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Chapter Twenty-two: Brain Storm with *Link*

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Lambton Institute of Technology – Complex machines Department

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31th August 1826

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Joseph Marie Jacquard wasn't yet over the frown his brow had acquired when the herd of not really toddlers had entered the classroom where the Director of the LIT had asked him to join him after his last class.

Joseph Marie was an old man who had repeatedly refused to be upgraded but who had accepted to join the LIT to chair the very well financed department of mechanical machines whom he had accepted to be one of the leading personalities.

- Don't be shy or modest, said the Duchess of Aquitania he had immediately recognized, your mechanical cardboard loom has been dubbed by my little band of would-be geniuses as the smartest insight in artificial intelligence that had been done on Earth. They wanted to see not only your machines but also the man who has thought out what they call the most groundbreaking concept of the century.

Jacquard couldn't help but feel himself honored.

- It was a real innovation I will admit it, but how on earth could it have a link with what you call Artificial intelligence?

- That's indeed how we call it, said the eldest of the present kids. Joseph, of course, knew him quite well and, the abysmal arrogance of the kid not considered, he had always been astonished at the boy's brilliance when it came to understand science and technology.

- Isn't it a little too much? It's just a few holes in a paperboard strip to give a machine a few easy-to-follow orders.

- Indeed, it is only that when you consider it's current use, but even if its use was/is important, it is also groundbreaking! What is really revolutionary in your invention is the number of astounding concepts behind it. Do you have met Charles Babbage?

- Not that I know. Is he working here? Is he a student here?

- No, he works for the company in London and he has created a theory that points at what he calls binary intelligence. And binary intelligence is nothing else, but it still is brilliant, then the realization that everything can be expressed by suites of only two digits, zero and one.

- Or, said one of the noticeably young kids, as we prefer to consider it, as the void and the full, the yes and the no, the light and the darkness.

He pointed at the boxes containing Jacquard's folded paperboard programs.

- Consider every hole in your paperboard as a void and every non-hole as a full. And when you do that, if you add your brilliant idea of feeding the paperboard to the machine's reader , it changes literally everything. Doing that you've created the foundation of artificial intelligence since it gives us the means to give very complex orders to any machine.

- It works for looms, protested Jacquard, because of the alternative movement of the shuttle and the possibility to have multiple threads waiting to be called upon. It was evident to me once I saw how to make it work. But most machines don't have a shuttle and aren't working with an alternate movement. The paperboard cards aren't of any interest outside of a weaver's workshop.

- You are right, said Lionel, but you are also very wrong since in your current schematics you place the loom as the most important part of your machine. But the loom is in reality, the least important part of your setting, what is essential, and groundbreaking is the card-reader! Once you have the idea of the card-reader and once you have built said reader, you just made us walk into a new realm we have been looking-for for years.

His eyes began to shine, and a huge smile appeared on his face.

A smile Jacquard had never seen before and who gave the surly youth's face an inner light that was rather astonishing.

- Now you can build machines around your card reader since those machines will be developed in order to be able to understand the instructions your card reader is now able to give them.

- And, said the boy who was the group's spokesman, we have nowadays means to replace your cards with a lot more efficient non mechanical method. On the outside the machines we will be able to build will have no link with what you discovered but in essence it still will be your brilliant invention used with more modern gears.

- You really believe so?

- We know it, said Lionel. You used the methods and the materials you had at your disposal to get better, more beautiful cloth out of your looms. And it did, indeed, have the results you wanted. But we have no interest in looms and clothes, we are interested in giving orders to machines -any machine- to get them working more efficiently. And even if you never really realized the groundbreaking revolution you've fathered, it still is the programming tool that you came up with that will change this Planet's future in a way you can't even imagine.

- This Planet is already a lot further than what I imagined when I was a young man, said Jacquard with a smile.

He made an all-encompassing gesture.

- I have seen so many marvels being constructed in less than two decades, so many political and ethical changes be introduced into the society that I very much doubt that there can be more of that…

Lionel shot him another of his exceedingly rare and charming smiles.

- But it will be, Professor, it will be. We have now, thanks to you, the basic knowledge of how to instruct a machine and force said machine to do just what we need it to do.

- And, as I said earlier, said the boy who had already spoken, it is the concept that is brilliant. Now that we have it, we just must look at everything else that has been created, invented or hinted at during these last decades to upgrade the concept by using those novelties.

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Lambton Institute of Technology – Complex machines Department

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15th September 1826

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- Alright, said Lionel, that punctured paper band is a lot more efficient and easier to use than Jacquard's cardboards, but, in essence it is the same thing, just a little better. That's not what we need. We need something that doesn't need a paper band or a cardboard.

He looked at Cassandra who had thought about the reuse of the telegraph paper bands.

- It does facilitate the programming but it still is too dependent on materials we wanted to exclude from our next generation reckoning machine.

- Don't try to jump over too many levels at once, said Charles who loved to join them when they were working in the Monastir's sublevels. I know that you are impatient to get at the place where we will have our first real computer, and believe me, I'm as impatient as you are, but it is often better to follow the road slowly and without forgetting to look at the intermediary steps. The Airships had been my first flying machine and the glider came next and even if the gliders have never been as important as what came after, it still had been a step in the right direction and it had helped to get the skill we needed to build our first plane. Nowadays nobody but the most passionate flyers use gliders, but they still have been an especially important step to understand the mechanics of flying.

He looked at the little band of geniuses and smiled at his daughters who smiled back since it was a Brainstorm and not a Compilation session.

Caroline and Louisa were real twins and did really look like his sister Caroline. They even had the little arrogant frown that had been his very own nightmare when at home under his sister's supervision. Louisa had been the kind and nurturing one while Caroline had been the judging demeaning one. Luckily for them his daughters had Caroline's physique but none of her worst character traits.

He looked at Jane who was, as usual, sitting in the background and keeping an eye on her little flock of geniuses. She never spoke but he knew that she followed every uttered word and had no problem to understand what the kids were speaking about.

She winked at him.

Proud father, aren't we?

Of course, what a fool would I be to not be proud of them…

They will be a lot more challenging test than those first two. Rupert and Deirdre are a lot easier to manage than that last brood. Those are stubborn, full of themselves and very convinced that we all are dumb dimwits.

Well, thanks to you, they still love us… They could have decided to despise us.

One of the *Link* does just that, you know. Fortunately, it is the one that won't come back, hopefully, like ever.

I think I forgot to thank you for the time you spend dealing with them. Without you we would be in deep… Problems…

Mine are part of the problem so it is only natural that I deal with it. And it is my best skill, remember?

Your best skill is to be the family's midwife, protested Charles. You are the reason none of them died while also protecting the mothers.

The Pond is a great help, you know…

You never lost a baby or a mother, even when you helped them outside of the Pond.

Being a gifted healer helps too…

Yes, and you are lucky too…

I prefer to consider that God looks favorably at me and my work.

One can call it that, too!

As usual a thought exchange was a lot faster than any spoken conversation and they had no problem to get back into the brainstorm.

- …E need to understand the intermediary levels, was saying Lionel. Not because we wouldn't understand what we jump into but because each intermediary level could open new scientific paths to us. Look at Jacquard's punctured cardboards, we could have overseen them and lost a lot of time searching in doomed directions.

- No direction is doomed, said Alice who was the most talented linguist of the bunch.

It was her who learned the languages they wanted to know and who shared her skill with the others. While learning languages she had acquired a weird stubbornness when it came to following a lead to its bitter end.

- Every path can teach us something. Most of the time when we consider that we've wasted time it is because we didn't really look at what has occurred. We have great memories and when we are linked our memories are even more complete! We have no excuses not to investigate about everything that happens to us. Most of the time not investigating just provokes a repetition of what has happened and another, more important, waste of time.

- We all agree that computers like those of Ishalon are a step we need to reach as soon as possible, said Lionel. Our scientists have reached tremendous heights but we are, as we speak, slowly reaching a ceiling our civilization will be unable to break without having real computers. I'm even surprised that we came in orbit without them.

- Most of our scientists are upgraded, said Charles, and their memories are as good as yours. It helps to make up for the absence of really effective reckoning machines. They compensate rather effectively the gap but you are right we are slowly reaching the level where we will be stuck. My engineers have spent tremendous amount of time fine tuning the equipment installed aboard the spaceships. It is not really a problem since I have lots of scientific engineers who have learned to deal with that part of the job but each of my ships becomes a specific model.

He sighed.

- I love to think that because of the time my engineers spend on that finetuning, we've got ourselves really unique and safe crafts. But we've lost the edge of our first step in industrialization. We are slowly regressing into the craftmanship that characterized the last century. We have the technical infrastructure to work a lot more efficiently and faster than forty years ago but we're still not at the same construction rates we have when we deal with mechanized production. Building a spaceship is very time consuming because every piece of the ship must be built by hand and adjusted by the technicians who build the ship. Here we would be better had we computers to finetune the production.

- The paper bands and the reader we've thought out could be your solution for that, said Catherine, Anne Darcy's daughter who was also the one who would be the family's engineering genius. It would be better to use metal bands -they would be sturdier- but they would suffice to give those power-tools the wanted instructions. I can see what could be done to create the new machines with the band-readers. She looked at Charles. But we would have to rebuild the machine-tools from scratch. As they are now, they have been built to give a human techy the place to work around the created spare part. A band-reading machine could be built a lot compacter and production friendlier.

- That's what I need, said Charles. And if I have followed your Brain-storming efforts the power-tool could stay the same even if you find a better way to give her building instructions.

He looked at the assembled little group of kids.

- I am right on that, am I not?

- Theoretically, you are right, agreed Lionel. But if we use the holed-band approach, we will be stuck with the creation of paper or metal bands to give orders. Even if we find better ways to convey instructions, we still would need to translate those orders into holes in a band…

- Which should be rather easy, added Catherine. I even see before my mind's eye how it could be done to create a machine that could translate signals into holes along a band…

Here Charles forced himself back into the discussion. Because that was a part, he personally found the most fascinating.

- Which brings us back to the language we need to give instructions to a machine while using only zeroes and ones.

He looked at Alice.

- You are the language genius of the family. How would you do it?

- By deciding what vocabulary is needed, answered she immediately. We humans we need a lot more words than a machine would have to understand. English has two hundred thousand words of which only fifty thousand are used by the very educated. But what we need to survive is more around two thousand words. A machine would only need a set of instructions that would turn around its task. Let's say that a hundred words would probably suffice to give him clear instructions about how to build a spare.

She looked at Catherine who was the engineer.

- What do you think?

- I think that we are restricting our reflection to too narrow a subject. Let's not focus on machine-tools, machine tools don't need a lot of words since what they essentially do is taking in a piece of metal -or anything else- and cut it, pierce it, smooth it and twist it to give it the final needed form. That could be done with a score of instructions and lots of figures to cut it into the right dimensions. But do we really want to create a language to speak to machine-tools? Wouldn't it be smarter to create a language that could speak to all sort of machines -and here I'm including every conceivable sort of machine- with the restriction that some machine would have to understand the whole vocabulary while others, like machine tools, would only need to understand a very small part of said vocabulary. What can do more, can do less, wouldn't you agree?

Charles nodded his agreement.

- I do agree, Katie dear. But my problem is with the fact that none of our present machines has the means to understand any language… How will you decide about the vocabulary if you don't know to whom you are about to speak…

Catherine smiled at her Uncle Charles who was her preferred Uncle since he had the same passion than her.

- That won't be a problem, Uncle, since we are not speaking about today's machines but about the machines that we will build after having created what we need to have real computers. That language we speak about…

Here she looked at Alice.

- And that we won't have difficulties to create once we have decided what we need to achieve, is the core of what is to come.

She took a few seconds to sort her thoughts.

- We know about computers. We know that they will play an ever more important role in the future and we know that computers will need a language we will have to create to give them the gift to understand our instructions.

- But we don't even have a prototype, protested Charles. How can you…

- That's not important, Uncle! We don't need to have a prototype to extrapolate what a computer will need to be understood and to understand. Remember that we know -at least we guess- when we remember Ishalon's affirmations what it will be able to do!

- More or less, said Charles while making a face. He wasn't very precise while describing his partner in orbit.

- He said enough since what he said brought us to understand that while Ishalon was either playing with the natives or sleeping, his computer was doing everything Ishalon could have done and the whole of the computer's own duties.

She smiled at her Uncle.

- In other worlds a computer does exactly what a human can do but faster and with less mistakes than said Human. So, that's what we want and that's for whom we are creating a language.

- But how will the machine understand the language?

- It won't, answered Lionel. It's not a language in the human sense, it is a suite and a mix of instructions the computer will have to follow. From what I have understood about computers they are machines that mimic humans but without having an own mind. It's just a sequence of operations the computer will follow when a certain event occurs.

He looked around him and pointed at the bulbs.

- Let's imagine that a computer is in charge or the regulation of the use of these rooms. Somebody enters and its arrival launches a sequence by the computer. First, light the room, second, launch the heater, third, inform the security that somebody's entered. And it could go on with dozens of instructions more. And we suspect that a real computer could follow instructions that would be a lot more complicated.

- But it also means, said Catherine, that we need to equip the computer with means to see what happens around him. To make the right decisions, he must know what is going on.

- There are no right decisions, protested Lionel. There are perhaps Sentient Computers looming in our future but for now what I see is a very dumb decision maker who follows instructions we've fed him in advance. He reacts to what he detects. The computer detects something and that something is 'Event A'. Event A always triggers the very same reaction. But Event A could be a lot of things. It is up to those who create the tree of decisions to think about and integrate as many options as possible. Let's say that Event A is the door to this lab opens. That will give the computer the direction where to look further. There will be somewhere in his files a 'Door Opening event' file. Within this file he will find a sub-file with 'door opened by a man'. Here he jumps to 'Opened by Man' file. Where he looks up the options we've predicted. Known? Unknown? Armed? Unarmed? You see the range of possibilities? Of course, an unknown armed man penetrating here won't provoke the same reaction than an unarmed known man entering. And so on…

- But that means thousands of different possibilities, said Charles, it will take eons to get decisions…

- Only if we don't find a way to make those decisions faster, said Cassandra. And we have Ishalon's wrist computer to show us that those ways exist. We just must find them and use them. It is no longer a problem of 'not possible', it is just a problem of 'what solution do we have'! And for that, our *Link*age is the best provider of solutions we can think of. In a certain way, now that I think of it, what we want is to create a mechanical counterpart of *Link* to whom we could be able to teach the art of problem solving.

- We don't function like that when we are *Link*ed, said Godefroy. We don't scan a tree of decisions, we think about the problem and if one of us has seen something that could be used to solve the problem we look at it.

- Which is probably not hugely different, said James. When *Link*ed we have access to all our memories, is there a difference with jumping from file to file to find which answer can be used considering what event has triggered a reaction? I don't really know how our memories are working and how we know where to look for solutions but in the end it looks a lot like what Lionel has described. We do use our memory without having the least clue about how we do it. Once we know, we will, perhaps, have the blueprint of the computer's mechanical memories?

- That's another big problem we haven't yet solved, said Alice. We have our brain, and we store our memories there, how do we store information within a computer?

- That's an excellent question, said Charles with smile. But that triggers another question: how does *Link* store the memories he produces when you are *Link*ed?

- That's, said Cassandra, at the same time very easy and totally mysterious. We all remember what *Link* came up with while we were *Link*ed. Once unlinked, it is like we have been looking at the whole process from the outside, but we still remember having been part of everything that happened while we were within the *Link*.

She shrugged.

- When *Link*ed we are *Link* and we remember what we did and thought while *Link*ed. But once out of the link the memories adjust to give us the opportunity to know which memories are *Link*'s and which are ours. Hence the mystery…

Charles nodded and smiled at his niece.

- Everything about you and what you are when *Link*ed is mysterious. We know that *Link* is, at the same time you and a total stranger whose motivations are often rather incomprehensible. What does *Link* want?

There was a silence and most of the kids looked at each other.

They all knew what *Link* wanted and without Mamma Jane's help *Link* would have gotten what he wanted a long time ago.

Do we dare speak about *Link*'s real goal?

Alice's question wasn't a rhetoric one. They knew *Link* better than anybody else and they had no doubts that *Link* -all *Link*s in fact- wanted an occasion to live his life without having to face the threat of being dissolved.

Mamma knows, said James. She told us the day she came up with the Sublink idea. She doesn't judge *Link* to try to survive but she was clear that she wanted us to remain ourselves. We must look at *Link* as an ally but also a risk for our very existence. As Mamma said, it's him or us and now that I have reached a level of self-awareness that gives me a real impression of what I am, I'm no longer ready to let myself dissolve into a different entity.

We are better when *Link*ed, said Aileen who as the only single child, was a lot more dependent on what she achieved when *Link*ed than the others. The others could easily form sublinks to enter the realm of what they called superthoughts. She could only get that -very addictive- state of mind when *Link*ed.

They had tried to include her in another Sublink but for no reason they could fathom it never had stayed stable long enough to get to the superthoughts level.

We are not better, countered Cassandra. We are different and even if it looks as if we are more efficient, it is only on a very static level. You are the most gifted martial artist of the whole group but you have seen that while *Link*ed you lose that gift as soon as you're implied…

But being *Link*ed gives me the impression to be so much more powerful.

It is no impression, said James, it is a fact but as you know *Link* is not better in everything. *Link* is better when it comes to correlating facts and information. And when *Link*ed we reach tremendous heights in efficiency in that specific range of activities. But we also lose everything that makes us unique and innovative when we are independent.

The fact you must always keep in mind, added Lydia Georgiana -Lyjoe for the kids- while embracing her cousin, is that when *Link*ed we stop to exist to become a part of *Link*. And *Link* is not what I want to be at all. *Link* is a marvelous tool, a great ally and in his lofty, unsentimental way, a good friend, but it is not how I want to be for the next hundred years.

It's easy for you, you have intermediary *Link*s to enter the superthoughts realm. I have only *Link*.

We know and we will find a solution. There is no reason why you can't *Link* with anyone of us. We can do it with our siblings and everybody but you.

We…

They were interrupted by their Uncle.

- I'm quite sure that you are currently discussing what to answer to my question, said Uncle Charles, and probably deciding what you can talk about and what not but even if I would not, normally, insist I still feel the obligation to do it. Because, for us, it is an important one! What do you think is *Link* wanting?

Once more they looked at each other and it was finally his daughter Lydia who answered.

- He wants to live…

- But he isn't existing, is he?

- Of course, he is, answered Lydia. When we are all *Linked* he exists and we, the parts of him, we disappear within the great mind that is *Link*. And when he is at the helm his goal is to go on existing without any interruption. And since we are him we would gladly accept to go on like that had we not the fail safes with the sub-links. It is enough for one of the Sublinks to split to dissolve the whole thing.

She looked at James and his sister.

- Usually, it is the d'Arcy Sublink that splits up first… Because Mamma Jane has created ways to call them. It reminds them of what they really are and they split their Sublink who is immediately expelled. And their splitting sends a wave through all the parts of *Link* and for a few seconds all sublinks remember what they are and get their freedom back. It always has been enough to get us all out of the *Link*.

- But don't you have the same problems with the Sublinks?

- No, answered Jane, it is a lot easier to split a two or three-members Sublink than a six-members *Link*. It seems that the more sublinks within *Link* the more difficult it is to pull them out of the collective.

She let out a long sigh.

- We've discussed about it and we believe that each member of *Link* is linked with every other part. So, the more parts you have within *Link* the greater the number of ties that exist within it. We have been very lucky that the very first Link has not been built out of twelve lone individuals. We would never have been able to shatter that sort of *Link*. Luckily your twin-daughters had a sub-link between them and had, as they always did, created another Sublink including Lydia. By staying in contact with their third sister they did create a weak link in the whole very impressive bulwark.

She smiled at Lydia.

- That's how, with Kitty's help, I succeeded to yank Lydia out of her Sublink with her siblings. And once that done the mothers were there to wake up their children's self-awareness. Since them we never again let them create a *Link* with more than four parts. They still have the advantage of shared mind-strength without the huge disadvantage to be facing a very compact and almost unpassable mind-fortress.

- We know now how to stop the links, said Cassandra to her Uncle. We can do it now without any outside help. I suppose it is a skill we needed to acquire and hone.

- And I'm always there to oversee the whole *Link*, said Jane. I do trust each one of the little ones, but I don't trust what they become when they are *Link*ed. *Link* has his own specific will and, from time to time, he has tried to convince the members to upgrade each other by multiplying the sublinks. Luckily to do that they need to cut the existing links and when they do that the whole *Link* is, for a small amount of time, unstable. When that happens, they all know that it is time to quit and get back their self-awareness.

- That's not at all reassuring, said Charles in a whisper.

- It is what we got, Charles, answered Jane. And we no longer have a choice, the little ones are no longer able to really leave it. In a certain sense they are addicted to what they call the superthoughts level. I am trying to wean them out of a daily dose, but it is not fun for them to be excluded even if most of them have their own sub-links to overcome the worst of the difficulty. Aileen is our current problem-child since she needs to be invited by *Link* to get access.

She shook her head and invited her goddaughter to join her.

She kissed her and took her in her arms.

- We'll find a solution, love, I promise. It will probably not be fast, but we will find a way to help you. And meanwhile we'll just have to let *Link* invite you once a day.

She shut her eyes and shook her head.

You have two hours, people, let's do it…

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What do we do now? The language crucible?

As usual these last weeks *Link* had developed a multilayered personality. He was one but he no longer tried to smother its parts into one mind. They all had a certain freedom they could use to make comments and ask questions.

Alice can do that without us. Once it is done, we will look it over and upgrade it but meanwhile we would do better to think about the computer itself. We have no idea how it could be organized…

It needs a memory! Without a memory nothing goes. It's there that it will find the instructions it needs to follow.

How does memory work? How does our memory work? When we are *Link*ed we share a unique memory whose content we take over whenever we part. It's a collective memory but it is also a memory each of us takes with him or her when we dis*Link*.

In fact, I've looked at it and we don't take it with us. We just add the new collective memories to our own. We don't ever share the parts' memories, we have access to them but it never becomes *Link*'s memory. That's odd…

That's because *Link* has no brain at his disposal. It shares the parts' brains and their memories, but he has no memory of his own.

Is it a problem? It does not hinder our collective thinking at all and that's the important thing. And the fact that the memories we share during the *Link*age are also available to the parts once out of the *Link* is highly at our advantage. Skills we've learned while *Link*ed are at everybody's disposal.

But that doesn't explain how memories are stored. And that's the question how do we store memories? Any idea?

The film industry stores the images on films. It is fragile but when stored with care it is possible to store it for quite a few years.

Sounds are stored on bands covered with a thin layer of glued iron. The bands already exist and we could use them to write the instructions.

That is a lot better since these magnetic bands are reusable.

Do we want them to be reusable? We want the instructions to last, a strong magnetic field will erase them.

We will have to put them into a faraday cage. That will protect them from magnetic interference.

And we could have different sets of instructions on different magnetic bands. The computer would be a lot more eclectic while being not too bulky.

There are still instructions -those the computer always uses to operate- we would need to have within the computer to make it work. And the safest way to protect those instructions would be to store them within the computer's box.

I don't think the magnetic band solution is a practical one. We would need to have a lot of mechanical parts to spool and respool the band. And those bands aren't very solid. What happens if they break while being spooled? You see the mess?

Magnetic is nevertheless a good medium; it can be written and erased. Reusability would be great…

Why would reusability be great?

Because we will change things and create new instructions, better, shorter instructions. We could reuse the bands.

I don't see why…

Because we won't be the only one to use those computers and for normals the cost is a real problem. Reusable will lower the costs.

Perhaps but the bands will be too fragile and what if the instructions you need are at the end of the spool? How much time will we waste?

Are we already thinking about not wasting time? We don't even have a prototype.

We don't need a prototype to imagine what could happen with a constantly spooled and respooled magnetic band. There will be breaks and once the band is broken the instructions are lost and the computer is no longer usable.

Why not have a magnetic flat surface the computer could read thanks to a moving reader? No longer problems with a breakable band.

How would you read?

The magnetic surface would, like the band, be formed by millions of tiny iron pieces who would be either '+' or '-'. And that's another way to have 'zeroes' and 'ones' to describe things.

What sort of reader will be able to make the difference between a '+' iron piece and a '-' iron piece?

There are readers who can read the signal on the magnetic bands. We go from those and we create better ones. We're quite good in that field, aren't we?

We'll see… But a computer is a lot more than memories. How does a machine make decisions?

We have all those electronic devices that had been developed for the entertainment industry to get the images out on television. I'm quite sure that, if we look at some other original uses we will come up with usable solutions…

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- You don't look worried, said Charles.

- I am not, answered Jane with a smile. It's too late to worry. Now has come the time to help them to overcome the current circumstances and find a way to be themselves while also having *Link* at their disposal.

She smiled at the children who, as they had learned to do it to avoid worrying the adults were currently mimicking various innocuous activities. Like drawing, for those in charge of drawing the proto-blueprints…

- We need to be very attentive to their moods. We cannot let them lose what makes them Human Beings. Their humanity, even if it is even farther away from what some would call normality, is important to them and to us.

She showed a minimalistic distance between two of her fingers.

- We have been extremely near to lose them to *Link* and had that happened, I dread what we would have been forced to do.

- And what would have that been?

Jane shut her eyes and took a long breath.

- Separate them. Put them as far away from each other as possible. After that it really would have depended on the range of their link.

She pointed towards the sky.

- It could be that we would have been forced to put at least one of them in orbit or even on the moon. I remember that Geof spoke about it with you. We now know that the orbit would have been enough to rip *Link* apart.

- So, we have a solution should…

Jane shook her head.

- No longer, their range is a lot better than it was a few years ago. Now they have planetary range and I know that the range is becoming greater with each new add-on in *Link*. Today, I'm not sure that would be able to maintain a link with one of them who would have travelled to Mars.

She winked at Charles.

- Which would be a superb accomplishment for our Mars Colonization project since we would have a way to communicate instantly with the Mars crews.

- If one of our kids is up there…

- If one of our kids is up there, acknowledged Jane. For now, they are not yet interested but it could happen. They are quite curious and open to new experiences. And as you know they are interested in going into orbit.

- But that's because of something they are hiding from us, said Charles. I Suspect that it is in relation with Ishalon's orbital lab. They'd like to get up there to have a better chance to find its whereabouts. My three little she-devils have been very curious about what I had learned about him. He's currently their number one thrill factor.

- They suspect that the lab's computer is even more interesting than the one Ishalon is wearing at his wrist. And computers are their current most-wanted item. They think it hides at L1.

- L1 that's the Lagrange point Earth's gravity forms with the sun, isn't it?

- You are the scientist, you should know…

- I do know but what I don't fathom is why they know.

- They know a lot, Charles, they devour books and magazines at a higher rate than we have them delivered. When *Link*ed they are still able to read twelve different books…

- And recall them…

- And recall them!

- It is scaring…

- No, it is not, intervened Jane. Don't ever forget that they are our beloved children. Whatever happens, they are and remain our beloved children! You can't be scared by your own children, Charles. Or it will change everything between them and us.

She took a long breath.

- They are indeed impressive and perhaps even dangerous. But not for us, not for their family. Loyalty to their family and to their rulers is something I have taken great lengths to teach them and that, I'm sure of it, they will never forget if we don't give them reasons to forswear it!

She looked at her little school of quiet geniuses.

- It has been my and the other mothers' duty to imprint them with the values we thought a gentleman and a lady must have. And we succeeded! Because of what they are and what we taught them to be, we won't let them ever drift away from what we consider a member of the aristocracy's duties. But in return we must show that we trust them, Charles.

She turned around and looked her friend and brother in the eyes.

- Never, ever will I allow you or any other member of the family to show that they fear them. First, because it is, for us upgraded Humans, foolish to even accept that one should fear something or someone that's different and second because they need our trust a lot more than our other children. They know, on a very intimate level, that they are different and could be considered as scary. And they are very attentive to see in any outsiders' eyes a proof that they are accepted and welcome. All the more if it is a family member that is looking at them.

- I don't fear any of them, but…

- I know, sighed Jane. With *Link* it is a little more difficult. But *Link* is nothing but a synthesis of them all. And they feel that bond even more since when *Link*ed they become *Link*. *Link* is not some outward entity, it is them, Charles. And you must accept and love them whatever the form they chose to face you with.

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Next chapter soon to come… We'll have a look at some suitors...

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