I caught snippets of the interview flashing past. The program was exploring a memory where she had been a little girl in a meadow and a butterfly had landed on her finger. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her smile slightly as she recalled it. The butterfly was red. Her dress was blue. The day was hot. Her mom and dad were somewhere off behind her, sitting on a picnic blanket. It sounded beautiful. I’d have to ask her, or at least her avatar, about it later.
Then, the program moved on to other lines of questioning, like the physical location, what she liked most and least about it, and so on. She liked it because they’d picnicked there many times, so it had fond memories for her.
I could almost picture the connections being made that she liked sunshine and meadows (who didn’t?). Thus, another node was formed, another electronic echo of the way our brains associate facts with feelings and sensations, which then connect to other things, forming a vast web. Only this one was of the woman I’d wondered about all my life, the one who gave me life.
“Ugh,” she moaned twenty minutes later. “Can I take this thing off?”
“Of course.” A red error message said COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPTED and the program stopped as she did so. “My brain feels beat.”
“Uh… that’s because I set it to question you faster than usual,” I admitted.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Um… I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”
“Did you now? Well, I did. Peter, I have to say I’m starting to feel uncomfortable with this whole thing.”
Tough luck. That’s what you get for abandoning me. “You can rest for a while,” I said.
“It’s not only that. I’m worried it’s going to start asking me about… intimate things.”
“It’s set to not do that,” I lied. The development team had started defining the boundaries of where it shouldn’t go, but we were nowhere near finished. Another reason the technology wasn’t ready for prime time.
“Well… okay. I trust you, son.” She smiled. Son. I couldn’t put into words how long I’d waited to hear that. Margaret, my adoptive mother, was standoffish. We’d never really connected in the way I’d needed as a boy. And now, here I was—home.
* * *
“Pete, come in for a second, and shut the door behind you.” My heart sank to my stomach. Nobody wanted to hear those words from their boss, especially before they’d had a chance to sit down. I turned left and entered Tom’s office.
“Have a seat,” Tom beckoned. I slung my backpack on the floor and perched on the edge of the chair as my gut twisted. “I can’t find your mind probe anywhere,” Tom said. “I even looked through your drawers. Do you mind telling me where it is?”
Oh, crap. “I… uhh… borrowed it.”
The lines around Tom’s eyes grew deeper as he frowned. “You what? Were you using it on somebody?”
“Just on myself,” I lied. “I… experimented with faster probing.”
His nostrils flared. “Faster probing? How fast?”
“One point five questions per second.”
His shoulders lowered a little. “Firstly, you know it’s forbidden to go beyond one QPS. Second, you also know that removing equipment from the office is a firing offense.” Oh, God. “If anyone were to get a hold of it we’d risk losing our first-to-market advantage. I’m taking it you at least have it with you now?”
I unzipped my backpack and held up the mind probe.
“If any of my superiors found out about this, you and I would both be fired, and I’m not about to lose my livelihood over you. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me. You’re not in school anymore. If you weren’t such a fine engineer I’d can you on the spot.”
I nodded contritely. “It won’t happen again.” I headed over to my desk, opened my laptop, and logged on. I clicked on Microsoft Outlook out of habit, but was staring through the screen as myriad thoughts raced through my head. How would I preserve Mom’s memories now? Making my own version of the mind probe was out of the question, due to the technology required. Plus, it would take longer than I had. What on earth was I going to do now?
* * *
“You’re early today, Pete,” Maeve said brightly as I entered the home. Her expression changed when she saw my face. “What’s wrong?”
I sighed. “I… can’t use the mind probe anymore. I got busted taking it out of the office.”
“Oh no! So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Thanks for helping me with it though,” I said, referring to the fact that Maeve had made sure we were undisturbed during the mind mapping sessions.
“No problem.” She paused for a moment. “She sure loves you.”
I smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
“And that’s more important than any ‘mind map’, or whatever that thing does.”
“I suppose you’re right. But how do I make up for all that lost time, Maeve? That’s what it was helping me with: extracting the stuff I’d otherwise already known if she’d been in my life. I hate myself for taking this long to try and find her.”
“Oh, come here,” Maeve said. She hugged me. I had a vague feeling she wasn’t supposed to, but she didn’t seem to care, so I returned the embrace. Then she pulled away. “Let me know if you guys need anything. Dinner’s in about an hour.”
“Thanks.”
I knew there was something wrong as soon as I entered Mom’s room.
“Sit down, Peter,” she said calmly from the bed. Oh, God, I really hope she isn’t going to say…
“I had another PET scan today. I’m afraid the chemotherapy’s not working.” Black dots danced around the edge of my vision as the world tilted around me. I gripped the wooden arms of the chair. Words failed me. I’d known we wouldn’t have very long together, but…
I could see the grief on Mom’s face as she looked at me, but I somehow felt like she was reflecting the way I felt more than being sad for or pitying herself. That’s the kind of person she was.
“Come here,” she said. I numbly made my way over to the bed. She sat up and put her arms around me. “Be thankful for the time we do have, son. I’m not gone yet.”
Despite the love I felt for Mom, I was still angry deep down.
* * *
“Tom, I didn’t use the mind probe on myself,” I said, shifting uncomfortably in his office guest chair. Tom raised his thick eyebrows. “You remember when I said I’d found my birth mother after forty years?”
“Yes.” I saw him tense. I think he knew what was coming next.
“Well, she’s got cancer, and she doesn’t have long left. I’m trying to extract her memories so I can have her DROP avatar after she’s gone.”
He buried his forehead in his palm. “Good Lord, Peter. So where have you been taking our stuff?”
“To the nursing home she lives in.”
Tom sighed. “Well, thank you for ‘fessing up. You still can’t take the mind probe off the premises, though. I’ve a good mind to lock your laptop to your desk, too.”
Ugh. “Well, that’s the thing. I was wondering if you’d let me use it on her with your tacit blessing. After all, this is one of the reasons we’re creating this technology, so people can be preserved in digital form.”
Tom looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Of course not. You could have her come to a DROP facility when it’s ready… although… Listen man, I see your predicament. I really do. But I just can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
I nodded, resigned. “Okay.” I got up and headed over to my desk, where I logged on and got on with my work on the mind mapping program. I thought about Mom’s mind map flowing through and being assembled by the code in front of me. It wasn’t to be. Well, at least, once we went public, countless other people could be mapped and preserved before they passed. I guessed that was some comfort.
* * *
We filed into conference room C, which seated all twenty of us. The meeting invite had been cryptically t
itled “Announcement.” In nervous whispers we’d expressed our fears that we were about to be laid off because the company was out of capital. I sat down at the opposite end of the long table from the whiteboard. In the middle of the table was an object that looked like a cross between the mind probe and a virtual reality headset.
“So, you’re all wondering what that thing is,” Tom began. “It’s nothing less than the future of DROP. NRG have discovered that presenting questions visually to the subject elicits a faster response from their mind. It is, in fact, ten times faster.” There were exclamations and low whistles throughout the room. “The question is presented as simple text that the subject subliminally reads for one twentieth of a second,” Tom continued. “Then the answer is extracted in the usual way. Of course, it is still compatible with the mapping and modeling software currently in development…” Tom’s voice faded into the background, as I thought about what I could do with this new prototype. I could now extract millions of nodes from Mom’s mind. Somehow, I had to get hold of that headset.
* * *
The wind whipped around me as I walked down the busy street away from the office. It was my custom to take a mid-afternoon walk, long enough to think but short enough to prevent Tom from accusing me of slacking off. Today, I spent my walk considering how I could utilize the new prototype.
I wondered for a second if I could take Mom to the office, but it wouldn’t work, because she wasn’t usually well enough to travel across town. Was there anyone in NRG I could appeal to or bribe? Andy Miller, who ran that group, was a hardass, so he was out. I only knew one other person there: Joanna Cruz. I sometimes saw her when she was outside taking a smoke break when I headed out for fresh air. She was my only hope. I headed back to my desk, and kept an eye on the instant messenger window.
A short while later, her name changed from green to red, which meant she was away from her computer. Bingo. I headed back downstairs and turned right out of the main doors. Joanna was standing on the sidewalk, her brown hair being whipped all around her face by the wind.
“Hi,” I said.
“Oh hi, Pete. How’s your mom doing?”
I shrugged. “Well, hanging in there, but I don’t think she’s going to be around much longer.”
“Aww, I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. Tom showed us the prototype of the new mind probe earlier. I thought it was pretty amazing.”
“Isn’t it cool? Who’d have thought we could get a factor of ten increase in speed before going public?” she enthused.
Okay, let’s get this over with. “I’m about to ask you for the biggest favor you could possibly do for anybody.”
“Umm, okay…”
“I… uh… want you to help me use the prototype on my mom for a few nights.”
“What?”
I looked down. “I told you it was a big ask… Sorry, I was being dumb.”
“You want to map your mom’s mind?”
“I already have been, using the regular probe,” I said, looking back up at Joanna.
“Holy crap, Pete! Do you know how much trouble you could get in?”
“I already did. Tom busted me on it.”
“And you’ve still got a job?” she asked, incredulous.
“Somehow, yes. Maybe he took pity on me with all I’m going through.”
Joanna exhaled slowly, blowing out smoke, and nodded. “Maybe.” She paused for a few moments. “I really wish I could help you, Pete. This is the exact reason we’re making this stuff.”
“Yeah…” I shuffled about, my hands in my pockets. “Okay, well I’m gonna head back in. See you later.”
* * *
People started zipping up backpacks and rolling out of the office at around 4:50pm. I was exhausted and glazed over, as usual for the last hour of the day. Just as I was about to roll back my chair and stand up to leave, a new instant message popped up. It was Joanna. Meet me out front.
“Hey,” she said as soon as I entered the lobby.
“What’s up?”
“Let’s walk this way.” As soon as we were fifty feet from the door, she continued, “I’m going to help you get the new mind probe out and use it on your mom.”
“You’re… what?”
“I lost two grandparents in the last year, so I know what you’re going through. Once most people have cleared out of the office, I’ll meet you out back with it.”
“Joanna… you don’t have to do this! You could lose your job and be sued six ways from Sunday!”
Joanna nodded. “Yeah. But it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
* * *
Five-thirty rolled around, and almost everybody had cleared out of the development office. I was so antsy and nervous that I couldn’t sit, so I headed upstairs to the neural research group. My key card didn’t allow me access there, so I looked in through the glass door and saw that most chairs were already unoccupied. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves as I headed back down. Development was now empty, so I just paced the blue-carpeted floor.
Eventually the text came. I headed down and out the back door.
“Take the backpack too,” Joanna said. “I can’t get it out, not here. And make sure it’s back by nine.”
“Um, key card?”
“Oh. Yeah. You’ll have to borrow that too,” she said with a touch of irritation, unclipping the lanyard from her jeans.
“I… don’t know how to thank you.”
“You can thank me by not getting us caught, since it’ll log my card opening the door later.”
“Right. See you tomorrow.”
I headed to the parking garage and was soon at Mom’s. Dinner was just finishing up. My phone vibrated. It was Joanna. Make sure to set QPS to 10. I chuckled—I had forgotten that with all the fear and nerves.
* * *
“You’re a real trooper for doing this, Mom,” I said as she relaxed with the new apparatus on her head. She nodded. I upped the probing speed to ten questions per second, recompiled, and started it. I watched with baited breath as the output window filled up quickly. I looked at Mom, and then back at the screen. The node counter rose quickly. I broke out in goose bumps. I was capturing 36,000 nodes per hour! A few hours at this rate would double the nodes I had already collected. How had they figured out this new technique anyway? I wasn’t sure, but it was working. The text scrolled by faster than I could read it. Mom seemed to be doing okay.
An hour went by. It was time she took a break.
“How are you feeling, Mom?”
She massaged her forehead and temples. “Like I just took my finals again.”
I smiled and nodded. Having not even used it on myself yet, I could only imagine. I silently thanked God that her brain was holding up well.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. What if I increased the speed to twenty? Seventy-two thousand nodes per hour! A million nodes in fourteen hours, if I could use this thing for that long! At that rate I could have a good baseline of Mom’s mind within a week, even if the outer tendrils of knowledge still eventually turned to question marks. I had no idea if this thing had been tested at that speed. But, oh, the knowledge I could capture! The fear of losing Mom pushed me forward, and the fear of something going wrong pushed me back. The former won. I opened the file and changed the number.
Mom and I began to make small talk about the weather and the Chicago Cubs, of all things.
“Ready to start again?” I asked.
“Okay.” I heard fatigue and reluctance in her voice. But time was running out. I placed it back on her head, like I was crowning a queen, and started the program. The window now filled up almost immediately! It was working! I wondered if NRG had tested it at this speed. Joanna would be very interested to know this. My heart was in my mouth as I imagined the software creating connections in the mind map at lightning speed, and was thankful for my laptop’s extremely fast processor. It wouldn’t be long until I was well on the way to having an everlasting copy of Mom.
* * *
I caught words here and there as they flashed by: blessed, drunkard, eight, Carter, school—but I would have to wait until later to ask her, or her avatar, what they meant to her. I sent up a mental prayer of thanks for Joanna having me lent me the marvelous new mind probe, and wondered what she was doing at that moment.
Suddenly, Mom began to shake, her arms, legs, and head jerking violently. “Oh, shit!” I jumped up and pulled the probe from her head, but her seizure continued. The room swirled around me in a blind panic. I hit the red emergency button on the wall. Mom made guttural animal-like grunts. Oh, God. I put my arms around her. “Mom! I’m here! Stop this. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.”
Maeve burst in. She took one look at Mom, then keyed the intercom button. “Call 911. Mrs. McLean’s having a seizure,” she said, in an urgent yet professional calm. Mom’s eyes rolled back in her head as she shook. God, please don’t take her from me now.
The paramedics were there in no time. “Mrs. McLean, I’m Mike. I’m a paramedic. We’re here to help you. We’re going to take you to the emergency room,” the big guy said as he maneuvered around to Mom’s side. The other medic helped cradle her as they lifted her shaking form onto the gurney. They wasted no time in wheeling Mom out of the room as Mike talked to the dispatcher on his radio. Maeve quickly rifled through Mom’s drawers, grabbing night clothes she would need in the hospital.
I was holding Mom’s shaking hand as we waited for the elevator. Oh, crap. I ran back into the room, nearly knocking Maeve over, grabbed the mind probe, stuffed it into Joanna’s backpack, and ran back out just as the elevator doors were closing. I made it in just before they shut. Mom stopped shaking and went limp.
* * *
“We’ve done all we can do for now, Mr. McLean,” the ER doctor said, as machines beeped in the background. “She’s stable. Her heart rate and blood pressure are holding steady.”
“When will she come around?” I asked.
“We’ve no way of knowing when, or even if, I’m afraid. We’ll check on her periodically, and all her vital signs are being monitored at the nurses’ station. Is there anything you need right now?”
The Expanding Universe Page 34