a solid gleam of white. "Agreed."
"Well?"
"Faked him out," Kate said. Late afternoon, she was alone
in her office, Browning having departed for the University's Crerar
Science Library. "I think. After all, it did make a lot of
sense--Barrie would probably have his head if he painted some great
picture about Special Projects' newest computer achievement and it
didn't pan out."
"At least he's cautious," Alex said. The synthvoice
sounded less mechanical now, she noticed, wondering of the
artificial sound was part of his 'AI' act. "That's good--it means
you can stall him while we figure out a way to convince SPD that
PerSim won't work."
Kate glanced at the camera above her desk shrewdly. "You
sound like you're done this before."
"I'm a businessman," Alex replied. "Or was. Coldblooded
manipulation comes naturally." The camera panned across the
office, focusing on the door. "Do you really think Browning
believes I'm an AI?" he said curiously.
"Why shouldn't he?" She raised her hands, gestured
obliquely. "What you really are is kind of hard to believe."
"You think you're having a problem? Try it from this
side."
Kate leaned back in the chair, her expression softening to
a mixture of curiosity and pity. "Is it that bad?" she said
gently.
"It's not bad. It's just different." She could hear the
tiny whir of the camera's lens focusing and unfocusing. "I don't
understand it at times. I should be going absolutely insane in
here--I mean, suddenly waking up in the middle of a computer
network is not the best way to start off your day. But I'm not
really worried about it." The synthvoice took on a pensive tone.
"A little scared, yes, I'll admit it. But something this unnatural
should be causing a stronger reaction, shouldn't it?"
"What's stronger than fear?"
The camera whirred again. "Panic. Blind, screaming panic.
That's what I'm not feeling, and I don't understand why."
"I think I do," she said thoughtfully. "Panic is usually
an illogical reaction to a frightening situation. But you're
sitting in the middle of the most advanced logic circuits in the
world, so it's possible that PerSim simply can't process an emotion
like panic. After all, the program's only an approximation of how
the mind works--we can't expect to catch every subtle nuance of
human behavior."
Alex mulled that over. "Does that mean that I won't be
able to experience any illogical emotions?" he asked, sounding a
little sad.
She couldn't help laughing. "All emotion, by definition,
is illogical, which you'd know if you ever watched Star Trek," she
said, smiling up at the camera. "But some emotions are a little
more illogical than others."
"Mmm. So what you're saying is, I should only be able to
experience the more orderly ones like anger or happiness," he said,
half to himself. "Interesting."
"Spoken like a true Vulcan."
"Oh, go to hell."
"A half-human one, of course."
"Quasi-human," he corrected absently. As he spoke, a
delicate tracery of blue shot through the monitor, overlaying the
crimson like an sparked net. "Let's face it, I'm not what you'd
call a card-carrying member of the human race anymore."
Kate bit back on her first reply--the kind oh, you're still
human, Alex, what are you talking about softsell. Because he was
right. His translation onto the NeuroNet mainframe had hybridized
him into a new type of lifeform--one that was sentient, granted,
but not human. A cyborg taken to the ultimate degree.
"How do you feel about that?" she said, instead.
"Unique."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Believe it or not, I'm grateful that I'm still
alive. I'm not in any pain, and you've given me a way to see and
hear, so I'm able to communicate. I can't move around, and that's
frustrating, but mentally--Kate, it's impossible to describe,
because you'd have to be here to really understand. But believe
me, I'm freer than I was when I had a body. It seems to be
balancing out." She was surprised to hear him laugh. "And there's
a whole world in here, Kate, something that you can't even imagine.
And I'm just sitting on the fence, your friendly neighborhood
interface."
Cocking her head to one side, Kate considered the terminal
camera, abruptly wishing that she could look Alex in the eye. A
sense of compassion washed over her suddenly; Alex was a cybernetic
organism now, but his mind was still human. What was it like, to
have closed your eyes on a hospital room and opened them as a
fusion of organic and silicon circuitry, topped off with a recorded
collection of memories driven by some kind of lifeforce? She
couldn't imagine.
"Something wrong?"
She jerked. "Uh, no. Woolgathering."
"And I thought you always walked around with that glazed
look in your eye. I should be happy you're not drooling."
At least his sense of humor was still intact. "I rarely
drool," she said, getting into the act. "Occasionally, I
oversalivate when I'm agitated, but I don't drool."
"Right. What about the R.E.M. concert?"
She thought for a moment, and colored. "Oh. That."
"Right in front of Dave." Dave had been the manager of
concession operations. "He started asking me if you were rabid."
"He always had a weird sense of humor," Kate muttered.
"I told him I didn't know, but I was pretty sure you had
your distemper shots, though," he added helpfuly.
"Are you saying I was a dog?"
"Would I do something like that?"
"Without batting an eye."
An artificial sigh. "Katherine, I can come up with five
stinging ripostes in the same time your slow, primitive brain can
come up with one. Face it--you're outclassed."
Kate rolled her eyes, masking a smile underneath her most
tragic expression. "Is there no chivalry left in this world?" she
mourned to the blank ceiling.
"You want chivalry, go buy a gothic romance. This is
reality, and if I can deal with it, so can you."
She could almost imagine him grinning on the last sentence.
"I suppose we don't have any choice."
"You got it."
The phone rang. Still grinning at the camera, Kate leaned
over and hit the answer button. "Dr. Elliott's office."
"Kate." It was Tim. "I've got to talk to you."
"Hold on a minute." She glanced up at the camera. "You
mind tuning out?"
"No problem. Sleepytime, over and out." Simultaneously,
the monitor screen cleared and the camera swung around and froze.
Alone, Kate turned back to the phone's pickup and switched on
video. "All clear. What's up?"
The picture sprang into focus, a closeup of Tim. "I
thought you might like to hear some news from the medical end of
things," he said. "Just in case you were worried, the burn unit is
treating this like a normal death. Which, I don't mind telling
you, took some fancy footwork on my part."
"I had complete faith in you. What else?"
"The ME's prelims just came in. They're kind of
interesting."
Kate leaned closer, frowning. "How interesting?"
Tim glanced down at something out of camera range. "The
pathologist said she'd never seen anything like it. I managed to
snag a copy of the procedure tapes, in case you want to listen to
them later."
Truly impressed, Kate whistled. "Of course I want to hear
them. And how in the world did you manage to get a copy of the
tapes?" she asked.
"Animal magnetism," was the glum reply. "I used to date
Joanne back in med school, and she had a thing for me. Still does,
apparently--this information is costing me a dinner and possible
use of my genitalia, you know."
Kate smiled slightly. "I'll pay you back somehow."
"Not in your wildest dreams."
"I know--we'd both start laughing. So what did she find?"
"Apart from the obvious damage, there was some very unusual
cerebral trauma," he said, glancing at the report again. "She said
the cortex had lost its ridges, almost as if he'd been in a
long-term coma. Also said that the only time she'd seen that type
of trauma in a non-comatose patient was with some guy who'd been in
a bar fight and had his eyeball driven back into his skull."
"Cause of death?"
"The official call is going to be heart failure, compounded
by third-degree burns and related pulmonary edema. But Joanne's
the curious type--she doesn't like loose ends, so she'll probably
dig around in the lungs, run a toxicological scan, the standard
set." He shrugged. "She's hypothesizing that the cerebral trauma
is some kind of freak biochemical response, possibly to gases
released from some burning plastic during the fire."
"Since when does gas poisoning cause neural tissue
expansion?" she muttered.
"It doesn't," Phillip said, gazing into the vid pickup
steadily. "But she's hearing hoofbeats. If she can't find a
horse, she's going to start looking for a zebra, especially since
she doesn't know what really happened to Alex."
It took a beat before she understood. "Are you suggesting
the tap--"
"Occam's Razor cuts both ways, Kate. Remove all the
variables until you get to the truth," he stated. "If I remember
correctly, you said the tap procedure involves a certain level of
electrorganic interaction with the brain. Apparently, that
interaction also produces some side effects, like altering the
physiological structure of the brain."
She remembered Ticotin's warning about the headaches. "We
ran into some low-level effects during the partial taps," she said
colorlessly. "General headaches, that sort of thing, but I thought
it was a nervous reaction to the length of the impulses. I didn't
expect anything like this." Her face went bleak for a moment.
"You think the tap pushed him over the edge?"
It was obvious that Tim was trying to choose his next words
carefully. "I don't know," he said. "Alex was terminal, there's
no doubt about that, and putting him through that procedure was
probably adding insult to injury. In the end, though, it wouldn't
have made much difference. Dead is dead."
"If you're trying to make me feel better, you're doing a
lousy job of it."
He beamed at her. "That's my girl. Half-bright, after
all."
"Go fuck thy suffering self."
"Don Marquis--I'm impressed. How about lunch?"
"That fettucine I never got?" She closed her eyes,
considered her stomach. Food would be very welcome in a while.
"Sure."
Tim nodded, checking his watch. "And after that, you can
watch me charm my way into another woman's heart as we pick up the
test results. Mondo's at twelve?"
"Terrific. I'll see you there." Tim grinned at her and
hit the disconnect button. The picture irised out as usual, except
for an odd blip at the end, almost as if the pixels gave a visual
hiccup. Kate blinked, suddenly bemused.
Telecom link is going to hell again, she thought at first.
Dismissively, she was about to brush the OFF switch when something
Sam had said occurred to her--You'll need to keep some security in
your system.
That blip--hadn't she seen it before, a few times? Telecom
was bad, but it wasn't that bad.
Her hand froze over the phone, laying blameless on her
desk. Very hesitantly, she ran one finger over the cover for the
circuitry/scrambler board, then pried it up. The cover came loose
with a pop, revealing the guts of the machine--normal high-tech
chipware.
You don't even know what you're looking for. Irritated at
the logic of the thought, she flipped the cover closed with one
abrupt snap. Looking for glitches was a job for the kids in the
Electronics shop, she decided, not one tired neurosurgeon/project
director. As soon as possible, she'd have techs go over all the
lab phones.
In the meantime, she had an animus to entertain.
Copyright 1991 by Melanie Miller. All rights reserved.
>From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY--Deus Ex <Chapter Five, Part One>
Date: 16 Dec 91 16:27:19 GMT
Deus Ex
Chapter Five, Part One
PERSIM Exp1B Log Report--i don't know what good this is going to
do, keeping a journal. i mean, i have total recall now, right? ha
ha. but if you want it, i guess i can do it. not a whole lot else
to do in here, other than running the info channel.
okay, about the tap. i remember you talking to me, telling me
everything would be all right. something heavy on my head, like a
crown. it was sticking me in places. and somebody started
counting numbers--percents, i think. my chest hurt once, like
someone was punching me in my heart, then my head. it felt
like-----like a vacuum, something pulling at what i was thinking,
sucking it down this long dark well.
then i wasn't there anymore. it was just like one of those
near-death things you hear about--i could see my body on the bed,
and the doctor hunching over it. i thought i was just dreaming.
there was a technician in the corner, at a computer terminal--a
woman, i think. must have been tina. she looked scared, but i
wanted to tell her that it was fine, everything was all right, and
i felt wonderful.
i saw a light. everything people say, whatever you heard--it's not
good enough, the descriptions. the light was beautiful, because it
wasn't just a light. it was like, i don't know--goodness,
happiness--love so pure that it made its own light. and i felt
relieved, like i was going home. i guess, in a way, i was. i know
it sounds like a classic near-death experience. i can't say if
it's real or not--the closest i've ever come to that situation
before was falling down a flight of stairs when i was six. but the
way i saw my body, and then some kind of bright, loving light--that
fits the pattern. but i've never heard of the light changing,
though. maybe i'm the first.
oh, about the light. it changed. i can't describe it in words.
it was a feeling--the light started changing, getting brighter, but
losing the love, the goodness. it was artificial. does that sound
crazy?
anyway, the light changed. there was no sense of moving into it.
I was watching it, and then, suddenly, i was light. kate, i
honestly don't know how to describe this. that's what's so weird
about it--the first light was so natural, like something you've
always known, but don't think about very much. i had one second to
recognize what happened, being in this new light, and then i
blanked out. maybe i fainted, if that's possible when you're dead.
after a while, i woke up here, and i heard you calling me. that
was weird, too--you weren't calling me by my name, but i knew you
were looking for me. it sounded like a different language--not
english, but i understood it.
then i looked around.
He moved through halls of endless silver, a tunnel of angel
light gridded in neon, stretching out in long, flowing threads to
the ends of the virtual horizon.
As it had been yesterday. And the day before. And the day
before that one.
God, I'd like to see a tree, Alex mused. Or a fire
hydrant. Even a currency exchange. Because halls of endless
silver were starting to get on his nerves, especially since they
weren't endless, oh no. He'd explored his own little mainframe
very thoroughly, every little nook and cranny that the NeuroNet had
to offer, every area of the hospital that the security cameras
could view, and he was now bored. Very bored. And the huge
diagonal slash of black lines he'd recently discovered around the
mainframe was damned near impassable. At least to him--streams of
data passed in and out of the jagged gaps like mindless pilotfish
swimming through the jaws of a crocodile; perfectly safe because
they were useful, part of the system.
Unlike himself. He was another part of the system, one
that the barrier was supposed to protect. The immense bars were
virtual representations, of course. Just the way his mind
interpreted data now, and his mind chose to turn the electronic
boundaries of the mainframe's system into a series of slanted
grills that kept him trapped within the NeuroNet. Only an
illusion, right?
My ass. The bars were as real as he was, and just as
solid, as he had discovered when he'd tried to get out. The
bounceback of reflected energy still ached--a neat little defense
that had been activated when he'd tried to get out of the
mainframe's electronic environs. Within the Neuronet's organic
circuitry, virtual and real became interchangeable terms, and the
virtual barrier that had flung a virtual defense subprogram at his
virtual extremities had hurt like a bitch.
Virtual life. Just this side of real, a neon dreamworld
where the body was something felt only faintly or not at all,
replaced by the uncanny vibrancy of images dredged up from the
sleeper's subconscious. Sound and vision took precedence over
smell, taste, or touch. This dreamworld had become his reality, a
framework for existence that was supposed to include a system of
cybernets stretching across the face of the globe like a giant
spider's web of fiber-optic lines.
Or at least, that was the way it was supposed to work. Two
weeks had gone by since the physical death of Alex McKinnon, and
the remnants translated onto the NeuroNet had abruptly discovered
that his new life was rooted inside a a hi-tech, virtual
representation of a jail cell. What was the point of having a
memory capacity that could hold the Library of Congress when you
couldn't DO anything with it? When you couldn't even go anywhere--
Furiously, he balled part of himself up, hurling it at the
bars in the closest way he could come to throwing a punch. On the
outside, it was registered as an illegal exit attempt. The system
reacted cooly, mercilessly. The bars recoiled, absorbing his
presense like a rubber wall. And then
BANG
He was flung back viciously into the mainframe system, the
punch's energy reflected in the form of microvolts that raced along
circuitry with the speed of real pain. Alex howled, twisting under
that mindless backlash of electricity sizzling along his neurons--
And it was over. No aftereffects, none that were physical.
The mainframe's drive system was simply doing what its programmers
had told it to do. Once the attempt to exit ended, so did the
counterattack.
Feeling dumb, Alex gave up and retreated into the cores.
He had known, in the same way an adult knows not to touch a live
wire, that force was exactly the wrong thing to use--the barrier
was a partition system designed to repel unauthorized users from
the mainframe. Unfortunately, it also kept unauthorized users from
leaving, a little fillip that one of the software artists, a hacker
himself in his younger days, had thrown in as a means of putting a
tag on a curious hacker's cybernet ID for location and pickup.
So he was stupid to try and force the barrier. Stupid to
allow logic to be overruled by what felt right and necessary, a
simple show of agression.
Try explaining that to the defense program, buddy.
In a way, though, it was reassuring. He was still
responding like a human.
He laughed to himself, the sound humorless in the vaults of
circuitry. I could start a whole new business. Forget about
T-shirts with the names of the latest health spa on them--how about
"Brain by the Government, Body by IBM."
"Alex."
The whisper sounded through the geometrics, directionless.
Alex shifted part of his attention to the pickups, concentrated on
amplifying the voice. Perversely, he resisted the urge to answer.
Goddamn it, I am still a man and I have free will. I will
answer when I feel like it.
"Alex, are you there?"
Kate. Whispers in semi-organic vaults, sending smooth
surges of memory flooding into his mind. The girl he had known in
college, then the blurry figure who had bent over the rails of his
hospital bed an eon ago. That woman had been the dim reincarnation
of a memory, a figure that had placed a halo of dermatrodes around
his head. Dragged him into this new existence, screaming like a
baby ripped out of the only environment it had ever known.
And now. Kate, the bright, funny woman who spoke to him in
the mornings, ran through different tests and programs with him
during the day. She was different from the girl or the shadowy
figure, still a stranger but beginning to assume an identity,
someone he recognized from the crowd that sifted through the
building each day.
"Okay, maybe you're busy." Her voice sounded hesitant, as
if talking into an answering machine. "Give me a call when you're
finished, all right?"
Courteous to the end. Give the computer man some privacy,
a little space of his own. He wondered if she even recognized her
own motivations, the psychological quirk of detachment, behind the
action.
Suddenly, he was tired of playing games. He reached out,
plunged tendrils of himself down through the node, and connected--
"What's up, Kate?"
The director glanced back up at the camera, one hand
automatically shutting down the notepad on her desk. Alex noted
the grey shadows around her eyes, compared them to the lab logs.
Kate had been spending a good 14 hours a day at work--not good, not
good at all.
"Oh, hi," she said, surprised. "I thought you were busy."
"Just banging my head against walls, nothing important.
What did you want?"
"The ELab finished installing the holoplate." She gestured
towards a flat, square shape next to her desk. Alex saw it as a
matte black pedestal, approximately one meter on all sides. Thick
wires sprouted from one side and wound into the terminal; tendrils
hungry for food. "I thought you might want to try projecting
something."
"Like what?"
She shrugged. "Your fractals. Body image, maybe."
The camera swiveled between her and the pedestal. "How am
I supposed to do that?"
"Recreate it from your memories. Your brain maintained a
kinasthetic record of your body, where it was in spatial relation
to your head." She keyed a combination, and a rectangle of air
stretched out above the pedestal, taking on a lambent glow.
"That's your projection area."
He stretched out, touched the new peripheral. Instructions
boiled past him in black waves, filling him with detail on how to
create and hold three-dimensional images. "One meter by one meter
by two point five," he murmured.
"Will that be enough space?"
"I wasn't the Incredible Hulk, kid." Alex concentrated,
calling up old sensations, the kinasthetic grace of movement he
once had. The outline of old body shapes, surface skin-tracing, a
movable shell that was the image of a human being. He connected
this image to the peripheral.
The rectilinear area froze, light condensing. "Nice." A
brief rainbow shimmer sketched a bilateral outline, shrinking,
defining. "Very nice."
Multicolored clouds bloomed, turned in on themselves,
solidity unending; until a man stood on the plate, gazing at her
with a sense of calm. Kate found herself holding her breath, and
gasped it out, unbelieving. The image in front of her was
translucent, composed in vibrant colors that overcame the ghostly
resolution. Thick, straight brown hair cut close to the sides,
gray-green eyes set in a finely drawn face. A beige work shirt and
pressed jeans, old boots lovingly polished. Her gaze traveled down
to the boots, back upward to the face, which was smiling at her.
"So what do you think?" the image said, lip movements synced to the
vocoder.
Kate stood up, approaching the image slowly. "Incredible.
Absolutely incredible." She glanced at the camera, flicker of an
eye to the image. "But--what do you want me to talk to?"
The image laughed. "Well, you went to the trouble of
installing this thing," he said, arms loosening, held slightly away
from the body in definition. Kate noticed that the gesture stayed
within the boundaries of the holoplate. "You might as well talk to
me."
She nodded, shifting two steps to the right. The camera's
sight line cut through the middle of the image now. "How's this?"
"Even better." The man--Alex--smiled at her. "But you
don't have to worry about spatial placement. Just talk to the
image--I'll adjust for differentiation."
"Spoken like a true computer geek."
"Just a computer." But the smile remained. "What if
Browning walks in?"
"Then you disappear. He usually knocks--you'll have two
seconds."
"That's good enough." Alex glanced down, brushed an
invisible speck from the shirt. "So was this is, or did you have
anything else to show me?"
"Not show--tell," Kate said. She couldn't help smiling--the
image pleased her in an odd, indefinable way. He looks so good.
"Browning's finished with the preliminary evaluations,' she
continued. "He wants to run you through a full Turing test, today
if possible. I thought you'd like some advance warning."
"Thanks a lot. So what did his preliminary evaluations
say?"
"Nothing we didn't expect." She activated the pad in front
of her, scanned down the page. "Your responses are well within the
sentient range--objective and subjective testing indicates a
quasiorganic intelligence, capable of intuitive leaps surpassing
any cybernetic intelligence system to date, heuristic functions
duplicating emotional levels to the nth degree, and so on."
"And Browning?"
"Doing backflips," she said heavily. "If he gets any more
excited, I'm going to shoot him. He's acting like he just gave
birth."
"I know you don't want to hear this, but you've got to give
the guy some credit," Alex responded. "I've been reviewing the
project records at night. Without his help on circuitry design, I
don't think you could've rebuilt the mainframe as soon as you did.
In a way, he is the father of the cerebral circuitry."
"Oh, really?" Her tone turned faintly challenging. "And
my developing the biochemical basis for your circuitry had nothing
to do with it, right?
"Of course it did." His voice shifted into saccharine
tones. "Mom."
Kate rolled her eyes. "Please don't team me up with that
monomaniac."
"I think you two would make a cute couple," he said
roguishly.
"My parents were a cuter couple, and they haven't spoken to
each other in seventeen years," she growled, secretly enjoying the
banter. My God, there really was a difference, she noted--talking
to a hologram was much more entertaining than communicating with
hardware. "I would be happy with that, personally, but he always
wants to talk to me now. I'll be at my desk, and suddenly he
materializes out of thin air and starts talking about 'the new
directions NAMSR is going to explore with our advances in
artificial intelligence." She shook hear head wearily. "You know
he doesn't make a sound when he moves? I never know when he's
going to turn up next."
Alex leaned up against the holo barrier, examining her.
"Maybe he's hanging around you for other reasons," he said
diffidently.
Kate glanced up, her eyes turning small and shrewd. "I
doubt it," she said. "Browning is interested in only two
things--silicarbon circuitry and you."
"I wouldn't bet on that. You are kind of cute, for an
academic type. You two have been working closely for a few months
now, you're both dedicated to the same project--even if he's not
big on women, you'd be a natural choice if he was going to get
interested in somebody." He shrugged. "Even boy wonders have
hormones, too."
"Not this one--trust me."
"Still--"
"Just drop the subject, Alex."
He sighed. "You're the boss." He let a measured series of
nanoseconds go by before: "It could be useful, though. With SPD.
I mean, if the shit hits the fan--"
He stopped, surprised when Kate dropped her head into her
hands and started moaning. "Noooo, not you too," she wailed.
"Wha?"
"I am soooo tired of everybody telling me to use everybody
else," she finally said, raising her head to stare at the hologram.
"Sam wants me to use Barrie, Browning wants me to use SPD, you want
me to use Browning." Color flooded her face, highlighting the
circles under her eyes. "I don't want to use anybody," she
continued. "I don't want to get caught up in some half-assed spy
plot, I don't want to play footsie with Browning--I just want to be
left alone to do my work."
"Hey, I'm sorry--" He broke off, staring at her again.
"You look tired. I mean, really tired."
"I am."
"When was the last time you got enough sleep?"
"Two weeks ago."
He flinched. She hadn't expected that. "You spending your
nights thinking about me?" he said, trying to give it an ironic
twist.
"Yeah," she said, not bothering to hide it any more. "I go
to bed and spend the next few hours staring at the ceiling,
wondering if I did the right thing. How you're doing--are you
getting enough stimuli, enough human contact. Wondering if you
hate me for what I did to you."
Alex closed his eyes, in pain. "Kate, I don't hate you,"
he murmured. "Please believe that. I know I keep bitching about
the networks, getting some more freedom, but that's just
bullshitting, you know? I get a little goofy sometimes, but. . .it
isn't your fault. I'm just trying to get used to all of this."
"I know. So am I. And I want to make it smooth, easy as
possible for you." "You don't want me to feel like an
experiment, right?"
"Right."
He leaned his head against an upraised arm, looking down at
her in perfect absorption. "And I thought you were an ice queen,"
he said softly. Almost a caress. "Always in perfect control."
"I haven't been in control for years," she said. And the
truth was suddenly bitter--but you're trying to control him, aren't
you? The worry about sensory overload was a legitimate one, but
she realized what was underneath--the fear of losing someone this
unique. Losing him to a world she couldn't join.
Time to let go. She turned away from the holoplate and
attacked her keyboard, typing in fast bursts. "Here."
He accessed her terminal, recognized the crystalline string
of alphanumerics. "Access codes?"
"All the networks. Go, take off, explore to your heart's
content." She smiled briefly. "Maybe I'll get some sleep if I
know you're having fun."
"Kate--" He trailed off, looking at her. And across an
infinite void, she could still feel him, the presence of a man she
knew so long ago. "Thank you."
And he disappeared.
Neon hashlines springing into life, wiping away the brief
contact with the outside. The higher logic nodes of the NeuroNet
were the closest thing Alex had to a home, and he made the most of
it--a virtual representation of gridded shapes, brightly colored
geometrics in the mainframe's memory storage that seemed to shift
between two and three dimensions by turns. It didn't really
matter, he supposed, but 3-D felt more natural, so the space would
shift to accomodate him.
He settled into an I/O node, accessing part of the
mainframe that served as memory storage and running through files
until he reached the one that held the mainframe's circuitry paths.
The map appeared as a green pattern of lines suspended in space,
perfect 3-D and rotatable to any axis. Alex concentrated on a
specific part of the circuitry, and a section of the map turned
red. Fine neon lines sketched the higher logic nexus of the
NeuroNet, refurbished with silicarbon circuitry so it could act as
a crude duplicate of the human cerebral cortex. The red section
abruptly swelled, expanding to take up the space where the bigger
map had been. Now the map was pure logic nexus, hanging in air
like an attenuated ruby sculpture, all wires and technology.
The center of my mind, Alex thought, not without
excitement. Also my physical address, such as it is. So does that
makes me schizophrenic or just psychotic?
Probably both. Did it matter?
He accessed the codes, concentrated. And was suddenly free
of the node, flying up to the diagonal slashes walling him off from
ComNation and the global sieve of computer networks. Purely on
reaction, he tensed up, expecting to get slapped back by the
protection programs. But the codes did their job. Black bars slid
sideways, opening into a long mirrored corridor that chuted him
down and around, picking up speed until it was almost dizzying, it
was so real.
And he entered the net.
"What's the matter?" Tim said. Kate had wandered through
the hospital after Alex had left, instincts homing in on the
residents' lounge. She had found Tim there, surgical bootied feet
propped up on a chair as he leafed through Pediatrics and
Neurosurgery. "You look burnt."
"I feel burnt." Kate sprawled on the slick-surfaced couch,
feeling it slide underneath her head. She stared up at the dropped
ceiling, allowing her eyes to fall out of focus, turning grey
stippled foamboard into soft indistinction. "I can't sleep
anymore. I keep worrying about Alex--how's he doing, is he getting
enough stimuli." She was silent for a moment. "Is he still
stable?"
"Good point. Is he?"
"I think so." She turned her head, favoring the surgeon
with a weak smile. "I hope he is, anyway, since I gave him my
access codes."
"So you let him out."
"On a global scale. I told him to go explore."
Tim whistled, one low note. "Was that smart?"
"Maybe not, but he needed it. I guess I'd call it a
necessary catharsis."
"For you or for him?"
She flung both hands over her head, letting them dangle off
the armsrest. Tingle of blood filling tissues, swelling. "Both.
All of this is making me very happy I never had kids. I don't
think I'm cut out for motherhood."
"Maybe you're overdoing it, then."
She shifted. "What d'you mean?"
"The mother bit," Tim said. "You do that sometimes.
Believe it or not, you're good with people who are hurt or
scared--you were a better doctor than you thought. But you used to
smother your patients with attention. And you're thinking of Alex
like a patient, which he isn't."
"I never said he was," she muttered, sitting up. "But he
is in a very unique situation, and I'm responsible for it. So I
worry about him."
Tim grunted, hunching forward in the chair. "And you won't
admit that maybe you're worrying too much," he said with gentle
force. "Has anything bad happened? Apart from the obvious, I
mean."
"Well, no." She clasped her hands, tightening finger
joints until they turned white and pink in turn. "He was a little
antsy but he kept it under control--I don't know, maybe that's
what's bothering me. He's being too calm about everything."
"Maybe he's just well-adjusted."
"Nobody's that well adjusted, Tim," she said. "Even
patients who know they're going to lose something from disease or
surgery experience some kind of trauma. Alex woke up and lost his
whole body--actually underwent physical death--and he's treating it
like he had a tooth pulled."
"Well, is it possible he can't feel upset? I mean, maybe
it's not written into the mental program."
"It's called PerSim," she said automatically. "And we
talked about that possibility. He doesn't seem to be experiencing
any type of high-irrationality states, like panic--"
"But he did panic," Tim interrupted her. "When you first
accessed--didn't you say he was afraid that you were going to leave
him alone?"
"He was afraid, not panicked," she corrected. "There's a
big difference. Fear is a natural reaction to a set of unknown
circumstances that the organism perceives as being dangerous.
There's a certain amount of rationality behind that kind of fear,
but panic is usually a knee-jerk reaction." Pensively, she added,
"The thing is, the NeuroNet's new circuitry is basically a
duplication of the brain's higher centers, so maybe he can't
experience any type of reactive emotion. But I think there's
enough leeway in PerSim to duplicate the mid and hindbrain
reactions, too. I'm just not seeing them in Alex."
Tim frowned. "I still think you're trying to fix something
that isn't broken," he said. "But if you're that worried, have
Alex checked out by a professional."
Kate snorted exasperatedly. "We've already gone through
every diagnostic in the book, plus a few Tina made up a few on the
way--"
"I don't mean hardware--I'm talking about a psych
evaluation. Have a therapist check him out, make sure he isn't
cooking up some kind of new neurosis in the circuits."
She stared at him, eyes narrowing as she mulled it over.
The idea was outrageous, almost impossible (what the hell would
Browning say if he found out?), but on a purely psychological level
it make sense. "Where am I supposed to find a psychologist for an
artificial intelligence?" she asked, covering her own confusion.
Tim gave her an angelic smile. "That, Madame Director, is
your problem. But what's life without a few challenges?"
It was immensity beyond words, beyond comprehension.
Except that it was there, to be grasped by the entities inhabiting
it, manipulating it in a eternal dance of information.
The net. Fiber-optics, invisible beams of energy were its
arteries, data its blood. And the constant interaction of humans
and machines trading bytes of news like wampum, the old method of
white shellstrings replaced now by electrons. It was alien from
the inside, completely unlike any kind of human existence.
And it was exhilirating.
Alex allowed himself to be carried along by the data
streams, passing through the sector that represented the south side
of Chicago. He watched while companies went about their daily
business of accepting orders, purchasing equipment, construction
and storage of myriad records. All electronic, all done on the
network as a matter of course as the fastest way of getting the job
done.
And he could manipulate all of them. He had experimented,
insinuating himself into a simple order sent by a construction
company to a local plumbing supply store. The interior of the
message was a simple set of compressed instructions, virtually
represented by wriggles that looked like neon tinsel. It was
almost too easy, he thought, once he had the hang of it--to create
a probe, an extension of his mind that could infiltrate the
glittering packets of data flashing past him. Like beads on a
string. The bulk of his mind was still in the mainframe, thousands
of objective miles away, but he realized that he could extend
himself anywhere that the net went, playing on its strings like a
crystalline spider's web.
Alex extracted his probe and allowed the message to
proceed, watching as it hesitated for a moment before picking up
speed, running full-tilt at a database that looked like a
rectilinear broccoli sprout. The sprout seemed to grow a mouth,
gulping the message in like a hypochondriac desperate for the first
pill. He continued to watch, learning from the simpler databases
(complexity was represented in the shape of the core--the bigger
the database, the craggier its outline) as they performed daily
functions. Data was extruded from the walls of every core, beads
packed with tight-coiled bytes destined for another computer--a
purchasing order, E-mail, the steady pearled string of a long
document making its way across the net.
So what do I look like? The thought carried curiosity,
apprehension--he didn't like that. I'm not afraid, dammit. He
extended a tendril to a smooth hexagonal core (Washington High
School, he noted) and entered its interface node. Meshing with the
alien computer, oddly enough, was like controlling a PC--no echoes
of thought here, only a machine processing academic records, email,
the occasional school project. Temporarily stalling the email tcp,
he settled into the port and turned back to look at himself.
A globe hung in front of him--preternaturally perfect, dark
crimson, with fine bands of black mesh wrapped around the equator.
A small, off-color holo of Jupiter revolving through c-space. He
stared at it, bemused. That's me--or part of me, at least. A sort
of muted amazement flowed through him, both at the beauty of what
he was seeing and the final, chilling reality of what it meant.
The final acceptance of his new reality--that I am here. This
isn't some kind of dream.
Experimentally, he tugged at a tendril extended from the
probe. Without warning, part of his mind--but no, that wasn't
right. Part of his attention was sucked across the matrix into the
tiny sphere. There was a dizzying sensation of being in two places
at once, seeing the hexagon at the same time as the globe; separate
entities reflecting a skewed image of himself. Irritated, he
yanked himself out of the I/O port.
The Probe. That was how he had to think of it--a probe, a
small piece of himself, split off and sent into the net to do his
work. It wasn't schizophrenic, he reminded himself; it was the
only way to function in this environment. And that one moment of
disjointedness came with the territory. Minor discomfort,
something to be endured while he explored the net--it probably
wouldn't happen again. He detached from the mainframe and flowed
back into net traffic, joining with the rainbow stream (virtually
resembling the old telephone wiring, the multicolored wires snaking
around each other).
Second mainframe to the right, then straight on 'til
morning. Let's have some fun.
Copyright 1991 by Melanie Miller. All rights reserved.
>From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY--Deus Ex <Chapter Five, Part Two>
Date: 16 Dec 91 16:28:05 GMT
Deus Ex
Chapter Five, Part Two
Later that week, Kate was on the Near North Side, heading
for the Department of Psychology at Loyola University. During
Alex's twelve hours in the net, she had spent the time poring over
medical and mental health listings before locating an A.L. Menzies,
a psychologist with a background in SDS (Sensory Deprivation
Syndrome) and AI research. A brief but polite argument with the
departmental secretary had landed her an appointment to meet with
Menzies in his laboratory. An even briefer argument with Alex
resulted in him agreeing to talk to the psychologist if Kate agreed
to find one with an open mind. "I don't want to keep up the 'HAL'
act longer than I have to."
"If things work out the way I want them to, you'll be
dealing with the psychologist as a person, not as a computer," she
explained. They were in her office--Alex's hologram blossoming
next to her desk like a genie out of a bottle. "That's why I want
to get Menzies in here--he has a background in AI research, so
presumably he wouldn't treat you like a piece of machinery. My
only problem would be the issue of your animus being translated to
the mainframe. I don't see how I could explain that--and to be
perfectly honest, I really don't know if I should."
"So don't bother."
"But Menzies has to think of you as a sentient being," she
said, frowning. "If he doesn't, there's no point in bringing him
in at all."
"I'm glad to hear we agree on something," Alex said, giving
her a crooked smile. "Kate, I don't like shrinks, okay? I've
never gone to one im my life, and I don't see why I should start
now."
"What about your dissociation?"
He rolled his eyes. "I shouldn't have told you about
that," he muttered. "Look, you know that the more complex a
computer is, the more it splits itself to do different things.
Granted, I'm not a computer, but the capability is built into my
hardware." He shrugged carelessly. "I was just a little
surprised, that's all. I'll get used to it."
Kate looked at him sharply. "What if it's something you
can't get used to?" she asked. "You've got a whole range of new
abilities--essentially, new senses--that the human psyche wasn't
designed to use. You may not have any problems dealing with them
now, but I'd feel a lot better if we had a professional on hand who
could--well, help you--"
"If I go into sensory overload," he finished impatiently.
"Of all people, you should know that can't happen--the mainframe
has a motherhuge capacity for incoming stimuli."
She closed her eyes, counted to ten in German. "Off all
people, I know that if something can go wrong, it will," she
continued patiently. "Let's say there's a freak accident in the
battacitor, and you lose a bank. Depending on what you're doing at
the time, if you lose that much capacity you could overload." She
stood up, moving forward until she was face to face with the
hologram. "Even if that's a remote possibility, I want to be able
to head it off, and I'll need a good psychologist to do it," she
said, firm now. "As a redundancy feature if nothing else. I don't
want to lose you to a preventable accident."
He grinned down at her. She realized she could see through
his head to the other side of the room. "Does this mean you care?"
"You should be so lucky."
"Touch. All right, bring in the shrink. But if he gets
weird I'm taking my toys and going home."
Kate grinned, remembering Alex's warning. Now all I have
to do is find Menzies, she thought, staring at unfamiliar buildings
while trying to avoid the cold October wind. Loyola University was
situated a few blocks from the lakefront, and boasted one of the
largest urban campuses in the Midwest. It was also on Chiacgo's
North Side, an area most South Siders thought of as a bastion for
the rich and the weird.
Trust me to get lost anywhere north of Monroe, Kate mused,
wandering around the campus before hailing a passing grad student
for directions. He offered to walk her over to the building,
chatting aimiably as they went. "God, the horror stories I could
tell you about trying to get into Psych 523," he said, shaking his
head. "Menzies is one tough mother--can't be bought, bribed, or
bled on, and late registration students are never allowed into that
class no matter what." Kate nodded politely, following him into a
large sandstone hall, proclaimed by a cramped sign to be the
Behavioral Sciences Building. "They like to make you sweat for a
year or so before you've even considered," he added. "Besides,
it's a bitch of a course, unless you enjoy living at the library.
Okay, here we are." He stopped in front of a pair of large glass
doors, pushing one open for her. "Lab 102A. The A is supposed to
stand for altered states. And there she is."
He pointed to a slim, attractive black woman working at a
lab table.
Kate blinked, bemused. "Who's that?"
The student looked surprised. "Dr. Menzies. Didn't you
want to see her?"
Dr. Menzies was a woman. Mentally cursing the asexual
catalog listing, Kate said, "Yes, but I didn't think--" At that
moment, the other woman looked up. Kate hesitated, then broke into
an amazed grin as the face clicked into memory. "Alison?"
The psychologist's face lit up. "Kate? My God, is that
you?" Dr. Alison Menzies stood up from the table, three quick
strides carrying her over for a squealing hug. "Woman, what have
you been doing the last few years?" she said, beaming.
"Turning the world upside down, of course," Kate answered.
Out of the corner of her eye, she just caught a picture of the grad
student's jaw dropping. Inside, she was doing much of the same
thing. She hadn't seen Alison since their wild days as
undergraduates at UIC, and meeting her again as Dr. A.L. Menzies,
psychologist extraordinair, was a shock. "But look at you," she
continued. "I thought you were going into teaching."
"Got bit by the research bug third year of grad school,"
Alison said, "and I haven't looked back since." She gestured
around the room. "Now I'm in charge of my own lab, and I get to
hassle with the academic Powers-That-Be all I want."
"I know the feeling."
"I bet you do. Listen, it's great to see you, Kate, but I
have some hotshot research director from the U of C coming over in
a few minutes, so if we could put this off till later--"
"Good idea. Why don't we get the meeting over with, then
we can bring each other up to date," Kate said with a straight
face.
She had to hand it to Alison. The psychologist didn't even
do a double take. "Your middle initial isn't C by any chance, is
it?"
"Dr. K.C. Elliott, at your service," Kate replied, with a
flourish. Turning to the grad student, who was desperately trying
to recover, she said, "Sorry if I disappointed you, dear. But
don't worry. If any questions about your opinion of Psych 523 or
Dr. Menzies come up, I'll be more than happy to take the Fifth."
Alison wheeled about, giving him a single intense look.
After a beat, the grad student got the hint and made a hurried
exit.
"Took him long enough," said Alison, the merry grin
bubbling up again. "So what's this about you getting into
research? I thought you'd be buried hip-deep in neurology by now."
"I was, then I got shanghaied into NAMSR," Kate replied.
Quickly, she gave Alison a rundown on the project. "And now I've
got a problem," she concluded. "I can't discuss it all here, but
let's just say that the problem needs a psychologist with an AI
background and experience in treating sensory deprivation
problems."
"The AI background is kind of old, but I still remember a
few things," Alison replied. "If you have a sick computer, though,
you need a software specialist. Not me."
"This isn't just a sick computer," Kate countered. "Right
now, I need a psychologist who understands advanced cybernetics
systems, and that's not a common combination."
"Tell me about it--I think that's how I latched onto
tenure," Alison admitted. "I don't know what I can do to help, but
I'm willing to take a crack at it."
"When?"
She glanced at her watch. "This is my last appointment for
the day. No time like the present, right?"
On the way to Hyde Park, Kate gave Alison some background
information on NAMSR's newest developments, as well as her problems
with Browning. By the time they reached the campus, Alison was
shaking her head over the antics of the research staff. "It seems
to me like you have a full-time monomaniac with this Washington
character," she said as they walked into BRI.
"I know. I can't decide whether he's incredibly good at
spying, he's really on my side and just overeager, or if he's
certifiable," Kate said, as she carded them into the lab. Turning
into the laboratory corridor, Kate heard Browning's voice drifting
from the computer bay. "Speak of the devil," she said quietly.
"Let's walk softly and vanish."
Once she had ushered Alison into her office, Kate headed
for the NeuroNet terminal in the corner and called up the PSU
specs, including Ticotin's theory. "Now, this is what I need your
help on," she said, pointing to the last part of the data. "Some
sort of therapy program designed to help a tapped animus adjust to
computerized existence."
Very carefully, Alison read the specs. When the came to
the outlined portion, her lips quirked, matched by upraised
eyebrows. Finally, she pulled back, sighing. "I never thought I'd
see it."
"See what?"
"The day when you finally went around the bend, Elliott."
She gestured at the monitor. "This is the craziest stuff I've ever
seen."
Kate shook her head at the by-now familiar complaint. "It
isn't crazy."
"Yes, it is. I can go along with the computerized persona
idea--that's been a subspecialty of AI research for years. But you
can't tell me that somehow this program also managed to translate a
human spirit on a mainframe," Alison insisted.
"What if I tell you we've done it?"
Alison stopped short. "What do you mean?"
"We've been able to tap and store an animus in a modified
mainframe," Kate explained, "and I want to make sure he doesn't
suffer from either chronic isolation or sensory overload. I know
it sounds silly to be worried about both of them, but I don't know
what's going on in here, so I'd like redundancy protection on him
at all times. And I want you--I would like you--to be his
therapist." Before Alison could answer, she continued, "I know
this sounds impossible, but that's what everybody said at first.
Then they met Alex. He convinced them."
"Who is Alex?"
Kate fidgeted with the toggle switches on the terminal.
"Alex is our animus," she finally said. "Our computer resident."
She wasn't sure how she was going to say the phrase that had been
rebounding in her mind ever since she'd first seen Alison in the
Loyola lab. She finally admitted, "You know him. At least, you
did."
Alison looked blank. "That's why I want you to be his
therapist," Kate plunged on. "You're another link with his past,
as I am, and I think he needs those links now. It's the only way
he'll be able to hold himself together, build some sort of mental
home ground for himself."
A light was slowly dawning on the psychologist's face.
"Number one, please leave the psychoanalyzing to me," she said
evenly. "I'm the only one authorized to use it. Number two,
there's only one Alex that we both know, and that was a long time
ago. I thought you had gotten over him, but apparently I was
wrong."
"I know what it sounds like, but it's not what you think,"
Kate said steadily. "A month and a half ago, Alex McKinnon was
brought into Billings Hospital with severe burns and other injuries
from a car accident. I can call up hospital records, if you need
proof." Her face clouded. "I was there. It was a stupid twist of
fate, but I was there, and I saw what happened to him. He was
almost dead when they brought him in. Alex knew he wasn't going to
make it. He asked me to save him, somehow." Her voice took on a
defensive tone, tinged with guilt. "There was nothing I could
do--nothing except this." And she gestured at the project specs.
"So you turned him into a computer?" Alison said.
Kate leveled a calm gaze at her friend. "You don't believe
me."
"Why should I?"
"Because I can prove it to you."
The psychologist spread her hands. "Feel free."
%%Access Filecode Ex1B*******term21run%%
<Hi, Kate> immediately appeared. <What's with the keyboard?>
%%I have somebody here who would like to talk to you, and I wanted
to introduce her this way first%%
Alison leaned closer, absorbing the message.
<If that's the shrink, this isn't a good time. Browning's in the
computer bay>
%%I know. I don't think he saw us come in--it should be safe%%
<It's your decision, O Fearless Leader. So who's my therapist?>
%%Remember Alison Menzies? Carlotti's?%%
<Of course. Instant recall, remember? What about her?>
%%I thought you might like to have somebody you know as a
therapist%%
The camera whirred to life, focussing on the women.
<Good Lord. Alison Menzies treating crazy people? That's the
blind leading the blind>
"That sounds like Alex," Alison sighed.
%%Spare me the sarcasm, please. She's a professional
psychologist%%
<And you're going to turn her loose on me? I thought you
liked me, Kate>
"Wait a minute," Alison interrupted. "I don't know what
you're pulling here, but I have to answer this one." She scooted
over to the keyboard and started typing:
%%Alex, this is Alison Menzies%%
<Yeah, so I noticed. Haven't seen you for a long time,
babe>
%%Alex, you might understand that I'm having a very hard time
understanding what Kate has been telling me about you. I'd like to
hear your side of the story%%
<What did Kate tell you?>
%%Basically, she told me that your animus was electronically
recorded and stored in some kind of computer%%
<Basically, that's right. What do you want to know about it?>
%%I just want to know the truth. Are you inside this computer?%%
<No.>
Triumphant, Alison turned to Kate. "Oh, really?"
"Look at the monitor," Kate replied, smiling.
<I'm not IN this computer> Alex explained. <What you're working on
is a terminal. Think of it as a telephone; you're communicating
with me through a piece of machinery connected into the NeuroNet,
where my memories are stored. Everything that is ME is two blocks
from where you're sitting at the moment. Your terminal is just the
receiver>
%%That sounds very logical, but I'm still not sure I understand%%
<You don't understand--or you don't believe?>
"Nice answer," Alison murmured.
%%If I didn't believe this, could you blame me?%%
<No. Kate can show you the Turing reports, but that just
demonstrates artificial intelligence. The energy anomaly is good,
but I think I've got something even better. Do you remember your
party fourteen years ago, when I got you to dance?>
Alison had to think for a minute. %%I vaguely remember
that%%
<Inferior memory retrieval. I remember it perfectly. Now, do you
remember what I was whispering in your ear after I followed you
into the bedroom? I was telling you how smooth your skin was, and
how I thought you were a hot piece of
%%That's enough%% Alison typed rapidly, flushing.
<But you do remember that?>
%%Yes%%
2And do you remember when you were necking with Mahad? I was
sprawled halfway underneath the bed, and I was calling him a
fucking lucky Malaysian>
Alison's eyes widened, as what she was reading struck home.
"Only Alex knew that," she said, half to herself. "You weren't in
the room, Kate. You couldn't have known that."
<I was really pissed off at you for a week, until you talked me out
of it. You were really nice about it, too--you let me down in a
way that didn't hurt. Much, anyway. I wasn't exactly grateful,
but it was a hell of a lot better to get dumped like that than to
have somebody say, "Fuck off," and walk away. And I was joking
earlier, kid--if you're half as good as you were in college, you'd
be a terrific psychologist>
Smoothly, Kate slid into Alison's spot and resumed typing.
%%I think you convinced her, Alex%%
She paused.
%%You called Mahad a fucking lucky Malaysian?%%
<I was drunk. So sue me. Hold on--Browning is accessing
the TRODE patch>
%%Can you still talk to us?%%
<Of course. It only takes part of my concentration to deal with
that fool>
%%Tell you what--why don't you concentrate on the fool for a while.
I have to get things settled with Alison%%
<Oui, memsahib. Over and out>
The monitor blanked, reverting to STANDBY mode. Kate
flicked it off, then faced Alison, who was staring blankly at the
terminal. "Do you believe me now?"
"I think I have to," as Alison rubbed her forehead,
frowning, "considering the evidence. That sounds like a man, not
an artificial intelligence." She frowned again, remembering
something. "What did he mean when he asked you why you were on the
keyboard?"
"I had a holoplate installed in here," Kate explained,
pointing out the squat pedestal. "Makes it easier for me to
communicate with him if I have some visual references."
"Mmm, I understand. What kind of a holo does he generate?"
"Body image. I would assume it's the one he had directly
before the accident."
"Clothed or unclothed?"
Kate blinked. "Clothed. Why?"
"Body image stops at skin level. If he's dressing the
holo, that means he's still concerned with current mores," Alison
replied. "That could be a good sign--he's retaining humanity.
Could I see the holo?"
Chewing her lip, Kate glanced at the door. "Not right
now," she decided. "Browning's in the bay, and he has a bad habit
of stopping in here at odd times. Besides, I want to cook up a
good reason why our computer would need a psychologist before I
introduce you."
Alison looked surprised. "Doesn't he know about Alex?"
"No," Kate stated flatly. "And I don't want him to know
anything about Alex. Browning is too obsessive as it is--if he
learned what PerSim could really do, he might well and truly go off
the deep end."
The psychologist nodded thoughtfully. "I can go along with
that. So what does he know about Alex?" Kate explained what she
had told Browning, how Alex was a computer simulation of the 'real'
Alex McKinnon.
"Well, why don't you tell Browning that I'm an AI
researcher with some psych background," Alison suggested. "I'm an
old friend of yours, and I want to examine your computer simulation
from a psychological perspective, or some garbage like that."
Kate considered it. "He'll probably raise hell about
bringing in an outside researcher," she said, "but I'm the
director, so I can probably override him. I'll have a talk with
him this evening. When can you come back?"
"Let me get my schedule rearranged, and I'll let you know,"
Alison said, getting up to leave. "I want to bone up on my AI
systems before I start sessions with Alex, anyway, so I'll need
some information from you on the type of mainframe you're using for
Alex." She stopped then, smiling. "You know, Kate, this is going
to be the first truly interesting case I've had in a while," she
said, musing. "How do you psychoanalyze a computer?"
"You're the shrink--you figure it out."
"Thanks a lot."
On the East Coast, in a small suburb of Virginia, a phone
began to ring in a spacious office. Decorated in the latest
minimalist style, it was a reflection of the personal taste of the
owner--quiet, restrained, in all ways calculated. In reality, it
wasn't an office so much as a covering plate for the finely tuned
clockworks of defense politics, everything moving to plan and in
conjunction with each careful facet.
A man sat in an comfortably battered desk chair,
contemplating the field beside his building. It was soothing to
watch animals, he often thought, going through their seasonal
performances; locating a safe hiding space, storing up food for the
oncoming winter, playing a simpler version of his own job. Hunt
and catch. He ignored the phone's rather unpleasant ringing,
keeping his attention on two jackrabbits chasing each other through
a shallow drift of grass.
Finally, he leaned over and brushed the ANSWER buttton.
"Yes?" he said, keeping full scramble up on his phone. The
caller's face would be fuzzed this way, along with his own. After
observing the debacle of the past few administrations' attempts at
internal policing, the man was no fool when it came to his own
security. Other may have fallen from stupidity, but he learned
from their mistakes.
The caller introduced himself, explaining the reason for
his message.
The man listened, nodding at the appropriate moments.
"Interesting," he murmured. "We didn't expect this development so
soon. That could be to our advantage." He made a note on the pad
at his side, consulted an earlier entry. "Find out what she's
planning to do with it." He paused for a minute, absorbing the
question channeled over the line. "I know he's a variable, but
he's already in position. Keep him on it."
Listened again.
"I believe reinstatement should be a simple matter, once we
have control of the project. Of course. Thank you."
There was a click, and silence. The man returned to his
contemplation of the fields, as the clockwork began to hum.
Copyright 1991 by Melanie Miller. All rights reserved.
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