Mind Games

by David George Richards

Chapter Eight

  Brain Storming

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were so worried?” Matthew replied after Ben had explained his situation.

  “I thought you knew. All of this, the expense, everything, was on my say so. So, if there are no results to show for it all at the end of the field trial, I’m for it. I thought that was obvious, even to you.”

  Ben had pulled up a chair and sat next to Matthew at his computer. To his surprise, Matthew just grinned at him. It annoyed Ben, but he kept his cool and said, “You’ve only got three more weeks, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Three more weeks will be fine, Ben!” Matthew said, still smiling. He turned back to his computer, and began typing on the keyboard.

  Ben felt more annoyed than ever. Matthew just didn’t seem to understand the appalling consequences for failure. Part of that was his own fault, of course. He had never revealed who owned MedTec, or the real reason why the Corporation was interested in Matthew’s research, for that would have defeated the whole object, because Matthew would never have agreed to work with them if he knew the truth. But failure would bring out the truth, in a very short, but horrific climax.

  Ben did his best to keep calm. “You don’t seem to understand,” he began, and then he stopped as something caught his eye.

  Jayne Middleton’s arm had slowly raised from the side of the bed where it lay, and as Ben stared at it, wide eyed, she held up three fingers in an obvious sign.

  Ben continued to stare at those three fingers as Matthew said over his shoulder, “Three weeks to go, you said. Or, if you prefer, one week gone.”

  Matthew typed again on his keyboard, and Jayne lowered two of her fingers. Ben was left staring at her raised middle finger.

  Ben turned to Matthew and asked in a subdued voice, “How long have you been able to do that?”

  Matthew turned to face Ben and smiled once more. “Oh, since about yesterday morning,” he said. “But that’s nothing, watch this!”

  Matthew typed on his keyboard again, then he began to rummage about in the drawer of his equipment trolley. A few seconds passed before he produced a virtual reality glove from somewhere inside. He quickly plugged it into his mini-computer and put it on his right hand. As he moved his hand and fingers, Jayne’s hand and fingers copied his movements exactly.

  “You should have told me you were worried, Ben, I could have showed you this yesterday,” Matthew said as they both watched Jayne’s arm, hand and fingers moving so energetically. “Although it might have looked like nothing was happening this week, most of the hard work has been done. I thought you would have guessed that by the increased usage on the Crays. Both of them are up to about ninety percent now, but that should be the limit.”

  “I dismissed it without thinking,” Ben admitted. “I’m used to physical results, so I never thought about where all that computer power was going. Can I try?”

  Matthew nodded and took off the glove. Ben put it on and began to move his hand, watching as Jayne copied his every move. “I know you must have explained it to me a hundred times before, Matthew,” he said, “but explain it to me again, will you?”

  “Okay.” Matthew swivelled in his chair and faced Ben properly. “If you remember from my proposal, the first task was the make or break of my whole research project. Before we can do anything, the neural net of the brain has to be mapped out. That’s what the Crays have been doing all this week.”

  “But what does that actually mean?” Ben asked as he made a thumbs up sign and watched Jayne do the same. “I’m an electronics man, not a brain surgeon.”

  Matthew laughed. “Yes, it is hard,” he said, scratching his head. “And I was like you in the beginning, but if I can understand the basics of it, you can. It’s to do with the way we remember things.

  “At the start, at birth, you can think of the brain as being a clean slate. The brain is made up of millions and millions of neural cells, but none of them are connected in any way. Then, as we learn things, pathways between neural cells begin to be formed. Gradually, as we remember more things, the pathways get more complicated as more and more neural cells are joined together. Soon it becomes a vast network of interconnecting pathways, an impenetrable rat’s nest of junctions and cells.

  “The complicated bit is understanding how our memory actually works. It’s not like a computer, where one piece of information is stored in one place. No, for us, one memory could require a dozen neural cells. But it’s not even that simple. Sometimes a smell might make you remember a time, a place, or even a person. Or a name might make you think of an event, or some sort of experience. So all your memories, everything, is interconnected, from one end of the rat’s nest to the other. Who knows how we access it, or how it really works? But it does work, and instantly. Well, almost instantly. The pathways need to be refreshed every so often. If they’re not, they seem to fade away.

  “You must have experienced the times when you want to remember something but you can’t? You know, the times when someone’s name is on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t get it?”

  Ben stopped playing with the virtual reality glove and nodded to Matthew as he took it off. “Yes,” he said. “It drives me crazy when I can’t remember like that. It’s very annoying.”

  Matthew smiled as he took the glove back from him. “That’s because your brain is trying to find the correct pathway, but for some reason the route isn’t there anymore. So what do you do? You try and find a different route, that’s what. You try to get round the gap by thinking of something else that will remind you of what you want to remember. It’s as if you know exactly where it is, but you just can’t reach it. You can go frantic trying to get closer and closer, until finally, you remember. And at the instant of remembering, the lost pathway is remade, and the thing that you couldn’t remember before is now suddenly so obvious.”

  “So how does all this fit in with your work?”

  “Well, Jayne’s brain was a mass of interconnecting pathways before she was injured. And although she’s alive again, those pathways have all disappeared. Part of the reason for that is that there is no life, or energy in the neural cells. The implant provides that energy in the form of a very weak electrical charge from the tiny battery inside it. From it’s position between the two halves of Jayne’s brain, it can stimulate all the neural cells like a little pacemaker. The next task is to refresh all those pathways. That’s what the Crays have been doing.

  “The software I wrote acts a bit like a computer virus. It leaves the implant along one of the hard wired routes into the brain where it reaches one neural cell. Once there, it identifies all the pathways that lead from it, reproduces itself, and sends the clones down each pathway. It then returns to the Crays to tell them where it went. Once the clones get to other neural cells, they each do the same, sending off more clones down more pathways. They also return to the Crays, travelling back through the same pathways to the first neural cell, and from there back to the implant. Each time this happens the neural cells and the pathways between them are refreshed, rebuilding the neural net. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but basically, that’s all there is to it. It just takes a long time. That’s why the Crays are so busy. They’re mapping out the neural net from the data they get from the returning virus clones. And because the amount of data coming back becomes very large very quickly, the first Cray was at it’s limits by the end of the first day. Now the two of them have almost got the mapping out done between them.”

  “Are you telling me that the Crays are trying to reproduce and store Jayne’s memories?”

  Matthew shook his head. “No, not at all. We would need more than two Crays to do that. All they’re doing at the moment is mapping out the neural net and continually refreshing it via the implant. The actual meaning, or content, of the information that the pathways and neural cells hold hasn’t been considered yet. That will come later, when the Crays are finished. Until then, I’ve been accessing th
e map they’ve created on this computer to analyse the connections between Jayne’s brain and the rest of her nervous system. I’ve concentrated on just her right arm and hand for the moment, and you’ve seen the results. But I’ve just been playing at it. When the Crays finish mapping out all of Jayne’s neural net, which will probably be tomorrow, or the day after, I’ll switch them over to this task, starting where I leave off. It’ll be another week, maybe two, before they’ve finished making the connections between her neural net and the rest of her body.”

  “So when can we think about accessing her memories?”

  “Any time after that.”

  “And you’ll use the Crays to do that, too?”

  “No, with luck we won’t need them anymore after that.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ben said, a puzzled expression on his face. “What will you use if you don’t use the Crays?”

  “We’ll just ask Jayne. She should be awake by then.”