. . .
Memories of Light
Shepherd sat across the archaic table from her in a dim-lit twentieth century eatery. They'd had several eras to choose from, but Shep had an affinity for what historians called the Golden Years from the 1950s, so they'd ended up here for their dinner.
Not that 'here' was anywhere different from where they had always been. The facilities they both worked in, and this restaurant, were all a part of a larger military installation which in turn belonged to an even larger collection of humanity's efforts.
A synthetic sphere roughly one-fourth the size of Earth that orbited that planet was home to approximately 3.2 million people for the time being. Owned and operated by the Military Science Intelligence agency, most of its inhabitants were specialists, researchers, and ranking officers whose presence was meant to support those civilians. Security tasks, and all other mundane routines, were coordinated by highly specialized AIs, designed for the purpose of handling the grunt-work without the grunt-attitude.
This man-made 'planet' was one of the few still allowed to maintain such a close distance to Earth. Hidden within its precisely controlled atmosphere were some of humanity's greatest secrets, and it was on this very soil that some of humanity's most prized realizations came to fruition. The discovery of Light as having the ability to store vast amounts of data, the manipulation of dark energy in order to travel great distances in space, and even the realization that both forms of energy could be combined and stabilized.
All in all, humanity was doing quite well for itself in terms of technology. But still ever greedy, the limits of its ingenuity knew no bounds. And thus, this orbiting body remained dedicated to people like Dr. Vey Shallin who sought to push those limits beyond possibility.
With a Doctorate in Engineering, and impressive research under her belt, she'd been one of the few chosen straight out of her studies to come here. Arriving with an untainted outlook and a wealth of new ideas, she'd climbed the ladder of success and established a respectable reputation within only a few short years. But that reputation hadn't remained untarnished for long, thanks to her habit of disregarding orders and doing just whatever the hell she wanted, and her fall from grace had come just as quickly as success had.
Which was fine with her. Without the community breathing down her neck about the questionable ethics or futility of her studies, she'd finally been given the isolation from those incompetent old badgers that she'd always wanted. And by age 25 – almost two years ago – she'd effectively ruined her career with the beginnings of decidedly darker research. Weapons research no longer interested her . . . human research, on the other hand, began to fascinate the engineer within.
Suddenly, her rivals were no longer complaining to her, but instead had collectively agreed to appeal to High Command about her antics. They'd whined about her use of human subjects, her deviant exploitation of previous genetic research, and her apparent disrespect for authority. And HIGHCOM had listened, making the decision to stuff her in one of the dark corners of MSI along with her work, keeping her around but away from public scrutiny. Then she'd met the Admiral, and luckily for her he'd had an eye for unconventional brilliance.
It was thanks to him that she'd made it thus far, and she could only hope that this project of hers would become a testament to his legacy of command . . . a parting gift in return for his belief in her.
"This is . . . unsettling." Shepherd commented quietly as he perused the notes on her work she'd brought for him.
"How so?" she asked curiously, pushing the plate of leftover synthetic food away from her.
"I'm not sure, exactly. There's just something about your use of a human brain in this context that worries me a little." He flipped the page, going over her sloppily written mathematical equations in black ink on the paper. Paper? It was so archaic, but she insisted it was the safest way.
She blew a puff of air out of compressed lips. "What difference does it make? They were all already dead anyway . . . maybe that's the problem. I might have better success with living brains, you think?"
He raised disturbed eyes to the woman sitting across from him.
"It was a joke, Lieutenant."
"I'd hoped so." He returned to his examination, making sure to note every single detail of something that not many others got a chance to see. "Wait," his brow furrowed in concentration for a moment before pointing at something only he could see anyway. "You've got the same equation here, but you've added something that doesn't make any sense." He stared at the 'M' scribbled into the end of one string. She'd added it as a part of the equation, but it didn't mean anything. It could have been a picture of an elephant for all it mattered.
"The 'M', right?" He nodded. "It stands for memories."
"Memories?" he asked, giving her a confused expression.
She smiled in response. "You're asking for an explanation to something I'm not sure I can explain. You can tell, from those notes, that all previous subjects were disasters. For some reason that I can't pinpoint, they accelerate into rampancy – a self-destructing process that usually takes weeks – within a span of only a few hours. I've tried all other variables – different psychological profiles, both male and female, old and young, even less than brilliant subjects – and the only one remaining that I can see is the inclusion of memories. It's nonsense, with no logical basis. But I have a funny feeling it might work. Even if it doesn't," she shrugged offhandedly. "It's going to make for a very interesting experiment."
Shepherd gazed oddly at her for a longer time than was necessary, his mind attempting to grasp at just what she was trying to do.
"The ethics of that–"
"Are irrelevant. The man is dead, Shep. He ceased to exist a long time ago, and now only remains as a slab of meat sitting in your lab that would have been destroyed anyway. So again, what difference does it make?"
"Death is a subjective term, Doctor. If you, by some freak occurrence, manage to succeed at this, you'll have reversed that process. For all intents and purposes, he'll be a living, fully aware entity."
"Living is also subjective. I could understand if I had a body, or I were working with a living brain. But that's not the case. This guy had his chance, and it's been spent. As far as I'm concerned, anything after that is bonus material."
The Lieutenant rested an elbow on the table, and used the attached hand to poke at his forehead in frustration. "The brain is all that matters, and you know that. He might not qualify as a living, biological organism anymore, but he'll have his humanity . . . and that disqualifies your right to do whatever you want with him."
To his surprise, she grinned sheepishly at him. "I know, but I thought I'd try and convince you anyway. Believe me, I understand and even share your concerns. But I think the pros far outweigh the cons here. If not, then it's as simple as 'pulling the plug' so to speak, and he'll be just as he has been for the past two centuries. No harm, no foul."
Shep sighed. He knew it was no use arguing with her, and he really had no intention of changing his mind about this. He just wanted to make sure she understood the implications of playing with human subjects.
"But if this works," she continued. "Can you even imagine what could be accomplished? The AI we have now does well enough, but they are still susceptible to human error because they have no judgment of their own. No moral or ethical basis for their decisions. But given the creativity and the true understanding of knowledge that only we as human beings possess . . . well, if combined with superhuman capabilities . . ."
She trailed off before suspending an open hand in front of her, leaving the last of her speech to his interpretation.
"You're insane, you know. Brilliant, but insane." He drained the last of his water before moving to leave. "And I suppose that's why I like you. You're entertaining, at least."
Vey followed, anxious to get back to the lab and begin. It was already nightfall, and she'd wanted to start almost an hour ago. But Shep had insisted on eating now if they were going to pull an all-nighter with this brain of hers.
And an all-nighter it would be, if the results from its analysis meant anything. After taking the time to go over them, she'd understood completely why Shep had went a little bonkers.
Unlike a typical human brain, whose connections are usually limited to a certain amount due to pruning, this brain had an unusual abundance of them. Vey had heard of only a few other cases in all of history in which the brain had, for reasons unknown, re-used connections instead of destroying them. Under normal conditions, the brain will attempt to keep a stable amount of neurons present at all times. During Neurogenesis or the growth of new cells, old ones are killed off. It was a matter of resources . . . of making sure there were never more nerve cells than could be adequately sustained, which would result in a hostile environment of competition. While some competition remained between neurons, it wasn't overbearing to the point of affecting the organism's survival.
But apparently, there had been plenty of resources for this one, and thus no need to eliminate older ones in exchange for the new. With so many branches, it would take longer than necessary to map all of them – probably all night and some of the next day.
She wondered briefly at what the living result had been of such an anomaly. Why had such an advanced life-form only made it through a quarter of its life span? Why had he been nameless – coming to them as an unknown? What did he look like, and what had he achieved with such ability? Had he propagated? Were there more like him?
She had so many questions, and so much time away from being able to ask them, if asking them would even be possible. Running his genetic material through several databases had turned up nothing, so the only possible answers would come from him.
If he made it, that is. And as much inexplicable faith as she had in this 3.8 pound mass, it was still a big 'if'. Sure, it worked perfectly in theory. But when applied to reality, things just fell apart for no apparent reason. There were no mistakes in her mathematics, or her procedure. So what was it, then, that caused her subjects to just up and go off the deep-end before shutting down completely? Stress? Being stripped of their humanity? Data overload? Maybe it was a combination of all three, and the fact that the subject needed 'off-the-charts' cognitive ability to survive?
Like 10311979-25L had? Perfection had certainly been the word for it, but would that make it better . . . or worse?
Luck. That's the reason that had been churning around her head for the past two days. Not that it made any sense . . .luck was just another whimsical thing thought up by the bored, much like fate or destiny.
Had it been fate, or luck, or whatever that he'd ended up being put on death row? It's not like scanning errors were all that uncommon – especially regarding those older ones. Hence Shep's job of rescanning the inmates on the Mind Mile before their execution just to make sure the baby wasn't going out with the bath water.
Vey silently thanked those Fates that the Lieutenant actually cared about his work, and did his job properly. She'd been to other facilities where the caretakers just threw heaps of brain in without a second thought of who they were actually incinerating. It was cruel enough to destroy them in the first place, when they'd been preserved for one reason or another. Not bothering to double check and record who went just added insult to injury. If it had to be done – which it did if they remained unclaimed or were of no use to science – then at least be thorough and decent about it.
Not that she had any business telling anyone what was decent, given her own use of them.
She smiled as she walked behind Shepherd.
She was under no disillusion about her trampling of the Ethical code Shep adhered so strongly too. One day, she'd stop rationalizing her decisions, wrap herself in a cocoon of misery and regret, and emerge as a bleeding heart ready to atone for her sins. But not right now, when she had work to do.
What had she been rambling on about? Ahhhh. Luck. So whose was it, his or hers? Was she lucky to have found such a unique specimen when the higher ups had made damn sure that she remained low on the waiting lists for something nowhere near as flawless as this one? Or was he lucky to have been found and granted such an opportunity when he'd been mislabeled as sub-par and scheduled for demolition? Or, was it simply coincidence that Shepherd had found a two-century old brain that had just happened to have been stored away in some aging private facility for no reason at all; coincidence that it had haphazardly made its way here to this sorting facility, and then to Shep's Mile as an undesirable?
Vey looked up at the bowling-ball sized version of Earth, with her blues and greens, illuminated in the night sky. All the way from there to this very installation, when there were several others it could have ended up at?
"Are you ready?"
"As I'll ever be." she replied before he popped the seal.
The blue fluid used to preserve the mass had been drained, and now all that remained within the glass housing was a hunk of wet, grey matter. Once a vibrant red color, it was now pale and bloodless. Vey could feel the firm, slick consistency of it beneath her gloved fingers as she reached into the sphere to remove it. It was chilly, and it looked and felt like over processed bologna. Maybe it tasted like bologna, too.
"There was a little freezer burn from its previous habitat, but nothing too bad." Shep commented as he looked over it from beside her. Satisfied, he motioned for her to deposit it within the chamber specifically designed to 'read' what lay within. The chamber itself was small, about the size of a beach ball, and perfectly spherical. Made of a highly reflective, metallic-white titanium, it resembled a large bead of mercury.
"B."
The single letter uttered initiated the warming of upside down crystal pedestals set within the low ceiling. From one of them sprang forth a white-hot ray of sunlight that produced a miniature, holographic version of a brilliant star. B, or Blind Radiance, hovered only a few feet above them within the center of the laboratory, his tiny eruptions of flaming energy making small hissing sounds.
"Yes, Doctor?" a disembodied voice replied.
"Open the casket and initiate protocol Heterodyne."
"Security lockout removed." They watched as the sphere chamber lowered to eye-level, and one side of it slid away to a reveal molded impression within.
"Good luck," she whispered to the remains held in both hands before placing it inside and settling it in the concaved alloy. "You'll need it."
"Ready for action, Doctor?"
"Yes, B. Proceed." She'd always liked B, and his sometimes humorous attempts at emulating human speech. But even he would soon find himself out of service, his limited life span giving way to an abrupt end. Such was the fate of almost all AI entities, including the most advanced. And because they were so integrated in many aspects of human life, it always hit those closest to them as if losing a pet, or a good friend.
She watched as the chamber again became impenetrable, and was then retracted back upwards by the hazy blue gravitational field surrounding it. Up it went, slowly, until it disappeared into the much larger contraption that remained hidden behind four walls and the ceiling. The process was something they couldn't intimately watch without burning their retinas out. The use of intense Light energy made it impossible for human eyes to observe, even through a video feed.
This Light would be sent in bursts throughout the brain, saturating all pathways and cells previously reanimated by electrical pulses. The sphere design was ideal in that it could emanate the energy towards the brain at an equal intensity from all sides, piercing through the matter to simultaneously come to the point of origin, or the brain's center. This would happen millions of times – with each a small nanometer turn of the brain. Similar to a molding process, the energy would copy everything it comes into contact with. The layout of the pathways, the size of the branches, and all data contained within – memories, thoughts, even that which had no name or definition.
With each burst, fragments of information would be replicated and then inscribed into a synthetic neural network – a tiny, superconducting copy of the human brain's structure made almost entirely of pure energy. The result would be a small chip that could fit into the palm of one's hand with the now data-ridden energy enclosed within.
"Doctor–"
"I know. I'm going."
She stepped back and made her way towards the door to join Shep in the adjoining observation room. There, they would monitor progress and watch simplified representations of the read/write, fragment/defragment process.
"So what now?" Shep asked when she took the seat beside him, a little awe-struck.
"We watch, and we wait, and we cross our fingers and hope like hell that this works."